by Amy Lane
“No, my lady,” he said, his voice stronger than he could ever remember it being. He had to make sure these people knew what he was and what he wasn’t—and what they were offering with their blood on the hex bags.
“I’m sorry?” Cory asked, affronted.
“This ritual—it took years from our mother’s life. And yes, she was an immortal, and the years were hers to give, but I’m sorry. Your people need all the years you have.”
Cory’s twisted smile of acquiescence hurt—but she backed out of the circle, and a dreamy-eyed elf with hair that seemed to shift color with every breeze stepped in after her.
“You should all know that,” he said, his voice carrying across the suddenly quiet yard. There were vampires surrounding them, he realized, hands joined. He wondered if they were there for protection—he’d noticed Cory’s eyes unfocused a lot, as she ordered people around. Perhaps they were hers. “This spell was done once with two people—but one of them was an angel in active service. The other was my mother, and she sacrificed years of her life. I realize you all have extended lifespans, but so do I.” He shrugged. “Every moment is precious. I have the feeling you all know this, probably more than most mortals. So right now, decide if that’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make for a complete stranger. My brothers and I were prepared to make it alone—we could do that again.”
Not a soul moved, and Edward bent his head humbly.
“I have no words,” he said. “My family is indebted to you for your kindness.”
“The brownies miss you,” Green told him from behind the vampires, arm wrapped firmly around Cory’s and Bracken’s shoulders. Nicky was in the circle—because he was as immortal as Green. “If we could send some of them to your home, they will be happier, and you’ll have discharged your debt.”
“But that doesn’t make sense!” Beltane muttered loudly. He was glared into silence by Francis, who, for once, seemed to understand.
Edward pulled his heart from his throat. “So Harry’s going to send me to where Mullins is, and then….” Edward thumped the snake-and-rhinoceros-horn staff in his hand next to the mirror at his feet. “Then, when you see this coming through the mirror, please pull us out.”
There was general laughter.
“And when Mullins is situated in the middle, I’ll start the spell. Are we clear?”
General assent then, and Edward took a deep breath. “Harry, you ready?”
Harry pushed himself standing. “You’d better not get lost, you prick!”
“You’d better not send me to the place with the big blue corn, idiot!” Edward snapped back. He saw Harry’s lips curve wickedly and knew that they’d both said “I love you, brother,” in front of an entire crowd of people.
And then everything—elves, werecreatures, vampires, brothers—all of it disappeared.
Clyde
“HELLO, CLYDE,” said the… well, now the purple man. “I hope you don’t mind a little bit of privacy.”
“I hate this place,” Mullins said flatly. He’d been Clyde for twenty years and Mullins for nearly four hundred. Whoever Clyde had been, Mullins wasn’t like that anymore.
The purple man looked around sadly, taking in the jagged edges of stone dripping thickly with blood and the tiny, safe bed in the middle of the cell, pristine. “I can see why. Why would you choose to stay here?”
Mullins gaped at him. “Because I was in hell. Remember? I was making a deal to save my little sister!”
The purple man nodded. “But I was coming to save you both!”
“But I didn’t know that!” Mullins pulled away from him, feeling a reluctant burst of attraction coursing through his blood. He was still perfectly made—wide shoulders, lean hips, muscular arms and legs.
No clothes and a prodigious manhood.
“Well, true.” To his horror the purple man wrapped strong arms around Mullins’s shoulders and nuzzled his ear. “I mean, I did save your sister. That’s her offspring who just hit that infernal fairy hill. Proof, right, Clyde?”
Mullins’s senses—newly awakened in Edward’s arms—kicked up about a thousand notches. In the back of his mind he heard, This is a god. Who refuses a god?
But his heart constricted.
Edward. He remembered the loneliness he’d felt, realizing he couldn’t even help with his own redemption spell. All he’d wanted was Edward’s touch on his hand, his bright eyes smiling back.
One hundred and forty years as Edward’s friend, mentor, avenger had not been enough. Two nights, one glorious day in Edward’s arms had not been enough. All it had done was tell Mullins an eternity would never be enough.
Mullins twisted his body and broke away from the embrace. “I’m not Clyde anymore,” he said, feeling a sense of relief. He’d been so young! So easily enchanted. He’d seen wonders since—an exploding bathtub, an angel delivered from torment, the desert at night.
Four young men he’d come to love, embarking on a tremendously difficult adventure—for him.
One of them growing, falling in love, being hurt, falling again.
Falling for him.
Mullins.
Not Clyde—not the shallow boy who didn’t know any better, but Mullins. The demon who’d learned to lie, to cheat, to kill—and who still doggedly hung on to his own soul.
Oh, Edward. I’ve seen so many marvels and so many abominations. But the most marvelous thing I’ve seen in four hundred years is your love, and my only abomination would be to betray that love, even for a god.
“Thank you,” Mullins said stiffly. “For saving my sister.” He relaxed a tad. “That was well done. She didn’t deserve any of what happened.”
“And you did?” the other asked silkily.
Mullins felt his lips contort and knew this was nothing like the smile he’d become more and more used to in the past few days. “I did not,” he said simply. “But I set those events in motion, and they could not be unset. Ruthie lived a long life?”
The other took a step back and eyed him warily. “She did. Over eighty winters, lively and blithe. She married a good man—three of them, actually—and outlived all three.”
Mullins nodded. “As long as she loved.” His Ruthie, young and sweet and kind. Not knowing of the perfidy of adults, of the hatred of… the other.
“She did,” the other told him quietly. “And your heart—still just as pure as I sensed when I showed up at your window, offering you sweets.”
It had not been this man’s fault that their evening together had erupted into chaos. His penchant, perhaps—even his curse—but the chaos, the danger, his parents’ house, all of that had been the gullible, panicky humans who would rather destroy what they didn’t understand than have a little faith.
“The sweets were… costly,” Mullins said, and he realized that all those years spent minding his tongue, minding his expression, waiting to see which way the whip would fall, all of that experience was paying off here.
He wanted to fall to his knees and scream Edward’s name.
What he was doing instead was discovering what this man would do to harm them.
Or help them.
“Well, yes.” The other nodded. “I hadn’t meant for you to become a demon.” He grimaced. “I really don’t….” He waved his hand around the cell, indicating the dank stone, the bloodstains, the vast vaulty echo of a mostly deserted hell. “I don’t really mingle with the folk down here. They seem to have their own agenda.”
Mullins let out a short bark of laughter. “Yes. People really do make their own hell and their worst selves possible, don’t they?” He’d learned that too. “But that doesn’t mean a signature into servitude isn’t binding.”
The other shrugged. “But hey—I gave you the means to unbind it, and here you are.” He smiled winningly. “And there are so many promising things we could do with your tail.”
Mullins felt anger congeal in his stomach. “Nobody touches my tail but Edward,” he snapped, and the other backed up, hands held out i
n mock surrender.
“Okay, okay! He can play too!”
“No,” Mullins told him. “No. It’s not playing. Not now. It never should have been playing in the first place. I hurt somebody. Somebody dear to me. He was kind and good—and maybe I’ve seen marvels and maybe I’m not the ignorant peasant boy I was all those years ago. But it came at the expense of breaking a friend’s heart, and that was not my price to pay. Maybe someone else could have many lovers with no hard feelings—Cory, Green, Bracken, Nicky—they seem to have found a way to love each other and to not let their love crumble from the weight of the four of them. But I’m not that strong. I love Edward—and I won’t hurt him, not for the world.”
“What about for your freedom,” the other asked harshly. “Because I’ll be honest—as much fun as those people in that fairy hill seemed to be having, you know they were just screwing around. There’s no way they can save you from here. The demons were going to get in sooner or later, and then where would you be? Hundreds of years of torment and no what’s his name—”
“Edward,” Mullins insisted. He hadn’t even mentioned Jonathan’s name before. Edward would be a real person between them. Edward would be a force for the other to fear.
“I mean, you disappeared,” the other reasoned. “He’s going to think you’re gone. And I can take you away from here as my consort. We play around a few years, you have the rest of a mortal lifetime to explore the world as it is. How bad can that be?”
Mullins closed his eyes and heard Edward promising to try again. And again. And again. If he had to start over again for his entire longer-than-mortal lifetime, he wouldn’t give up on Mullins.
Mullins believed that. Believed that help was coming with all his heart. It may not be this night. It may not be this decade.
But Edward would come.
“No thank you,” he said softly, closing his eyes against the awfulness of hell. Inside his heart, he saw the mirror of hope Edward had given him.
He still had it in his pocket.
His eyes flew open as he realized it was warm.
Edward.
“But Clyde—”
“Mullins. Clyde died in that stream, signing his name in blood, believing the lies of a soul as small and petty as Menoch. Mullins was reborn. He’s seen and done terrible things—but he’s still a good man.”
The other rolled his eyes. “Well, Mullins, you can come with me and be my love, or you can rot in hell and await your precious wizard kid. Just remember—I gave you the staff. I gave you the bloodline to finish off the spell. I saved your little sister and her descendants for you—this is a really shitty way to say thanks—”
“Thank you,” Mullins said again. “Thank you for saving my sister like I begged you to do, despairing with my last breath. Thank you for teaching me the difference between love and lust in a field of flowers, no two the same. And thank you for reminding me now that I’m not a fool. Not anymore. I refuse to pay anybody else’s broken heart for my sins, and I will never betray Edward.”
The other gazed at him, turquoise eyes alight with an unholy glow. “Done,” he said softly, as though this speech was the thing he’d waited 400 years to hear.
And then he disappeared, blinking out of existence in the space of a heartbeat.
Mullins covered his face with his hands and sank to his knees on the stone floor.
“Edward,” he whispered, and then, as the full extent of his loss hammered at him, as he realized how long he’d have to wait for another touch from his beloved’s hand, he screamed it.
“Edward!”
He managed to crawl onto his bed, alone, all alone in the twelfth sphincter of hell, yearning for one more breath, one more touch, one more moment of peace from the heart of his beloved.
AN HOUR passed.
Maybe two.
Mullins crouched on his bed and tried to reason.
Where was everybody?
From what he could hear, none of the demons were actually in hell. Maybe, off in the distance, in the first through tenth sphincters, he could hear the screams and wails of hell’s usual doings, but not here with the scribes, and not next door with the beast-makers. But these two units—these were deserted, and Mullins was alone.
Which meant they must be still breaking down the magic and psychic barriers that guarded the fairy hill.
Why would they do that? Unless… unless they didn’t know he was here.
But Edward would know, certainly, wouldn’t he? But wait. Would Edward have to know? Edward had his blood—or Sam’s blood—and Harry could….
At the thought of Harry Mullins’s heart sank. Harry was weak. Edward wouldn’t ask his brother to help them at the expense of Harry’s life, would he?
The thought tormented him, around and around, as he listened to the far-off tortures in places he’d done his best for 400 years not to explore.
He might be here for 400 years more.
“Edward…,” he moaned, covering his face with his hands.
“Mullins!” Edward cried, and Mullins gasped.
His boy, orange hair mussed, green eyes shadowed, gave a whoop and embraced Mullins with all his formidable strength, falling to his knees across from him, both of them clinging together in the twelfth sphincter of hell.
Edward smiled at him, eyes red-rimmed, as he smoothed Mullins’s hair back from his face.
“I told you I’d come for you.”
Mullins nodded and tried not to sob. “Oh, you did. You did indeed.”
“I’m sorry I’m late—you knew I was coming, right?”
Mullins broke, laying his head on Edward’s shoulder and holding him so tight he gasped for air. “Oh, I did,” he hiccupped. “I did. With all my heart, I took you at your word.”
Redemption Day
EDWARD PICKED the staff up from where he dropped it and pulled Mullins close one more time.
“You ready?” he asked. His heart still thundered in relief from seeing Mullins alive and unharmed.
Mullins looked unhappily at the staff. “We’re using that? You know it was a gift from… from….”
“Your ex-boyfriend? Yeah. We figured. Congratulations, Mullins, your lover was a god.”
Mullins’s laugh sounded a little unhinged. “But other than that, he wasn’t a bad man.”
Edward paused. “What happened?” he asked softly. “What did he want?”
Mullins gnawed on that lush lower lip, thinking carefully. “He wanted to… tempt me,” he answered at last. “He wanted to offer me an easy way out of hell.”
The smell of blood, of entrails, of despair washed over Edward then, suddenly strong.
“And you didn’t take it? Oh, Mullins—you’re a stronger man than I am!”
Mullins seized his hand and gazed intently into his eyes. “Don’t you believe it, Edward Youngblood. You gave me the strength to say no.”
Edward had to turn away, humbled. “That’s an amazing thing to say,” he mumbled, charmed even more by his Mullins’s kiss on his cheek.
“It’s true,” Mullins whispered, before pulling back. “But we should leave soon before everybody comes back.”
Edward shook his head. “They’re still waiting for you on the hill. I don’t think they’ll go until you are well and truly transformed. Do you have your mirror?”
Mullins nodded. “It was the oddest thing that I grabbed it this morning. I… it was on the floor of Leonard and Emma’s after I came through. I couldn’t imagine leaving it there.”
“I didn’t even remember holding on to mine,” Edward said. “But it was in my pocket this morning when we dressed.” He grimaced. “I spelled another one to both of ours and left it on top of the hill. We need to use them because….” His brother’s pale, strained face as Harry had stood to cast that spell was terrifying.
“Harry?” Mullins said unhappily. “Well, then. Let’s go.”
Edward kissed him. Hard. “I’ll do it all again if I have to,” he swore. Then he grinned. “Let’s hope we d
on’t have to.”
And with that he set the mirror on the ground and thrust the staff through it, clinging to the staff with one hand and Mullins with the other.
With a terrible heave, he and Mullins were dragged through.
He almost dislocated his shoulder with the pressure of hanging on to Mullins, and Mullins clung to him so tightly they’d later realize he’d cracked Edward’s ribs.
There was a terrible friction this time, a physical reluctance to the relocation, and it wasn’t until Edward found himself hauled to his knees in the center of the multiple pentagrams on Green’s Hill that he saw what the problem was.
“Mullins?” he cried, touching his beloved’s face.
Or the beast that had taken over as his face again.
“Oh no.” Mullins lay on his back, where apparently rescuers had placed him after prying his arms from around Edward’s waist. His eyes were closed, and he lay flat on his back, legs like a goat’s, hands like a pig’s, a face like a horse. Still. Abominably, deathly still. “He’s not breathing!”
“Edward!” Suriel was there, hauling him to his feet. “We have no time. We have to perform the spell now. Edward, after you disappeared, the shields slipped a little more. The demons are making it through!”
Edward looked around the garden wildly, appalled. The ring of spellcasters remained, but they were all facing outward. The fey were glowing, their bodies impossibly tall, giants crouched and ready to fight. Around them was a mosh pit of demons and werecreatures—wolves, giant dogs, jaguars, mountain cats, giant housecats, and giant birds fought with snarling, howling intensity. As Edward watched, the werewolf he’d known as Teague and a giant housecat with crossed blue eyes like Francis’s took one end each of a creature with a fly’s bloated white body and ripped it in two.
“Oh, heavens! Suriel! What have we done?”
“Nothing intentional,” Suriel said sternly. “And it’s time to make it right. Now Cory’s got a plan to leave you unmolested, but she says it can only buy you a few moments. We’re all in position. Can you use that time?”