Chapter 3
Atlas
“Witches are bullshit,” I said from the driver’s seat of my GTO. We’d been on the road for thirty minutes, following behind the Harlots as they led us on what would most likely be a wild goose chase. “This whole thing is bullshit.”
“She’s right, though,” Wes added from the passenger. “We knew what we were signing up for.”
“And what were we gonna do, huh?” I shook my head. “Not attend a bonding ceremony just because it’s her? Dad would kill us if he were still alive.”
“It’s surprising both of us were chosen.
I’ll give you that,” Wes said, flipping a page of his book.
Such a fucking nerd, my brother. Sometimes, it was difficult to tell that we’d been raised by the same dude, even if we had different biological parents.
Wes had been with me since he was four, so he might as well be my brother in every way except blood.
When Dad came home all pissed off and angry, he yelled at both of us, not just me.
Yep, connected by trauma didn’t even begin to describe how fucked up our little so-called family was.
“What? The ancestors couldn’t figure out which of us would be the worst match for her, so they picked both?
” I laughed and let the disappointment roll through me.
At least twenty other prospective warriors were waiting in the wings; any of them would have been a better choice.
But nooo, fate was a fickle bitch and wouldn’t let us have any breathing room.
“The ancestors don’t do anything by chance,” Wes said, glancing at me with a disapproving side eye. “If they wanted it this way, it’s for a reason.”
“Yeah, let’s live our lives following a bunch of dead idiots that were stupid enough to get killed in the first place,” I said. “There’s a bright idea.”
“You didn’t have to come,” Wes said. “I could have taken this one.”
“And let you have all the fun?” I reached over to hit his book on the spine, sending it flying toward his face. “Not a chance.”
“Hey, knock it off,” he said, shoving my shoulder. I responded by knocking his book out of his hands again, which only made him punch me in the bicep. “Asshole.”
“Cunt.”
Wes pursed his lips and grabbed his phone to scroll through the socials for anything relevant.
Marta said people were screwing each other to death, whatever the fuck that meant.
Maybe it was a demon or a poltergeist, possessing all those poor fucks and forcing them to wear down their meat-suits.
It could be an easy fix, and if it were, we’d be back in Asheville by the weekend.
Good. The less time we spend with her, the better.
It wasn’t that I was pissed about the warrior bond, though that was a whole other bag of cats entirely. It was just her. Why her?
Twelve years ago, Dad had taken us on our first mission, which was a mistake. I was twenty at the time, Wes only eighteen. It was supposed to be an easy job, in and out, a quick fix, and we’d be on our way. At the time, I’d been thrilled about becoming a warrior. I thought it was my destiny.
Killing monsters. Saving humanity. All that stupid, idiotic shit.
We got to the haunted house, quickly realized it was infested with demons, and tried to make a swift retreat.
Marta’s parents got caught in the crossfire.
Dad told me to take Wes and get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him, leaving all of them.
But always a good little soldier, I did what he told me to do.
I took my brother back to the motel and waited for Dad, his witch, and her husband to return.
They never did. We later learned all three of them had gotten chewed up and spit out, hardly a body part left to bury.
Marta blamed me for what happened, blamed Wes and me both.
Maybe that was why I hated her so much. She’d never heard our side of the story, and she didn’t want to. No, she’d rather simmer with her own wrath while Wes and I bore the brunt of the fallout.
“It could be a Cupid,” Wes said, drawing me back to reality. “Or maybe a siren.”
“Cupids don’t make people go rabid,” I said.
“Are we sure that’s what’s happening?” Wes asked, scrolling through the evidence Aradia sent to us.
“A few videos don’t mean anything.” He clicked on his screen before leaning over to show me.
“Check out the local PD reports. Ten victims so far, and six more they’re not sure about.
Four of them were still…chewing…by the time EMS arrived. ”
“Chewing?” I grimaced and skimmed the intel as best as I could while driving. Sure enough, the impacted people had escalated from fucking to cannibalizing each other alive. “Fuck. That’s gnarly.”
“Granny from the orgy was rib deep in human pit beef when they carted her off to the ICU. They had to sedate her to keep her from breaking out to finish him off.” Wes scrolled through a graphic, gory mess.
“So if it’s not a Cupid, are we going with a siren?” I looked at Wes, waiting to see his reaction.
He rubbed his hand over his mouth and sighed. “Maybe, but sirens usually only go after men.”
“C’mon,” I teased, grabbing his shoulder to give him a shake. “It’s 2025. Sex-obsessed monsters don’t care about stupid things like gender anymore.”
“You would know,” Wes added with a chuckle.
I shot him a glare. “Prude.”
Yeah, I’d been known to fuck around with anything that moved.
I, too, didn’t care about stupid things like gender.
Chances were, if I liked you, I’d probably want to play with whatever was in your pants.
I guessed that made me pansexual or some shit, but I always thought of myself as an equal opportunity sex-enthusiast. In my short thirty-two years, I’d been around the block more than I’d ever admit.
Practically run through, at this point. But that didn’t mean I’d stand for being shamed by it.
“No, this is worse than that,” he said as he ran his hand back through his dark curly hair. “If people are consuming each other, that’s heavy-hitting magic. My money’s on demon.”
I took a deep breath and ran through my mental monster encyclopedia.
Demons in this world weren’t like the impotent villains in comic books or the snarky antiheroes from some long-running television melodrama for tweens.
These fuckers were cruel and ruthless. They came from the darkest pits of the afterlife, here to wreak destruction and chaos.
At least fifteen of the last twenty serial killers in modern history were possessed by demons, and it wasn’t as easy as exorcising them back to hell.
The witches we ran with didn’t banish; they said it cost a witch part of her soul.
Most of the time, demons crawled out of whatever shit-stained veil they could find and walked among us like average people.
The only way to get rid of them was to trap them in a liminal or destroy every piece of them in this plane of existence.
Liminals were pocket realities created by magic, sort of like a bubble in the space-time continuum of the human realm.
It was the easiest and safest way to ditch a demon.
Gather a group of witches, create the porthole, and shove the fucker in it.
Piece of cake. But the magic required to do the spell took even the best witches out for days afterward.
Destroying every piece of a demon was harder.
Unfortunately, demons knew their own kryptonite, so they typically left chunks of themselves hidden throughout the human realm.
A lock of hair here. A graph of skin there.
A molar in a suit jacket sold at a thrift store.
These bitches were relentless, and they could re-manifest using any piece of their body.
Because of their connection to the afterlife, they packed a mean punch. They had the entire weight of hell and the undead behind them, so they could influence humans in truly despicable ways.
“If it’s a demon,” I said, “there’d be other signs. Cattle mutilations. Desecrated ground. Dark rituals and—”
“Low blood supply at the Red Cross,” he added. “A week ago, the local blood bank reported a break-in. Nearly sixty pints of O-Neg were stolen. They blamed it on local teenagers pulling a prank.”
“And there it is,” I said. “Did you replenish the salt stores and the holy water?”
“Of course,” Wes said, a sharp sting of defensiveness in his tone. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Just checking,” I said, holding up a hand to show I meant no offense.
My own mother died when I was five, and Dad married Wesson’s mother shortly after that.
Then, she’d died a year later, leaving my old man with two little boys to raise on his own.
I’d like to say he did his best, but he was never the same after that.
He rode both of us hard, forcing us to train and shoot and learn how to fight.
Our home was more like boot camp than a safe space for children, and Dad had been our drill sergeant until he died.
I had to be perfect. Always the best. Which was why I probably pushed myself the hardest in these missions.
Be better, faster, stronger. Softness was a weakness.
Love was a vulnerability. So I never let myself open up to anyone.
Sex was one thing. Relationships carried too much baggage, especially in this life.
People died all the time, and I didn’t have the patience for it.
Wes and I had a fucked-up relationship. We fought like brothers, probably because we spent far too much time together, but we were more than that.
We always had been. We were two sides of the same coin, attached at the soul.
If we were to end up on some therapist’s couch, they’d probably say we had something unhealthy and codependent about us, but fuck all that.
Wes was the only person in my life I truly cared about.
He didn’t want this life. He wanted to go off to college and get married, maybe end up with two-point-five kids and a golden retriever. He even tried it once or twice. And as much as I loved him, I hated him for that. I saw this life as my duty, my birthright. He saw it as an obligation.
“When we get to the motel, let’s regroup with Marta and let her know what we think,” Wes said. “She might have better ideas on how to handle it from the magical side of things.”
“It’s a good thing Lilith sent three witches,” I said. “If we need to make a liminal, three will do it.”
“It would be better with four,” he muttered. A few minutes of quiet went by before he ran his hands over his face and sighed. “You think Marta knows what she’s doing?”
I snorted. “I think Marta’s in over her head. Yeah, she helped with those shifters out in Montana, but does that mean she’s ready for missions?”
Wes shook his head. “I feel bad for her, ya know.”
“Feel bad for her? Why?” I narrowed my gaze on him and tsked through my teeth. “We didn’t have anything to do with her parents’ death? We lost our dad that day, too.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she deserves this.” He gestured between us, as if to say she didn’t deserve the burden of being bonded to us.
“Deserves what? Two highly capable warriors with a lifetime of experience?” I scoffed. “Yeah, poor her.”
“C’mon, Atlas,” Wes said. “She hates us. And we haven’t been exactly kind to her, either.”
“Whatever. I just hope there’s cheesecake at the diner.” I reached forward and turned up the radio, blasting classic rock to shut him up.