CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
The climb to the second floor was treacherous.
Hero glanced briefly into her old room, the one she’d shared with Liam until she’d been relegated to the attic.
She paused at the door to her parents’ room, the scene of the crime, where an incubus had seduced her mother.
She hung on to the doorjamb, hissing in a breath through her bared teeth, her gaze fixed on the empty floor where her parents’ bed had stood.
All her life, she’d suffered and been blamed for something not her fault.
The injustice of it took her breath away.
Her last stop was the attic. She really didn’t want to go up there, but she’d come this far and figured she might as well see it all the way through.
Glutton for punishment, aren’t I?
There was an actual room in the attic, not just a crawlspace, with finished walls she remembered sloping close to the head of a girl who grew too fast. Hero had to duck to get back to the eaves as she searched for signs of her younger self, but all evidence had been erased.
Not even a scrap of blanket or paper remained from the many drawings she’d plastered on the slanted ceiling, pictures of flowers and birds and meadows, and of skeletons and dead squirrels and paths through the Underworld – all the usual scribblings of a girl half human and half demon.
The round window letting light in from outside was still intact.
Beyond lay the familiar view of the backyard and shed and fence – broken in places now.
The roof of the shed was caved in and the walls leaned drunkenly.
She remembered leaping from the roof overhead to the roof of the shed, landing lightly like a spider, limbs strong and flexible.
She could jump back the other way, too, and there had been joy in the power of it even when it bought her an enraged beating.
A swirl of wind disturbed the fallen leaves in the yard, and she heard the distant lowing of cattle. All so peaceful and bucolic. Any child would have been lucky to have grown up in such a place.
Not this child.
The sun hung low in the sky, slanting through the window, painting the yard gold.
She looked over the hills and the cropland and saw the creeping shadows.
A sense of dread rose within her. To the left, nearly hidden by trees and distance, a hilltop stood drenched in darkness.
She knew what it was, and a shudder rolled through her.
She would crack it open. She swore it to herself, to Sister Catarine, to Cassie Graham.
“This town has always harbored evil,” she said to the empty attic room. Her hand clenched into a fist, nails digging sharply into her palm. The pain gave her focus. “It reeks of Pandemonium.”
A low, sultry laugh drifted to her ears. A sudden breeze whirled through the attic. Dust stirred and twirled behind her. She turned, unsurprised. It wouldn’t be the first time her thoughts had summoned him, and her father had been foremost in her mind. Her true father.
A figure appeared, seemingly made of dust. A disembodied mouth grinned at her before a person formed around it – an exceedingly handsome person with skin like fresh cream and hair as black as soot, silky soft and hanging to puddle around his feet.
He stood naked, of course. Even in front of his own daughter, he had no shame.
“You should not have come here, sweet child.” He spoke in a lisping drawl, gently chastising.
“Nor you,” she replied, hand tightening on her cane, ready to draw it if necessary.
She couldn’t kill him, or wouldn’t, really.
She despised him, but he was her father, and he had chains on her, invisible but as real and solid as her bones and blood.
She wouldn’t speak his name, Silvanus. It would only give him more power.
He grinned, playing with his hair, braiding it like a schoolgirl, all the while keeping his flaming eyes pinned on her. They had the same eyes, father and daughter. “This town is very dangerous for someone like you.”
Traitor.
He didn’t speak the word, but she heard it all the same, whispering from the empty air.
A trickle of flame erupted from the edges of the floor, beneath the eaves.
A heatless fire. A little taste of Hell.
As a full demon, he brought Hell with him wherever he went, but his power was limited, unlike hers.
He was a demon touching the human world, able to touch it, to influence it, but little else.
She could squash him flat if she so chose.
“Whatever creature of Pandemonium resides here, Father, I will find it. And I will destroy it.” She leaned on her cane and examined her long nails casually. “If you stand in my way, I’ll happily send you back to the Spheres, too. Just for fun.”
That brought a scowl to his gorgeous face. He didn’t like it when she threatened him. She couldn’t kill him, but she could weaken him enough to force him back to Pandemonium. That was the last place an incubus wanted to be stuck. Who was there to seduce in Hell?
“I am merely trying to warn you, daughter. You should heed my words instead of getting all prickly.” He tsk ed chidingly. “You sound so… human.”
She gave him a shrewd look. “Since when do you bring me warnings? You’ve never tried to protect me from anything. So. What’s in it for you now, dear old Pop?”
In a flash, he was an inch from her, handsome face transformed into a hideous, fanged visage, red and bloody. She remained still, regarding him calmly. He always tried to startle her, the bastard.
“BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE!”
His shriek made the walls rattle and the floor shake, and Hero hoped the whole house wouldn’t collapse at his outburst. He subsided almost immediately, returning to his pretty form several feet from her, working on his braid. “I’ll not have you taken to Pandemonium as some other demon’s prize.”
Hero scoffed. “As if it would be so easy.” Inside, however, she felt a small niggle of doubt.
Was he telling her the truth? He wasn’t one for honesty, her Pop.
And he only ever appeared to make her life messy.
However, there was no doubt that something very powerful was at work here, and she couldn’t dismiss the possibility that he might be concerned for her – not that she would die, of course, but that she would escape him.
He was a jealous incubus, after all. It was his dream to have her rule beside him in Hell, chained together for eternity.
I know what awaits you.
She fought the urge to scowl. That damnable nun thought she knew her fate. So did her accursed father. Let them both believe it. She refused to accept it. She just had to stay alive long enough to figure out how to avoid it. Easy.
“I appreciate the warning, Father,” she said politely, smiling her own fanged smile.
She reached beneath her scapular and retrieved the fancy lighter Culpepper had given her on her first anniversary as an inspector death speaker.
The engraved device was pure silver and had never failed to light.
She flicked open the top and ran her thumb over the striker wheel.
A flame burst to life in the gathering gloom.
With a hiss, her demon-father shrank away.
It wasn’t a normal lighter, after all, but one imbued with a righteous light, blessed of the Goddess. “But it’s time for you to go.”
Tucking her cane under her arm, she retrieved the crumpled complaint from her pocket and set it ablaze.
No great loss – she could always write another one.
It burned with an intense blue. Casually, she tossed it into a corner.
The dry wood erupted beneath it and flames began to eat at the desiccated floor, creeping toward them like a living thing.
Unhurried, Hero strode toward her father then past him, slipping beyond his reaching fingers effortlessly. She’d had a lot of practice, after all. His enraged snarls followed her down the stairs before cutting off abruptly. Good. Go back to Hell, monster.
The crackle and snap of burning wood rose to a roar.
Heat beat down on her head as she descended to the main floor, flames in her wake.
A slight hop took her over the hole in the front porch and she leapt from the top step onto the ground rather than risk the rickety steps again.
Whistling and swinging her cane jauntily, she began the trek back to town as her childhood home was consumed by a cleansing fire behind her.
Good riddance.