Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
To say I’m surprised when Luther and my mum appear would be an understatement. Shock radiates through me as they stand in the doorway, surveying us and the remains of the door.
“What is going on here? I thought we agreed for you to come at ten o’clock,” my mum says as she toes the wooden splinters of the door with her blue heel. What? My mouth pops open as I stare at her incredulously. Oh, my bad. Sorry, Mother, how rude of me—I didn’t come at the appointed time.
“Oh, I thought I’d arrive early as I was so excited to see you, Mum. Good evening, Luther. I don’t suppose you have anything for silver poisoning, do you? It seems you are trying to kill your hellhound guest.” I grit my teeth and grin maniacally.
“No, we have nothing like that here,” she replies as she carefully steps around the door and glides further into the room.
Luther follows, content to let my mum speak.
“There was a report of an enormous demon terrorising everyone. One of our guards who reported in said it was eating another guard’s leg.
” She sniffs and looks again around the room. “An illusion, I am sure.”
Eww. “I didn’t eat anyone’s leg,” I mumble for John’s benefit.
The pair of them are dressed so smartly, they both look ridiculous. Luther is back to looking like his usual put-together self in a sharp, crisp suit, and my mother is in a beautiful dark-blue dress.
“The pair of you look nice. I do have to say you’re both a tad overdressed for our current location.” I wrinkle my nose as I glance about the room and raise an enquiring eyebrow.
They should have condemned the entire building.
The place is a hovel, although the poor state of the building didn’t stop the vampires from having a state-of-the-art security system, so perhaps they wanted it to look like this—a shithole.
Not the ideal place to dress in fancy evening wear, that’s for sure.
The amount of vermin poop I had to negotiate while I was a mouse was so gross.
Luckily, most animals are sensitive to magic and run away as soon as I’m scented, so I am glad I didn’t get to meet the locals.
I sure didn’t want a new rodent boyfriend.
They both ignore my remarks. So for the sheer hell of it I try again. “Going somewhere nice?”
My mum gives me a withering look. Her upper lip curls back with a sneer, showing her pointy fangs. I take a jerky step backwards. Oh, wow, that’s a bit different from the trembling and crying that I am used to.
“You were always such a horrid child…”
Oh, here we go. I puff my cheeks out with frustration. Okay, mum, hurry up and get the villain speech out of the way. I have a damsel to save.
Now John is free from those archaic manacles, he needs a moment to rest. Given enough time, his body should be able to dispel the silver that’s floating around in his bloodstream.
We aren’t yet overrun by vampires, so I will listen to her speech…
oh bloody hell, that wasn’t me trying to tempt fate. I groan.
“…You never did anything that you were told to do. Throwing yourself on the floor, having a tantrum, saying you were hungry. You were always hungry. Screaming and demanding. You were a horrible child and I see not much has changed.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, as a baby I was an evil genius. You are right, I so did that on purpose.” I tilt my lips up in a semblance of a smile. “Well, Mum, this has been a fun visit, but we need to go, and by we, I mean me and the hellhound.” I nod toward John, in case they’ve forgotten about him.
“When Luther suggested sending you away, I knew it was the perfect solution. You’d done enough: ruined my body, ruined my life. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t wish you didn’t exist. I still wish I’d never had you,” my mum continues. Her voice is utterly toneless.
I blink at her with slowly dawning comprehension.
John was right in warning me about her. My mum has always been a little off, but she hid her hate for me well.
I never wanted to believe my mum could be a bad person.
For twenty-two-years I thought that she’d sold me to a demon to become a vampire, and for another eighteen years, she led me to believe it was Luther’s fault.
Wow. Tonight the mask has come off and she’s baring her real face to me, fangs and all.
I understand that having a child doesn’t automatically make that child lovable or endear that child to you.
I also understand that having a kid is really hard work, that parents have the most important and hardest job in the world.
I’m grateful I’m here, but I didn’t ask to be born.
I might have been a naughty child, according to my mum, but I hadn’t done that on purpose. I was a baby.
I wait for the pain to hit me. But there isn’t even a twinge. I don’t know if she is trying to upset me on purpose, to throw me off track and imbalance me, but it looks like that ship sailed long ago.
Huh. I forgave my mum a long time ago, even if she doesn’t want, need, or deserve my forgiveness. I did it for me. Sometimes it’s okay to let the dream of someone go, to see them as they really are and be okay with that. After all, she has to be the one to look at herself in the mirror.
I need to wrap this conversation up and get John the hell out of here.
My mum continues, “Yes, it was Luther’s idea, but I made the arrangement for you to go to your father.”
My mouth pops open and my thoughts grind to a halt with my shock.
What. The. Hell.
“My father?” I choke out.
“Yes, Arlo, your father. It was his fault I got knocked up. At least he could deal with the consequences. Not all women want to be mothers, Emma. What would I want with a hybrid child? I thought he was in love with me and that a child would bring us closer together. But he left, as most men do. Not every man can be as powerful and loyal as Luther.” She smiles at him and then sneers back at me.
“Arlo took you off my hands with my promise that I’d never contact you.
If you made the move to contact me…well, I promised to spare your feelings—” She keeps talking, but my head is spinning.
My legs feel oddly weak. I keep on repeating her words back to myself.
Arlo was my father.
My dad.
I wasn’t his human pet, I was his bloody daughter.
Wow. The entire time that I lived with him now makes some weird sense.
Why he called me his favourite but didn’t touch me…
he made everyone believe he did. It was something I never disputed as he was my demon master, and I learned to be grateful.
I was safe and had so many nice things. He had many, many lovers… I was relieved that he never picked me.
What was all that about, then…Arlo asking me to strip in front of his friends? In the end did he know the hellhounds were coming for him?
By human standards, what he said and what he did was seriously messed up.
I mentally shrug. Even after all of my reading, I still don’t understand demons as a race, not really.
If I think about everything too closely, I will freak out.
I rub my temple. Perhaps he said stuff to punish me?
Protect me? I guess that being his pet, I was invisible; being his daughter, I would have been a target.
Bloody hell.
That’s why he left me so much money, why he gave me the pocket dimension. I guess in his own way he was trying to protect me.
I thought there was nothing left to shock me. I never really thought about who my father could be as I was so focused on my mother selling me. Apart from the total mystery of what type of creature he was, I classified him as a sperm donor and didn’t think any more about it.
You’re wasting time. I need to get John out of here.
Another thought rattles to the front of my head. John killed my father, who killed his mum. Wow, that’s messed up. Later we will have a lot to talk about.
I compartmentalise my feelings as it doesn’t matter…only John matters, and I need to get him out of here.
I turn my head and my eyes fly to him. He’s still on the floor.
Oh, God, he looks worse. How can he look worse?
I swallow. My eyes swing back to my mum.
She’s still talking… “Let the hellhound die. You are coming with us.” Why mum?
So you can use me? I believe you've made it quite clear that you don't like me. “Everyone knows he’s a loose cannon—he won’t be missed.”
“He killed fifteen of my vampires, fifteen. He is an animal,” Luther says when my mum finally stops to take a breath.
“The hellhounds are irrelevant in today’s world.
Redundant. No one needs them anymore—that’s the reason they sent them off-world.
No one will miss him. We are doing the shifters a favour, getting rid of a problem. ” I growl at his words.
Without my thinking about them, my protective instincts kick in.
I allow my eyes to bleed black and my shoulder blades tingle as my top magically parts to allow my demon wings to spread.
The purple-and-black wings hang heavy at my back.
I growl again, which highlights my black lips, and my smoky black magic pours from my hands.
My magic snaps out towards Luther and a smoky tendril wraps itself tightly around his neck.
His eyes widen and his hands scramble to pull my magic away from his throat, but he ends up scratching his neck as the smoke holds tight yet shifts away from his grabby fingers.
“Look, Luther, I don’t want your hellhound-hating hard-on poking at me.
This hellhound is not your concern. John has nothing to do with what is between us.
You even look at him wrongly and I will rip your pureblood face off.
Do purebloods need to breathe?” I snarl as my magic tightens and his face purples.
Huh, I guess so. “The problems you currently have are to do with me. Instead of wanting me to join ‘the fold,’ perhaps you should look around you.” I curl my lip with disgust. “Your House is crumbling around your ears. You’re a disgrace to the purebloods. ”
With my mum revealing her true colours, certain things about the pureblood and his House makes sense—for an example off the top of my head, the dirt that I have on him didn’t start accumulating until a few years after they’d met.
I flick my eyes at my mother’s snarling face and shake my head.
“My mother whispering poison in your ear has made you weak.”
“Emma, let him go,” John says gruffly behind me. There is a sound of scuffing and a scrape of his boots on the floor as he attempts and fails to get to his feet.
What John is avoiding saying is, I can’t kill Luther—if I did so, I would be dead in a week. The vampires would come after me, and I can’t fight all the vampires.
I flick my wrist and throw Luther across the room. He hits the wall with a crunch. “Come near John again and I’ll kill your whole House. Oh, and you’re wrong: hellhounds are the pride of the shifters, and the guilds won’t take kindly to you holding one of their elite prisoner.”
I growl. “You.” I glare at my mother. “The vampire council’s enforcers are coming.
I wouldn’t stick around if I was you.” She rushes to Luther’s side and helps him to his feet.
I shake my head again with revulsion. “We are leaving. Believe it or not, I haven’t had to kill anyone yet—please don’t make me. ” I turn my back and dismiss them.
My full attention is on John. My magic grows heavier behind me, screening us from the two vampires.
I drop to my knees and slap my wings on either side of John, hardly feeling the sting.
The light changes to purple as my wings cocoon us.
I drop my forehead to his and my thumb rasps across his stubbled cheek. “Shift,” I tell him. He needs to heal.
“I can’t. Too much silver in my system.”
Like a naughty puppy pulling on a leash, my magic pulls towards him. I allow more of it out and it eagerly rushes to John; it dances across his skin and then sinks into his chest.
Oh, that’s a bit freaky…I’ve never seen it do that before.
Within moments the wounds on his neck, wrists, and thighs weep tiny droplets of silver. As soon as the silver leaves his body, my magic attacks it, turning it from a liquid into a cloud of dust—that floats harmlessly to the floor. Wow.
My wings dissipate.
John lifts his chin and takes a deep breath in as his whole body straightens. Using the wall to help, he rises.
In my peripheral vision, I see the horrific, torturous manacles and chains that nonchalantly rest on the floor where I kicked them.
I narrow my eyes at them. The nasty spikes still drip with John’s blood and skin.
I wonder if I can also deal with that…my magic eagerly accepts the challenge, and it creeps across the floor, surrounding the silver restraints until they too disappear in a puff of dust.
“You’re full of surprises today, pretty girl.” I shrug and help him undo the laces of his boots. I know I don’t need to help him undress, what with the whole dissipating shifter magic, but I want to.
He needs to shift. My magic got rid of the silver but John still needs to heal. He shucks off his trousers, and suddenly I am intimately close to a naked John.
I look because why the hell not. He is mine.
Wow…urm, yeah…the man is perfectly proportioned. I cough. “Shift,” I whimper. John takes me in, on my knees, and his once-tired and pain-filled eyes shine with poorly veiled interest. With a sexy grin and a nod of his head, he shifts.
His massive, bleeding form is replaced by my hellhound. My heart squeezes as my hand reaches out and soft red fur threads through my fingers.