Chapter Three
“Dude. That’s fucked up. Does it hurt?”
“What,” Hawkyn gritted out, his breath coming in shallow
pants, “this gaping hole in my chest? Yeah. Stings a little.”
Clad in green scrubs, Darien, Hawkyn’s ebony-haired
half-brother and Sheoul-gra’s resident healer, gestured to a chair in his
office. “Did you at least save your Primori?”
It was pretty safe to assume that
any injured Memitim had taken the damage during a battle to protect their
Primori, and Hawk was perfectly okay with letting Darien believe that was true
in this case. All of the thousands of Memitim were
Hawkyn’s brothers and sisters, sired by the same male, but functionally they
were no different than anyone in the general population, stabbing each other in
the back, fighting, and being assholes. Hawkyn trusted few Memitim, and Darien
wasn’t one of them.
“My Primori is fine,” he said, which was true.
“How about the guy who did this to you?”
“It was a female. And I don’t know.” An image of her,
helpless and afraid, filled him with guilt as he peeled off his ruined shirt
and sank into the hard plastic chair. He’d seen so much ugliness in his
centuries of life, but for some reason, this was affecting him more than usual.
But he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it if he didn’t take care
of his injuries. “So, can you fix me, or what?”
Darien’s skeptical expression was all Hawk needed as answer.
“I’m best with non-magical injuries. If you’d been eviscerated with a sword,
it’d be right up my alley.” He kneeled next to Hawkyn with a tiny vial of
glowing green liquid. “This might work, but I need to know what kind of demon
did this to you.”
“I have no idea. She vibed human.” A human who was, no
doubt, suffering right now.
“A witch, then? An Aegi?”
“Dunno. Maybe.” At Darien’s huff of annoyance, Hawkyn gave
one of his own. “So, can you fix me?” he repeated.
“I told you, I’m better with injuries of non-magical
origin.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“You know what’s not helpful?” Darien gestured to Hawkyn’s
charred wound. “Your inability to identify the type of weapon that injured
you.”
“Don’t know what to tell you. The female blasted me with
some sort of silver-blue light. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in a pile of
smoking flesh.”
Darien’s fingers smoothed over the edges of the wound, and
Hawkyn hissed in pain. “It’s partially healed. How long were you out?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an hour.”
“Damn.” Darien frowned. “It should have healed more than
this.”
Duh. “Which is why I’m here.”
“Okay.” Darien held up the vial and popped off the rubber
stopper. “I’m going to try this elixir on it. It’s good for a lot of the kinds
of spells human witches use.”
“I don’t think it was a spell. It seemed innate and
organic.”
Spells cast by humans were often preceded by a warning
tingle Hawkyn could feel like tiny pinpricks on his scalp, but abilities that
were species traits usually gave no detectible warning, which was damned
inconvenient.
Darien’s hand paused with the dropper hovering over the
pulsing gash. “Then...there might be some wee side effects.”
“What kind of side effects?” It was a safe bet that Darien
wasn’t talking about dry mouth, blurred vision, or anal leakage.
“Depends on the species of the person who wielded the power.
And the power itself, of course.”
That didn’t sound good. Hawkyn narrowed his eyes at the
healer. “Examples?”
“Well, I once used it on a strange blister that formed on
Llewellyn’s arm after a Thraycer demon battle. The elixir caused blisters to
erupt all over his body. You don’t want to know what came out of them.”
Darien’s brown eyes glittered with excitement. He had always gotten a kick out
of bizarre medical mishaps. “Ooh, and one time I used it on Gladys when a human
cast a revenge spell that turned her blind. It restored her sight but caused
temporary insanity and a loss of bowel control for a week.”
So...anal leakage was a
concern.
Hawkyn stared at his half-brother. “Where the fuck did you
get your medical training? Hogwarts?”
“Ha. Funny. I did a year and a half stint at Underworld
General.”
“Did they fire you, by chance?”
Darien looked hurt. “Fired is a strong word. Look, if you
just...oops.”
“Oops?” Hawk looked down at where a drop of
Darien’s magical mystery juice had fallen into his wound. A foul stench and
hissing noise rose up as the liquid absorbed, disappearing into the mangled
flesh. “Are you kidding me?”
“It was just a drop. Probably wasn’t enough to affect
anything,” Darien said quickly. “Probably.”
Hawk shoved the guy away and staggered to his feet. “Never
mind. I’ll just drop by the hospital.”
“They treat demons,” Darien reminded him. “Not angels.”
He reached for the door, wincing at the stretch of his
muscles. “We’re half demon.”
“We’re half fallen angel,” Darien argued. “There’s
a difference.”
Not…exactly. Technically, their father was a Heavenly angel.
But he’d given up his halo willingly, so he was more like an angel turned evil
than a True Fallen angel.
“Have you even met our father? Azagoth is a demon
if I ever saw one. He stopped being any kind of angel a long time ago.”
Darien nodded emphatically, his long bangs flapping against
his cheeks. “Especially lately.”
“No shit.” Hawkyn paused with the door half open. “What’s up
with his grumpy ass?”
Shrugging, Darien popped the rubber stopper back into the
elixir bottle. “I overheard Zhubaal and Hades talking the other day. They said
he’s been demanding access to the Memitim Council. And several of our brothers
and sisters mentioned that he’s been asking them weird questions.”
Hawkyn frowned. “Questions? Like what?”
“Personal stuff. It’s bizarre. He’s never taken an interest
in us before, and now he’s wanting the history of our lives.”
That was bizarre. Azagoth had always taken a cool,
detached approach to fatherhood, treating all his children more like tenants
than family.
“And yesterday,” Darien continued, “he was in a rage all
day. Not even Lilliana dared to cross him. You should have seen him at dinner.
He devoured a steak like it was someone’s soul. He was fucking snarling.”
“Yeah? You know what else is snarling?” Hawk looked down at
his destroyed abdomen. “My wound, thanks to the radioactive sludge you dripped
into it.”
Darien laughed. “You think Underworld General will be any
better?”
“Can’t be worse.”
Funny, but Darien had nothing to say about that, and Hawkyn
wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
The staff at Underworld General Hospital weren’t the
nicest people Hawkyn had ever met, but they fixed him quickly, and without
using crazy mystery potions. They’d even called in the head doctor after
Hawkyn’s full sister, Idess, explained who he was. UGH might specialize in
demon care, but the children of Azagoth and siblings of Idess got first class
treatment.
As he started to leave the building, located beneath the
busy streets of Manhattan, Idess gave him a hug. “I’ll be taking Mace to see
his grandpa tomorrow. Will you be there?”
Idess was mated to one of the Seminus brothers who ran the
hospital, and they had a rambunctious, dark-haired toddler who was full of
mischief and who might be just the thing to lighten Azagoth’s mood.
“If I am, I’ll make sure to see you guys.”
She gestured to the sliding ER doors to the parking lot.
“Where are you off to?”
He hesitated. Idess had broken Memitim rules for one of her
Primori a while back, so he could probably trust her, but...
“I haven’t decided yet,” he lied. He hesitated again, and
then, well, fuck it. “Idess?”
“Yes?”
“When you were Memitim, you had to protect some real
scumbags, didn’t you? Including an assassin?”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Careful, little brother.” Her tone,
issuing a playful warning, reminded him of Suzanne. But given that he, Suzanne,
and Idess were full siblings—centuries apart—he wasn’t surprised. “That
assassin is now my mate.”
“But he’s not an assassin anymore,” he pointed out. “He’s a
partner at the hospital, and he works here, right?”
She nodded. “In the morgue.”
Since the dude’s bare-handed touch was fatal, working with
dead people seemed like a good job for him.
“Okay,” he said, “but what was it like having to protect
someone who killed for money?”
“What’s this about, Hawk?” Idess crossed her arms across the
black scrub top she wore over a pair of jeans. She had the mom-thing down pat.
“Is one of your Primori an assassin?”
“Serial killer.”
She winced. “That’s tough. I know that bad people affect
change in human society in ways we can’t understand at the time, but it’s still
hard to stand by and let them wreak havoc. I had to watch over a number of truly disgusting Primori in my two thousand
years of service, and the ones who tortured and killed for pleasure were some
of the worst.”
Agreed. But somehow Hawkyn had
managed to disconnect himself from his Primoris’ lives, duty-bound to protect
them no matter what. And he still would. But he couldn’t get Aurora’s eyes,
wide with terror, out of his mind.
“How did you deal with it?” he asked, lowering his voice as
if the hospital was full of Memitim Council members instead of vampires,
demons, and werewolves. “Were you ever tempted to save the victims?”
“All the time,” she sighed. “If not for my brother reining
me in, I might have.”
“Would that have been so bad?”
She blinked in surprise, and he couldn’t blame her. He was
just as surprised that those words had come out of his mouth.
“Hawkyn, I’d think you of all people would understand the
need to not interfere in the lives of our Primori. Don’t you want to join the
Memitim Council when you Ascend? It won’t happen if you break a rule like
that.”
Well aware of that fact, he
swallowed dryly. “I’m just curious.”
She didn’t appear to buy it. “Once,” she said, lowering her
voice the way he had, “when I had a breakdown over the death of a teen girl at