Page 65 of Thorns from the Fall

Remy’s posture shifts, going tight. He turns away from me and crosses his arms.

“I haven’t done that shit in years. I’m fine. You need to relax. You’re like a helicopter parent.”

“I’ll relax when I’m dead.”

Remy looks past me at the garage door. “Let’s just get this over with. You have a coven to run.”

“It can wait,” I say.

Remy glares, then sighs, and walks past me. He’s turning the knob on the door when he looks over his shoulder. “You’re stalling.”

“Am not.”

“Are too,” he says, pushing open the door. The demon strapped to the folding chair starts chanting in Latin as he stares up at us with a swollen, bloody face. “Let me guess. You don’t want to be like Father,” Remy says, trailing his fingers over the various tools on my workbench. “Or, you feel bad about him dying for your inheritance?”

I haven’t even thought to ask him how he feels about Bjorn and Emile being dead, but I think that’s the least of my worries when it comes to my little brother. He picks up a large wrench. With enough force, a blow to the head will kill the host body. Remy spins the heavy metal in his grasp before setting it back down.

“I don’t want it,” I say, not into his attempt at psychoanalyzing me. Sure, the fear of being like our dad is a niggling presence in the back of my mind, but that’s not why I’ve avoided the compound.

“You’re made for it, like it or not.” He shrugs. “If you’re stalling because of me, don’t. I’m fine,” he says, giving me a thousand watt smile. I narrow my eyes, but he jerks his chin in silent communication.

I’m telling the truth—really.

He’s silent for a minute, pulling open a drawer on my toolbox and digging through it. He pauses over different power tools and takes a long look at a hacksaw.

“It’s becauseshe’sthere, isn’t it?” Remy asks, trying out some gardening shears. They’re not very sharp, so it won’t be quick or painless if he chooses them. I’m silent despite my instinct to tell him that it’s not because of Gwyn—because I don’t like lying to him. She’s certainly part of it.

“I liked her,” he says, laughing as he tosses the shears back on the workbench when he sees my bewildered expression. “I mean, like, think about it. Her dad fucking sucks, and I didn’t feel bad about killing him, don’t get me wrong. But if you were a grown ass man when they killed Mom? You’d bomb an entire city, pretty sure.”

“Would not.” I don’t like him making excuses for her. As much as I love my brother, and as much as Bill deserved his death, Gwyn’s reaction to take my brother and seek vengeance isn’t what pisses me off. Not anymore, anyway.

“An entire block, at least,” he says. “I know you can’t kick her out if she doesn’t want to go, since they’re sworn to her. But isn’t Hale almost done Ascending?”

I shrug, not sure. He seemed alright when I saw him the other night, but Gwyn’s Ascension felt never-ending. Nico hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with updates, and Margot has been staying with me while they fuck all over her apartment. I don’t know about Hale, and it doesn’t matter.

“She’ll leave soon, Ro. Listen, you can’t… You can’t let the fact she swindled your ass stop you from taking your birthright. Of all the people to be conned by, she’s a pretty perfect sell for you. More so now than before. No one could blame you.”

“Hello, Stockholm syndrome, can you put my brother back on the line?”

He snorts, picking up a giant crowbar I obtained for an annoying project on an old car of mine. Half of the tools in here are one-off purchases that have only collected dust since the one time I needed to use it. He palms it, tossing it in his hand and measuring its weight. Satisfied, he takes a practice swing. He nods and rolls up his sleeves before turning to me.

“You know how addicts can spy addict behavior from a mile away? Same goes for people like me,” he says, and it’s clear he’s not talking about his addiction to demon blood. “It makes sense that you softened to her. She’s like me.”

“You’renot a lying asshole,” I blurt, and I’m pissed off that it can be distilled into something that seems so simple. I’m not angry with her for her vengeance. In that regard, she’s like me. And as far as her likeness to Remy goes, he’s not wrong. Before I ever met her, she was familiar.

There’s something about being born into bloodlines carved out by death and violence that shapes who you are. The knowledge of our bloody history holds weight that seeks to crush and destroy—kill or be killed.

“She’s an asshole and she’s a liar, but no more than you are,” he says.

“I’m not a liar.”

“Yeah, you are,” he says before walking over to the demon responsible for killing Kayla. Even though Remy had fulfilled his end of the bargain, this fucker didn’t free the girl. Remy places the crowbar beneath the demon’s chin, tilting it up. He recites the Enochian prayer, fumbling over a few of the words and having to restart, while the demon groans in pain.

“Hasta la vista, baby,” Remy says as he bashes the demon’s skull in with two devastating swings of the crowbar. Black mist seeps out of the dead host, not forming together in an almost corporeal body like Asmodeus had, but instead dissipating in theair like dust. Off to hell or wherever the fuck to regenerate as Asmodeus had said.

“Did you just quote Terminator?”

“Terminator: 2, thank you very much,” he retorts, but his voice comes out watery.

---