Page 43 of Fiends and Familiars
Typhon
Idrove as fast as the car could go, using my demon powers to get us around corners and across intersections without crashing. If only I could teleport Addy with me, but that would involve taking her on a brief detour through hell that wouldn’t save us all that much time and would probably freak her out enough to smash whatever tentative relationship we’d managed to knit together.
Someday I’d show her my home, but not now.
I’d considered leaving her at the party and teleporting to face Abraxas myself, but I knew that too would damage what tonight had healed between us. Addy was the sort of witch who needed to fight by my side, and she wouldn’t like being left behind to catch a ride with her sister. Plus I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t blame the whole thing on me if she didn’t see me confronting Abraxas with her own eyes.
I had no doubt what he was doing. He’d intended to capture and torture her until she gave Faust up, but I’d made it quite clear in that corn maze that Addy was mine, and under my protection. I’d planned to finesse my way around Addy’s wards, but Abraxas wouldn’t care about that. If he had enough time, he’d possibly be able to smash his way through them and grab his prey.
Those three demons he’d sent after us might have given him enough time. Actually, I was pretty sure they had, and that Abraxas had called them off once he had Faust. It was why they’d scurried back to hell in the middle of the fight.
Abraxas would defy Lucien, confident that Satan himself would back him up if he delivered Faust’s soul to hell. We were demons and the ends most definitely justified the means with us. Satan gave Lucien a lot of authority, but he still was the one in charge, and he wouldn’t understand his son’s need to keep his witch lover happy.
I understood, I thought as I glanced over at Addy. It was why I’d backed down and decided to honor her eldest sister’s interpretation of the contract Faust had signed. It was why I’d followed her to that party, practically combusting with jealousy as I watched her talk to that attractive human man. It was humiliating to admit that I was basically stalking her like a lovesick fool, but I was glad I was there when Abraxas had tried to snatch her out of that cornfield.
Fire burned beneath my skin at the thought of what he would have done to her. I would have killed him. I would have ordered my hounds to rip him apart then accepted whatever punishment Satan dealt to me for killing one of his favorite demons. I wouldn’t let any demon lay a hand on my Addy, not while I still had horns on my head.
I glanced over at her again, feeling that alarming sensation in my midsection, as if worms were crawling through my insides, turning what had been fire into a river of molten lava. Shit. No wonder Yeth was such a puppy dog when it came to Addy. I was the same.
And as embarrassing as it was, I didn’t want to be any other way. Her touch, her glance, her smile, did things to me. Painful, and yet pleasurable things. I liked it. I loved it. I loved her.
Which was why I was doing one-fifty through the city streets, racing toward her home, plotting the murder of one of Satan’s favorites. Would Addy wait for me? I’d probably suffer for thousands of years for what I was about to do. Would she live long enough for me to return to her once Satan was done taking his displeasure out on my body? Could I find her soul if she died in the meantime? If she was in heaven, could I beg to just have a glimpse of her now and then?
The thought turned those worms under my skin to knives. I might never see her again, but I’d gladly pay the price to know she was happy.
As we screeched to a stop in front of her house, Addy was far from happy. She let out a cry that nearly ripped me in half, then flung open the car door and raced across her lawn.
“No!”
She scrambled through the wreckage of the front door. I heard her sobs, but took my time getting out of the car. There was no one for me to battle, no one for me to kill. As I feared, we were too late.
The house…the house could be fixed, although I sensed that by breaking through her wards and damaging her sanctuary, Abraxas had wounded my beloved almost as much as if he’d hurt her physically. I followed her inside, watched as she searched the house, a singed vulture limping beside her.
“He’s not here. That asshole took him!” Addy turned to me, her hands in fists, her eyes full of fire. I saw three squirrels emerge from the rubble of her kitchen at her voice, tentatively making their way toward her.
I gathered her into my arms. “I know. I’m sorry, Addy. I’m so sorry.”
Her tears were a mixture of sorrow and anger. After a few seconds she pulled back, and looked up at me. “He killed Rhoid. He killed him so he could take his soul to hell and torture him. How can he do that, Ty? How?”
I knew how. “The contract says his soul belongs to hell once he’s dead. We’re demons, Addy. When faced with that sort of thing, our impulse is to immediately make Faust dead so we can collect what’s due to us. He’s avoided punishment for so long. It was bound to happen.”
I knew as soon as I’d said it that I should have just kept my mouth shut. She pounded her fists on my chest, shrieking in fury. “That’s wrong! He might have been clever enough to weasel out of his contract for hundreds of years, then to escape hell, but that’s no reason to kill him. Your co-worker terminated his life before it had run its course. That’s wrong!”
I held her tight, let her rage and punch until she just slumped against me and cried. It hurt—not her punches, but her sorrow. Faust was an absolute jerk, and I shouldn’t care one bit about whether Abraxas killed him or not, but I did.
I cared because Faust had been my soul to deal with, not that fuck head Abraxas. And I cared because Addy grieved over the loss of that annoying squirrel who’d once been a clever wizard.
I didn’t know what I could do. If I went to Lucien, I’d be a whiny demon ratting out a co-worker. If I went to Satan, he’d laugh at me and probably punish me for not being the one with enough balls to bring Faust back to hell.
There was only one thing I could do. So I kissed Addy on the forehead and left her in the rubble of her house to do it.
