got out of that dusty hotel and were in a more comfortable environment the tension between Silas and the rest of us would ease. If we were going to put his plan into action—bottom line—we had to get past our issues. We had to trust each other.
But the tense silence as we settled into the living room in Wheatley’s farmhouse was as oppressive as the stifling Nebraska heat. I stood with my arms folded, an uneasy spectator to the icy standoff between Wheatley and her father. Silas and I had issues—but they were small fries compared to the history between those two.
“I never expected to come back.” Silas was on Wheatley’s couch, his elbows on his knees, his head resting in his hands. “I thought I’d die trying to save your mother. But when I learned of the cancer...I knew I had to do something. If I’m going to die, it’s going to be saving her. Not from a goddamn disease.”
Wheatley tilted her head. “So let me get this straight. You have a plan to lead us into hell, and you don’t plan on coming home.”
“I didn’t say—“
“Yeah, you did!” Wheatley insisted. “If you’re going to die—you’d rather die on this damned mission than from cancer. Well, I can put two-and-two together, Dad. That means you don’t care to survive this mission.”
Silas met her gaze steadily. “I plan to save your mother. And Sebastian’s wife. If I do that, I’ll die in peace. There will be no reason to come back and wither away...to die weak...”
I couldn’t stay silent any longer. “That’s not weakness,” I interjected. “Say we save your wife and Angi. We come home and you get to die surrounded by loved ones. That’s a hell of a lot better than dying in the pit.”
Wheatley nodded emphatically. “Exactly!”
Silas chuckled under his breath. “Well, if I die in hell, it’ll be a short trip into the afterlife.”
“That’s not funny!” Wheatley insisted.
But Silas remained resolute. “It’s my death, my choice.”
“Fuck you, Dad,” Wheatley spat, her fists clenched at her sides.
I sighed internally, feeling the weight of their fractured relationship. As much as I understood Silas’ determination, the anguish in Wheatley’s eyes tore at me. She had already lost so much. To finally have her father back, only for him to choose to die on this mission? It seemed unbearably cruel.
Silas just laughed, a dry, rasping sound that echoed in the tense silence of the room. He glanced at me, a wry twist to his lips. “My daughter’s a firecracker, ain’t she?”
I winced, meeting his gaze with a hard stare. “No, she’s right. Fuck you, dude. I’m glad you’re here, that you’re going to help, but that woman—your daughter—just found out her father is alive. You can’t drop bombs like, we’re going to hell, and you’re going to leave me there, and expect her to be cool with it.”
Wheatley waved her hand through the air, a gesture of frustration and resignation. “Don’t bother, Sebastian. My father’s a stubborn son of a bitch. Always has been.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but a sudden clamor from the kitchen interrupted me. Banging cupboards, rattling dishes—Donnie, no doubt, ravaging Wheatley’s pantry. I glanced at Wheatley, raising an eyebrow.
She shrugged. “I told him to help himself. Said he was hungry.”
I shook my head. “Donnie! What are you doing in there?”
“Hey, Wheatley,” Donnie shouted back, his voice muffled. “You got any Metamucil, by chance?”
Oh, Lord. I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to stave off the impending migraine. “What?”
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” Donnie called out. “That stuff gives you the smoothest, sleekest, most elegant bowel movements you’ll ever have. Fiber can change your life!”
Despite the tension in the room, Wheatley chuckled. “You trying to romance my asshole or something?”
Donnie peeked his head around the corner, a mischievous grin on his face. “Maybe?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Silas growled, his eyes narrowing.
I couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity of the situation. Here we were, planning a mission into hell, and Donnie was concerned about his daily dose of fiber. It was so quintessentially Donnie that I almost laughed out loud.
Donnie gulped as he caught Silas’ death glare. “Yeah, sorry Pops. Bad timing? I saw some prunes in the cabinet. They’ll do in a pinch.” He paused, a grin spreading across his face. “Get it? In a pinch? Because I’ll be pinching one off soon!”
I groaned, burying my face in my hands. Silas turned to me, his expression a mixture of disbelief and exasperation. “You left me in Mexico to work with that joker?”
I felt a flare of defensiveness. “Look, Donnie’s a little off—“
“A little?” Silas scoffed.
“Alright, he’s weird as fuck,” I conceded, “but at least I know his real goddamn name, and he’s never pretended to be someone he’s not.” The words came out harsher than I intended, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret them.
Silas nodded slowly. A flicker of something—remorse, perhaps—crossed his weathered face. “I deserved that.”
Wheatley shook her head. “Enjoy that, Sebastian. Because that’s the closest thing to an apology that’s ever come out of that man’s mouth.”
“That’s not true, Care Bear!” Silas protested, forcing himself off the edge of the chair, and reached for her.
She recoiled as if his touch burned. “Don’t call me that. I’m not eleven anymore, Silas.”
“Call me Dad,” he insisted. “I’m your father.”
Wheatley laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “My father is dead. The day he actually apologizes for all the shit he’s done is the day hell freezes over.”
Silas was so out-of-touch with his daughter’s pain that he laughed. “Well, if that’s what it took to freeze hell, I’d say I’m sorry right now!”
“You think this is a joke to me?” Wheatley yelled, her voice cracking. “You were always a prick, Dad. But you were my Dad. I mourned you and mom. I mourned, and I moved on. Then you know what I did? Everything you trained me to do, like your good little warrior. I kept the world safe while you wandered around doing God knows what, supposedly trying to save Mom? And you never let me know you were alive?”
Her words hung in the air, heavy with years of unspoken pain and resentment she didn’t even know she was harboring—but had crashed through like a river behind a broken dam the moment she saw her father alive in that hotel room.
Silas’s weathered face softened, the lines around his eyes crinkling with a sadness I’d never seen in the hardened hunter before. “I love you, Wheatley,” he whispered. “I know I’m not good at showing it, but it’s true.”
Wheatley put her hands on her hips, her green eyes flashing. “Then say you’re goddamn sorry. For once in your life, admit you were wrong.”
“I am sorry,” Silas began, and for a moment, I saw Wheatley’s stance relax just a fraction. But then he continued, “But I wasn’t wrong.”
“Un-fucking-believable!” Wheatley threw her hands in the air.
“Will you let me finish!” Silas’s voice boomed. “I was wrong not to trust you, not to let you know what I was doing, alright. But I wasn’t wrong in that if I hadn’t done what I did, we wouldn’t be here right now with a real shot at saving your mom, and Sebastian’s wife!”
Wheatley took a deep, shuddering breath, her fists clenched at her sides. Silas stepped closer, his voice dropping to a gentler register. “But I am sorry for putting that burden on you, for letting you think I was dead, for all of that. Just know it wasn’t a decision I took lightly. Maybe it was the wrong choice, but I made it, and now I have to live with it. Even if not for much longer. And forgive me for not wanting to sit around on a recliner and do nothing with what time I have left. I’d rather spend it trying to do what’s right, saving your mother with you!”
Silence hung in the air, thick as raw sewage. I hardly dared to breathe, watching the play of emotions across Wheatley’s face—anger, hurt, longing, all warring for dominance.
Finally, Silas turned to me. “You’re like a son to me, Sebastian. I know we only fought together for a few months, but I came to care about you more than you realize. I’m sorry for not being honest with you from the get go. But look at what you’ve become. Like I said back at the old hotel, if I’d told you the truth back then, you wouldn’t have grown into the hunter you are today. You wouldn’t be ready for this fight.”
I swallowed hard, a lump in my throat. Damn the old man for being such an asshole—and damn him even more for being right. I wanted to stay angry, to hold on to the betrayal I’d felt at his deception. But looking at him now, frail and yet still so resolved, I couldn’t help but feel a rush of affection. He had trained me to survive in a world I hadn’t even known existed. And not just to survive, but to fight back and make a difference.
The last ten years—even though none of my missions turned up anything relevant to what happened to Angi—weren’t a waste. I’d saved lives. I stopped evil from wreaking havoc on the world. I’d made a bigger difference than I might have made if I’d returned to my planned career as a cop. To serve and protect. That’s always what I wanted to do. As a hunter, I was more than someone who killed monsters. I was a sentinel, a protector of the earth from dangers most people didn’t even know existed. None of that would have happened without Silas.
And now, he was offering me a chance to save the woman I loved from the depths of hell itself. Letting go of my resentment toward him wasn’t easy—but it was easier than holding onto it.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I thought you weren’t sure if I was ready.”
Silas shook his head, his weathered face breaking into a wry grin. “I said that because I’m an asshole. You’re more than ready, Sebastian. I heard about that ghost of a Japanese Emperor and his terracotta warriors you destroyed in Rhode Island a few weeks back. Worked with a vampire, is that right?”
I chuckled. “A Chinese emperor, not Japanese. The first one, actually.”
Silas waved his hand dismissively through the air. “But you worked with a vampire—and not just any vampire—the queen of vampires, the progeny of the original vampire himself!”
I couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride at his words. Yeah, Mercy Brown—the vampire queen, also a witch. There was a time I’d have staked her without a second thought and burned out her heart without remorse. In fact, the first time I met her, I staked her—but I also knew that this vampire had done more to protect people from other monsters of her kind than any other bloodsucker I’d ever met. What shocked me, now, was that Silas seemed to compliment my unlikely collaboration with the vampire queen. “Look,” I said, meeting his gaze. “She’s not the monster you’re thinking.”
“I’m not judging you,” Silas’ tone was sincere. “I know back in the day I told you all monsters must die. Death to all of them! But the last decade has taught me a few things about the difference between real evil, and the mixed bag we usually find on earth. There’s very little that’s purely good or purely evil. We’re all a little bit of each. I think there’s enough evil inside all of us to destroy the world three times over. What separates us isn’t an innate goodness or an inherent evil, but which side we nurture.”
He paused, studying me with an intensity that made me feel like he could see right through me. “If you worked with a vampire that powerful and didn’t get yourself drained, well, I’m impressed. You’re more discerning than I ever was.”
Wheatley shook her head, a mix of surprise and amusement playing across her sun-kissed features. “I don’t know that story. I knew you were in Rhode Island, Sebastian. I had no idea what you were hunting.” She turned to Silas, her voice taking on a teasing lilt. “Regardless, I think my Dad just complimented you. An apology and a compliment in one day.”
Silas chuckled, the sound a low rumble in his chest. “Like I said,” he continued, his weathered face softening. “I’ve changed. A little, anyway.”
Wheatley nodded, her expression growing serious. “Fine, Dad. Then give me this much. After you tell us this plan, after we save mom—and Angi Winter—you don’t stay in hell. Let us be a family again, even if it doesn’t last long.”
I watched as Silas took a deep breath, the weight of his daughter’s words seeming to settle on his broad shoulders. For a moment, I thought he might refuse, his stubborn nature rearing its head. But then, he surprised me.
“Alright,” he agreed, his voice gruff with emotion. “But I have one condition, too.”
Wheatley arched a brow, her hands settling on her hips. “What’s that?”
A mischievous glint entered Silas’ eye, and I held my breath, wondering what demand he might make. “I still get to call you Care Bear.” The widest grin I’d ever seen on the man almost split his face in two.
Wheatley rolled her eyes, but I could see the hint of a smile on her lips. “Deal.” She leaned forward, her gaze intense. “Now let’s hear that plan of yours. How are we going to pull off a heist in hell itself?”