140 Years Ago
THE DEMON sagged against his restraints, his beastly head lolling, the very human blood torn from his back running down his ribs. The lash rose and fell again, the very sound making Mullins’s skin cringe back from his own beastly head as he hid in the shadows.
Menoch did so love his work.
“So, Leonard,” Menoch practically purred, “why are we here again?”
Mullins must have made a sound, because Leonard looked up from his slump and shook himself. When Mullins had first arrived in hell, he would have found the shivering of the man’s body in conjunction with the beastly head and feet to be an abomination. After he’d had the skin and flesh peeled from his bones and replaced with his own beastly features, he would have felt it to be even more so.
But not now. Not when this man-beast was suffering the torture of a thousand hells to cover for Mullins’s misdeed.
Mullins had to come forward—he had to! Even if he suffered the same fate three times over! He made a move toward the red light of the torturer’s torch and saw Leonard shake his head slightly. “No,” he mouthed.
“Answer me, filth!” Menoch screeched.
“I forgot your orders, oh torturer of hell, demon of shame.”
Mullins closed his eyes. Even half-dead, Leonard was lying for him, and if Mullins kept gazing at the spectacle of pain, someone would notice the torchlight reflecting from his slitted eyes.
The lash rose and fell again.
“Why?” Menoch demanded.
“I forgot!”
“Lies!” Menoch screamed.
“Truth,” Leonard wept, sobs shaking him as he hung from the heated chains bolted to the ceiling. “I forgot. I’m a demon of learning, milord. Puny and forgetful. I am to blame. I forgot to relay the order. I deserve the lashes of shame.”
Well, Menoch was the demon of shame—and his lash was diamond tipped. But Leonard maintained the fiction, right up until his spinal column was flayed open. He gave a howl and a wail and lost consciousness, and Menoch’s beating stopped.
“He fought that for a long time,” he said to the smallish, wrinkled slug thing at his heels.
“Yes, milord.”
“It’s always better when they fight, Renotly,” Menoch said with satisfaction. “He suffers for today, as long as he can, and by tomorrow he’s healed, and he suffers some more.” Menoch’s form was that of a giant, grotesque housefly, flesh-colored, with pulsing bulges of pox coursing along his broken exoskeletal skin. “By hell, I lust at the thought of it!”
“You want to satisfy yourself, milord?” Renotly whined. “I would relieve you!”
Mullins kept his eyes closed, knowing that if he opened them, he might be chosen for the honor of relieving Menoch’s urges. Nobody in hell wanted that job.
Nobody but Renotly.
Ugh.
The two greater demons of the twelfth sphincter of hell disappeared to do unholy things, and Mullins came forth, lockpick in hand, to help Leonard down from the chains.
Leonard groaned, and Mullins pulled him up, half carrying his bloodied body into the deepest secret recesses of the twelfth sphincter—an almost clean sector of stone, tidy as a monk’s cell. He laid Leonard on the bed and conjured cool water, using the magic that Leonard himself had taught.
Leonard was the demon of learning, the scourge of the cold academic who refused to see the real-life consequences of learning, even when terrible forces had been unleashed on earth.
As demons went, he was not exactly terrifying. And when Mullins had come to hell, on his knees, having made a dreadful bargain to spare the life of his younger sister, Leonard had purposefully asked for him as an assistant.
Hell was… hell. There were no grace notes, could never be mercy.
But Leonard had never allowed Mullins, even once, to forget that they were both human beings under the guise of crazed beasts.
A thing Mullins was beginning to regret.
Using more magic—oh, academia could be a glorious place—Mullins took away Leonard’s pain, closing his wounds with only the barest of scars. Menoch was notoriously sloppy about details. Leonard would be expected to heal anyway—he wouldn’t look to see that the area had been soothed.
“Give me up,” Mullins begged, holding water for Leonard to drink. “Give me up—please. I can’t stand to watch you—”
“No,” Leonard said, voice rasping.
“But… but….” Mullins’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Emma… she’s making plans to pull you out—you can’t do it when you’re half-dead from beating.”
“Emma understands,” Leonard said softly. “You need to understand as well, my dear boy.”
“I don’t.” Mullins laid Leonard gently down again. “Why? Why would I understand when… oh hells. Leonard, the things we’re asked to do down here—why does it even matter!”
“Because they lie,” Leonard said softly. “They tell us we have no souls, and so most of the… the creatures down here act as though that’s fact. It’s not. It’s all lies. We have souls—you haven’t killed a child yet, Mullins. Nor an adult who was not asking for holy retribution. Your soul, should you escape, is still as pure as the day you came. They want you to think it isn’t—that you can give in to fear and cowardice, to cruelty. I did that—for a hundred years I did that, and then….”
“Emma,” Mullins whispered. Leonard had been summoned by a witch, simply for conversation. Mullins had been there—and even though he knew the lie that Leonard had succumbed to cowardice and fear because Leonard had never been cruel to Mullins, Mullins also knew the truth: that Leonard may have lost his soul completely one day, had it beaten and battered, murdered and raped from his person, if he had never engaged in spirited discourse with a golden-haired sorceress who treated him with kindness…
And then fell in love.
“She has forgiven me for the beast I became,” Leonard whispered. “The least I can do is spare you the lash so you need never become that beast.”
“But it’s hurting you!” Mullins’s face, covered in coarse hair, was not meant for any of the human contortions of weeping. They hurt, for hell’s sake! His eyes burned like a human’s would in alcohol, and his nose and cheeks ached.
And still, Leonard’s hand on his cheek made all that go away. “My son, have faith. We shall pull you out—”
“Do not,” Mullins begged. “One more day of Menoch, and then she’ll be ready. We’ve scouted the church, she’s cooking the hex bags….” His voice dropped even further. “She’s enlisted the enemy—”
“Suriel is kind,” Leonard said, his voice dry and mocking.
“He’s agreed to come,” Mullins said stiffly. It was hard enough to remember he had a soul, much less remember that the angel wasn’t his enemy—not really.
“Anybody Emma has faith in will be good to his word,” Leonard said faintly. “And that means you, my boy. We won’t leave you in this dreadful place—please, son. Have hope.”
Leonard fell into a fitful sleep then, and Mullins curled up in a ball next to the hard-slatted bed that he usually slept in. Gah! Leonard had never lost his kindness, no matter what he professed to have been. But Mullins…. Mullins was hanging on by the barest of threads. He’d been told to go lure a young brothel brat into a river, the better to claim his soul now, while it was unformed and still bitter as a child’s could be made, and before it matured and learned forgiveness and self-care.
He couldn’t do it—not with this child.
In his heart, he knew, not with any.
Leonard had seen him, ready to defy Menoch, ready to be beaten from existence, and had stepped forward.
Leonard had learned the art of taking such beatings.
Apparently it was to draw strength from the warmth of his true soul.
EDWARD COULDN’T stop staring.
He and Harry and Francis crouched in the underbrush near the Sacramento River, still shaking from their escape from the Golden Child, the brothel that had been their life and their hell ever since their mothers—in one way or another—had wandered into the pitcher plant of safety that the place offered. Their mothers had passed away, leaving the boys to fend for themselves, and getting the hell out of the brothel seemed to be their best bet.
The plan had been to escape from Bertha and Big Cass, and then to hop on a railcar heading for the Midwest. Harry wasn’t great with plans, but he’d earned tickets for his sisters to go back before his mother died of pox and a broken heart, and he said there was farmland Midwest, and Bertha and Big Cass couldn’t even dream of the boys in their care escaping that far.
That had been the plan, anyway. But Harry had set fire to the trash pile as a diversion and escaped in the smoke, and Edward and Francis had gotten caught in the herd of women screaming as they exited the building.
Big Cass had spotted them in the street, running for the outskirts of the city, and had given chase.
He’d caught Francis from behind and given him a terrible blow to the head. Edward wasn’t sure what happened after that. One minute his heart had been racing in his chest and the next Big Cass was stumbling back, blood rushing from his nose. He’d howled and launched himself at Edward, but Edward took advantage of the moment of shock. He grabbed Francis and hauled him away from the scene, ducking around a corner and waiting until Cass’s bulky figure shambled by. He’d been able to make it to the meeting place, but Francis had grown increasingly less cognizant of his surroundings as they ran. By the time they’d run into Harry, Francis was barely conscious and Edward was exhausted from dragging him.
When Harry heard them thrashing through the bushes, Edward assumed Big Cass had caught them, and his heart shriveled inside his chest. Harry pulled them to safety, and Edward was honestly relieved to see the beast-man and the witch entering the clearing.
They may have eaten children’s souls for breakfast, but at this point anything was better than being a gaping maw at the Golden Child, waiting to be sold to the next filthy miner desperate to dip his wick.
And now, watching as a beautiful woman and a ferocious beast set up hex bags in a pentagram around another beast-man in the center, he was working furiously to realign his world.
His mind—ever logical—saw the pentagram and thought Witchcraft! But that logical mind was not immune to the other things going on. The beautiful woman was kind to the beast, and both of them were intent on saving the thing in the center of the pentagram.
And then the beast shed his own blood to make the magic complete.
Edward had shed enough of his own blood in the brothel—had given himself to Big Cass multiple times to keep the brutal bouncer away from Francis, the youngest of the three of them and the most fragile.
He understood self-sacrifice, and in particular, he understood that peculiar wrenching feeling that happened when the self-sacrifice went against the grain of who you were. It was not logical to hurt yourself or allow pain in order to protect others, but sometimes it was necessary.
In future years, Edward would have the selfishness vs. selflessness debate many times, in salons, with his brothers, with friends and teachers, professors and angels—and in particular, the terrible beast-man he watched disappearing into the shadows on this fateful night.
But in spite of the many years of learning that would come, he would never, ever manage to verbalize the crystal clear understanding of the concept that he experienced watching that hideous, terrifying, vulnerable being limp away to what sounded like a terrible fate.
The only word that would ever come close was love.
His attention on the demon—for that was what he turned out to be—was pulled away when the woman, Emma, summoned the angel Suriel.
The angel.
An angel joined hands with this woman, this obvious sorceress, and together, they stood over the figure lying on the ground before them and…
Made magic.
Edward’s brain forgot reason in that moment and embraced wonder.
A glorious glow surrounded the figures in the clearing, then spread, a nimbus surrounding the area, encompassing Edward, Harry, and Francis, permeating their bodies, before it simply ceased to be.
When it was gone, instead of Harry, a sturdily built, plain boy of fourteen, there sat a growling, spitting fluffy black cat, fur upright in fury. Next to him, eyes crossed, a mostly cream-colored Siamese cat stared bemusedly at his paw.
They both opened their mouths in surprise and meowed.
Edward sat down on haunches covered in orange fur and stared at Harry in utter helplessness.
They were cats?
Harry went rushing out into the clearing in a cloud of righteous indignation and black fur. Edward would eventually follow—and listen as Emma explained what she had done.
“I can give you a home,” she said softly. “I can give you food and clothes. I can teach you to read and give you a purpose. I just ask that you hold my power, be my familiars, use my magic to change your shape and do no harm. I….” Her voice broke. “I just didn’t want to leave him, you see. If I hadn’t stored my power in the three of you, I would have aged and died right here, and he would have awakened in this world to live a long life alone. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong—so wrong—to not ask you. But please… won’t you please forgive me enough to let us care for each other?”
Edward recalled the kindness she’d shown the demon beast, and as he watched, the now-human Leonard sat up, looking plain and gentle. When they all heard the racket of Big Cass thrashing through the woods, it was only logical that Edward allow Leonard to scoop him up and hurry him away from danger.
Harry could run from danger on his own, but Edward appreciated transportation and some caring for.
It was only logical.
NOBODY WAS as surprised as Mullins was, the first time Emma summoned him after Leonard’s redemption.
He’d been facing off with Menoch, lying—because that’s what demons did.
“I have no idea where he is,” Mullins said, as though he hadn’t missed his friend every moment of every tortuous day. “He was summoned—”
“By that woman?” Menoch spat the word. Of course the demon of shame was a misogynist. Mocking women gave him more power than he knew what to do with.
“Yes—you told him to answer her, remember?”
“Yes.” Menoch had beady little human eyes in his fly’s face. It made Mullins want to vomit, even though he spent much of his time in hell as this twisted fusion of man, pig, horse, and goat. “I remember. And then she learned his name and he had no choice.” A horrible buzz-snort then. “Bloody accords.”
There were treaties—old ones—between heaven and hell. Mullins and Leonard had studied them long and hard before they’d risked sending Leonard up to the surface without a summoning and allowing Emma to transform him back into a man.
Mullins had spent enough time memorizing those treaties, word for word, that he’d begun to doubt their necessity.
Essentially, the treaties drew out the rules of hell:
No demon shall break his word, but lying is perfectly acceptable.
Demons must come when called by name.
Hell may compel demonic actions.
Demons cannot be wiped from existence by not complying—but they may be punished.
A demon’s surrender is the only thing that can end his suffering and his soul.
And:
Redemption for the atrocities of hell can only happen with sincere sacrifice.
The. End.
That was it.
Mullins had drawn up enough contracts as one of the 666 scribes of hell to know that everything else was window dressing.
It was like the spell for a demon keeping a small chunk of its soul. There were long, involved passages about needing small mammal’s entrails, complete with several types of microbial activity, to ward off complete damnation in the heart of a demon’s soul.
It had taken two years of intense reading for Mullins and Leonard to realize that the entire passage was about caring for something smaller than one’s self. It didn’t need to be a cat or a rat with a petri dish in its stomach—it needed to be a live animal who had just been cared for.
Once Mullins had deciphered that passage, he and Leonard had looked up the spell for redeeming a demon—which had taken years. But years they took, and they had faith.
Mullins hadn’t been paid for this task. He’d worked long hours after his regular duties.
But he’d done it for the same reason Leonard had risked his life and soul to escape.
Emma—beautiful, kind Emma who had so guilelessly offered Mullins a way out—had loved Leonard enough to redeem him from all the evils he’d performed in hell.
Leonard thought being with Emma was worth the risk.
Mullins thought knowing that Leonard was safe was worth the risk.
Just like the Articles of Hellish Redemption, the solution had been so much simpler than the spell that delineated it.
Mullins had snuck Leonard out, past the catacombs of the scribes. Through sulfur, arsenic, and lakes of blood, they had managed to wend their way to the surface without the magic that would have summoned the other demons and given away their plan. Only the imps of schadenfreude at the entrance to the surface had seen them, and while they’d both been wounded, Emma had been there at the portal to help Mullins and Leonard make their escape.
After Leonard drew his first breath as a free man, Mullins had returned, sneaking around the frenzied imps and teleporting back to his place.
Nobody noticed the magic then. They were too upset about the redemption. While nobody knew which demon had been stripped from their ranks, all of hell knew that somebody had. It was why Mullins hadn’t been able to go with them.
The redemption could only be performed on one of them. If Mullins had stayed, the very fact that he was still a demon would have led the others right to Emma and Leonard, no matter how well they were hidden.
As it was, Mullins was there at Menoch’s beck and call while all of hell tried to figure out which of them had actually managed to escape.
“Well, the accords gave her the power,” Mullins said patiently, breathing through the pain. “But now somebody is summoning me by name, and by the accords, I must go.”
Ah, the blessed accords.
Because Mullins recognized the voice of the summoner—and it was low and sweet and kind. Always, always kind.
Emma.
He allowed the world of hell to fade and embraced the reality of the woman who had stolen Leonard from him—and given them both hope.
The room she summoned him to was plain, a log cabin with running water—an anomaly for this place and time, Mullins knew—and two bedrooms. In the distance, he could hear the giant shush of the ocean.
Emma stood next to Leonard in front of the summoning circle, holding a delicate seal-tipped cat in her arms. Leonard was holding a marmalade tom, and a fluffy black tomcat curled up in the back of the room, letting out a low-level tomcat growl.
Emma smiled as soon as he had completely materialized. “Mullins!” she cried, as though seeing an old and dear friend. “We’re so glad you could come!”
Mullins nodded and kept tears of relief at bay. Tears hurt, and they looked grotesque, and they did nobody any good.
“I’m happy to be here,” he said gruffly. “You have… guests?”
Leonard stepped forward and looked behind him. “Harry, would you like to change form and shake hands like a man?”
There was a mild ring of challenge, and the black cat gave a deep breath and…
Suddenly stood, a midsized compact young man, still in the throes of adolescence. His hair was a black fury around his head, and his black eyes snapped with irritation.
That nonstop feline growl had not yet ceased, and Leonard cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.
Mullins had a moment to register that Leonard, as a human, was a plainly handsome man, with a little bit of gray in his medium brown hair and laugh lines around his hazel eyes, before the boy-who-was-no-longer-a-cat stepped forward, hand extended.
“Harry,” he said, voice still growly. “Emma and Leonard say we can trust you. Pleased to meet you.”
Mullins took his grip around his goat hoof and was faintly warmed by the way the boy squeezed hard, like Mullins was a human, and shook.
“Pleased to meet you, young master,” Mullins said quietly. He let go of Harry’s hand and raised his eyebrows at Emma. “Familiars?”
He could feel it now, the way her once formidable power was spread out not just with Leonard, but among the other three creatures in the room. It was an incredible sacrifice—it would cut her lifespan to a fifth of the time she would normally live as a learned and studied witch—but she and Leonard seemed so content, he couldn’t even bring himself to ask.
“Edward,” Harry said gruffly into Mullins’s realizations, “Francis—c’mon ye lazy bastards and fuckin’ change.”
The marmalade cat leaped solidly to the floor and grew into another midsized boy, not much younger than Harry. This one had red hair, freckles, and stunning green eyes, and for a moment Mullins was…
Beguiled.
His body stilled, his restless heart and worried mind took their ease.
All his fears about facing Menoch again, becoming snared in the lies of hell, grew still.
This boy was looking at him curiously, head cocked, as though the two of them shared a secret.
“Hullo,” the boy said cheerfully. He stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’m Edward.”
Mullins shook his hand dutifully, but a part of him was lost, back hundreds of years, when he and the smithy’s boy had tussled in the grass one morning and shared heated skin, hot touches, a tender, wonder-filled kiss.
Had the boy possessed green eyes like this? Maybe not… but something about this boy was mesmerizing, like that one had been.
Mullins shook himself, exactly like a beast, and released Edward’s hand. “Master Edward,” he said, bowing slightly.
With a delicate little whirl, the white cat in Emma’s arms became a younger, slighter boy, with white-blond hair and crossed blue eyes. “Francis,” he said, stepping into Edward’s space without any self-consciousness. He grasped Mullins’s hand and Mullins gasped—but kept his composure.
Later he would tell Leonard that their youngest familiar had a drop or two of truly fey blood in his system. Angels, Mullins could touch at will, but the fey—they were beyond anybody’s management.
But the boy—and unlike Edward and Harry, who were on the cusp of manhood, Francis was truly a boy—only gave Mullins the ghost of a smile and practically floated back into his cat form, and into Emma’s arms.
“You have a family,” Mullins said to Leonard, trying to keep the surprise from his own voice. Demons didn’t find redemption and reclaim their humanity—and if they did, they never became foster fathers to a trio of fey and human children.
“Emma’s doing,” Leonard said, tilting his head warmly toward the woman who had saved him in every sense of the word. “She stored her power in them the night she brought me back. It was….” He grimaced.
“It was the only way,” she said simply. “They boys were in the bushes, watching our every move. I needed vessels and I… well, I won’t say I did it shamelessly. But as it turned out, they needed us as much as we needed them.” She smiled fondly and stroked Francis soothingly behind the ears. “It’s worked out very well for all of us, I hope.”
Harry shot her a wary look. “You’ve been good to us,” he said, his voice sounding rusty, like he didn’t use it enough. “Better than anyone. We thank you.”
She smiled gently at him, her eyes troubled. “It’s been our pleasure, young Harry. Now please make yourselves comfortable, and by all means get poor Mullins a cushion.”
Harry took one from the sofa against the wall, and Edward brought over a chest for him to lean against. Both of them had obviously been schooled in how to handle a demon summoning, because they began mumbling the spell of protection three steps from the pentagram on the floor, and they continued mumbling it as they set Mullins up to sit cross-legged, as was most comfortable for him, on the floor.
They continued the recitation until they were safe on the other side of the chalked outline, and Mullins nodded approvingly.
“Very good,” he said. “And your Latin is flawless.” He winked at Leonard. “Did you teach them that?”
Leonard inclined his head. “I did. But they’ve been good students—in all matters.”
“Emma taught us to mend our own clothes,” Edward said shortly, as though affronted. “And how to cook.”
Mullins was delighted. “Well, everybody should know how to care for themselves. Emma does take good care of you, I’m sure, but someday you must care for yourselves, yes?”
Harry and Edward exchanged the glances of puzzled conspirators. “Someday, yes,” Harry said carefully, and for a moment, Mullins doubted. The boys were planning to run away already, weren’t they?
“Emma said we could stay as long as it suited us,” Edward said diplomatically. “We were surprised, you see, to suddenly be cats.”
Mullins looked at Emma with some speculation, and she herself gave back a very catlike smile.
“I see,” he said politely. Inside, he was thinking that Emma had perhaps done the wisest thing of any human he’d ever known. She’d given the boys their freedom—but had also given them an incentive to stay. Clever, clever Emma.
Wistfully, Mullins thought that if he had been born to parents as wise as Emma and Leonard, he might not be sitting here, a twisted beast, pathetically grateful that Emma and Leonard’s careful schooling had never put Mullins in the position of having to choose between his own well-being and tearing the boys apart, as protocol would have dictated had they forgotten their protection incantation while getting him a place to sit.
He hoped with the tattered remnants of his soul that he never had to choose between what protocol dictated and harming Leonard and Emma’s children.
He had a sinking feeling he might rather be torn apart himself than participate in harming these boys that the two of them so obviously cherished.
It turned out that the boys were the reason he was there.
Leonard sat down in a hand-carved rocking chair that Mullins gathered he had made himself, and Emma made herself comfortable on the couch. Together they gently urged Mullins to help the boys learn Latin, to build upon the very solid knowledge they had already imparted and to explain nuances that would hinder spellwork and get in the way of their more arcane studies.
“I don’t get it,” Harry said grumpily, writing with awkward precision on his small chalkboard. “Everybody keeps telling me that it’s the intention that counts. If it’s the intention that counts, why can’t we just think ‘Turn into a toad’ and have that happen?”
“Language makes your thoughts clearer, Harry,” Edward said, concentrating on his own tablet. Francis sat next to him, still in cat form, and moved his paw purposefully on a scattering of dust Emma had brought in when she couldn’t coax him to change. “If you just think ‘Turn into a toad’ at someone, the thought’s gonna go wide. You might look at their hat and turn it into a toad; you might turn their boots into a toad. But if you say very specifically ‘Save the sheep in the wold but turn their owner into a toad,’ and you use a different language to focus it, to make it special, the spell is more likely to take effect.”
“Exactly,” Mullins said, surprised and pleased. Harry was smart and aggressive—but he was also passionate and emotional. Edward was the more logical of the two of them, the calmer one, the thinker.
Mullins was enjoying all the boys’ company, but something about Edward soothed Mullins, gave him feelings of peace in the universe. For a demon living in constant fear of Menoch’s lash, it was an amazing luxury, this feeling of peace.
Suddenly Francis let out a distracted meow, and all eyes turned toward the little cat who was licking the dust off his paw. In front of him was a slightly hard to read but perfect conjugation of the Latin verb “to eat.”
Emma raised her eyebrows. “Feeling a bit peckish, are we, my sweet?”
Francis twitched a tail and yawned, showing teeth.
Edward reached out and smoothed his brother’s fur. “Fine,” he said shortly. “Let me finish my own work and Harry and I will fetch the cake from the cold box. Is that what you wanted?”
Francis cleaned his paw again, feigning indifference.
“There is also,” Harry said mildly, “some fish left over from dinner.”
Francis sat back on his haunches and blinked expectantly. Harry held out his tablet for Mullins’s inspection. “I botched the last one,” he said apologetically. “I’ll fix it when I’m back if that’s all right with you?”
“It is indeed,” Mullins said, nodding. Edward kept working assiduously as Harry moved to the small kitchen area and began pulling out the cake and the dishes, Francis at his heels. Mullins risked a glance behind him and saw Harry feeding Francis small pieces of grilled trout as he worked, and Francis taking them with delicate nibbles.
He’d seen brothers in blood who weren’t as kind.
“I didn’t botch the last one,” Edward said with satisfaction. “That should be acceptable.”
Mullins forgot the grotesquerie of his expression and smiled.
To his eternal surprise, Edward smiled back. “It’s okay?” Edward asked, always seeking perfection.
“Indeed,” Mullins told him. “It’s very well done.”
“Excellent! Time for cake. Would you like some, Mullins?”
Abruptly Mullins became the outsider again, an agent of hell, a creature who depended on tricks and subterfuge and entrapment. “I’m sorry, Master Edward, no. And Emma and Leonard should have taken care to make sure you never offer a demon food in your home, ever.”
Edward bit his lip. “They said that,” he mumbled, clearly discomfited. “It’s not their fault—”
“You were being polite, Edward,” Emma said softly. “Just remember you are lucky this is Mullins. Any other demon would have taken you up on it and we would have all been ripped apart in our beds.”
If a demon ever ate the food offered to him in free will, he was bound to the offerer. Another demon could have used that bond to return to the home unbidden and do… well, whatever the family was in a state to let him do.
Edward nodded, looking shamed in a way that was far beyond what reprimand Emma had offered, and Mullins watched him go, troubled.
“They’re very young,” he said to Leonard, and Leonard gave him a bleak look.
“They are—far too young to have gone through what they have.” Leonard made a little sign then, with his forefinger and thumb, and looked up and around. Mullins didn’t have to look around—his old mentor hadn’t lost his touch, and the secrecy spell was very firm indeed.
Mullins cocked his head, wondering why Leonard would block his next words from the family.
“What?”
“They were escaping from a brothel—all three of the boys had been abused or traded. Edward and Harry were running to try to save Francis from the worst of it.”
Mullins felt a vague red haze fill his brain. Anger, the devil’s favorite sin.
“Which brothel?” he asked, his voice as measured as it had always been.
“The Golden Child,” Leonard told him, eyes level. “Their worst abuser, Big Cass, was killed the night we were there—”
“By whom?” Mullins needed to make sure the job had been done right.
“Suriel,” Leonard said, not trying to sugarcoat it.
“How long….” Time stretched so oddly in hell. It had felt like a year, maybe two down there, but Mullins had assumed it had been but a day. But this place—this was a well-established home. There were gas lights in sconces on the walls, and the boys had an established routine. Somebody had already taught them Latin verb conjugations, for sweet hell’s sake!
“We’ve been here five or so months,” Leonard said. “But don’t expect the boys to grow by leaps and bounds. Emma wove that spell good and tight—she and I aren’t exactly immortal anymore, but they’re not exactly mortal, either. We figured five for every hundred. More if they use their human forms a lot, less if….” Mullins saw he was looking at Francis with worry in his eyes. “They tried so hard to get him out, you see. And he got caught one day while the boys were both… busy. He didn’t want to tell them… kept it close. The damage it did to his soul—well, he’s going to be a cat for much of his life until it’s gone, you understand?”
Mullins nodded, his red haze intensifying. And still he couldn’t help ask, “Edward too?” The boy seemed so even, so calm.
“He was pretty—he was treated better than Harry, but yes.”
It wasn’t a haze anymore. Mullins had to fight it from taking over his entire body. He knew this feeling, this liquid, viscous sludge pouring through his veins.
This was the gift of hell, the gift of a killer’s blood.
“Mullins,” Leonard hissed. “Your eyes!”
Mullins cleared his throat. “I need to take my leave,” he murmured. “Do you have any other names for me besides Big Cass?”
Leonard knew why he asked. “Bertha was the proprietress. And Edward has told me about a few customers who were particularly brutal.” Leonard gave him the names without remorse—which reassured Mullins, actually. Rage was not just a demonic trait. He could feel this weight in his breast and still be human.
“Is that all?” Best to be thorough here.
“Yes. Don’t harm any of the girls.” Leonard nodded decisively. “They worked hard to protect the boys for as long as possible. Think of it like hell—the demons in power have choices and they choose to abuse their power. The demons without power are victims—”
“Until they become abusers.” Some of the red faded from Mullins’s head. This was Leonard’s best lesson, and Mullins would be better off if he never forgot it.
“Indeed.” Leonard met his eyes then and made the gesture to take away their little bubble of secrecy. The chatter from the kitchen intruded on Mullins’s dark thoughts, and for a moment his emotions were etched in crystal.
Emma was the mother and Leonard was the father—that much had never been clearer.
The boys were their children—of course.
But he had a use too—a service besides teaching them Latin—which he would do many, many, many more times in the future.
As far as he was concerned, this other thing was the reason he’d become a demon at all.
He managed to be polite and kind as they wrapped up the grammar lesson. When it was over, one at a time, they stood and bowed.
“Thank you for the lesson, Mullins,” Edward said, so incredibly polite he must have studied.
“’Preciate it,” Harry muttered, face flushed. “Wish ye could eat. Would feel better if we could repay ya.”
Mullins knew his beast’s eyes grew wider. “This was a gift, young master,” he said gently.
Harry’s mouth worked. “Not good at accepting those.” He looked mournfully around the snug little cabin. “I’ll try to get better. But you’re a good man to come help. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Mullins said gravely, wondering what was to come from Francis.
Francis sat at the hearth in cat form, washing his paws until Edward nudged him with his sock-clad toe. “C’mon, Francis, don’t be an ass.”
The cat let out a growl, then abruptly turned into the enchantingly fey and beautiful young man with the white hair, and bowed.
“Thank you,” he said, meeting Mullins’s eyes with must have been a supreme effort.
Mullins inclined his head. “My pleasure.”
And Francis was a cat again.
Mullins felt something in his chest that displaced the rage, if only for a moment. “This family was a balm to my bleeding soul,” he said, because demons could speak the truth. “Please summon me as often as you wish.”
“We release you,” the boys all said as one, and Mullins felt the pull of hell again.
He allowed himself to fade, but he didn’t go directly back to his catacomb in hell.
First he passed a spell of deception over himself. Unlike being summoned, when the compulsion was to present himself in his real form, visiting an unwary human allowed him a certain leeway.
In this case, he allowed himself to look like a typical human of the era. Dirty, unshaven, black stubble growing from his jaw, he wore rank and threadbare breeches, battered boots, and a cotton shirt that had seen many washes, none of them recent.
Then he arrived at his destination.
Sacramento was a gold rush city, with ankle-breaking cobblestones in the streets and a dock for ships traveling up the delta to bring supplies. The high boardwalks tried to keep the shops and apartments from getting wet in the floods that invariably tormented the region every ten years or so, but the horse-drawn carts that rolled down the road and the river delta itself left the streets and boardwalks covered with silt and mud and shit.
It had potential to be a town someday, but today?
Today Mullins lumped the whole place in with the wolves and deer at the Golden Child.
He found the brothel on the edge of the town proper, along the railroad tracks, and his heart hurt. The boys had been hiding under bushes, escaping. How hard must it have been to see a train every day, going someplace other, someplace else, and to be stuck here in a torment of other’s making.
Human form or not, he allowed the red of rage to fill up his eyes.
He crashed through the doors of the Golden Child Saloon and Brothel like the forces of the Apocalypse on the greased wheels of hell.
Nobody looked up. Nobody cared.
A prematurely old woman, face caked in paint, sauntered up to him. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Bertha,” he said, voice husky.
“She’s in session with Bruno,” the woman said, eyes crusted thick with kohl shifting uneasily.
Mullins knew this name.
It was a place to start.
“Show me,” he rumbled, and the woman blinked, her mind exhausted by just the command.
“Of course,” she said.
Mullins smiled the death’s head grin of the beast.
Let the revenge begin.
WHEN HE walked away from the brothel that night, he was one of many fleeing. The girls were, as Leonard had asked, unharmed, mostly dressed, running for their lives to the train station in the night.
Mullins had made sure they had as much money as they needed.
There were a lot trousers that would not be put back on after this night.
He hadn’t gotten all the names that Leonard had given him—but he would.
Right now it was best to just fade into the night and let others wash off the blood.
Nobody would hurt those boys again. Not under Mullins’s watch. Emma was the mother, Leonard was the father, the boys were the children, and Suriel was the protector.
But this family was special, and they needed Mullins in the capacity for which he could best serve.
Mullins was the avenger, and nobody would hurt his boys again.