LOGAN KNEW he must be getting close, because he got vampires thrown at him. Well, they were throwing themselves at him. Still counted, right?
One minute, he’d been alone in an abandoned sewer tunnel, and now he had a bunch of the yellow-eyed bloodsuckers attacking him. But he was always prepared and had his handy minimachete with him. He’d sewed a special holster for it inside his jacket, which was probably one of the craftier/nerdier things he’d ever done.
The first vamp launched itself at him, flashing its fangs and showing razor-sharp nails, and he met it with a smooth arc of the machete. Logan sliced through its neck cleanly, sending its head one way while its body continued its suicide trajectory toward him. The thing about garlic and stakes through the heart? Bullshit. Like most monsters, they were most susceptible to decapitation. Very little survived without its head.
Logan sidestepped the corpse, but another bloodsucker grabbed him from behind. It attempted to bite his neck but hit the silver collar he wore whenever he went into dark, possibly monster-infested places. Yes, it looked like a choker, therefore pretty ridiculous on him, but it was just for these eventualities. Silver didn’t hurt vampires, but they didn’t like it, and it hissed and recoiled as he threw back a hard elbow and crushed its nose before turning around and hacking its head off with his machete.
It would have been so nice if real vampires were like most pop-culture vampires—rich, vicious effetes who lived in mansions and penthouses. In reality, they were nocturnal predators that liked to hide and not draw too much attention to themselves. So they loved dark, grotty places, like sewer tunnels and crumbling basements. It was really disappointing.
One of the vamps got smart and kicked him hard in the back, sending Logan stumbling into the arms of two other vampires, who stripped him of his machete. He would have worried if he didn’t have his peashooter.
Of course, that wasn’t what it was. It was a bit of do-it-yourself ad hoc weaponry that he and Ceri had gotten great at improvising. It was essentially a pellet gun that shot iron nails, which, if decapitation wasn’t a current option, would do as a neutralizer when fired into the head.
The bloodsucker that had Logan was a real ugly-looking one, with a face like a wood knot come to life and too many needle-fine teeth crammed in too small a mouth. It screeched at him, and its breath was rank, like it had been washing abandoned bus station socks in kerosene in its gullet. Logan pulled out the peashooter and put a nail point-blank in the center of its forehead. As it fell away, yellow eyes rolling up into the back of its head, its friend had grabbed him painfully by the hair and started dragging him, perhaps to its nest. He glanced up long enough to get a general idea of where its head was, and fired the peashooter again. In what was impressive good luck on his part, or bad luck on the vamp’s part, Logan got the bloodsucker right in the eye. It screeched and let him go, clawing at its own face to try to get at the offending piece of metal.
Logan shot another one coming for him and was able to shove himself against a wall so nothing could grab him from behind. He shot a fourth in the face while looking for the machete and found it a few feet down the way. Dammit.
He was plotting the path to it when a booming female voice asked, “Where is your hellhound, Logan?”
Ceri really hated that nickname, which was why pricks like the vamps liked to use it. “Now why the hell would I tell you a goddamn thing, your highness?” She was the queen of the vamps, so she deserved some respect. Not much.
The uninjured vampires had ceased their attack because when she spoke, her people listened. Or they got killed. She ran a tight ship. “Is he not here?”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m known to go into monster-infested places alone.” He wasn’t. Like he wasn’t known to go places without several redundant backup weapons. Because in a fight, assholes like this went for your weapons first thing. Multiples were good.
“Sarcasm impresses no one.” She was a tall shadow with glowing yellow eyes. Vampires couldn’t shape-shift, save for the queen. She could make herself a shadow or a bat or a column of smoke. It made her almost impossible to hurt in any meaningful way, which is why she was the queen, and all the others followed her orders.
“Like I give a shit. I came here for the Amulet of Azrael. You can give it to me and I’ll stop killing your people and leave, or we can continue to do this, although I’ll ask Ceri to join me and we’ll be done in ten seconds. Maybe throw us a palace coup as well.”
Her voice took on a cold, sharp edge. “Are you threatening me?”
“Do I have to?” Considering how things had been going all topsy-turvy lately, he had no idea if the vampires were generally for or against the end of the world. It seemed like they changed their minds every other day. “It’s not your property. Hell, it ain’t mine either. It’s Ceri’s, and he wants it. And if you’re not willing to give it to me, I’ll call him down here and you can give it to him yourself. Or he can take it.”
She made a noise of disgust, and the amulet came flying from out of the darkness and crashed at his feet. Considering what it was, it should have looked special or impressive, but it looked exactly like an old, tarnished necklace. The gold chain seemed like it had seen better decades, and the pendant part looked like a glass eye embedded in a flattened bottle cap. How was this an icon of power? But Logan wasn’t in charge of this. He was a lowly human who’d never wanted to get in the middle of this insanity. He simply didn’t have a choice.
The conscious and uninjured vampires seemed to disappear into the darkness, a neat perk of being one of their kind. “Take your necklace and go, Fox. The next time we meet, it’ll probably be your last.”
“Sure,” he said, deadpan, picking up the necklace. Despite it looking like costume jewelry some cheap great-aunt left to a relative in a will, when he touched it, a nearly electrical surge of power flashed through him. This thing was crazy dangerous even in the right hands, and the vamps were definitely the wrong ones. Not that he’d trust anyone with this beyond Ceri.
Before leaving the sewer, Logan retrieved his machete, because while it was troubling and stupid to have a favorite one, he still did. Ceri probably would have teased him for it, if he were here.
Because that was all a bluff. Ceri was at home, recuperating from his last battle with Azazel and his minions, who’d launched that Lucifer-level bomb at him. In fact, if he found out Logan had come alone, he’d probably be furious. It was stupid, it was dangerous, and he could have ended up vampire chow—or worse yet, a vampire himself. Although Ceri would have made them pay in a very final, bloody way that would’ve made them sorry they were ever created.
And all of this—this collecting of powerful supernatural objects—was a sort of Hail Mary play. Even if they got them all, they might not have enough mystical energy to stop the apocalypse. But they had to try, right?
Logan secured the amulet in a special bag, marked up with all the sigils that would render it and its power essentially invisible to anyone looking for it. It was a bad idea to have mystical nukes like this floating around, although with the end of the world on the horizon, most people didn’t really give a shit. Sometimes Logan didn’t give a shit either. Sometimes it was nearly impossible for him to get out of bed. But with Ceri beside him, he’d figure something out. He had to. It was either that or let the world burn.
And if truth be told? Logan would let it burn if it weren’t for Ceri, and Logan’s sister, Gillian. Except sometimes it was the reason Logan wanted it all to burn.
He drove home, letting the cold night air heal the few scrapes he’d gotten fighting the vamps. They’d blend in with the rest of his scrapes and bruises, as he usually had some. Ceri said that with all his scars, he looked a bit like a chewed-up old tomcat, and he offered to heal them. But Logan liked his scars. Well, most of them. There was a story in each one, and they generally had happy endings. Well, okayish endings. He lived, which was no small feat. Okay, most of the time. He had died a couple of times. But not for long, so they barely counted.
Logan was hoping Ceri would still be sleeping, but when he entered their home, he heard the water running in the bathroom. He was glad he’d made a quick pit stop for groceries because now he had an excuse for why he’d been gone. Logan hid the protected amulet in the kitchen stash box Esme’d made, before heading into the bedroom, where he undressed carefully, making sure he had no obvious, still-bleeding injuries. He didn’t and considered himself lucky.
Ceri exited the bathroom, clad only in boxers. “Where the hell have you been?” Ceri asked, yawning. He climbed back into bed before Logan could respond.
That was okay by him. Logan crossed the room and got in on his side of the bed. So far, so good. Logan was also glad Ceri had his glamour off and was simply showing his own skin.
A weird thing about species hybrids was they could come out looking one of several different ways, and while everyone thought Ceri looked human—and they were right—it was only because he protected himself with a glamour. Without it, he was two-toned.
It wasn’t an even split down the middle. His left side was mostly humanish, with bronze skin and an amber/hazel eye. But unglamoured, his right side bore red demon skin, and his eye was white pupiled and had black sclera, which he occasionally didn’t bother to include in the glamour for its intimidation properties. Demon skin was slightly more leatherlike, and because it wasn’t an even split, the borders of it roamed. He had more on his chest, for example, than his stomach, and while the front of his right leg was red, the back was mostly bronze. He also had two thick, nub-like black horns, usually covered by his black hair even when the glamour wasn’t in place.
When Logan first met him, he thought Ceri was the most ridiculously handsome man he had ever seen. When he first saw him without the glamour—with the right half of his face red and his eye white—Logan still thought he was the most ridiculously handsome man he had ever met. Ceri had been afraid he’d reject him or call him ugly, as so many had before. Logan kissed him all along the border where the demon skin melded with the human, and they ended up having the most intense, meaningful sex he had ever had in his life.
Before Ceri, Logan was very much a one-night stand type of guy, because he learned very quickly that attachments left a person weak and hurting when they couldn’t afford to be. Ceri had changed that. Logan had never believed in such a soppy concept as soul mates—until now. They were connected in ways that couldn’t always be quantified. He loved Ceri with every fiber of his being and couldn’t imagine life without him. At this point, he couldn’t live without him, and he didn’t mean that in some crazy, possessive, stalkerish way. He meant it literally. Without him, there was no point to living. If Ceri were gone, the world could fucking burn.
Logan snuggled into his arms, hip to hip, and rested his head on his shoulder. Ceri kissed him on the top of his head and sniffed. “Your hair smells terrible.”
“I haven’t washed it for a few days.” He’d forgotten about the whole old-sewer-tunnel terrible-smell thing. How?
“Really?” Ceri replied. Was that doubt in his voice? Logan thought he was safe for a moment, because Ceri was quiet for several long seconds. Then he said, “Now tell me where you really were.”
“Out buying those hard lemonades that someone seems to like so much,” he said with an eye roll. Ceri loved hard lemonades; he drank them like some people ate candy. Which is what they were to Logan, who found them too sweet and cloying to enjoy. To be fair, he didn’t like too many beers either. He was picky. “Also potato chips. Somebody keeps eating them all.”
“That isn’t completely my fault. You eat them too.”
“Usually not by the sackful.”
“They’re a human food. Is it my fault if you don’t know how to eat them properly?” Ceri said, playing innocent. He was good at that.
“You’re lucky you’re so cute. Otherwise I’d kick you out on your ass.” This was a running joke between the two of them. They both randomly threatened to kick each other’s ass, but wouldn’t, because said asses were too pretty. It startled people who didn’t realize it was an inside joke.
Ceri patted him on the arm. “What did you sneak out and get?”
“What?” Shit.
“Hmm. Judging by the smell of your hair, I’m gonna guess… you made a trip to the sewer? Who lives in the sewer? You didn’t try and find where the vampire queen was hiding, did you?”
“Umm… if I say I have no idea what you’re talking about, you’ll throw me out of the bed, won’t you.” Did he tell Ceri about the amulet yet or not? Maybe he should wait until tomorrow. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“No, I’m not that cruel.” Ceri sighed, and Logan felt it on his neck. “I wish you’d stop feeling like you have to prove yourself. You’re the only human who’s ever fought demons and lived. You have street cred! Now stop being insecure before it gets you killed.”
“I’m not insecure. Am I?” Oh God, of course he was. But that’s what happened to the only regular guy in a group of supernatural superbeings.
“If you have to ask…,” Ceri said and then kissed him on top of the head again.
Logan gave him an anemic slap on the arm, but it was barely a love tap. Being stubborn bastards was one of the main things they had in common. Logan realized he was in danger of dozing off, and he didn’t want to, so he turned to Ceri and kissed him.
Their kisses were always passionate, always hungry. Logan loved kissing Ceri. Generally, when he started, he couldn’t stop. He loved the taste of him, the way he’d envelop him in his arms, and how it made him feel loved and safe. So much of his life, he’d never quite felt either.
Logan gently straddled Ceri, never breaking the kiss, and Ceri slipped his arms around Logan’s waist. Their lovemaking, as usual, took Logan to a place he could never afterward describe.
When they slept, unless it was screaming hot, they found it kind of impossible not to snuggle together. Logan, who was used to sleeping alone even when he slept with someone else, had found he didn’t mind it. He actually liked it. It went back to feeling safe and loved, wrapped in Ceri’s embrace.
Logan knew no one would understand that. Learning Ceri was half-demon, they expected he’d be a maniac. Learning of his parentage, they assumed he was an attack dog with plutonium teeth and cyanide blood. Which was why Ceri being so sweet and loving threw everyone off. Even Logan hadn’t quite understood it at first. But Ceri wasn’t his father, or his mother either. He was himself, and the best thing either of them ever created. His father would deny that, but his father was the universe’s biggest asshole, so of course he would. Ceri was his North Star, his light, and Logan would not give him up for anything.
Even the end of the world.
LOGAN’S PHONE vibrated on the nightstand, waking him up. He grumbled and wasn’t going to answer, but he picked it up to at least see who was calling. The display simply read Stop trying to block me, asshole. There was only one person that could be. Logan still wouldn’t have answered, but she might have tried to invade his dreams if he didn’t, and the first time, that had been as ugly as fuck.
“Fuck off, Gill,” he said, jamming the phone to his ear.
“What kind of way is that to greet your sister?” Gillian replied.
“You’re not my sister anymore.”
“I am, though, now more than ever. I’ve met my potential. You threw it away to fuck a demon.”
“Hanging up now,” Logan said, pulling the phone away.
“Fine,” he heard Gill say. Since she’d joined the holy assholes, her voice had taken on a colder, sharper edge. Not that Gill had been all sunshine and puppies when she was human, but he knew who she was. She was his shyer, homelier—ha!—sister, the one he pretty much raised when their mother finally succumbed to alcoholism and insanity. Although the latter was partially, if not completely, down to demons who had tormented her for years. And all because of her stupid doomed kids. “I know the Amulet of Azrael is off the board. You should give it to us.”
“And help bring on the end of the world? Yeah, I’m getting right on that.”
“You can’t give it to the demons. You know what they’ll do with it.”
“The same fucking thing. I’m not giving it to either side.”
“You can’t use it. You haven’t activated your potential yet.” Gill paused, and then her voice seemed to get frostier. “Oh, you’re giving it to him.”
“It’s his by right, and he’s the only one I trust with it.”
She made a disgusted noise. “You know, I’m actually proud of you. I know it took you a shockingly long time to figure out you were pansexual, although I always assumed you were bi. But whatever. At least you figured it out. But why… him?”
Logan sighed, staring up at the darkened ceiling. “We’re not having this discussion. You’ve made your feelings about Ceri quite clear.”
Gill snickered. “Ceri? His name is Cerberus. You know, like the three-headed dog?”
“Because his father’s a complete fucking cockwaffle.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that.” Gill was quiet for a moment, and Logan wondered if she ever missed being human, or missed being siblings. What about beer—did she miss beer? Or ice cream? When she was a kid, she couldn’t get enough of that. “But you can’t throw everything away, Logan. You have a gift. And the apocalypse is going to happen whether you play your role or not. I want you to survive. Join me here and you can. Two beings will never stop an apocalypse.”
“We’re not just two.”
She made a noise Logan thought of as an old Gill noise, a sort of disapproving click of the tongue. “Oh yes, the ragtag misfits. Altogether, they don’t even equal one whole person.”
“Were you always a snob?” Logan asked, sitting up. “’Cause you always had a tendency.”
“I am not a snob, I’m a realist.”
“So that’s your excuse for treachery, is it?” Logan snapped. “Realism?”
“You’re never letting that go, are you?”
“You were brainwashed.”
“I am fulfilling my birthright,” she snapped, and the line crackled with energy. She must have realized what she was doing since she took a breath and steadied herself. “Fulfill yours, Logan. Before it’s too late.”
Logan despaired for his sister but did wonder if he was to blame. Maybe if Gill had more faith in him, in their fight, she wouldn’t have succumbed. In the end, maybe it was Logan’s fault. “I’ve made my choice, Gill, like you’ve made yours. Now we have to live with them.” He cut the connection and put his phone on the nightstand.
Ceri put a hand on his thigh. Logan could feel both his soft human skin and the rougher demon skin on his hand. “You okay?” Ceri asked, his voice partially muffled by the blankets. He knew how horrible this was for Logan. He knew Logan hated facing off with his sister.
Logan put his hand over Ceri’s and said, “Yeah, I’m okay.” He thought he was. Mostly.
He had to be okay. He was sure Gill was okay with things as they were now, so it was high time Logan got okay with it too, he thought as he dozed and remembered….
MOM HADN’T had much in the way of family. They were all dead, more or less, although those who were alive, mostly extended family, wanted nothing to do with her. They thought she was crazy and a drunk, and while she may have eventually been driven to the former, mainly she was the latter. But she was mostly a functional alcoholic in that sometimes she seemed perfectly sober while being completely drunk off her ass. Eventually, they would discover that the reason their mother kept them moving from place to place all the time was because the demons were after them. It led to her first hospitalization and the first time Logan genuinely had to look after himself and Gill as a full-time thing. But he didn’t find out the demons were real things, not sick hallucinations, until one attacked him.
Logan had been seventeen and had snuck out to a club he was too young to be in, but the owners played fast and loose with the carding policy, and anyone who had cash got a pass. He was there seeing a punk band—or were they post rock (whatever the fuck that meant)?—but it didn’t really matter. Logan was tired of babysitting both his mother and Gill and wanted time to himself. Getting wasted and laid were things he was hoping for, but he wouldn’t be depressed if they didn’t happen. They’d simply be gravy.
He had some pills he’d bought at the last school he went to. He wasn’t quite ready to do any of the club drugs, but painkillers he could do. Logan was good and numb, and while he still hated the taste of beer, the warmth was nice. Eventually he had to find the place’s gross bathroom and take a piss.
Mom might have been a drunk, but she was big on both him and Gill learning about personal safety. Wherever they lived, she enrolled them in martial arts classes, kickboxing classes, boxing, even simple self-defense courses. She told them she always wanted them to know how to take care of themselves, even though she didn’t say why. She had a sawed-off shotgun she taught Logan to shoot when he was ten, and she found some guy who was willing to teach him how to knife fight. Only in retrospect did Logan realize she was worried she’d be killed and he and Gillian would be vulnerable to both the demons and the angels, so she wanted them ready. Although at the time they’d thought she was overly paranoid, it had saved their lives time and again.
Logan hadn’t really noticed the guy who entered after him, as he’d been having a piss. But once he went to the sink to wash his hands, he noticed the man. He looked very straightedged, like a narc or someone’s freakishly young guidance counselor, a clean-cut, clean-shaven young man in a Black Flag T-shirt that didn’t fit him, and jeans that were probably a smidgen too tight. Still, that wasn’t Logan’s tip-off that there was something deeply wrong with this guy. It was his face.
It was blandly handsome, not really noteworthy, except his skin was flawless in a way that people’s faces weren’t. He had no zits, so scars, no big pores, no grease or grime, no stubble of any kind. His white-bread face was perfect in a way that was completely unrealistic. He wasn’t even sweating.
Logan didn’t know it then, but that was his first encounter with a glamour. Demons had to wear them to walk around; otherwise their appearance instantly gave them away. They were bipedal, and that was pretty much where their similarity to humans ended.
Logan was drying his hands when the guy attacked.
Since he had him in the corner of his eye, Logan saw him coming and managed to get his elbow up so the guy basically ran into it. It sent a jolt of pain through Logan’s arm, but he heard a crack and warmth suddenly gushed upon him. He’d broken the perfect bastard’s nose.
As he reeled back, all of Logan’s training flashed through his mind, but what it had settled on was that what was simple was best. Got a good shot? Take it. Which was why his next move was to kick the guy in the nuts and, as he bent over, grab his head and knee him in the face. Not once, but four times, until Logan was tired of getting all that blood on his jeans. As soon as Logan let him go, he staggered and fell against the sink, cursing him out, but it was hard to hear what he was saying through a mouthful of blood.
“I don’t know why you attacked me,” Logan said. “But I do know if you don’t give up now, I’ll flatten your skull into a pancake.”
Logan took a step toward him, and his boot kicked a metal charm that had fallen on the ground. Most demons couldn’t do most glamours themselves. The job was literally outsourced, either to higher demons—as a higher demon, Ceri was able to glamour himself—or to witches, who sold the demons physical charms. While they had it on them, their glamour was in place. When Logan kneed the guy in the face, he somehow lost his charm.
Logan didn’t really pay attention to it in the moment. It was when the guy straightened up that Logan’s world as he’d known it ended. Mr. Perfect Face was now a being with leathery dark green skin, and his mouth was a fucked-up mess of teeth. His hair was strawlike and barely concealed what looked like a nubby series of yellowish-white horns atop the crown of his head, which also kind of looked like teeth growing out of his skin. (They were horns of course. On demons they seemed to be optional, but some were really strangely shaped.) Logan did a hard double-take. “What the fuck…?”
The demon wasn’t yet aware he’d lost his charm, and he lunged at Logan again. Training overcame his shock, and he turned into a spinning kick that caught the ugly guy flush in his fucked-up jaw. It was pure action movie, and as the demon slammed headfirst into a bathroom stall and collapsed on the filthy floor, Logan suddenly remembered his mother’s drunken rambles about “demons,” and the first thing that flashed through his mind wasn’t that she had been right, but maybe he’d caught her madness too. Was it hereditary? He was concerned he was having a psychotic break in the messy bathroom of a punk club. He was about the right age for it, right? Schizophrenia supposedly hit around the late teens for most people.
He went back out into the club, belatedly remembering he probably had blood on him, but in what he assumed to be the lighting, Logan saw it looked black—on his hand, on his shirt, on his jeans. It turned out when he initially saw it as red, it was part of the glamour. Most demon blood actually was black.
But again, learned in hindsight. At the time, he sat at the bar and drank until reality didn’t matter anymore. Logan was positive it was his last sane night. He had no idea how he got home—someone put him in a taxi and sent him on his way. Later, he would learn it was Lynneia, who was apparently at the club keeping an eye on him, but he didn’t know that, and he didn’t know her yet either. It would be about a year from then that he would meet her in a social context, in what he assumed was their first meeting. It would also technically be the last opposite-sex relationship for either of them, which was kind of hilarious to think about now, although Lynneia always knew she was bisexual.
He didn’t find out she wasn’t human until a little later on. Wow, all his relationships were fucked up from the get-go, weren’t they?
LOGAN WAS woken from his dream, memory—whatever it was called when sleep and remembrances became entwined—by Ceri, who leaned over and kissed him on the top of his head and stroked his arm until Logan opened his eyes. He didn’t want to open his eyes.
Ceri had put his glamour on again. He looked like a bronze-skinned Greek god, with wavy black hair and golden hazel eyes, but he remembered to put some flaws in his glamour, so he had an acne scar or two, which somehow just added to his beauty. And while he was extremely sexy, Logan sort of preferred his real self, bisected and all.
“Lynneia and Esme are back,” Ceri said.
“Oh, excellent,” Logan said, sitting up. He really wanted to pull Ceri into bed, but the sun was clearly up, and the birds were trilling their hearts out beyond the windows. Logan personally didn’t care for being up in the morning, was best suited to nighttime living. He honestly didn’t know how anyone functioned in daylight.
Logan grabbed some sweatpants and stepped into them—not sure if they were his or Ceri’s and not really caring—and pondered putting on a shirt before figuring fuck it. Lyn had seen him naked, and Esme had seen him shirtless before, so it was no big deal. Besides, it allowed him to show off his tattoos.
Magic existed, but it was really weird. It worked for some beings and not for others, and the rules weren’t wildly consistent. But there were a few bedrock things that couldn’t be shaken. First of all, the talent for it really did seem to run in families, and protective sigils would only work if drawn—or tattooed—by a genuine magic wielder. So Esme was responsible for the wards tattooed on his body. A non-magic-using tattoo artist was responsible for the No Gods, No Masters tattoo on his left upper arm, because it wasn’t a spell, just a statement.
Logan padded into the kitchen to find Lynneia and Esme sitting at the table with mugs of tea in their hands. Lynneia was in her human form. He could smell something good cooking on the stove as Ceri was in chef mode. Logan poured himself a cup of french-pressed coffee—of course Ceri, being a major coffee snob, had already prepared it—and took a seat at the kitchen table.
“So how did the hunt for The Blackburn Codex go?” Logan asked Esme.
Esme sighed, putting down her mug. She was an attractive Latinx woman with short blue asymmetrical hair, longer on the right than the left. Her left ear had about a half dozen different earrings in it, mostly studs all along the cartilage, and she also had a pierced eyebrow. She was the first genuinely punk-as-fuck witch Logan had ever met, and he appreciated that. Not that it mattered what he thought. She was Lynneia’s girlfriend, and he was irrelevant. “Well, it was pretty fucked-up, but eventually we found its last known hiding place. Delacourt Manor.”
Logan pondered that while sipping his coffee. Ceri might have been a coffee snob, but that made him the best at making it. “Is it that weirdass supernatural death house?”
Esme tapped the side of her nose and pointed at him. “That’s the death trap.”
He gave Lynneia a skeptical look. “You couldn’t just fly in there?”
“I could fly to the property, but whoever set it up was aware more than demons and witches would be looking for it. Its traps have traps.”
Although at first he’d thought it was a joke, Lynneia was a harpy. A genuine one. One of those mythological Greek bird women. She was quick to point out the myth wasn’t exactly spot-on. It had a definite sting of misogyny, and every tale told over time loses many of its facts and ends up in the land of opinion. In human guise, she looked like a very attractive Korean woman, which she was, although it was really a disguise. Lynneia had tried to explain it to him once, but it was complicated and made his head hurt. The gist was she could appear as any female, old or young, any race or size. Harpies were gender-specific shape-shifters. She was also cagey about how old she was but had dropped that harpies lived about a thousand years. She had been working for Heaven at first, keeping an eye on Logan, but in the end she decided they were manipulating her and walked away. They initially sent angels after her, but the thing about harpies was they were fierce warriors. So after a couple of dead angels, they decided, wisely, to leave her the fuck alone.
“Do you know what we’re gonna be facing?” Logan asked.
“Not completely,” Lyn admitted. “But I think we can handle it, since the traps probably aren’t made for us.”
“We could also ask Ahmed if he wants in on this.”
“What’s in it for him?” Esme asked. “Would he even give a shit?”
“It’s part of stopping the apocalypse. He’d rather the world didn’t end.” But Ahmed could be fickle. He was extremely old, and a guy that old was bound to be cranky. Especially when he had Ahmed’s issues.
Ceri finally came to the table and put a plate of scrambled eggs and grilled toast in front of Logan before sitting down next to him with his own food. Ceri was demon enough that eating was optional, but he’d come to appreciate human food. Usually the junkier the better, but Logan’s love of breakfast sandwiches in all their iterations—burritos, biscuits, quesadillas—had led Ceri to appreciate those foods as well.
Logan took a bite of the grilled toast and savored both its crunch and buttery goodness. Ceri knew every possible way to his heart.
Lynneia raised an eyebrow at the both of them. “You realize you’re eating eggs in front of a birdwoman, don’t you?”
“These aren’t harpy eggs,” Ceri replied, and Logan spluttered out a laugh.
Lynneia glared at him. “We don’t lay eggs.”
“I know, but you said—”
“We’re still working on humor and its variables,” Logan told Lyn. Ceri had been raised pretty much as a demon, as his father hadn’t wanted him to get “tainted” by humanity. But he hadn’t been able to quell Ceri’s curiosity about humans, and then, when Logan ended up in Hell, the rest was history. Ceri had to come see his father’s human prisoner, and while it wasn’t exactly love at first sight, it was at least lust. That was when Logan realized he was kinda sorta sometimes attracted to dudes. And others. Not just women, which seemed like a major thing to acknowledge to himself when he was essentially Hell’s prisoner. But thanks to Ceri, he wasn’t Hell’s prisoner for long. Although it had been long enough for Gill to do the stupidest goddamn thing she had ever done. No help for it now.
They sketched out a loose plan for penetrating Delacourt Manor, and Logan figured he’d bug Ahmed after this and see if he wanted in. If, that is, he was in the basement, where he lived. If he wasn’t, it wasn’t like Logan could call him, because he didn’t keep a phone with him regularly. For one, he hated most modern tech, and besides, sand got everywhere and ruined everything. It seemed like he could control that better, but again, old man. Maybe it was to be expected.
As soon as he was done with breakfast, Logan headed to the basement. He knocked before he opened the door and called out, “You here, Ahmed?”
He lived in their basement, even though he had a crazy amount of money, because Ahmed neither had a place to live nor seemed to want one. All he had in the basement was an armchair he probably didn’t use, a table, and a flat-screen television bolted to the wall. Ahmed had to have his shows. But he didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and wouldn’t have sex if it was offered to him, being a total old-school—no pun intended—asexual. He saw humanity as a whole as pathetic and not worth a damn, except for two things: he loved fashion, and he didn’t want to be the only thing left alive on Earth after an apocalypse. He would talk about being alone in some places when the Black Death ravished Europe, and he realized he’d had more than enough alone time. It was probably also why he lived in their basement, even though they rarely saw him.
“Ahmed?” Logan called again. There was a little sand about, but not enough to be him, so Logan wrote him a note and left it taped to his TV. He had no idea if Ahmed would get it in time or not. Not that it mattered; they’d planned around him. Him showing up would be a bonus.
Esme and Lyn said they’d meet them there, and in the backyard, Lyn transformed into her true harpy form. It was sudden, and Logan always felt it should be more dramatic than it was. She held out her arms, and feathers suddenly burst from beneath her skin, metallic silver and sleek, like she was some cyborg angel, while her arms seemed to grow another foot. Her fingers curved into thick black talons, and if she was still wearing her boots—which she wasn’t; she’d kicked them off inside the house—they would have exploded as her feet became wide three-toed talons, scaled like they belonged to a dragon. Her face remained the same, but feathers erupted from inside her tank top, filling it out like she was smuggling pillows. Some fun facts Logan had learned about Lynneia in her harpy form—she was strong enough to pick up a bus, her claws could cut through concrete, and she flew at about eighty miles an hour at top speed, more if she could catch a favorable breeze. This was why angels didn’t bother with harpies. Even though they didn’t look it, they were tanks. They could lay waste to anyone and their brother so fast they’d have little idea what had actually hit them.
Esme wrapped her arms around Lyn’s neck from behind, and then Lyn shot up into the sky at a rate that probably would have been terrifying to anyone who wasn’t one of the most powerful witches on the planet. Esme could more than hold her own.
When he returned to the house, Logan got properly dressed and started to make decisions about the weapons he’d bring. Silver and iron were both givens, as most spooky stuff hated them. Very little worked on angels, and ghosts could give a shit, but they had the most powerful weapons they could use against everything in Esme, Lyn, and Ceri. He was the weak link in the chain. He was the nonsuperhero in the group of superheroes. Logan supposed he should thank his lucky stars that at least he was pretty and had witchy protection sigils on him. Otherwise, he was the first guy to die in any horror movie.
He did have those new improvised weapons, though. One he’d built on research, using these weird glass globes he found at a hobby shop. Logan filled them with things most evil stuff hated—salt, peppermint oil, rosemary oil, essence of mistletoe and wolfsbane, colloidal silver—and could throw them like grenades, as the glass was surprisingly thin. He had to cushion them in bubble wrap before sticking them in his backpack. They also smelled pretty good, to the point where he wondered if he shouldn’t market it as a perfume. Maybe if they stopped the end of the world, he would.
“Ready?” Ceri asked. He was still in his glamour, but he had strapped his sword, which was called Godslayer, to his back. Yes, it was a pretentious name, but he didn’t pick it. It was all one piece, pure ebony, and curved slightly, almost like a scimitar. It was the kind of black that seemed to absorb all light surrounding it, and it was supposedly made of a special Hell-only metal that was not only unbreakable but toxic to just about everyone. Not Ceri, of course. His father wouldn’t have endangered him like that. He would have if he’d known Ceri would betray him over a human, but that was hindsight.
“As I can ever be,” Logan said, hefting his backpack over one shoulder.
Ceri, showing one of his stunning bursts of insight, gave him a tiny frown. “You know you’re the best natural fighter among us, right? What you lack in mystical abilities, you more than make up for in skill.”
Logan gave him a wan smile in return. “Thanks.” He didn’t actually know if that was true, but he appreciated the sentiment.
“I’m serious. You’re badass.”
Logan put his arms around Ceri and brought him close. “You have to say that. You’re my boyfriend.”
“It’s no less true.”
They shared a kiss for good luck, which was a thing they did now when they had time before a battle, and Ceri’s leathery red wings sprang out and enfolded Logan.
That was when the bottom dropped out of reality.
Logan thought of it as teleportation, but Ceri had told him that it was actually folding space. Either way, it was something higher demons and angels could do. Be one place one minute and somewhere else the next. Step from one place on a map to another place on a map, all via a fold in the space-time continuum. Ceri didn’t know how he did it, he simply could. It was an inborn talent, like his ability to wield Godslayer. It didn’t matter that he was half-human—he was born from the highest demon that currently existed. In point of fact, he was royalty, although he hated being reminded of that.
They broke the kiss, and Ceri’s wings retracted, disappearing into his back, and revealed they were now maybe fifty feet from Delacourt Manor, in the shadow of a large pine tree. Delacourt was in the part of the city where the edge of the wealthy county butted up against the poor rural one, so there was a fuckload of nothing out here. Private property with unclear owners, green spaces that could be public property for all anyone knew. Spaces between houses were measured in acres.
Delacourt was surrounded by one of those brick-wall jobs that had wrought iron at the top so no one could look in from any place except the huge iron gate in front. It was locked, but that meant nothing. The locks they couldn’t see, the wards and the booby traps, were the things that would be an issue.
Logan stepped back as Ceri went forward and put his hand on the wall surrounding the property. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Logan simply waited for him to be done with his scan. It was only a few seconds before he moved back. “I’m reading more angel warding than demon warding.”
“Really? So Delacourt was more down with demons?”
“Unclear. Maybe he assumed angels would be more interested in the codex than demons.”
“I’d think everyone would be interested in it.” The Blackburn Codex was apparently the inspiration for the Necronomicon. It was full of deep black magic, stuff that would basically kill anyone who cast it, along with other shit that was edging toward apocalypse. Ironically, it might help prevent one, but they had to find it first.
“Since we have time,” Ceri said, “you wanna talk about that phone call from your sister?”
Logan sighed, slipped his backpack off, and leaned against the tree trunk. He set the bag by his feet carefully. He didn’t want to breach the unholy Molotovs. “No.”
“Logan,” he said in that way of his. It was somehow affectionate and admonishing at the same time.
“There’s nothing to say. You know what she wants, and you know my response to it.”
Ceri was going to say something soothing, because that was his way, when he looked up suddenly and said, “Company.”
Logan grabbed his bag and shouldered it as two people blinked into existence on the street about thirty feet away from them.
Angels were weird. They weren’t white-winged feathered things, unless that’s the guise they’d chosen. They were energy beings who looked, according to Ceri, like rips in the space-time continuum, a glowing slash in the universe. But when they showed up in human guise, for some reason they always looked like yoga teachers. They wore flowing clothes and linen pants, except when they wore yoga pants and sports bras, and there was little rhyme or reason to any of it. For some reason, they thought this was how all humans dressed, even though they had ample evidence to the contrary. Angels were so stubborn, they made mules and two-year-olds look like rank amateurs.
Today, the angels went yoga standard. The leader, whom Logan recognized as Raphael, had his long brown hair up in a man bun, looking like a thirty-year-old guy hanging out at the farmer’s market, selling hand-harvested honey. He wore a loose beige tunic and flowing white linen pants. His feet weren’t visible, but he was usually barefoot. The angel beside him was a woman in her midthirties with stringy dirty-blond hair held back in a high ponytail, wearing an outfit almost identical to Raphael’s. Logan had no idea which angel this was, as Raphael was one of the few to create a guise and stick with it. And gender was no tell. Angels didn’t have a gender, being energy beings, so they were extremely arbitrary with it.
Ceri took up a protective stance in front of Logan and drew Godslayer from its sheath. Little besides harpies killed angels; Ceri’s sword did. Godslayer killed everything. Because Ceri was in front of him, Logan saw through the rip in the back of his T-shirt that his wings had peeked out a touch. When Ceri released his full power, his wings came out, his glamour fell, his fingers became gnarled talons, and his eyes glowed as molten red as lava. He was genuinely terrifying, and at full power, no lone angel could deal with him.
Raphael raised a hand, as if signaling him to halt, and dipped his head. “We are blessed to be in your presence, Crown Prince of Hell, but we are not here to fight.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ceri snapped as the female angel repeated Raphael’s gesture. Logan snaked a hand into his backpack and found what Esme had given him to deal with angels. They were difficult to hurt, but there was a special frequency of sound and light they could hear and see that others couldn’t. (Ceri could, but he could shut those off. He had a full range of senses that baffled Logan.) So it was essentially a flash-bang that only worked on angels. It didn’t work for long, but buying a few seconds was usually enough. Escape or death. There was no third option, except with Ceri. Then the third option was that he killed them all.
Raphael raised an eyebrow. He had a long face, very horselike for a human, and as always, Logan was sure he’d based his guise on a real human. But who he had no idea. “Do you prefer Cerberus?”
“No, I prefer demon. You have thirty seconds.”
“Or what?” the female angel asked.
“Or I see how much my sword fighting’s improved since last time.”
Angels rarely reacted to anything, but she shot Raphael an uncomfortable look, to Logan’s delight. Ceri had killed angels before, and he was willing to do so again. It was perhaps the only reason the angels didn’t confront them at their house. Well, that and the warding. But Ceri was the main deterrent. And why wouldn’t he be? He was Lucifer’s son, and according to a few prophecies, he was supposed to be the Destroyer of Earth. Of course, the fact that he didn’t want to destroy Earth seemed to matter to no one.
“We mean no harm to your… human,” Raphael said. What an obsequious little toad. “Or to you. We simply want to talk.”
“Then call. We know you have the number.”
“Erm… we thought a face-to-face meeting would be better. Because you don’t seem to understand you have to fulfill your destiny. Logan does too.”
Ceri scoffed. “We don’t have to do shit. I’ll tell you what I told my father—cram your destiny up your ass.”
“We don’t have—” the female began.
Raphael cut her off. “You have no choice in the matter. As it is written, it shall be.”
Ceri sighed heavily. Like Logan, he’d heard that song and dance a billion times and was, Logan was sure, equally sick of it. “Tell me one passage of the Bible that is genuinely true. I’ll wait. I’ll even give you extra time to wrack your brain.”
Raphael frowned at him. If he’d had glasses, he would no doubt have dramatically pushed them up. “You know as well as I do that was made up by humans.”
“And the prophecy of me as the Destroyer wasn’t?”
“No, it was not. It is our prophecy.”
“And it’s garbage. You think all demons are evil.”
“All demons are—” Raphael made himself pause and try again. “Most demons are.”
“I’m not. And to prove that, I should let you know a harpy will be arriving any second now, and I’m pretty sure she skipped breakfast, so you might want to get out of here.”
Both angels looked puzzled, but the female one said, “We’re inedible.”
Ceri shrugged. “You think that’ll stop her from trying?”
The angels exchanged a look that could best be described as mildly concerned, although for an angel that verged on full-blown panic, and it was no surprise to Logan when they winked out of existence a moment later. “Wait till I tell Lyn you used her as the boogeyman.”
Ceri rolled his eyes as he turned back around and returned Godslayer to its sheath. “Angels are pests. No offense.”
“None taken.” The angels had taken an interest in him and his sister because they had angelic bloodlines—someone in their family was porked by an angel at some point. All that meant was when they died, they had an option to be “reborn” as an angel. That was it. And Gill took them up on it and was now a heavenly piece of shit. Maybe she assumed she’d have her own personality and mind in spite of the fact that she and Logan hadn’t met one angel who wasn’t a Stepford drone. That didn’t happen. Gill was his sister in name only—none of the person he knew remained. She was another mouthpiece for their same old line: die and be reborn an angel.
The angels couldn’t simply kill Logan either. Apparently consent was huge. He had to agree willingly before it could happen. Which was why he was still sucking air. If they could have killed both of them and have them reborn as angels, they probably would have done it when they were kids. Well, if their mother had let them. She’d tried so hard to protect them, she’d driven herself crazy. In hindsight, she’d done the best she could.
And yes, he and Ceri had heard all the jokes about the boy with angel blood and the Crown Prince of Hell being involved. Some assholes liked to refer to them as Romeo and Juliet, like they were being original or clever. Sometimes Romeo and Julian or Jude, but it was no less annoying. Or vaguely homophobic and dumb.
Logan was glad Gill hadn’t come with Raphael this time, but why hadn’t she? If they wanted Logan off-balance—or spitting angry—bringing Gill would have done it. But maybe they were waiting to launch that bomb, because once they did, there would be no going back.
Ceri gave him a sympathetic look, suggesting he knew what Logan was thinking about, but thankfully Lyn picked this moment to land on the street a few feet short of where the angels had appeared. Esme jumped off her back, while Lyn started to shake out her wings.
As funny as that sounded, it was part of her shift process. Lyn bent over and flapped her wings in what seemed like a drying and not flying way, and her arms appeared to shrink while her feathers were absorbed beneath her skin. It was like someone reversed the frames on her transformation into a harpy.
Esme ran her hands through her close-cropped hair, which looked fluffier from the wind, and said, “We just missed some angels, didn’t we?” Esme had her own warding tattoos, including one that told her when angels or demons were in the vicinity. Of course, when she was around Ceri, it was going off all the time, but she said it measured degrees of danger. How, Logan had no idea. But he wasn’t the natural-born bruja.
“You didn’t miss much,” Logan told her.
Esme made a dramatic face and held her hand out toward him. “Join us, and you will become more powerful than you could ever imagine.”
“Basically.”
“Assclowns.” She shook her head and turned to study the locked gate. “So, Ceri, you wanna do the honors? I can do a blanket spell afterward.”
Ceri shrugged. “Why not?” He walked up to the gate and put his hand on it. The gate flew open as if an armored truck had slammed into it at a hundred miles an hour, and something metal broke off and flew away. Again, Ceri was a sweetheart, but as Lucifer’s son, he had leveled up as far as power sets went. Maybe he was the fabled Destroyer of Earth because technically? If he wanted to crack the globe in half, no one could stop him.
Esme, who was standing behind him, threw a spell designed to cause all the hidden traps to start glowing. Her spells were done in a mix of Spanish and Latin that seemed unique to hr, as he’d never encountered any other witch who did that. But Esme claimed she could trace her magical bloodline all the way back to the Aztecs, which could be a lie but, knowing her, probably wasn’t. Esmerelda Navarro was the kind of witch only spoken about in hushed whispers, like she was the boogeyman or a cautionary tale. Probably due to her evil eye. But still, it was cool being friends with the most powerful witch on the planet. Again, all the supernaturals on this team were tanks, and Logan was the sad, sorry human. All he brought to the team was a pretty face and a bit of snark. He was the court-mandated mediocre white guy.
Lyn, back to human, said, “Hey, babe, I could use some feet warmers.” Yep, she was barefoot and back to her very human-looking feet. Logan had seen her naked; he knew she looked as human as he did, and he had no idea how this human-to-harpy thing worked. It looked painful, but she claimed it didn’t hurt. It was just “weird.” Which, no shit.
Esme looked back and said a few words, and soft black boots seemed to spontaneously form over Lyn’s feet. She looked at them and said, “Neat. Can I keep these?”
“Only if I can borrow them.”
Lyn approached Esme and gave her a little side hug, which Esme returned. They were so cute together, it almost made Logan’s teeth hurt. He went to where they were, getting his first good loo(k inside the gate.
The Delacourt Manor still looked like the setting of about 50 percent of the haunted-house movies in existence, although now there were glowing sigils and neon lines stretched above the tiled driveway, and the formerly manicured lawn and garden had gone to seed. To say there were a lot of mystical traps was an understatement. How many had Esme found? At least a dozen.
Ceri let out a low whistle. “He did not want unexpected visitors.”
“Or any visitors,” Lyn said. “Can you guys deactivate all of these?”
Ceri and Esme shared a look before they both glanced at Lyn. “Between the Prince of Hell and the most badass witch on earth?” Esme said. “Yeah, I think we got this.”
“Cocky goeth before a fall,” Lyn warned.
Esme shrugged as Ceri crouched down and put his hand flat on the paved drive. He didn’t appear to be doing anything, but some of the neon lines and sigils started to look like they were burning, turning to ash while they watched. Esme cast a spell that caused all the others to wink out one by one, like someone was turning off lights.
Logan could feel power in the air, like static electricity, and the hair on his arms was standing on end. The air tasted of ozone, like after a thunderstorm. Lyn sighed. “Okay, I guess I’ll give it a shot first, since I’m nigh invulnerable.”
“Please tell me that was a Tick reference,” Logan said. He genuinely hoped it was.
She clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. “You and your pop culture references.” Lyn stepped fearlessly past the gate, walked toward the house, and while Logan was braced for some last-minute thing they’d overlooked suddenly striking her down, nothing happened. But of course it didn’t—Prince of Hell, best witch in the world. They were golden.
But the trouble had never really been getting in the gate. They could do that. They could handle it. No, the problem was the house. That thing was warded up the ass and beyond and contained things specifically to deter demons and angels and witches alike. The yard was simply to keep out the weaklings and those who weren’t serious. This was the mastermind round.
And, ironically, it was the mediocre man’s time to shine.
“Okay, before the two of you go in, I have some things for you,” Esme said, reaching into her coat pocket. She pulled out a necklace with a leather cord, which she put around Logan’s neck. It had two things on it: a tiny black velvet bag that smelled strongly of wormwood and a pendant that looked for all the world like a glass eye, although not the same kind as Ceri wore. These looked like glass eyes fished out of bowl, whereas the one on the Amulet of Azrael looked a bit like it might belong to a sinister cartoon character, and the one Ceri wore had a diamond-shaped pupil. Lyn was already wearing one because Logan wasn’t going into spooky death mansion alone. Again, nonsuperhero here.
“What does this do?” he asked.
“It should keep you safe from the more general curses,” Esme said. “And it gives me a way to see what’s going on so we can help you from out here if necessary.”
Ceri grabbed him and gave him a quick kiss before saying, “I have something for you too.” Ceri was holding Logan’s hand in a weird way, and only when his palm got unnaturally hot did he realize that Ceri was doing something to him.
Magic ran in bloodlines, and as the Prince of Hell, Ceri had some as well. More powerful, because he also had demon blood. But Ceri’s parentage got really confusing because Lucifer was his father, but so was some unsuspecting warlock from a long line of witches. It seems not just anyone could have the son of Satan, and there were no females who met the criteria, so he made do with what he had and picked the warlock. Ceri didn’t know all the details, but apparently he’d gestated like a parasite and burst out of the warlock a week later. Did the warlock know he was a vessel for Lucifer’s son? Knowing his dad, as Ceri had explained to Logan, he figured the guy didn’t know. Lucifer might have seduced him in a female guise, so the warlock likely never knew he’d been impregnated. He didn’t survive the birthing process. It was a whole big bunch of ick, but Lucifer was a complete dickbag, so at least it made sense.
As soon as he saw that Ceri had turned his hand red and leathery, like demon skin—no, like his demon skin—Logan knew exactly what he was going to do. “Oh no, Cer—”
“This will protect you from anything,” Ceri replied, taking the sword and sheath off his back and looping it over Logan’s shoulder. The thing about Godslayer, besides being a weapon that could kill or destroy fucking anything in the entire universe, was that only Ceri could touch it. If someone who was not him touched it, it would suck out their soul and life force. Sounded like a joke, right? But once during a fight another demon had tried to pick it up, and by the time he’d lifted it to a usable height, he’d turned into a desiccated husk. One second he was a demon in human guise; the next he was a piece of green beef jerky on the ground. Only the Destroyer, aka Son of Satan, could wield it. Full stop. It killed everyone else.
But of course, with the magic he had, Ceri could temporarily transfer an almost literal piece of himself to Logan. But it would be on Logan to remember to only touch the sword with his right hand. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even live long enough to say “Oops.”
Lucifer and his offspring could blow through most demon wards, but heavy duty wards they couldn’t breach existed and were in use in this house. So Ceri couldn’t enter with them. Even Esme was warded out. That left Logan and Lyn. Ahmed could have come in too, but he wasn’t here.
Lyn, being a harpy, didn’t need anything to protect her. Truth was, hardly anybody warded against harpies because most people didn’t seem to know about them. The same was true of Ahmed, although he was not a harpy. Obscure monsters didn’t get the love or fear they deserved.
Lyn gave the door a good push, and the wood cracked as the door gave way and gaped open like a hungry mouth. She stepped inside, and Logan followed.
The foyer and front room seemed cavernous, and despite the layer of dust that made everything seem faded, the floor was marble with streaks of gold and blue running through it like veins. A huge wooden staircase with a slight elegant curve to it ran up to the second floor, which seemed darker than it should have been. But the windows were all boarded or shuttered, right? It was going to be as murky as an abandoned swimming pool.
There was very little in the way of furniture, but what there was had been covered with white sheets for that extra layer of spooky. Of course the dust had turned them gray, but one couldn’t have everything.
No obvious sigils or visible fetishes appeared, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. A really good witch or warlock kept that shit hidden. What good was a trap if everyone saw it coming?
They checked out the first side room they came to, which, judging from the empty shelves that ran up one wall, was a former library. From the shape of the sheets, a small table and an armchair were still in this room.
“Wanna look?” Lyn asked.
Logan shrugged. “Why not?”
The closest thing to him was the small side table, so he lifted up the grungy sheet, face turned away so he didn’t get a nose full of dust, and revealed a plain old table, although it looked like it had some scratches on it. No—was that wax? Something drawn in wax?
Suddenly he was no longer inside the house but plunging to the bottom of a lake. Or some body of water that was deep and cold. Now Logan was glad he’d been holding his breath. As he swam to the surface, Logan knew he had to figure out quickly if that had been some kind of teleportation spell or if this was all in his head. Which would be an issue because hallucination spells were a pain in the ass. They could trick the brain into thinking everything about it was reality, to the point that the body would respond to it. People who supposedly died of spontaneous combustion? Hallucination spell victims. They hallucinated they were burning, so they did. The human brain was a marvel and could be fooled into destroying itself quite easily.
He broke the surface to find a thick wall of ice that gave him maybe an inch or two of an air pocket and no more. So, cool. Was this real or fake?
Logan looked at the palm of his right hand. It was unlikely he’d have a demon-skin hand in here. In fact, he told himself he wouldn’t, if indeed this was a hallucination. If it was a real place he was dropped into, he wouldn’t make the demon hand disappear by refusing to believe it was real.
The skin of his hand was that odd fleshy pink colloquially described as white. Yep, hallucination. Even though he was alone, he shouted, “Lyn, if you can hear me, I’m stuck in a hallucination. Punch me out of it.” That was a dangerous ask, since she could technically punch him through a wall, but he was hoping she didn’t unleash on him completely. He was relatively sure he hadn’t pissed her off lately.
Of course, it was always weird having an ex for a friend. On the plus side, at least they had both gotten into gay relationships post breakup. Strange how that seemed to leech out any possible jealousy or hang-ups. Or at least it had in their case.
There was no immediate response, making him wonder if she was caught in a hallucination trap as well. Being a harpy, she was less subject to such things, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t happen. It just meant it was unlikely.
The water was so cold his balls seemed to have retracted completely inside his body. Even his bone marrow was contracting. Goddamn, he was turning into an ice cube. He wondered if he was going to die of hypothermia before he drowned. “Any time now, Ly—”
Pain suddenly exploded against the side of his face, and he stumbled and fell to the floor. The dry, warm floor. With an aching jaw. “Oww,” he said, shuddering from the sudden temperature shift as he reached up and made sure his face was still intact. “I didn’t mean for you to break my jaw.”
“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “You said punch you.” It didn’t help that she was grinning while she said this. Okay, this was the problem with being exes. She took way too much enjoyment from that.
“You could have pulled it a little more.”
“Could I?” She reached down and gave him a hand up to his feet. He took it, but he frowned at her. She knew exactly how strong she was.
“Did you find anything on the chair?”
She shook her head. “Standard fear-induction sigil. I’m sure if I was a human, I’d be a gibbering wreck.”
Sometimes she overdid the whole “harpies are superior” thing, but he couldn’t do much about it except shake his head. She was, and she goddamn knew it, and that was the most annoying thing about it. They couldn’t all be nigh-invulnerable birdwomen of vengeance.
All the cold had fled from his extremities by the time they went to the next room, which was the living room or the drawing room or whatever the fuck. He came from a working-poor background. Houses even remotely like this he’d seen only on films and TV shows. He didn’t know the names for all the rooms, if they even had them.
The only furniture in here was odd things pushed off into the corner and, again, covered with dusty sheets. Coatracks? Maybe. Maybe sculptures too? But that didn’t make a ton of sense. Then again, creepy mansion. Anything pretty much went. Judging by Scooby-Doo, this included trapdoors, secret rooms, and evil caretakers who hid behind shitty monster masks.
Considering what had happened last time, Logan hung back and let Lyn take the lead. She uncovered one of the weirdass things in the corner. It turned out to be a coatrack, but it had things dangling from its coat-hanging branches, or whatever they were called. “What the hell are those?” he wondered aloud.
She eyed them, grabbing one for a closer look. The fact that she sniffed it was generally a bad sign. “Okay, this must be related to a spell, or else something really bizarre happened a long time ago because I’m pretty sure these are dried intestines.”
“Gross. Are intestines used in a spell?”
“In some? Probably. But don’t ask me, I only date a witch. I ain’t one.”
“Do you feel weird or anything?”
She scowled at him. “Almost always. I doubt it’s—”
Lyn was interrupted by a deep, guttural growling noise that made both of them turn back toward the doorway. In it stood some kind of huge black dog, maybe a Rottweiler on steroids, although Logan noticed it was slightly translucent at the edges. A hellhound?
“Ceri!” he shouted. The dog hadn’t stopped growling or drooling blood and acidic saliva.
Suddenly there was a noise that sounded like someone playing a book on tape backward, with some warps and gaps in the tape. That was what demon tongue sounded like, at least to human ears. Humans couldn’t speak it or understand it, which was why humans being able to summon demons was a rare thing. They had to do it in their human language, and some demons didn’t bother to respond to requests in other languages.
But the hellhound immediately lay down, no longer snarling or drooling. It was pretty much encoded in their DNA—well, whatever passed for their DNA—to respond to Ceri and Lucifer as their masters. No matter that he was summoned up as part of some spell to protect this place. If Ceri told him to knock it off, he knocked it the fuck off. He couldn’t disobey him.
The spectral dog rested its head on its front paws, watching them with its red-hot eyes but unable to do anything since Ceri had commanded it to stay. The thing about hellhounds was they were tangible enough to rip people apart like soggy bread but intangible enough that attempts to hurt them inevitably failed. It was like trying to punch a cloud.
Logan heard another burst of demon language, and the dog hefted itself to its feet. “Hon?” he asked.
“I’ve ordered it to protect the two of you,” Ceri shouted back.
Lyn coughed out a laugh that startled the dog. “It’s working for us now? Cool.”
Logan gestured toward the opposite door and said, “Come on, Cujo, give us a tour.”
The dog’s fiery eyes glanced his way, but Logan doubted it understood him. But he had orders, and he padded onward, with Logan and Lyn following behind.
Another thing about hellhounds? They were death omens, meaning anyone who saw one was dead within a few hours, or less if it caught them first. But that didn’t apply to Logan, whose boyfriend was the Destroyer. Man, I should just start bossing hellhounds around. Talk about giving him street cred.
“Cujo is so played out as a reference,” Lyn said. “Why don’t we call him Ralph or something?”
“Ralph? Why Ralph?”
She shrugged. “Pretty silly name for a hellhound.”
Now it was hard to believe they had ever dated. Of course it made all kinds of sense in retrospect, since Lyn was basically a mercenary hired by the angels to keep an eye on him and he was desperately clinging to the idea that he was hetero while trying not to acknowledge that maybe he sorta kinda had thoughts that meant maybe he wasn’t. The lies he told himself were more pervasive and powerful than any of the other lies in his life, which was earthshaking and very sad, especially considering how much of his life was built on lies. Without lies, what would he have had? An alcoholic mother, an absent father, and a younger sister he was equally protective of and alienated from. And now he had kind of an ad hoc family, although it was a desperately weird one, and he was the only human in it. He couldn’t continue to lie to himself, not after everything he’d been through. He missed Gill sometimes. He wished he still had his sister. But that ship had sailed, and once someone was reborn as an angel, there was no going back.
Cujo/Ralph had led them to what Logan guessed was a dining room when it paused and looked toward the front of the house with a small, almost endearing warning woof. He and Lyn shared a look before Logan shouted, “Everything okay out there?”
There was no immediate answer, but a breeze blew through the house, followed by a small sandstorm—some might call it a dust devil—that swirled into the room. The sand became a pile that suddenly resolved into the shape of an average-sized man who was lean and very handsome.
“Ahmed! You could’ve called, you know,” Logan said.
Ahmed shrugged. “It was quicker to just show up.” His dark eyes, such a deep brown they usually appeared black, settled on the hellhound, which was looking at him as if it was unsure if it should attack or not. “You have a hellhound in here.”
“Yeah, Ceri made it work for us,” Logan told him.
“What’s up, Mum?” Lyn said.
Ahmed scowled at her. “I told you not to call me that.”
Ahmed was a mummy. Or so he said. It was actually unclear what he was. According to Esme, he was cursed by an actual mummy and not mummified himself, but since what a mummy was as a supernatural being was a nebulous category, who was to say? Unlike cartoonish old horror movies, he was not a guy wrapped up in bandages like toilet paper, or as in more recent horror movies, not a commander of CGI scarabs or anything. He was technically undead, in the sense that he was dead but still somehow alive, and there was some doubt he could be killed. His power, such as it was, was his ability to turn into sand—basically his body weight in sand—and he could move in that fashion and coalesce back into human form. He couldn’t cause a sandstorm, nor could he control all sand. Just himself.
But he appeared to be a handsome Egyptian man in his midtwenties, with cheekbones so high a male model would fight him to death in the street for them. He was a bit of a clotheshorse, so he often conjured up stylish clothes for himself, and right now Ahmed had conjured up one of his favorite suits, based on an actual Issey Miyake, that consisted of a maroon-and-white jacket and pants with a checkered pattern so tight and strange it looked like it was trying to become an optical illusion. He often paired it with bright and somewhat startling shirts, and today was no exception, as he’d conjured up a royal blue one for himself. It clashed, and yet somehow he made it work, the male-modeling son of a bitch. Logan had asked him once why he wore clashing colors, and Ahmed gave him a snooty look before replying, “It’s Miyake. If you want something conservative, go to Walmart.” Had Logan been asked what he thought a mummy might be like, he’d never have said fashion snob, but hey, he wouldn’t have thought his fucked-up family had angel blood in it either. Surprises abounded.
To no one’s shock, Ahmed’s hair was always perfectly coifed, but it became amazing upon realizing he was a man of sand and none of this was real. His detailing was exquisite, but then again, he claimed to have been around since “sometime BC”—he would claim he forgot what time exactly, because he was super old and calendars changed depending on the country and/or religion involved. Which was fair because Logan looked it up, and he was 100 percent correct.
He and Ceri stumbled upon Ahmed when they went after a dangerous collector of occult artifacts. They found a heavy chest with lots of ominous but unknown markings on it and decided to open it, because they were stupid like that. All they found was sand, which they were sure was some kind of prank or something, maybe someone sold the collector an expensive box of nothing. But then it formed into Ahmed, who was pissed at being locked in a fucking box—as anyone would be—but realized immediately they weren’t responsible, and oh yeah, Ceri had a power aura like Satan, and he wasn’t fucking with that. But after that, they became sort of acquaintances.
Ahmed was naturally(?) a loner—though dapper—and a depressive on a scale that made Eeyore look almost cheerful. He’d long ago declared humankind worthless and a failed experiment. But he didn’t want the apocalypse to come, because where would he get clothing ideas? Also he was relatively sure after the demons and angels had wiped everyone out, he would still be around. Because he wasn’t sure he could die. He had tried to kill himself numerous times, only to be disappointed. For instance, his first attempt had been throwing himself in the Nile, but all he could do was travel the sea without a boat. And as sand, neither fish nor humans had any interest in him. So he was a sad, grumpy, aesthete immortal. Exactly like all the old stereotypes.
And much like no one warded against harpies, no one warded against mummies—or the mummy cursed—either. Since he was also sand, he could travel through the Delacourt house a lot faster than Lynneia and Logan and never trigger a trap.
“Hey, Ahmed, you wanna check out the upper floors?” Logan asked. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll get there by Tuesday.”
He sighed, which was always a neat trick since he didn’t technically breathe, and said, “Fine. What am I looking for again?”
“A nasty book that gives off mucho bad mojo,” Lyn said.
“Should I destroy it?”
“No, we might need it,” Logan admitted.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course we do. We need all the bad-news stuff we can gather. Because if we’re going to allow an apocalypse, it’s going to be one we start.” Before either of them could reply, he became a dust devil and blew off into the next room. The hellhound watched, looking as puzzled as it could possibly be.
“Would it be insensitive if I suggested he give Prozac a shot?” Lyn wondered.
Logan shrugged. “You could, but you know what he’ll say.”
Lyn scowled—because Ahmed didn’t have resting bitch face as much as he had resting disapproving face—and quoted, “I don’t eat or drink. I don’t need to sleep, but once I slept for four years because it was the Dark Ages and it was fucking dull. People are disgusting. How is the species not dead yet?”
“I’m kind of surprised he doesn’t have a hit podcast,” Logan admitted.
“I’m surprised he’s not the head of the Department of Health and Human Services,” Lyn replied.
Yeah, that was a surprise now that he thought about it. Also, the current government was the best reason for an apocalypse because those toddler motherfuckers were bound and determined to blow the world up. Call Logan perverse, but he thought maybe humans should end humanity, not a bunch of bored angels and demons. Not that it would matter much since the outcome would be the same. It was the principle of the thing.
The dining room had another hallucination sigil that neither the hellhound nor Lyn was subject to, and Logan stayed as far away from it as he could until Lyn destroyed it by putting her foot through the floorboards. But that revealed something unexpected, although in retrospect, not an unsurprising find.
“Who put money on bodies under the floor?” Lyn asked as Logan sidled up for his own peek.
Yep. That looked like a human skull and some random other bones. “Think that was part of the sacrifice to juice all these sigils?”
“Either that or the guy who used to live here was a serial killer.”
Logan shrugged. “Possibly both. Who else would leave behind such a fucked-up house?”
“Well, a wannabe black-magician sadist who probably thought he was the coolest thing imaginable. So, yeah, serial killer.”
Cujo/Ralph dipped his muzzle into the hole in the floor and pulled out a bone. Logan thought about telling him to put it down, but would he listen? Also, it was highly doubtful the deceased gave a fuck. That was a perk of being dead, not having to give a fuck about the material world anymore.
The hellhound trotted on, gnawing on the tibia, or whatever bone it had snagged, and they were close to the stairs when they heard what sounded like the collapse of a partially full bookcase upstairs. Even the dog looked up.
“You okay up there, Ahmed?” Logan shouted.
After a moment, the dust devil returned to the top of the stairs and instantly re-formed into fashion-plate Ahmed again. “There was a stupid trap that apparently read me as a physical being it could crush. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”
Logan nodded, all the while thinking that maybe that guy who voiced Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie should have been replaced by Ahmed. When someone was really down on everything, it showed. Or could be heard, as the case may be. “Anything nasty waiting for us on the stairs?”
Ahmed glanced down at the staircase like he hadn’t noticed it before. “Besides a half-century worth of dust and tetanus? Not really.” He paused. “There’s a banishing sigil about halfway up, but it might put you someplace better.”
Logan looked toward the door, which was open and in view from where they stood. Ceri and Esme were still waiting patiently, like they didn’t have loved ones inside a death trap. “Anything you guys can do about that?”
Ceri and Esme had a brief whispered conversation; then Esme cast a spell. She was both too far away and talking too fast for Logan to follow it, but the stairs began to change color. No—not just change color, change material. The wooden stairs were becoming… plastic? Something like that. But the material being transmogrified had zeroed out the sigil. It also cleared out the dust, which Logan thought would have impressed Ahmed, but he looked unmoved by this display, and once the spell was done, he said, “Oh goody, Lucite stairs. Are we making this a strip club?” Not waiting for a response, he turned back into a dust devil and blew off to another room upstairs.
“He is such a ray of sunshine,” Lyn said, mounting the stairs. “It’s a good thing he’s immortal, ’cause otherwise he’d have been bludgeoned to death by now.”
The funny thing? Most days, Ahmed would have liked that. Apparently immortality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Logan wondered if Gill was going to learn that sooner or later. And what she would do once she did.