How to Kill an Incubus: A Rae Erickson Story (37 page)

“Thanks,” I said.

He walked me to the bathroom—a nice, big space with a nice, big tub and shower—and hovered for a while before I kicked him out. Bracing myself, I faced the mirror.

Daniel Lawless had really done a number on me. It was funny how I wasn’t able to register where he hit me exactly when he was doing it, but now, looking at the purple bruises scattered all over my skin, it was impossible to believe that I didn’t feel it.

I gingerly fingered a particularly ugly mark just below my eye—correction, my black eye. Looking at it, it seemed as if I had a black eye patch that took up half my face. A few of the bruises were already beginning to yellow and could probably be covered up with make-up—the rest, not so much. I was glad that I wasn’t awake to see the swelling. Still, I wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants anytime soon.

“Because your looks are so important right now, Rae,” I mumbled to myself, struggling to remove the gown. My “nearly-dislocated” right shoulder hurt like a bitch.

Naked, I stood in front of the mirror, holding myself up against the sink. A myriad of colorful bruises decorated my skin, along with a few tiny stitches here and there. They had to be excruciating when they were still fresh. My eyes zeroed in on the marks on my belly and the one thought that resounded in my head was that the tiny beings forming inside me could have died.

Daniel could have killed me, but more importantly, he could have killed my babies. Now that I knew about them, knew that they were growing inside me for over a month… I knew that I would do anything and everything to protect them. If it meant being haunted by the images of Daniel’s battered face for the rest of my life, so be it. I would kill him again in a heartbeat.

This was me, a woman who, just last week, had no maternal bone in her body.

“Hey, guys,” I murmured, placing a hand on my stomach. It would never be the flattest but it still looked the same. “Aren’t we a trio of survivors?” I rubbed circles on it for a bit, feeling foolish for talking to my tummy. “I’m sorry about what I said about your dad. Bionic sperm is an exaggeration.”

“Hey, Baby Phat! You okay?”

I glanced at the closed door, offering Temp a quick “I’m fine!” before returning my gaze back to my belly. “I miss your dad like crazy. And the thought of not knowing when I’m going to see him again scares the shit out of me. And now I have you little guys to think about.” I let out a sigh. “I’m not mad that you’re here. I know it may feel that way but I’m not. I’m just… stunned. And scared. Mostly scared. I…”

I stopped, dropping my hand.
What was that?
That couldn’t have been a kick, could it? I was six weeks along, not six months. Clearly, I was still concussed.

Head shaking, I fixed the gown up, used the facilities, and shuffled back into the room.

Chapter 25

“That dude’s still standing out there,” Temp growled, finally letting the curtains close again. After sporadically peeking through my living room window like a guard dog for the past twenty minutes, he was finally taking a break. “You know, the nasty-looking thug with all the scars? Prowling about every day like a loser. I swear, Rae…”

“Ignore him, Temp,” I muttered vaguely, balancing my laptop on my knees as I reached for my fourth waffle that morning. I was making a half-hearted attempt to check my mail and an even feebler attempt to resist Temp’s incredible waffles. “Like everyone else, he probably heard about the beating yours truly received and wants to see if it’s true that half my face was knifed clean off.”

“Small town, small people.”

I couldn’t deny that. The Bay might be one of the most beautiful places I ever saw—and even had one legitimate celebrity living in it, but I still tried to escape it. And of the main reasons for that was its microscopic size. The fact that news here traveled at the speed of light was testament to this. It had been a week since I returned from the hospital and people were still bringing food and flowers to my door. They could pretend that they were concerned about my well-being, but truthfully, they just wanted some juicy gossip to dissect for bingo night.

“I heard the psycho raped her and now she’s having his kid.”

“Zachary, bless his soul, had to stitch her face back together. It was so grisly.”

“She led her abductor on. You remember the Ericksons, don’t you? Strange Swedish fellow raising a sexed-up daughter alone? Rest his soul but no wonder this happened to her.”

They didn’t get the chance to say those to my face, of course. Temp, my mediator, just relayed their awful gossip to me… while they thought I was shacked up with a lover. Temp didn’t bother to dispel this rumor. I didn’t particularly care. They could speculate all they wanted, as long as they left me the hell alone. Thankfully, Temp got one of his warlock buddies who owed him a favor to put up a special kind of ward around my house. One that could keep out anyone who wanted to do me harm.

Too bad that didn’t include gossipmongers bearing chicken pot pies and fake smiles.

“Hey, you all right?” Temp sat at my feet, fixing worried eyes on me. “If you think this guy’s more than just a creep, I’ll go take care of him.”

I smiled wryly. “He’s twice your size. I don’t want to watch you die senselessly. I already have enough sickening images in my head.”

He flashed me a wide grin. “Don’t get sappy on me now, Baby Phat.”

But all I did was get sappy these days. Just last night, I cried like a baby when Morgan Freeman died and Temp had to scramble to turn off
The Bucket List
. It didn’t matter that I already watched it a hundred times before; I still bawled my eyes out and scared the crap out of my brother.

Then there were the nightmares, the stifling blanket of guilt settling over me whenever I so much as shut my eyes for a nanosecond. Daniel’s face constantly invaded my subconscious. He was practically living behind my eyelids.

I didn’t want to feel guilty but I did. I wanted to hate him for the way he behaved at the end. I wanted to pretend that he did have a choice before he attacked me. But then I remembered the Daniel I’d imagined in my head before I knew who he was. The Daniel who used to undress by his bedroom window. The Daniel who dragged me out the bar when I drank too much. The Daniel who wasn’t a backstabbing demon hunter.

“Rae.”

Temp gently shook me, dragging me back to earth. I focused on my laptop screen, finally registering how full my inbox was. Things had not changed. Men were still dogs and women were still trying to keep them on a leash. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with their problems right now though. Not when I had a whole lot of them myself.

The primary one, no surprise there, was Andrei. Andrei Anghelescu wasn’t the type of guy to forget to do something. He didn’t forget how I couldn’t stand pickles and made sure to remove them from my Big Mac before handing it over, which always surprised me. He didn’t forget that I loved his hair, loved to grab and yank it. So he never trimmed it. And he didn’t forget that I loved his foot massages. So how could he forget to inform me about something as major as the fact that he could make me pregnant?

My eyes traveled down my stomach, to where my palm was unconsciously stroking it through my sweatshirt. Since I left the hospital, the action was quickly becoming a habit. The knowledge of the tiny lives growing inside me scared me to death, but at the same time, it made me want them more.

I paused mid-rub, biting my lower lip at the thought of that week in the white room: the hospital. If I never saw it again, it would be too soon. I never wanted to see Dr. Sheppard again, not after seeing my chart, in which he’d penned “eight weeks”… then “seven”… before crossing that out and settling on “six”. The evidence hit me smack-dab in the face. Even a medical professional wasn’t sure how old my babies were.

“Okay, Baby Phat. Whatever you’re thinking, just stop it,” Temp was saying, seizing my computer and setting it on the coffee table. He forced me to look at him. “Talk to me.”

I didn’t have the courage to say the words aloud, which was stupid, to be honest.

“Did… did Lauren gestate for nine months? Thirty-six weeks? Thereabout?” I blurted out, feeling heat bloom in my cheeks.

Temp raised a brow. “Is that what’s worrying you? Jeez, Baby Phat. You look scared shitless!”

“Please,” I said, my voice high-pitched. “I need to know that two winged creatures aren’t going to be flying out my girly parts next week.”

He let out a short bark of laughter. “Okay. One, who even says ‘gestate’ anymore? This isn’t Animal Planet. Two, you’re carrying hybrids, not Daenerys’ fucking dragons. And three, you’re going to have a normal pregnancy.” He sucked in a deep breath before exhaling. “So try to relax. Look at how motherfucking awesome I turned out to be.”

I heaved out a shaky breath. “A normal pregnancy?”

“Part of my charm is that I can easily integrate with full-blooded humans,” he said with a wink. “How else are we cambions supposed to pretend to be normal if we’re out of our moms after ten weeks?” Then, when he saw that I wasn’t fully placated, he said more solemnly, “Why didn’t you ask me this stuff at the hospital? I’ve been trying to find out what the hell was up with you for the past week.”

“Well, I’m asking now.”

He sighed. “I get that you’re scared. You have every right to be,” he said gently. “But don’t get trapped in your head. You killed a guy, woke up from a coma, and discovered you’re having a demon king’s kids—all in the space of one week. No one could walk away from all that and not be changed. You can ask me anything. I’m gonna take care of you.” He scrunched up his face. “Fuck, Rae. Don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it,” I blubbered. “It’s like onions are permanently stuck under my eyes.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re gonna keep me from getting laid, at least make it worth my while and be great company.”

I slapped his shoulder. He cringed as if I’d really hurt him. I had to smile.

“Can I ask you something?” I said after a while.

Temp leaned back, folding his arms behind his head. “Go ahead.”

“When did you lose your virginity?” It was an invasive question, and truthfully, I didn’t want to know. But I had to. So I braced myself for something ridiculous, like
In the sandpit, when I was five. It was recess.

“My sixteenth birthday.” He laughed at the incredulous look that was probably painted on my face. “Contrary to popular belief, we don’t pop out our mothers and fuck. For all intents and purposes, Rae, we’re normal when we’re younger, just smarter, cuter, and way more intuitive than the average kid. Did I mention cute?”

“What about the evil part?”

Temp’s eyes flickered with something. Anger? “There’s no such thing as a good demon, Rae. But there are
choices. My father wanted… Well, let’s just say I’m a big disappointment to him. It was my choice to be like this, just like your kids will choose what they want to be.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke, lost in our own thoughts. I felt stupid for scaring myself with my own wild assumptions. Temp was my personal
What to Expect When You're Expecting Demon Hybrids
book, yet I was too afraid to come to him. Probably because I was afraid of his response.

“Do you think Andrei would be happy?” I didn’t mean for the words to slip out but once they did, they hung in the air beside
Do you think he’ll ever come back? Will I make a good mother? What the hell are we going to do about Damien Ivanov?

“I think,” Temp began, “Andrei will be happy to be with you.”

It was a vague response and didn’t really answer my question, but it was what I needed to hear.

Temp wordlessly reached for the bottle of folic acid on the table and handed it to me. Not for the first time I regretted not growing up with him. He was the only thing keeping me sane right now.

I was going stir-crazy. No, scratch that. I was stir-crazy.

There were only so many YouTube videos of skateboarding animals a girl could watch in one week. Sitting around and doing nothing just wasn’t my M.O. but Temp was a bully when it came to my leaving the house.

“No fucking way,” was what he explosively said to me when I told him I was going to the beach.

“I wasn’t asking you, Temp. I was just telling you where you could find me.”

“Don’t test me, Baby Phat.”

“Fine. Renée was going to come over anyway,” I told him through clenched teeth.

“No. No visitors right now. You want to put your bestie in danger?”

And that was the end of that. I understood him completely, and because I knew that he did love me, I couldn’t even hate him. I prided myself on my independence but there was a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest whenever he pretended he was older than me and got all protective.

That didn’t change the fact that I was bored out of my damn mind though. And now that Temp went out to feed, I was scared that I would do something impulsive… like sneak out to meet Ren… or go out for a burger.

I was pacing the living room when the knock at the door came.

Even with the ward up, I couldn’t be too careful. I hadn't fired a gun in years. But now, one of my father’s handguns was permanently near me. I snatched it up from the coffee table and held it behind my back as I padded to the front door, peeking through the peephole. I instantly recoiled, heart hammering in my chest.

Fuck
.

Scarface was standing on my doorstep. Temp had warned me about him just the other day. Loitering around my property was suspicious enough but coupled with his grisly appearance, who knew what the hell he wanted? I wasn’t exaggerating when I reminded Temp that this man was practically twice his size. Cloaked in a navy trench coat in this heat, he had the rugged, brutish appearance of a gladiator who’d been in one too many fights and had barely survived.

“Yes?” I called to him, pressing my ear to the door. “What is it?”

“Rae. Please. Open up.”

A flicker of something scurried up my spine. I placed my palm against the door, inhaling sharply.

“I will not hurt you.”

That much was obvious, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to come through the gate, let alone right up to my porch.

I unlocked the door, wrenching it open and revealing myself to him. I stifled a gasp at his appearance. From afar, he was creepy. Up close, his face was positively in tatters. Pink, jagged lines crisscrossed his face, one of them extending to his scalp, hidden by a thick mop of golden curls. Some scars looked to be stitched up, while others were already healing on their own. Deep-set cobalt eyes were watching me watch him.

Really familiar blue eyes.

I staggered backward, suddenly dizzy. Panic skittered through me, panic for my babies.
Have I eaten?
Is something wrong?
The dread evaporated almost immediately, however, and I was able to take a deep breathe.