The lesser-powered fae and shifters worked around my fire, taking swings at the cowering horde, which was now focused on the magical creatures closing in on them. I still hadn’t figured out how to make my creations solid, but the elves’ pets were too stupid and scared to catch on.
I pushed the fire out and ran down the middle of the horde, spraying hellfire as I did so. I’d been so good for so long. I needed to let off some steam. “Here’s Johnny!”
Skin and limbs and magical parts burned away. There wasn’t much that could withstand hellfire, and I did not look forward to eventually meeting the creatures that could. Spoiler alert: it was my dad and his upper-tier minions.
I stabbed into a chest and then hacked at a neck, not nearly as graceful and elegant as the fae, and not caring in the least. A wolf took down a sorta blob-looking thing, and I wondered if it was a dybbuk—a disembodied soul. I didn’t even know how one of those killed. Not like it mattered. The wolf solved that problem by killing it first.
Turning, I went to slash, only to lose the mark to Yasmine, her white wolf form just as lovely as her human form. Some women had all the luck. On the other side, an elf met a grisly end in a combined attack from Steve and Kairi, and the wolf of Sour Face took down a cute little sprite that apparently spat acid. Yikes.
Before I could find a new target, I found myself standing in flickering firelight amid a bunch of bodies and panting good guys. Or, at least, “guys and gals with sometimes questionable ethics, who were currently not in the wrong.”
“Dang it, that was too fast,” I said, let down.
I cleaned my blade as Romulus worked his way closer, a smear of blood on his cheek and a sparkle in his eyes. He stopped beside me and looked from my still-flickering fire to the darkened sky.
“Here.” I fished another cloth out of my pouch.
“Thank you.” He took it and applied it to his blade. “That is a very handy…”
“Pouch,” I supplied.
“Yes. I saw some in the Brink. None so plain as that, but I like it all the more for it.”
“I’m not after the fashion element of it.”
“I wish no one was after the fashion element of it,” Emery groused as he wandered by.
“What’d you do, one spell?” I asked him.
“Half of a spell. I’m that good.”
“Lazy.”
“Ungrateful.”
I smirked and bent, stuffing the dirty cloth into a dead creature’s pocket. It wasn’t technically littering that way.
Romulus was still standing there. He was clearly trying to tell me something, but these guys seemed to prefer charades to words, and if it didn’t involve a weapon, I didn’t read body language.
“Hi,” I said, just to break the ice.
“Use your words, Dad,” Charity called, stowing her sword and then looking at the sky.
Taking the hint, I said, “Oh right, yeah. I’ll put the Realm back.” I grimaced and got to work. Not too many people made me nervous, but this guy did. It wasn’t that I feared for my life—I didn’t—but I felt the discomfort of being the crude chick among rich and polished people. It was the same nervousness I got when trekking into Darius’s French Quarter house, with its cream-colored rug and decor. This feeling had once prompted me to take off my shoes to eat dinner in his house, only to try to hide my shoeless feet when the very posh Marie joined me. In other words, it made me an even bigger shitshow.
“Use my words, yes.” Romulus chuckled quietly to himself, staring out at nothing. “Charity’s mother always used to say that to me. I do miss her. I wonder if the longing will ever go away…”
“Yeah…I’m not really…sure what to say to that.”
“Of course, yes.” He paused for a moment, and I wondered if something was expected of me. Where was Darius when you needed him? “I must say,” he finally went on, “you are effective.”
I gave a little smile and nodded, but something caught me up short. It sounded like a compliment, but his tone wasn’t all that different from the one he’d used to make a fool of that elf earlier. I didn’t want to be the person who preened when they were actually the butt of the joke.
I was going to end up embarrassing myself with him. It was inevitable.
“Until this moment, I had no actual proof that you were Lucifer’s heir,” Romulus continued. “Now, there can be no doubt, of course.” Romulus gestured around him as I reset the orange sky. The cold breeze still blew across us, though, so that wasn’t right. It should be a gentle, warm breeze with a hint of spicy fragrance. Except the fragrance and temperature of that breeze were supposed to be tailored to each person, something I didn’t know how to do. “You have been in the Brink all this time, within the magical community, and no one was the wiser. Amazing.”