Revealed in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights #9)(5)

“It is not your impatience that is the problem at the moment—it is your thinking capacity. There are no elephants in the Underworld.”

“You’ve learned Darius’s trick of how to pleasantly call me an idiot.”

“Yes.” He waited for me to frown at him before going on. “Julius trapped me for a full year, beating me every day, trying to break me and turn me to his cause.”

“Wow. There goes your friendship. But, obviously, he wasn’t strong enough to break you.”

“No one has been strong enough to break me, though many have tried.”

I widened my eyes at that. It occurred to me that I knew very little about the deadly man standing beside me, and suddenly I wanted to amend that fact, if only because it sounded more interesting than living in the lap of luxury.

“Your father, who had allowed his heir free rein in what he called ‘side pursuits,’ finally stepped in and commanded I be released. He did not like what his heir had turned into, I could tell, both because Julius was slightly…unhinged—”

“Just slightly?”

“—and because he was ineffective.”

“You mean he didn’t have the power to break you.”

“Correct. He was an embarrassment on two levels.”

“My dear old dad isn’t such a good guy, I take it.”

“He exists in balance. He can love and hate, lust and kill. Like you. Like me. He looked at his child the way humans look at theirs. His son was…getting soupy…”

“Nope. Missed the mark that time.”

“Lucifer tried to get help for his son. He thought the Underworld was responsible for breaking Julius down. That the human side of him was too weak for the Underworld. And in some ways he was right, but as I said, I suspect power also corrupted him. Regardless, that is why Lucifer sought refuge for his son in the Realm, as any parent would.”

“He also let his son torture an innocent acquaintance for a year…”

“We’re not all perfect.”

“Wow. I think you are out of balance, because your level of forgiveness is on par with an angel.”

“I am in balance.”

Shivers covered my body. I didn’t want to know the darkness that clearly lurked within him.

Well…kind of didn’t, and kind of did. I just didn’t want it directed at me.

“Do you ever chase shifters around for sport?” I asked. He gave me a funny look, but I waved it away. “Never mind. It also should be noted that Lucifer would’ve rather gone to war to get what he wanted than take the obvious solution and send his son back to live in the human world.”

“A parent would move heaven and earth for their child. Lucifer is no different.”

I squinted, because yes, he was different. My mother had sacrificed big time to keep me safe, and Penny’s mother had done the same for her. Neither of them would have turned a blind eye if we’d started torturing people in our rooms. My dear old dad would not win any awards for father of the year, and I wouldn’t put it past him to torture me to bring me to heel. Clearly the practice was tolerated, and I knew for a fact that Lucifer’s power had a larger range than mine. If anyone could break me, I had every reason to believe it was him.

I sighed. “We still have not covered how elephants could possibly fit into all of this, since they also do not exist in the Realm.”

“Now your impatience is the problem. After I was released, I washed my hands of Julius. I left the Underworld and did not look back. I haven’t been there since.”

“You hold grudges. Got it.”

“Julius showed his displeasure by mutilating the elephants that roamed freely on my Brink property and delivering them to my doorstep. I’d saved those elephants from…what we’d call poachers now. They had refuge on my estate. They were the closest thing I had to family, as alone as I am in this life. It was like mutilating a pet, in a way, but more meaningful. I grieved heavily that I was the ultimate cause of their demise.”

“Hmm. So my using elephants was a pretty low blow.”

“Certainly not as low as punching me in the nut sack.”

“It’s lower, believe me. I’ll punch a dick any ol’ day and twice on Sunday. I do not care. Take that as a warning. But seeing me re-kill your not-pets must have been rough. My bad.”

“The memory has faded. My worry is less about seeing a fake elephant die than it is about an heir who would kill a defenseless animal out of spite. Those elephants represent my fear of what you may become.”





Two





I braced my hands on my hips. “That was quite a truth bomb. But not to worry—I don’t want to lord my power over people. I’m happy living in the Brink, and even though it seems like I have everything I could possibly want, it is at the expense of my freedom. I’d prefer to be left alone and get on with my life. You’re in no danger of losing not-pets. Not from me, anyway.”

“What is your freedom worth? Your friends’ lives? Your beloved’s?”

“Darius calls me his beloved, not the other way around. I’m not nearly old enough to use that term of endearment. But no, my freedom is not worth any of those things, which is why I went down into the Underworld rather than letting my father come find me up here.”