Demons of Christmas Past: A Hidden Novella Read online

  I tried not to flash back to the day he’d died… died, and then resurrected in the Old Nether, held captive by my enemies. For over a year, I’d mourned him, wishing I had died as well.

  I tried not to think about it, so, of course, it was all I could think about, even as I sat there with my palm over his heart.

  There was a noise outside in the corridor, and I looked at the doors just as Dahael, Asclepius, Megaera, Gaia, and a gaggle of other immortals and demons charged through.

  “Is he okay?” Megaera asked over the din.

  “We’ll find out,” I said, gesturing Asclepius, the kindly healer god, over to where Nain was, still motionless on the couch. Asclepius knelt next to Nain after giving me a gentle pat on the shoulder.

  “I have never known a group of beings who got themselves into as much trouble as you and your friends. Between you, this demon, Eunomia, and her shifter husband, I have lost count of how many dire situations I’ve been called to.”

  I didn’t answer. I watched closely as he inspected Nain, as he let his hands hover over Nain’s body, sensing the injuries and the trauma they’d caused. I tuned out the murmuring of the others who had followed him in. Megaera stood by my side and rested her hand on my shoulder.

  He’ll be okay, she thought at me. He’s alive and breathing.

  I nodded.

  “What kind of weapon did this?” Asclepius asked, forehead furrowed as he focused on inspecting Nain.

  “We’re not sure. The vampires grabbed one and are bringing it to Hephaestus to look at,” I said.

  Asclepius nodded. He pulled his hands back. “The good news: he’s alive and will continue to be. How he became so badly injured is a mystery to me, because I’ve seen him take worse than a few cuts.”

  “I know.”

  “He needs rest.” He looked at me sharply. “You both need rest. No disrespect, my Queen, but you look like shit.”

  I glared at him, and he continued to look pleasant and calm as always.

  “You’re running yourself ragged. The judging of the influx of souls due to the undead plague, the constant calls for attention from supernaturals in Detroit, not to mention the very real pressures of caring for a family… take a damn vacation, Mollis.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right. Sure.”

  “I am not kidding. I finally got Eunomia to take one and she’s like a new person.”

  “Eunomia earned a damn vacation. I still have too much to do.”

  “The dead are not going anywhere, Mollis,” Megaera said. I looked up at her, making it clear that I didn’t appreciate her siding against me. “Don’t give me that look. You can’t keep going this way. You think we don’t see it? You think your mother and I can’t sense it? You’re always angry. Even more than usual. Short tempered, violent… it’s not a good combination, niece,” she finished.

  “I—”

  “Take a vacation. Take him with you,” Gaia said. I gave her a look of disbelief. She stood across the room, green hair cascading down her lithe brown body, arms crossed over her chest like some kind of petulant wood sprite. “And you should agree to this now, or I am calling your mother.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? I’m the goddamn Goddess of Death, Queen of fucking darkness. You can’t threaten me with telling my mother!”

  “And yet,” she said with a shrug. “So Tisiphone is in Paris, yes? Maybe I’ll just go see her—”

  “Stop.”

  “You are too stubborn for your own good. Your rage is affecting everything around you.”

  “What the hell are you even talking about?”

  “No one with your power exists without changing the world around them. The very trees weaken in this city, thanks to the negative energy that surrounds you. And I have known you for a while,” she said, holding her hand up to stall whatever I was going to say. “You’ve always been angry. It’s who you are. But this level of rage, of exhaustion, of… despair,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t go on like this. Keep trying, and you will destroy the very things you’re trying to protect. And that includes him,” she said, nodding toward Nain’s still form.

  “Where the hell would we even go?” I asked.

  “That is not my problem. Figure it out, oh, Queen of Darkness,” she said, giving me a wink. And then she was gone, and most of the others followed suit. I looked up at my aunt in disbelief. Asclepius patted my shoulder again, saying he would go speak with Hephaestus.

  Megaera bent down, looking directly into my eyes.

  “Take a vacation. I’m not above telling your mother, either,” she said. And then she had the goddamn nerve to kiss my forehead like I’m an infant or something, and then she was gone as well.

  I shook my head.

  Wasn’t I just thinking a vacation wouldn’t be a bad thing?

  Well, yeah. But I hadn’t really meant it. I got up and sat on the edge of the sofa, resting my hand on Nain’s chest again. He seemed to have gotten some of his color back.

  I blew out a breath. He was clearly exhausted. If I was messing things up in Detroit as much as Gaia suggested… that wasn’t good, either.

  Shit.

  “Well, it looks like we’re going on vacation,” I muttered to Nain. And I was starting to get an inkling of where we could go. I ran my fingers across Nain’s jaw, remembering the way he’d talked about some of his favorite places, times, memories.

  Maybe it wasn’t so much a question of where, as when.

  “Dahael,” I said, and she popped up beside me.

  “Yes, Mistress?”

  “There’s a god I’ve heard my mother mention. Aion. Please track him down for me and let him know I’d like to talk to him.”

  She nodded, and then, like the others, she was gone as well. I had no idea how I was going to do this, or if it was even possible, but now that I’d considered it, I realized I had the perfect Christmas gift for my pain in the ass of a husband. And if it made us both less insane and violent… that might not be a bad thing, either.

  Chapter Four

  Later that night, after I’d rematerialized Nain, who was still sleeping deeply, into our bed and stripped and washed him down, Dahael knocked on the door to our chambers.

  “Come in,” I called from my favorite chair in the corner of the living room. My head was pounding and all I wanted to do was eat about twenty-seven pounds of chocolate and then maybe wash it down with vodka.

  Dahael walked in, followed by a guy who looked like a member of one of those teenage boy bands. Which ones were there? Backstreet boys or some shit like that? This guy looked like he could have been in one of them: blond-haired, blue-eyed, wearing skinny jeans, a t-shirt, and some stupid looking hat that I had an urge to set on fire.

  Okay. So maybe Gaia has a point about my rage issues.

  “Mistress, Aion, God of Time,” Dahael said, and then she bowed and left, closing the doors behind her. Aion gave me a bow, keeping his eyes fixed on me as I stayed in my seat.

  “Mollis Eth-Hades. It is a pleasure to finally meet you. How can I help you?”

  “I hear that you have the ability to travel through time. Is that true?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s true,” he said, grinning.

  “Can you make it so others can do that?”

  He tilted his head, assessing me. “I can.”

  “And ensure that they can get back to their own time?”

  “Of course.”

  “I want to travel to the past. With my husband. You can make that happen?”

  “I can,” he repeated, slowly. “But it’s not as if I can just snap my fingers and make it happen.” He snapped his fingers as he said it, as if demonstrating. I watched him, waiting for him to continue. He grinned at me. “I need something from you, something personal. It needs to be something that has meaning to you, something I can use to create the spell that allows me to send you back.”

  “What… like a strand of my hair, or what?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head
. “Not like that. Something you have an emotional tie to. Not a person, nothing living. It has to be an object that you have a lot of emotional energy tied up in.”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t.. what? I have my wedding ring. My necklace. This dagger that was my father’s.”

  He listened, and seemed to be sensing for something. “No, those won’t do.”

  “I don’t get what you’re asking for.”

  “Everyone has something sentimental. Something that their past is tied up in, something that, for whatever reason, holds a little piece of them within it.”

  “Dude. What? Like my childhood blankie or something? I was raised as an orphan. I don’t have anyth—” I stared at him as I realized what it would be.

  Aion smiled, a wide, innocent-looking smile. “Ah, there it is.” He must have seen the conflict in my expression. “If you’d rather not, we can forget all of this.”

  I thought of Nain. His exhaustion. His constant fear of losing control.

  All of the times he’d been there for me, when I hadn’t been there for him.

  And I realized how much I wanted to see him smile again. Hear him laugh. See something other than that tense posture he had all the time now, like he was so close to snapping he was nearly afraid to breathe.

  I pushed myself out of my chair and walked across the room. I pulled a large black-and-white photograph that showed the view of Detroit we’d always seen from our windows at the loft off of the wall. Behind it was a safe. I felt a little silly, but shook it off. A few turns of the dial, and I swung the door open.

  I took a deep breath, looked at the boxes for a few moments, then steeled myself and took them out of the safe. I set them on the coffee table in front of Aion, more than a little embarrassed.

  He didn’t seem surprised, just nodded thoughtfully.

  “Um. Just one, or…” I asked him.

  “You see these as a collection, and the collection has meaning,” he said, and I nodded.

  “So all of them, then,” I said, hating the tightness in my throat, the tears burning the back of my eyeballs.

  “My Lady, you do not have to do this. If you decide to go through with this, this is the cost. I can feel it, your connection to these… things.”

  “Christmas ornaments. Pretty stupid, huh?” I asked, forcing a small laugh.

  “Not at all. It’s never about the item, really. It’s the memories, the love, the emotion. That’s where the magic lies.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you want to think about it?”

  I shook my head. I opened the box on top. I took a last look at the delicate old ornaments. Vintage, in all different colors, from soft gold and silver to pale pink, baby blue. They’d been with me since I was sixteen, even when I didn’t have a home. They lived with me in my car. I lugged them with me everywhere I went. When my house had been destroyed, my only relief was that I knew they were in a safe in a bank.

  Ridiculous, I know. I’ve been stupid about these. And yet… it’s crazy how safe, how loved I feel just looking at these old, 1930s Polish glass ornaments. The different shapes, the textures. I can remember lying on the floor in front of the tree, looking up at them, seeing the Christmas lights glinting off of them.

  I put the lid back on. “Okay.”

  “Okay. So, it will take me a few hours to create… basically an amulet, for you. I can send you back, but it’s up to you to let me know when and where you are and that you want to come back—”

  “You mean you don’t keep track of stuff like that?” I asked.

  “Do you think you’re the only one who’s asking me to send them somewhere? I can’t keep track of everything, can I? And besides, I don’t stay in the present unless I have to.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “You have your home, I have mine.”

  I nodded.

  “I would recommend getting your hands on some clothing that will suit whatever era you want to visit, unless you want to cause a panic when you show up looking so out of place.”

  I nodded. “I can do that.”

  “I’ll be back in the morning with the amulet. Again: are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yes,” I told him irritably. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “It’s clear you love these things. They will be destroyed in the making of the amulet. I’d rather not die because you decide you regret this.”

  “I will not kill you,” I said through gritted teeth. “Unless you keep asking me if I’m sure.”

  “Fine. Very good,” he said with another wide-mouthed grin. “I’ll have this ready by morning.”

  “Thank you,” I said, deliberately not looking at the boxes as he picked them up and cradled them against his hip.

  “When did you want to go? I mean, what year?”

  “1927.”

  He nodded. “Very good. That was a good year.”

  “Detroit.”

  “Of course. That part will be up to you. Go to wherever you want to be when you appear in 1926. Use the amulet to go back, and then, when you’re ready, do the same thing, but it will take you back to the present time. One use each way.”

  “What if something happens to it? If it breaks or gets lost or something before we get back?”

  He gave me a deadly serious look, one that would have looked much more grave if he didn’t look like he was about to bust out into some Disney song or something. “Don’t let that happen. The amulet ties you to now. Got it?”

  “Yep.”

  He gave me another nod, and then walked out, carrying my three boxes of ornaments with him. My heart gave a little lurch.

  “They’re just ornaments. Who even cares?” I muttered to myself as I walked back across the room to close the now-empty safe and put the photo back on the wall. “It’s worth it,” I said.

  That much, at least, was true.

  I checked on Nain, who had, to my relief, turned over in his sleep so he was sleeping on his side. When I climbed into bed beside him, unable to stay away, he roused enough to pull me into his arms, just like he always did, like it was as natural as breathing, as natural as fighting, as natural as the blood that pumped through his veins, mingled, eternally, with my own.

  I rested my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him, reveling in the warmth of his skin, the hard planes of his muscles under my hands as I ran my hands up and down his back.

  “I’m going to kick your ass,” I whispered. His arms tightened briefly, and he let out a quiet snore.

  He was okay. Exhausted. But okay.

  I’d keep him that way, no matter what it took.

  After a while, I pulled myself out of bed. Dahael was off duty, so I summoned a couple more imps.

  “I need a favor, if you’d be willing,” I said to them after offering them both coffee. My imps have, slowly but surely, started to share my appreciation for caffeinated perfection. As they sat, sipping their coffee, I told them what I needed.

  “I need vintage 1920s clothing. Or decent modern stuff made to look vintage. 1926-27, specifically. For both Nain and for me. Day clothes, maybe something to wear out in the evening. Shoes, hats… everything.”

  The taller of the two (meaning he stood roughly three feet tall), Orvant, nodded. “Can look in vintage shops. Resale shops.”

  “Junk shops,” the other, a female imp named Zaeda, put in. “Antique stores, too.”

  “Do you need our sizes?”

  “Been around you both for years, Mistress,” Zaeda said with a toothy grin. “Know your sizes as well as my own.”

  I smiled.

  “Will gather everything as quickly as possible,” Orvant said.

  “Thank you, guys.”

  They nodded, each gave me the imps’ customary salute, a fist over their chest, and then they left with a pop, rematerializing to wherever they would begin their search. I had no doubt they’d find what I needed. My imps never, ever let me down.

  I had stuff to do before I could actually do t
his. I needed to get in touch with my mom about the kids. I needed to talk to aunt Megaera about handling the souls in the queue for punishment. I needed to let Rayna and Jamie, the shifter leader, know that I’d be out of touch for a few days.

  The hardest part, really, would be convincing Nain to take a few days off. He was even worse than I was.

  Chapter Five

  I did not go to my throne room the next morning. Instead, aunt Meg came to me, and I told her I was taking her advice. I also asked her to talk to my mom and tell her I was taking a few days off.

  “Why don’t you tell her?” she asked. “Don’t you want to talk to your kids?”

  I shook my head. “Zoe gets freaked out talking on the phone. Hades starts crying if he hears my voice and I’m not there.”

  “Oh. Right,” she said. “You could still call Tisiphone, though.”

  I blew out a breath. I was scrolling on my phone, trying to book a hotel room downtown on an app that absolutely sucked.

  “She always knows when something’s bothering me. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “But—”

  “I just want to go and get this over with so I can get back.”

  “Well, there’s the attitude to have when you’re planning a few days away with your husband,” she said wryly.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t mean it like that. I just know that if I spend more than a day or two away everything’s going to go to shit.”

  “So humble,” she said.

  “Just honest,” I muttered, switching to a different app.

  “You know you could just, like, call the hotel and talk to a human and book a room.”

  “We’re not savages, aunt Meg.”

  She snorted. “Okay. Try not to obsess. I’m sure we can manage a few days without you. And yes, I’ll call my sister and lie to her and not tell her what a goddamn mess you are.”

  “Aw, you’re the best.”

  She shook her head and walked out, heading to the punishment chambers. I was about to go check on Nain when I heard a “pop” and saw that Zaeda and Orvant had returned, laden with bags.