“Hi, Dad,” Jonah says. “I’m your son.”
Oh, jeez. There’s no way Craig is going to buy that. Humans don’t just walk in and declare themselves other people’s offspring.
Craig turns and looks at him. “Are you, now?”
“Yeah. I am.”
What is going on?
“Can you let my sister go? It’s weird, what you’re doing. Really weird.”
Whatever this is, I don’t think it is going well. I suspect this is some kind of trick. It has to be. I banished Jonah, and now he’s back, which I understand isn’t technically possible. I checked the books, and I asked Steve at least three times. I wanted to be sure I’d never be confronted with this artful demon again. And yet, here we are, almost as if fate is far more powerful than any action I might take.
Craig is staring at Jonah with an expression of wonder and concern. I wonder if he has any idea what he is really looking at. He’s supposed to be a demon slayer. Then again, Bryn never knew either.
“I thought you were dead. She told me you had been killed.”
Nope. He doesn’t know.
Jonah laughs. “As if Bryn could ever follow through on anything. As if he could ever hope to slay our bloodline, Father. They’ve kept me from you. They’ve hidden you away, but I was listening. I was hiding and I was paying attention. And now I’ve found you.”
He’s saying everything Craig wants to hear. Jonah always did know how to manipulate people and Craig’s pathetic desires are written all over him. I cannot believe that Jonah has come to save me. Though I know he is an evil demon who wants my suffering to continue for eternity, there is some part of my human design that makes it impossible for me to entirely let go of the shreds of affection remaining between us. I have hope, even though I know I shouldn’t.
“I knew you would find me,” Craig is saying. He’s choked with emotion. He’s buying this hook, line, and sinker. I watch, silent, feeling slightly sad that it is the only hint of reasonable human need left in his fucked-up head that is being used to hurt him. A father loves his son, so Craig loves the thing that just walked in. He loves him immediately and completely.
Jonah holds out his arms. This is the part where someone would scream Craig, no!, if he had any friends, or any real family, or anyone who cared about him at all. But he doesn’t.
Craig embraces Jonah and immediately the room is filled with the smell of burning flesh and hair. Craig screams. Loudly. Terribly. He is being burned alive. I shut my eyes, but I can still hear the screams, and then I open them because having them closed almost makes it worse. The world is opening around them. Jonah has hands now tipped with long black claws digging right into Craig's human flesh. Before my horrified gaze, Jonah drags him out of the solid human world and into a flaming portal directly to Hell. Together they fall. And fall. For all time.
“There she is! There she is!”
They’ve come for me. Not soon enough to save me from building a bank of irreversible trauma, but soon enough to see me alive. Before I know it, I am freed and being wrapped in Bryn’s arms. He’s found me and he’s rescued me, but my mind is still playing that horrible sight over again and again. Everybody I have ever tried to trust has turned on me. Everybody I have embraced as family has been taken from me. I can’t do this. I thought I could. But I can’t.
I look into Bryn’s handsome, concerned eyes, and I say four words I never imagined I would say. Four words no happy bride can ever imagine thinking, let alone actually manifesting:
“I want a divorce.”
“Shh,” he soothes me. “You’re safe now. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not going to be okay. I want a divorce. Now. I can’t risk loving you. I can’t make a family with you. I can’t play this twisted game one day longer. I can’t!”
“Let me take you home and get you better,” Bryn says, calm. He’s not taking me seriously. He thinks I am hysterical and traumatized. I am both. But I am also entirely serious.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bryn
I knew I would ruin her. From the moment I first set eyes on her I felt the inevitability of the destruction of her innocence. Now it has come to pass. This is why taking her was wrong. Why marrying her was wrong. Why allowing her to learn the bitter truth of her creation was wrong. I should have slain the demon and let her go out into the world blissfully unaware of all the pain around her. Instead, I kept her for myself. And now it seems her pain will never end.