Personal Demon

HOPE: LAYING THE BLAME

I lay on Karl, my head on his chest, his arms around me. His steady breathing said he’d fallen asleep. When I lifted my head and looked around, his eyes opened.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep. I thought you were.”

“I should be but…”

“You aren’t tired. Neither am I. How about that drink then?”

“Sure. I’ll get-”

Before I could finish, he rolled me over and laid me down beside him, then swung out of bed. His pants were still around his knees and he reached down, as if to pull them up, then kicked them off and tossed them onto a chair, socks following. His shirt had disappeared at some point.

I propped myself up to watch as he crossed to the minibar, and remembered the first time I’d seen Karl shirtless. The morning after our night at the museum, I’d walked in on him fixing the bandage on his shoulder, his shirt half off. He’d jumped, pulling the shirt on as fast as a shy twelve-year-old. With Karl, it was the scars he was quick to hide-old bite and claw marks across his chest, the legacy of thirty years fighting other werewolves.

Those scars belied the smooth, sophisticated persona he cultivated, of a man who’d never stoop to anything as uncivilized as brawling. Tonight he’d shown that he was as quick with his fists as with his words, and he offered no apologies for that, but it wasn’t how he liked to be seen. I suspected he’d conducted many an affair under cover of near-darkness.

So watching him, naked, I could appreciate that I was viewing a sight rarely seen. My tastes had always tended more toward reedy Bohemian types, but Karl made me admit that I wasn’t immune to a more…masculine physique. No bulging muscles, but perfectly toned. Even the scars seemed to fit-a body for function, not show.

He crouched before the fridge and fished out bottles. As he turned, I resisted the urge to look away and let my gaze slide over him.

“You look…amazing.”

He arched his brows in genuine surprise, then lifted the bottles. “You’re supposed to say that after I get you drunk.”

“Am I?”

He grabbed glasses, sliding the stems between his fingers so he could carry them. “Yes, because then you can blame it on the alcohol. Otherwise you risk inflating an ego that you know needs no help.” He crossed back to me, setting the bottles and glasses on the nightstand. “And may I say in return that you look perfect.”

I looked into his eyes and knew there was no sense lying to myself anymore. I was in love with him. More than that, I loved him. It had nothing to do with what Griffin said-a chaotic man for a chaos-loving demon. Karl knew when I needed to be set on my feet with a sharp word and a kick in the butt, and he knew when I needed someone to look out for me, and coddle me and tell me that I’m perfect.

I wanted to be that for him too. I had the first part down-keeping his ego in check-but I struggled with the second. Cooking him dinner, being there whenever he called, for as long as he wanted to talk, that all came easy. But complimenting him or even saying, “Thanks, Karl” was different. I’d worked so hard to keep things casual, so afraid of getting hurt that, even now, it was hard to drop my guard and let him know how I felt. I’d have to work on that.

I slid over to make room for him and he handed me a gin and tonic, then he got into bed, propping himself up on the pillows.

“Thank you,” I said. “For the memories.”

His brows shot up. “That sounds disturbingly like a brush-off.”

“You know what I meant. Your memories. The ones you…” I struggled for a word. “Projected, I guess. I didn’t know I could pick that up.”

“Neither did I, but it seemed worth a try.”

He lapsed into silence, his gaze going distant.

“I won’t pry,” I said.

“Hmmm?”

“If you’re worried I’m going to ask about those early memories, I won’t. I know you were just trying to find something to distract me.”

“Ah.”

More silence. He swirled the Scotch in his glass, frowning at it.

“Yes, you need ice.”

A bark of a laugh. “No, that’s not what I’m thinking. Good try, though. And ice would be nice.”

“See? I wasn’t reading your mind. I was predicting future thoughts. Even better.”

A tiny smile. “As you are, apparently, still building your mind-reading skills, I’ll have to tell you what I’m thinking. It is about that vision. I should tell you about it. Or maybe not so much should as want.”

He went quiet again.

“You wanted to join the Pack,” I said. “When you were young.”

A slow nod. “Ironic that now, almost forty years later, I’m in it and uncomfortable with the idea.”

“The instinct probably felt stronger at that age.”

“At the time, it seemed obvious. That’s how werewolves should live-as part of a Pack, growing up with Pack brothers, building a home and defending your territory. I blamed my father for dragging me from place to place, living in rooming houses and hotels. I blamed him and I hated myself for it.”

I knew how much Karl had loved his father. Shortly after we’d met, I’d made the mistake of commenting on a father who’d raise his son to be a thief, and it had been the first time I’d seen Karl’s composure ripple. He’d been as quick to his father’s defense as I’d been when he’d commented on a mother who set her daughter up with blind dates. After that, we’d come to an unspoken agreement: taking potshots at one another was fine, but our parents were off-limits.

Karl’s father had raised him as he thought best, into the only life he knew for a lone werewolf.

“That afternoon I showed you was the only time I actually saw someone from the Pack,” Karl said. “We were in Vermont, working, at a resort, and the Pack arrived for a vacation. I only caught that glimpse before my father whisked us out of town. I don’t think I’d ever been so angry with him. He’d always made them sound like monsters. That’s why we had to keep moving-he said they’d kill us if we stayed. But seeing Jeremy and Antonio…” He shook his head. “They looked like ordinary young men, joking and teasing and hanging out. I saw that and I wanted it so badly. But, when I got older, I started to resent them because they kept us from settling down.”

“From holding territory.”

“Testosterone kicking in, I suppose. Joining them wasn’t as important as showing them we weren’t afraid. When I was sixteen, my father came to the motel we were staying in and told me we had to leave because a few Pack wolves were in town. But that day, I decided I wasn’t going anywhere. I thought…” A bitter laugh. “I thought all my father needed was some encouragement. If I forced him to stay, he’d either see that his fears were ungrounded or he’d learn to fight for his place in the world. So I used the one stalling tactic I knew would work. I’d been Changing for a few months, and at that stage, it’s very difficult. When the urge comes, it can’t be denied.”

“So you said you had to Change.”

“I did. He took me into the woods behind the motel, and I did my damnedest. Eventually, it started, but even then it didn’t go very far. My father stayed outside that thicket, encouraging me, for probably half an hour. Then he heard something and told me to stay still. A few minutes later, Malcolm Danvers found me.”

“Jeremy’s father.”

“Malcolm found me, stuck in mid-Change. I don’t know what he would have done, but helping me clearly wasn’t on his mind. I heard my father calling Malcolm, luring him away. As I managed to Change back, I could hear Malcolm taunting my father. He kept trying to convince his two Pack buddies to challenge my father, saying no one would because he wasn’t worth anything-he didn’t have a reputation. Malcolm killed him. Snapped his neck, tossed him aside and went after me. I escaped. There was nothing else I could do, not at that age. Years later, when I was ready, I went back for Malcolm, but it was too late. Someone beat me to him.”

I tried to think of something to say. I’d known his father had been killed by a werewolf and now I knew how. And, maybe, I knew why he struggled so hard with being in the Pack. Anyone who’d been involved with his father’s death was long dead and no son could be less like his father than Jeremy, but still Karl had joined the group that killed his father. Accepted as Alpha the man whose father killed his. A death I knew he blamed himself for.

It would do no good to point out to Karl that he’d been young. I wouldn’t be telling him anything he didn’t already know. But what I’d felt in that glimpse inside him had been a cesspool of guilt and remorse-the memory he’d chosen when he’d needed to show me the worst one he had.

“I’m sorry.”

It was the only thing I could say, but I meant it with all my heart, and he leaned over to kiss the top of my head.

“I want you to know,” he said after a moment. “If I push you away, if I fight getting close, if I’m selfish, it’s because that’s the lesson I learned about myself. Let someone get close and…” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s not a good idea with someone I care about.”

“You were sixteen, Karl.”

“I didn’t say it was a rational fear. But the worst fears aren’t, are they?”

He met my gaze pointedly.

“I don’t think my fear is irrational, Karl. When I stood in that room, whatever would keep a normal person from wanting Troy to die was gone. Not buried. Not overshadowed. Completely nonexistent. It was like…” I cupped my glass between my hands. “I don’t even know what it was like.”

“Like a starving werewolf stumbling across dinner on two legs?” He took my glass and set it on the table. “What you’re afraid of, Hope, is that someday, just for a few minutes, the thing that you are will overtake the person that you are, and someone will die because of it. A werewolf deals with that from the day he first Changes.”

“But you can control it. You’ve never-”

“Three times. Twice in my teens, and I couldn’t even tell you who I killed. All I know is that I Changed and I woke stained with human blood. The third time, I was twenty, and I came to standing over the body of a man. Eating. Yes, most of the time, we can control it. It’s like you with chaos. You can resist the urge to do something you consider wrong. My father did what he could to teach me that, but he never had the chance to finish the lessons. There’s the instinct and it must be fed, and to the wolf there is no difference between a deer and a man. Both are prey. The wolf doesn’t feel sorry for the man, doesn’t consider the life he’s taking, doesn’t think of his wife and children, his mother and father. That’s the human’s job, and it’s the werewolf’s job to make sure the humanity in him doesn’t disappear. When I came to my senses that day, and saw what I’d done, I knew I had to make a choice.”

He shifted in the bed, turning onto his side, head propped up on his hand. “What happened to me happens to most werewolves at some point. They can decide that killing an innocent person proves they’re a monster who must die. Or they can keep killing, blaming it on the wolf. Or they can understand the urge and avoid temptation. Don’t Change in inhabited areas. Don’t Change when you’re too hungry. Don’t Change when you’ve been drinking. And, just as important, sublimate the urge, that need to hunt, by going after rabbits or deer…or diamonds.

“That’s what you need to do, Hope. Avoid temptation. Avoid situations where it may be too much for you-like signing up to spy for a Cabal. And sublimate the hunger with chaos you can enjoy without guilt. I can help with that, but only to a degree. There are jobs I know you’d enjoy more than the little ones I offer. But I won’t take you on them because later, you’d feel guilty. And, as you saw, sometimes I take risks myself. I have to, for the same reason you need to chase chaos. I can’t ever bring you on a job like that and put you in that danger. Not after my father.”

“I understand.”

He studied me to be sure I did. Then he nodded. “I’ll find more for you. Ones you can enjoy, guilt-free. The rest, you’ll have to make do with secondhand.”

I smiled. “I can live with that.”

“Good.” He sobered. “But remember, you’ll never be perfect. With a werewolf, there’s always the chance it can happen again. We cannot control every variable. I haven’t killed a human in thirty years, but I have to accept that I could. And you need to accept that you could too. And, if you do, as horrible as you’ll feel about it, and as much as you’ll suffer for it, if you’ve done what you could to avoid it, it isn’t your fault. You didn’t choose to be half-demon any more than I chose to be a werewolf.”

Silence fell.

After a moment, he said, “Have I put you to sleep yet?”

“No, not yet.” I reached up and kissed him. “Thank you, Karl.”

He pulled me closer, then turned out the light.