which was poor timing, he decided quite quickly upon noting the fury contorting Harmony’s face. “I should have been happy talking to the dog!”
Damon shook his head. “I dinna follow, lass . . .”
“I should have been satisfied with the simple things, the solitude, but no, I had to want more. A full house on Sundays.” She gulped several breaths. “But what did I get? Demons and flying monkeys!” She threw down the shovel.
Her face was streaked with mud. He reached up to wipe her cheek with his thumb, but she recoiled as if she feared him. Feared what he was. He couldn’t blame her.
“I kissed you, Damon!” she accused. “I kissed you!”
Aye, and he’d not stopped thinking about it, either.
“I cooked for you. I bought you underwear. I . . . I wanted to
You could have heard a pin drop in the sudden silence. Damon wasn’t sure which one of them looked more shocked by her confession.
Then there was a loud whoosh. Water gushed out of a hijacked sprinkler and, aimed by mischievous little hands, ricocheted off a metal fence post, zinged overhead, and clipped off one of the chains holding the Mysteria Community Church banner over the church door. As if in surrender, the banner slid off the wall.
A fitting end to a terrible day.
Harmony watched the sign fall. Looking as if she were about to cry, she stopped herself and dashed the heel of her palm across her eyes. Muddy water streamed from her hair and dribbled down her ruined dress.
“Lass . . . ,” he tried, lifting a hand to her. Then he hesitated, fearing her vulnerable stance was deceptive, that if he touched her, tried to hold her, she’d snap like a too taut spring and fly away from him. As it was, she pushed to her feet without another word and went to join Jeanie in restoring order.
Damon watched her go. So much had changed since he’d come to Mysteria, and yet so little. He was as much a reason for doubt and second thoughts as he ever was.
An oddly pitched scream tore into his self-pitying thoughts. He saw an O’Cleary child go down under the weight of several angry subdemons, a situation missed by others in the chaos. Subdemons were dark creatures with little power, but enough of them could kill a small human. Could kill a child.
Damon surged to his feet, the pitchfork in hand. A half-dozen strides brought him to where the child’s thin legs kicked. Damon grabbed one beastie by its collar and threw it to the ground. Then he dragged the remaining creatures off the frightened child.
The little girl’s face was without color, her blue eyes wide and tearfilled. “Are you hurt, little one?”
She shook her head, but her lower lip trembled. “Scared?” he asked gently, coming down on one knee.
She nodded, her mouth wobbling. Damon lifted her fist, which was still clamping a plastic water gun. He smiled. “Would ye like to get them back?”
She grinned. “Yeah!”
“Then let’s do it.” He hoisted her under his arm. “Fire away!” With the child pumping water out of the little toy gun, he chased fleeing subdemons to the Hell hole, followed enthusiastically by a wildly barking Bubba and a herd of miniature O’Clearys. When every last one had either melted or vanished into the depths of Hell, Damon lowered the little girl to the ground. Her skinny shoulders felt so delicate under his hands. A sudden rush of emotion threatened to swamp him, a sensation still so new. This child encapsulated all that was fragile and good on this earth; all that he’d hoped to protect, to cherish. “What is your name?”
“Annabelle,” she answered in a tremulous voice.
“Bullies, that’s all they are, Annabelle. Ye canna be afraid. Your goodness, ’twill always win out. Ye are stronger than them. Far stronger. Do ye understand?”
Annabelle nodded, and he touched a fingertip to her little freckled nose before rising to his feet. His breath caught in his throat when he realized Harmony had been watching him the entire time, her face so full of pain that he had to turn away from her horrified gaze.
Damon trudged to the sprinkler timer box to shut off the water, but before he reached the shutoff valve, and as everyone began to come up from the basement and from behind chairs and under tables—just as everyone thought it was safe—little Annabelle O’Cleary fired off one last salvo with the hose, aiming the water at her parents as her brothers and sisters, not appearing a wee bit sorry, fled the scene.
Damon wrested the hose from Annabelle’s little hands. “Off with ye now, little hell-raiser.” With grudging admiration, he sent her on her way. Then he tended to the shaken townspeople, working his charm as best he could to coax assurances that they’d return to church the next week. All the while he felt Harmony’s gaze on him, and his face burned in shame.
Jeanie sauntered up to him. “I’ve seen a lot of unusual goings-on in this town, but not this. What were those animals?”
“Are they not from Mysteria?” Damon tried charming the sheriff with one of his smiles, but her gaze sharpened.
“It won’t work, Damon. Not with me. And just for your information”—she bobbed her chin in Harmony’s direction—“it won’t work with her, either. I want the facts, not the glossed-over version.”
“Aye, I know,” he said with a sigh. “I’d tried to keep it from her so I wouldn’t lose her, but now that I have, secrets do me no good. In Satan’s army, there is a hierarchy. At the apex are the demon high lords, Lucifer’s commanders. Then there are the foot soldiers, the scores of classes of underlords, demon worker-bees, and subdemons. They can take the form of almost any monster, from ant-size on up, and with more ways to intimidate, frighten, and kill than can be counted. New versions are created every day.”
“Like . . . Demon 8.0,” Jeanie joked, jotting down the information.
“That is a way to look at it,” Damon said sadly, gazing over at Harmony, who refused to meet his eyes.
Jeanie noted the exchange and put down her notepad. “You’re in deep shit, aren’t you?”
“Deep, really deep, aye.”
“We Mysteria women call it doghouse deep. And there’s only one thing you can do. Go fix it.”
“I dinna know if it’s possible.”
“Her job is to forgive, Damon. That’ll be the easy part. All you have to do is to convince her to put her heart into it.” She chucked him on the arm. “Good luck. I know you can do it.”
Could he?
Damon found Harmony in the barn, washing mud off her hands and face at the work sink. Harmony turned around, wiping her hands on her soiled skirt. Water and tears had smudged the makeup under her wide, expressive brown eyes. She studied him for a moment, as if he were a stranger. Then she blew her nose in a paper towel. “No wonder you didn’t like devil’s food cake.”
His chest hurt. “Yes, I have a past, of which ye know little.”
He told her everything, as best a man could summarize ten thousand years of walking the earth.
“Ten thousand years.” Harmony’s voice came out as a squeak. “A
“Aye, but I’ve lived more in these past few months than in all the time before.” He told her the story of the starving settlers of Mysteria, how he’d given them the Will-to-Go-On, how he’d repeated such acts all around the globe until Lucifer found out and captured him. He told her about the torture, his being made mortal, and finally how he’d woken, dazed and naked, in her garden, terminated and pensionless. “I thought he was done with me, then, Lucifer was. But ’tis clear he’s not yet finished. And for that, lass, I am truly sorry . . . for what you’ve suffered as a consequence. And ’tis about you, for the Devil does not want me to have something good, you see. Then I’ll have won. If there’s one thing I know about Lucifer—he does not like to lose.”
“Is everything okay in here?” Jeanie Tortellini poked her head in the barn.
“Fine!” they both shouted a little too quickly.
The sheriff shot Damon a you-poor-bastard wink. “The water’s off, Reverend; I locked up the church. Everyone’s gone home—it’s a ghost town out there.” Jeanie clamped her mouth closed, as if realizing that was a poor choice of words, given Harmony’s profession—and mood. She held up a little gold-trimmed red coat. “But on the plus side, there are enough doll clothes left behind to supply every little girl’s collection in Mysteria.” She sniffed at the garment and grimaced. “Once they’ve been through the wash, that is. Hey, I’ll be down at the jail, so call me if you need me.” Jeanie waved good-bye and slid the door closed.
