“Human.”
“Well, there’s one piece of the puzzle. You’re a cambion. Half-breed. Which is why we can’t sense you.” He looked down the hall where two Aegis slayers weren’t even attempting to be covert as they watched them. Shade flipped them off and turned back to Lore. “So your human mother named you Lore?”
“Loren,” he mumbled.
Shade eyed him with sympathy. Because, yeah, Shade was such a great name. “When were you born?”
“Eighteen-eighty.”
“Then you were one of our father’s firsts. Idiot either didn’t know any better than to impregnate a human, or he was already off his rocker.”
“You know, I’m not feeling the love here.” Lore shifted, wincing at the tingles shooting up his leg, which had fallen asleep.
“Our father got off on fucking things he shouldn’t.”
Lore had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but Shade’s tone didn’t invite questions, and really, Lore had more to worry about than his deadbeat dad’s choice of bedmates. Besides, Lore didn’t have a lot of room to judge.
“Where is he?”
“Dead.” He gestured to Lore’s dermoire. “What’s your gift?”
“Gift?” Lore laughed. “Is that what you call it? Can you kill everything you touch, too?”
Shade cocked an eyebrow. “I can kill with my gift, but I have to make an effort to use it that way. Its primary purpose is to force ovulation in females.”
Since Shade was an incubus, that made sense. “Can all Seminus demons do that?”
“Wraith can get inside female heads and make them receptive to sex. Eidolon can ensure an egg is fertilized. You said you kill everything you touch?”
“Yeah. Except it didn’t affect Eidolon.”
“Could be the brother thing… or it could be because E had activated his own gift, and maybe they countered each other.”
It had to be the sibling thing. Lore had never hurt his sister with his touch, either. “So why is my gift all fucked up?”
“Probably has something to do with the cambion thing. We’re not meant to breed with humans. Stuff tends to go wrong with the offspring. Obviously.”
“Is there anything else I should know about? You know, that might go wrong?”
Shade appeared to consider that. “Oh, hey, you’re probably sterile. You know how when a donkey and a horse or a water sprite and a fire sprite—”
“I got the picture,” Lore snapped. For some reason, the sterile thing annoyed the shit out of him, but he had no idea why, since he couldn’t fucking have sex without killing his partner. Having kids was a moot point.
Shade said something under his breath about him being high-strung. “So why did you think killing me and Eidolon would be a good idea?”
“Some dude named Roag paid me.”
“And you didn’t know who he was?” Shade threw back his head and laughed, but the sound wasn’t one of amusement. “That sick sonofabitch.”
“Can I get in on the joke?”
“He was our brother.”
“Brother? As in, that sick fuck, too?”
“Yep. No doubt he knew who you were all along. I’ll bet he had it arranged so that when you got the money for killing us, you’d learn the truth.”
Fun guy, his insane brother. Of course, the one in front of him didn’t strike him as a load of laughs, either. “I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Well, he’s not exactly dead. But he’s suffering a fate worse than death. Trust me.”
A commotion in the front room brought Shade to his feet. The pounding of heavy footsteps and hushed curses heralded the arrival of something… not good.
Wraith stalked into the hall, his arms cradling a body. The human male, Kynan. Oh, cool.
Gem’s scream pierced the silence, and his feeling of satisfaction shattered.
“No… no… no!” She’d been in the room with the sick woman, and now she stood in the doorway, disbelief and horror etched on her face. She backed away, hand over her mouth, shaking her head, and as Lore watched, she stumbled and fell to the floor.
Wraith moved slowly down the hall toward the bedroom, his eyes closed, but his aim never wavering. Shade uttered a soft curse and moved aside as Wraith took the body to Gem and laid it before her.
“No, Wraith… no!” She grabbed his hand, pleading with him to make Kynan not be dead.
Shade and Wraith both bowed their heads until Gem collapsed on top of Kynan, her sobs wracking her body.
Wraith seemed to weigh a thousand pounds as he went to Serena.
No one in the room seemed to know what to do, but Gem’s cries lanced Lore’s heart. He should use this opportunity to comfort her, to take advantage of her loss. Had he been the one to kill Kynan, that’s what he would have done.
But seeing her suffer wasn’t pleasant.
“Shade.” The guy didn’t move. “Shade!”
“What?” He was still standing, head bowed.
“Release me.”