The Devil's Playground

twenty-five

EVEN THOUGH THERE WASN’T ANY WAY TO FORCE Raphael out of my brother, I couldn’t help trying to fight my way to the surface, so angry I expected a red haze to cloud my vision. I felt Lugh wince as my efforts made his head hurt.

But then Lugh turned us toward Tommy Brewster, and I stopped fighting for control.

Tommy was slumped forward in his chair, his arm lying limply over Adam’s and Dom’s laps.

“He’s not breathing,” Adam said.

Lugh took a couple of strides forward. Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone, he told me, and I think he was only half joking. Then he touched the back of Tommy’s neck, and suddenly, for the first time in months, I was alone in my body.

It was so disorienting that my knees gave out, and I pitched forward, almost landing in Adam’s lap. Adam caught one of my arms, and Lugh, in Tommy’s body, caught the other, and they held me until I steadied. My head throbbed, and my stomach churned, but I tried to ignore them as I got my feet back under me.

As soon as I’d disentangled myself from Lugh and Adam, I stood up straight and glared at Raphael. If I hadn’t been afraid he’d let Andy feel it, I’d have slugged him. He blinked at me calmly, unaffected by my glare. He even smiled at me.

“Believe it or not, I’m doing Andrew a favor. I told you he likes to beat himself half to death with guilt. He’d have had a field day if—”

“You’re the one who laid the guilt trip on him, asshole!”

“Yes, I laid a guilt trip on him while he could still do something about it. If I hadn’t said anything, he would have allowed Lugh to ‘volunteer’ Dominic and would have drowned in guilt afterward. He needed a swift kick in the ass, and I gave it to him.”

Lugh made a grunting sound that could have been amusement or annoyance. “Even when you’re doing what is arguably the right thing,” Lugh said, “you manage to be cruel about it.”

Okay, that sounded more like annoyance.

Raphael shrugged. “If I’d tried to be nice about it, it wouldn’t have worked. I may not like Andrew, but I understand him.” He turned to me. “Honestly, Morgan. Hosting me for another couple of hours will do him no harm.” One corner of his mouth tipped up. “And since he took me voluntarily, it might remind him that, even if his shining armor is dented and rusty, he still has it.”

What could I possibly say to that? I couldn’t deny that Raphael knew Andy better than any of the rest of us did. I’d tried my own version of “tough love,” and it had been an abysmal failure. Raphael had been even more brutal, but he’d prompted Andy into doing something I would never in a million years have expected. Maybe he really did know what he was doing. Even so, I just didn’t have it in me to trust Raphael.

“Let’s talk about the meeting with Dougal, shall we?” Lugh asked.

It felt weirder than I can explain to hear Lugh’s words coming out of Tommy’s body. Even when I was hearing his voice in my head, I always pictured Lugh as the gorgeous stud muffin he made himself into in my dreams. To hear him talking out of what had only minutes ago been Raphael’s body was …

uncomfortable.

I sat on the arm of the couch, feeling a little too weak and shaky to stand. I was still fighting the headache and nausea, but there was another pain, too, a hollow cold ache in the center of my chest. I found myself rubbing my breastbone absently, but it didn’t ease the ache.

“Raphael,” Lugh said. “I want you to stay here with Morgan and Dominic.”

Raphael sat up straight and gaped at his brother. “You must be joking! You’re not going to meet Dougal with only Adam at your side.”

Lugh arched an eyebrow. “I’m not going to bring a couple of helpless humans into Dougal’s range, and we’ve already established that I don’t want him to know about you.”

I was sitting close enough to Lugh to give him a sharp kick in the shin.

“Ow!” he protested, giving me an affronted look.

“There are no ‘helpless humans’ in this room,” I informed him. “And we’re not expecting a melee in the food court. That was Dougal’s whole point in choosing to meet there, right?”

“And if you show up with only Adam in your entourage,” Raphael said, “you’re going to make yourself look weak, like you have no supporters.”

“I want Dougal to think I’m weak. I want him to underestimate me so he’ll make a fatal mistake.”

Raphael shook his head. “Tell me you’re not really planning to go through with this whole duel thing.”

“Why not? I might have more supporters than I was planning to let Dougal know about, but we all know he’s got many more supporters on the Mortal Plain than I do. If you’re thinking we can somehow hunt him down and get to him without putting me at risk, you’re delusional.”

Raphael was agitated enough to stand up and start pacing. “But Lugh, there’s no way to know who would win if the two of you fought. And Dougal’s too smart to set up the duel in any way that would let you get an advantage.”

“Someday, somehow, it’s going to come down to a fight between the two of us,” Lugh said, his voice low and soothing. “You know that, even if you don’t want to admit it.” He turned to me. “And in case you or anyone else is worried, if we do succeed in setting up a duel, I’ll fight it in Tommy’s body, not yours. We have to assume that Dougal will have taken a superhost of some sort, and I would be at a severe disadvantage if my host were a normal human.”

I’d have worried about what that meant for Andy, since no doubt he’d be Raphael’s temporary host once more if Lugh marched off to battle in Tommy’s body. But if Lugh fought with Dougal and lost, I had a feeling Andy’s emotional well-being was going to be the least of our troubles.

Raphael still didn’t look convinced. “We’ll argue about whether you’re going to duel Dougal or not later,” he said. “Let’s finish arguing about who’s going with you today, first.”

Lugh smiled wryly. “Adam and I are going alone. There’s nothing to argue about.”

Raphael stopped pacing, and the look in his eyes made the hair at the back of my neck prickle. I could almost smell the testosterone in the air as Lugh unfolded from his chair and met Raphael’s glare with one of his own. I wasn’t sure if this was about to get ugly, but just in case, I started backing away toward my dining room table, on which my purse currently sat. I had a Taser in there, and I was beginning to suspect having it out and armed would be a good idea. No one paid any attention to me, not with Lugh and Raphael facing off as they were.

“You’re not going without me,” Raphael said with quiet menace.

“Raphael, I am your king, and I am giving you an order. Stay. Here.” Lugh was getting that eerie, pissed-off glow in his eyes.

Raphael shook his head. “To you, you’re my king first, my brother second, and that’s the way it should be. But to me, you will always be my brother first. So you can give me as many orders as you like, but don’t expect me to crumble in the face of your royal authority.”

I’d gotten to my purse by this time, and I fished out my Taser.

“I really hate to say this,” I said as I armed and pointed the Taser, “but in this rare instance, I agree with Raphael.”

All eyes turned to me. Lugh’s jaw dropped open in shock to see me standing there pointing my Taser at him.

“There are too many things that can go wrong,” I informed him. “You can’t go with no backup other than Adam.” I kept my eyes on Lugh as I spoke to Adam. “You’re damn good backup,” I told him,

“but you’re only one person. You can bet Dougal’s going to have more than one minion with him, and we need to have more than one person there to defend Lugh if push comes to shove. You know I’m right.”

Lugh had told me once that even the most loyal of his council members would defy him if they thought it was for his own safety. I was gambling that he was right and that Adam would see things the same way Raphael and I did. If I was wrong, this was a lost cause. Yeah, I could Taser Lugh, and Raphael would be able to keep Adam and Dom from interfering. But superhosts were able to shed the effects of a Taser jolt faster than mere human hosts, so it wasn’t like I could keep Lugh down long enough to miss the rendezvous.

Lugh turned his fearsome glare to Adam, who looked very unhappy to be in the hot seat. He thought for a long, agonizing minute, then sighed.

“I’m afraid they’re right, Lugh,” he said, his head bowed with regret. “All Dougal has to do is kill your host, and victory will be in his reach. If you look too vulnerable, he might be willing to risk trying it even in the middle of a crowded mall.”

Lugh’s glare would have had more effect if Adam had actually been looking at him.

“I know I’m only a ‘helpless human,’” Dominic chimed in, “and you probably don’t much care about my opinion, but I have to agree. I understand you want to minimize the risks to the rest of us, but meeting Dougal with only Adam to guard you would be just plain reckless.”

Lugh winced, as if Dom’s words had hurt him. Maybe they had. Lugh slowly lowered himself back into his chair, and I lowered my Taser. I didn’t put it away, though. I knew how fast demons could move.

“If I didn’t care about your opinion, Dominic,” Lugh said, “you would not be on my council.” He looked around at the rest of us, and a wry smile played on his lips. “I had hoped that without the full council here to back you, I might be able to browbeat you all into seeing things my way. It appears I was mistaken.”

Raphael laughed, a genuine, hearty laugh that broke some of the tension in the room. I disarmed the Taser and shoved it back into my purse.

“You thought you could browbeat me?” Raphael asked Lugh, still laughing. “Being housed in human flesh has addled your mind, big brother. In what alternate universe would that actually work?”

Lugh’s lips twitched. I think he was suppressing a smile, though he gave Raphael a halfhearted snarl.

“Just so we’re clear,” I said. “We’re all going. Right?” Everyone nodded. “Okay then, what’s the plan?”

And it was a good thing Lugh had kept the rest of the council members out of this, even if things hadn’t turned out as he’d hoped, because even with only four of us there to argue with him, it took every minute we had left to agree on how to make the approach to Dougal.