Page 43 of Dead Air
“Mmm…” Niall smiled, nuzzling his cheek against Cenn’s palm. “I’mma good boy?” he slurred as his eyelids fluttered.
Cenn hummed as he lowered and kissed his brow. “Always my good boy.”
“I had the wildest dream, Cenn. This little bald man was here and…” Niall started as he opened his eyes but they widened and watered when he spotted Oglethorpe. “It wasn’t a dream.”
“I’m afraid not,” Oglethorpe answered, his tone grandfatherly as he approached the bed with a mug of water.
“Okay…” Niall licked his lips. “Did I miss the part where you explained about the nephilumps and campalongs? What happens if you do it with a demon?”
Oglethorpe’s lips pulled in and he swallowed a chirping giggle. “The nephilim and the cambion are the offspring of angels and demons. They can be very powerful—my namesake was the product of such a mating!—but they can also live cursed existences.”
“I can’t have a baby, right?” Niall said, pushing out a relieved breath when Oglethorpe and MacIlwraith shook their heads.
“There will be magick, though,” MacIlwraith warned, his sunny expression darkening with sadness. “The radiation from it made my mother sick and being close to me eventually killed her. I didn’t know if I’d survive the transformation and was scared shitless until the time came.”
“I’m so sorry,” Niall said and used his sleeve to wipe a tear from his cheek, making MacIlwraith smile.
“Me too but I appreciate your kindness. You don’t deserve any of this and I’m hoping you’ll let us help you.”
Cenn let out an irritated groan. “I told you, Niall will be fine andIwill find a way to fix this. Hugh Dùbhghlas is canny and cunning but I can outwit the warlock.”
“Only a demon would be this obtuse!” Oglethorpe shook his fist at Cenn. “I have long had my suspicions about who—orwhat—Hugh Dùbhghlas’s mother was, but I would bet both of my eyes that he has been bartering and besting demons since he was a child. Your first and worst mistake was underestimating Hugh Dùbhghlas.”
“A mistake I won’t make again,” Cenn vowed.
“It’s too late now! You’re already in his trap and I don’t see any solution for you and Niall that doesn’t delight him.”
Cenn’s neck craned, he was suddenly wary and wondered if he had overlooked something else. “How can you be so sure?”
“Obtuse! You see!” Oglethorpe had turned red and was practically dancing, he was so livid. “You have overlooked or forgotten the most basic fact of your demonic existence.”
“What are you talking about?” Cenn laughed belligerently. “I pretty much wrote the book on demons. Sorry, Niall,” he offered Niall a sheepish, apologetic wince, then gave Oglethorpe a bored look. “Everything you know about demons—every wives’ tale, parable, book, and movie is based onme.”
“I take it back, then. You are arrogantandyou are obtuse!” Oglethorpe advanced on Cenn, waving his staff. “How is a demon made? How wereyoumade?” He pointed the end at Cenn, making him draw back as he reeled.
“How was I made?” he parroted, momentarily confused.
“You were the first!” Oglethorpe shouted. “How did it begin!” He tapped the black kyanite against Cenn’s forehead but he fell back as if he’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
He was alone and dying in the woods, the screams of his people—his family—carrying through the forest as flames devoured their homes. Cenn had fallen to his knees and set fire to a handful of yellow stones, begging the darkness to deliver them from the monsters destroying his clan. The darkness answered, demanding his soul and his service for eternity.
“I have no idea how long I was gone, but nothing was left when I came back,” Cenn murmured, the sound of screams and the smell of their modest roundhouses, smoking and ablaze in the night, faded as he returned to Niall’s cabin. “My life, my love, my purpose, my pain… All I had was an insatiable hunger for vengeance, to see the world covered in the same darknessthat had taken my soul. I was driven by the urge to feed it more souls and to have my own army of lost monsters. That was how I became Cenn Cruach.”
“No! Go back farther!Howwere you made?” Oglethorpe beat his staff against the floor, hurling Cenn backwards through the last frantic moments of his mortal life.
He ran through the front door of his house and found his wife and children, slaughtered in their beds. Mindless with grief and fearing for his parents, Cenn stumbled back out into the chaos. Bewildered by the melee of fleeing and falling bodies, the anguished whinnies of scared horses, the stomping of their hooves, and the screams of women and children, Cenn was struck in the back with a long blade, spear, or sword. He didn’t know what it was but his parents’ house was burning, along with all the others. Everywhere Cenn looked he saw violence and destruction.
With no hope left, Cenn fled into the woods, clutching a burning piece of the cruit his father had given him. The glowing strip of willow burned slowly as Cenn freed the pouch of ancient yellow stones from his belt. His last breaths were gasped into blue smoke, a prayer to the darkness for salvation.
“I died three times that night. I lost my family and my people, I lost my life, and I lost my soul,” Cenn told Oglethorpe.
“There you have it: the first threefold death and the birth of the first demon. You sacrificed yourself to the darkness and the first sacrifices were madeto you,Cenn Cruach, Father of Demons, Lord Smoak,” Oglethorpe bowed dramatically but there were loud, angry growls from the twins as they grew larger and loomed behind Nelson in the doorway. “Back!” Oglethorpe said, spreading his arms to block the door as he watched Cenn. “You cannot take him, even without his horde, Cenn Cruach is powerful and cunning. He knows all there is to know of darkmagick because he is the one who first spoke those charms. It is his tongue that demons speak.”
Cenn hummed, tilting his head from side to side. “I did leave my mighty army as collateral but the hellhounds, the sun god, and whatever that little pixie is might be able to muster enough strength to best me,” he said with a cocky wink, igniting the feistier hellhound’s temper.
“He is lying and tempting you into a duel,” Oglethorpe warned, shaking his head at Cenn. “There is only one way to truly end a demon. It is the same way you make one.”
“The threefold death,” MacIlwraith guessed and Oglethorpe answered with a disgruntled humph in Cenn’s direction.
