Page 43 of Tethered Souls
My expression doesn’t change, but he laughs anyway as he gestures to the seat in front of his desk. I move towards it, no hesitation in my steps despite the rising of hairs on my back. His preferred way of killing is by blasting a person with a bolt of electricity, and I can sense the charge in the air before he does it. I can move faster than him, grab the gun in my shoulder holster, and fire it into his skull before he can use his magic.
My finger twitches in the phantom pull of a trigger.
Bang.
“Should’ve gone for the full minute. The odds on that…” Talon whistles as he rounds his desk to stand in front of me, then leans back on it, his arms crossed.
I don’t ask him how he got the information on my time. Indulging my brothers only leads to them taking the piss for longer. Instead, I start by developing a baseline to discern his lies, asking a question I already know the answer to. “How many Ricks did we move last month?”
That’s the street name for our incubus potions, derived from the shortening of the word “erections” given that is what they create – albeit with ridges and bulges and extra parts like feelers and tongues and hooks and sacs of cum for those obsessed with breeding.
He shakes his head, his buzzed black hair not moving. “Oh, come on,” he says in exasperation. “Forget business for a sec. You’reengaged.”
The door to the office opens, and Louise Warner strides in in a well fitted dark-blue suit, her brown eyes sharp, not one strand of hair free from her tight bun. She carries a tray with a mini bottle of helfire on it, a corkscrew, and two glass tumblers. After placing it on the desk beside my brother, she turns to leave. Efficient and quick. The doorclickswithin six seconds of her entry.
Talon grabs the corkscrew and black bottle. A green wax seal covers the top, stamped with the Heldron Family logo – a fiery H. Steam hisses from the beverage as he pulls the cork free, and he pours a generous shot into both tumblers, the liquid as black as tar. That amount will kill a human and will practically floor us, but I take the offered glass with a slight nod.
“To the loss of an old man’s virginity.” Talon smirks as he lifts his glass. My body buzzing with the expectation of pain and adrenaline, I raise mine to clink with his. And as I move closer, his eyes sharpen. His smile drops. And his shoulders tense as he goes on high alert – but it’s nothing suspicious. Just the normal reaction to drinking helfire.
Created in the Underground of Halzaja, the plane of the angels and demons, it’s brewed by the family of demons that guard the backdoor of Niflhel. They fight the souls of the escaped, keep the dead from coming back to the world of the living, and party like fucking animals. Each batch of helfire is imbued with the actual flames of the underworld, so it isn’t a drink you indulge in for pleasure. It’s a beating of chests, a “tradition” in our family to see who’s the biggest dumbass, started when Talon stole a bottle when he was nine, wanting to be cool like Father.
“Louise is on standby,” he says, referencing the fact that she’s a healer. We wouldn’t be the first sups to die from drinking this, and for a moment, I wonder if this is a trap, if Louise is in on it. And the glass in my hands feels heavier than if it was solid gold.
But if it is, then I want to get it fucking over with. And being drunk when I kill him might be a blessing.
So I raise the tumbler to my lips, and Talon quickly does the same. His eyes sparkle with this dumbass challenge, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel that same need to win. Though no one ever wins drinking helfire. Case in point, the few sups who have actually died from it, their souls burned by the flames of Niflhel.
My nostrils sting with the heat of the liquid, like the smoke of a forest fire wafting up to them, clogging them, making my eyes water. My lips start to tingle with phantom pain. My fingers flexing, I take a deep breath, still holding my brother’s challenging gaze, and then I chuck it back.
Instantly, my throat and stomach feel pelted by acid rain.
So I only manage to down about a third of it before I’m leaning forward, coughing up my balls. Talon is having a similar fit, but his comes with full on tears as he struggles to suck in air.
“Holy...shit,” he wheezes as he pounds on his chest.
My throat is on fire, as is my stomach and lungs and every other inch of my godsdamn body. Sweat gleams on my face and neck, and the pain has me sagging down into the chair. As I sprawl out, familial memories rise, and I start craving some Carolina reapers to eat like a bag of chips. A few years ago, Maddox had the bright idea that if he could “handle” helfire, then the hottest pepper on Earth couldn’t be that bad. Turns out, the high concentration of alcohol in the drink naturally dissolves the capsaicin in the chillies that makes them spicy. They have a pretty good flavor when they’re not just “hot, hot, and more hot” – something you don’t get to experience before first having a drink of helfire.
As I start to sit up, Talon laughs in that broken, crazed way that speaks of pure agony. My lips twitch as exhaustion hits me like I’ve just run a hundred miles, that rush of bone weary exhilaration, that delicious heaviness of well-worked limbs.
“Fuck,” Talon says as he pushes himself further onto his desk, his knees hanging over the edge. “How did Father ever manage to drink this with his dinner?”
“Balls of steel,” I say flatly.
“Clearly.” Shaking his head, he looks at me. “Soooo tell me about your neeeeewboooo.Is she as scary as the stories say?”
I shrug a shoulder, and he rolls his eyes.
“You haven’t asked her a single thing about herself, have you?” He shakes his head again. “That’s a terrible start to a marriage.”
“We’re not married.”
“But you will be.”
“If she conceives.”
He stares at me, twirling the remainder of his helfire. “Have you told her?”
“That Khalid might kill our kid? Or that he’ll kill me too?”
