“Oh damn,” Divine muttered, guilt sliding through her. She hadn’t meant to do real damage, just teach him a lesson about entering other people’s homes without permission. Unfortunately, she used her strength so rarely that Divine forgot just how strong she was. This wasn’t the first time she’d done more damage than intended. She’d once tossed a grandson through a wall when all she’d meant to do was slam him up against it. But she hadn’t felt too bad about that. It had been Rufus, who she suspected didn’t follow her rules about feeding. He was a mouthy piece of work, always sneering at the “stupidity and weakness of mortals.” She’d heard him more than once declare they were stupid cattle and deserved to be slaughtered. He knew she hated it when he said things like that. She hated that he even thought like that, and blamed herself for it.
Divine didn’t spend a lot of time around her son and his sons. She hadn’t since he became a man and struck out on his own. She had visited with him more often at first. She’d even raised several of his boys in the early centuries when the birth mother didn’t want to be bothered, but had found it too heart-wrenching when one or another of them had been caught by one of Uncle Lucian’s scouts and killed. It had actually been a relief when Damian had stopped asking her to raise them.
The last time she’d spent more than a half hour or so with Damian had been when she’d had to rescue him from Uncle Lucian up in Canada. She’d moved as quickly as she could when she’d got the message from Abaddon that her son might need her. Fortunately, the carnival she’d been traveling with at the time had been in Michigan and she’d got to Toronto quickly enough. She’d checked into a hotel and had immediately tried to contact Damian. When she hadn’t been able to reach him, she’d reluctantly tried to contact Abaddon with no success. She’d paced her hotel room for two days, trying repeatedly to reach either of the men. Just as she was about to give up and head back to Michigan, Abaddon had called in a panic. He’d told her Leo was holed up in a hotel in downtown Toronto and Lucian and his men were there searching for him.
Divine had ground her teeth at his calling Damian Leo, but had merely snapped out, “Which hotel? What room is he in?”
The hotel hadn’t been far from her own. Still, by the time she’d arrived, slipped past the men her uncle seemed to have streaming through the building, and got to the floor Damian’s room was on, she’d been too late. They’d found him, and Damian was lying on the floor in the hall, several bullets in his chest and an arrow protruding from his heart.
Shocked and horrified, Divine had scooped him up and started to turn away with him, but a small sound, perhaps a gasp, had made her swing back toward the room Damian had lain outside of. A petite brunette was trying to help a dark-haired man to his feet and had spotted her. The woman was opening her mouth to scream when Divine had taken control of her mind, stopped her from making a sound, wiped her mind, and put her to sleep. She’d then rushed off for the stairs with her son, carrying him up rather than down and then leaping from the rooftop of that building to the next, and then the next after that before stopping to remove the arrow from his heart. He hadn’t miraculously gained consciousness right away, of course. Besides the arrow, he’d taken several bullet wounds and lost enough blood that he would be out for a while. She’d waited an hour, though, before moving.
Not knowing what else to do, Divine had left him there while she went for her RV. It hadn’t taken long . . . even so, Damian was gone by the time she returned.
In a panic, she’d called his number only to have a strange voice answer. Suspecting it was one of Uncle Lucian’s men, she’d hung up at once and called Abaddon instead, telling herself that just because they had the phone didn’t mean they had her son. Her calls to Abaddon had again gone unanswered. Divine had stayed in town for another full day calling again and again, and then had packed up and headed for the border, intending to get as far away from Canada and her uncle as possible.
The next weeks had been stressful as she waited to learn whether her son had managed to drag himself off that roof on his own, or had been caught. She’d also changed carnivals at that point, moving to the Hoskins Amusements, and she’d dialed Abaddon’s number so many times she’d started to dream about dialing it. And then she’d finally got a call, not from Abaddon, but from her son. He was alive, well, and wanted to thank her for saving his life. Seriously, that’s what he’d said. Divine had flipped. All that anxiety and fear and he finally calls her up cheerful as a chimp to say thanks? Divine had demanded to know where he was and when she found out he was holed up not far from where the carnival was, she’d left at once to go see him.
Her temper hadn’t improved any once she’d arrived at the dilapidated building he’d taken shelter in. He deserved better than the holes he chose to inhabit, and she didn’t like his choice of companions either. Not the women. They were all emaciated drug addicts, every one of them high as kites, either passed out and blank-brained or so strung out their thoughts didn’t make sense when she tried to read them. She hadn’t been any more pleased to find her grandsons just as high from feeding on them. She’d ignored that at first, too intent on seeing for herself that Damian was all right to care what her grandsons got up to. Once she’d seen for herself that he was alive and well, Divine had demanded an explanation and Damian had explained that Abaddon had carried him off the roof and got him away when she’d left him there.
That last part had been said with a wounded note that suggested she’d abandoned him, and that was when Divine had let her temper rip. She’d explained in no uncertain terms that she’d left him to fetch the RV and came back to find him gone.
“Says you. You were probably off fetching the Rogue Hunters to come get Dad,” Rufus had sneered, his words slurred with the effects of the drug-soaked blood he’d consumed. Divine hadn’t even thought; she’d picked him up by the throat and thrown him up against the wall . . . only he’d gone right through it, crashing to the floor in the next room. Divine had followed to make sure he was all right, and then to warn him to watch his tongue if he didn’t want to be tongueless as well as fangless. It had been an empty threat, but effective. He’d said “Yes ma’am,” and nodded repeatedly as she’d turned and stormed out.
Damian had followed her, but when she’d asked how Lucian Argeneau had tracked him down, he’d been infuriatingly vague about the whole ordeal. He’d claimed that a couple of the boys had taken some risks they shouldn’t have and behaved stupidly, and that he’d tried to clean up their mess and got himself caught. Damian had refused to explain what those risks had been, however. He’d also avoided her eyes the whole time, which had made her suspect he was lying to her about something, though she couldn’t tell which part of the tale was a lie.
“What risks?” she’d demanded. “What stupid things did they do?”
“They’re my sons. I’ll handle it,” he’d said, refusing to explain.
Divine had let the matter go, too emotionally exhausted from weeks of worry to have the energy to fight with him. But she’d taken the time to warn him in no uncertain terms to lie low and avoid trouble for the next little while. Lucian didn’t like to lose, wouldn’t be happy about losing him, and would have his people out in force looking for him. She’d emphasized it by pounding at him until he’d assured her he’d lie low for a while.
The moment he’d made that promise, she’d mounted her motorcycle and left. Divine always came away from visits to Damian’s chosen shelters feeling slightly dirty. She blamed it on Abaddon and some of her grandsons. She had always found Abaddon loathsome, but while she disliked admitting it, some of her grandsons left her feeling the same way. As a rule they avoided her as much as possible, and were mostly quiet and polite when they couldn’t avoid her, but it didn’t matter. Divine always left worried about what they were up to and feeling like she needed a bath. It was why she didn’t go out of her way to see her son. In fact, she hadn’t seen him more than half a dozen times over the last century, and four of those times had been over the last two or three years, twice when she’d had to save him from Lucian and then had visited him after, and twice the last couple of days.