* * *
What?
This wasn’t possible. It… it defied everything in the Books. James Paddington was the demon: he had proven that three years ago, he was of Enanti’s Race, even his name testified to his fate. Despite his mother’s best attempts, James was the demon. They couldn’t switch roles now! Jermaine couldn’t become the demon. He would have been the champion… if the Tree of Life hadn’t died. That had left no alternative but for James to kill Jermaine. There was no other physical possibility.
And yet… here strode not James Paddington but Jermaine Mitchell, born Jermaine Paddington, taken to Estika and hidden by his father as Jermaine Bretherton. Not the best pseudonym, really, using Andrea’s maiden name. Perhaps her husband assumed Adonis wouldn’t follow them to the Mainland and try to find them. Or maybe he just wasn’t very bright.
Probably the latter. He’d run as soon as Adonis had bought the castle. Run off in such a panic that he got himself killed. And all Adonis had wanted was to make sure Mitchell grew up into the hero he was intended to be. Clearly Adonis had failed there. Failed him.
Mitchell sat at an empty chair, Melanthios’s gun still held loosely in one hand.
“So,” Mitchell said.
“So,” said Adonis. How could they begin? What was there even to say? Mitchell had become the demon or defied the prophecies; either was impossible. “You killed him.”
Mitchell nodded, something cold and alien in his gaze, something akin to Paddington’s calm, calculating glares but with greater physical threat behind it. “He didn’t even know, you know,” Mitchell said. “All your gentle prods only took him further in the wrong direction. He thought Beck was his brother.”
Beck? The little human that had been hanging around? The one Niamh had messaged about Lisa, before they’d discovered that the union with the Mother of Creation might not be in the world’s best interests. The local bobby who had, eventually, noticed the increasingly-obvious clues of their existence. They’d practically had to bite him on the neck before he’d called the Team.
Paddington had thought he was his brother? “Why?” asked Adonis.
“Because Beck didn’t know his mummy and Paddington let his fantasies blind him, just like someone else I could mention.”
Paddington hadn’t even known? Every urging they’d given him to fulfil the prophecy had been useless. At best, Paddington would have killed an innocent man. Apparently he had: Melanthios was dragging another corpse over to the others.
How had it all gone so wrong?
“How did you know?” asked Adonis. “If even he hadn’t worked it out.”
“Because this place is slightly familiar, which is what you wanted, isn’t it? That I’d recognise it. There were some other clues along the way, but the revelation came when Paddington casually mentioned a gift that only we share.”
Oh, Idryo… To think, Adonis could have told him at any time. Could have laid out the truth. But it had seemed callous, telling him to murder Mitchell. A hideous prospect and an unnecessary one: the prophecy would come to pass. They always did. Not needing to be crass, Adonis had only guided. He’d been too polite to say “Just kill Mitchell.” And now, here they were.
But where was here?
“Did you think I’d just let him kill me if you kept nudging?” Mitchell asked.
“There was no alternative,” said Adonis. “Your… The champion’s prophecy could not be fulfilled.”
“Good.”
Good? How was that good? How was any of this good? In the five-hundred years Adonis had waited for this moment, he’d never conceived it might be like this. That the demon could be a different person in the second prophecy to the first. That he would kill his brother without even revealing himself. That the demon would rather be murderer than saviour.
“I don’t want to be his redemption,” Mitchell said. “I didn’t kill Paddington for your prophecy or because he’s my brother. I killed him because he deserved to die and I’ve never hesitated to do what must be done, no matter how grisly.” He cocked his head to the side. “Though living forever did sound appealing.”
Was Mitchell now propositioning? Bargaining? Hoping to exchange a night with one of Adonis’s daughters for their lives?
Adonis had lost so much. He wasn’t losing that, too.
“Is this where you ask to be turned?” asked Adonis. “Your brother was a werewolf; there is an elegant symmetry to your becoming a vampire.”
“If I’d wanted that,” Mitchell said, “I’d have taken it from Ianthe before I snapped her neck.”
Mitchell had killed Ianthe? It hadn’t been Paddington? Oh Three-God…
Adonis had been so wrong of late. His understanding of the prophecies. His actions guiding Paddington. His whole treatment of this war.
Adonis had never felt old, never truly old, until this moment. Occasionally he wished that he had been kinder to his knees in youth, but he’d never felt so tired as he did now. He’d never felt so completely defeated. His family was dead, his dreams were dead. He had wasted his entire existence in the pursuit of an impossible goal that, according to Lisa Paddington, would have ruined not redeemed the world.
“I have no intention of becoming like you,” Mitchell said.
“Wise choice,” said Adonis. “Eternity… wears one thin.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that.”
Was this it, then? His fate? His end? Murdered by the demon, not for any crime, just because… just because. Adonis raised his chin; he would meet death head-on, as Paddington had been denied.
Mitchell used Melanthios’s pistol to wave the boy over to the table with his family. At least they would die together. Adonis was sorry for it; sorry he had devoted so much of his life to one failed cause after another. Perhaps Mitchell would be merciful and spare Lilith and Guenevere, who had wanted no part of this. Perhaps.
Adonis chose to hope.
“There’s still the final line of your prophecy, after all,” Mitchell said. “Something about death spreading across the globe?” Mitchell leaned forward, placing both his elbows on the dining table. “Well that’s me and you. That’s your death, spread across the world as you hide from me. As you run. As far and as fast as you can. I hope you have other towns like this one ready to hide and shelter you because when the sun rises, I’m coming for you. All of you.”
Mitchell’s eyes passed from Adonis to Lilith, then Clytemnestra, Niamh, and Melanthios.
Sunrise. They had an hour. They couldn’t return to Archi, but they would live. Perhaps they could settle somewhere quiet; somewhere Mitchell wouldn’t find them.
If such a place existed.
“When I see your mother,” said Adonis, “I shall tell her she was right. Though I doubt she will take comfort in that.”
Mitchell stood. “Tell her whatever you like. There’s only one mother I’m interested in.”