Page 30 of The Cruelest Undead

Little one, must you make it sound so trashy like I was some deity on the side of the street, and he picked me up like an empty soda bottle?

Rinnon, do you want to come try this? They missed the last decade of their son’s life. I’m working with very little here. How do I tell them he died twice, and came back to marry a vampyre, and now he’s trying to keep the world from dying?

I mean, did he come back in three days or was it faster because I don’t mess around?

Jolie wasn’t letting him go there.

STOP.Don’t even, Rinnon. Let the Jesus thing go for a moment.

There was laughter from Jacques who had left just in time, so he didn’t have to be part of this.

Thanks, Jacques.

I owe you one, Mon Amour.

Oh, he absolutely did.

“I don’t understand,” Flynn’s father, John, said. “Are you saying he’s unwell and possessed?”

It was Rinnon’s turn to go there.

Jolie, do not!

Jolie tried not to laugh. Instead, she was honest. There was no way to sugarcoat this.

“Flynn is carrying Rinnon, a Horseman of the Apocalypse, inside him. He’s not just your son anymore. He’s a demon God’s vessel.”

And that went over as well as it could.

At the word‘demon’, Flynn’s mother, a Catholic, started crying.

Flynn’s father just sat there.

“Oh, God. He got into drugs, didn’t he?” his father asked. “He had this one cop friend, Tommy, who was sketchy as hell. Aren’t drugs the gateway to Satanism?”

Vanth laughed from where she stood.

Why?

Well, first, Jolie was having a rough time, and second because Tommy was still his friend, and a hybrid human-vamp like Flynn had once been.

Jolie was frustrated.

Clearly, Flynn didn’t get his ability to read between the lines from either of them.

“No, not drugs. Me. He got into me.”

Rinnon was in her head.

And that’s the best place to be, Little One. Trust me. I could get into you all over again and never be bored.

Jolie stopped that.

Rinnon. Get Flynn to come out. This isn’t easy. I was an expert in deviant behavior, not a family counselor. I don’t know how to deal with them.

Rinnon was honest.

I’m trying. If I can’t, you might have to come help me. He’s dead silent, and I can’t get behind his one mental wall. I’d have to blow through it, and that would kill all his memories.