Devil of Dublin

by B.B. Easton

He laughed, and I thought he looked just like a leprechaun. His once-bright orange hair had faded to a golden blond by then, and he had so many freckles that his face looked like a wrinkly, old, speckled egg, but the twinkle in his eye was just as sharp and mischievous as a child’s.

“But ya have to be quiet if ya want to see one. Quiet as a mouse. Fairies have excellent hearin’. If they sense a human nearby, they’ll use their magic to disappear like that.”

Biscuits, I’d discovered, were just delicious sandwich cookies with vanilla custard cream in the middle that you were allowed to eat if you pretended to like tea.

He scared me, but the idea of letting him get away scared me more.

He couldn’t be the witch, I decided. He had fairy magic all over him.

He didn’t even have a single freckle. That made me sad. Grandpa had told me that everywhere you have a freckle is where an angel kissed you. I must have been kissed a million times, but this boy hadn’t been kissed even once.

“Ya know what they say about the Devil. Once upon a time, he was God’s most beautiful angel.”

“Kellen?” My guts twisted into violent knots as I jumped up, facing the hill. I saw her instantly, a riot of color in a sea of green. Coppery-orange hair. A rainbow-striped hoodie. And a pair of wellies as yellow as Mr. Lafferty’s farmhouse.

That gap-toothed grin destroyed me. Ran me through with medieval brutality. It wasn’t clean. Or quick. It was slow and jagged and splintered as it pierced my heart, twisting on the way in, dragging on the way out. It left a million brittle shards behind, ensuring that I would never ever forget who that organ belonged to. Darby Collins. The only person who ever smiled when they saw me.

She was a little taller. Her hair a little longer. But it was as if the moment she’d stepped into those woods, the past year of my life—every shitty second of it—had just disappeared.

“They’re your favorite!” Darby clapped as I pulled out a handful of crushed biscuits. My mouth watered at the sight of them, but my throat locked up completely as heavy, rusty chains of emotion tightened around my neck. Breathing was difficult. Swallowing? Impossible.

It hurt so much. Not the knots or the tangles, but the tenderness. It felt like she was sawing my heart in half with that fucking stick.

Being near him when he was that upset was terrifying—he was like a wild, caged beast, all jerky movements and darting eyes, bared teeth and fiery breath—but I didn’t have a choice. A prickly, tingly cord of magic had coiled itself

Pushing up onto my tiptoes, I rested my chin on his shoulder, and as soon as our pounding hearts were lined up, I felt the invisible gears that had been pulling me closer grind to a halt. I could almost hear the click of it, like a key fitting into a lock.

Her eyes locked on to mine—wide and green and surrounded by freckles—and the relief I saw in them lit a new fire within me. A flickering glow, like the flame of a candle, deep in my godforsaken soul.

Her eyes lifted to mine, round and sweet, and without a word, without a plan, without a clue as to why we would do such a thing, Darby and I pressed our bloody palms together. And kissed. The moment her lips touched mine, the same still blue presence that had beckoned me into the water returned. It wrapped around my mind like the tail of a cat, warm and soft and cautiously curious. Then, it spoke. “Is fíor bhur ngrá,” it purred. “Tugaim mobheannacht daoibh.”

I’d never been to Glenshire in the winter before. I didn’t like it. Instead of being green and lush and buzzing with nature sounds, the woods were silent. Brittle. Gray. It was as if all of Ireland were mourning with me. The thought was oddly comforting.

“Sorry if I … disturbed you. I just got lost for a minute and thought I was somewhere else.” “Aye,” she said, her cloudy bluish eyes sizing me up. “Ya been lost a lot longer than that now, haven’t cha? Come in, child. Let’s get ya out of the cold.”

My head whipped to the side, and there—marching up the hill, barefoot with the bottom of her dress in both fists—was a bleedin’ apparition. A vision in black. Darby fucking Collins.

May those who love us, love us, And those who don’t love us, may God turn their hearts, And if he doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles, so we’ll know them by their limping.

I wanted him. I wanted to feel his fairy magic on my skin again. I wanted to be looked into instead of looked at. I wanted to be held instead of held down.

I felt her reach for me. Felt her relief. And when I extended my arms and reached for her too, she was there. She was actually fucking there.

I wasn’t letting anything take her from me again. Not even God himself.

“Wh-wh-why aren’t you f-f-freezing too?” Darby asked over the sound of zips and fabric rustling behind me. “There’s l-l-literally s-s-steam coming off of you.” Because I got one foot in hell, I thought, zipping up my jeans. Keeps me nice and toasty.

May you be in heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.

Darby was an angel in the flesh, and if the rumors were true, I was the spawn of Satan himself. But I didn’t give a single solitary shite.

If the Devil wanted to drag me back to hell now, he was going to need a fucking body bag.

Darby’s joy pumped into my veins like pure, uncut sunshine after eight endless years of night.

Hope was a killer. Just like me.

I knew fear. I’d been living with it since I was thirteen years old. In fact, the only time I hadn’t felt it was every second since Kellen had come storming back into my life.

A bashful smile brightened his dark features … and sealed my fate along with it. I couldn’t walk away after seeing that. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life trying to make him do that again. As often as possible.

The flames had set me free.

“He saved her, just like he had already saved himself.”

I had the skills necessary to take a life with my bare hands or from thirty meters away, but nothing had ever made me feel more powerful than discovering that I had the ability to make Darby Collins make that fucking sound.

I was no longer human or demon or even fucking breathing. I was simply hers—mind, body, and cursed black soul.

I had never understood desire before. I didn’t want men; I wanted to avoid men. I wanted to become invisible to men. But Kellen wasn’t a man. He was a god. Powerful and divine and impossibly perfect.

But Kellen was different. He didn’t want to take anything from me. And knowing that made me want to give him the world.

Darby was just trading one demon for another, and she didn’t even know it.

“Trust me,” I said, giving her a smirk, “yer the least fucked up person in this room.” Darby’s swollen lips spread into a breathtaking smile, and at that very second, I made a vow to myself. I didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, but I was going to.

I wanted to give her everything I had. My fucking life. My splintered heart. My hateful, hell bound soul. She could do with it what she pleased. I didn’t care. None of it belonged to me anymore, and it hadn’t since I was ten years old.

“I’m in love with you, Darby,” I said, pressing my lips to her shoulder. “Always have been. And if I had a fucking birth certificate, I’d ask you to marry me right now.”

“I’m in love with you too, Kellen Donovan,” she whispered, rolling her hips as I swelled inside of her. “Always will be.”

Wanting was excruciating. Wanting was emotional suicide. But ever since Darby had come back into my life, it was all I fucking did. Want. And it terrified me.

She was the only one who ever saw me.

The want she had awakened in me was ravenous, insatiable … ancient. It felt as if it had a power all its own. A power that was greater than mine.

“I want yer fuckin’ ghost.”

If the Devil had been God’s most beautiful angel, then Kellen wasn’t just his son. He was the Prince of Darkness himself.

He was a masterpiece in black and white. Strong and tender. Familiar and mysterious. A lover and a fighter. Focused and yet somehow completely lost.

“All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is for you to look at me the way you’re lookin’ at me now.”

“Look at me.” I did as he’d commanded, and the moment our eyes met, I felt my cheeks flush and that uncontrollable smile return as love and lust and fairy dust danced across my skin.