Devil of Dublin

by B.B. Easton

Grandpa bent forward and sank one knee into the grass, making himself as short as I was. He did that a lot. It made me feel special, like he was on my team instead of the grown-ups’.

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

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 knew. She knew, and she’d come back anyway.

“This is fun. Maybe I should do hair when I grow up. I used to think I’d be a teacher, like my mom, but she’s so tired and grumpy all the time. She says teaching is the hardest job ever. She also says they don’t pay her enough because ‘society devalues traditionally female occupations.’ ” Darby said that last part in a deep, grown-up voice.

I hated the way my arms felt when she wasn’t in them.

It was as if all of Ireland were mourning with me.

Because there, on her finger, was a diamond the size of my hatred for humankind.

He rarely cursed, and whenever I slipped up and cursed around him, he never failed to remind me that my “white trash” was showing. But when he drank, all those lower-class words he’d been trying so hard to suppress came flying out like bullets. And they were usually aimed at me.

Ten minutes later, I was using the flashlight feature on my cell phone to illuminate Kellen’s path as he carried a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound corporate attorney over his shoulder into the forest.

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

Because I got one foot in hell, I thought, zipping up my jeans. Keeps me nice and toasty.

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

I had one foot in hell. And my half hour in heaven was almost up.

Even though danger chased him like a shadow, even though I might never know what he was involved in or when the next threat would appear, I couldn’t deny that I’d felt safer with him in a hail of gunfire than I had in my own home.

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.

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. From that moment on, I was going to be every bit the white knight she saw when she looked at me. Darby deserved a hero, and I’d be goddamned if I was going to let it be anyone else.

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’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,”

I would’ve followed Kellen through the gates of hell.

I had only ever done what I had to do, not what I wanted to do. Wanting was excruciating. Wanting was emotional suicide.

She was the only one who ever saw me.

Darby Collins used to be fucking fearless. She’d been tiny and covered in freckles and always missing at least one tooth, and she wasn’t scared of shite.

She was the only person who wasn’t afraid of me. The only person I felt like I could express myself around. Even if it came out wrong or I got upset or I lost control, Darby had never treated me any differently. Now, if I went silent or raised my voice or so much as looked at her wrong, she cowered like a kicked dog.

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

And when I finally floated too close to the sun, Kellen was there to catch me as I crashed back down to earth.

Eyes as steely as the gun he carried lifted and locked on to mine.

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.”

“Let me hear you, angel.”

But being with Darby made me feel brave in a completely different way. It gave me the courage to imagine a different life. One where I could look however I wanted, be whatever I wanted, have whatever I wanted … because for the first time ever, those wants felt like possibilities instead of liabilities.

I’d never felt better in my entire fucking life, which was a problem because I was about to have to play the part of a man who was incapable of feeling anything at all.

I might have picked up my bag and walked out of that room with my body intact, but my mind was locked inside a windowless attic in Glenshire.

“Beer’s free in Ireland … unless yer ugly.”

I’d gotten my half hour in heaven. And now, the Devil knew I was dead.

“Is fíor bhur ngrá,” Kellen recited, his voice as soft and sad as his haunted gaze. “We have eternity, remember? Maybe I’ll deserve you by then.”

NO. It was a decree. A demand. A line drawn in the sand. NO. I would not let another man touch me without my permission. NO. I would not abandon my body and let it be attacked. NO. I was not powerless. Helpless. Or weak. In fact, I was the most dangerous force on earth. I was somebody with nothing to lose.

But there is no honor among thieves. We were all pieces of shite.

What she’d felt for me had been based on a lie, but what I felt for her would haunt me for the rest of my life.

“You opened my eyes. You showed me that power is something you take back, not something you wait to be given. You showed me a life I’d never even dreamed of.”

It was as if he’d never been given a gift in his life.

“This is the girl I fell in love with back in Glenshire.”

Kellen grinned, and I could almost feel his self-hatred crack like a glacier and start to melt in my hands.

I’ve been yours since the moment we met. I thought you were magical then, and I still do. You are my past, you are my present, and according to a thousand-year-old lake spirit, you are my eternity.

I would have the rest of my life to process the trauma of almost losing him. I wasn’t going to let it steal another second of my joy now that I finally had him back.

Kellen was the most courageous, most resilient, most formidable person I’d ever met. He’d found the strength to destroy the men who’d hurt us, and if that made him the Devil, then I would gladly burn in hell by his side.

I laughed. I laughed, and I laughed until tears of joy streamed down my face.

I would love nothin’ more than to haunt these woods with you for eternity.”