by RJ Blain
Protection gigs sucked, especially when it involved protecting someone against their will. No matter what happened, I was screwed, and my success hinged on learning everything I could about my victim.
“Who are you, Malcolm? Why does your family want you gone?” I made myself comfortable in front of my laptop and tapped in my password. The instant I logged in, I changed my password to a variant of ‘Satin sucks socks’ for shits and giggles.
I’d invoke the devil’s misspelled name every time I used my computer, and I’d do it with a smile. Once satisfied with my blasphemy, I went to work.
I started with a name search and was dismayed to learn Malcolm Findlay Stewart was a very common Scottish name. On second thought, I could work with a Scot. I didn’t know a single woman who objected to the occasional objectification of a smoking, bare-chested Scot in a kilt.
Considering the little Bubba Eugene had told me, I tossed in fireman as a keyword to see if I could narrow the two million results to something a bit more manageable. I grinned. If Scots in kilts could make a woman’s blood boil, what would a hunky fireman Scot do? Curiosity reared its ugly head and bit me in the ass, and unable to resist the lure, I checked the image results.
A half-naked man covered in soot holding an entire litter of disheveled, soaked kittens took the top spot.
“Holy abs,” I whispered, licking my lips and swallowing so I wouldn’t drool. It took far longer than I liked to realize the rest of his clothes were on the ground serving as a blanket for a bunch of sopping wet puppies. Clicking the image took me to an article about a fire at an animal shelter, declaring Malcolm Findlay Stewart a local hero for entering the collapsing building to rescue as many of the trapped animals as he could.
A second picture showed more of his face, which was bloodied from a cut near his hairline. Beneath the blood and soot, I thought he was blond or a pale ginger.
Meow.
If my job involved kidnapping him, I’d be a very happy kitty. I’d even hunt him as a feline, since I couldn’t purr when human. Lionesses couldn’t purr, either, but I’d do my best. On looks alone, he was worth purring over. Add in his dedication to rescuing kittens and puppies and I might not ever let him go if I got my hands on him.
I’d met too many pretty men who couldn’t tie their shoelaces without help. This specific Malcolm Findlay Stewart jumped into burning buildings, and he didn’t draw a line at only rescuing sentients. He risked his life for unwanted pets.
Could a more perfect man exist?
Since he was so easy on the eyes, I made a note to check if he’d modeled for any sexy fireman calendars. I bet they made him Mr. July on virtue of him being too hot to handle. I needed every last calendar featuring him so I could properly indulge in my fledgling crush.
It took a lot of effort, but I dragged my attention back to work. The addition of fireman to my search had narrowed my pool down to several hundred men scattered across the United States. Creating a spreadsheet, I began the tedious task of listing them by name, state, and city. Once finished, I filtered by the states I believed might have men nicknamed Bubba. I refused to believe Bubba was my client’s real name. Still, I checked his name, too, just in case a Bubba Eugene showed up on the same page as a Malcolm or Malcolm Findlay.
No such luck.
However, I did discover three Bubba Eugenes. Two lived in Virginia and one lived in Tennessee. I thought it safe to assume the cousins lived in the same state, thus limiting my pool of eligible Scots to six, and the rescuer of baby animals numbered among them.
I thanked God several times for the hope I might get my filthy paws on a Scottish firefighter worthy of a second look, and not just because he—them, all six of them—looked like escapees from the high heavens. Their abs alone made my mouth water. I suspected their presence was responsible for elevating the state’s temperature by a few degrees. The men could easily explain a few things about the state’s weather, too. I bet Mother Nature summoned storms most nights to cool her jets.
Since they all shared the same name, I went with the sexy fireman calendar theme and assigned them a month. The hottest one, Sir Kitten and Puppy Rescuer Supreme, retained his title as Mr. July. August went to a ginger with a beard. I liked beards; they reminded me of whiskers, and I liked August because of its instability. While he wasn’t quite as devastatingly handsome as Mr. July, August still smoldered.
Who was I kidding? If one of them was Bubba Eugene’s cousin, I’d have my work cut out for me. Not only would I need to keep him alive, I’d have to make sure not a single inch of his perfection was marred while in my care.
The title of January went to an ice god with the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen. May went to the oddball elf-thin Scot with a smile so bright it needed to be classified as a dangerous weapon. October went to a rugged man who, according to an article I’d found, enjoyed rock climbing in the high peaks.
I figured his big hands could crush stone to powder with ease. However handsome, of the six, he was the one I didn’t want to get into a fight with. Even in my feline forms, I suspected he could smash me to pulp.
The last of the men—and my most realistic option—lived within twenty miles of Tennessee’s Bubba Eugene Stewart. Something about the Scot’s dark eyes worried me, cold despite his otherwise pleasant expression. I named him February because of my dislike for that month, when it felt like spring would never come. With my luck, I’d be stuck with February, and no matter how handsome he was, eyes like his worried me.
They were the eyes of someone who’d enjoy skinning me for my pelt.
Mr. February enjoyed showing off his body—all of it—on social media. Maybe his eyes creeped me out, but I could lose hours admiring the rest of him. At twenty-four, he was younger than I liked, which did a good job of cooling my jets and convincing me maybe I should work rather than lick my chops and think of the many ways I could enjoy him for dessert. His public profiles reported he worked at a car dealership, which fit some of Bubba Eugene’s vague descriptions. Twenty minutes into my browsing, I discovered links to his online dating profiles.
I clicked.
Big mistake.
If the pictures of him showing off his prowess with his equally pretty boyfriends were any indication, he had a very active and public sex life—so public he used his exploits to attract new men to his bed. To add to the chaos, he was openly engaged to two of his lovers.
Damn. I needed half his luck. I scratched the man off my list of candidates, filing away his profile information in case I needed to drag my client over coals for lying to me. If Mr. February was Bubba Eugene’s cousin, Bubba was going to end up with a really rude wakeup call in the form of my foot up his ass.
I hated when my clients lied to me.
It took less than ten minutes to eliminate Mr. October from my list; he was married with children. Mr. May was engaged. Mr. August went through women almost as fast as I collected saris, leaving me with Mr. January and Mr. July as my viable options. Both were volunteer firefighters and led private enough lives. I couldn’t find them on social media; they only showed up as mentions in rare articles detailing their acts of heroism in the face of fire—literal fire.
Deleting Findlay from my searches helped; I scored a hit on Mr. January.
He deserved a very successful career as a fashion model. Was he my target? Did models make enough to be involved with investments? I had no idea.
Models were way out of my league, and not because of my looks. I had the exotic market nailed down, and men liked that well enough, but when it came to public events, I became a liability. When courting wealthy companies, the rich and famous wanted pretty but generic American girls hanging off their arms.
If Mr. January was my target, I wouldn’t have to guess his measurements. His modeling agency included everything from his species to his metabolism rating. With a rating of ninety-five percent human, it was no wonder they showed off his private information. I’d never met such a pure human before. I’d heard of them, but
they were going extinct. Within a hundred years, humanity would only exist because so many different species liked sleeping together, resulting in what the CDC classified as a human but wasn’t, not really.
Even then, hybrid children weren’t human, not really. To make matters worse for humanity, people like me existed, non-humans who’d been born human to human parents but changed during puberty into something else, further diluting the gene pool. When the magic failed again, people like me would die out or go into hibernation until the magic returned and rewrote what it meant to be human.
Cultural divides would ultimately reset humanity back to its state before magic had bloomed and taken over Earth. If I endured beyond magic’s recession, my exotic appearance would sink my ship in European-pale America.
I struggled enough as it was; I didn’t need my odd skin color and foreign appearance becoming the primary focuses of discrimination and prejudice. It was hard enough convincing people I was a sphinx. If prejudice turned skin deep, I’d be in trouble.
Shaking my head, I forced my attention back to my work. No matter how many different ways I scoured the internet for Mr. January and Mr. July, I couldn’t eliminate either one of them as a possibility. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want them to disappear. Neither had a single scandal sullying their name. At first blush, they were truly beautiful and perfect in all ways.
Leaning back in my chair, I scowled at my laptop. If either one suggested I should hop into bed with him, I’d do it without hesitation, and not just because it had been way too long since I’d dived between the sheets with someone. Despite my father’s nature and my wandering feet, I liked the illusion of security and permanency. Maybe one day I’d find a lycanthrope to share the rest of my life with, which would solve my relationship woes. A lycanthrope wouldn’t leave me—he couldn’t. The virus wouldn’t let him, not until death did we part. I supposed I’d be influenced by his virus, too, despite my immunity to lycanthropy.
Magic worked in mysterious ways.
My single status boiled down to my ignorance. I had no idea how long sphinxes lived, and I didn’t want to commit to a lycanthrope when it was entirely possible I’d drop dead from old age within a year. No one knew anything of substance about sphinxes, not even the CDC. Unlike lycanthropes, who had lived in secrecy between the magic surges, sphinxes existed only in mythology, and thousands of years separated me from my predecessors.
At least I’d been spared becoming a research subject of the CDC. I’d been born human, thus entitled to the same protections other humans enjoyed despite my change in species categorization.
I sighed, wrinkled my nose, and closed my browser so I wouldn’t have to look at either Scottish dream come true. According to my laptop’s clock, I had an hour to blow before the devil came calling, further entangling himself in my affairs.
What did the devil want with me, anyway?
I sucked in a breath. What use did an almost pure vanilla human have for fresh water beyond drinking it? A body of fresh water had been critical to Bubba Eugene. Mysterious Mr. July could be anything, just like me. I only looked human. My DNA had been rewritten during adolescence, so much so I’d be surprised if a scan found any actual human in me at all.
Could Malcolm be someone like me?
I’d never actually met anyone else born a human and later twisted into a non-human, although I’d heard rumors about them. Most of my papers declared my species was human despite my protests. While the idea of kidnapping someone still didn’t sit well with me, the silver linings I found made the job a lot easier to stomach.
I wanted to know more. I wanted to know why. I wanted to discover the truth about Bubba Eugene’s cousin.
Hopefully, curiosity wouldn’t get this cat killed.
The first light of dawn peeked through the curtains. Ten seconds later, someone knocked on my door. Since Lord Satin of Hell—
“Satan!” the devil snarled.
—would just pop in if alone, I assumed he had angelic company ensuring his good behavior. While I had no problem courting death at the devil’s hands, angels scared me. Their lack of a head freaked me out every time. Bracing for the inevitable, I unlocked and opened the door.
Two angels waited in the hall, and the devil himself lurked behind them, an ebony beauty in a designer suit. He might’ve even succeeded at playing human if he hadn’t sheathed himself in fire and given himself a spade tail, leathery wings, and a pair of ram horns. The tousled hair was a nice touch.
Despite his efforts, the devil had nothing on Scottish firemen. “Well color me amazed and sign me up for a cruise to Scotland,” I muttered, shaking my head and retreating into my hotel room. “Come on in. Don’t mind the mess, please.”
Sane sentients didn’t invite the Lord of Hell into their home, however temporary a home my hotel room was, but I supposed pulling an all-nighter stalking Scottish studs disqualified me by default and classified me as a little crazy.
“A little?” Satin blurted.
“Shut it, Lucy.” Heading to my chair, I flopped onto it and closed my laptop’s lid so they’d have to invest effort if they wanted to meddle in my affairs.
The angels hesitated but strode into my room. It unnerved me that creatures without eyes could watch me, but I could feel their attention on me, scrutinizing and judging. With the exception of their wings, they were identical. One had blue bands on his feathers while the other’s were scarlet.
“You call Mephistopheles ‘Lucy?’” the scarlet-banded angel spluttered.
It creeped me out that I could tell which one of them was talking. Damn it. How could an entity speak without a head? To add to the confusion, the angel sounded male despite lacking obvious genitals.
If I focused on the angel’s shocked splutter, I could ground myself—and find a sick sort of amusement in the situation. I’d astonished an angel. “I like calling him Satin, too. Drives him wild. I really don’t know why I’m not dead yet. Last guy to call him Satin got wrapped in a fortune’s worth of fabric and lit on fire. I must be lucky.”
“Or he wants your soul and doesn’t have it yet.”
“Wait. I’m not headed straight to hell yet? Now I’m really impressed. I’m Kanika. Make yourselves comfortable.”
“Michael,” the blue-banded angel replied.
“Gabriel.”
My mouth dropped open. Angels couldn’t lie. They could twist words and omit the truth, but no falsehood ever left their non-existent lips. Two archangels stood in my hotel room while the Lord of Hell, the devil himself, examined my pile of sari on the floor. A single angel could smite an entire city.
Michael alone could herald in the end of days.
If I ran for the balcony and shifted, could I outrun the apocalypse?
“No,” Michael replied, stepping to my bed, twisting around so he could keep tabs on Satan. “Don’t fear, Kanika. It’s a lot of work ushering in an apocalypse. I’d like to be home in time for breakfast.”
“Of course.” Right. Archangels needed breakfast, too. “It’d be rude of me to keep you from your breakfast. Let’s get down to business. How does this work?”
Gabriel stretched out his right hand, and a black briefcase materialized in a flash of golden light. Gripping the handle, he set it on the bed. “You’ll ask Mephistopheles your questions. He’ll answer them. We’ll confirm the truth. Should you be satisfied, you’ll sign the papers. You won’t be able to read the script, which will be covered as a precaution. The documents are written in Angelic and Demonic. An English translation will be made available upon Satan’s approval.” The archangel paused. “Few mortals dare to accuse the Lord of Lies of actually lying.”
“They’re stupid, then. So, Satin. Stop playing with my sari and start talking. Was every word you said on the phone with me true, in spirit and in content? In short, are you trying to trick me?”
The angels’ laughter chimed, and I held my breath until the sound faded.
“You’re wise,” Michael complimented.
>
Huh. An archangel, one of the direct servants of God, thought I was wise? There certainly was nothing wise about even considering signing a deal with the devil.
“Don’t think too hard about it,” the devil advised. “You’ll just give yourself a headache. Every word I spoke to you was the truth in all ways.”
“He speaks the truth,” the angels declared, and their proclamation shook the hotel.
All right. Since when did the Lord of Hell play fair? “You’re really not trying to trick me?”
“I’m not trying to trick you. You blind signing these documents is nothing more than a passing amusement, a game of wits and will, one that won’t directly harm you. We’ve spoken of made enemies, of course, a factor beyond my complete control.”
“And that’s the truth?”
Michael laughed and stretched his wings, smacking the Lord of Hell with one. “He speaks the truth.”
Satan grunted and shoved the archangel’s wing out of his face. “Feathered menace.”
While uncertain of the consequences of keeping my word, I nodded. “I’ll sign.”
Neither angel attempted to change my mind, which startled me. Gabriel used my bed as a table, opening his briefcase while the Lord of Hell crossed his arms over his chest and watched. The inside glowed with a soothing, golden light.
Curiosity dug its sharp claws deep into me. Muttering a curse that made both angels twitch, I fought the desire to ask one of the many questions rattling around in my head. As the silence lengthened, I fidgeted before finally blurting, “I thought archangels lived to thwart the devil.”
Everyone laughed, and Michael whacked Satan with his wing again. “However much fun it is to annoy our brother, no. That’s not how it works. We’re like any other family. So, while we can’t quite seem to keep the same father over the years, we are the originals. He has his role. We have ours. This? This is a game we’ve never played before, a future without a past reflecting it. In our way, we’re rather like cats. Curious. Inquisitive. This is new to us. New is rare. I look forward to watching this new future unfold, so much so I won’t even peek. That would ruin the fun.”