by Jack Porter
Nor could I object to Azrael’s assessment. I didn’t have much else to offer. So maybe, just maybe, he was right. Dammit. This was not how I had envisioned the night going.
“Perhaps you might find it easier if you were to have a drink or two first,” Azrael suggested.
With an act of sheer will, I forced myself to relax and headed to the bar. My drink of choice was a rum and coke, so I ordered a triple, and choked it down as quickly as I could. Then I stood there, hesitating, just like I’d always done in the past.
“What have you got to lose?” Azrael said. “Rejection is good for the soul.”
Great, I thought. I had a demon passenger in my mind, and instead of offering me everything I could desire, he gave me one-liner motivational quotes.
Even when my life goes right, it still goes stunningly, spectacularly wrong.
I ordered another rum and coke, just a single this time, and downed that as well, and by the time I was done, the world had started to wobble a bit on its axis.
“There’s no time like the present,” Azrael said. “Just do it.”
“Enough with the motivation already,” I muttered, speaking loud enough that the guy next to me turned my way. I waved him away with a frown. “All right already, I’m doing it!”
With that, I turned toward the nearest woman, a brunette in a red dress that was trying to keep her rolls of fat in place, and stepped up to her as if I had a right to do so.
She looked at me in surprise, and I felt my cheeks starting to burn. “Uh, hi,” I said. “Um, is there any chance, do you think, that you… Could you… uh.”
“Spit it out,” Azrael said.
“Do you want to have sex with me?” I blurted.
I could see it in her eyes. The moment when surprise and polite interest turned into rejection. There wasn’t even a hint of her considering my proposition for even an instant. Her eyes just went blank, and she dismissed me without a second thought.
She turned away before she even started speaking. “No. Go away.”
I stayed at her table for half a second as my world turned into pure humiliation. What had I expected? I wondered. How could that have possibly worked?
Feeling as if everyone I’d ever met or known was laughing at me for my failure, I turned and stumbled away, intent on leaving the bar and never coming back.
“Well done,” came the voice in my head. “The first one is always the hardest. Try again, and this time start with a smile.”
The demon’s words were totally at odds with how I was feeling. I reeled toward the door, but something kept me from going through it.
“Are you crazy?” I demanded of my internal passenger. “Did you not see what just happened?”
“I saw you take the first step. I saw you start to play the numbers game. Did you really expect it to work on the first person you tried?”
He had a point. I hadn’t expected it to work.
“Now try again. Smile. Open with a compliment.”
Slowly, my humiliation began to fade. I found myself nodding. I could do this. Hell, it wasn’t as if she had pulled out a knife and cut my throat with it. All she had done was reject me.
And really, what did that matter?
Perhaps it was the alcohol in my bloodstream giving me a confidence I didn’t usually feel. But I turned back around and headed to my next target with a comparative spring in my step and my head held high.
“Hi,” I said, then belatedly remembered to smile. This woman was blonde, with blue eyes and a round, pretty face. “You look very pretty,” I managed. “Would you like to come back to my place?”
She didn’t even bother to respond out loud. Just shook her head and back to her conversation with her friend.
I turned to her next. Another blonde, this one was slim, but less pretty. “How about you?” I said. My cheeks were still burning, but nowhere near as much as they had been with the first.
This time, my target at least paused for a moment to look me up and down. But it was still a firm no, and I had no choice but to seek someone new.
“Good, good,” Azrael said, a bit grudgingly by the sound of his voice. “Keep going. Sooner or later we’ll find someone with low enough standards. Try the curly haired one over there.”
I tried. Again and again I tried. I smiled, complemented, and made my pitch to every woman in the bar. It didn’t matter if they were old or young, pretty or not, I approached them all. Most of the time, my approaches were met with instant refusal, but every now and again, someone would pause as if to consider her options. Once or twice I even thought I might be in with a chance, but that’s when my status really came into play.
I could sense it. Maybe if I’d been better looking, it wouldn’t have mattered. But then, if I’d been better looking, likely my status would have been better as well. Nevertheless, I could sense those who might have said yes mentally weighing up my perceived status in their mind, and that led to only one answer.
A shake of the head, maybe tinged with a little regret, but not much.
One of them, a chubby woman with a gap between her front teeth, summed it up nicely.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I admire your courage, but the night is still young. There’s still time for someone better to come along.”
I had no argument against that. It was all I could do to nod and keep trying.
Except that by then, I literally couldn’t. My efforts had not gone unnoticed. Suddenly, I found myself face to face with a large, overweight guy who glared down at me as he folded his arms over his ample stomach.
“You’re the one that’s been bothering all the woman here,” he said, and his tone told me everything I needed to know. He had decided that he was their self-appointed guardian angel.
I felt the sneer twist my lips before I could do anything to stop it. “Mind your own fucking business,” I said, and knew it was a mistake as soon as the words left my mouth.
I thought the fat man would throw a punch and got ready to duck. But it wasn’t him. Instead, one of his mates grabbed me from behind and lifted me into the air.
“Hey! Leave me alone!” I yelled. But the fat man just grinned. “You’re outta here,” the fat man said, and his unseen friend carried me bodily to the door. I kicked and squirmed, but there was nothing I could do. The fat man opened the door for his friend, and then I flew through the air to crash painfully onto the concrete pavement outside.
The fat man looked extraordinarily pleased with himself, and his friend, a muscular guy with a bushy moustache, did as well. I filed their faces away in that place in my mind I kept for petty revenge, and glared at them.
“And don’t come back,” the fat man said before turning back inside.
I lay on the pavement, cataloguing all the various hurts I had gained from hitting the ground. “Fat lot of help you were,” I said to my demon friend, but he didn’t even bother to answer. It was as if he had nothing to add to my failure.
I thought about hauling myself to my feet, but it just seemed too hard. Instead, I just lay there, staring up into the night.
Within just a few seconds, a face appeared above me. “Are you all right?” the face said.
Dark-haired, white make up, black lips. A Goth girl, complete with glasses and a piercing in her nose, and a drawn-on tattoo of a cross next to her eye.
“You’re pretty,” I said, out of habit, and because she was. To my surprise, she smiled at me.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re not,” she added, but there was no malice in her words. “But I guess you know that already. Do you want some company?”
I frowned, puzzled. For a moment, I didn’t say anything. Then Azrael piped up again in my mind. “Say something!”
“Um, sure,” I said.
The Goth girl smiled again, but instead of helping me up or doing anything like that, she lay down beside me as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“I’m Rachel,” she said. “What’s your name?”
&n
bsp; Chapter 12
“Simon. Simon Kingman,” I said.
She laughed beside me as if I had told a small joke. “Well Simon, Simon Kingman,” she said. “Tell me. Why are we lying on the pavement, staring up at the sky on this fine evening?”
Perhaps it was the comfortable, relaxed way she asked. Or, it might have been the alcohol still sloshing about in my bloodstream, combined with the endless sequence of failures I had endured during the evening. I mean, I had the help of an Incubus in my ear, and I still had struck out every time I went to bat.
I couldn’t help but be disappointed.
More likely, it was simply because it had been so long since anyone had taken any real interest in me at all.
Either way, I found myself speaking honestly, with no motivation in mind other than to answer her question.
“I thought my life might be finally turning around,” I said. “I found myself the essence of a demon and managed to resurrect it. I thought that would be my key to everything. Power, status, everything I’ve ever wanted. But it seems I’m too big a loser for even that to help.”
“You have a demon on your side?” Rachel asked, her curiosity plain.
“Yes. His name is Azrael, and I have bound him to me. I can hear his voice in my head.”
“Wow,” Rachel said. “I’ve never met anyone who had access to a real demon before. What sort is it? What can it do?”
I let out a laugh. “It can’t do much of anything at the moment. It’s in a diminished state, with barely any power at all.” I rubbed my elbow, the one that had taken much of the impact when the two guys had thrown me out of the bar. “It’s an Incubus, which means it gains strength through sex.” I laughed again, this time at my own inabilities. “Which would be fine if I had any hope in the world of getting laid. Which, it turns out, I don’t.”
Rachel pushed herself up onto one elbow so I could see her. She gave me a contemplative look, biting her lower lip in the process. I thought again about how pretty she was. I had no idea what her status might have been, but it was clearly much higher than mine.
She was a long, long way out of my league. “So, you’re saying you’ve effectively got a key to the castle, but you don’t have the ability to use it?”
“Yeah,” I said, chuckling at the irony. I was the one person in El Diablo who could most use Azrael’s help. At the same time, I was perhaps Azrael’s worst ever option for a host. Anyone else would have been able to get laid, thus granting Azrael some of the power he’d lost.
But me? It was hopeless.
“All I need is one to get the ball rolling,” I said, talking to myself more than anything. I didn’t really expect Rachel to answer at all.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
I looked at her, not understanding. “Huh?”
“You’re a low status guy looking for a leg up. Or, you know, a leg over. You have a demon in you that gains power from sex, and right now, it’s not worth anything much. But if you were to get laid, it might be the start of something great. Have I got that right?”
Still unsure where she was heading with all this, I nodded from my place on the pavement.
She grinned. “I’ll sleep with you,” she said. She gave a small shrug. “I mean, what’s the big deal? You look like the kind of guy who needs a boost. If I can give you one, at no real cost to myself, then why not?” She reached out and gave my nose a playful tap. “And who knows? I might even enjoy it.”
I could hardly believe it was so easy. I stared at her in confusion. After all the rejections I’d gained that evening, this was the last thing I had expected. I felt Azrael’s satisfaction in my mind even though my demon had done little to lead to this outcome.
“You’re sure?” I asked, and she nodded. “You’re not doing this just out of pity?”
She gave a snort that was mixed with a laugh. “Of course I am!” she said. “But it still counts, right? And anyway, I’ve never had the chance to sleep with a demon before. So, score one to me, right?”
With that, as if she she’d made up her mind and didn’t want to wait for me to say the wrong thing, she stood and offered me a helping hand.
“Come on,” she said. “You’ve got a place, right?”
I accepted her hand, and in moments I was standing beside her. She was taller than me by some inches, and I found myself grinning from ear to ear.
“Sure,” I said.
Chapter 13
It was only a short ride back to the apartment, and I must have spent every moment of it repeating the same phrase to myself over and over.
“Don’t blow it, don’t blow it, don’t blow it.”
I could feel the echo of my words repeated back to me by Azrael. But where mine were tinted with anxiety and excitement, the demon’s seemed almost despairing, as if he fully expected me to mess it all up. Several times, I thought to say something to Rachel, only to have Azrael throw up a caution.
“Do you really want to say that?”
I analyzed what I intended to say, and each time pulled the pin. There was no need to grovel my thanks or ask her again if she was sure. That type of dumb comment would just talk me out of a done deal.
Yet nothing could stop me from looking at her with an incredulous expression while she sat in the back of the taxi with me, calm and at ease, perfectly content with her place in the world. She was very pretty, with long legs and a nice hourglass figure.
Really, way out of my league, but I tried not to think about that so I wouldn’t be too nervous.
It didn’t help.
Even though the ride back wasn’t very long, to me, it felt like forever. Finally, we arrived and took the elevator up to my floor. I had so little experience in the art of seduction that I didn’t know quite what to do. Should I try to hold her hand?
“She’s not your girlfriend,” Azrael drawled, his dry voice aloof and vaguely condescending, as if he was talking to a slow-to-learn child.
Nor did Rachel seem to want to hold hands. She seemed happy enough to walk by my side until we reached my apartment, and then to follow me in.
“Nice place,” she said, looking around. “Is it yours?” she asked in a tone of surprise.
I almost told her about Chad and might have done so if Azrael hadn’t offered a quick warning.
“Don’t!” he said, and it didn’t take much to figure out why.
“I rent it,” I said, and even that gained a look of approval. “I have a roommate, but he’s not here at the moment,” I added, skirting around a truth that was sure to chase her away.
For a moment, I stood awkwardly, unsure how to proceed.
“Offer her a drink,” Azrael said.
“Would you like a drink?” I blurted.
Rachel didn’t answer but smiled coyly at me. “Your roommate isn’t likely to come back any time soon, is he?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. If only she knew.
It was enough. Rachel nodded, and without another word, began stripping off her clothes. She did it methodically, casually, and all I could do was stare, my heart pumping loudly in my chest. First came her black, tailored jacket, which she casually dropped on the floor. Then her boots, tough-looking, practical footwear in purple that would have served her well on a hike or a building site. She kicked them off and stood in her socks, which in contrast to everything else she wore, were a rainbow of colors aligned in horizontal rows.
“Nice socks,” I said, acutely aware of the blood rushing to my cheeks, and also straight to another place, as well.
“Thanks,” Rachel said, and she began unbuttoning her shirt, which in the darkness outside I’d taken for black but now saw to be a dark indigo blue. She shrugged out of the sleeves, and the shirt joined her jacket on the floor, leaving her standing before me in a lacy, black bra standing out sharply against her pale white skin.
She was a dress size or two bigger than most of the models the magazine industry decried as the norm, but to me, she was perfect. My breat
h caught in my throat at the sight. This was the closest I’d come to a real live naked woman in longer than I cared to admit, and even though all the good bits were still hidden, Rachel was still more appealing than all the porn sites on the web put together.
She was real, and right there in front of me.
I realized my mouth had dropped open, and there might have been a bit of drool escaping the corner. I wiped at it with the back of my hand, hoping it hadn’t put her off, and she smiled again.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, and kept going. Her jeans were next, and for a moment, she stood there in her matching panties and bra, with her multi-colored socks on her feet. “Which room is yours?” she asked.
I gestured, and that was all she needed.
“Come along,” she said, talking to me as if I was a puppy, and it was her who led the way.
I suffered a quick flashback, thinking madly that Chad’s body was still on the floor at the end of my bed, but of course it was not. There wasn’t anything left of my roommate at all.
So I did my best to get the image out of my mind and followed Rachel into my room. I watched as she ran her fingers over my collection of occult books, candles, and various other items of the arcane.
“Nice,” she said, then turned back to me. “Care to do the honors?” she asked, and for a moment I had no clue what she was talking about.
“Her bra,” Azrael supplied, and I could almost hear the unspoken word he hadn’t added to the end. Idiot. “She wants you to unhook her bra.”
I found myself blinking and swallowing at the same time. “Sure,” I managed, and stumbled toward her. Obligingly, she turned around, and I willed my hands to stop shaking as I did as she asked, the tips of my fingers brushing against her skin.
For me, the slight touch felt electric. “Steady,” came Azrael’s dry voice in my mind. “If you blow your load too early, it doesn’t count, and all this would have been for nothing.”