by Parker,Lori
“Bullshit.” I’m a profesh bullshitter, so I know it when I see it. “Why not just hop back on down to the old sauna under the ground, and be done with it?”
“It’s not that simple,” is the only answer he gives me.
“Find another hunter.”
I go to duck under his arm. He grabs me and slams me back into the brick wall, and my teeth rattle a bit from the impact. Suddenly, he’s all over me. His long, aristocratic nose is running up my neck as I move my head back. It’s the single most sensual moment of my life. And I hate myself, so much right now.
“I don’t want another hunter,” he breathes into my neck, his teeth brushing my skin.
My skin crackles with arousal. Shame slams my heart in fast staccato. I slam my knee into his groin. Fortunately, this move works on anything with a penis, demons included. The impact is enough to break the way he has me trapped, and I flee back into the crowded bar. Safety in numbers.
Kade returns through the front door about ten minutes after I get back. He looks completely unruffled as he joins a table full of college bros, and downs the plastic cup of whiskey that Lindsay brings to him upon his return.
I watch him like a hawk and manage to spill half of a customer’s drink down the front of my shirt, which is thankfully black. When I look back up from dabbing the drink off of myself and the counter, I find Kade watching me. A knowing smile on his face.
I am so screwed.
****
Daylight pours into the window above my bed. It’s blinding but refreshing. I managed to stay alive for another 24 hours. I arch my back, and stretch my legs. An answering nip on my big toe lets me know that Bear kitty is seriously pissed that I disturbed his sleep.
“Time to get up Bear-Bear,” I coo at him.
Bear is the only man in my heart now. He’s a huge black tom cat. I took him to a vet a while back who declared that he must be part panther. My big boy was fifteen pounds of sleek muscle, with a shiny coat to boot. I dump his measured cup of high-end cat food into his bowl, and he meows at me in answer. Damn cat eats better than me.
I pull the milk out of the fridge and pour it over a bowl of cereal. Folding my body onto my only kitchen chair, I eat in a state of half-sleep and dawning horror as I remember the events of the night before.
My cellphone rings from my purse across the table, and I slide it toward me. I rustle through the shit and come across the hilt of my knife, pulling it out. Yup, covered in blood and receipts dried to it.
My phone stops ringing, only to start up again. I finally get a grip on it and flick it on without checking the number. Only three people have my number: Todd, my aunt, and Lindsay.
“Hello,” I greet, my voice flat. I wait for my aunt to bitch me out for sounding pissed to talk to her. Seriously Aunt Milly, this is just my fucking voice.
“Finally, I’ve been calling you for hours.”
That’s not my aunt. Or Lindsay. Or Todd. The musical notes of his accent assault my ears.
“How’d you get my number?” I ask. It’s a stupid question. The answer becomes even more obvious when I hear a familiar giggle on the other side. The noise is followed by the sound of lips kissing, and clothes rustling. A faint feminine moan emits from my no-longer-almost-friend, and I’m tempted to murder her.
“Are you seriously fucking my friend, while you call me?” I ask.
“I’m not fucking her right now.” Another moan, this one more urgent and breathless. “I do have a finger or two buried inside her.”
Sweet, milky vomit races up my throat, and I swallow thickly to stop it from exiting my mouth.
“I don’t want fucking details dude,” I yell into the phone. An answering thump on my apartment wall lets me know that Old Man Perkins is awake and not at all charmed by my beautiful voice. Seriously Mr. Perkins, this is just my fucking voice.
“Jealous?” Kade purrs on the other end. Fuck him. And fuck Lindsay.
“No. What do you want?”
I should hang up. Why haven’t I hung up?
“If you hang up I’m just going to call back,” he warns. I have no idea how he can read me so well. I know a lot about demons, and I’m like ninety percent certain they can’t read thoughts over the phone. I’m like sixty percent certain they can’t read thoughts at all.
“I really want to kill you; you know that, right?”
“You also want to fuck me.”
Fucking asshole. “Not as much as I want to kill you.”
He’s a lust demon, his entire existence is for the sole purpose of making humans want to fuck him. So yeah, I’m unfortunately human.
"Aren't I lucky?" he asks
“Well if you’re really lucky, you’ll get to do both,” I say.
I can’t believe I just admitted that. I hop out of my chair and begin pacing my apartment to try to dispel some of my humiliation. Just as my face starts to cool, it burns up again. There is an unmistakable noise of moist grossness coming from Kade’s side of our conversation.
“What the hell was that noise?” I blurt. I slap my hand over my mouth, because I know what that noise was.
“I’m eating breakfast, Tyler. It’s delicious. Warm, and soft. Homemade peaches and cream. Do you like peaches and cream, Tyler? I bet yours tastes even more divine than this.” Lindsay’s moan almost covers up the wet noises coming from Kade’s mouth.
Fuck. This. Shit. I hang up.
Fifteen minutes later I get a text message. It’s a selfie of Kade, with his tongue sticking out between his fingers. Dirty, nasty boy.
I text back. Gross dude.
Kade: I’m beginning to question your life choices Tyler. Are you a virgin?
Me: Wow. Okay. Where and when do you want me to kill you?
Kade: You should try foreplay. You’d love it.
Me: I. Want. You. Dead.
Kade: All I read was, I. Want. You. In. Bed.
Despite myself I chuckle at the cheeky bastard. He’s persistent, that’s for sure. And not totally off base about how some parts of me feel about him.
Me: Do you know where I live?
Me: Nevermind. Of course you do. Get your flesh bag over here in two hours. I’ll have everything ready.
Kade: Sounds good.
My phone rings immediately after I read Kade’s last message.
“What?” I snap when I see it’s him. Fucking hell, I have a demon in my contacts.
“Don’t forget the whips and handcuffs.” He hangs up on his laugh.
Kinky bastard.
****
Lindsay is more than willing to cover my shift today. She thinks Kade is going to come back and sit at the bar like a puppy in love. I sit through twenty minutes of excruciating details of their night together before I deem it appropriate to cut her off with a thanks for covering my ass. I almost feel bad that I am going to kill ‘the best lay she’s ever had.’
But, it’s my job.
A knock sounds at my door. It’s light. I barely hear it over the music I have blaring, mostly to drown out reruns of Judge Judy blaring from Old Man Perkins’ apartment. We are mutually drowning each other out at this point. Luckily there are only two apartments here, so we can only make each other miserable.
I throw the door open to a god. Only he’s not: he’s living sin. And he looks tempting as hell. I want to slap the smug smile off his face. I finally meet his eyes, but I don’t slap him. Because in the light of day, Kade’s eyes are breathtaking. Light green or maybe hazel, I can’t tell for sure.
“Fuck you, Kade,” I say as I swing the door open and let him into my sanctuary.
There are various knives laying around the demon trap I’ve drawn in dry erase marker on my linoleum floor. It’s a pentagram, with some other symbols added into it to keep a demon from escaping, once they’ve stepped into the circle. My kitchen table is shoved into my living room, and my cat is howling in his carrier, because I didn’t want him to smudge my pentagram before it dried. But Kade isn’t paying attention at any of that. His
eyes are glued to my stereo. Then they flick to my breasts, then back to my stereo.
I roll my eyes. Figures he’d be looking at my boobs.
“Justin Beiber?” He rubs the back of his neck as he takes in the rest of the apartment, waiting for my response.
“His new album is amazing, so shut up.”
“I just didn’t figure you for a Belieber, is all.”
“Help me, Kade, I’ve got a fever, Beiber Fever,” I say as I dramatically fall into his arms. He catches me easily, and my breath hitches as he stares down at me.
It dawns on me how insane it is that I am falling into the arms of a demon. A demon who has serious creeper vibes. I scramble to get back on my own feet and away from him. I happen to catch my own reflection in the mirror and laugh. Now I get his confusion. I’m wearing a My Chemical Romance shirt and ripped black skinny jeans.
“Yeah dude, I’m emo and I like JB. I’m full of complexities.”
“So you are.”
I gesture to my beautiful pentagram. “Shall we get to the killing?” I ask, less eager than I should be at vanquishing what is obviously a very powerful demon.
I walk into the kitchen. I definitely don’t feel great about this. Must be because I forgot to eat lunch, or something. It’s not the idea of getting rid of the Walking Temptation in my living room.
“You sure you don’t wanna give it a go before we do this?” His thumb hitches to my open bedroom door. His throat constricts as he swallows deeply.
“Nervous?” I tease, and bend down to light a candle.
“No, I just don’t want to spend eternity wondering what it would feel like being inside you.”
I jump because I had no idea he’d come to stand behind me.
“Ugh. Give it a rest,” I say and push him into the pentagram. “Just watch your step.” I gesture to the floor. I don’t think dry erase marker will hold up well to a lot of foot traffic. He roars with laughter when he finally realizes what I drew the pentagram with. I wait patiently for him to stop with my hands on my hips. My foot is tapping impatiently on the floor by the time he wipes tears from his eyes.
“I want my deposit back when I move out,” I offer as a weak explanation. I’m not stupid enough to think that my pentagram is strong enough to hold him, but he stays willingly. A lamb to be sacrificed. Only I’m not appeasing anyone but myself and the karmas.
And he’s definitely more wolf than lamb.
Now he’s the one waiting patiently. I’m a bit rusty on the vanquishing spell after not using it for months, so I pick up an old notebook and read it over before I start to recite in Latin. This is an invocation that I’ve used before. A lot. And it’s worked like a charm every time.
I say the spell three times with my eyes closed, because for some reason, killing a willing demon feels not so great. Maybe it’s because I love the chase. Or maybe it’s because the fact that Kade is willing to commit suicide means that there is more to him than just sex. After the third chant ends I open my eyes to find Kade still standing in my kitchen. And he looks … defeated.
“I don’t understand.” I stare at him, stupefied. “This spell always works!
My voice carries across the apartment, and on cue my neighbor hits the wall with his cane. It breaks Kade from whatever trance he’s in and he snaps his head up, and he stares at me with black eyes, empty except the fiery red veins flowing through them. Oh fuck. I hadn’t noticed the red veins last night.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” I yell at him. I grab the nearest knife and throw it at him. It hits its target with a wet thwap in his stomach. I’m so angry my hands shake and fear starts creeping into me, wiping out any of the comfort and compliance that I had in his presence. “You’re a fucking ArchDemon!”
I throw another knife, and this time, the knife embeds itself in his shoulder. I was aiming for his heart, but my aim is shit, I’m so enraged. They’re enchanted blades, not enough to kill him. Not even with the incantation still burning through the air.
He pulls the knife out of his stomach just as I get a third knife in my hand ready to throw. I let it fly and hit him in the other shoulder. The knife in his hand drops to the floor, and the cheap thing breaks, as the blade comes completely out of the handle. That knife was one of my first and oldest, the only thing I could afford on a limited allowance. I grab another knife from the floor and ready myself to fling it at him.
Kade collides with me, knocking me to the ground. He’s heavy on top of me, blood pours from his wounds, unable to heal while the cursed blades are still in him. He props himself up over me so the knives in his shoulders aren’t driven in deeper. He’s over me, his large hands trapping my arms to the floor.
“Stop, Ty.”
He’s in pain. A flicker of remorse burrows into my stomach. I push it out, and drive the knife in my hand into his lower back. If he were human, even if he were a lesser demon, he would be dead. Instead the knife smokes a little, and he merely grunts in increasing pain. His lips slam onto mine, and the shock of the kiss stays my hand from twisting the knife more.
“Stop, Ty,” he almost sobs into my mouth. I can literally feel the pain and frustration radiating from him. His ribs dig into mine with every breath he takes.
“How did you get out of the circle, and why won’t you die?” I ask as I stare into his now-human eyes. He closes them, my last question the hardest strike I’ve given him. We both know the vanquishing spell should have worked, even on an ArchDemon.
He tears himself off me, and before I can even recover from the loss of his weight, he’s out the door, slamming it behind him.
Bear hisses from across the room, and I flop back down onto my floor. My fingers curl in a pool of dark red blood. It’s richer than human blood. Thicker. Sweeter too; the blood from his lip, from when I bit him during his kiss, still lingers on my tongue.
When my breath evens out, I see that splatters of his blood smeared the marker, just enough to open the circle to him.
“Hey, Bear-Bear, you think demon blood stains?” I ask my now-loudly protesting fur baby. “Yeah, yeah. Let me get this shit off the floor first okay? I’m not sure what demon blood does to kitties.”
I peel myself off the floor and head for the sink. It’s gonna take probably like two rolls of paper towels to clean this mess up.
Fuck my life. Not killing a demon is expensive and unrewarding.
Chapter Two
It’s a few weeks before Kade comes back into my life.
He sits in the almost-empty bar, brooding over a glass of whisky as I fully ignore him. Fuck him. I want nothing to do with him.
Except, I’ve scoured every source I can on how to kill an ArchDemon. There are plenty of spells other than the one I used, but from my research, the one I used should have worked. So there is something else going on here. Something that Kade didn’t tell me.
I don’t know why I am so pissed that he’s hiding shit from me. I’m not his girlfriend, and he’s definitely a lying-sack-of-shit demon.
Lindsay is like a pig farmer at a hog auction. She’s so fucking excited that her Romeo has returned, she hasn’t stopped humming some fucking bullshit pop song.
I’m just pissy because I deleted Justin from my life as punishment for failing to vanquish Kade. I’m officially having Beiber withdrawals.
“Can you stop fucking humming?” I yell at Lindsay across the bar.
We’re doing inventory. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any reason for two of us to be here on a Tuesday afternoon.
I’m also annoyed because all she wants to talk about is Kade. Isn’t Kade so hot, Tyler? Isn’t Kade just the best? Kade is the best sex I’ve ever had. The way she describes him to the other girls is a bit confusing, because Kade isn’t the tall, dark, and handsome demon that she’s describing. Maybe she’s just playing him up to be more manly looking. Kade is hot, but some girls don’t go for guys with his traditional all American looks.
“What the fuck is your problem, Tyler?” She says my name with a sn
eer. Lindsay and I are no longer almost-friends.
“You’re a shitty hummer. And that song fucking sucks balls. That’s my fucking problem.” I’m closest to the bar so I turn on our PA system and plug in my music player to the hardest, heaviest, most emo playlist I have. We’re in the motherfucking Black Parade, bitch.
“We’re not listening to this depressing emo shit.” Lindsay stomps over to me and turns the volume down.
“Suck my dick Lindsay,” I growl at her again, and crank the volume back up.
“Ladies, there is no need to fight over me.” Kade’s leaning against the counter now. His face is shitty and smug and I hate him. Lindsay is annoying me so much, I forgot Kade was in the bar.
“I hate you.” I poke him in the shoulder. Right where my knife was embedded. “And I want my fucking knives back.”
We have a stare off over the always sticky bar. Lindsay eyes us in slowly dawning horror.
“Wait, you two know each other?” Her voice cracks.
Some guilt leaks into me as I realize that she thinks I slept with her pseudo-boyfriend. Then I remember that he hasn’t spoken to her in weeks either. Oh, and that he’s a demon, not her fucking boyfriend.
“Whatever,” I say as I bite back the excuse ready to fall out of my mouth. I stomp out the back of the bar and into the alley. Fuck, I wish I had a joint or something to take the edge off.
Leaning back into the same brick wall that Kade had thrown me against a few weeks ago, I point my head the sky, close my eyes, and exhale. How had life gotten so messed up in just a few short weeks?
“What are you thinking?” he asks, already too far in my personal bubble for comfort.
“I have got to start paying better attention,” I snap, irritated that he has once again snuck up on me.
“Don’t worry, no one will bother you so long as I am around.” Like it’s a promise of security, like he’s not one of the biggest fucking threats alive.
“That is so reassuring,” my sarcasm drips.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Ty.” He runs a finger along my jaw, and down my neck. “Do you believe me when I say that?”