by Parker,Lori
“But then I came along and ruined your peace,” he says.
“You didn’t ruin my peace, because I never had any.”
“Yes, and then I fucked it out of you.”
“How can you say that, how can you be so cold to me after I just bared my soul to you?”
“I’m a lust demon.”
Ice slams into my veins at the coolness of his voice. It’s remorseless. A demon addressing another foolish girl baring her soul to him. I look up at him, at his face so devoid of anything.
“Fuck you”! I jump from the bed. Just, Fuck you!” I hurl my fists into his chest. He catches my hands easily. My mind and attack are unfocused. My mind reeling from the sudden change in Kade.
“Let’s just get this over with,” he says.
He releases my arms and gathers up the rest of our things.
I don’t speak another word. I’m angry, and I’m hurt, because this person, no, this demon, next to me, isn’t who I spent the last week with. This is something else, and the sour feeling in my gut lets me know that I was played. All along he had my number. He wasn’t surprised by my broken heart, or my grief because he saw it all along.
And he took advantage of it.
I don’t have it in me to be pissed at him, not really. Instead, I’m just really sad. And tired. I follow him out of the car, and we drive the next leg of our journey in silence. Neither of us even bothers to turn on the radio.
Maria’s home is a cute stucco house. The village isn’t mud huts and straw roofs like I assumed it would be. It’s still primitive, but not ancient.
I raise my hand and knock on her door. I don’t know what to expect, and I’m nervous. My Spanish is rusty at best and I’m trying to appeal to her goodwill here.
A small woman answers the door. Her skin is perfectly smooth, and the only indication of her advanced age is the pure snow white hair that hangs down her back in a thick braid.
“Are you Maria Isabela?” I ask in broken Spanish.
She looks at me without emotion. It’s not until she takes Kade in that her face breaks, angry.
“You have some nerve showing up here, Kade,” she spits in heavily-accented English.
My jaw must be on the ground, because I was not expecting her to speak English. I was expecting her to say Kade’s name even less.
“I need your help.” His voice is soft, a gentle caress. The same voice he uses the most with me.
“Get inside, both of you.” She rushes us into her small, but well-kept home.
She turns and offers me a kind, understanding smile. “So he roped you into helping him out?” And I suddenly think about the generations of girls that Kade has been pulling this shit on. I feel very stupid.
“Yeah.”
I hesitate and realize he didn’t need my help at all. He probably could have come down here and gotten Maria to help him on his own. Of course, maybe what he said was true, because she’s looking at him like she wants nothing more than to rip his heart out.
It makes me think she only let him in because I’m here.
“Still can’t get back in, can you?” she asks him. And to my surprise, she laughs.
“This is your fault.” His voice is low. It sends shivers down my spine. The tone dangerous.
His rage is a knife, and Maria steps back as if it actually cut her. Her movements aren’t hobbled from age, and instead, she moves with grace to avoid Kade and his anger.
She sits on the couch and motions for me to do the same.
“It’s true,” she tells me. “I did do this to him.”
And she looks proud. I don’t blame her. If I had anything left inside of me, I’d probably find a way to curse him too.
“So how does it feel?” she asks him.
I’m confused at the question because he’s obviously pissed that he’s been stuck on earth for this long.
“I thought you’d been stuck here for generations, not just one?” I ask Kade.
And he turns to me, and looks at me with utter disgust. “What would you know about time? You’re nothing but a human.”
“No need to talk to the poor girl like that, Kade. I’m the one you’re mad at.” She pats my leg. “He’s just being cruel because he doesn’t know how to deal with human emotions. Even after all this time.”
I have to rub my eyes because the old woman in front of me seems to be getting younger.
“Oh it’s merely a spell, my daughter.” She smiles at me. “Figures he’d ensnare you and not tell you the whole story.”
I sit back on the couch and stare at the ceiling. I just want to go home to my shitty life, and die of embarrassment. I can’t believe I let him do this to me.
“It’s not a long story, child,” she says. “Don’t fret. I, like you, made the mistake of falling for Kade.” She smiles and squeezes my hand. “And I thought he loved me back. I knew what he was.” She watches him with fondness that wasn’t there before. “So I made a deal with a very, very bad spirit, and gained eternal life. For a cost, of course.”
Her smile turns sad, and she stares off into space, reliving the cost of her eternal life. “I thought, it’s worth it if I can be with Kade for eternity.”
Then she laughs, a whole-body laugh, like she just heard the funniest joke on earth.
But there’s nothing funny about this story because I know how it ends.
“You know what you get when you fall in love with him,” she says. “Luckily, I had a few tricks up my sleeve. With my extended life I’d also received gifts. Powerful gifts. The evil thing said I would need them. ‘To defend my eternal body, soul and heart,’ he said. He was right, of course.”
She looks wistful. “So I used those powers to curse Kade to life on earth.” I gasp at this information. “I had a little help from someone further up the food chain for that one.” Her giggle is positively girlish.
I have the sudden and intense urge to run away from Maria. Who is no longer old at all, but a woman only a few years older than me. I can’t help but be mesmerized by her.
“Oh, and I gave him a soul.” I’m the one who laughs this time, because it’s such a sweet, sweet morsel of revenge. For every one of Kade’s victims’.
“So what he felt for me was real?” I ask Maria. At this point I’d forgotten Kade was even here.
“I fucking felt everything Tyler!” he cries in anguish.
I think back to Kade’s victims. The ones I know of; they were all willing victims. He very rarely manipulated outright, instead tweaking pre-existing feelings that people felt for each other.
“Good!” I yell back at him, a smile plastered on my face. I was never one to take joy out of other people’s pain, but the wound that Kade ripped open was still too fresh for me to be sane in this moment. And to top it all off, I just found out the demon I’d been screwing had a soul. Life is fucked up like that.
“So how do I help him?” My voice is quiet.
“Simple, just cast him into hell,” she gestures to her kitchen floor. A permanent pentagram is painted under her table, out in plain sight.
Seeing it, I’m a little bit jealous at her ability to be herself in public, but then I remember the little old lady who answered her door. We all have to hide in plain sight as this world was not always kind to those who lived out in the open. Normal people could only tolerate so much. I learned this from my time with my aunt.
“I tried that already, several times.” My shoulders sag.
“That was before.” She turns to look at Kade directly. “Before he fell in love with you.”
“Is that true?” My voice is little more than a whisper, but he hears me.
For an answer, he turns his head away from me.
I move off the couch toward him. The closer I move, the more I can feel the tension rolling off him. I can read Kade like an open book now that my eyes have been opened to him.
He isn’t a good person, but he is a person.
“What will happen to him when I send him back?” I ask Mar
ia.
“No one knows,” she answers honestly. “I don’t think any demon who has been cursed with a soul has ever chosen to return.”
“More than likely, it will get burned out by torture,” Kade answers. He sounds confident.
“And that’s what you want?” I ask him.
“I can’t live with the pain anymore,” he says.
I see it, the toll the years of being a demon with a soul have taken on him. He was banished, with a soul. I doubt very many demons have suffered that fate.
My soul feels heavy right now, and it takes everything I have inside of me to stop myself from sinking to the floor and giving up. I want. No. I need to beg Kade to stay, because this feels wrong. The whole situation is moving too fast, and I can’t process it. Tears slide easily down my face. If the outside of me looked like the inside then the salt from my tears would be burning trails down my cheeks. Instead they merely wet my face. They feel insignificant, and small compared to the monumental decision I need to make.
“Fine,” I say as I kiss him.
We move backwards with the pressure of my kiss until we bump into the kitchen table.
I flip my pocket knife out of and stab into his hand that lies on the table behind him. I don’t need it to keep him there, but I do it anyway. For me, for Maria, and for countless other victims.
He doesn’t cry out in pain, because it probably doesn’t register through the emotional turmoil I see in his eyes.
His wound doesn’t smoke, because it’s a normal blade and not an enchanted one.
I back out of the circle and begin chanting.
The first cry of pain leaves his mouth after my first recitation. It takes three. I don’t take my time. I don’t drag it out. I spare him as much pain as I can. All of my revenge centers in the knife still stuck in his hand.
This is a mercy, even if it’s breaking me to do it. Because as I’m chanting, our eyes are locked. And I see it all clearly. Everything he hid from me with bravado and charm.
It only takes a moment to fall in love with someone. It takes a lifetime to stay in love with them. I am robbing myself of a chance to have love again, but I’m not a selfish person. I’ve lost too much to hang onto something so reckless as the love of a demon.
The last word leaves my mouth, and Kade is ripped from my life. I open my eyes at the last moment and see Kade for the last time. This is reality, I gave him up so that he can be at rest.
I drop to my knees. Saying goodbye was the last straw, my body can no longer support the weight of my grief.
As my hands spread to catch my fall, I feel something clasped there. While I was busy getting my knife out of my pocket, Kade had slipped something into my other hand. I look at it and see the amulet that he’s always worn hanging from a long chain. I should take comfort that he left me something of himself, but I’m tired of being comforted by trinkets.
Maria picks me up off the floor, and we sit back on her couch. She holds me as I sob, and then she dries my tears. This stranger who loved the man that I loved. She loved him before he could love.
I see it now, the events that happened so many years ago. He ran from her, just like he ran from me. Demons weren’t meant to have souls. They weren’t meant to love.
“Don’t give up on him yet,” Maria says as she studies his amulet. She winks at me and places the chain over my head. “And don’t ever take that off. There is power in that stone, and you’ll need it.”
This time there is no wink; she’s dead serious.
And if a powerful gray witch like Maria says to keep something on, you do it.
****
I leave Mexico the same way I came into it: lost, hopeful, broken, and sweaty.
I return home tired. I’m not sure if I can continue to open myself to people.
I walk into the bar again, gripping Kade’s amulet for strength, and continue with my life.
Epilogue
Four Months Later
“Jesus, you scared me!” I gasp when I turn around to find the astral projection of my demon lover in my bathroom. I wipe the steam from the mirror to see him more clearly. He’s merely a wisp, but his reflection in the unclear mirror is more solid than I had seen in months. A deep breath passes before I turn to face him. The roar of the water running the bath almost drowns out his voice.
“Sorry, love.” He kisses my forehead. It’s not quite a real kiss, his lips feel more like cool wind on wet skin. But it’s all I have. “I don’t have much time, I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”
Kade first visited me through his amulet a month after I’d vanquished him to hell. I don’t know why, and I knew it wasn’t healthy for me mentally to have this connection with him, but I can’t tell him to leave me alone. I am done turning my back on people that I care for.
“Yep. I’m good.” I put a smile on my face, and pull my shirt down, making sure that I am completely covered. Kade’s eyes follow my movements, his eyes taking in every detail, but if he suspects anything is off about me, he doesn’t mention it.
“Hey, I have a question?” I ask. “Why does Lindsay think you have brown hair, and chocolate brown eyes, and dangerous scruff?”
The question is meant to distract him, and it works. He’s no longer watching my hands, and is looking back into my eyes.
He shakes with laughter at my obvious confusion. “I’m a lust demon. I let most people see what they want to see when they look at me. They see their fantasies reflected. There are pieces of me in there, though.”
No wonder he managed to avoid detection. He looks slightly different to everyone.
“So this isn’t the real you? It’s just my desire?” I’m even more confused now, because Kade is the exact opposite of any man I’ve ever been attracted too.
“You’re the only person who has seen all of me. All of the real me.” He breathes his confession.
“Why did you show me the real you?” I ask. I’m in shock that he would do something so dangerous.
Instead of answering me, he kisses my forehead again, and tells me to stay safe before he leaves.
He rarely stays long. Returning to hell with a soul was a dangerous move, and he’s trying to hang onto it for some reason. We’ve fought about it a lot.
Today I didn’t want to fight.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
I turn back and look at my face in the mirror, surprised that my face isn’t a mask of shock. I take one last look down at the counter, and bite my lip. Then, I clear the sink of garbage and put on make-up.
I have to get the bar soon because I need to talk to Todd before anyone else comes in today.
The bar is empty when I arrive. It’s not even open to the public yet, but Todd is here. Just like I knew he would be. He lives in an apartment above the bar, and I know he spends a lot of his time downstairs now that his dad is back.
To our mutual dismay, Luke didn’t take off right after Kade was gone. He stuck around. I’d even had the chance to assist him on a few hunts. That’s all it took for me to realize that Luke Whittacker was an asshole and an alcoholic. No wonder Todd didn’t think too highly of hunting; growing up with a sadistic fucker like Luke would do that to anyone.
“Hey Tyler, what brings you in so early?” He’s watching TV from one of the booths.
“I need your help.” I feel lightheaded so I sit in the booth quickly. “Is your dad here?” My eyes dart around the bar, as if Luke is lurking in the shadows.
“Nah, he took off late last night. I’ve just gotten so used to coming down here to avoid him, I did it without thinking.
“I’m pregnant.” I stare at him, and I hope he understands all of what that means.
“Fuck.” His face mirrors everything I feel. He knows who the father is.
“Am I going to die?” I ask, thinking of every Hollywood movie ever made about demon spawn. I’ve never heard of it happening outside of the movies, or fan fiction on the internet.
“No, it’s not like that.”
/> “How do you know?” I ask. I slam myself back into my chair as Todd’s eyes go black.
“What the hell, Todd?”
“Luke’s not my real dad.” He shrugs. “My mom had an affair with a demon.”
I blink, surprised. So here is living proof of a half-demon spawn. “Does he know?”
“Yeah, he knows, but since his own kids are girls, he decided to claim me. I think he hoped I’d use my demon powers to become a hunter. You know, keep up the family business.” He chuckles.
My heart breaks for Todd, thinking about what his life must have been like. Now I know why I never see him and Luke in the same room. I’ve never even seen them talk.
“Why do you even let him come around?” I ask. “I know, it’s not my business, but…”
“My sisters and mom want nothing to do with him. They all still hunt, and are really successful, but they got sick of his bullshit and drinking, so they shut him out.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“Because he has no one else, and he took me in when he could have killed me.”
“Fuck, what am I going to do?”
The question is more for myself, but Todd lays his hand on top of mine.
“We’ll figure it out.” He smiles at me. It’s a normal Todd smile, but suddenly, I realize that I can feel more behind it. I was never sure how to read Todd. Sometimes he seemed to flirt with me, other times he seemed more like a big brother.
But now, as clear as day, I know.
I could feel the undercurrent of desire pulsating. It rushed through my veins warming my blood in a heat so intense I couldn’t help but suck in a breath. At first I think Todd is like Kade, but I take in his face. He looks at me the same as he always has. I try not to gasp when I realize that the fermenting half-demon spawn inside of me is reading Todd and relaying the information to me. I don’t know how I know this for sure, but it feels right.