by Liz Meldon
She shrugged. “I said I’d always worn contacts. Now I just wore colored ones.”
His lips thinned; what sort of idiots did she spend her time with? “And they believed you?”
“Some. Most, but not all.”
“Not, er,” Severus reached back for the photo again, holding it up and tapping at the woman he guessed was her closest friend, “her, eh? You two seem especially close… You and Ella.”
“Exactly how long have you been following me?” she snapped, setting the box aside, her tone sharp.
“Since Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a curiosity,” he told her, sharpening the edge of his tone to match. “Continue your story.”
“But—”
“That is what we’ve come here to discuss, after all. My prowling around the outskirts of your life this past week is insignificant by comparison.”
Moira glowered up at him, unflinching the longer their staring contested waged, until she finally turned and lifted the lid off her box. “Fine. We’ll put a pin in it. Don’t forget that I can still literally—”
“Yes, yes, put me through a wall,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I remember.”
Any rational individual would demand to know more about his stalking habits—he couldn’t fault her for that—but Severus was just more interested in her story. She ought to be too. Big-picture thinking, hers was the one that mattered.
Alaric’s suggestion that she could be a hybrid was starting to ring truer and truer. Not all hybrids expressed both parts of themselves. Alaric was more human than demon, despite being lucky enough to have a former prince of Hell for a father. He had always been assured that the dark depths hiding within would surface, but it wasn’t an exact science. Perhaps for Moira, her other side was finally making itself known.
But why now? Why had her mother cautioned her about her twenty-second birthday?
“My mom was kind of out of it toward the end,” Moira admitted softly, staring into the box, the lid on her lap. “I didn’t take half the stuff coming out of her mouth seriously, but she said my dad would be able to explain it all. He’d have answers, the kind she hadn’t found yet.”
“Have you ever met your father?” Very likely, if the hybrid theory was true, he was the supernatural one of the two.
“No. She never talked about him either. Not until the end.” Moira leaned over, rooting through the stacks of papers, envelopes and frames inside. When she straightened, she had an off-white business card in hand, its embossed lettering gold. “No matter how much I pried growing up, she never said a word about him…until she handed me this the day before she died. Apparently, he works here. Which,” she laughed weakly as she offered the card to him, “makes me sick to think about. I’ve walked by that building a thousand times. It’s near the movie theater Ella and I worked at when we were in high school.”
She prattled on about it, but Severus was only half listening. He plucked the card from her hand—and once he caught sight of the name emblazed across it, he stopped listening entirely.
Seraphim Securities. The gold letters stared up at him mockingly, and he nearly dropped the thick, unbendable card at the first prickle of fear. Moira trailed off, slowly searching out his gaze when he stared down at her—looking, but only truly seeing for the first time.
The white hair. The colourless features. Those eyes.
How could he have been so stupid?
“What?” she asked, standing, and Severus took two large steps back with a shake of his head.
“Don’t—”
“You asked me what I was,” she said, as if finally finding her voice in the face of his fear. “You said I wasn’t human. You said things I’ve only ever dared think this last year, too afraid to say out loud. You know something.”
As she went back to the box, he tossed the business card onto her bed. His inner demon should have recoiled at the very idea of her—yet there it was, still prowling about within Severus’s chest, still desperate to push her over the side of her bed and fuck her into sweet oblivion.
The saner part of him insisted he get the hell out of the house—immediately—and Severus was inclined to agree.
“There’s no information online about the employees who work there, but last summer I tried taking pictures of all the people who come and go,” Moira told him, hurriedly darting in front of him when he attempted to stalk toward the door. She thrust a series of polaroids at him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. “I thought it was an issue with my phone, so I did it the old-fashioned way. Every single time I tried, the faces were obscured.”
He clenched his jaw, stiffly accepting the photographs. Sure enough, a brilliant circle of fiery light engulfed the face of every suited figure, no matter how close, no matter the natural lighting. In action. Standing still. She’d never get a good picture. Never.
“It’s because you can’t photograph angels,” he said simply, handing the photos back. Only she didn’t take them. Moira stood before him, her chest noticeably rising and falling now, and slowly looked down at the polaroids.
“W-what?”
“I know you heard me.” He went for the door, but she continued to block him, backing herself up against it, a vise-grip on the doorknob.
“What do you mean…angels?”
“I mean precisely what I said,” Severus remarked. “I mean, angels. Warrior angels, to be exact. Servants of the archangels. None of us exactly know their caste, but those men,” he tapped a finger on the stack of photos, then shoved them into her free hand, “are not to be trifled with.”
Seraphim Securities. It was about as subtle a name as the Inferno. Vicious creatures charged with protecting the cities, towns, villages, whatever located on the cusps of hell-gates, the angels employed at every branch were a nightmare to the demon community. While demon mob families might run the dirty underbelly of Farrow’s Hollow, the fuckers at Seraphim Securities were there to ensure that the darkness didn’t seep into the light—that the precious humans going about their days, oblivious, remained unharmed.
Though, from what Severus had heard, the boys at this particular branch weren’t opposed to making examples of humans who dared cross the proverbial line either.
He frowned at Moira, at her heaving chest and her watery eyes and her pouty lower lip, begging for him to sink his teeth into it. If she wasn’t careful, this infuriating creature was going to get herself killed.
“Move.”
“What? No.” She buckled down, throwing her very likely newfound strength around as if that would intimidate him. After a bit of awkward scuffling at the door, with Severus trying to slip around her and Moira throwing herself in his path, he finally grabbed her arm and shoved her aside. She shoved right back, her cheeks bright red.
After stumbling a few paces, he grasped her outstretched forearms with a snarl and pushed. Her back and shoulders slammed into the door first, followed by her head, and Severus let out a long, annoyed sigh as she sank to the floor with a whimper.
“Get out of the way,” he ordered thickly, the demon raring to go—thinking their physicality some sort of twisted, lovely foreplay. Severus, meanwhile, kept his tone as polite as possible, glaring down at her. “Now.”
“No.”
“I have my answers,” he told her. “Now, move out of the—”
“No!” The window rattled and her eyes flashed, each wide, round orb glistening with unshed tears. There it was—that electric blue. He’d thought it ethereal at first, not paying much attention to the adjective. But that was what it was, that color. Ethereal—like her father’s, no doubt.
“Moira, I really don’t—”
“I…” She opened and closed her mouth, fat, heavy tears finally falling when she blinked. “I thought I was dying.”
“Just the opposite, I suspect.” With another sigh, he dragged her upright, clutching at her slim, delicate forearms again. Delicate. Ha. There was nothing delicate about her. “You’re changing, Moira. You
r other side is coming out. It happens. It’s frightening, I imagine, if you don’t know it’s happening, but now it’s happened. So. There you are.”
“But I don’t understand—”
“Look,” he growled, plopping her down at the end of her bed and ignoring the way her cheeks warmed when she glanced up at him, “your mother was just an ordinary human, right? Nothing strange or special about her?”
“She was a nurse. She dedicated her life to helping—”
“All right, all right, save the indignation.” Severus rolled his eyes—and only then realized he was still holding her. He retreated quickly, no more than a few steps, and she stood to follow, looking a little unstable on her own two feet. A part of him yearned to reach out and touch her again. Nudge back the sleeves of her white long-sleeved shirt and caress her skin. Instead, he said, “I meant she was nothing supernatural. Just…human.”
“As far as I knew, yes, but—”
“If what she says is true, and your father is a member of Seraphim Securities, then he’s very likely an angel. A poorly behaved angel, sure, but an angel all the same.” He nodded to her hair, his dark stare roving her body. “You’ve got the characteristics. Not all of them are quite as pale, but the white hair. The eyes… You might lose that pigmentation too. I’ve only ever seen one up close, but his were nearly grey, verging on white. Something to look forward to, I suppose.”
“You… You’ve met an angel?” She still sounded like she didn’t completely believe him—but that wasn’t Severus’s problem. As far as he was concerned, he had done his civic duty in enlightening her, broadening her once-small mind without fucking her in the process.
Not a bad day’s work—for a demon.
“Yes, I saw one. Once.” He wouldn’t exactly classify the encounter as a meeting—more of a stare-down from afar as the creature took out an ill-behaved demon. Severus, thinking he was about to die too, jostled himself out of his stupor and ran for his life. You didn’t fuck with angels. Demons called them nancy boys and do-gooders and every other name under the sun, but when it came down to it, you just didn’t fuck with them. Not unless you had powerful friends to help you with the fallout.
And Severus didn’t really have any powerful friends.
In fact, he didn’t have friends, period. Friend, singular—Alaric, whose father had washed his hands clean of angelic affairs after he fell from Heaven.
“Can you… Can you help me find him?”
He lifted his brow at her. “What makes you think he wants to be found?”
She stood there, silent and still, nothing but a lost child braving the storm as her whole world fell to pieces. He ought to delight in her turmoil, her devastation, but Severus found he wanted to draw her in and press her cheek to his chest, over his pounding heart, and nuzzle his nose in her hair.
He had to get out of here.
“You just seem to know so much,” she murmured. “I don’t know if he… I don’t know anything. And you do. Please, can you—”
“No,” he said, hoping he sounded more resolute than he felt. When she started to sway, threatening to pitch forward, he braced her by the shoulders, then walked her back and sat her on the edge of the bed again. Those wide, imploring eyes peered up at him, lips slightly parted. Inhaling shakily, Severus found himself trailing his thumb along the seam, plucking at the lower one just enough to make him hard.
Get. Out. Now.
He moved for the door with a shake of his head. The knob came off in his hand when he wrenched it open, and he held it up for her to see, then set it on her messy desk. He hadn’t meant to break it—he hadn’t meant for any of this—but it didn’t feel as though that was the first time the thing had come loose. Moira simply stared, eyes still imploring and lips begging to be touched. He scowled back briefly before all but hurling himself down the nearby staircase, each step creaking and groaning underfoot.
At the base of the stairs, his hand ghosting over the chipped railing, he heard her crying. Not soft, mewling whimpers, but hard, desperate sobbing. He stopped, hand clamping down on the wood, eyes closed.
Severus understood that feeling—to suddenly realize you were alone in the world. It was a bitter, hardening sensation that crept across your body, seeped into every pore, until eventually you stopped feeling the cruel sting. Abandonment. Loneliness. Two of his oldest, dearest companions. A chuckle breached his lips at the thought; apparently he did have more than one friend.
Moira’s sobs filled the whole house, the air, once silent and still, now drenched in sorrow. He wrenched his hand from the bannister when the wood started to cool, the change palpable, and his gaze darted around. No wind. No open window. Yet a cool breeze whispered across his skin. He glanced up the dark stairwell, at the horrible floral wallpaper that carried on throughout the upper level, save for Moira’s bedroom. That had been an off-white.
His stare hardened. So her world was falling apart. So what? Severus had survived it, and she would too. Severus had endured the disdain of his own kind for centuries, always reliant on humans to maintain his strength. Moira only seemed to grow stronger with time, not dependent on anything or anyone. She was a phoenix. This was her rebirth.
Everyone wept after drawing their first breath.
He moved for the front door, yet how quickly his arm fell back to his side when he reached for the handle. With a huff, he adjusted himself, tucking his rigid cock up and out of the way.
“You realize,” he snarled, glaring down at his chest, “that you are lusting after an angel, do you not? Hybrid or otherwise, you can’t possibly…”
Want her.
Desire her.
Need her.
Yet he did. At least, the inner demon did, and as much as Severus tried to disassociate from it while he was on Earth, that demon was his truest self.
And he wanted Moira.
“Fuck.” He caught the glint of his reflection in the stained-glass window embedded in the door. How fuming he appeared, his mouth in a thin line and forehead crinkled—and his eyes completely black. She was a threat to him. A danger to his grasp on the carefully cultivated control he had built over the years.
So, why couldn’t he just walk out the front door?
“Fuck.”
Severus jogged up the staircase, taking it three steps at a time, then flung himself around her doorway. Still seated at the end of her bed, Moira looked up sharply, her trembling hand pressed to her mouth. Tears streaked down her cheeks, her skin flushed and her eyes bloodshot.
“Listen to me,” he growled, anger and arousal warring within him. “If you stick your nose where they don’t want it, they’ll kill you. That’s their entire purpose on Earth—to punish and contain truant demons and the humans who associate with them.”
“Demons?” she squeaked from behind her hand, her eyes wide. Severus’s snort straddled the line between amusement and incredulousness.
“What, you think there’re only angels? It’s all real, Moira. Angels. Demons. Witches. Vampires. Everything that goes bump in the night.” He pointed at her. “And you’re one of us now, so I’m going to need you to drop this wide-eyed innocent thing and get with the program.”
She sat up straight, her hand falling to her lap. “O-okay.”
Okay. That was easier than he’d expected.
“Seraphim Securities is staffed by warrior angels, and they don’t play around.” He planted his hands on his hips, rather enjoying the way she hung on his every word, her lips parting again as she drew breath. How desperately he wanted to slip his tongue, his fingers, his cock, between them. Teeth gritted, Severus closed his eyes for a moment, pushing the inner demon down until he was sure he could stay focused. When he looked back to her, she was standing, holding herself in a solo hug.
“Okay.”
“If your father is one of them, and he hasn’t been recalled to Heaven for defiling a human, I doubt he’ll want to know you.” Angels weren’t exactly encouraged to procreate with Daddy’s creations.
“I’ve thought about it my whole life, that my dad doesn’t want me,” she told him, lifting her chin slightly. “That’s not a deterrent.”
“Well, it should be. You’ve spent your whole life thinking he was a human, not a creature who can set you on fire with just a look.”
She gulped, shoulders slumping.
“But if you stick with me, I’ll do my best not to let that happen.” Because it would be a shame to lose her over something as frivolous as a paternity confirmation. He’d keep her alive and well—at least until he could fuck her properly.
Yes. That was it. That was what he’d tell himself when he tried to fall asleep tonight, his thoughts inundated with her, his senses still overwhelmed by her. Sure.
“So, you’ll help me?” She seemed hopeful, innocent once more, her whole being elevated.
“Only because I think it’d be a pity to see you killed,” he told her, adding a leer for good measure. She crossed her arms over her chest, deflated.
“Gee, thanks.” Moira wiped at her cheeks. “Good to know where we stand, I guess.”
“What did you expect to hear?” Severus hardened his features. “That I’d fallen in love with you our first night together? That I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you?” He scoffed when her cheeks reddened. “I know what you’re going up against. If I don’t help, you’ll be dead within the month.”
“And you think that’d be a pity.” She studied him, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “Why?”
“I’ve never met a human-angel hybrid before,” he said, spouting whatever nonsense first came to mind. “I find you fascinating. Who knows what you can truly do.”
They stared at one another for a long moment, the air still and tense again, no longer cold and bitter. Finally, Severus looked away and cleared his throat.
“Russ?”
“It’s Severus,” he clarified. If they were going to be spending more time together, he refused to let her call him by his escort pseudonym.
“Oh. Severus what?”
“Just Severus.” He held out his hand. “Incubus.”
She retracted her own hand hastily at the word. “Incubus? Like a…a…”