The Hidden Demon

by Monica La Porta

  One of the angels reached the first line and exchanged a few words with Lena Chiosi who giggled back like a schoolgirl. The angel then looked over the woman and directly at Peter. “You are wanted somewhere else.” He projected his voice under human hearing level, while still maintaining his smile in place.

  Questions from the unaware crowd kept flocking.

  “I’m busy.” Answering on the same register, Peter tried to maneuver the mass to his advantage, but he was pressed back against the wall.

  The journalists all asked where he had to go and if it was related to the case.

  The angel stared down at him, his eyes the iciest shade of blue. “Our orders are to either take you or your shifter friend.”

  Peter forced himself to remain calm. “You won’t touch her.”

  “Believe me, having to deal with you is enough. I would never want to spend time with a wolf.” He made a face as if he had smelled something foul. “In any case, let’s move this party somewhere else before I decide to clean the street of these humans. And I know you don’t want that to happen, am I right?”

  The first drops of rain descended upon them, and the sky darkened, matching Peter’s mood to perfection. He knew the angel wasn’t bluffing. The Holy race’s temper was as legendary as the werewolves’. His companions had strategically positioned themselves at either side of the crowd, waiting for their orders. Just to make their point clear, the angels would open their mouths and let out their Wrath, killing and maiming anyone there if Peter didn’t follow them. He passed his hand over his face, feeling weaker by the moment. He couldn’t remember when he had properly lain under the sun last. His energy was depleting fast. There wasn’t enough light for him to draw from. “Let’s go.”

  ****

  Thankful the noisy mob was otherwise engaged in harassing Peter, Ophelia crossed the street and sneaked into her garage without anyone noticing her. Once on her bike, she hurried out from the other side, hoping she wouldn’t lose Peter and the angels. The moment she had seen them heading for Peter, a cold shiver had run along her back. She despised the Holy Nation with all her might. Among the paranormals, angels were the haughtiest race. Hateful and full of themselves, they made even the most bigoted among the shifters—and there were some—look compassionate by comparison. Whatever they wanted with Peter was a question that made her pause. Angels used and discarded demons like paper towels, necessary to take care of the most basic needs, but disposable.

  Keeping the engine turned off, she pushed her bike to the corner of the building from where she peeked, looking for Peter. She was terrified for him, but needed to keep her cool or she wouldn’t be able to help him. One look wasn’t enough. She had to push her bike forward and squint against the glare. The rain that had started as a soft tumble upon the ground was now coming in earnest. A deep uneasiness settled in her stomach as she realized that the crowd was hastily dismantling and neither Peter nor the angels were among them anymore.

  Her breath coming in white puffs and her naked arms freezing—Ophelia had left her apartment in tank top and shorts, what she had been wearing on her way to her bedroom—she massaged her limbs to activate circulation. She scanned the place, looking for Peter. He and the angels were big and stood over humans. It should have been easy to locate them, but she found herself looking through the rain with her heart plummeting to the ground as the seconds ticked away and she couldn’t see them.

  The night before at Club Red, she had felt him coming for her. Before all the noise and destruction, she had heard him, his thoughts, his despair, his longing, inside her. Her heartbeat had thumped faster and she had known he was getting closer. And then he had. The way he had looked at her had made her weak, but she had steeled her resolve and sent him away. She had entered the alcove with all the intentions to forget about Peter, if only for an hour. The man she had opted for was eager and easy on the eyes. But he wasn’t her demon. And the moment she thought that, she also realized an important truth. A few days earlier, she would have compared her chosen companion to Samuel. Not anymore. But Peter’s mere presence hurt her. She couldn’t bear to be near him and not touch him.

  As soon as Peter had stormed out, she asked her companion to leave, which he did with great relief. She had paid for the alcove for the entire night, sent Malina a text briefly explaining the situation, then drank herself to oblivion. As a shifter, it took lots of irresponsible imbibing to reach the satisfactory forgetful buzz she was after. But she was on a mission and remaining sober without shifting into either suicidal or homicidal mode wasn’t an option she would contemplate. Unfortunately, her fast metabolism—made even faster by the approaching full moon that night—processed alcohol at such a speed she was able to put together full thoughts by the first light of day. She had called a taxi, went home, showered to remove the grime from her mind, then headed for her bed. Sleep had proved elusive. Then she had heard him again, like a siren call, and ran to the window.

  The sight of her big, dangerous demon painting over the murals with paint dripping all over him had made her happy beyond expectation. She decided she wanted him in her life. Despite any logic. Despite anything she had told him. The want she experienced any time she thought of him was such she couldn’t understand her own feelings. She would let him give her whatever he could of himself and she would learn to content herself with that. They could use their imagination to be together. They would find a way. What she felt for him was so strong, no obstacle was too big.

  She had read his mouth when he had said, “I’m sorry,” and she had wept. A moment later, the angels had arrived like harbingers of bad omens, and now that she couldn’t find Peter or them anywhere, she could only think of how she had sent him away the night before. She had to find him so she could set the record straight and start again.

  The horde of cameras and paparazzi had cleared the street. She strained her eyes, but the rain was thick and the cold was making her shiver to the point she couldn’t keep her eyes focused. She started despairing. Tears mixed with the falling rain. Her stomach hurt for the constant clenching and she massaged her arms with renewed vigor. A few cars were around, but the adverse conditions discouraged people from leaving their houses. She redoubled her scouting efforts. Finally, several meters away from where she was standing, a silver city car moved from the side and merged into the light traffic. Ophelia felt that familiar tug she had been waiting for and cried out of joy, knowing without a doubt that it was Peter in that car.

  Keeping a safe distance, she followed the car as it slid out of Rome and worked its way toward the Maremmana Country, a luscious region just outside the city on its northern side. She almost lost her quarry several times when she had to slow down or hide behind cars in order to avoid detection. Once or twice, she thought they were playing a game of cat and mouse with her, but she discarded it. Not because it wasn’t plausible. The opposite was true. The angels were most assuredly aware of her trailing behind—despite of all her trying to be inconspicuous, but she would have followed them in any case. She couldn’t leave Peter in their hands. He was as big as they were, but there were three of them and only one of him. And she would do anything to have him back. Period.

  After reaching the medieval fortified city of Tolfa, perched on top of the Maremma hills, the angels had decided to go off-road. They must have not cared for their car because it bounced over the rocky terrain as they slowly maneuvered a trail climbing toward a peak covered by a short vegetation made of yellow flowers and contorted-looking bushes constantly reshaped by the winds.

  Ophelia thanked the fates and her stupidity for having drunk so much a few hours earlier. Although the effects of the alcohol were mostly gone, the residual hangover provided her with a distraction from the hypothermia effects that would soon immobilize her. By the time the angels finally took a narrow, winding road leading to a casolare nested deep inside a forest, she knew they knew of her. She had kept the safest distance she could keep, but fewer and fewer cars had been filling the ancien
t roads, and even with a whole hairpin bend between herself and the angels, she was positive they could see her and her swerving bike.

  It didn’t matter. She decided to go full Ophelia, and switching gears, she left caution and all her old life behind. The werewolf who pined after a fallen angel was no more. Her place had been taken by a woman so desperately in love with a demon she would have sold her soul to those angels to save him.

  The ride ended, almost abruptly after such a long detour, at a clearing in the middle of oaks and chestnut trees with trunks so large it showed how old that forest was. She drove right behind the car and waited for the angels to dismount.

  “Hope the ride was pleasant, shifter.” One of the angels, the tallest, addressed her as he stepped out. No one else exited the car.

  “What do you want with him?” She looked behind the angel. His glowing skin disgusted her.

  “Your race is always so crude.” The angel seemed on the verge of throwing up, his nose twitching.

  Her wolf—who surprisingly had kept quiet for the longest time—growled at the angel, and Ophelia couldn’t stop her. Not that she cared to play nice for the horrible being.

  The angel fanned his wings out, creating a small vortex of air that contributed to drop the temperature. Ophelia couldn’t help but shiver and hated herself for showing her weakness to her enemy.

  “Why did you bring him here?” Ophelia was still on her bike, the warmth of its body keeping her from fainting. She leaned down, her hands still on the handlebars, unable to open her fingers.

  “Do you really believe I would discuss our reasons with you?” He laughed a cold, mirthless sound that froze her more than the cold had.

  The passengers’ doors finally opened and a second angel emerged, soon followed by the third. When Peter didn’t appear, Ophelia made to swing her leg to the side. The angel she had been fruitlessly conversing with moved before her.

  “What do you think you’re doing, shifter?” His eyes were staring down at her.

  “Let me see him.” She tried to move, but the angel stalled her by stepping forward and coming too close.

  “You don’t get to order me, shifter.”

  The angel had raised his voice, enough to let her feel a taste of his Wrath. Nausea hit her like a punch, brutally fast, and she doubled over, all the alcohol she had downed coming up and then some. “Please, let me see he’s fine.”

  The angel smiled upon her. “He’s alive.”

  From inside the car, her ears picked up a low moan and her wolf went into a frenzy. The proximity to the full moon and their combined worries about Peter caused Ophelia’s and the wolf’s feelings to tangle.

  One of the angels bent by the rear passenger’s seat and peered inside. A snort accompanied an insult sent Peter’s way. When his goading didn’t elicit a reaction from Peter, he leaned inside and pulled an unconscious body out. Panic hit her as she saw the thin rivulets of blood coming out from Peter’s ears. His throat was covered in rusty streaks that ran along his shirt, and his long hair was matted with the blood that had pooled and dried during the long ride. They had tortured him with their Wrath and had been careless.

  Ophelia screamed and her wolf almost took complete control. The angel dragged Peter by his feet, letting his body trail on the ground, uncaring of the large rocks disseminated along the path leading to the casolare. As she ran after him, she heard an unmistakable whooshing sound and was hit on her back by the sharp end of one of the angels’ wings. She felt blood gushing from the cut, but she was too cold and scared for Peter to register the pain.

  The angel entered the casolare—that at a second glance had all the windows barred with wooden panels—and she stepped inside too, regretting not having thought of calling Barnes or any one of her friends to inform them of her decision to run headfirst into a trap.

  Chapter Nine

  “What do you want from us?” Ophelia had been screaming at first and later whispering a variation of that question for the majority of the day. The angels had chained her to one of the brick columns while Peter was kept on the wall opposite. Peter wasn’t chained. Several times, the angels took turns beating him. Ophelia was relieved they didn’t use their Wrath on him. Given sun and sufficient time, a demon could survive broken bones and internal injuries, but a second round of concentrated, high-frequency screams would have liquefied him from the inside out. She counted every kick they imparted on him as a blessing.

  The three angels never answered her. In their opinion, she was too far beneath them and even talking directly to her was more than she deserved. She kept asking though, mostly to keep her sanity by defying them. Their captors never said anything relevant, and when they received phone calls, they modulated their voice to a register she couldn’t hear even with her wolf senses. A whole day passed in the damp darkness of the tuff casolare. She only knew the night was approaching because the full moon was rising and her body started preparing to shift. Hoping she would be able to keep her growing pains hidden, she tried a few breathing exercises Quintilius had taught her.

  She knew she could never take the three of them by herself, but she planned to create enough of a diversion to give Peter a chance to escape if he ever came to his senses. After his last beating, she had seen him tap his finger on the dusty terracotta floor for a few counts. It could have been a spasm of his hand’s muscles for all she knew, but she had decided to interpret it as a sign he was trying to communicate with her.

  She wished sunrays would filter through the barred windows and bathe Peter, but the angels had left nothing to chance, and now, judging from her itching skin, the sun had set. “Why haven’t you killed us already?” She wasn’t expecting an answer, but was surprised when she heard the taller one chastising one of the other two for having mumbled something that sounded like “politics.” She was even more surprised when some time later, a knock rattled the casolare’s door. By then, she was sweating from the effort of keeping her imminent transformation under control. Thankfully, her wolf had seemed eager to cooperate with her on that issue.

  “About time, fang.” The tall angel greeted someone who stood just out of Ophelia’s line of sight.

  A man entered, followed by three others.

  Ophelia smelled vampire. In her delicate shifting state, she was very sensitive to olfactory and auditory inputs, and there was nothing as repulsive to a wolf as vampires. She almost gagged, but her wolf came to her rescue by commanding her body long enough to calm her.

  “Those are the two you need to have disposed of?” The vampire, a tall man wearing a soccer uniform, walked toward Peter. His minions, sporting the same jerseys, were a step behind.

  “Those were your instructions, weren’t they?” The angel’s voice boomed inside the room, amplified by the lack of furniture and the high ceiling.

  Ophelia was thankful for the exposed tuff bricks that absorbed sounds. Otherwise, she would be bleeding from her ears, and she wasn’t sure what kind of damage Peter would have sustained. Even so, her stomach heaved and the vampires swore.

  The vampire massaged his ears and gulped to compensate. “No need to be nasty. I’ll remind you we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t requested our help.”

  Ophelia braced for the angel’s ire to hit them, but he stared down at his interlocutor and walked toward the door as his companions tagged along.

  “Do what you were hired to do and leave. We’ll be back tomorrow to make sure you complied. If things are dealt to our satisfaction, you’ll be paid.” Without another glance to the rest of the room, the angel exited, taking with him the other two.

  Ophelia was shaking with pent-up rage, both hers and her wolf’s. Any minute now, the moon would be at its highest point in the sky, its silvery disk illuminating the night in its soft glow.

  One of the vampires, the one who had kept up the conversation with the angel, and the captain of the team given the blue band on his forearm, kicked Peter. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

  His minions laughed. One of
them decided to partake of the fun and kicked Peter as well. “We need to kill you, but we need you awake first.” More laughs.

  Ophelia felt her bones popping all at once. Her wolf had been patient, but neither of them had any power over the moon cycle. The transformation, delayed until the last possible moment, took less than usual to complete. The pain was nothing Ophelia could compare anything with, because she didn’t believe if she had stayed in human form one more second she could have survived.

  ****

  Hurt. Me. Her. Him.

  Danger. Evil. Stench. Darkness.

  Attack one. Screams.

  Pain. Bite. Blood. Bones snapping.

  Up. Attack again. Down. Stench. Rage.

  Pain. Up. Up. Hurt.

  Blind.

  Attack two. Bite. Break.

  Jump. Bite. Howl. Snap.

  Cut. Flank. Pain.

  Up. Bite. Blood. Attack three. Snap. Break. Screams.

  Bite. Evil run. Follow. Crash. Bite.

  Break. Break. Break.

  Kill. Kill. Kill.

  Attack four.

  Break.

  Kill.

  Avenge.

  Protect.

  Save.

  Free.

  Him hurt. Lick wounds. Keep warm.

  Hurt. No more.

  Love. We. Her. Me. Him.

  ****

  Peter opened his eyes to find the big, chocolate wolf spooning him. The wolf’s head behind his, the wet nose under his ear. He smiled. Ophelia’s wolf liked to cuddle. After fighting the four vampires and killing them, she had guarded Peter the whole night. She had licked him clean with her soft tongue and whined when she found deeper wounds. Unable to do anything else, he had murmured soft, appraising words for her. The angels had played a number on him and he was surprised he had reached the end of the day alive. If it weren’t for Ophelia’s wolf, he would be dead. He couldn’t have fended off the vampires’ attack. The wolf moved as he did. Her big, intelligent, deep brown eyes staring at him.

  “Hey, girl.” He patted her head and she rolled for him, her belly up and her big paws bent. “You’re so pretty.” He kneeled and hugged her, burrowing in her soft fur that had a trace of Ophelia’s scent. “I’m too weak to play, but next time we’ll go for a run. Would you like that?”