Flame's Embrace

by Pillar, Amanda

  I reached the sink as my coffee made itself reappear. No magic in that one though. Just way, way too much vodka. Uko came over and patted me on the back gently. “It does not smell so delicious in this form,” he said, amused.

  I flipped him the bird as I rested my head on the cool stainless steel of my sink. I was definitely dying. Maybe Uko was a death apparition. Like the end of a really awesome novel where the protagonist is really buried in the woods and you’re seeing the last days of her life. I see dead people. You know?

  Uko gave me a glass of water. “Do you need a medicine man?”

  I shook my head real, real slowly. “Nope. I’m good. I’m just going to have a nap until my blood alcohol level is more like 50/50, then we will go on a road trip to Dallas. You’re going to love it.” I gave him a weak smile. I let him wrap an arm around me and walk me to my bedroom. Then he tucked me in, whispering “there, there” and petting my head like a puppy. When he left, I went back to sleep.

  *

  The sun was streaming through my window when I woke up again, and I was hot. My forehead was coated in sweat and my thighs were stuck together. My chest was stuck to… something. My eyes shot open and I realized I was curled around a shirtless Uko. He was snoring like a drunk old fat man. A little drool pooled in the corner of his mouth. He was adorable but not particularly sexy at that moment, and it kind of made me like him more.

  I physically peeled my cleavage from his impressive back and resisted the urge to run my fingers down the muscles there.

  Instead, I rolled over to my nightstand. I looked at my phone; ten missed calls from Cade on my home screen. There were also twenty-three texts from him, and five from my mom.

  I opened the ones from my mom first.

  Mom: Cade says you are having a nervous breakdown. Are you okay?

  Mom: Are you inviting strange men home, Elsie May? What would your father say?

  Mom: Elsie? Why aren’t you answering me? Are you okay?

  Mom: Elsie, are you dead? ANSWER ME!

  Mom: Have you been murdered? I’m calling the police.

  I quickly responded to her, because she wasn’t the kind of person who bluffed about calling the cops.

  Me: Mom, I’m fine. My phone was just out of batteries. Caught Cade fucking my boss. Wouldn’t take his word as gospel. Love you xo

  Then I read the ones from Cade and smiled. I’d changed his name on my phone last night while I was drunk.

  Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Frank says you have a guy at your house. That was quick.

  Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: What, you aren’t talking to me now?

  Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Look, Elsie I made a mistake, that’s all. I want you back.

  Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Fine, be a bitch and not talk to me.

  It devolved on from there, of course. The last message he sent was so dripping in acid, created with the express desire to slay me.

  Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Fuck you, you whore. Your boss was a thousand fucking times better in bed than you. You were like fucking a beached whale. Have a shit life, bitch.

  I let out a little sobbing noise. As much as my brain said that he was a dick who felt threatened because I had another guy here and he thought I should be sobbing over losing him, my heart internalized his venom like a sponge. A tear dripped down my cheek, and I swallowed hard.

  “I can flay him, if you want. I think I would enjoy it even more now. Actually, dismembering should be back on the table.”

  I looked quickly over my shoulder to see that Uko had woken and was looking over my shoulder at my phone.

  I shook my head. I took a screenshot of the last few messages and sent them to his mother. Then I deleted the messages and blocked his number. I swiped at my eyes with my palm. “He’s not worth wasting your time on,” I sniffed, sounding stronger than I felt. I slid out of the bed, suddenly more self-conscious in front of Uko. Damn Cade.

  I grabbed a box from the top of my wardrobe and started stuffing all the things that belonged to Cade in there. His shirts in my drawers. His toothbrush. I opened his protein powder and spat in it, before packing it, too.

  Eventually, when I was sure I’d purged every last sign of Cade from my apartment, I turned to Uko. He was wearing a shirt again, and he was looking at me with a small crease between his brows.

  “We should go. Let me just throw together some stuff, and we’ll be on the road in five minutes.”

  I stuffed some spare clothes and toiletries into a backpack. On impulse, I put my camera in, as well. It had been years since I picked it up. It was probably horribly outdated now, but I kind of wanted to document our road trip.

  Finally, I walked out into the living room, and Uko was leaning on the kitchen counter. “Are you ready?” I asked. I was trying not to sound wounded, but I was. Uko nodded. “Can you carry the box for me?”

  He lifted the box like it weighed nothing, despite having one of Cade’s stupid dumbbells in it. Like he couldn’t go more than twenty minutes without doing a bicep curl. That should have been my first sign.

  I was tempted to just dump his stuff at Frank’s apartment, but I wanted Cade out of my life forever.

  I lived on the outskirts of Chicago, and Cade lived with his parents a couple of suburbs over. Yeah, that should have been my second sign. There was hardly any traffic at this time of day, so if this drop off went quickly, we could be on our way to Dallas in under an hour.

  Uko took up too much room in my tiny little car, and not just with his body. His whole presence seeped into every nook and cranny, making breathing a little like swimming through a sea of lust and pheromones. I cracked a window, gave my libido a stern talking to, and drove to Cade’s parent’s house.

  I liked his parents. They were nice people. It wasn’t their fault their son was a roided up penis head. I pulled up to the curb of their nice house, and got out.

  “Could you put the box on the driveway for me?” I asked Uko, and he nodded. While he was lugging the box, I went and knocked on the door.

  It was opened by Cade’s mother, Martha. She looked at me with a combination of indignation and pity. Yeah, she’d gotten my message alright. “Just wanted to warn you I’m going to light a little fire on your drive. I wanted to apologize in advance.”

  “Oh, Elsie, dear I don’t know if that’s a very good idea-”

  “Just let the girl do it, Martha. Cade can go clean it up with a toothbrush, for all I care. Maybe he will get it through his thick skull that you don’t treat women that way,” Vernon grumbled from behind his wife. “Apologies, Elsie. We didn’t raise him that way, I promise you.”

  I gave them a watery smile and a short nod and turned away. I wandered over to the box.

  “Uko, you’re a fire demon right?” When he grinned, I couldn’t help but smile back. “On my word?”

  He nodded, the mischief in his eyes making him look like the devil he was.

  “CADE! Hey Cade!” I yelled. The curtains in a second-story window flicked open. Bet he’d known I’d been here the whole time and sent his mom to answer the door like a chicken-shit. I mouthed the words, “Fuck you,” and flipped him the bird.

  Then I looked over at Uko. “Now.”

  The box went up like an inferno, a massive fireball with six-foot high flames. It was glorious. I kept my middle fingers up and pointed at his window all the way to my car. Uko grinned and practically skipped to the passenger side. “That was fun. Do you have any other ex-boyfriends we should set on fire?”

  I laughed as I squealed away from the curb. “Not recently. Don’t worry, Uko. That shit is behind me. I’m devoting my life to twinkies and wine, and swearing off men altogether.”

  We hit the freeway and I realized that I was actually kind of excited. I hadn’t felt this alive in a long time.

  When had I gotten trapped in the mundane? Waking up next to Cade, having the same boring missionary morning sex, wearing the same smart busine
ss clothes to work, seeing the same faces, eating the same food, going to bed at the same time. It was just monotony over and over again.

  This right here, a little pyromania and running away to a carnival with a fucking demon? This was living. Was I probably going to be evicted from my apartment when I couldn’t pay my rent? Maybe. Should I be looking for a new job? Definitely. But I could give myself these few days to actually live. Maybe me and Uko had more in common than I thought.

  Uko seemed content to watch everything stream past out the windows, and I could study his profile out of the corner of my eye. He was so damn beautiful. Even in his demon form. Hell, especially in his demon form. His meat suit didn’t really change his physicality so much as it just covered the swirling markings on his skin, hid his horns, and made his eyes less mesmerizing.

  He still had the same almost inhumanly sharp jawline. The same impossibly high cheekbones. The same nose that sat a little too much to the left, like it had been broken numerous times. The same broad shoulders that I wanted to kiss a path across. The same, long, muscular legs.

  I dragged my eyes back to the road before I killed us both. I cleared my throat. “So I thought we’d go down through Memphis. They do some good fried food and have some great music. We can stop there for the night. Home of Elvis, you know. You would have liked him. Pretty sure he died from too much deep-fried food. Well, maybe drugs. Or constipation. It’s all a little fuzzy. But he liked deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and I feel like that’s something the demon of fried-food can get behind,” I babbled out, filling the silence with nonsense. It was like my self-consciousness had only just caught up with the rest of me and realized that Uko was super freaking hot, and not just because he was a fire demon.

  Uko just stared at me, his eyes watching my mouth like he couldn’t fully comprehend all the drivel coming out of it. I snapped my jaw shut and kept my eyes on the road. We drove for an hour in a silence that eventually became comfortable. Uko had a lazy insouciance, as if his body was just made to be temporary. Maybe it was. What the hell did I know about, err, Hell?

  “So, Uko, do you have any siblings?”

  He turned his dark eyes toward me, inclining his head. “About three hundred at last count. They live and die in pretty quick succession.”

  I whipped my head toward him. “Three hundred? Your parents must, be uh, active?”

  He gave me a sharp-toothed grin, despite the fact that his meat suit made his pearly whites completely mundane looking. “We aren’t born in the way humans are. We are…” he seemed to be trying to find the right word, and I was going to be no help because I knew next to nothing about demon birthing techniques. “Spawned, perhaps? We are all souls waiting around a writhing mass until a body comes up for grabs, and then we fight for it. My siblings are just other Inferior Demons.”

  “So your brother…?”

  “A joke. But I guess the demon born before me could be considered my sibling. Although, he is the Demon of Kale and Coffee Enemas.”

  The laugh that bubbled out of me was so sudden, I hissed like Ernie from Sesame Street.

  “Are you fucking with me right now?”

  He gave me that grin again. “Not unless you pull over.”

  Heat flooded every inch of my body until I imagined I was just one giant, leaking pheromone. “Don’t joke about that, Uko. I’m feeling a little raw after Cade.”

  Uko huffed and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “We should have made him the bonfire in the driveway. There is nothing more impressive than a human torch.”

  I squinted at him, trying to decide if he was still joking, but he seemed deadly serious.

  Well then.

  After my stellar attempt at making conversation, we fell back into silence again. Eventually, I caved, connecting my music to the speakers. Imagine Dragons played over the stereo, and Uko’s eyes went wide with wonder. I grinned widely as the deep, thumping bass lines reverberated around my car. I sang along softly as his head whipped around trying to find the source of the magical music. I passed him my phone. “Here. You can pick the songs. The little right arrow thing will switch the song.”

  Watching him taste-test all the music in my streaming service was the type of simple pleasure we don’t experience anymore. To see someone form a passion, to decide what they love and what they hate, was something else. He didn’t like music with no lyrics, we discovered that one after some rousing musical scores. He liked slow, heavy, lazy beats. He didn’t like electronica but seemed to enjoy modern country and old school metal music. We passed hours talking about music, gossiping about bands, and rattling off suggestions.

  I taught him how to create a playlist to add the songs he likes so he could listen to them again, and it was the most eclectic thing ever. Patsy Cline sat beside Billie Eilish. Nirvana beside The Beatles. Random indie bands beside Pop Princesses. I loved it. I was keeping his playlist even after he returned to Hell.

  The first pang of sadness hit me at the idea of Uko leaving. He was merely a distraction, albeit a super hot distraction. But the more I got to know him, the more I liked him.

  I pulled into a cheap chain hotel in Downtown Memphis, close to Beale Street. I wanted to take him to see some live blues, eat some good food and live in the moment. Maybe we’d hit up a strip club or something. Demons gone wild!

  I parked in a garage half a block away and walked toward the hotel. Normally, walking in the dark in a parking lot at night would be an anxiety-inducing walk of terror. But Uko stood close, his body rolling lazily like he didn’t have a care in the world. But if you stared past his glamor, you could see the coiled violence churning under his skin like the hidden black ink. I’m pretty sure he was dying to rend someone limb from limb, and where that small fact should have terrified me, it kind of made me feel safe.

  Apparently, I’d killed all the good-sense brain cells last night.

  When we hit the brightly lit lobby of the hotel, the receptionist’s eyes passed over me with a glazed look and a fake smile. But when they snagged on Uko, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. Yeah, he was definitely that hot. Like, triple-take hot.

  When the receptionist’s eyes shot back to me, and she realized we were together, I prepared myself for the same incredulous looks I got when I went out with Cade. Like I was somehow reaching above my allotted hotness level.

  Uko was a thousand times hotter than Cade.

  But instead of the scathing disapproval or downright dismissal, the receptionist reached a fist across the counter. I stared at it for a second until I realized she wanted me to bump it. I pressed my knuckles hesitantly to hers.

  She grinned at me. “You go girl,” she whispered out the side of her mouth. She made a look that was the universal expression for ‘holy fuck is this guy actually real? Because that is way too much hotness in one package’. Yeah, we women had a look for that.

  Uko just raised an eyebrow at me, and I bumbled my way through getting a room. “Uh, a double please.” My cheeks burned.

  The receptionist, her name badge said Kate, bit her lip and stared at her computer screen. “Looks like we only have queen rooms left at the moment. You may have to get separate rooms unless you are okay to share…?”

  Uko shrugged. “I don’t mind sharing a bed with Elsie.”

  My cheeks flared even redder, and Kate the Receptionist seemed to take stock of me, my slightly lustful looks at Uko, and gave a little nod.

  “Well, would you look at that? All our queen rooms have just sold out as well. Luckily I do have the honeymoon suite still available. It has a hot tub. We’ll give it to you for the same price as a normal room. What luck, am I right?”

  I nodded and blinked my way through filling out all the details and collecting our room key. I thanked Kate as we headed toward the bank of lifts.

  I looked over my shoulder and Kate was fanning herself and giving me two thumbs up. I couldn’t help but grin. She had it all wrong, but I appreciated th
e unofficial wing-woman.

  Uko seemed pretty oblivious to the whole exchange, but completely fascinated with the idea of elevators. He pressed every button, tried to talk back to the automatic voice that read out the floors, and jumped up and down to see if it would make the car stop. That last one was especially terrifying. Finally, we reached the eighth floor.

  Honestly, I’ve never stayed in a hotel room bigger than a tissue box before, so when I opened the door into a room with a massive Cali king bed, a kitchenette and a polished black bathroom complete with a sunken hot tub, I actually squealed. Out loud.

  Uko winced, but looked around the suite. “I believe this might be bigger than your home,” he said, but he wasn’t being scathing. He also wasn’t wrong. If I wasn’t with Uko, I would have just slid right out of my clothes and straight into the hot tub. Then I’d put on the fluffy robes that were folded neatly on the bed and order room service.

  But Uko didn’t have the luxury of time and I wanted him to experience a life more exciting than sitting around eating fried chicken naked.

  Besides, I hadn’t even brought my swimsuit. I could almost feel Kate’s disappointment in me from here. I cleared my throat. “I think you’re right. How about we drop this stuff and go get something to eat. You must be starving by now.”

  I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate; before I discovered Cade balls deep in my manager, I guess. Today, the hangover had chased away my appetite, but it was back now with a vengeance. Probably all the thoughts I was having about a naked fried chicken feast.

  “I could eat, just let me do this first…” he burst into flames, and he was once again Uko the demon. Standing less than two feet away, I thought I would feel the warmth of his flames. But other than a tingle rolling across my skin, I felt nothing. However, this close I could see the moving ink on his skin was some kind of sigil. Demon language?

  I wanted to reach up and touch his horns, which I could now see weren’t as smooth as I’d originally thought. My eyes dropped down to his face, and my cheeks flushed when I realized he’d been watching me watch him.