by L. C. Mawson
She let raw Energy run down her blade, knowing that the display was a little show-offish. Raw Energy was powerful, but draining. She usually used it to encourage her enemies to run from a fight. The one good thing about her reputation starting to precede her was that it usually worked. This time, however, they seemed too dense to want to live.
The only slight hesitation either of them gave, was when they first noted her wings, but that only lasted a moment.
It was a shame, she thought as she made quick work of the Demon in front of her.
She hadn’t been paying attention to the one behind her, only remembering he existed when he yelled to signal his attack.
She spun around, expecting the Demon’s blade to meet her own. She realised too late that her weapon wasn’t angled correctly. He was going to slice right through her chest.
Only he didn’t.
Instead of striking her, the Demon staggered forward. Freya spotted something sticking out of his chest as he collapsed to his knees, revealing Damon behind him, holding a crossbow.
Freya ran her sword through the Demon to make sure he was dead before dealing with Damon. She needed the time to figure out what to say.
“Thank you,” she eventually managed.
“I...” Damon seemed a little dazed, staring at the dead Demon. “I didn’t think I would find you in the middle of a fight. I only brought the crossbow to show you...”
“I am a bounty hunter,” she reminded him. “Or, well, a Human protector, to be more accurate. But rogue Demons usually have bounties on their head. So, you know, win-win.”
Damon nodded, but still seemed a little out of it.
Freya frowned, wondering what was bothering him. It took her an awkwardly long time to realise that it might have been his first kill.
“Hey,” she said, drawing his attention back to her. “Thank you. You saved my life.”
He nodded, finally remembering to put his crossbow away. “This is what you do?” he asked. “Kill Demons for money?”
“Yes. Does that bother you?”
“Yes.”
She flinched. “I only hunt rogues,” she told him, hating how pleading her voice sounded.
Why the hell did she have to defend herself to him? The rogues had gone after her first, and she was the only one who seemed to care about the Humans of the city. Everyone else was too concerned with exposure.
He nodded. “I know. And everyone is thankful that the Angel is taking care of this stuff. I just...” He looked down at the dead Demons once more. “I guess I’m not used to this kind of thing.”
“If you want to talk, we should do so elsewhere. I know a good place.”
Damon nodded and she took that as an invitation, taking hold of his arm and shifting them to the school rooftop. It gave a nice view of the surrounding neighbourhoods, but she always liked looking at the stars from so high up.
“It’s nice up here,” Damon said after a moment as Freya sat on the edge of the building, letting her legs dangle off the side. He moved to join her.
“I’m sorry about before,” he eventually said. “I would have lied and said that it didn’t bother me but, you know, truth spell.”
Freya shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s just weird to me. I was attacked when I first came into my powers, so it’s all I’ve really known of the magical world. I actually meant to thank you. That protection charm you loaned me saved my life. It should have probably tipped me off to you not being Human, but since you could see through glamours, I just assumed you were Sensitive and had some magic blood way back.”
Damon tensed a little, shifting his weight. “Would you hate me if I told you that the Demon who attacked you was one of my father’s men?”
“No,” Freya assured him. “He was after me long before I met you. Though, he only got the source stone after your father saw me, so I assume your father gave it to him.”
Damon tensed further, becoming stone. “Do you think my father knows who you are?”
Freya shrugged. “Possibly. But I’ve killed all of the men he sent after me, assuming that they were all of the random Demon attacks against me. What about you? When you found me bloody and near-death, I mean. If you knew that your father’s man had attacked me, how did you think I survived?”
“I assumed that the Angel had saved you. It didn’t occur to me that you were the Angel.”
He was smiling, but Freya couldn’t help but notice how tense he still was.
She leaned over to him, resting her head against his bicep. He relaxed just a little at the move, but not much.
“He can’t hurt me. Your father, I mean. His attempts so far haven’t even been particularly good.”
“That just means that he’s only been toying with you. Perhaps, if he doesn’t know who you are, he wants to know why the Angel is protecting you.”
“You don’t talk about him,” she ventured.
He sighed. “It’s difficult enough to talk about without lying, Freya.”
After a few moments of awkward silence, she eventually asked, “What would you have been lying about?”
“My other half.”
“Your non-Demon half? Why? Who was your mother?” She wanted to retract the question as soon as she had asked it, knowing that he had no choice but to answer.
“A Human assassin,” he answered, tensing up once more.
“I’m sorry. I forgot about the truth spell.”
“It’s okay, Freya. I always hated lying to you.”
“Me too.”
He nodded. “What do you know about how Humans fought against us in the last alternate timeline?”
Freya shrugged. “It was technology, right? Their technology caught up to magic and they used genetic enhancements to...” She trailed off, realising where this was going. They had used genetic enhancements. If his mother had been an assassin...
He nodded, realising that she had figured it out. “I’m half-Demon and half-genetically engineered Human, which means that I have genetic enhancements that shouldn’t even exist in this timeline.”
“Are they how you survived the shift to this timeline?”
He shook his head. “The Humans had been experimenting with shields that could work against magic. They had a whole shielded facility that survived the shift.”
“Had?”
“My father found out about it and... that I existed.” He let out an irritated sigh. “No one has really told me the specifics. All I know is that I was born at the facility around the time of the shift. A year later, my father raided the facility and killed everyone. He kept me alive because... Because he was curious about the combination of both magic and genetic enhancements. He didn’t want Demons to be caught out again, if it ever came to another War...”
“You were his lab rat?” Freya asked, horrified at the thought.
Damon nodded. “Pretty much. Every day was a different trial. How long could I survive in extreme conditions? Had they enhanced my intelligence as well? How resistant was I to deadly magics?”
“I’m sorry.” Freya didn’t know what else to say. She’d never understood saying sorry. It wasn’t her fault and sentiment was no use to anyone. But she remembered that it was the done thing.
What she really wanted, she realised as her insides broiled with Damon’s pain, was to track down his father and kill him. Slowly. See how resistant to deadly magics he was.
“You can’t kill him,” Damon said simply and Freya wondered momentarily if he had read her mind, before realising that her fists were clenched and engulfed in flame.
Freya let the fire dissipate.
“I thought about it,” Damon admitted. “After he made you a target. It was possibly the worst thing he could have done...”
Damon moved his hand close to hers and she let him as his thumb stroked the side of her fist.
“I didn’t know that he was wrong to treat me the way he did when I was little. I didn’t see anyone but him, and a few of his most trusted underlings. He had no other
heir and couldn’t let anyone find out about me. As his oldest child, I would inherit his position if he died, despite my Human blood. If he hadn’t wanted to study me, he certainly would have killed me.
“He let me know it too. It was made very clear to me that I was nothing but an abomination. My only value was what I could teach him about my genetic make-up.”
“Are you sure I can’t kill him?”
Damon smiled, though it faded quickly. He ignored her question.
“When my aunt and her husband showed up... They told me that they had only just learned of my existence. They told me that my father had no right to treat a child the way he had.” Damon frowned, shaking his head. “But they made it just as clear that they also just wanted me for my power. Theirs is a political marriage, nothing more. They were never going to have a child, and they needed someone...”
Freya wanted to prompt him but couldn’t figure out how to do it without asking a question that he would be forced to answer, so she let the silence continue.
“I don’t want to freak you out,” he eventually muttered quietly. “I still freak out when I think about inheriting that legacy.”
Freya snuggled her head against his arm a little, much like a cat, in an attempt to reassure him. “Trust me, when it comes to terrifying legacies, I think I have everyone beat.”
“Oh? You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
She took a deep breath. She hadn’t told anyone since she had found out.
Suddenly, she had a little sympathy with Amber for keeping it to herself. It wasn’t exactly an easy thing to bring up.
“My grandmother was the Angel Twilight.”
“Shit... You’re right, I think that does beat mine.” He was smiling, which eased her anxiety. He didn’t seem to be freaking out like she had feared.
“So, what’s yours then?”
“My aunt’s husband? He’s... He’s the Demon King...”
“Shit.”
“Yeah...”
She tried to give him the same reassuring smile that he had given her, but it was weak.
If Damon was his aunt’s husband’s chosen heir, that made him the future Demon King.
She was dating the future ruler of all Demons.
Or... Were they dating?
The only reason Damon told her that they couldn’t be together before had been because he had thought she was Human. And they had kissed. Damn had they kissed... And they had straight-up admitted that they loved each other.
She pushed those thoughts away as she realised that she was being selfish. Damon needed the same reassurance he had given her. That they were rock solid, no matter their past or future.
“I still beat you,” she told him with a smile.
“That you do,” he replied. “It’s not as if I have Royal Blood or anything. I was just a convenient choice.”
“So, if you’re his chosen heir, why are you here, on Earth?”
“The King instructed my uncle, his most trusted guard, to watch over me and make sure my father couldn’t get to me. Earth seemed like the safest place. And the King couldn’t let someone as powerful as me stay in my father’s control.”
He clenched his fists as he spoke of his father, Dark energy crackling over them. Freya placed her hands over his, ignoring the sting. She could take it.
“They made you think you were just your power,” Freya realised. “Your father, your aunt...”
Damon nodded. “Nothing else mattered to them. Even my uncle... He was under orders to care about me.
“But you? No one ever told you to care about me. You had no idea who I was and you still... You still treated me like everyone else.”
Freya offered a weak smile. “I seem to remember being more than a little defensive when we first met.”
“But you were defensive with everyone,” he countered. “And you eventually let me through. That... It meant a lot to me.”
“It meant a lot to me too,” she admitted.
“I still believed that the secrets locked in my DNA were my only worth. But you made me feel like I mattered. I had never hated my father, because I never thought what he did to me was wrong. And then he tried to kill you. It gave me the strength to hate him for what he did to me as well.”
“None of this is explaining why I can’t kill the bastard.”
Damon smiled, though it was bittersweet. “You can’t kill him because he never leaves his impenetrable estate in the Underworld. You also can’t kill him because my aunt still uses him for political leverage. Technically, they didn’t take me away. They told my father that they had learned of my existence and they offered to take me in as a ward. It would have been unseemly of him to refuse such an offer from the King, so I got away. But it was all ‘officially’ done with smiles.”
“So, killing him would mess up the power structure of the Underworld?”
“Pretty much. My aunt still relies on him to help her keep everyone in line when the King’s not around.”
“I don’t care,” Freya eventually said after a few moments of thought. “If he ever tries to hurt you again, I’ll kill him.”
Damon smirked. “Is murder always your first course of action?”
She shrugged, taking his joke as a sign that he was feeling better about her bounty hunting. “Not always. Stopping the Fae required me to start thinking outside the murder box, but I still think it’s a valid solution in many cases.”
Thankfully, he smiled at her continuing the joke.
They lapsed into silence and Damon leaned closer to her, his gaze heated to the point that her breath hitched.
“I’m glad I can talk to you about this, Freya,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I... I know this is kind of weird and sudden, but I’ve cared about you for so long.”
She couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Yeah, you weren’t exactly alone in that.”
“If only I’d realised you were magic when I loaned you that protection charm. I would have told you then and there that I had fallen for you.”
She closed the gap between them, tentatively pressing her lips to his. He responded with full force and she had to take what little focus she retained to keep her magic from setting his clothing alight. Her own combat gear could take it, but his t-shirt couldn’t.
Her wings flared out as she pressed herself closer to him, shifting around so that she wasn’t straining her neck.
He pulled away after a few moments, only to jump as he looked her over.
“Freya, the ledge!”
She looked down to see what he meant, only to let out a surprised yelp as she realised that she was hovering away from the ledge.
As if by Loony Tunes logic, as soon as Freya realised that gravity should be having an effect on her, it did.
She dropped towards the ground, leaving her stomach behind.
Her arms flew out to try and break her fall, her eyes squeezing shut.
The ground was wet from a brief shower earlier in the day and the water rushed up to break Freya’s fall, but she still heard a crack as she landed on her left arm.
Damon was at her side immediately, having shifted just a moment too late to catch her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Broken arm, I think,” she told him. “Don’t worry. It’s not the first time.”
Damon helped her to get into a sitting position, passing her a vial from his pocket.
“Here. It’s a healing potion.”
“Meant for Demons?”
“Demons with mixed blood, so it should help a little at least.”
She nodded, moving the water up to hold her bad arm and keep the bone in its proper place as her good one took the vial.
She downed it in one go, giving a cry as, a few moments later, her bone started to fuse itself back together.
After a couple of moments, she let the water dissipate, feeling as good as new.
“I thought you said it would only help a little,” she ventured. “I’ve never had
a healing potion work that well before.”
“It shouldn’t have. I mean, it’s a good healing potion, but they can only do so much unless tailored towards you. As I said, that one was meant for Demons with mixed blood. Specifically Human, but it also shouldn’t have hurt, so...”
“But I’m not a Demon,” she told him. “I’m an Angel.”
“Yeah, but ‘Angel’ isn’t an entirely genetic thing. You can have non-Angel traits from non-Angel parents... You always told me that you never knew your father...”
Freya shook her head. “Nope. I am too tired to deal with that possibility right now.”
“Freya, you can’t just ignore-”
“Watch me,” she said, cutting him off as she stood up.
As if to punctuate her saying that she was tired, she yawned so violently that her jaw made a cracking sound.
“I’ve had an emotionally draining couple of days,” she told him. “It’s taking all of my focus just to make fully formed sentences. I need a day off.”
“A day off?”
She nodded. “Tomorrow. You and me. A day off. We’ll do stuff. Couples stuff. Figure out whatever it is we are.”
Damon smiled. “Couples stuff,” he agreed. “Oh, before you go.” He reached around to his back pocket, bringing out another vial. “You mentioned that you were having trouble sleeping before, so I brought you a potion to help.”
“Thank you,” she said, accepting the gift before closing the gap between them to kiss him. “‘Night,” she said as she pulled away.
“‘Night.”
FREYA WAS USED TO THE rush of memories from her Earth counterpart at this point, though it had never happened while she was in combat before. Her mind took a moment to register the heavy armour she was wearing and remember that it was familiar, despite the fact that her Earth counterpart usually wore a much lighter and less ornate ensemble.
“Queen Freya!” she heard as she stumbled, a blast of water knocking back the enemies who tried to take advantage of her situation.
She spun around to see that Melody, one of her ranged combatants, had probably just saved her life. She would have to remember to give her a medal if they ever made it out of there alive.