by Debra Dunbar
“That’s beautiful,” a deep voice said behind me. Gregory. His tone was that soothing rumble. I got the impression he’d been there watching me for a while as I’d been engrossed in my glasswork.
I looked up at him. His black eyes were hard to read in the moonless night, but at least he didn’t appear pissed off. Maybe whatever errand he’d run had allowed him to relax and recover his control.
“Back home, I’d gift it to the one of the elves,” I told him.
The elves loved art, but they were not often satisfied with their own creations. I thought their art was beautiful and perfect, but they deplored the lack of emotion and feeling. They were always grateful to get something we had made, and they frequently invited us to their social events. We annoy them, but they’ve always tolerated us like we were crazy eccentric relatives.
“You know elves?” Gregory asked in wonder. “You actually see them socially?”
Oh yeah, the prodigal children. The elves as a race had always been doted on and favored by the angels. They had originally sided with the angels during the war, but became increasingly disillusioned with them as the fighting dragged on.
To everyone’s surprise, and seemingly against their own best interests, they ended up pulling themselves from the conflict and declaring neutrality. The angels had been winning before, but after the elves pulled out, we reached a stalemate and thus the division of the realms and the treaty. I’m not sure what caused the elves to come to our turf, but they carved out their own space and refused to enter this realm. The whole reason the angels had created the big stable gates was in hope that their beloved species would come to their senses and join them again.
“Yeah. They ward their land heavily against us, and their adults are kind of stodgy and boring, but their young are fun and playful. They sneak over into our land and play pranks on us, and we reciprocate. It’s all in good fun. We sometimes perform services for each other. If we establish a business relationship, then it results in being invited to their social functions.”
“Do you go? Are you invited?” Gregory asked, sitting beside me.
“Occasionally. I’ve performed some services for one of the high lords, and he invites me to holiday functions, and the occasional great hunt. Honestly, I think I get invited to the hunts because I ride like shit and they all get a huge laugh at seeing me hit the ground regularly.”
I handed him the glass horse and he examined it carefully.
“I saw you pull the impurities out of the glass. Why did you bother?” he asked, sending strands of himself into the glass to better feel its structural integrity.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Elves would have said that things of beauty should not be marred, that they should attempt to approach divinity in their perfection, that sloppy imperfect work was an offense against nature and the forces of creation. Perhaps the elves had just rubbed off on me?
“I don’t know,” I replied shrugging. “I didn’t have any particular reason, I just did it.”
“It’s perfect,” Gregory handed the horse back to me. “And it has such feeling and expression to it. That I expected, but I would never have expected this level of detail from a demon. Honestly, I would have expected you to shoot the bottles off the railing or twist them into a horrific mass. Not create this delicate thing of beauty.”
“There is equal beauty in the things called horrific. The act of destruction is an expression of beauty, too. I destroyed the bottle to make the horse. Is a pretty glass horse worth the loss of a bottle, but the sound of shattered glass and bits flying through the air isn’t? Is transformation only worthy if you approve of the end result?”
Gregory stared at me in silence for a while. I think I shocked him. He’d probably expected me to say “fuck that” and blow up the glass horse or something. Well, I wasn’t always a stereotype.
He reached out a hand to me and I tensed involuntarily expecting him to blast me with that white stuff or pop my head off. Unfair, I know, since he was calm right now and we hadn’t exactly been arguing. Still, after today, I was leery of his intentions toward me. And it’s not like he’d necessarily have to be angry with me to kill me. The whole process could be as emotionless as pinching the top off a dandelion. Gregory paused for a second then gently took a piece of my hair and carefully rubbed it between his thumb and fingers.
“Your human form is perfect too,” he said, half to himself. “Down to the last cell. Your energy is so tightly contained. You don’t leak like so many other demons”.
He leaked. The power flowed off him in waves. It was like sitting next to an open oven. And his form sucked. It was so weird with the strange skin and faint glow. He blurred at the edges sometimes, too.
“You don’t have the slightest imperfection in your form,” he continued. “I could walk right by you on the street and not know what you are. I could be in the same room with you for hours and not know.”
“You did,” I told him. “Last week in The Wine Room. I was there when you came in looking for me and I managed to sneak out the back door.”
He looked at me in surprise. “You were? I wasn’t looking for you. I was there to find Candy in an attempt to gain any information the local werewolves had on Althean. I could sense she was there, but she got out the back door while the humans were smothering me with adoration.” He rolled his eyes, as if the reaction of the humans was both amusing and annoying. “I didn’t know you were there at all. You were a few yards from me, and I didn’t even sense your presence?”
“You weren’t looking for me?” I asked. “But you must have sensed me. You were at that werewolf’s house a few days later. The one I killed with the electricity.”
He shook his head in confusion. “What are you talking about? I had no indication of your presence until you blasted Althean at Robinson’s house.”
Damn. Candy had lied. She’d made up the whole thing to manipulate me into doing what she wanted. All my panic, this whole madness with Candy had been because I’d thought he was on my trail. He hadn’t even known I existed, that I was right there. He hadn’t been after me at all. I could have just gone about my life and he would have never known.
He continued to rub my hair between his fingers and I felt him push his energy in once again to examine me. It was pretty rude. He’d examined the glass horse with more consideration. Poking around like this at me was so annoying. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to force him out, so I returned the favor and poked back at him with my personal energy. It didn’t have the same effect. He brushed me off repeatedly without effort, and certainly didn’t get the hint on how disrespectful this sort of thing was. I was nervous he’d find out how much raw energy I had stored within me and tried to compress it tighter, but he was careful to avoid contact with it. The rest of me was fair game though. It was like having someone root through your underwear drawer.
Without warning, I felt him snatch hold of the red–purple within me and pull violently.
“Owww,” I yelled and punched him as hard as I could in the arm. It was like hitting a cement block. “Asshole. That hurts. Cut it out.”
He stopped and I felt his surprise, but he didn’t let go and didn’t remove his energy from me. I sat there and braced myself for more pain, but he released and gently pulled back to himself. Silence stretched on between us, but it wasn’t awkward. If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be sitting on a porch next to an angel listening to the locusts sing at night I would not have believed it. I was fully aware of his strength and the enormous power imbalance between us, but for some reason I felt a sense of peace.
We continued to sit there in silence for several hours, and then I put the glass horse on the railing beside the empty beer bottles and went in to sleep. My intention was to grab a blanket and curl up on the floor, but I looked longingly at Wyatt snoring softly in the bed. I might not be around much longer. As much as I dislike having someone crush me all night, I really wanted as much closeness with him as I could. I wanted to feel his wa
rm flesh against me. I didn’t want to regret missing a moment of that. Filled with longing, I pulled off my clothes and climbed under the covers with Wyatt. He immediately sensed my presence and turned to face me, wrapping his arms tight around me and twining my legs between his. Seconds later and I was clamped against him. There was nowhere I’d rather have been.
I slept some, and woke in the morning to the now familiar feel of Wyatt’s erection against my thigh. As if that weren’t bad enough, Wyatt ran his one hand down my back to cup around my ass and brought the other up to the side of my breast.
“Sam?” his groggy voice asked. “Why are you naked?”
I’d forgotten about Candy’s presence and her edict regarding night wear.
“I always sleep naked,” I told him.
He caught his breath. “Do you think Candy is a light sleeper,” he whispered, his hands roaming across my skin. That morning erection of his had gained focus and was now a hard steel pipe on my leg.
“I’m a very light sleeper,” a stern voice from the sofa announced. “And there will be no sex going on while I’m here.”
“Can you leave?” I asked her hopefully.
“No. Sam, get up and put some clothes on and go outside while Wyatt calms certain parts of his anatomy down. I’ve got some bottled water for us to brush our teeth with. We’ll wait for our orders from Gregory, and then hopefully we can grab coffee and breakfast on our way.”
Candy was very organized for such an early hour in the morning. I would rather have had slow thorough sex with Wyatt then snooze while Candy ran out to fetch coffee and donuts, but that was clearly not going to happen. Reluctantly, I got up and dressed in yesterday’s torn dirty jeans and a clean shirt.
When I went out to the porch to stretch my legs, I noticed the glass horse was gone. All the other bottles were still lined up on the porch rail, but there was a conspicuous empty spot where I’d put the horse. I was oddly delighted that he’d taken it. It must have been him. No one else had left the cabin, and it wasn’t likely that some prowler had come around, especially with Candy’s werewolf hearing. I was glad he liked it. Hopefully after he killed me, he’d look at it and remember me fondly.
I grabbed the empty bottles and one at a time threw them off the side of the porch against the trunk of an oak. The first bounced off without breaking, so I put a bit of energy behind the next one and was gratified when it shattered with that lovely breaking glass sound. The others quickly followed, and I ended by blasting the remaining whole one as it lay by the base of the tree.
“I can’t quite see how that was a thing of beauty, but I’ll allow you to have your differing opinion on the matter,” Gregory’s amused voice announced.
I turned and was surprised by the incongruity of seeing him holding a drink carrier with Styrofoam cups and a bag. Judging from the smell, the cups contained coffee.
“You brought coffee?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I know humans are basically useless without this morning beverage, and I assumed you’d be the same.”
At that moment, we were interrupted by Candy, who burst through the door brandishing a broken remote control.
“I’m not paying for this,” she told me, waving it at my face.
I immediately threw the angel under the bus. “It was him,” I said pointing at Gregory. “He broke it off the chain and I was just trying to hide the evidence.”
Gregory raised his eyebrows at Candy and handed her a cup of coffee.
“Oh,” she said in confusion, taking the coffee. “Thank you. I mean, no problem. I’m sure it was an accident.”
“No,” he told her. “It was no accident. I purposely broke it.”
Candy turned bright red with embarrassment and sputtered something about how it was no problem at all, vanishing back into the cabin with her coffee. I grabbed a cup for myself out of the holder and laughed.
“You’re mean. I like it. Especially when it’s not directed at me.”
He handed me the drink holder and the bag along with an address on a slip of paper.
“Meet me at this address in half an hour. We’ve got a long day ahead of us. If you’re late, I’ll turn your car into a useless ball of metal.”
Without waiting for a reply, he gated away. I assumed that meant the camaraderie was over and we were now back to our former adversarial relationship. The thought made me rather sad.
Chapter 16
“Do it,” Gregory commanded. “Do your thing.”
We were at the first of the werewolves’ houses and they were away at work. It was a family of three. Father, mother, ten year old son. I didn’t know what the hell Gregory wanted me to do.
“Your thing,” he said impatiently. “Do it.”
“What thing?” Was I supposed to fuck Wyatt on the lawn, blow a hole in the driveway, throw a bolt of lightning through the picture window, or strip the skin off some human and forcibly Own them?
“Change,” he waved his hand around. “Change into something, then change back. Leave a big old demon energy signature right here on the front lawn to scare Althean away.”
Great. He was too lazy to hex the place, so I needed to convert my entire flesh. Did he want me to do this at every house? There were forty werewolf residences in the Waynesboro area. Was I supposed to do this at thirty nine of them? Fuck that. And what good would it do? Was Althean so stupid, or possibly so insane that he wouldn’t realize that that fortieth house, the one without my energy all over it was a trap? Any self respecting demon would just head elsewhere. Somewhere outside the little regression line Wyatt showed on his computer. Stupid fucking angels. Like a dumb ass lemming.
“You’re joking. You expect me to convert my entire form at thirty nine houses today? Do you realize how much raw energy it would take for that? I’d be drained to nothing,” I announced dramatically. I had more than enough raw energy, but I didn’t want him to know that.
Gregory raised an eyebrow. “Do it,” he commanded. His voice had power behind the compulsion. Huge power. It swept over me with the intensity of a forest fire. I admired his ability to put forth such a huge volume of power, but in spite of it, the compulsion slid over me without effect.
“Fuck you,” I told him.
He frowned and I could tell he had expected the compulsion to work.
“Do it now or I will make your human toy into a eunuch,” he announced, changing tactics.
Wyatt turned white. He’d do it too, without a second thought. Asshole. Fine, I’d do it, but I wouldn’t make it pretty.
I was pissed, so I exploded out everything but my personal energy and stash of raw energy in a rapid blast. Time froze, as it always did when I converted my whole self and I felt the seductive pull of eternity. I could just let the matter go, let it drift on out taking my personal energy with it. I would fade into the fabric of creation, become whole. I forced myself to focus and snap back into flesh. It was like a sonic boom, once out and once in. Crack, crack. Wyatt and Candy were both knocked to the ground. Gregory stood as if untouched, the bastard.
“And she’s naked again,” Candy said, getting to her feet and dusting off her pants. “There doesn’t seem to be a day that goes by that I’m not treated to the sight of your naked body. Can’t you possibly do this without losing your clothing?”
Of course, I’d blown my clothing to bits when I converted, and didn’t know how to create new ones.
“Is she always like this?” Gregory asked me, gesturing toward Candy. “No wonder Althean is trying to exterminate the werewolves if they’re all as annoying as she is.”
“She’s alright,” I chuckled. “I’ll bet she fucks with all her clothes on and the lights off, though.”
Gregory looked around, no doubt sensing my energy usage.
“Do it again, over here a bit. I don’t think that will be close enough to the house to suffice.”
Fuck, this was going to be even worse if I had to do a conversion multiple times at each house. I really would be running low if he
kept this up. Was this some way to determine how much I had stored? How much I could do before I collapsed exhausted in a heap? I complained again that this was a stupid idea and that there was no way I was going to be able to keep doing this.
He stopped and looked at me sternly. “Did we not just have this conversation? Let me see. Yes. Yes, it was the same conversation. There was some whining from you, then I threatened to do physical harm to your toy, then you grudgingly complied. Perhaps we can just skip all the middle part and get to the part where you comply? Otherwise, I’m liable to get angry and do all sorts of things I’ll really enjoy now and mildly regret later.”
I hated this angel.
I walked over closer to the house and again converted myself violently in an explosion of pressure and sound. Wyatt and Candy stayed farther back this time and managed to stay on their feet.
“I had forgotten about the clothing thing,” the angel said as he turned his back on me and walked toward the car. “You’ll need to strip each time you do this since we don’t have a truckload of outfits for you to ruin.”
I glared at him as I followed him, naked, to the car, and noticed him rub a hand over his ear. Blood. That was interesting.
The next house he stood back farther. I smiled to myself and blew everything apart and back with even more force. Candy clutched her head. “Can Wyatt and I be somewhere else for this? If she keeps it up I’ll be tossed into the adjacent county. Maybe we can just wait for you all to finish this at a local coffee shop?”
Gregory shot Candy an irritated look, and didn’t reply. He clearly had a slight nose bleed this time. “I don’t think you need to change your whole self next time,” he said rubbing his nose. “Maybe just a portion of you, instead.”
The following few houses I experimented, changing just portions of me, using less energy, changing the residents’ dog into a rat, which Candy insisted I change back. I can easily convert myself, but I’m not so good at changing other beings. The dog didn’t quite go back the same as it originally was. The owners would never be able to tell, but the unfortunate thing would die in a few weeks. I should have left it a rat. At the next house I burned a circle in the lawn with green fire. None of these seemed to have any noticeable impact on Gregory.