Chapter Three #3
I drew a circle for heart, a circle for health, a line pointing north that strayed over a pebbled nipple, a line south that descended just below the other.
I gave the rune for exchange, a rune for breath.
A temporary spell that I connected to another circle, smudging my blood into archaic symbols that connected him to me in the most intimate of ways, with blood and life, calling upon the power of a greater demon, Draevus Faust. And then I drew one last circle, which I gave a weak connection to the first. The circle was smaller, simpler, the cardinal directions notched in and an ancient symbol for balance and exchange.
If he rejected me, my life would be forfeited.
I wondered who’d feed my books once I was gone. Surely, they’d grow lonely without sampling pieces of gaze and interest. They’d starve and could go feral… I prayed the guild would take care of it.
“There are too many circles, mage. What are you doing?” The crack of urgency lifted his pitch to an unmanly one that I understood, desperation and love.
“Giving him a choice.” I slammed my hand onto the main sigil, and Esmeray’s entire body bowed off the table, back arching, fingers clawed as the thickest, rattling breath drew in.
“Esmeray. Listen carefully!” I drew my hands to his face, black eyes wide and wild as they blew open.
“Do not waste this breath. You are dead. I can revive you at the cost of binding our lives eternally. We will be mates. I will be your husband in all things for all time. Or I can give you mortality for as long as your demon body holds out.”
The shadow hissed and swarmed, blocking off the room’s door as Draevus shouted something that drowned in a sudden scream from its nonexistent mouth.
He exhaled slowly, breath rattling, and he only had that one breath. Once it was gone, there were no more. True death would await.
“Answer me! You’ll die. It’s forever or not.” I stared as the breath rattled on, his dark eyes lightening as they met mine before slowly rolling back. “Esmeray!” I pressed on his chest, trying to squeeze a little more air through him to prolong the breath.
“You,” he spoke on the last whisper of breath, and the spell lit brilliantly, traversing to the next sigil where our very essences entwined.
Ausmius howled with ecstasy and threw solid darkness all around us, eyes opening all over the room, their red intensity staring at us from a thousand facets.
Aramaic faded into Avestan, of all things, whispered and hissing from unseen mouths.
Shadows stabbed into me, sharp tendrils penetrating flesh as each needle-like protrusion went through my blazer, crisp linen shirt, and through many layers of flesh.
I’d had worse and stilled. Any shifter unable to fully take their animal form could tell how painful an incomplete shift was, and I did it multiple times a day.
Some pinpricks were nothing, even as the shadow swam in my veins, entering one side of me, leaving the other like the very stitches I used to heal his neck.
Apologies, Diana and Bast! My soul comes with accessories now.
I took a deep breath as Esmeray breathed in and out, air sawing free of him as his flesh regained color, eyes evening out to a typical shape, whether glamor or not, I would come to know one day, I was certain.
“Esmeray!” Draevus shouted from the door, his posture slacking. Calling upon his power for such a thing had to drain him.
Esmeray didn’t look over as the pumpkin-orange glow of his eyes reignited. He stared in awe at me. Cherubic lips parted, pale face flushing. Whispered words traced his breath in a single statement. “I’ve always wanted to be loved. Really loved.”
I couldn’t promise I ever would. I couldn’t promise I’d try, either. I could only swear to him that I would share my life in all ways our bond demanded. Instead, I reciprocated. “Me too.”
I straightened his sheet and tucked it around his hips as he lost consciousness.
His shallow breaths rose and fell as our heartbeats synchronized in a way I could feel through my soul.
I caught my hand wandering to find his, our fingers curling together as Ausmius retreated into Esmeray’s body.
But some part of Esmeray was gone, and a presence lingered about him, offering power for service.
The nagging sensation of a god’s impatient words made my skin prickle.
“Ho—unholy shit.” The terrified and probably traumatized male stood still as Draevus forged his way forward, face a mask of anger.
“He lives.” Draevus breathed a sigh of relief so deep that he lost several inches of height. “He’s weak.”
“I have summoned his essence back to his corpse. In a way, I think, he’ll always know.
Part of him, maybe. A deity claimed his soul, in any case.
” I turned his palm over to stare at the lines.
What deity would claim a nefalem of dubious mixture didn’t come to me, but as I thought to check, it surprised me to feel through his spirit that both my gods had blessed our union, claiming him to me.
Diana and Bast. The female goddesses owned my soul, and with that, a daeva with his shadow.
“What?” Draevus didn’t take his gaze off Esmeray.
“My soul is claimed already. They put their mark on him, too. Our union is solid.” Saying the words made them feel too real.
“Well, shit. This is going to be hard to explain to Satan when the apocalypse comes.” The admission didn’t seem to dampen his mood. “But he’s with us. Part of my mate lives on. The daeva has survived, and my son will persist.”
I swallowed down the urge to smack his hand away when he caressed the side of Esmeray’s face. “My beautiful son. I almost lost everything. Thank you, mage.”
“You’re welcome. This is…going to take some getting used to.” The unnatural urge to have Esmeray untouched, alone with me, protected from others made me swallow bile that quietly rose in my throat. The sneaking feeling clawed its way through me.
“That stunt you pulled. It could have cost my son his life. You, your soul.” Draevus clenched a fist and released it. “Why?”
I gestured to Esmeray’s chest, to my spell map.
“This one here is for a single breath to choose. It’s for goodbyes.
It gives you life to say whatever one breath gives you.
And I used it to obtain his consent or refute.
If he’d wasted his breath, he’d have died truly.
If he chose me, he’d be tethered to me as mate…
My initial spellwork called to him as a familiar, but Ausmius tuned the magic quite efficiently. ”
“Ausmius shares you with him now.” Draevus glanced at me and then away, as if he found distaste in it. “Esmeray despises Ausmius. He’s had him so young that they never learned to coexist, only fight.”
I said nothing, as Draevus was doing his best to come to terms with something enormous, something even I would need time to understand.
“What do you desire of him?” Draevus traced pointed nails over Esmeray’s cheek.
“I desire what all men do. Happiness. If I he can be happy, and I can be happy, I can ask for nothing more.”
“Are you happy, now?” Draevus drew his hand back.
“I think I’m too stunned to answer you truthfully.
You are a demon and would sense a lie and either yes or no is a lie.
I am not happy, nor am I upset. I am in a limbo, and I can only hope that Esmeray and I can find our happiness in time.
My true concern is if I was the cause of his situation, and why he had that in his neck,” I said, gesturing behind me to the discarded sigil of The Church.
Draevus turned to stare at it and swore. Demonic swearing twisted reality at times, and the way it buzzed in my ears made me flinch as time went pink for a second. Don’t ask me how. Please, it’s difficult enough to just experience it.
Though, the fact I didn’t vomit blood was a good sign, a show that my bond with Esmeray settled in. Demonic immunity. Some bright side to the dark side, then. I have a mate, didn’t think that was possible. But no demon or omega of Esmeray’s status would want a mongrim.
Either Draevus could read minds, or I said it aloud, because his hand clasped to my wrist. “You called upon my name for that spell. You had faith in me. Your goddesses have faith in you. Hybrid or not, I must accept you as family.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, someone get my son some pants. I need to make sure he goes home with his mate this night.” Draevus sneered, a pained expression twisting his face.
“Their binding needs consummation soon. Do not call upon my name for that, if you would please. There are some lines even dukes of hell do not cross.”
I said nothing, but I thought many things while also thinking lalalalalala at the same time, just in case he could indeed read minds.
He swore again. Half the tiles in the room peeled up at the corners with dry cracks. “Ask.”
“How soon does this need to happen and how far must we go, minimum, to call it united?” I flinched, hoping he didn’t use demon swearing again.
“Within forty-eight hours and your seed must enter his body and his must… His must enter yours.” The flat-lipped moue of disgust twisted his face into something sinister.
“I hate to ask. He’s lovely, but I would hate to push any boundaries.” I swallowed hard, and something in me remembered the swallow of my mid-form, where my giraffe neck would carry a bolus down to my stomach in a slow ride. A gulp could be quite the spectacle.
“So, instead, you’re pushing mine?” He shook his head. “It’s simple enough. His life is anchored to yours, and if he so much as frowns in your presence, I will end you.”
“Understood.” I nodded once and tried to imagine Esmeray’s glowing orange eyes like embers flaring with desire, a body shaking with pleasure, and quickly buried the thought under Christmas music. Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an—
“Are you certain you’re no part demon?” Draevus turned his head to stare at me with a long question in his gaze.
“Could be. I am to understand my alpha father was giraffe, and my omega pater was a human omega, but—”
“That doesn’t make sense, entirely. Especially with how well you wield magic and how easily you called on my power.” Draevus drew his attention to his son as someone pressed a pair of scrub trousers into my hands.
With as much perfunctory touch as I could manage, I slipped the trousers over his feet at the end of the cloth and rucked them up, keeping the cloth on as best I could as they slipped into place over cool, soft skin and sturdy, masculine hips.
Just a few days ago, I hungered for the taste of carnal delights, and at that moment, the thought sickened me.
“Your speculation is as good as mine, sir.”
He grunted in acknowledgment as I picked Esmeray up, the position of his body, sheet still draped, almost bridal. “Are you certain he will be okay coming to my home?”
“Where else would I send him? They’ve already emptied his apartment into storage since he was murdered.
It’ll be a week of paperwork getting him undeclared dead.
You two need to be in proximity and he can summon help if need be.
” Draevus sighed. “Come to the limousine with me. When he’s awake and better, come to the firm to visit and we’ll discuss his return to the office. ”
“And about The Church?” I hesitated for a step but followed all the same.
“I’ll deal with them. You will be guarded.” Draevus kept his pace clipped as I followed.
“And is my name cleared?”
Draevus glanced over his shoulder, face hardened and twisted. “From the moment you spoke Ausmius’s name. If his daeva shadow trusts you? I do, too. Implicitly.”
That had to be good enough for me. I left that afternoon a single male, impossibly lonely and tolerated only for the services he could provide others.