Chapter 21 Malachi
Malachi
Mortal cocks are so strange.
It’s certainly not ‘velvet-wrapped steel’—honestly, whoever wrote that book needs a refresher on metallurgy. It’s more like a particularly stubborn, over-sensitive blood sausage. It’s fleshy and persistent and a startlingly human shade of beige that feels entirely too vulnerable.
It looked better when it was silver. Everything did. Now, it just looks… needy. Like a blind animal looking for a warm place to burrow.
Even if I could kick down her bedroom door and bury myself in her to finish what we started in the construction site, would she even like the look of it?
I snort, my fingers tightening on my waistband.
No, of course she would.
Even in this claustrophobic meat-suit, I’m an ethereal being compared to the dish-plate-faced mortals she’s used to. She’d probably weep with gratitude at the upgrade. If she were to let me get past the point of burying my fingers inside her before she panicked.
Eden is fast asleep or—more likely—weeping into her pillow over her ‘trauma’, and the House Beast isn't even here to keep me company
I look down at the bratwurst again.
Fuck it.
I slide my hand down my chest, my palm closing around the hot length of it. I let out a breath that’s half-growl, half-sigh. But as I start a slow, experimental stroke, a wave of genuine revulsion curls in my chest.
It feels like I’m jerking someone else off.
I’m centuries old, of course I’ve done that before—but this is different.
This is my consciousness driving a stolen vehicle, and trying to find the manual for the steering wheel.
Every time my thumb brushes the head, I’m hyper-aware of the fact that the nerves are mine, but also really aren't. They’re a biological interface.
A simulation. It feels like I’m crossing some unspoken line of demonic dignity.
I'm a Torture Administrator, for fuck's sake.
I shouldn't be reduced to manual labor on a couch.
But the ache is persistent, and it’s drowning out any semblance of logic.
I close my eyes, trying to superimpose Eden’s face over the darkness behind my eyelids as the memory of her pussy and her sweet sweet gasps fills my mind, until I can practically taste her wetness again.
My pace picks up, teeth grinding together as the silver piercing bolted into the head clicks rhythmically against my knuckles. My breath hitches as I catch a bead of precum with my thumb, wiping it slowly across the sensitive ridge of the head—okay, oh fuck, that isn’t too bad.
A heavy coil of heat begins to unspool at the base of my spine, radiating outward until my toes curl into the couch cushions.
I lean lean into the rhythm, my head falling back against the upholstery, biting into my other fist to stop myself from moaning, my mind a chaotic loop of Eden’s thighs, Eden’s pussy, Eden’s hands—
“Are you masturbating?!”
My eyelids snap open, head whipping toward the hallway—nothing. No one. The air is still, the House-Beast is nowhere to be seen, and the bedroom door is still firmly shut.
A sharp, dry cough echoes through the room.
I look over to the TV, my pulse still thundering in my ears, to see the screen flickering into a sickening, static-heavy violet. Veraxia is staring at me, her face filling the high-definition display, her expression one of pure revulsion.
“Fuck's sake,” I hiss, tucking the cock back into the shorts with an undignified shove. Then I sit up slowly, rolling my neck until the vertebrae pop.
Well it was mildly fun while it fucking lasted.
“Veraxia,” I deadpan. “To what do I owe the displeasure this time? I’m busy.”
“I can see that,” she says, her lip curling in a way that suggests she’d like to audit my entire soul. “You weren’t in your office today. Or the day before.”
“Astute as ever,” I drawl, leaning back and trying to project a cavalier boredom I don't entirely feel with a semi-hard bratwurst still throbbing in my pants. “Your grasp of the calendar remains unparalleled.”
“You are masturbating in the mortal realm, Malachi,” she sneers, eyes narrowing as they take in the rumpled state of my borrowed clothes. “Is this your idea of fun? Is this why you’ve abandoned your station? To masturbate on a piece of polyester furniture?”
I let out a long groan, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Cut to the chase before I decide to see if this remote control works on your forehead.”
“Petulant brat,” she hisses, her voice rippling with a familiar, weary condescension that makes my skin crawl.
“I was out for dinner last night, under the impression that I’d finally intercepted your little runaway job, when I heard something very interesting over my drinks. Do you know what it was?”
I pick a piece of cat hair off the cushion, feigning a deep interest in the fabric. “I don't know. That the brimstone harvest is down? That Satan’s finally divorcing her fifteenth husband? “
“I heard whispers of a Harvester from the Twelfth Division going missing,” she snaps “Specifically the one who reported your little 'vacation' to me.
But I thought to myself: No. Surely, Malachi isn't that stupid. He’s already neck-deep in the shit; he wouldn't draw that kind of heat to himself. And yet,” she snarls, leaning in until her distorted face fills all fifty inches of the screen, “the second I tracked that Harvester’s essence, the trail bled straight back to you.
The Twelfth has already flagged him as a lost asset.
The only reason a Recovery Team isn't tearing through the Veil to find that shell is because I’ve manually rerouted the Harvester's location to a dead-zone server in the Sixth Division.”
I let out a mocking hum, tilting my head. “Oh, so not only have I got you riding my ass, but you’ve turned me into a tech-support ticket, too?”
“What is wrong with you?!” she snaps.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I mutter. “He was Vermin-Class, Veraxia. I’ve done the Twelfth a favor by getting rid of a pest who added zero value to the collective.”
“It doesn't matter if he was vermin-class! As much as I enjoy watching those bugs get their skulls squished when they wander into our halls, you cannot kill them on the mortal plane. It leaves a footprint, Malachi. A messy, bleeding footprint that leads right to a demon who’s on illegal leave from his job.”
“Malachi, shut up for fuck's sake!” Eden’s voice hammers from the hallway. “The dating show contestants can’t hear your life advice! Turn the volume down or I’m throwing the TV out the window!”
I tilt my head back and bellow toward the hallway. “My deepest apologies, baby girl! I’ll stop arguing with the desperate female who clearly has no self-respect! Carry on with your weeping!”
The sound of her bedroom door slamming shut is so violent the framed picture of the House-Beast on the wall actually tilts.
Veraxia’s face on the screen shifts instantly, the bureaucratic rage replaced by a look of narrow-eyed suspicion. “Was that a mortal?” she whisper-shouts. “Malachi, tell me you are in a hotel. Tell me that was a particularly loud chambermaid.”
“You think I'd pay for a hotel that looks like this?” I gesture vaguely at the sagging couch and the floral-on-floral tragedy of the living room. “Come on, Vee, give me some credit. This is 'low-budget domestic' at best. The towels don't even match.”
“So you’re staying with a mortal?” The static on the screen flickers with angry lines of green and purple. “In her actual residence? Have you lost what little remains of your mind?”
“What? She’s my host.” I shrug.
“Please do not tell me she saw you before you were in this shell,” she says, her voice trembling with the kind of dread usually reserved for accidental holy-water spills. “Tell me you didn't expose your true form to a meat-sack.”
“No,” I say, my face a mask of perfect, silver-tongued innocence. “She didn’t see me before I was in the shell. I was very discreet.”
“Listen to me, you arrogant prick,” she whispers.
“You have twenty-four hours. That’s it. If you aren't back at your desk by your next shift, I have no choice but to send the Wardens. They’ll tear the door off the hinges, drag you back in chains, and I’ll have to spend a week’s worth of energy performing a total memory wipe on that mortal just to stop her brain from leaking out of her ears. ”
I reach out, my fingers curling around the remote. “You won't do shit. You'd have to get out of your chair first. And we both know you haven't seen the sun since the Renaissance. You’re all bark and spreadsheets.”
“Malachi, I am warning you—if you are not through the Veil in twenty-four hours, the girl is collateral, I will—”
“Yeah, yeah. Riveting stuff.” I yawn, my thumb hovering over the power button. “You're starting to sound like a broken record, and frankly, you're ruining the vibe of the room.”
“Don't you dare—”
The screen swallows her face into a single, disappearing dot of white light before going black. I toss the remote onto the cushion and let out a long breath, the silence of the apartment rushing back in to fill the space where her annoying-as-fuck voice had been.
I snatch the stupid romance book from the coffee table and fall back onto the couch, yanking the blanket over myself.
If I’m going to theoretically be hunted, I’m going to do it while catching up on the literary requirements of being a fortress. And I’m certainly not doing it without making sure Eden knows exactly how much of a prick I can be when my grand gestures go unappreciated.