13. BDSM? Really?
The strong rush of air passing across my ears ended with a loud and painful slam to the ground. I expected to have a quick moment of consciousness at the bottom of the canyon before I passed out, but when I opened my eyes, I was looking at the arched entrance to my home. As if the shards of magnets in my arms and the blows to my face weren’t enough to ruin my damn day, landing in my front yard, bloodied and dressed in a bathrobe, sure was.
Don’t get me wrong. I was happy to be alive, but when the pain shot up from my ass through my spine and into my shoulders, I questioned if death wouldn’t have been a better option. I laid there, splayed out, eyes drifting to the sky. The cool breeze brushed across my body and gave a weird sense of relief to the pain.
“Are you okay?” the shaky voice of an elderly woman called out. “Do you need help?”
I looked up to see my nosy neighbor, Mrs. Green, staring at me from her front porch. Great, the entire neighborhood would hear about this shit now.
“I’m fine!” I called out and scrambled to get up from the ground, pulling the robe tighter around me as I rushed for the door. Thank God for keyless entry. If she got any closer, those prescription goggles she wore would kick in, and she’d see just how not okay I was. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to explain being outside in the middle of winter in my damn underwear?
The door slammed shut behind me just as Mrs. Green stepped off her porch. I looked through the peephole and watched her throw her hands up in the air and return to her chair. No juicy gossip for her to spread today.
“I can’t believe this shit.” I looked at my dirty hands and thought about the power that surged through them earlier. “So, that just happened. That was real.”
And suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My house felt too small, like the walls would fold in and crush me. I opened the robe and grabbed the magazine off the entry table to fan myself.
“How is any of this possible? And what the hell did she mean about Metice?” My mind ran as I spoke the questions aloud to no one.
I stumbled into the house, ass hurting more with each step, and looked at the disaster that was my kitchen. The bitch had made more of a mess than I thought. The table sat top down, legs up, food splattered all over the ceiling and wall. All those pretty counter trinkets I’d bought for the aesthetic more than their function were smashed across the floor.
“Not my coffee maker!” I cried out when I found my top-of-the-line machine broken in half. “Evil ass bitch!”
As I carefully picked up the pieces of the two-hundred-dollar machine, I felt it. The tension. That feeling that once excited me but no longer had the same effect.
“Not this bitch again.” I turned around, holding the broken appliance in my hand. If I needed to use it as a weapon, I would.
“What happened here?” Metice appeared.
“Now you arrive!” I dropped the pieces and laughed. “That crazy bitch was in here kicking my ass all up and down my kitchen, and you were nowhere to be found.”
“Rayna, what happened?” Metice waved his hand in front of my face to get me to focus. “Who was here?”
“What happened?” I turned over a chair and sat down, grimacing at the pain that shot up my spine. “I think I broke my ass.”
“What?” He moved toward me but stopped when I held my hand out to him.
“Your crazy ex-girlfriend showed up here.” I pointed at him. “Just a friend, my ass! What’s her name?”
“Who?” He clearly wasn’t listening to me. He kept looking at my dirty robe and scarred knees.
“The big green bitch. You know who, Metice. Don’t play with me.” My frustration grew, and for a moment, I felt that heat in my gut again, but it quickly dissipated.
“Olian was here?”
“Olian?” I sucked my teeth. “That’s her name? Well, yeah. Olian was here, and she came to tell me to stay the hell away from you, the man she was supposed to be marrying until I came along. I mean, damn, I know you wanted to keep your secrets, but this is something you definitely should have told me! Oh, by the way, I have a psycho ex that might try to take your head off with her fucking tentacles!”
“Calm down please.” He took another step toward me, but I held my hand up again to stop him.
“Don’t tell me to calm down after I was just attacked in my own damn home and found out that I apparently have some freaky ass powers I haven’t even had three seconds to stop and process.”
“Rayna, I’m trying my best to follow you, but you’re losing me.”
“How difficult is it to follow?” I cocked my head to the side. “You left. She came. She told me to stay away from you or she would kill me. Then, she attacked me. We fought. Well, more like she demon kicked my ass, and then somehow, I blasted her big ass up off me.” I pointed to the floor, where it all happened. “Then she came for me again, talking about how she was going to drag me back to hell. But when I tried to blast her again, something else happened.”
“What happened?” he asked, but there was something strange to his voice, that slight rise in expectation. It was as if he already knew what I would say but wanted me to be the one to say it first.
“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that.” I stood carefully, using the edge of the knocked-over table as support. “We were here, and then we weren’t. Then I dropped her, and I fell too, but I landed in my yard. We weren’t over my yard, though. We were over a canyon somewhere. It was enormous, so deep that I couldn’t even see the bottom.”
“Oh shit.” He took a step back this time, and his expression said everything. Metice had just received confirmation of what I assumed was another secret he’d held from me.
“Oh shit is right.” I paused, then turned my finger back on him. “You knew, didn’t you? She said you were keeping a secret. Am I the secret? Are my powers the secret? What else have you hidden from me? What else do you know that I don’t?”
“Can we pause? Let’s clean up this mess and get you dressed. Then, we can talk.” Metice tried to deflect, but it only told me my assumptions were right.
“And that means everything she said is true, and you definitely know a lot more about me and all this shit than you told me before.” I turned and headed for the stairs. “Fine. You clean this up. I’m going to go process everything that happened and hope when I see you again, I don’t want to kill you—not that it seems possible. I mean, I tried to stab that green ho, and nothing happened. Are all demons knife-proof?”
Metice said nothing else as I continued talking and headed up the stairs. With the pain I was in, all I could manage was a quick shower. I chose a summer dress instead of weather appropriate wear, as it was the easiest thing to put on. I contemplated going back downstairs, but that felt like too much work. The pain was setting in, and all I wanted was my bed—the same bed where I slept next to that lying ass demon the night before. I propped my pillows under my stomach and laid ass up across the center of the bed.
“Rayna?” Metice’s deep voice pulled me from the nap I’d slipped into.
“Yes?” I groaned as the pain returned with my consciousness. “What do you want?”
“Are you okay?” he spoke from behind, but his shadow stretched across the wall in front of me.
“Do I look okay to you?” I groaned and shifted my weight to adjust the pillow beneath my belly. “My back hurts, my arm is cut up, and I’m pretty sure I broke my damn ass when I fell from the sky!”
“Let me help you.” He tried to help me maneuver, but I smacked his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.” I scooted across the bed away from him.
“Why are you being so difficult?” He reached for me again but stopped when I pulled away from him.
“I’m not being difficult just because I don’t want your hands on me. Why have you kept so many secrets from me?”
“I told you there were things you shouldn’t know.” He straightened and watched as I continued to adjust myself without his help.
“And that’s fine when it’s all your shit, but it wasn’t, was it? You knew things about me, things that could put my life at risk, and you kept me in the dark. Tell me how the hell you think that’s fair?” I finally found a comfortable position with my back against the headboard. “And what the hell did your ex mean about the job you walked away from? You went to other worlds to take people to hell? You said you studied those worlds, not that you were kidnapping innocent beings.”
“It’s not that simple.” He sat in the chair across from the foot of the bed, giving me the space I clearly wanted. “And I did study the worlds when I went.”
“Give me a break!” I shook my head. “If it’s not that simple, explain it to me so I understand. No more secrets. No more pretending to protect me from the truth.”
“Where should I start?” he asked.
“The most important part.” My heart raced in my chest. I wanted to know the answers, but then again, I didn’t. I knew his answers could change the way I looked at him. “Why were you taking people from their homes?”
“Well, first, let’s get something straight. None of the people I took were innocent. They knew what would happen to them,” he explained. “They were magical beings, and by your standards, they were all evil. Each one of them made deals with who they thought was the devil. They made bargains, promising their souls to someone they didn’t know for temporary power, and they got that power. And when it was time for them to pay up, it was my job to go and retrieve them. When I took them to my home, it wasn’t an arbitrary kidnapping. It was picking up people who had a debt to pay and making sure they paid it.”
“So you’re like the errand boy for the devil?” My stomach twisted with a mixture of disgust and pity.
“I was, yes. That was my job. I got an assignment, was told my target, and I went and retrieved them.” He said the tasks as if they meant nothing to him.
“And one day, you decided you no longer wanted to do it anymore?” I watched him closely for any semblance of regret for what he’d done.
“Exactly. I had a change of heart,” he explained. “I didn’t want to do the job anymore because it didn’t feel the same. It was no longer just a job, so I had to walk away.”
“Why?” I leaned forward. “What changed? Why did you walk away?”
Metice took a deep breath and looked at me. I could see the internal conflict playing out in his eyes. He didn’t want to tell me, but he had to. How else could we move on from this? How else could I ever trust him again?
“I landed on a world devoid of water. I’m still not sure how the natives survive, but they do. My landing was rough, and I’m still not sure what happened. I blacked out, and when I woke, there was this old hag, my target, dragging me back to her home.” He sighed. “She knew why I was there, and yet, still she helped me. If it wasn’t for her help, I wouldn’t have survived. She waited for me to be better; she didn’t run like most do.”
“She wasn’t afraid of you?”
“No, she said she saw me coming years before I ever arrived.” He paused, choosing his words. “And then she told me something about myself, something about my future that I wouldn’t be able to run from. Those words changed everything. There was no way I could move forward the way I had been, not knowing the truth.”
“What did she tell you?” I wanted to know. What could have been so significant that it would change his very pursuit in life?
“I don’t know that I want to tell you that part.” He rubbed the back of his neck like he was burning from his own embarrassment.
“More secrets, Metice? Tell me what she told you. What could it have been to make you turn your back on everything you worked so hard for? What happened to your fiancée, and the life you wanted so much before you met her?”
“She told me who my soulmate would be and made it so I would feel them when they were ready for me. At first, it felt like she put a curse on me. When she told me more about the person, about who they would be and what they would be capable of, I realized this person was a lot like the ones I was tasked with bringing back to my world, and it felt like a punishment for what I’d done.” He rubbed his face, taking a deep breath before continuing. “For years, I carried that thought and felt this ridiculous guilt because how could my soul mate be the type of person who would make a deal with evil? Despite how much I wanted it to be a lie, it wasn’t. I knew that because I felt you, and it happened long before you did that spell.”
“What do you mean, you felt me?” I’m not gonna lie, that made me uncomfortable. Had he known about me since I was a child? Had he been waiting in the shadows for me?
“It was a few years ago. I have no idea what caused it, but I woke up one day, and I could feel you. Didn’t do anything about it, though. I could have sought you out, tried to learn more about you, but that just felt wrong. Instead, I ignored the feeling and found any and everything to take my mind off you. What I could tell was that you were here on Earth, which meant you were human. And I thought, hey, she’s human. She won’t live that long. I can bear this. It’ll go away. But then you did that spell, and I literally couldn’t stay away any longer.”
“So, you were sitting in hell knowing that I’m your soulmate and waiting for me to die?” I went from creeped out to irritated. Here I was, trying to find my love on Earth, and the man who was meant for me was ignoring my existence.
“When you say it like that, it sounds really bad.” He chuckled.
“Because it is really fucking bad.” I threw a pillow at him. “There’s nothing funny about it.”
“Okay. Yeah, maybe it is.” He caught the pillow and placed it at the foot of the bed. “But I’m a demon, and you’re a human. A magical one. I couldn’t risk it.”
“And what about your fiancée?” I moved the focus to the other question I had. “When did you end things with her, because she’s acting like it just happened?”
“Shortly after I first felt your presence,” he answered. “I knew you were human and there was no path of us being together, not that I was hoping for one. Maybe I could have gone on with my life as usual and tried to commit myself to her, but it wouldn’t have worked. There’s this thing about demons and becoming one with each other. It’s not just signing some forms and having a ceremony. When we become one, it is a literal action. Our souls intertwine on a level that I don’t believe humans are capable of understanding.”
“And you walked away from her?” Suddenly, I felt cold, like the window had opened and allowed the winter breeze inside. Olian had a broken heart. That’s why she wanted to kill me. What was that saying about a woman scorned? She wouldn’t give up.
“Two days before our ceremony was supposed to happen.” He sighed. “She would have known everything as soon as the process was over. She would have known that my soul belonged to someone else, not her. No matter the process, she would have always felt that void. Knowing her, she would have gone after you. I thought I was protecting you by ending it.
“And here I am anyway.” I leaned my head back on the headboard. “Well, no wonder the bitch is trying to kill me.”
“Yeah, I know. I should have cut it off as soon as the witch told me what she saw in my future, but I couldn’t. Like I said, I didn’t want to believe it was true,” he admitted. “Besides, I’d worked hard to get where I was, and I still had a long way to go. I didn’t want to give that up over some supposed vision of a soulmate I didn’t know.”
“Wait.” The chill I felt before stopped as my sluggish brain caught up with Metice’s story. There was something far more important there that I’d overlooked. “You said the witch told you I was like the people you were taking to hell. What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t sure what it meant until I felt you. I did some digging on the energy signature. Every magical bloodline has a unique one. I’d never encountered yours before, and I couldn’t find out much without seeking you out. All I knew was somewhere in your bloodline, there were powerful beings who had magical abilities, people who could do things that defied the logic of your world. I’m not even sure they were originally from Earth, but again, I don’t know exactly who or what they were. I tried researching, but I came up with nothing.” He paused, scrutinizing me with a furrowed brow. “But with your skills teleporting across worlds and apparently concentrating energy through your hands strong enough to knock over Olian, I’m thinking at the very least that you have some form of psychic powers.”
“Okay, let’s just gloss over the fact that you alluded that I may be a descendent of aliens.” I waved my hands in front of my face, as if clearing a whiteboard with too much scribbled data. There was no way I was about to unpack all that. “Is there a way to figure this out now? I mean, is there a blood test, something you can do to tell me what I am?”
“Yes, there are ways.” He nodded. “There are always ways to finding the truth, but maybe not ways you’d like.”
“Right. Okay.” I held my hand up while I gathered myself. I wanted to curse, scream, and fight him, but my ass was already sore, so I used my words instead. “Metice, I’m still trying to understand why you wouldn’t have told me all of this before now. Okay, maybe leave out the crazy ex-girlfriend, because that’s really your personal shit, but all these details about me? My bloodline, my potentially alien lineage, my apparent power? How could you know something like that and not tell me? I know you said you didn’t want it to be true, but come on. That’s a lame excuse and a copout.”
“I wish I could say that I had a better reason, but I didn’t. I wanted you to be able to go back to your regular life, without all this.” He looked me in the eyes and held my attention. “You have to believe me.”
“Why?” I didn’t believe him. He didn’t want to leave me alone or send me back to an uninterrupted human life. My ass would still be perfectly intact if that were true.
“What do you mean, why?”
“Why did you want me to go back to my regular life?” I clarified. “Which, by the way, I don’t believe, since you came here to interfere with my regular life, reintroducing all the shit you claim you wanted to keep me away from. The only reason Olian found me is because she had her minions track you. She told me that while she was here.”
“Because I know what my world does to humans. I’ve seen it time and time again. Being connected to the dark energy of the Bane destroys the human soul. I was born there, Rayna. I am the energy of my world, just like you’re the energy of yours. With you being tied to me, a demon, a being of the dark, it could really be bad for you, Rayna.”
“Well, doesn’t that just hit the ‘man making decisions for a woman without taking her opinion into account at all’ nail on the head?” I threw another pillow at him, which he caught and held. “Did you think saying that would make me feel better about all this?”
“It wasn’t my intention to discount your opinion.” His jaw tightened.
“But that’s what you did.” I pointed at him. “And don’t look at me like you’re frustrated. You’re not the one who’s been lied to. I’m the one whose life is constantly being turned upside down by this. I should know what I’m up against.”
“You’re right.” He stood. “I’m sorry, Rayna.”
“And I guess I should take your apology and forgive you?”
“No, make me work for your forgiveness. I’ve broken your trust. That’s a big deal,” he said with a straight face, and I had to keep my jaw from dropping. That wasn’t what I expected him to say. “Let me earn your trust back, please. Let me help you.”
“Help me?” I kept my tight-lipped expression. “How exactly do you think you can help me now? Can you reverse time? Can you change the mind of the demoness who wants my head?”
“I cannot do either of those things, but I can help your body.” He pointed to my butt, pressed against the pillow behind me. “That will take a long time for your human body to heal. Something tells me we’re going to need you in better condition, and soon. Stay here. I’ll return soon with something to heal your wounds.”
“Yeah, right okay.” I waved him off. “Do what you gotta do.”
The tension set in, and a moment later, he was gone, and I was hobbling my ass from my bed to my car. Yes, I should have stayed put. Yes, this was a cliché move for me to do, but everything about our meeting had been like a playbook drafted from one of the many fantasy novels that lined my pewter painted shelves. So, if I wanted the shit to play out the right way, I had to play my role, right? Well, that’s what I told myself anyway, and that’s what I did. I took my thirty-almost-seven-year-old brain and overrode it with the mindset of a seventeen-year-old with no bills or business credit hanging over her head. We do what we must for the plot!
It took me ten minutes to get my pants on, and another thirty to get my hair in a bun and my hoodie over my head, and that was all I could manage. It didn’t matter; I wasn’t going anywhere where my looks would matter.
Much later than it should have been, I stood leaning against the doorframe, waving at the camera above Keri’s door.
“Rayna?” The door swung open, and the scent of warm cinnamon flooded my senses. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a girl just drop by her bestie’s house to see what’s up?” I tried to keep the sound of pain from my voice, but even standing there had every fiber of my body screaming out.
“Maybe, but since I haven’t heard from you in weeks, the last thing I would expect is an in-person visit.” Keri, however, did not keep the hurt from her voice. After my return and her overbearing visits for the first month, things went back to normal. She went back to work and her boyfriend bubble, and I turned my focus to trying to save my career and finding a viable man to date to distract myself from the demon I really wanted.
“Yeah, well, here I am.” I threw my hand up. “Are you going to let me in or leave me standing out here in the cold?”
“I guess I don’t want you to freeze to death. If you do that, then I can’t shit talk you for disappearing again.” She stuck her tongue out at me and then stepped aside, waving me forward. “Come in.”
“Thank you.” I straightened, took a step forward, and the expressions of pain I held back had to have colored every inch of my face, because Keri freaked out.
“What happened to you? Are you hurt? Why are you moving like that?” She closed the door behind me and then fluttered her hands around my body, as if she could energetically heal my wounds. “Is your face busted up? Did you get into a fight?”
Her questions came with each step I took into her home and down the short hall to her couch, where I finally sat before answering. I figured once I sat down, she couldn’t cart my ass out of her house to the emergency room.
“I’m fine, Keri.” I winced as I adjusted the pillow behind my back. “Just had a little fall. You know how it is when it’s winter here. People fall left and right.”
“Yeah, when it’s icy outside. We haven’t even had our first real snow yet.” Keri crossed her arms. “You need to go to the hospital and let a doctor look at you. You may have broken something.”
“I’m fine.” I waved off her concerns and shifted my ass until I found a position that was least painful.
“Where did it happen?” There was the lawyer side of her brain kicking in. I always knew when Keri started searching for a case by her narrowed eyes and the way her left hand twitched, ready to take notes. “Tell me. Was it at home, at an establishment? Have you been out on any new dates? Don’t tell me one of those weird ass men had something to do with this. I will call the girls, and we’ll find his ass.”
“Look, I’m fine. It was just a minor fall.” I wasn’t technically lying. “I’ll go and see a doctor, but can we just chill for a bit?”
“Rayna.” She sat across from me in the armchair. “I don’t know. If your mama knew about this, she’d be cursing my ass out for not forcing you to go right now.”
“Please, Keri.” I rolled my eyes. She knew damn well my mom wasn’t that overbearing. If nothing else, she’d be mad I didn’t make an appointment with my own doctor. My mother was no fan of emergency rooms.
“Wait, what’s really going on?” She paused, leaning back as she narrowed her eyes. “Something is different about you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re in pain, yes, but you got that glow about you and…” She stood and crossed the room to get in my face. “Your skin is clear! You always have acne, and you said that for the women in your family, your skin is all irritated unless you’re having sex! You’re having sex, aren’t you? Is that how you hurt your ass? Was this a rough sex injury? Wait, you’re into that BDSM stuff?”
“Okay, you’re going off the deep end.” I laughed at her. “BDSM? Really?”
“Well then, what is it? And tell me the truth, Rayna.” Keri was so close to me, I could smell the chocolate coming from her breath and see the traces of the sweet treat still on her tongue.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to tell you. I just didn’t want to be alone.” I dropped my shoulders. “I wish this was easier. If you really want to know, I need you to listen without judgement. The shit is going to sound crazy. You’re going to want to tell me to call my therapist. I get it. But right now, I just want to be a woman dishing crazy drama to her friend. I want my friend to ignore how outlandish this shit sounds, pour me a glass of wine, and let me vent. Can you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” She leaned back from me and scanned my full body, like the secrets were tattooed on my flesh.
“Keri, can you do that?” It probably wasn’t a great idea to drink in my condition, but it made no difference to me. I told myself the wine would ease the pain. It might have also thinned out my blood and caused my injuries to worsen, but apparently, I was magical, so maybe things worked differently for me.
“Yes, of course.” She straightened. “Getting the wine now!”
I spent the next several hours sipping wine and telling Keri every detail I could remember, from the first time I met Metice, to multiple demon attacks, to being dragged to hell, to banging a demoness and fighting his crazy ex. Every juicy detail, and my friend hung on every word. Before the wine kicked in, she looked concerned but kept her comments to herself. By her fourth glass, she was shouting jokes about my lesbian lover and asking if I would ever see her again.
“So that’s what your life has been?” she asked as she emptied another bottle of wine into her cup. “A demon with a rotating dick.”
“Everything I’ve told you, and that’s what you’re hung up on?”
“Well, hell, aren’t you? I mean, you can call him whenever you want, right? Then he shows up and takes care of you?” She waggled her brows and then dropped her eyes to the glass in her hand. “I wish my man would come when I commanded.”
“Is everything okay with you two?” That comment caught my attention. I hadn’t talked to Keri in a while, and I figured she was still happy in her new love, but it sounded like I wasn’t the only one with a troublesome man on my hands.
“Yeah, it’s fine. Just out of the honeymoon stage.” She held her glass to her lips but put it down without drinking. “We had our first fight, but it was nothing. Still a little tense, but we’ll be okay.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” It would be good to talk about someone else for a change. Metice said how he didn’t think Keri was a good friend to me, but the same could be said about me. I got lost in my new world—granted, what I dealt with was a lot more of a mind fuck, but still. I cared about Keri and wanted her to be okay.
“Actually, no.” She saw my face drop and quickly added, “It’s just that, he’s the one, Rayna. This is my guy, and I don’t want to be airing out our dirty laundry every time I get with my girls. You know how it is when you constantly listen to your friend complain about a man and then they end up getting married? Everyone rolling their eyes as the bride strolls down the aisle. I don’t want that.”
We caught each other’s eyes and blurted out at the same time, “Tricia!”
Keri fell out laughing, and if it still didn’t hurt so much, I would have been laughing just as hard. Our former friend had all but landed her ass in jail messing with a guy she swore she would never see again. Five years later they were married with three kids and headed for divorce.
“Look, I get that.” I raised my glass to her. “But if something serious happens, you tell me. I’m not playing that shit.”
“You can call your demon to handle it for me.” She winked while lifting her own glass.
“Hell, if I can figure out my magic, I’ll teleport his ass to the desert and leave him there. I don’t need a man to fight my battles.” After about a minute of miming superwoman poses, Keri’s face turned serious, and I swallowed the knot that quickly formed in my throat.
“Do you really believe all this is real?” She raised her hand to stop me. “I’m not going to tell you to call your therapist, and I won’t tell anyone else, but I have to know, for me. So I can support you in the best way. Is this something you think is really happening to you?”
I thought about how to answer her. I could’ve lied and said it was all an elaborate creation of my imagination, but I didn’t want to. It was selfish of me. I didn’t want to be in the shit by myself anymore. Could I really drag my best friend into it with me?
“I-”
Bang!
We both jumped and turned our heads to the front door as the blue painted wood shook, something pounding against the outside of it.
“What the hell?” Keri stood, ready to defend her home, but before she could reach for the box I knew held her little pink bestie, the door flew in off the hinges.
Standing in the doorway, clothes singed and hair missing from half her head, was the big green demoness bitch.