20. Well-Fucked & Well-Fed #2
“No, but it seemed like a good time to sneak up on us, you’re distracting me.
Keep walking,” Deyva said, bumping her hip against mine and raising John in front of her.
“Anyway, yes, we can talk to Zach, although I feel like I should mention that Kais was all ‘grump grump, I’m a lone wolf who don’t need no lovin, grouch’ about it. He pushed me away.”
“Huh. And I thought Zach was the repressed one,” I said, smiling as I thought of the way Zach had basically climbed on top of me and humped me like a cuddly little bunny rabbit this morning.
He made us both a mess, but he’d been so happy about it and Deyva had looked totally blissed out by the contact high.
“Well-fucked is a good look for you, Stav,” Deyva said, grinning.
“Well-fed is a good one on you,” I tossed back. She hummed and smiled agreeably. “Kais will break.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t want you or Zach to think about it in terms of how I’m feeding though. The two of you are enough for me, in all physical and emotional senses.”
There was room for more though, I thought.
Deyva deserved more after everything she’d been through.
Maybe she didn’t realize how much she’d changed in such a short amount of time, but she’d gone from guarded and sarcastic, nipping playfully at us with barbed digs about our piety, to…
Well, to a fluffy cinnamon roll of a woman, one who made sex with me about caring for one another, and who was working with Zach on his own self-acceptance.
Who amplified love between a couple of humans who hadn’t accepted her.
She could work her magic on Kais and he might even learn to trust himself again.
Deyva’s hand squeezed around mine suddenly, so tight it actually pinched. We were halfway around the windmill when her head suddenly snapped to one side, looking out into the smog.
“Dey, do you hear—”
“Shh.” She raised a hand to silence me, gaze locked on something indiscernible out in our hazy surroundings.
I listened hard, hands tense on my water gun, but couldn’t make out anything beyond the whooshing sounds of the wind turbines cutting through the toxic air. Deyva remained eerily still, like a statue, her hand still hovering in the air from shushing me.
My gaze shifted toward Zach. He’d already seen us pause and listened intently, alert and poised with his machete Joan, for anything moving.
His jaw clenched, mismatched eyes hard and determined on Deyva and me.
I sent a nod back his way, hoping to reassure him we were fine and he should focus on protecting Will.
“Something’s out there,” Deyva whispered with a slow lowering of her hand. “But it’s keeping its distance.”
I opened my mouth to ask what she’d heard, when a bone-chilling scream rattled through all my senses.
My feet carried me in a sprint toward the base of the turbine, muscle memory powering me before my brain made sense of the fact.
I’d heard that scream before. Too many times.
It was the sound of someone being dragged off by a hellion.
Will’s repair kit was scattered all over the base of the windmill. Just beyond his tools, their forms quickly fading in the low visibility, two men fought for their lives.
“Zach!” I rushed in, my fear of losing him taking on new heights, new meanings since the start of our budding relationship.
“Get Will!” he shouted back, cutting through one of the hellions in a wide arc, continuing the movement in a graceful spin to slice through the ones coming for his back.
I ran blindly into the sulphuric haze, following the sound of Will’s cries and his body dragging along the ground. The poor man was able to grab hold of a craggy rock sticking out of the ground, buying me a few seconds of time to catch up before the creature cruelly yanked him loose.
These hellions were unlike any I’d ever seen before, and I’d seen enough to last lifetimes.
Their proportions were more human-like than most, and they seemed to be wearing odd clothes and masks.
The one pulling Will away wore large trash bags over its torso and legs, wrinkled black plastic covered in dust and ash.
A cheap clown Halloween mask covered its face.
I aimed my gun and sprayed holy water the moment I had enough visibility. The creature paused and stared back at me, water running over its mask and trash bag-clad body. Then it let out a rattling sound, a hellish taunting laugh that made my skin crawl, before continuing on its way.
“No, no please!” Will’s hands scrambled for purchase on the ground as he continued to be dragged, blood darkening his fingers. “Save me, Father, please! ”
My gun clattered to the ground, hands reaching for the knives sheathed on my sides of my legs.
He would not be taken because I failed him, because these monsters figured out how to shield themselves from holy water.
Arms and legs pumping to catch up, the demon would be in stabbing range in just a few more feet.
I raised one arm, aiming for the back of the neck, while keeping the other poised at my ribs to stab through the trunk of the body.
In less time than it took to blink, something hit the demon from the side with the force of a freight train. I nearly tumbled over my own feet as I stopped abruptly, looking around desperately for where the demon flew off to while I knelt to help Will.
“I got you, buddy. You’re okay.” I hovered over him, knives still out in case anything else decided to drag him away.
That dry rattling sound returned, making my hairs stand on end.
I whipped around, knife blade singing through the air, just in time to see a trash-bag clad body drop from the sky with a heavy thud not ten feet away.
And not a moment later, Deyva dropped from the clouds, her sneakered feet landing on the demon’s chest with a sickening crunch.
“You don’t touch my humans,” she snarled, pulling John from his sheath.
The demon let out another rattle of protest before she swung the blade down, separating its masked head from its body like a knife through butter. It crumbled to dust underneath her and I couldn’t have been more proud, but we couldn’t afford to celebrate yet.
“Dey, look out!” I screamed the moment I saw more figures moving in through the smog.
“You too, behind you!” she shrieked.
I spun, stabbing my blade through a grey-skinned hand that had been reaching for Will. It poofed into a cloud of ash-like dust that made my eyes sting and water. Turning back to Deyva, I saw that Zach had beaten me in becoming her hero.
Our girl kicked through the chest of another hellion, while Zach stabbed mercilessly through another that had tried to sneak up on her from behind. Once that one crumbled, and Deyva successfully decapitated another with John, the others began pulling back into the fog.
“What are you scared of, fuckers?” Zach taunted the retreating silhouettes. “You hate followers of God so much, come get us!”
“Let them go.” Deyva placed a hand on his shoulder, the tension visibly draining out of him from the contact.
“It’s weird for them to retreat though, right?” He looked over at me, brow furrowed and chest lifting slightly with exerted breaths. “Have you ever seen that before, Stav?”
“No,” I admitted, sheathing my knives. “But Deyva’s right.
No point in going after them.” I lowered my knees to the ground, next to Will who was still face down and shaken.
“Hey man, they’re gone. We’re all okay. I’m gonna help sit you up, okay?
” Deyva and Zach came closer, their expressions concerned as I pulled Will up by his shoulders.
“That’s it, get your knees under you. You’re okay. ”
The man’s breaths continued to saw in and out shallowly from his chest, panicked and hyperventilating.
He shook like a leaf and his eyes darted around, focused on nothing, with pupils the size of pinpricks.
I felt awful for him. As an engineer, he usually didn’t jump into the fray of our fights with demons, seeing himself as more useful maintaining our utilities to keep Bethel comfortable.
Now his first real confrontation with a demon and he nearly got dragged off to that unthinkable place.
“He’s in shock,” Zach murmured, kneeling in front as he took one of Will’s bloody, ragged hands.
“You were so brave, Will. Make no mistake, God is watching and He is proud.” The young priest’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow.
I didn’t have to be Deyva to sense his uneasiness with giving reassurances about God when his own faith was shaken.
“Careful,” I warned. “His wrists might be sprained or broken. We better get him back.”
“We can manage with one windmill down,” Zach agreed. He rose to his feet and moved to help me lift Will under his armpits.
“May I?”
Our eyes fell on Deyva, green gaze shimmering and her kissable mouth in a small pout as she looked at the injured man between us.
“What are you going to do?” Zach’s tone was curious, without a single note of accusation.
“Just make him feel a bit better.” She looked at me, chewing her lip. “Do you think he would mind?”
Will barely seemed aware of the fact that she was standing in front of him, much less asking to use her abilities on him.
The poor guy would continue to suffer long after his physical injuries healed, I had no doubt of that.
If she could ease that suffering a little, even temporarily, how could I deny it?
I nodded at her. “Go ahead, babe.”
Deyva placed a delicate hand on his arm, closed her eyes on a deep inhale, then pushed a concentrated dose of emotions toward him as she breathed out. Whether she did it on purpose, or just because I was holding him up, I got a hit with the bundle of emotions she directed at Will.