24. Demons Don’t Wrestle
Deyva
I was hauling a massive basket into the diner, full to bursting with potatoes from the school house garden, when I found Azariah there at the bar, surrounded by fawning women.
Their fingers were in his wings, on his arm, breasts brushing against him as they leaned in close, batting eyelashes and tossing their hair.
And why was I feeling prickly all of the sudden as Az shuddered and twitched his wing away from their touch?
I wanted to believe it was because one woman was going against the plume grain like an idiot but…
“Deyva!” Azariah called, brightening on his stool, shimmying out of the cluster of women and rushing to me.
I pulled to a sudden stop and a potato rolled out of the basket, Azariah catching it just before it hit the floor.
“Let me help you,” he said, grabbing the basket from my arms. It was twice the size of what any of the humans could manage, but I’d already finished the shooting range and some local repairs, and I was trying to stay as useful as possible in Bethel.
“Showing off?” I teased Az as he grabbed the basket from my arms.
“I need an escape route,” he hissed. “They’re ravenous, especially now that rumors are out about you and the holy men.”
Right, because what would top banging a priest or two? An angel, of course.
“Pretty sure you could talk a couple of them into a threesome,” I said, plastering on a vapid smile and wiggling my fingers at the women as I followed Az behind the counter toward the kitchen. “If not an outright orgy.”
“Mm, I’m considering it,” Azariah said with a shrug.
My smile dropped immediately and I cleared my throat.
“But, and correct me if I’m wrong, I have a feeling they might be looking to put me…”
“In a gilded cage?” I supplied, opening the door to the kitchens for him.
“I was going to say their pocket, but yes, I suppose. I’d be a token fuck, basically,” Azariah said.
The kitchen staff, some of whom I’d managed to win over in the past few days with my willingness to try anything they experimented with, and do heavy labor while I was at it, greeted both of us.
“Ohh looks like shepherd’s pie is on the menu tomorrow night. And hashbrowns at breakfast.”
“What would Zach have been?” I asked Az, crossing my arms over my chest.
Az sobered and turned to face me, ducking his head and frowning at me. “Zach would’ve been the closest thing I could come to being with one of my own kind again, and I would’ve cherished every second.”
I swallowed and tried not to fidget under the force of the angel’s stare, until he sighed and straightened.
“But I fucked that up, I know.”
I couldn’t really argue with Azariah on that one, so instead I took his arm and led him through the kitchens to the back door. “Here’s your escape route. Let’s go and see if Kais will take any help in the training room.”
“Gotta say, he’s not my favorite of the three,” Az mused as I dragged him out of the diner and down the alley toward the church. “He either needs something pulled out of his ass, or inserted into it, I haven’t decided.”
“He doesn’t need to be your favorite,” I hissed over my shoulder. “And quit thinking about his ass.”
That ass was mine, whether or not Kais was in the mood to admit it.
“What?! I’m on your side, he could stand to loosen up a bit, and I know just the succubus to—” Azariah cut off with a pained oof as I elbowed him roughly in the ribs.
“Az, I am begging you, praying even, to keep your angelic asshat nose out of this one,” I said, cutting down the side of the church and drawing to a stop outside of the gymnasium doors. “Kais is…”
Az sighed and relaxed, his smirk sliding away and head bowing in a nod. “He has very powerful protective energy, but he spends it all on others and spares none for himself.”
I nodded, stomach twisting uneasily, and frowned up at Azariah. “If I...if anything happened to me, you would look out for them, right? All of them?”
Azariah frowned. “First Daughter, what would happen to you?”
I shrugged and looked away, reaching for the handle. “We’re at war, aren’t we?”
“When I was younger, war came with starvation and illness. Here it comes with shepherd’s pie,” Az said softly, lips quirking.
I opened the door to the gym, the sound of bodies slapping against mats and voices grunting with impact rushed out into the church’s side garden. “Yes, Deyva. I would look after them.”
I didn’t look back at Az, only nodded and stepped inside, my eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness of the gymnasium.
There were eight mats set up around the vast space, each of them occupied by two to four people in various stages of combat.
On one, a woman was being attacked from all sides by the three men and she was using evasive maneuvers to escape.
On another, two older men were taking turns practicing quick, sharp offensive moves to disable and escape their partner.
“No, no. That won’t work,” Az said, jogging over to them. “You’re betting on the hellions being single jointed, but most would let you break their arm before letting you go. Here, try this.”
I found Kais at the back of the room, engaging in an earnest wrestling match with the man who’d complained about training twice a day.
I walked slowly around the edge of the gymnasium, ignoring the stares of suspicion coming from most of the humans, keeping my eyes fixed on Kais.
He was out of his priest robes, dressed in those addictively clingy sweatpants of his and just a tank top.
There were women perched on the bleachers, drinking water and looking barely rumpled as they stared hungrily at my—at Kais—actually fuck that, at my Kais.
Kais looked like a predator, his eyes focused and sharp, constantly flicking over his opponent, waiting for the glimpse of an opening.
My tongue ran over my bottom lip and I paused against the wall as his muscles tensed.
The other man lunged and Kais caught him easily around his ribs, swinging him and making him lose his footing before driving him down to the mat with a hard smack and a great groan.
I winced and Kais caught his breath, covering his face with his hand briefly before smoothing it back through his dark curls and rising.
He held out a hand, which was ignored, and the man rolled to his side to rise on his own.
“If we’re supposed to be learning to fight demons, why don’t we just throw around the one we have inside the gate,” a voice muttered.
Kais and I turned to them at the same time. He was young, big, and his eyes were drinking me up in a way that made it pretty clear he would’ve liked to throw me around, but not on a mat in a crowded gymnasium.
“She’s not a demon,” Azariah said, prowling through the mats, drawing eyes with every step as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the kid.
“No, but I have the strength of one,” I said with a shrug, stepping forward from the wall.
“Jason, I saw her fucking lift an entire tree, man. Don’t be stupid,” one of Jason’s younger friends called.
I glanced at Kais who blinked at me and shrugged. “Just don’t break anything,” he said.
I grinned and turned back to young Jason, who had a pair of murky brown eyes fixed determinedly to my tits. “Okay, Jason. I’ll give you three tries to put me on my back.”
Jason grinned and somewhere from the bleachers, too quiet for anyone but me and Az to catch, a woman muttered under her breath. “Isn’t that kind of just what she does though?”
“More like she gets on her knees,” another whispered.
“Ladies, you’re both right,” I called loudly across the room, and the entire gym gave up the pretense of paying attention to anything but me.
I stepped forward to meet Jason on the mat, his friends backing away, Az moving to join Kais at the sidelines to watch.
“If it gets to be too much, just say ‘uncle,’” I said, smiling up at Jason. He was pretty enough, but he wasn’t one of my priests, and there was a mean hunger to his lustful emotions that reminded me too much of Kimaris, enough that I had to stamp down the shudder as he grinned back at me.
“Oh sweetheart, the only one who’s gonna be feeling too much is you when I find you down in whatever basement they’re keeping you in tonight,” Jason whispered.
Huh. So not everybody knew about me shacking up in the priest house yet?
Jason charged as I mulled over this discovery, and behind me Kais barked my name.
Like he thought I wasn’t even paying attention.
Please . I let Jason wrap his arms around mine, squeezing tight around my ribs, as I balanced on my toes, pushing back as he tried to tackle me to the ground and found me immoveable.
He grunted, snarled in my ear, and pushed and pushed and strained against me.
Azariah laughed. “She’s going to give him a hernia.”
I jumped, pressed my feet to Jason’s knees to unbalance him and then used the momentum to slam him down onto his back. He released me with the smack of his flesh against the rubber and I rolled away, bouncing back up onto my feet in an easy beat.
“One,” I said.
Jason snarled from the floor, twisting and grabbing for my ankles, but I only stepped lightly out of the way and then down onto his back, pinning him to the mat again.
“You wasted that chance. Two. Don’t attack again until you know what your plan is,” I snapped, leaping away and rolling my eyes as he growled on his way up to standing.
“Quit thinking of me as a woman you want to teach a lesson to and look at me as your enemy. I could break your neck in a heartbeat. You need to focus.”
For a moment, it looked like my advice was wasted. Jason tensed, ready to spring mindlessly into action. Then he blinked, released a slow breath, relaxed, and took a longer and more studious look at me. Better, good. I even got a nice whiff of Kais’ appreciation from the wall.