Chapter 10 #2
When I reach the corner where she sits and reads Tarot cards to her clients—yes, I’ve been watching and learning—I flip her onto the chair and lean in, face to face.
For a second, I’m taken aback by the glimmering sight of her heterochromia.
One blue eye, one brown eye. The tears from her recent amusement only make her that much more stunning, the pink in her cheeks and the wide, unhindered grin on her lips make my chest ache with longing.
Mere seconds later, her features morph, and right before my eyes, her hatred comes back with a force that takes me by surprise.
Unfortunately for her, I’m quicker. Before she has a chance to escape, I swing my backpack around and take out the silky rope and tie her wrists to the back of her chair. She’s barely had time to protest before I’ve got her exactly where I want her.
“It’s story time, my chosen one.” Just as she takes a deep breath to scream, I place my palm over her mouth and tsk. “How am I supposed to tell you about you if you’re hurling insults at me?”
Now, I’m fully aware that I’m being a dick, but this shit has gone on long enough. Plan A clearly went to shit, so now it’s time for Plan B.
When she seems to calm down, her eyes morphing from afraid and panicked to a reasonable amount of pissed off, I test my theory by pulling my hand back just a tad.
“Let’s start this over, shall we?” I’m about to extend my hand but that would be an asshole move on my part, considering hers are tied behind her back. She doesn’t miss it, though, does she? Of course not.
“Good one. Not only did you come here under false pretense but now you’re holding me prisoner?
And let’s be clear, your buddy needing the witchy equivalent of Viagra is not, in any fucking circumstance, considered an emergency.
” She barely takes a breath but my entire body rears back from the verbal assault.
“The fuck are you talking about?” I grab the second chair, flip it around, and sit with my arms resting on the back as I lean in.
“Yohimbe bark? It’s to help with erectile dysfunction,” she says, and the smug look on her face when she realizes I have no fucking clue what she’s talking about should piss me off.
Problem is, she’s too fucking cute for her own good.
Then, the three faces of my brothers flash across my mind and I can’t decide whose balls I’m going to bust when I get back.
Slash. Definitely Slash. No way he’d appreciate anyone thinking he has limp dick syndrome.
But that’s not the point of this whole set-up.
“Well, clearly, I had no idea about that. I was more in search of the bark for the mood swings.” I did not think through this whole excuse and judging by the conversation, this kind of deceptive planning isn’t my forte.
“Oh.” It’s her turn to frown, her mouth slanting upside down as she nods in agreement.
“That, too.” We share a moment that’s almost cordial until she remembers she’s tied up and being held hostage in her own shop.
I mean, she knows she’s not in danger or she would have screamed her little heart out until Desdemon or his sister came flying down.
“Let’s try this again.” My voice is lower, soothing almost, as I try to have a much needed conversation about our future. “My name is Zelos Adofo but my friends call me Hack.”
“Hack? That’s your nickname…Hack?” The suspicion in her mismatched irises is confirmed by her next question. “Is that because you like to cut people up into little pieces?”
Try as I may, I can’t help the way my eyes roll the tiniest bit. Like I haven’t heard that before.
“No, of course not. I mean…not lately, at least.”
Aiyana blanches, her mouth falling open and her body going as stiff as the chair she’s sitting on. “Wh-what?”
“It may have happened once, about two thousand years ago when I was just a young demon.” My answer escapes without me giving it a single thought, but when I see her raise her brow, I understand my mistake.
She doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t. I don’t know why I thought her roommate would have said something with Desdemon being around.
“Did you escape from a hospital or something?” Her voice is so quiet, I can barely hear the faint notes of her New York accent.
“No. This isn’t going the way I had planned. At all.” I stand, frustrated from all of this shit. Why can’t it ever be simple?
Hell, one year, I found her just as she was being burnt by witch hunters in Salem. That day still haunts me and it was centuries ago.
Pacing in and out of her tarot reading area where I’ve drawn the curtains open, I decide to just put it all out there.
“Look, can you at least tell me your name?” I can’t keep calling her something outdated for her if I want her to take me seriously.
“S-Sage. Sage Bayley.” I stop in my tracks and look at her. Really look at her.
“All my fates, it’s perfect for you.”
“Zelos?” My heart stops for a second as my given name pours from between her lips and lights every nerve ending in my body. Not Hack. Not Conquest. My actual name.
“Yes, my chosen one?”
“Can you please untie me? My wrists are hurting.” She’s cute when she’s trying to manipulate me.
“Of course, but first…let me tell you a story.” I swipe a candle from a shelf separating the reading corner from the counter out front and look around for a lighter.
“In the drawer, underneath the cash register.” She says this like she just wants this whole charade to continue so we can be done with this.
Little does she know that she’ll never be done with me.
“Thanks.” I round the shelf and reach the counter where they sell candles and cards and crystals, open the drawer, and light the candle with the purple lighter.
“The first time I met you, we were in what is now Alaska. I was collecting a soul and you were gathering some wood for the cabin where you lived with your mother.” Without stopping, I decide to light another two candles, thinking the more the better for her nerves.
She’s about to get shaken to her core. Then I’m right back inside her tarot reading corner, watching her every expression.
“I’ve never been to Alaska and my mother died in childbirth.” In her attempt at debunking my story, I realize this is a difficult subject for her, not ever having had the chance to meet her biological mother in this lifetime.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Sage.” Her name tastes like sunshine and bright futures, but I’m not na?ve.
I’ve lost her too many times to hope for a better outcome.
“But this happened almost two thousand years ago, before this continent was called America. Before…any of this.” I wave my arms around to indicate this shop, this city, this world.
When I dare meet her eyes, all I see is confusion and maybe even a little pity, like I’m not quite stable.
“So, let me get this straight.” Judging from her tone, I’m about to get assaulted by sarcasm.
“We met two thousand years ago and I’m your…
chosen something? You’re a demon? And my name is Aiyana?
Did I leave anything out?” Her head falls back in a clear show of frustration.
“Why do I always attract the crazy ones?” she mumbles, but I hear her loud and clear.
“Sage.” The gravel in my voice doesn’t mask my rising anger. I do not—no, I cannot—hear about any other men in her life. I will, no doubt in my mind, go on a killing spree.
Deep down in her soul, she must recognize this part of me because her lips snap shut and her spine goes rigid.
“That’s not it.” I half sit on the reading table with Sage sitting mere inches from me. “Yes, I’m a demon and you don’t know this yet because your powers won’t come in until your thirtieth birthday but…you’re a witch.”
I pause to let her digest that for a second but she has zero reaction to my words.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that supposed to be some kind of revelation? I work in a fucking witch shop. Try again, you fucking psycho.”
I grin. She’s giving me a nickname. It’s not really fitting but I like it.
Ignoring what she thinks is a jab, I continue our walk down my memory lane.
“Your original mother was Baba Yaga, the most powerful witch in the world. I have no doubt she’s tried to connect with you somehow. Do you ever have visions or maybe there’s a birthmark somewhere?”
With every word I say, I watch her. From the tick at the corner of her eye to the tremble in her bottom lip, I read every emotion that crosses her features. Danger may not be on her radar but she’s not at ease, either. But when I mention her birthmark, her entire demeanor changes.
I’ve hit a nerve and now I have to hammer in the worst of it.
“Here’s the thing, Sage. You and me, we’re destined souls.
The first time we met, you placed your hand on my arm and any feeling of emptiness or loss that may have been lurking inside me disappeared.
When your skin touched mine, we both felt the immediate bonding of our fates.
For two thousand years, I’ve been searching for you as you come back, over and over again.
Some of your lives are lost to me completely, other times I’m seconds too late. ”
I stand from the table then crouch at her side. This is important. This is everything.
“The other day, it was the first time I’ve found you by accident. Usually, I can only find you on Hallow’s Eve, when the veil is at its thinnest. The pull of you guides me, it’s like an internal GPS honed in only on you.”
I have no idea if any of this is getting through to her but she’s staring at me with wide eyes and flaring nostrils.
The chances of her going off on me or worse, crying, are very fucking high.
“Every time I find you…you die before your thirtieth birthday. And every time it breaks a little piece of me.” My whispered words feel like shards of ice slicing up my insides.
“But, Sage, I’m really hoping this life is different because I can’t spend months with you then watch you die all over again.
” I choke on my own emotions, so much so that I don’t notice the moment she loses all sense of calm.
It all happens in slow motion.
Her chest rises, she inhales deep, then with a sound that would create a tsunami across the globe, she lets out a scream capable of stripping the walls of their paint.
Taken aback, I jump to my full height as she thrashes and yells. She’s on the verge of breaking the chair when I decide to untie her before she hurts herself.
As soon as I do, she starts punching my chest, my face, my stomach.
But it’s the kick to my balls that gets her the freedom she’s seeking.
Mother…fucker. I’ve been stabbed and shot and punched until my anthros head swelled up like a balloon, but nothing compares the visceral pain of getting kicked, full force, in the nuts. Not a thing.
“That’s enough.” The baritone command doesn’t have an effect on Sage, who is still freaking the fuck out.
When I look up, I see the regal force that is Desdemon standing at the back entrance of the shop. Gone is his nonchalance. All I see is pure, unabashed power.
“It’s time you leave.”
Fuck that.
“I can’t. I can’t leave her when she’s like this.” Releasing my battered balls, I reach out for Sage, but she’s thrashing and screaming like every word I said to her is causing her physical pain.
“Fine.” In a flash, Desdemon is at Sage’s side and, just as quickly, silence falls upon the shop. “Now go before your head is no longer attached to your body.”
Fighting against every instinct in my body, I follow Dei Desdemon’s orders but I don’t go far…I stay in the shadows and I watch.
I protect, always.