Chapter 9 Vyslan
Suggested Listening: Brave by Sara Bareilles
I am a creature that loves comfort. I’ve spent a lot of times in many beds in my very long existence, but I think Gracie’s bed might be the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in.
Also, is it my imagination, or is the bed bigger than when we went to sleep? I could have sworn the room was twenty by thirty yesterday, but it seems to have expanded. I thought I’d figured out what was happening with the house yesterday, but the evidence is contradicting what I know. Is it possible the house is truly alive?
“Yikes!” the adorable child on the flat screen TV screams.
I glance back at the movie I put on after Ezra and Gracie left. Judging by the energies I can sense around us, we’re the only three here, save for the creature in the walls. In case I’m wrong, however, I don’t intend to budge from this bed. Besides, the little hits of lust and I’m getting from the other two tell me they’re having a very important conversation that I don’t want to interrupt.
This wasn’t supposed to be a complicated arrangement. I was pissed to end up summoned after all this time. It would never have happened if I hadn’t adjusted my home’s defenses to allow my companion more peace of mind. Talk about epic backfire. My demands last night, though posed as requests, were selfish. I liked what I saw and the prospect of either or both of them was more appealing than the demon coming to service me.
I wasn’t supposed to like them.
They weren’t supposed to worm past my defenses.
At no point was I supposed to care about what happens to them.
The child on the screen pauses and says something to the adult, getting in their way. I squint at the TV and grab the remote, pausing it on a blur of motion.
I know that face…
The door opens and Gracie shuffles in, swaddled in a fluffy robe, with Ezra following her. Our little Puppy Daddy is staring at her with big, puffy hearts in his eyes. That’s when I see their linked hands.
Good.
I dislike the pang in my chest. The one that wants something besides the fight for power and dominance. My time spent outside of normal demonic culture has changed me, I suppose. It’s been ages since I participated in things not of my choosing. That’s the sort of thing that comes with power. But it has also made me different.
I lean forward on my knees, the blankets pooling around my hips, and grin at them. “Come to kick me out?”
“What?” Gracie frowns at me. Her aura is tinged with pops of sickly yellow and red, indicating pain. But there are also rosy tones of happiness mixed in. “No. I was wondering where you were and if you were going to come out for breakfast. I’m also assuming demons eat.”
“Oh. Well, your friend didn’t seem to like me much, so I thought I’d stay here and out of the way.”
Gracie nods slowly. “It’s not your fault.”
“Of course it isn’t. I haven’t been to your world in hundreds of years. But I know my kind have been responsible for a wide range of atrocities.” I shrug. “It costs me nothing to be sensitive to her needs, given how accommodating you’ve been.”
Ezra slips past Gracie. “Vys, help me strip the bed real quick? We’re going to have a movie day.”
How quaint. Mundane even. And utterly adorable. I don’t want to be anywhere else.
I throw back the blankets and vault out of the bed while Ezra tells Gracie in a no-nonsense tone to go sit down while we handle the bed. Seems their talk was good and they’ve reached a decision about what they are to one another.
“Speaking of movies…” We dump the mound of bedding onto the floor. “I was just watching this movie, and this child has an uncanny resemblance to you. It’s the glare. Tell me I’m wrong, Gracie?”
I grab the remote and rewind the movie a few moments until the child’s face fills the screen, frozen there for us to see.
Gracie twists to look at the gargantuan TV mounted on the far wall. “Wow, that does look like you, Ezra. Hey, I remember this kid. He was in so many movies I watched growing up. I wonder what…”
Ezra stands at the foot of the bed, frozen, with one hand in his hair. His scent has gone cold and musty, almost like death.
Gracie’s eyes go wide and she looks from me back to Ezra. His aura has gone dark, molted with colors like an aging bruise. He’s hurting in a way that speaks to deep damage and trauma. Immediately, I want to shelter him and soothe those hurts, but his body language is stiff and his shoulders hunched.
“Ezra?” Gracie whispers.
I hit the power button and the TV clicks off.
“Fuck. Okay, we’re doing this,” Ezra mutters. The room is so silent even those barely spoken words seem loud.
Gracie gingerly places her hand on his arm and squints at him. “Ezra, what’s wrong?”
His face has gone deathly pale, which is saying something since he’s already dead. It’s the hunched shoulders, as if he’s expecting to be hit, that bring out my protective side. I grab a throw blanket from the pile and circle the bed to wrap it around him. I’m still naked, but since no one seems to mind, I keep my focus on Ezra and usher him toward the sofa. We settle the vampire between us on her purple velvet sofa. She and I are on the same page, because we’re plastered to his sides like bookends holding him together.
“Ezra?” She rubs up and down his arm before taking his hand. “You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”
He continues staring at the floor with that heartbreaking, shell-shocked look on his face.
Someone hurt him. Deeply. I don’t need to see his aura to know that. And if I had to guess, the scars covering his back are somehow related. I hadn’t thought about it at the time. Demons often have scars. I’m vain enough that I’ve dealt with mine, but others choose to wear them like badges.
“I was always going to tell you,” Ezra says as he stares straight ahead. “Ezra is my current legal name, but that wasn’t the name I was born with. And it isn’t the name I used for acting. The reason I look like that kid is because I am that kid. My parents are lazy narcissists that took advantage of me being a cute kid that enjoyed acting. They had a lot of connections that got me started in the business. They were both trust fund babies to begin with and shouldn’t have had a kid. When they realized they could live off my acting income, they gave up the pretense of having jobs to manage my career. And for a while, it worked. I loved acting. But when I started to leave the cute kid stage, I also started getting rejected for roles, they wanted me to have. And that’s when things turned ugly. I was put into some gross situations I should never have been in for the sake of connections. No one ever did anything to me, besides my parents. But… Kids shouldn’t have to see and be around the stuff I saw.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Gracie has shifted and now rubs his back. He’s got a death grip on the blanket, so I place my hand on his knee. The moment I make contact, his head whips around, but instead of a trauma response he smiles at me then grips my hand back. Like he needs this lifeline to the present.
Ezra’s gaze slides back to the carpet, but he sits a little straighter. “I got lucky with some pre-teen gigs. Got some freedom. Met some people who gave me solid advice. That’s when I got emancipated from them. With the pictures and reports from doctors, it wasn’t difficult. I had a really fantastic director on the last show I did. She was an advocate for me, and I lived with her and her family for the first few years while my parents tried to come after me. But, once everything was settled, I wanted out of that life. So I changed my name and moved away to escape my family. For the last fifteen or so years, I throw a dart at a map until I hit on a place that has zero connection to me, anything I’ve done, or a place my family has been. That’s kind of how I wound up here.”
We descend into silence save for the swish, swish sound of Gracie’s hand on his back.
“I’m going to hex them,” she announces.
I crack my knuckles. “Is that all? I think I can do something much worse.”
“Guys! Don’t.” Ezra’s hand clamps on my knee and Gracie’s. Then he chuckles. The sound is so incongruous with the conversation I have to stare at him. “I cut off contact a very long time ago. I just want to move on and leave that all behind me. I wasn’t expecting to share that today, so I’m a little blindsided. That’s all. And I guess if we’re dropping bombshells, I should go ahead and mention the last one.”
He glances at me, then Gracie. The nerves are clear, but he does seem to be recovering from his shock earlier.
“There’s more? Are you secretly a mafia don or something?” Gracie asks. She shakes her head as she continues to rub his back. “I can’t fucking believe no one has recognized you, though.”
He lifts a shoulder and smiles at her. “It was a very long time ago. When my hair is long, most people don’t see it. My brand as a child actor was very clean cut. I really didn’t act in anything after puberty hit. Totally changed the shape of my face so it’s harder to see.”
I want to protect him. I want to have his back so no one sees those scars ever again. I want to rip his parents apart bit by bit, then stitch them back together so we can do it all over again. And I’m not certain I can honor his request to leave his parents alone. I’m feeling very possessive. But that might be the heat.
“So, bombshell?” Gracie drawls.
He drops his head and stares at the carpet. “I was engaged a few years back, but my fiancé left me because I was too clingy.”
That’s it?
I can understand the issue, but this is not something he needs to be ashamed of. Work on, yes. But I don’t want him to emotionally torture himself any longer.
“Ezra, look at me,” I say.
It takes him a moment to twist in my direction, but the best he can do is look at the center of my chest.
I reach out and cup his jaw, lifting his face. “Some people are in our lives for a season. Some are in our lives for a purpose. This fiancé. What did you do after she left?”
“I went into therapy…”
“You worked on yourself.”
“Yeah…”
“Gracie, are you upset with Ezra for any of this?”
“Fuck no,” she practically snarls, then latches onto his back, slipping her arms around him. “Are you going to tell me I can’t hex her, too?”
Ezra’s already wide eyes grow even larger. He grips her wrist and stares at me with so much hope in the depths of his blue eyes. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”
Gracie makes a harumph sound and perches her chin on his shoulder. “Ezra, I can’t promise being clingy won’t get on my nerves. It sounds like something we’ll have to work on. But, it also sounds kind of nice. Besides Dad, no one really cared about me until I met Briella and Poppy. I think that’s why Puck got to me so bad. And living with the fear he’d vanish at any moment made me very… Insecure? I guess what I’m saying is, clingy might be good for us. What do you think, Vyslan?”
What do I think?
The question takes me by surprise.
I’m not a party to this relationship. And yet…
I want to be.
They do make a pretty picture all tangled up the way they are. Gracie is sensual darkness while Puppy Daddy is joyous light and playful kisses.
“I think you are both very tempting right now,” I say.
Ezra shakes his head and the last remnants of the scared boy he’d been moments ago are shaken off. His aura changes immediately, going blue and gray with steely resolve. “Gracie is having a high pain day. I’m not saying no, but can it wait?”
I grin at him and wink. “Edging me already, Daddy?”
Ezra’s face flushes and Gracie giggles against his shoulder.
I reach over and clap him on the shoulder, then jump to my feet. “Delayed satisfaction can make it so much better.”
Gracie holds up her hand, shielding her eyes, and turns her head, squinting toward the bed. “We have seriously got to get you some pants. I can’t stop staring at your meat stick. Shit. How do you walk around with that thing and not hurt yourself?”
“Keep looking at it’ll get bigger.” I sway my hips from side to side. Ezra makes a pained face but doesn’t look away. “It’s usually not this big. It’s part of an incubus’ biological response to starvation. What you were calling a heat. I’m thinking I might have made a mistake in choosing celibacy. Is she high already?”
Ezra closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Yes, she had a gummy to help with the pain. Now, why don’t we change the bed like we talked about and find something else to watch. I can order some clothes that are more your size, dude.”
Gracie groans and stretches back on the sofa, releasing Ezra. “Clean linens are in the closet on the right. Why don’t we go with the black cotton set and the dark purple comforter?”
Ezra and I head toward the closet together. With that tiny bit of privacy, I grasp his shoulder and pull him around to look at me. Tilting my head to the side, I just look at him. There’s pain there, but also something bubbly and hopeful. For all that he’s endured, I think the universe is about to reward him.
“I’m good,” he says softly and smiles. “It’s nice having it all out there. Finally.”
“You and I should talk about last night.”
“Oh.” His still pink cheeks turn red. “Uh… Was it…? Was it okay?”
“My boy, you are a very in-tune lover. A natural. I mean that as a compliment. Is that acceptable for humans?”
He chuckles. “I’m not human anymore and I feel complimented.”
“Any regrets about your first time fucking someone of the same sex?”
“No,” he says without hesitation. “I mean… I’ve wanted to a few times. I just never liked someone I trusted that was also willing to… You know…”
It’s the way he stares up at me with all that sunshine and hope that makes my stomach clench.
I dearly hope this isn’t a false biological response. I rather like the idea of being blindsided by affection. Then again, I am an archdemon. It might not be good for them to have me around. Especially if one of Gracie’s closest friends has already experienced cruelty at the hands of my kind.
“Are you guys really having a gay talk in the closet?” Gracie asks.
Ezra grins and laughs. “Does it count if Vys is only half in the closet?”
“I think he’s all the way out.”
I glance over my shoulder and wink at her. “Baby, I don’t think your closet could fit me.”
She smiles and rubs at her face, eyes squinting, which reminds me of what Ezra just said. She’s in pain. And despite that, she’s still fully tuned into what Ezra needs. She’s a good witch. And more than a little powerful.
Ezra thrusts a pile of linens into my arms. “Here.”
He and I wrestle the black sheets onto the bed while Gracie fetches a joint from somewhere. In short order, we’re bundled into bed with me in the middle, somehow passing the joint back and forth while we search for a movie. It’s so domestic and pleasant, I almost feel like I’m living in a production. I seem to remember a program that was on our version of TV a few decades back that was similar.
I watch Gracie offer the newly lit witchweed joint to Ezra, enjoying the tender way they interact. “Mind if I ask an invasive question, Gracie?”
“Hm? Go ahead,” she says. Her eyes are darker and her shoulders more relaxed. The real change is her aura. There’s less pain in it.
“I noticed you have alters to the elements, but not the gods. Where do you stand on that front?”
Her nose scrunches up. “That’s… Complicated.”
Ezra coughs and frowns. “Gods? What?”
She takes takes a tiny toke before offering it to me. “It’s something we just don’t talk about. Briella’s family was super devout. Poppy grew up with a much more casual practice. Dad was always spiritual curious, and when we talked about religion and belief, he always told me to decide what I believe for myself. When I was introduced to witch culture and realized that most of the gods are just like a much more powerful being with some special godly powers, I guess I kind of lost the faith. Witch religion is… It’s a lot.”
I nod and puff my cheeks out, tasting the smoke more fully. Witchweed is the superior smokable herb.
“What even is witch religion?” Ezra asks.
Gracie and I look at each other, then chuckle.
“What do you know?” she asks me.
I shrug. “Your gods were thorough. I know nothing.”
“Damn it,” she mutters. She wiggles her fingers at me and I pass the joint back to her. “Okay, witch religion 101. Buckle up. Supposedly, all humans—or most of them—used to be witches. I’ve always taken that with a pound of salt. Kind of like the Christian god creating the world in seven days. The way I look at it, these stories are real for the people and parts of the earth those gods created. But not universally correct for everyone. But that’s my personal philosophy. Anyway, the witch gods. They made some sort of contract with humans, and we broke it. The punishment for breaking that contract was no longer being able to use our magic naturally. We couldn’t snap our fingers and make fire. Now, there has to be some cost. Some potion. A medium to draw that power out, because our ancestors broke the covenant.”
“That’s harsh,” Ezra mutters.
“It gets even more fucked up. The gods then wiped out all record of what that agreement was, how we broke it, and what we can do to fix it. Supposedly, after so many generations of atonement we’ll be cleared of wrongdoing and the covenant will be reestablished. But this happened so long ago, Ezra. So long ago there are no records, nothing. The coven does holy days and offerings and jumps through all sorts of hoops to try to repay that debt sooner. But I guess I’m just like, why bother? Not my circus, not my monkeys. So some people went back on their word ages and ages and ages ago. So fucking what? Why am I still paying for that? Especially if I don’t know the price or the duration of it. So, I view myself as a secular witch. Briella and Poppy can observe religion how they choose, and they leave me out of it.”
“It is strange,” I mutter. “The whole situation. I’ve often wondered what it is we’ve forgotten. Was it truly justified?”
She shrugs. “We’ll never know.”
We lapse into silence, passing the joint between us.
There’s something about the story of the unknown witch gods that has always sat wrong with me. It’s a mystery I wish I could untangle. But that isn’t my place.
We need something to lighten the mood. Between the events of last night and Ezra’s confession, I think we need some laughter.
“What are you thinking about so hard over there?” Gracie asks as she passes the joint back to me.
I tip my head back and savor the taste of the fragrant smoke. There’s a hint of something floral in it. “I was trying to recall a program that was on our version of TV. These two humans accidentally summon a sloth demon during a party in their apartment. The demon panics and fools them into believing he is their new roommate. It was a comedy about trying to fit in while providing satirical commentary on classic demon roles. But most of the human stuff was completely wrong. Really fucking funny.”
“Damn. How do we get to watch that?” she grumbles.
“Hm… Let… Me… See…” I pass Ezra the joint while I work out how this might be possible. “Gracie, would you be opposed to a small scale summoning? I think I can bring my… Well. I think you call it a cable box?”
“Fuck yeah.” Suddenly, she grips my arm. “Wow. The room just spun a little. Um, if you don’t need a lot of space, why don’t you use the top of that side table? I use it for casual divination, so it should have… Good vibes.”
“Good vibes?” Ezra snorts and chuckles between puffs as he locks eyes with Gracie over some private joke that has them grinning.
“You two were made for each other.” I laugh and bound to my feet, then jump off the bed.
Gracie giggles. “Says the demon, talking about good vibes .”
I glance at Ezra and find he’s blushing again.
I sway from side to side, my dick slapping my thighs each time. “Something I should know?”
“Dude.” Ezra holds his hand up to shield his eyes and coughs. “You’re making this weird.”
“Are you sure that’s my fault?”
Gracie reaches over and slaps the pillow between them. “Tell him.”
“It sounds stupid,” Ezra protests.
“It doesn’t. It’s cute .”
Ezra rolls his eyes and passes the joint to Gracie. His eyes find me and his smile turns small and private. “I told Gracie that I can only be attracted to people I vibe with. Like everyone has a frequency. I just told her the three of us had a good vibe.”
I feel like he just knocked the air out of me. I glance down to make sure I’m still on my feet instead of my knees.
I’m unaccustomed to emotions like these. It’s tempting to run from them. To brush it off. And yet, I can’t deny that the circumstances that brought us together are so unique and perfect they cannot be denied.
When I look at the two of them, there’s this slight shimmer around their auras. Like someone dripped the same color over them that just happens to be my favorite color. I’ve tried ignoring it, but at this point that would be foolish.
I’m not the only one sensing the signs that this might be fate.
I cross to the side of the bed and take Ezra’s face in my hands, then kiss him.
Demons and humans alike don’t tend to trust incubi. And for good reason. I hate to think what might have happened had any other demon been summoned. But it was me . And I think I want to enjoy this for however long it lasts.
Ezra rolls his lips between his teeth and glances down at my mouth.
I kiss his brow next, then step back before the need to fuck him overtakes me.
“Let’s get that cable box, shall we?” I say.
I clear the side table she indicated quickly and find some chalk and other mediums in the top drawer. In five minutes, I’ve completed the spell, summoned the little black box, and tidied up after myself. The atmosphere has relaxed and my two humans are slumped over in bed.
“He has a really great ass,” Gracie mutters.
“I know. Have you felt his tail?”
“No,” she pouts.
“I can hear you both,” I say over my shoulder.
“Good to know your ears work,” Gracie replies.
I grin over my shoulder. They’ve both scooted to the middle of the bed where their bodies now form a triangle from the way they’ve leaned into each other. “You can pull my tail anytime, sweet witch.”
“I’m really not sweet,” Gracie replies.
“I beg to differ. Now, who is ready to see some terrible acting? Oh, Ezra, fun fact! The humans are played by vampires.”
He perks up at that. “What? Seriously?”
“When was this made in human years?” Gracie asks.
“I think sometime in the sixties or seventies for you? All of the set pieces were brought over from your world so they would be authentic.” I jump up on the foot of the bed while considering the timing of it all.
“I know the shorts are coming, but at this point the meat stick is normal,” Gracie says and glances at Ezra. “Yeah?”
“Kinda. Yeah.”
I grin and freefall forward on their legs, wrapping my arms around their thighs. I don’t know how long I can stay. I might only be in their lives for a moment. But I can enjoy this period of life.