Chapter 37 #2
“Stay back, Brynn,” he rumbles, and his voice is so deep I can practically feel it in my marrow.
I stumble after him, my breath coming in short gasps. “What-What are you doing? Are you okay?”
“Don't,” he snarls, and the sound is so feral I freeze.
He spears me with a look that I can only describe as half-starvation, half-agony. The raw hunger in his eyes steals my focus for several heartbeats. His massive chest heaves with each labored breath, muscles rippling beneath that strange, dark skin.
He looks like he’s fighting, with every ounce of will he has, the urge to close the distance, like he wants to either grab me or eat me, or both. His claws are twitching with a lethality that terrifies me… yet my feet are somehow still following him.
“Stop running away,” I say, my voice hoarser than intended. “I've had a very long day and I'm not chasing a ten-foot demon through the woods.”
“Brynn, I'm serious.” His voice drops lower, rougher. “If I touch you—”
The unfinished threat hangs between us. My heart hammers against my ribs. Even in this monstrous form, I can see the “Chad” in the way his jaw clenches and unclenches. But why is he looking at me like this?
“If you touch me, what?” I manage. “I’ll finally get a straight answer out of you?”
I take another step, the scholarly side of my brain still trying to catalog the sheer physical impossibility of him. He’s massive, a wall of ridged, midnight-dark muscle that makes the air around him hum with a terrifying… yet somehow delicious heat.
Gods, it’s deeply inconvenient that my body is, for some reason, currently deciding that “Demon-Hulk Chad” is a significant upgrade from “Stick-up-his-ass Soldier Chad.”
“I am trying to save your life,” he growls, backing into an ancient oak with enough force to make the branches snap. “My instincts are... loud, Brynn. You smell like everything I want to…”
His voice trails off, and I don’t catch that last part, but the worst part of my brain fills it in for me.
Devour?
Ruin?
Ruin is a very specific word, Brynn. A concerningly specific word.
But honestly… the way he's looking at me right now—like he's barely holding himself together, like I'm both his salvation and damnation—
Okay, so maybe after the week I've had, being ruined by a giant, brooding monster doesn't sound like the worst thing that could happen to me.
Wait, what?
Did I just think that?
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Chad, because my vocabulary is currently failing me,” I huff, adjusting my glasses.
I somehow take another step, my boots crunching on dry leaves.
“What, is this the part where you tell me you're too dangerous for me?
Because frankly, the ancient ghosts currently trying to lobotomize me in the name of 'collective therapy' are much higher on my list of concerns.”
He lets out a sound that’s half-snarl, half-groan, his massive back hitting another oak tree. The wood cracks. “Brynn, I am literally vibrating. If you come any closer, I might not be able to stop myself from—”
“From what? Giving me an aggressive hug? Snarling into my hair?” I cross my arms, trying to ignore the way the heat radiating off him makes my skin prickle in a way that is definitely not a medical symptom.
“You're still in there, Chad. I can see the Poster Boy beneath the horns. I can still see the guy who tells me my reading posture is going to ruin my spine.”
“Your posture is terrible,” he murmurs, the familiar cadence of his human voice flickering through the demonic bass. He shakes his head, his horns snapping a low-hanging branch. “And you’re still a stubborn, suicidal librarian who doesn’t know when to run from a losing fight.”
“Losing fight, eh? Is that what this is?” I take another step closer even as my heart does a frantic little skip at the flicker of the real him. “Because to me, it looks like you're more afraid of me than I am of you. Which is hilarious, considering you could probably use my head as a stress ball.”
“I don't want to use your head as a stress ball,” he growls, his molten eyes seeming to track the movement of my throat as I swallow. “I want to... gods, Brynn, just go. Back to the dragons. Back to your house. Anywhere I’m not.”
“And yet, you’re not running away from me very fast, are you? You could be gone by now if you really wanted to…”
I dare move in another step, my boots brushing the end of one of the long twigs he’s standing on.
The air between us suddenly feels thicker than ever, vibrating with a static charge.
For a moment, it feels like we’re trapped in the eye of a storm, a pocket of pressure where the only thing that exists is the rhythmic, heavy sound of his breathing and the frantic pulse in my own neck.
The dragons are still being held back by that Ide-powered wall.
The heat radiating from Chad’s massive frame is intoxicating.
It’s a dry, furnace-like glow that seems to seep through my clothes, melting the last of any academic pretense.
I should be terrified. I’m standing in the shadow of a creature that could snap a tree like a toothpick, yet all I can think about is how the light of his molten eyes makes my skin feel like it's humming.
“You’re still talking,” he rasps, his voice a low vibration that I feel more in my chest than my ears. He hasn't moved, but his shadow seems to expand, wrapping around me like a dark velvet cloak. “You should be halfway home by now, Brynn. You’re making it very hard to be the ‘good guy’ here.”
I tilt my head back, looking up—and up—until I’m staring directly into that glowing, dangerous heat.
We are mere feet apart now. If I reached out, I could almost touch the rough skin of his chest. The smell of him—smoke, rain, and something primal that speaks directly to the most instinctive part of my brain—is everywhere.
I lower my voice, my tone softening. “Just tell me what the problem is, Chad. I can try to help… Also, who the hell is that other demon?”
His eyes flick briefly toward the other towering figure, who is currently watching us from his position near the barrier, before snapping back to me.
“That’s my father,” he growls. “And the problem is that I’m a Malabranche demon, Brynn. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“Wait, back up. O-One point at a time. Your father? How—How did you even find him?”
He exhales. “It doesn’t matter right now.”
“It matters to me. And no, I don’t know what a Malabranche demon is. I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve heard of it is Rothmere’s brief mention. Which is kind of alarming. Care to explain?”
Chad takes a deep breath, his gaze anchoring on mine. For a long, electric moment, the forest around us feels like it’s vanished. There is only the heat radiating from his massive frame and the predatory, agonizing intensity in his gaze that makes my knees feel like they’re turning to water.
“It means that I… fixate,” he grates out. “And right now, for… reasons I cannot comprehend… I’m fixating on you.”
My breath hitches, a sharp sound dragged straight out of my lungs.
Fixate. I don’t have to be a genius to know that the word isn't just a verb in demonic lexicon; it's a biological sentence. I’ve read footnotes in the Codex Infernalis about certain demons being prone to absolute, ruinous obsession.
The ones that don't just like or desire or lust; ones that haunt, imprint…
ruin. Like incubi, but turned up to eleven.
Is that what a Malabranche does?
But why fixate on me?
Was it something I did? I try to think—some gesture, some trigger. I know demons can latch onto things, twist them into meaning, set off instincts that don’t care about logic. But nothing comes to mind.
Then again, it’s hard to think at all through the heat coming off him—that dry, sulfurous warmth blurring the edges of my vision. He’s a ten-foot wall of dark muscle and something that feels ancient and hungry, and I’m a librarian with bent glasses and a ghost in my skull. I should be running.
Instead, I lean closer.
“Fixate,” I repeat, my voice thin in the air. “What does that mean exactly?”
I take one more step—the final, stupid inch—until the heat of him is right there, inches from my face. Even the Ide in my head is quiet, like it’s watching this play out. I can see the pulse in Chad’s neck, heavy and steady, seeming to echo the frantic beat in my own chest.
“You’re playing with fire, Brynn,” he grates out, his voice gone dangerously low, like I’m testing the last threads of his restraint.
And frankly, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Only that I feel drawn inexplicably closer. Like I want to reach Chad beneath this monster. Like I can somehow help him if I can just reach out and… touch him.
I do it. My fingertips graze the rough, heated skin of his forearm. Chad’s breath hitches—a jagged sound—and his other hand snaps up, his massive, clawed fingers encircling my wrist. But he doesn't pull away. He pulls me in.
Suddenly, I’m flush against him, my face pressed against the heat of his rock-hard sternum.
His grip tightens, and in one fluid motion, he lifts me off my feet like I weigh nothing.
My back hits rough bark as he presses me against the tree, his massive form caging me in.
Now we're face to face, his burning eyes level with mine, his breath hot against my skin.
My heart hammers so hard I'm certain he hears it.
“Is this what you wanted?” he growls, his voice practically vibrating through me. “To see what happens when you push a demon too far?”
I should be terrified. I'm pinned against a tree by a creature that could tear me apart without a shred of effort. But all I feel is an electric thrill racing along my skin. What, exactly, is wrong with me?
“I just wanted to see you,” I breathe. “The real you.”