Demon and the Fox - 12. True Self

Rebecca dragged on the suspense a few minutes longer before revealing herself to Malachy. She stepped forth in the middle of the wrecked living room, the floor creaking in protest under her silver stilettos. Her one shoulder dress was skin-tight as it stretched down to the middle of her thighs. A pure white dress. Her sleek locks looked very gold in comparison. She had a jasmine flower clipped in her hair, and an emerald green silk scarf around her neck.

Her bluer than blue eyes studied him. A lot of people thought wearing blue was the best option to enhance blue eyes. But they were wrong.

“Love the green scarf.” Malachy smiled, crossing his legs.

Rebecca’s manicured fingers caressed the silk scarf. “A gift from a lover.”

She had no accent. She spoke a flawless, international, businessy English.

“He’s a lucky man.”

“A woman,” said Rebecca, raising her chin, “actually.”

Malachy raised his glass. “Lucky woman, then. Could I tempt you with a glass of my single malt, top class villain scotch?”

Rebecca slowly crossed her arms. Her every gesture was graceful. Calculated.

“I do not drink.”

“Ah,” Malachy laughed, “of course you don’t. You’re an angel.”

He uncrossed his legs and leaped to his feet. He didn’t like sitting when she was standing. Between them was the knocked over coffee table, and smears of blood on the wooden floor.

The hint of a crooked smile twitched Rebecca’s lips. But she said nothing.

Malachy didn’t much like long silences. “Shay used to drink with me all the time,” he said.

“Shay,” Rebecca said coolly, “broke the rules a lot.”

Malachy smiled. “Rules are meant to be broken, my dear.”

“What do you want from me, Malachy?” Her voice was very calm, very smooth. It made him want to grab her and shake her until she got furious and showed some emotion on that pretty face.

But instead he just turned his palm toward her. “Hey, you’re the one stalking me. What’s your deal? Did Lance send you to spy on me?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her eyes.

“I don’t act under anyone’s orders. I do what I like.”

Outside, cars drove by 49^th Street. The fresh wind slipped in through the window, blowing the linen curtain softly.

The ceiling light flickered, startling Malachy a bit. But he didn’t break eye contact with Rebecca.

That was one of the ways Malachy recognized a kindred soul who’d been around a long time: they weren’t afraid of looking people in the eye. Humans were always so shy—and demons too at first—when it came to looking someone else in the eye without faltering. They couldn’t do it for much longer than a few seconds.

So he made sure to maintain eye contact with Rebecca as he let a long sip of scotch delight his taste buds. On the downside, encounters with other old souls could easily turn into annoyingly lengthy staring contests.

Malachy thought he heard wolf-Kyle snoring from the spare bedroom. Oh, well, so much for his watchdog.

“Well,” Malachy said at length, “since you asked what I wanted from you, there is something you could help me with.”

“And why, pray tell, would I help you?”

She shifted just a little closer, careful not to step in any blood spatter with her silver heels.

Malachy spread his arms. “Why are you here?”

Rebecca merely smiled. Her lips were a pale shade of pink, like cherry blossom petals.

“You’re here,” Malachy said, “because you’re intrigued by me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I do flatter myself. I do it all the time.” Malachy flashed a grin.

Rebecca uncrossed her arms and reached back with a hand to slide all of her thick hair over one bare shoulder. The caramel strands looked very pretty against the pale green silk of her scarf. Their eyes met. Malachy realized he’d lost the staring contest; he’d been too enthralled with her movements.

“I will admit,” Rebecca said, “I wanted to meet the one who defied Lance.”

Malachy shrugged. “And why now? I killed Lance twenty five years ago.”

“When he refused your pleas to make you a Higher Demon one too many times, yes. I know the story.”

“It was more complicated than that.” Malachy’s smile disappeared.

Rebecca tilted her head. “Not really. You wanted to be a Higher Demon so you could possess a human. To be with the woman you loved.”

“I’m a romantic,” Malachy deadpanned.

“When he refused you stole Lance’s poisonous sword and stabbed his heart. And then you went and possessed a human anyway, and you spent four beautiful years with the woman of your dreams. Jade, was it? A witch. You have a thing,” Rebecca said, her voice slithering like a snake, “for dangerous women.”

“Can’t resist them,” said Malachy.

She stepped just a little closer, her heel stabbing the old wooden floor.

“One could think that you killed Lance for nothing. Your mentor. The only one who believed in you. Who loved you like an older brother. One could,” she said, “find it hard to forgive you.”

“You really did your homework. Or, you’re closer to Lance than I thought you were. I didn’t know you were allowed to befriend Higher Demons.”

“Let’s just say Lance and I go back a long way.”

“Then I’m sure you realize he’s completely insane by now,” Malachy said.

“Coming from you,” Rebecca replied, “I’m not sure that means much.”

“Touché. But come on. Lance is crazy. He was a slave in Egypt, that guy, when he was human. He helped build the bloody pyramids. I don’t blame him for going mad. I probably did him a favor, killing him. He loves it in Purgatory. After all those centuries he can finally do what he always wanted and whip people all day long.”

“You think you’re funny.”

Malachy shrugged one shoulder. “I do what I can.”

Rebecca licked her lips. “That thing you said I could help you with. What is it? I’m only curious,” she added.

“There is an eighteen year old fox spirit passed out in the next room,” Malachy said. “And he knows I’m not really Nicholas Russell. See, I can’t have that.”

“And what could I possibly do about that, if, hypothetically, I chose to help you.”

“I know what the leader of the spirit guides is capable of. Erasing memories.”

“You’ve done your homework, too.” Their gazes were locked in another one of those staring contests.

“I know Shay didn’t remember a thing about his human life when I met him. Though you weren’t his leader back then. So I can’t blame you for doing that to him, but I don’t doubt you’ve been doing it to a lot of new spirit guides ever since you took the job. Probably did it very recently, too, for Shay’s replacement. Some half-wit with a blind adoration for you, surely. Someone who accepts the stupid lists you give them without ever questioning you. Must be nice.”

“Your sarcasm lacks finesse,” she said.

Her voice was as calm as ever, but he could tell she was a bit shaken up. He could see it in the depths of her blue eyes; she wasn’t used to someone talking to her like that.

He ignored her comment. “I asked you before why you chose to meet me now. I bet that’s the reason.” He raised his glass. “With Shay the rule-breaker in Purgatory, you’re bored out of your mind, aren’t you? You were Hazel Snow’s spirit guide, and you saw how I stole her heart. You wanted to see for yourself what was so special about me.”

“And I stand disappointed,” she retorted.

But her voice was slowly losing its controlled confidence. Now she pushed her thick caramel locks behind her shoulder. The way she did it was less graceful, more nervous. And the jasmine flower fell from her hair.

In a flash Malachy extended his arm and scooped the flower in his hand. He leaned closer to Rebecca and replaced it in her hair, just behind her ear. Their eyes met.

He pulled back. She parted her lips.

“You want me to erase Sasha Reed’s memories.”

Malachy smiled. “You would be a charm.”

“This power is not supposed to be used on humans.”

“You could make an exception.”

The ceiling light flickered again.

“He might never remember,” she said.

Malachy waved it off. “I’m sure he’ll remember. Shay remembered everything about his human life, eventually.”

Two centuries after becoming a spirit guide. Malachy ignored that thought. Details.

“If I do this, I can’t just erase certain memories,” Rebecca added. “It’s all or nothing. He won’t remember anything.”

“I know.”

Rebecca stared with icy eyes. “His only sin being that he saw through your lies?”

“I never said I was a nice guy.”

“And what’s in it for me?” Rebecca arched a finely shaped eyebrow.

Malachy leaned just a little closer. “I could make it worth your while.”

She smiled, tilting her head. “Oh, please,” she said, and in that moment Malachy thought she looked beautiful; more playful, more spontaneous. “What could you possibly offer me? I’m on top of the world, Malachy. I reign over the Angels. Over Heaven.”

That last one made Malachy explode with laughter. He laughed so much that wolf-Kyle’s snores stopped abruptly. He’d woken him up.

Across the hallway, the brown wolf poked his head out of the bedroom, looking toward the noise.

“Stay where you are, Kyle. Be a good boy, now,” said Malachy.

The wolf returned to hide inside the bedroom. Malachy turned his attention back to Rebecca. He was still laughing. She, however, was unamused.

“Care to explain?”

“Over Heaven. That’s a good one. I’m not the only one who tells lies, am I?”

“What do you mean by that?” Her pretty face gave nothing whatsoever away.

“Never mind. I’m not here to discuss semantics with you.” He leaned closer, so that now mere inches separated them. He could see the specks of violet in her eyes. The slight curve of her nose. The tiny mole near the corner of her eye.

Malachy noticed the way her chest lifted as she breathed in.

“Are you flirting?” she asked in a very low voice.

His gaze flicked back to her eyes—just a little more wide set than normal. Malachy liked her little imperfections the best. They made her look more human. Though her porcelain skin had that somewhat frightening agelessness. It was the same with Lance. The same with a lot of old spirits—or souls, or whatever they were really. They looked young but not quite; you couldn’t tell their age. But that had never happened to Malachy. He had died at the age of twenty, and he had looked the same ever since.

“I want to show you my true self,” he said to Rebecca.

“Then show me,” she said.

He made to drink his last sip of scotch, but she snatched the glass from his hand. She gulped down what was left, and threw the glass on the floor.

The sound of shattering glass made Malachy wince. “Not very lady-like,” he said.

She flashed a devilish grin. Malachy liked it.

“You look younger when you’re smiling,” he told her.

Rebecca tilted her head. Were she a cat, she would’ve been purring right now.

“I’ll concede I enjoy your flirting. But enough lingering. You said you wanted to show me. Show me.” Her tone was clear: she would not ask a third time.

He placed his arms at her waist and in a sudden movement brought her closer. Her hands flew to his shoulders to steady herself as a black veil enveloped them in a soundless embrace and they were sucked into nothingness together.

Malachy took her to his hideout in the mountains. A hollow cave in the stone that Malachy was fond of because its opening overlooked a patch of woods. And those woods weren’t made of black, leafless trees. They were lush, strong trees with golden and red leaves. And the leaves never fell. Leafy shrubs, flowers and weeds carpeted the ground in all shades of yellow and gold. No green. And they were always a bit frosted, like it was the morning after a cold storm, but the flowers never withered.

“I call it the Frozen Fall forest,” Malachy told Rebecca as they stood at the edge of the cave.

Malachy’s cave was halfway up a mountain. Over the trees, they could see the inky sky as it stretched over the shimmering white mountaintops. The mountains seemed to go on forever in the distance. It was dizzying. Rebecca turned to look at him.

Everything was quiet. There was no wind.

“You look handsome,” Rebecca told him.

“I know,” said Malachy.

“You’re not too bad at flirting, but we’ll have to work on how you respond to flirting.”

Malachy smiled. “I never said I was humble.”

She placed a hand flat against his chest and pushed him back, pinning him to the cave’s cold stone wall. Her hand felt warm in contrast. Without a word, she kicked off her silver heels, sending them to clatter deeper inside the cave. Parting her lips, she slid even closer to him, and at once Malachy caught both sides of her scarf to pull her in and flush their bodies together.

“I really do like that scarf,” he whispered.

They kissed and Rebecca was how he liked again: spontaneous, impulsive. She smiled through the kiss. The jasmine flower fell from her hair, and this time Malachy let it drop to the floor. A pure white stain against the gray stone.

Rebecca lifted a leg and as Malachy deepened the kiss, he grabbed her thigh and held it up against his hip. His other hand vanished into her long hair and cupped the back of her neck.

He let out a startled gasp as his fingers detected the all too familiar feel of numbers etched across her nape. He had a number tattooed behind his own neck, too.

But… this would mean Rebecca had once been a prisoner in Purgatory? He had no idea.

They interrupted the kiss, breathing hard. Dark blue eyes stared hard into his, defying him to say anything. Malachy didn’t; he wasn’t a gentleman, but he wasn’t stupid enough to break the moment.

Instead he kissed her again with renewed intensity, and she relaxed into his touch and kissed back. He felt the shape of her back with a hand, pressing their chests together. She smelled sweet, like lychee and orchids. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tangled a hand in his curly hair.

When his lips left a trail of kisses down her jaw and neck, she gave a moan and they locked eyes. With their arms around each other, they disappeared inside the cave together, letting the darkness swallow them. Feeding the silence with the sounds of clothes coming off skin and kisses that had no end and no beginning.

…

It was morning when they came back to the apartment.

Pale sunlight spilled in through the window, washing over the pony-themed bedroom. Kyle was back to normal, and he was freshly showered and dressed, with a gigantic bowl of cereal in his hands. He was limping slightly; Malachy recalled Sasha had bit his leg.

Sasha was still lying in the middle of the plushies and pillows where Malachy had put him.

“Where were you?” Kyle stood next to the bed. “You told me to watch over him and get you if he woke up, and then you just vanished with some,” Kyle waved toward Rebecca, “with some girl.”

Rebecca and Malachy stood in the doorway with their hair messy and their clothes crumpled. Rebecca was barefoot and her dress was dirty, but she didn’t seem to care.

“She’s not just some girl,” Malachy said.

“I don’t care,” Kyle snapped, nearly spilling his cereal. “I don’t care if she’s the president of the United States. You’re supposed to be with Hazel.”

Malachy ignored that. “Well,” he looked at Sasha, “did he wake up?”

“No,” Kyle answered.

“There you go. No problem. Now be quiet.” Malachy turned to Rebecca. “Can you do it if he’s asleep?”

“He’ll wake up for this,” said Rebecca.

She glided over to the bed and cautiously sat next to Sasha’s waist. Malachy approached so he could look over her shoulder. Sasha’s bite wounds and scratches had bled all over Shane’s bed. But the bleeding had stopped now. Sasha was very pale, though. And his injuries hadn’t started healing yet. Kyle hadn’t gone easy on him.

Right now Kyle stood on the other side of the bed. Clearly he was confused, but he said nothing. He just shoved a spoonful of cereal in his mouth.

Rebecca rolled Sasha on his back and leaned closer to him, placing her palms against his temples.

“Wake up,” she said quietly.

Her long hair spilled over her shoulder and brushed Sasha’s chest. After a few seconds, Sasha’s green eyes opened. But he didn’t look awake. He seemed to be hypnotized, looking only at Rebecca’s eyes, as if nothing else existed.

Kyle and Malachy exchanged a glance, then looked down at the bed again.

“Forget.” Rebecca whispered to Sasha, in a voice so low the others could barely hear. “Forget everything. No memories remain. You are purified. You start anew. You are a man with no name and no past. You will not try to remember.” She slid one palm to Sasha’s forehead, and then slowly lowered it to close his eyes. “Now, sleep,” she said. A small tear trickled from the corner of Sasha’s eye, and Rebecca wiped it with her finger.

She rose from the bed. Sasha was asleep again.

“That’s it?” Malachy arched an eyebrow.

Rebecca looked up. “That’s it.”

Kyle dropped his spoon in his cereal. “Whoa. She’s like a jedi.”

“I have compulsion powers,” Rebecca conceded. She sounded amused, like this was all a game to her. Maybe it was. She stepped closer to Malachy. “It’ll work,” she said. “It’s the same discourse I use on my new spirit guides. Well, I must be going now.”

She tugged at the green scarf around her neck, and draped her shoulders with it.

“Thank you.” Malachy joined his palms together and bowed.

“No need to thank me.” There was a glint in her blue eyes as she eyed him up and down. “You said you’d make it worth my while, and you did. Though it’s odd now,” she added, “seeing you in this body.”

Before Malachy could reply, she had slipped away into thin air. No smoke, nothing. Just a clean teleportation. Malachy nodded appreciatively.

Kyle put his cereal bowl down on the nightstand. “What now?”

“You remember what we talked about yesterday?” Malachy asked.

Kyle was in Nick’s t-shirt again, the one that was too small for him. When he crossed his arms over his wide chest, the sleeves threatened to tear.

“We tell Hazel and Jack that I lost control and bit you,” Kyle said, though he didn’t sound too happy about this fake version. “We say it was a side effect of coming back from the dead and all that, and I should be okay next full moon, and I’m really sorry.”

“Perfect. Now,” Malachy said, narrowing his eyes, “do you by any chance own a car?”

“No.”

“Find one. Rent one,” Malachy suggested, “or get a cab, if that’s simpler. I don’t care how much it costs. I’ll pay for it.”

Kyle frowned. The morning sunlight made his brown eyes tint gold. “Why? Where are we going?”

“Not we. You, and Sasha. I need you to take him to a hospital outside of town. Today.”

He hesitated. “I don’t really feel comfortable doing that.”

Malachy ran around the bed and stood face to face with Kyle. “Please do this for me. I promise this is the last thing I ask of you. When you come back we’ll just pretend this never happened. We’ll go back to your apartment so we can be with Jack and Hazel.”

Kyle nodded slowly. “I know a guy who’ll lend me his car if I ask—he owes me cash. If you promise it’s the last thing…”

“I promise,” Malachy said fervently. And he meant it. He just wanted all this to be over so he could be with Hazel.

Kyle said, “I’ll do it.”