welcome to my wonderland

A demon and a reaper walk into a bar … it should’ve been the start of a bad joke, but instead it was just bad, at least as far as the news Sonny dropped like a cow pat on the damn table. Crowley was on the back foot. The other guy’s demons – like this was just a football game and some rival high school was gonna try and put the hurt on the star quarterback before he could guarantee them the championship for the season – were pushing things and last night … well, there’d been another handful of bodies dumped in a ravine out in the woods. All for his guys to deal with.

Damien hung his head, elbows planted on the table, fingers laced behind his neck. The tips gripped the back of his shirt collar, the fabric still crisp under his fingertips, new, a gift he wasn’t about to get messy just because Crowley couldn’t keep himself and his people out of trouble. The groan rolled out of his low. If it had been Leah or Cory or one of the thousands of anonymous reapers Death had at his beck and call who’d gone out there things would be just fine. The devil – old Lucifer himself – would maybe throw a little tantrum, you know, he’d head down to Georgia and challenge some asshole to a fiddle playing battle and that would be that. If it was Death’s golden boy looking to have another star stuck to his chest, he was screwed.

Elias was probably that golden boy at his day job, and maybe he was tolerable there, as long as he kept the sanctimonious attitude under wraps with his bosses. Where he was the biggest pain in anybody’s ass was with his side line. It didn’t matter that the woman in the alleyway had told him that something had been inside of her, or that the place had practically reeked of sulphur. He’d taken one look at the situation without any idea of the circumstances, and had decided that his teammate (as though he’d use such a word) was siding with the enemy. A little poke of a finger here and oops the body would drop without anybody having a clue who’d done it, a hand grab there and that soul that could’ve blabbed was already on its way down to heaven to shriek about every errant thought they’d ever had.

Looking up at his brother, Damien let a breath hiss out through his nose. ”Did you see anybody there … after?” Sonny had laughed, enough of the thing in the sound to leave him squirming in the seat as his brother shook his head. That didn’t mean every single one of the hosts had already been dead before those things had crawled into them, just that if a reaper had gone out there, they hadn’t decided to make themselves seen. That still didn’t rule Elias out. The lecture could still be coming.

Cursing under his breath, Damien downed the last of his beer and pushed the empty glass away. His expression was even grimmer than it had been when he’d walked in as he stood. ”Do me a favour and keep your head down … you keep this up and it’s not just gonna be demons coming for you.” The thing cackled again and Damien slammed his hand down on the table top to cut it off. ”I’m serious. Nobody’s gonna care who you’re hitching a ride with and you’re not getting him killed.” There’d been a promise when they’d come to their agreement that Sonny hadn’t been killed in that bank, if the demon left he’d be just fine. Damien wasn’t so sure it wasn’t a crock of shit, but for now his brother was sharing that thing’s brain and he wasn’t gonna let that change if he could help it.

The demon sprawled back with some sort of mumble of agreement. Damien strode out of the bath, leaving Sonny behind. He had enough hanging over his own head with the crap going down in this town, with one good thing here finally. Another person he wasn’t gonna risk. Shrugging off the tension as he started across the square, Damien pulled his phone out. Who woulda thought that another shitty situation in a bar would’ve brought Aurora into his life. So much more than just another bloodsucker, the binary star around which he’d started to orbit, with Sonny the moon who tore at him the way that thing up there did the tides on earth. Puffing out a breath that steamed the cold air, Damien tipped his head back, had just a glimpse of the moon glowing before the screen of his phone lit up, along with the pit of his stomach.

He was already smiling when he put the phone up to his ear. Aurora was the good to the demon’s bad, although there were probably plenty in town who’d argue over it. ”Hey,” he murmured softly. ”I was just thinking about … where are you?” His other hand came up, fingers smoothing the collar of his shirt, eyes snapping around the square like Aurora would stroll up to him.

Up.

Damien tipped his head back again, scanning the buildings around him until he saw her sat on the ledge of the clocktower, the moon painting her hair with those auburn streaks. ”You hang on,” he told her, humour wrapped around his words. ”I’ll be right up.” If anybody saw the guy disappear from the middle of the square, he didn’t care. His eyes were on her, crinkling at the corners behind the black frames of his glasses as he appeared next to her. Damien crouched for a moment, slipping a finger beneath Aurora’s chin to lift her lips to his to kiss before he settled, dangling long legs over the edge. ”Feeling a little nostalgic? Or just looking out over your kingdom?” A town that was maybe too small for her, especially if her brother decided to pay a visit, but the one where the two of them had stayed put … mostly.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 1019

The general consensus seemed to be that Aurora was trouble – even according to her blind fool of a brother – they couldn’t have been more wrong though. What sort of a problem smiled at you like that? What sort of a problem smiled back just as broadly, the distance between them shrinking even before he shoved the phone back in his pocket and was teetering up there atop the clock tower with her? The sort who’d robbed his way across the country, what had originally been a mission of mercy rapidly turning into something that had offered some excitement, some sort of high in a life that might’ve been dark and depressing. What were he and Sonny supposed to have done? Given up a life of crime to return home in their retirement. Sitting there behind a bank counter again day after day, money he could’ve stolen like candy from a baby passing through his fingers while every moment was spent wondering if this was the one Connie’s body was finally gonna give out.

There was no worrying about things like that with Aurora. It wasn’t gonna be some asshole who didn’t have the sense not to get behind the wheel drunk, or something boiled straight up out of hell that’d steal her away from him. It wasn’t even gonna be her brother. Apparently the guy would try – and had succeeded – in chasing men away from his sister before. Tristan hadn’t met anybody like him though. Damien doubted he’d have a hope of getting shot of him. Reapers were harder to kill than your normal sorta sap, especially when he could kill the guy with a single touch. He wouldn’t, for Aurora’s sake – she didn’t need to feel what it was like to lose a sibling, even if disliked her brother in a way he never could’ve done Connie – but it sounded like Tristan deserved whatever was coming to him. Maybe he’d find out what that was soon, this town chewing him up the way it had done others.

The knot that had been tightening in the pit of his stomach at the news Sonny had dropped on him vanished entirely with the first brush of Aurora’s lips against his. Sonny could handle himself for now, he had more pressing issues. Damien stole one more quick peck before he drew back to let that breeze flow between the two of them again. Human him would’ve been crapping his pants at being up here – heights hadn’t been his thing, but now he could’ve leapt off of here like Superman and walked away without a scratch. He had no intention of trying it though, one hand curled around the edge, the other brushed through those flaming strands of hair, his thumb trailing over Aurora’s temple, massaging the tender skin. ”You did that? Jumped to turn yourself?” he asked lightly. The story of just Aurora had been turned not one he’d ever pushed for. She was older, he knew that well enough.

How many centuries had she been trying to evade her brother? The moment she sighed and admitted she was hiding from prying eyes Damien was sure it was her brother she was talking about. He glanced down, a frown creasing his brow before he curled his fingers around the nape of her neck. ”He tries to and I’ll get you out. Wherever he takes you, I’ll find you. You’re not gonna spend years locked away from me.” It seemed as though Tristan would believe he could though. Taking measures to make sure that Aurora didn’t have the strength to get herself out. Imagining her weak had that knot back in his stomach, his thumb sweeping beneath her eye as though he could brush away those welling tears. ”Do you want me to get rid of them? The people your brother has spying on you?” Elias would be screaming from the rooftops about it, using every dead body as proof that he was rotten, but honestly he didn’t give a damn. Things like that deserved to be stamped out and the minute the empty shells of their bodies dropping it would be the hellhounds’ problem anyway.

”No, baby,” Damien murmured, inching closer. He let go of the edge of their perch and cupped Aurora’s face in his palms, thumbs smoothing over her skin, trying to brush those nerves away as he shook his head. ”Nothing’s gonna get rid of me. Not your brother, not his toadies…” Especially not with love in the equation. It was those knife edge moments that wrung admissions out of you, stripping away all the bullshit that clouded things until you ended up with the truth spilling out. The corners of his mouth tipped up, a quick smile cutting in a moment before his mouth descended on hers once more, fierce, stamping those words there. ”Good,” he breathed when he finally drew back just far enough to be able to rest his brow on hers and look Aurora in the eye. ”Cause I’m pretty sure I already fell in love with you. That means I’m not letting you go, OK? No matter what your brother’s gonna have brewing if he finds out about all of this.” He wasn’t the same fool who’d agreed to ne more job without a clue of what was waiting. He’d seen too much over the last handful of decades for that.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 897