Page 8 of Demons of Eden

A broken laugh escapes me between the sobbing, and after a few more moments, while still crying, I manage to ask, “You…you’d really want to be a part of their life?” I sniff loudly, resting my head on her shoulder.

“I mean, people do say all children are demons anyway, right? Can’t be insanely different from a regular kid. Plus, they’ll be half you, and you’re one of my favourite people in the universe, so I’m sure I’ll love them too.”

“You’d be putting yourself in danger,” I try to object, still sniffing as the tears start to subside, but slowly regaining a little control over my emotions. “Just knowing there’s a demon inside me and not immediately informing the Witch Council could get you into serious trouble.”

“Eh. The Council are a bunch of stuffy old jerks with wands permanently stuck up their asses. They don’t scare me,” she says, adding a cheesy wink to the end of the statement. Despite that, I can still hear the slight tremor in her voice, the one she’s clearly trying to hide underneath the show of humour and false confidence.

I don’t call her out on it. Instead, I wipe my tears and blow my nose again, grateful beyond belief to have her at my side. Faced with all the dangers and repercussions, she’s knowingly choosing to help me still, even when she’s clearly afraid. It makes me grateful that I moved to this city, despite all my struggles here. She really is the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I would do without her.

“How are you feeling now?” Suvi asks, throwing out the tissues I’d gone through and then returning to my side. She ignores the stains on her shoulder like my little emotional breakdown never happened, yet another thing I’m grateful to her for.

“Other than being terrified?” I question back before shrugging. “I’m still nauseated. I’m going to go through so many anti-nausea potions, aren’t I?” I complain, already dreading the awful taste. For something that’s supposed to stop you from being sick, it sure has the ability to make you gag as you swallow it down.

“Typically morning sickness can stick around until about twenty weeks, but for you it would be a lot less with the rapid growth. There’s also a chance you could experience it for the entire pregnancy, demon baby or not. Honestly, I’m not sure how the baby being half-demon will affect any of this, either. As I said, I only know the basics. You ideally need someone with more knowledge than I have on the topic, not that I won’t do everything I can to help.”

“I get it, I get it. I’ll consider looking him up,” I concede. “And morning sickness,” I huff, feeling irritated at the deceptive name. “That’s a fucking joke. Why is it called morning sickness when I’m feeling sick all freaking day long?”

“You’ve got bigger problems than morning sickness,” Suvi points out. “Whether you get his help or not, you’ll need to find a way to boost your magical energy. The baby’s sucking all the vitav right out of you. For now, all I can do is transfer some of mine to you. I’m not sure how long it’ll last with how much it's using, though.”

“Isn't doing that supposed to be dangerous, like master-healers-only stuff?” I question, worried she could hurt herself. Some species are able to transfer their energy or absorb someone else’s as easily as breathing. For us witches, sharingpower in a ritual or spell is easy enough, but actually transferring the energy into another person is usually only done for healing purposes. And only ever by those with the training to do it, as it’s so easy to give too much.

“It’ll be less dangerous than leaving you wandering around empty while looking for your demonic baby daddy.” She shrugs. “It’s not as if you can go to a master healer, anyway.”

Ah, yes. What a fun reminder of how I’m now enemy number one of witchkind, as if it’s my fault Ash didn’t mention his demonic status when bringing me back to his hotel room. I decide I'll track him down if only to yell at him for that omission. There are things you should tell a girl before making her brain cells vanish with orgasms, and being a demon is definitely one of them.

“Are you sure you can do it safely?” It doesn’t matter if I need the vitav to live; I won’t let her try unless she’s sure she can do it without hurting herself. Trading my best friend’s safety for my own isn’t something I’d do.

“Don’t go telling on me, but I’ve actually done it once before. We’re both rule breakers, I suppose,” she teases. “Just lie back, take my hand, and we’ll have you casting spells again in no time.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Rubbing my belly absent-mindedly, I stare at the building while slowly growing more and more apprehensive about my decision to drive over here.

I know I’m only putting off the inevitable by hesitating, but it doesn’t make it any easier to force myself into moving. I’m completely out of other, saner avenues for dealing with my problem, leaving me only this terrible option left. Obviously, I’m desperate. Only a truly desperate or crazy person would do something like this. And at this point, staring at the large black, red, and gold sign above the door, I think I may actually be both of those things.

‘Fletcher Hunting: Demon Recovery and Termination Specialists.’

“Demon hunters,” I grumble to myself, shaking my head. “What the hell am I thinking?” I huff out a breath then take another sip of my water, silently cursing the fact it’s the last few drops from the bottle. Empty again already. I’ve been so thirsty these last few days, as if everything else isn’t already irritating enough.

Two days ago, I left my coven’s health clinic with the worst news a witch could possibly get and began my search for the demon who did this to me.

My first stop was the hotel Ash took me to, figuring they’d have a record of his room booking at the very least, maybe even some contact information I could talk them into giving me. I was prepared to flirt or cry if necessary to get the information, but the person at the front desk had been entirely unsympathetic. It was obvious neither of those tactics would have worked on them, so I didn’t bother. Not only did he outright refuse to give me Ash’s info, he also all but ordered me to leave the premises for simply asking. When I’d quietly snuck about and asked other staff members if they’d seen him instead, none of them had seen the man I described.

What’s weirder is that I’m pretty sure they were all telling the truth about it.

I got my first glimmer of hope at Midnight Masque, but it was ultimately another dead end. Several witches said they’d spoken to an attractive and charismatic man named Ash, but then they all described him differently. Not small differences, which could be explained by drunken misremembering, but big ones. Blond hair, red hair, bald! Tall and lanky, thick and muscled. One girl even said the Ash she met had cat eyes!Cat. Eyes.I’ve only ever met one man named Ash, but there are clearly a bizarrely endless number of attractive men who share his name.

Honestly, by the end of my lacklustre night of investigation, I was both exhausted and half-convinced the universe itself was laughing at me. I left the club feeling like crying, cursing the demonic bastard for doing this to me and then pulling a vanishing act. It’s bad enough I’m hungrier than an underfed glutton, but the nausea’s starting to drive me to homicidal thoughts because I can’t keep anything down. I should be resting, but I’m finding myself chasing this guy all over thefreaking city, like I’m not feeling the worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life!

How far am I going to have to expand my search? To the continent, the entire world, across all of the freaking realms of existence? Considering he’s an otherworlder, there’s every possibility he’s not on Earth anymore. If he isn’t, how can I get safely to the demonic domain, let alone track someone down in such an unfamiliar place? Obviously, I can’t do that. How freaking dare he impregnate me and then disappear like he never existed at all, ultimately leaving me in a situation I can’t fix or deal with on my own?

This entire situation is so fucking unfair.

I said as much, and worse, to Suvi when I called her in the middle of my frustrated tantrum while driving home. It’s how I’ve found myself here now, sitting outside the office of a reputable group of licensed demon hunters, hoping they can do what I’ve utterly failed at over the last two days. Usually, the demons who hunters track down are the murderous kind. They’re the ones who make it onto the Council’s kill or capture lists, but Suvi had insisted they take on personal jobs too. That if I was going to trust anyone outside of us to help with my situation, it should be them. Then she’d pointed out how theymost likelywouldn’t even need to kill him once they’d tracked him down, so why wouldn’t they take on such an easy job?

The way she had said ‘most likely’ had not been at all reassuring, but I’m out of water and nearly out of daylight too after delaying for as long as I possibly could. Knowing I can't put this off any longer, I bottle up my nerves, grab my purse, and climb out of the car. It’s a quick walk over to the building from where I parked. I lift my chin, pretending like I’m not dreading this with every fibre of my being while heading for the main door.

It’s wide open, so I walk right in, pausing in the entryway as I look around. For an office used by demon hunters, I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. The space is pretty big, and most of it’s empty, with the far left corner of the room having an opening which I assume leads to a few private offices or something. The walls are a rather plain shade of off-white, bare other than for a few pieces of abstract art and two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

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