Andrew looked at the Taser and raised his eyebrows. “Are you planning self-defense, or revenge?” he asked, his voice mild.
I thought about that a moment. I didn’t think he was going to hit me again. I’d had to work really hard to get him that angry last time. Now that I knew he had a temper under his usually calm exterior, I wasn’t anxious to bring it to the surface.
“Revenge, I guess,” I said, then shot him. The probes latched onto his leather jacket, and fifty thousand volts slammed into him.
He gratifyingly collapsed into himself, landing on the doorstep in fetal position, screaming.
When I got my Taser license, one of the requirements was to take a shot yourself, just so you’d have a real clear understanding of the power you hold in your hands. I’d seen two-hundred-pound macho men scream like little girls. I wish I could say I’d taken it in stoic silence, but I’d screamed as loud as anyone. Never felt anything like it. Never want to again.
“Sorry, Andy,” I said softly, talking to my real brother, the one who was imprisoned somewhere in that body. I wasn’t clear if the host could feel the demon’s pain or not, but just in case it could, I felt the need to apologize.
It took the demon more time to recover from the shot than it would have taken a human. The electricity really fucks up their control of the nervous system. He lay in a panting heap for a while, then uncurled and pushed himself to his knees, looking up at me from behind a lock of reddish blond hair that had fallen over his eyes.
“Should I bother getting up,” he asked, “or am I in for some more fun?”
He was still so infuriatingly calm it made me want to zap him again. But he’d only hit me once. Fair’s fair. That didn’t mean I was putting the Taser away, but I ejected the cartridge and let him pluck the probes out of his jacket.
“Remember,” I warned him, “I can still use this like a stun gun without reloading.”
He laughed and pushed his hair out of his eyes, then stood up slowly, keeping a close watch on the Taser. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“So, what, the pain doesn’t even bother you? You just laugh at it?”
He shrugged. “It bothers me. But I deal with pain all the time on the job. If I fell to pieces every time something hurt, I’d be useless.”
Andrew is a firefighter. Almost all of the legal demons make themselves into ultra-useful members of society, using their powers for good, justice, etc. They know they have to do a lot of good deeds to make up for their occasional bad eggs, like the one I’d encountered in Topeka. Because demons can heal the bodies of their human hosts, they often take on really dangerous jobs. Andrew is always rescuing people from burning buildings. He’s a fucking hero.
Okay, so maybe it’s not fair to be mad at him for being a hero. But, see, I’m not a hero, and I never will be. Sometimes that makes me feel small and selfish in comparison. I’m all for doing good deeds. Just not at the price Andy paid.
“What do you want, Andrew? I’ve had a really shitty couple of days, and I so don’t want any family drama right now.”
He ran a hand through his hair — a very human gesture, but then if you just met him on the street you’d never know he wasn’t human. “It’s been two months since our, uh, problem. I thought maybe it was time we buried the hatchet.”
Oh, yeah. This was a conversation I wanted to have right now. Personally, I’d have been just as happy if we never spoke to each other again.
“Andrew-”
“Morgan, we’re family, whether you want us to be or not.”
This was somewhere along the lines of the conversation we’d had last time. I wondered if slamming the door in his face would be my best option right about now.
“Andy’s my family! You’re just a parasite using his body, like a big, lethal tick sucking the life out of him.”
He grimaced. “Lovely image. You’ve always had such a way with words.”
I went for the door slam, but he stopped it with the flat of his hand. I was pissed enough that I tried to use my Taser like a stun gun, but he saw it coming and knocked the Taser out of my hand. He could have broken bones in the process, but somehow he hit just the right spot to make my fingers loosen without even hurting me.
I cradled my hand to my body anyway, hating him, wishing it wasn’t illegal to exorcize a demon from a willing host. But it’s considered murder, and no matter how strongly I felt about Andrew’s demon, I wasn’t willing to go to prison or face execution.
Andrew pushed past me into my house, shutting the door behind him. Anger glinted in his eyes, and there was a steely set to his jaw that Andy would never have been able to pull off.
“Violence isn’t the answer to everything,” he said, sounding disgusted. “Stop acting like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum!”
I glared at him. “I wasn’t the one who threw a punch the last time we argued.”
He lost some of his righteous indignation, and his lips pursed like he’d tasted something sour. “I really am sorry about that, Morgan. The last time I walked the Mortal Plain, my host was an inherently violent man, a warrior. We may suppress our hosts’ personalities, but some of it does leak through, and a lifetime of it can affect our behavior. I am…embarrassed that I allowed that to happen. It won’t happen again.”
I cocked my head at him. “So you’re saying it wasn’t really you that hit me? That it was some remnant of your last host?”
As an exorcist, I’m technically an expert on demons. And being raised by a Spirit Society family, I have a little bit of extra expertise from up-close-and-personal experience. But even us “experts” don’t really know all that much about them. We only know what they tell us, and I would bet my life that they’re not telling us everything. That’s one of the things that scares the shit out of me. What aren’t they telling us? And why?
Andrew took my question as evidence that I was ready to have a lovely little heart-to-heart chat and invited himself into my living room.
My house looks nothing like me. I look like the sort of woman who should live in some kind of ultramodern condo with spare, sleek lines and uncomfortable furniture. Instead, I live in a little cottage that could have been plucked straight from the English countryside, complete with hedge roses and a cobblestone walk. My living room features an overstuffed floral chintz sofa and a butter-yellow love seat capable of swallowing a medium-sized adult whole.
Andrew is not medium-sized, though he’s not huge, either. He’s right around six feet tall, two hundred pounds of pure muscle. If he weren’t my brother — sort of — I’d think he was pretty nice to look at. He sank into the love seat, but managed not to be smothered by it.
Bowing to the inevitable, I sat on the sofa and clutched a throw pillow to my chest. My nerves were too raw from the nightmare in Topeka. I didn’t feel like coping, and I didn’t feel like having any deep conversations with this creature I despised.
Andrew clasped his hands between his knees and stared at them intently. “I take the full blame for what I did, Morgan. I’m not a Viking anymore, and I should have had better control over myself. Yes, Einar affected my personality, but I’ve been with Andrew for ten years. I should have been able to readjust by now.” He looked up at me, and his lips twitched with a hint of a grin. “Though you could bring out the devil in anyone.”
I laughed, though grudgingly. Then I swallowed back the moment of humor and fixed him with my steeliest gaze. “Like I told you before, I’ve had a really lousy couple of days. I just want to take a long hot bath and then go to bed. Can you hurry this along a bit?”
His raised eyebrow made me blush, because of course he’d seen me drive up with Brian, and he’d known that meant it wasn’t relaxing I’d had in mind. Luckily for both of us, he let it drop without teasing.
“All I want is to make things right between us. Or at least as right as they can be. What can I do to apologize for my horrendous behavior?”