Demons' Home Ch. 20-24

CHAPTER 20

"I'm not going to lose you."

The words caught me unaware and I quickly turned from my meditation to look at Taurin leaning against the wall. Earlier I felt him come in and watch me, but he never said anything so I didn't acknowledge his presence. My breath caught in wonder as he started to walk to me.

"I can't go with you and Ezra. Dragons eat demons."

His hair was caught in an intricate braid and thrown over his shoulder, silver and blue threads woven throughout. His clothes were... odd. It looked like he stepped out of a book of cultural anthropology. Cloth and embroidery of white, gray and shiny blue, decorated his body, closed tight around his neck. Furred lined boots went to his knees.

"Taurin..." I puffed out a breath in disbelief, "How do you always manage to look like a wet dream?!"

He had his own moment of disbelief reflected on his face as he looked down at himself, "Me? Really?! In this?!" His nose crinkled up in horror.

I laughed and stood up, "You're gorgeous. Where are you going?"

"I thought I'd go home."

I nodded my head because it made sense, "When will we see each other again?"

He laughed, "You are going to be with dragons and you ask me! I just hope Ezra gets you out alive." His hands framed my face and he kissed me. I ardently responded and pulled away to catch my breath when we slowed down. He continued talking before I got the chance.

"I think everything is going to change between the three of us. For now, you give us almost all of you, but after this I'm not so sure you will." He shook his head. "I expect to see you when you're done with Ezra."

Taurin pulled me closer to him and placed a tender kiss on my forehead. I had nothing to say. All I knew was that I hated to see the two of them hurting and if by being with them in their world would heal them, I'd try. The emotion in his eyes made me want to ask what was wrong and how I could help. I knew it wouldn't matter, he wasn't ready to tell me.

"I'll talk to you mind to mind while I'm away," I said determinedly.

He shook his head, "No. It's more complicated there. The connections are garbled and hard to hold. We communicate through anchored sites that fight the shifting susceptibility of magic. Power is more chaotic and unpredictable, not like Earth."

"So... Ezra and I won't be able to communicate that way either?"

He shrugged, "I don't know. I wouldn't think so, but Ezra is... different. I'm going. I don't want to watch you leave me." His smiled sadly as he walked backwards to the door. I watched him reach the threshold and quickly turn around.

I didn't want to watch him leave either so I stayed in the room. A distinct sound quivered in my soul when he left. His vibration within me became a pure howling music, as if there was space within the notes. Did I love him, did I love Ezra? More importantly, had I been holding back because of my fear that they were only using me? Was I using them like Mackenzie suggested, as a path to death? My private thoughts were invaded by Ezra's voice.

'Dove, come outside.'

I gave a last look around my home and went outside to start my journey with Ezra.

He stood outside looking into the dusk, his hand outstretched behind him, waiting for me. I placed my own in his and faced the familiarity of the snowy evergreens, wondering how long it would be until I saw all of it again.

Ezra tugged me closer and embraced me tight to his body. His warmth felt like standing close to a campfire and was welcome from the brisk winter air. The whoosh of the sheet of wings extending had me gazing behind to watch them flare and catch the breeze. Lines of glowing red traced patterns too chaotic to follow.

He drew close to my ear and whispered, "Close your eyes. Hold tight."

I heard and felt his breath as he shot us up into the sky. The movement of his wings had a strength and thunder of sound that I could only vaguely compare to horses' hooves. He twirled us around in the air and I finally shut my eyes because of the force pushing on me. I felt his muscles bulk and enlarge and knew his transformation could easily grace artwork on the walls of chapels. The part when the angels were cast out from heaven.

He was larger and stronger and smelled... off. It was the scent of smoke and dust that shocked me into realizing that I hadn't smelled the fullness of cloves off Ezra in months. In fact there were subtle differences that had been growing. His power felt more potent inside me. The little dragon his magic placed in me was quiet, almost in hibernation if I had to put a word to it. I didn't see her in my thoughts or dreams lately, but I did get a lot of double vision of Ezra's dragon self like a phantasm over him.

I buried my face in his skin and took a deep breath, familiarizing myself with this new Ezra that had emerged while I was learning how to use a gun. A gun that I had with me. The reactions of the two demons in my life to the prospect of meeting dragons didn't leave me feeling it would be a friendly reunion.

CHAPTER 21

Ezra was wrong when he said magic travel would be rough for me, it was worse. I spit up on him before we even made it out of the magnetic lines. My eyes were out of focus and watery as we landed onto the stone floor of a fire lit cavern. I caught a blurry sight of wisps of fire flaring around his body as he laughed. I clenched my stomach and groaned as I hunched over, so sick I was unable to even give him a good glare.

"I have longed to hear the sound of that laugh," echoed a female ghost of a voice.

Ezra immediately stopped laughing. "Dame Genesis," he said reverently.

An unmistakable forlorn sigh filled the space and I looked up from the ground to study the woman who I saw in my dreams. She wore the same outfit, completely covered in red, from the top of her head to the toes of her feet. Shots of gold and fire glinted off her as she glided towards us. The sound of the bells weighing down the veil over her head jingled as she walked. I could make out a barely visible face hidden behind the material.

Then she made a loud distinct sniff, "What is that smell, Scion Ezra?"

Ezra made a loud noise of relief and opened his mouth to speak.

She angrily interrupted him, "Did you think I would disown you?! Did you think that is why I requested you come, to formally renounce you?! After all the times I embraced you in front of convocation. Do I need to call you scion at all times to make you trust me?"

Within moments of her reprimand Ezra had sprawled on the floor, his wings stretched as far as they could go. The blur of his movement had me blinking.

"No."

She walked closer to him, "You let her see you powerless. You found your Eshera."

"Yes."

"Rise, Scion Ezra." She stressed 'scion' with exasperation and motioned the movement she expected of him with her hand.

Ezra spoke as he stood, "She threw up on me."

She laughed and it was a musical sound in my ears. "Good. Now clean up and properly introduce me to your Eshera."

Ezra bowed his head and in seconds his body flared with more fire. He stood before his mother completely naked, dark blood red, wings, tail, and with so many unfamiliar toned muscles on his humanoid form that my mouth dropped. I had never seen him in such a way before. He was taller and wider than he had ever let me see. He was a chameleon of forms, but I had no idea how good he really was. His tail swished lazily behind him as he turned to me. This was what he transformed into when we were traveling here.

I'd like to think my silence was demanding, but obviously not to him. All he did was lean forward and wrinkle his nose at me.

"You threw up more on me than yourself. Stay very still." He drew close to me and breathed on the top of my head. I felt like I was being bathed in a soothing, warm shower that smelled of stone and campfire.

He sniffed me, "Better. Come."

My hand was grabbed roughly and I lurched forward with his pull, "Dame Genesis. Dove Hawthorne, demon hunter to my demon. Eshera to my Meloch."

My eyes widened as she neared until we were so close I could hug her. At this distance I saw through her mantle and my breath caught, she was stunning. Her eyes looked like slanted glitter through the veil, her features delicate and her smell intoxicating. Something stirred in me and it had everything to do with Oldavai. I leaned even closer to her, almost touching lips.

She looked sharply up at Ezra, "She smells like incubus underneath so many others. Oldavai?"

I didn't look but I knew he was confirming the name.

"How ironic. Did Scion Ezra tell you his history with the breed?"

"Mother," Ezra said in annoyance.

Her laugh trilled through the air and she winked at me, "My son finally ceases with the formalities."

She immediately launched into a story, but I couldn't concentrate. All I could do was smell her and all it made me do was want Oldavai. I was startled into awareness when Ezra clamped a hand over the lower part of my face.

"A moment, Dame Genesis. No disrespect, Mother."

"Ah. Let me move farther away. She had sex with him?"

"No. He had sex with her."

"Oh! Now that is surprising." She said with a thin hint of amazement even I couldn't miss.

I shook Ezra's hand away and spoke curtly, "I'm fine."

She continued to talk to me, "It is your curse to bear. He will be able to call to you through any of his kind. My curse is that I will be a succubus whenever Ezra and I are together."

The confusion was evident on my face as I looked from her to Ezra. She laughed again, but I could feel Ezra's anger.

"Ezra's and my secret is that I had intimate relations with our Creator's, the Eternal She's, consort. Eventually I was cursed in this form every time I am with my son. No dragon knows the real reason for my transformation and so it is one of many conditions they blame Ezra for."

I blinked, "Wait. What?! You mean that Ezra's father is..." I stopped, unsure what he was.

"A creature of the stars also created by our Creator."

"Oh my God," I looked over at Ezra in shock, "You are the first demon ever."

Ezra's eyes hardened, "Dame Genesis is unusually free with our family history with you."

"She is your Eshera."

She said this as if it explained everything. I'm not so sure it did for Ezra. I was okay with it if it meant I got to learn more about the demon I was spending my life with.

His mother continued, "Ezra is different from those other spawns."

Ezra grumbled over her words that no dragon agreed with her. She sighed loudly and shook her head. I felt the air move violently behind me and saw the tip of his tail as it slashed back and forth. Then the earth shook and the size of the space around me registered. It was dragon sized. Ezra closed his eyes and blew a breath of fire out of his mouth.

"Your brother is coming. Protect your Eshera. He does not believe it."

"He would argue words from the Eternal She's mouth if she stood right in front of him," Ezra mumbled.

The woman turned and distanced herself from us, "That is true."

My eyes darted from one to the other in panic and then fixed on the opening that the sound of movement reverberated from. There was a dragon coming and supposedly this one didn't like me.

A roar boiled through the air and fire burst out of the passageway.

CHAPTER 22

Would I faint? I felt faint. I fainted when I saw Ezra's form for the first time and that was just a specter of what he could be. Oh God, I hoped I didn't faint. I backed up as far as I could go. Terror poured out of my veins and I knew they could all feel it. All I could do was stare at the entranceway. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. It was a spider.

I'm not sure it was even really there, but at that moment I was able to step out of myself and remember everything I had done. Who I was, who I was becoming. The fear didn't fade completely, but it did lessen. I wasn't here to die. And then I realized I didn't know what I was here for. I walked back to Ezra and grasped his hand. He turned to me with a look of hooded wonder and we didn't stop staring at each other even when his brother entered the room.

'What do you want from me?' I asked. I don't think he heard though because he said nothing back into my mind. Instead, Ezra's tail wrapped around my leg as we turned to face his brother together. He bowed his head slightly without taking his eyes off the dragon in front of us and spoke.

"Premier Nazar."

This dragon was huge, gigantic. He glowed with the shifting colors of a living, breathing inferno. His scales wove around themselves, they moved in such a way that I almost believed they were another muscle, not just covering for bones and organs. I knew from experience that they were so razor edged they could slice without notice. Shiny black horns curved from behind his skull to semi circle the crown and then point out as an effective weapon. A mane that resembled dreadlocks flowed almost independently around those horns, they didn't look anything like hair though. His head was wide at the base and slimmed slightly to the blunt end of his nose. I barely had the courage to look at the glassy surface of his eyes, they shone with their own light and fury. I shied away with a wince at the sound of his claws gouging the stone floor and the overpowering haze of his smoke purposely enshrouding us.

No words were exchanged and I stood perplexed until I deduced that the sighs and movements of bodies were their language. I finally realized why Ezra sighed so much and in so many different ways. It was fascinating to watch until Ezra pushed me behind him and flared his wings out, shielding me from his brother. The respond was a tail smashing into stone causing the ground to shudder and me to grasp Ezra's back for balance and reassurance.

Ezra finally spoke to me without turning around, "Nazar thinks that he should kill you because you have been corrupted by me. He would have killed me ages ago if our Dame allowed it."

Nazar brought his head down and pushed Ezra in the chest. I was moved by his stagger backwards into me.

Ezra's growl vibrated hard over my hands as he thrust his head violently towards his brother, "It was Dame Genesis' decree that I look for my Eshera. I doubt she asked so you could kill her and destroy me in the process!"

The dragon's head and neck struck out like a snake and Ezra quickly backed us up even more. I stumbled over my feet and looked at the woman who bore these two indomitable males. She stood watching several feet away, saying nothing and appearing incredibly calm.

Nazar growled threatening at Ezra and the dragon inside me finally woke up and emitted one long screech of displeasure. It hurt and I pushed one of my ears into my shoulder with the hope that I could stop its ringing. I couldn't hear the silence, but I felt it and looked up to find them all staring at me. I also couldn't hear Ezra say 'shit', but I read his lips just fine.

Nazar roared his outrage and it punctured my hearing even more, vibrating every nerve ending in my body. His body flared, engulfing itself in flames. I shot out in front of Ezra with my gun firmly in my hand and sighted on Nazar's eye. I was ready to see how effective a Haelithic bullet really could be. Then everything happened at once, but I still couldn't hear a damn thing!

Their mother reacted quickly and I just knew she was shouting for me to stop. Any mother would if she saw a gun directed at her child.

Ezra grabbed me around the waist and threw me down on the ground. I twisted around to my back and moved my hands over my head to point the gun at stone. It took him less than a second to transform into a dragon and hunker down, covering me from Nazar's fire blast. Above me, scales colored the darkest black and blue I'd ever seen were so close I could touch them. My breathing became fast and shallow as I realized I was surrounded by huge, emotionally unstable, fire breathing bodies, and that definitely included the demon I was with. The dragon inside of me was a spark to the tinder of Nazar's rage.

Ezra stood and shook his massive frame. How he managed to carefully step around my fragile body without squashing me I'll never know. There was no time to process any feelings as I shimmied as far away as I could across the floor with my elbows and feet. Once standing I put the gun back in its holster and stared at the two dragons facing off.

Ezra was the night sky with scatterings of pinpricks of white starlight. He was the smaller of the two, although that didn't make much difference to me, I could be measured by a yard stick or two, he needed blue prints. Only the tip of his tail moved, the rest of it stayed stretched out in my direction. Nazar's thrashed the walls in high agitation and I swallowed nervously as I watched small rocks fall from the cave and skitter around like Mexican jumping beans on the ground. Language filled the air and the only part of me that comprehended was my magic. Since I hadn't quite consciously mastered any part of my bonding with Ezra I had very little understanding about the argument. The only good thing at the moment was that my hearing finally came back.

Their mother gracefully stepped across the floor in my direction, red shimmers cascading down her dress in an endless waterfall. When she reached me she stayed a few feet away. Unfortunately, her scent still carried and I grimaced in agitation.

"You carry Haelithic magic, you have dragon magic in you, my son protects you, my eldest wants to kill you and you are a demon hunter who protects a self-proclaimed demon. Such a maze to navigate. I cannot touch on the incubus part of it all." She paused and watched her two offsprings take superficial swipes with coughing growls at each other, "You are here to bring my son back into his clan. To convince his brother that he was never betrayed by Ezra. And if you can manage it, implore the Eternal She to take the curse off of me and let me see Ezra's night witch of a father."

I stared back in incredulity and then rolled my eyes. Sarcasm flooded my inner dialogue. The first words I thought in response were not the ones I chose. Who says I don't have the ability to be respectful to my elders. "Dame Genesis, how would you like me to accomplish that?"

"I am not your Dame Genesis, so call me Zhora. As for how we will accomplish my goals, I have ideas." She looked back at her sons and continued, "I think it is time to stop this. They would fight all day and all night if I let them. I see that much has not changed."

She calmly walked forward and stood between them. In moments Ezra abased himself on the ground. Nazar waited till Ezra was almost completely flat and then slowly crouched lower than his mother, which was a feat since she was so small compared to him.

Zhora laid her hand on her eldest's head. "Premier Nazar. Grace us with your guardian form so that we may all understand and be understood."

Nazar's form shivered in procession from his mouth, down his backside, to the tip of his tail without hesitation. When he raised his massive head, his eyes burned anger right into Ezra. I tensely watched as the muscles in his jaw twitched in several directions as once. Then his entire upper left side sneered and I got a good look at immense dragon teeth. I felt the blood drain from my face and I swallowed again. A coughing chortle came out of his mouth, followed by smoke. Within moments he was reduced in size and burning a warm red orangish glow. Physically he looked as much as Ezra did when he stood on two feet. Wings flared out behind him and tail snaking back and forth on the floor.

"Scion Ezra-" Zhora started, but was interrupted by Nazar.

"No. This will be settled here and now. If she will aim a Haelithic bullet at my eye without pause let her do what no dragon will tolerate of his chosen."