Vermillion: Transforming

Everyone was so in tuned with Alex's reading that it took a while for someone to break the silence.

"Alex." Nick spoke kindly "We're all stressed..Maybe you should rest here for a bit."

"No but thank you your majesty." Alex said deflating "I'm sorry."

"There's no need to apologize, I understand. I wear my frustration on the inside. I can't say that this all sits well with me either."

"Which parts exactly?" Elyra asked, she herself seemed a bit winded.

"That I'll keep to myself. Here is what will happen, I'm not asking for permission or opinions at this point." When Nick spoke his voice echoed across the table through the stone walls sending large vibrations that shook the entire castle.

"Neimos will seal Luna's presence and place a safeguard around Verdure. I will send word to the other cities and towns as well as Casor to be on alert for strange auras and activities that arise around the boarders. I'll personally inform Lord Romus of the situation. But I won't lock Vermillion down. I'll tighten security at the docks as well."

"Now I'd like to speak about our deal, Sirus."

Sirus nodded "Elyra, you need to leave first."

"You are a foolish little boy, I'm protecting you."

"I'm not staying here long, I'll be in Hirea soon and you can follow me there. Maybe it will take some of the demons off of Luna's trail."

Elyra looked crossed, but huffed "Fine, I'll leave. But you better be there by the time I feel like taking a stroll along Hirea's high gardens."

"I will be."

Elyra stood up from the table pushing her chair in "It was lovely meeting you king Nicholas, and your sister too." She then turned to Alex "However I can't say the same for you."

"You were rude, I don't understand why you'd be upset unless you know what I said was true." Alex tilted his head to the side waiting for an answer.

"Goodbye." Elyra waved before walking out.

"What deal?" Luna poked.

Sirus looked at Iris before looking at the head of the table "I asked the king to pardon Iris and let her stay here until I clear up a few things, I'll be acting as Lord of Hirea as I do."

"This is surprising, Nicholas. I thought for sure you'd want to kill him on sight." Elizabeth said.

"You knew."

"I read your mind, it wasn't very hard with all those ramblings going on. But being that you're suffering, and Luna seems okay with you being here I have no complaints. For now." Elizabeth sniffed "Righting wrongs isn't an easy task."

"Some aren't my wrongs." Sirus started "But I'd rather have time to spend with my friend and Iris without enemies coming for my head. It gets tedious."

"Finally, sense has struck him." Lynx said biting into a piece of toast "How long?"

"Um, I didn't ask for a pardon." Iris snapped "It's not Sirus' decision on where I stay-

"It is if anyone comes after you, because of me. Or worse, your aunt." Sirus countered "Or did you forget your home situation? It's not a risk, but a fact that she will kill you if you try to return. It's not forever."

Iris pouted "To you, I don't like rules."

"Well, you won't have to kill to survive here, so you'll be fine. Can you just agree to it? It's for your safety too."

Iris nodded, she knew her aunt could be a worse and more current threat than any other "When are you coming back?"

"A few months maybe."

"Sirus-

"I don't know. I'll send a message through to update you and the king. That's all I have at the moment, Iris." Sirus frowned "Please." His pure white eyes urged her sorrowfully, even if it was corny, him begging even, it still pulled on Iris' heartstrings.

"Okay, okay.." Iris looked to Nick "If you'll have me."

"Of course." Nick smiled "You're welcomed to stay in any room here. You can come to me or Dominic or Luna if you have a problem, need anything."

"Thank you."

"So where are you going to stay?" Areya asked Lynx impatiently "With Alex?"

"Only if she wants to." Alex shrugged "We have to go shopping."

"We can go shopping, you can check on Rumi." Luna reassured him "You feeling okay?" She knew Alex didn't feel like walking up and down a mall to help with clothes, unless they were for Rumi of course.

"I'll be fine. Where will my father be staying?"

"We can find somewhere to place Neimos." Areya smiled "Or he could stay with you."

"Mother, he can't stay with you?"

Neimos coughed awkwardly "Do you really wish to poke that bear?"

"No, she has room. You need room. So?" Alex shrugged.

"Are you really that upset with me?"

Alex bit his lip trying to be delicate about what he was about to say next "I'm a grown man with a job, future plans, an apartment that I pay for, an adorable companion and now I'm moving my girlfriend in..."

"Wow." Luna snickered "You really couldn't figure that out?"

Neimos eyed Luna "Is that what you're doing with Nicholas?"

"Yes, we're just in different rooms. But nice try."

Neimos held his index finger up not ready to give into defeat "I am psychic, Luna."

"So is she." Luna said nodding at Elizabeth "But she's not family and she's not trying to shade me about my relationship with her brother. Though if you and I mean any of you had a question I'd answer it simply, Nick may not."

Nick rubbed the side of his face "Could we end the bickering?"

"Sure, when Alex's dad stops trying to one up us."

"Oh my god, Luna just apologize to your uncle or stop it altogether." Dom grumbled under his breath.

"Why don't you go check on Brina since that's all that's been on your mind since we got here?" Luna watched as Dom glanced down from the table, tempted to do so "I would check in case, we didn't hear anything from Mason last, right?"

"No, but if you're that worried, I can go out myself and see." Nick told them.

"It's fine, I'll call her later."

"So, in the future..." Areya coughed "Could there be a marriage?"

Sirus and Iris smiled at Lynx "Blushing bride."

"You're on my team." Lynx reminded Iris "And if there were, what's the big deal? We're already together."

"I never thought I'd see the day." Sirus whispered to Iris.

"I never thought you and Iris would ever stop fooling around and do something other than have pillow talk." Lynx whispered back.

"The answer is yes, possibly." Alex poked at his waffle "And moving later on."

"Moving? Alex you've barely left this city as a child." Areya was beyond baffled at how nonchalant Alex was speaking "You can't just leave."

"I just think that staying here is grounding me. I love Verdure, I love Vermillion. It's great here, but I want to branch out. Verdure isn't the place I want to make my permanent home anyway."

Luna coughed twice at Alex to get his attention which shifted to his mother who was shaking with fear and anger. "Mother, I'm not going anyway this year, or the year after this. Besides, you and father did your own things and you turned out fine."

Neimos gripped Areya's hand underneath the table, he rubbed his thumb over her other fingers, feeling how cold they had become. He was calmly stroking them sending thoughts to Areya to concentrate on her breathing to calm herself. Eventually it worked.

"I'm sorry, but what would you do? What would she do?"

"We have ideas." Lynx said swallowing her juice "Plans too, if Alex isn't too obsessed with his cat fetish."

"I love her, that does not mean I have a fetish."

"So, when she dies you'll do what?"

Alex firmly looked Lynx in her eyes "I'm getting another cat, and you can't stop me. And you can't kill them."

"Says who?"

"Says me." Alex threatened "It's not like the money's coming from your paycheck."

"True, just keep them in their cages or cubbies and they'll stay alive."

"I want a magical cat."

"And I want new clothes for this new life."

"We can get started on your stay here, yours and Iris'." Dom said "Setting up id, insurance, and so on. Though being that you're pretty ancient I doubt that we'll be able to find your birth certificate."

Lynx smiled viciously "Handsome and sharp, not as if I ever had one. Iris either, her people are nature spirits."

"It's useless paper for us, but what about money?"

"We can give you a loan or the king can send for a certain amount for you that he'd pay back to the banks."

"Sounds good." Lynx shrugged.

"No slicing or dicing-

"Or eating people, I got it. No killing unless it's self-defense, or evil coming to take over the world."

"It seems that all is in order then." Sirus said.

"Not quite, we need to talk." Iris sniffed "Alone, is there a room we can use?"

"Yes, there's one down the hall near the staircase, first door on the left." Nick said.

Sirus seemed uneasy but stood "If you'll excuse us." Iris followed suit and they left the room in awkward silence.

"She's going to rip into him." Lynx yawned.

"Sounds like it." Alex agreed "Do you have your furniture insured?"

"Um, some..Alex. They'll be fine."

"They better be, Nick. Some of those sofas and chairs are older than them, older than you." Elizabeth said angrily "Sometimes you are too lax."

"If I'm up in arms all the time I'll be a madman not knowing which way I want to go or need to go. Elizabeth, they're not setting fires, they're talking."

Luna tapped her ear indicating that Nick was listening in.

"Clever. Speaking of, Lynx?" Elizabeth turned her cold stare towards her this time expecting clear cut answers "What did Elyra do that was so bad to Sirus? I can hardly imagine it."

Lynx's face changed "It wasn't something Sirus ever liked speaking about, but since he's preoccupied, and I think you should know. I'll tell you."

"Elyra's always been posh on the outside and a devil on the inside. She loves to get into everything she can, drugs, alcohol, sex, pure adrenaline. Drugs and alcohol usually have no effect on demons unless laced with something like their blood or blood from a superior being."

Last time Sirus trusted Elyra was a century ago. He knew her to be tricky and manipulative, but he had been running into often. Despite the rumors and known violence, he decided to give her a shot at being his sister. She wined and dined him, discussed world art and cultures, showed him her own desires all to expose him to the blackness in her heart.

They became friends and Elyra always treated her friends well, she knew all the clubs and hotspots to get great liquor and women. She introduced some of her very generous friends to Sirus one night at a private club. A blonde and red head, both who kissed up and down every inch of Sirus while clothed, they were grabbing at him like starving wolves.

Then a round of drinks was brought by, then another. Elyra offered him a small vial of blue powder, cocaine laced with the blood of a druid who used death magic. Sirus would drink some when he went out, but he never did drugs. It didn't interest him, so Elyra decided to make him interested. She wanted him to see and feel how she did daily, so she slipped him the drug into his drink. And the rounds kept coming, the more he drank the more Sirus felt free, with nothing and no one to worry about he let his mind drift further into oblivion.

Elyra watched almost in glee as Sirus started to let loose, she even nudged the feeling with her own powers, watching him take turns kissing and touching the two women she served up to him. Elyra then snapped her fingers alerting a man to escort Sirus and his friends into a personal room.

She paid him handsomely as he led Sirus to the room, she even paid him extra to serve him a crafted drink that would not only increase his excitement. There was a side effect to so much fun, Elyra knew that there was a possibility that Sirus would tap into a coarser emotion when engaged in his pleasures. While Sirus enjoyed himself Elyra went off on her own midnight adventure and returned around eleven in the morning.

The entire club was empty, even the staff was gone. It was odd and reassuring at the same time, she could smell the sweet scent of all the erotic, lewd, dirty acts that took place there. But the one scent that was new for her there was that of blood. She followed the scent to the same room she'd left Sirus in. Inside Sirus was on the bed, sitting up completely dazed with blood on his lips, on his chest, claw marks down his arm.

The girls were both there in the bed, sleeping. Or so Elyra thought as she examined them, the blonde was a siren, the redhead an elf. Both were pleasant girls who were just out to have fun. Upon further inspection Elyra discovered them dead.

Sirus could slowly picture it all, during their time together he began to become more driven and when one of the girls opted out, he started choking her, her friend was barely conscious. But she woke up when she heard a noise, it was Sirus stabbing the elf girl in the heart with an ice pick over and over. He then set his sights on her friend and tore through her torso with his own hand, shaking her as she died, his blood boiled and all he could think about was killing. Killing was giving him the same heat that he felt in his rapture with other women he'd encounter in the past.

All that pleasure had turned into unbridled rage after one girl said no more. After figuring it all out Sirus stumbled with getting up, he could barely walk after the previous night. Elyra tried to ease him into it, it was an accident after all. Sirus didn't see it that way, he didn't need to kill to get off. But Elyra insisted by grabbing his wrist and speaking softly, her words echoing in his head slowly trying to sway him with her power of persuasion. It was almost too difficult to resist especially with how weak Sirus felt.

But at that time Lynx was looking for Sirus and enlisted Iris' help. It didn't take long for her to find him. She found the club and ten minutes later Sirus ready to fall out while Elyra was ensnaring him. The entire event ended with Iris using an herb to cure Sirus, allowing him to break from Elyra. He threatened her never to contact him again and left away for the first time that Iris saw, with guilt.

"That's horrible." Elizabeth could hardly imagine it, least of all with Nick "She did all of that for what? To control her brother?"

"More like morph him, change his personality, so he could be like her. See through her eyes. If you haven't come to realize it yet, princess, Sirus is unable of letting go of past mistakes. Whether that's Elyra's or his."

"I find it strange for an incubus to have so much worry over crimes he committed, accidents versus the lives he took when he was actually angry."

Lynx shrugged "He's complex is the simpler version. He feels that those lives were in a way more innocent being that he wasn't in his right mind and blacked out. Making up for killing people out of rage isn't easy."

"It almost makes you ask why even try." Neimos mumbled.

"For Iris." Alex pointed out "He wants to be with Iris so he's trying to be better for her."

"And he's trying to right some of his wrongs which is good, but there is always blowback taking on so much." Nick tapped the table "But it's better than him being our enemy."

"You would have killed him?" Elizabeth asked.

"If he attacked Luna, Dominic, myself? Yes, he came close to it in Romus. Anger is a trait that incubi have more than succubi."

"I feel that I have passion, not anger." Everyone turned to see Sirus standing in the entryway "I promise we didn't break anything."

"Hm, you didn't do anything else?" Elizabeth hinted.

"No."

"Then where's Iris?"

"She wants to go out and look around. I offered to go with her, so right now she's looking over the side at the city."

"And you came back for?" Dom waited.

"I wanted to ask if I could speak with you, Luna. Later on, maybe tomorrow?"

Luna shrugged "I guess."

"Good, then all four of us can have a talk together." Nick said.

"Four?" Sirus said confused.

"Luna, myself, and Dominic. Unless you'd like to make it five and have Elizabeth join us."

Sirus looked at Eliza and then back at Nick "That will be fine, and I'd appreciate it if you'd at least address me about Elyra later rather than let Lynx blurt everything out to you so crudely."

"That was a clean version, I didn't tell them what you did to the server."

Sirus opened his mouth to speak "It wasn't personal, we just wanted to know this devil a bit better." Areya said "Are you that fearful of her?"

"I'm not afraid of her, she gets people to act out their desires and hers while reeling them in for a night of horrors. Do you know what an empty shell feels like, Areya?"

"No."

"I do, there's nothing. No emotion, no thought, no feeling. And that after effect lasts hours, hours where you don't sleep, eat, dream. But it's worse for those who aren't human, the effect lasts from days to months. Then you feel like peeling off your skin, your bones creak, and you're plagued with horrible nightmares."

"You had nightmares?" Luna pressed.

"No, being as our powers give us insight into dreams and nightmares, I got excruciating pain in my eyes, my head, and my chest."

"Yeah, he collapsed a few times and I had to kick him to get him to feel anything afterwards." Lynx added "I had to babysit."

"Well my apologies for the struggle, I did help you track down that guy despite going through all that."

"Do you want a sticker?"

"Do you want a friend?" Sirus smiled "A buddy?"

"If that's it you can go on your date now. You know how temperamental Iris is."

"Yes, I'll see you all later this evening. Bye for now." Sirus gave a half wave before leaving.

"They're going to a hotel." Luna said to everyone once he left.

"Yup." Dom knew too.

"They'll probably talk first." Lynx thought "They're more talkative than you would imagine for a sex demon and a sexual spirit of the earth."

"All relationships are different."

"Luna, you were his breakthrough. If it weren't for you, he wouldn't have realized he loved Iris." Alex cheesed brightly.

Luna coughed trying hard not to laugh, because it was true. All the intimidation and death somehow led them to a place where they weren't at each other's throats and could be in the same room together.

"We could have done without the theatrics." Nick looked at Luna who smiled "But I am glad everything is content at the moment."

There were a few hotels in the city, the Walcott was nearby, so Sirus paid for a suite to spend a few hours in with Iris who was completely mixed up with Sirus leaving soon and her staying in Verdure while her aunt terrorized her sisters. The bedroom was in ivory and a creamy yellow. The bed was a canopy with white lace hanging off the sides.

Before anything was done Iris and Sirus sat on the side of the bed in silence.

"What if you don't make it back?" she asked.

"I'm going to make it back even if I have to face Elyra." Sirus said looking into her purple eyes, he smoothed back her pale blue hair and smiled "I love you too much not to try and make it back."

Iris looked at her lap "You know I love you, but that doesn't mean you'll come back. That's crap that's on tv, in fairy tales. Si, you might not make it back from Hirea and I don't want that. I can't take it if you don't."

Sirus grabbed her hands "I don't lie. But I'm not invincible either. If I stay here, I'll be a beacon of destruction, with your aunt and now Luna's uncle. I'm not risking everything here, especially you. If my letters stop, you'll know. Because I can't promise you that my past won't catch up with me."

Iris exhaled sadly "I know." She faced him "But I need you to."

"Then, I will." Sirus kissed her gently on her plush lips "Lay down."

Iris did feel Sirus pull up the skirt of her dress, he unzipped his pants and closed the space between their bodies. The first thing Iris felt were his lips, they scoured from her ears down to the nape of her neck, tickling her. The second was Sirus' sword, so hard and hot as it pressed against the opening of her cavern. There was a soft nudge as his flesh began to part hers.