“You abandoned me…” Alexi whispered.
The demon made a great effort to raise his voice: “No, I gave you three more years of normality! I refused to drag you into this world of demons, succubi, incubi and cambions before it was your time. I let the Pantheon do that, because I sure as hell couldn’t do it. What was I supposed to do? Kidnap you? Show you how I had to feed off human energy to stay alive? Would you have accepted that? Do you really think you wouldn’t have turned against me?”
Alexi shook his head in disbelief. “Wait a second! Are you trying to convince me you’re actually the good guy here? You take advantage of the fact that I’m vulnerable, you seduce me, then you abandon me without a word, and now you tell me you did all of this to… protect me? To give me three more years of normality? What normality are you talking about exactly? You call what I had a normal life?”
“Much more normal than fighting demons, don’t you think?”
The cambion took a deep breath and reminded himself he had to calm down. Come to think of it, it had probably been a bad idea to come here and try to talk to the Duke. As expected, the demon was messing with his head again.
“I know you despise me, Alexander. For what I did to you, for what I am… I don’t blame you.”
“You marked me… Do you have any idea how much your mark has tortured me all these years?”
A flicker of sadness sparkled in the demon’s eyes, but it was gone before Alexi could decide if it was genuine.
“I admit that was selfish of me…”
“Selfish?” The cambion laughed bitterly. “It was cruel!”
Gremory averted his gaze for the first time. “I guess I wanted you to have something that would remind you of me.” He sighed, then smiled to himself when he realized how the cambion’s presence made him act human. “No matter, I can take it back if you want.”
“If I want? I don’t want anything from you anymore.”
The demon focused all his strength in his limbs and used his hands to push himself to his feet. His knees shook, but he willed them to work as they were supposed to. He closed the distance between him and Alexi, moving as fast as he could, least the cambion came out of his shock and backed away. He had his hands on his shoulders before Alexi had time to figure out what was going on.
“Did you choose to be born a cambion?”
Alexi’s voice trembled. The feel of Gremory’s hands on his shoulders made his mark burn like never before. He was sure his T-shirt would eventually start melting on his skin. “No…”
“Then you have to understand that I never chose to be a demon either. Yes, I feed off human energy and I’ve done some despicable things in my long life. It’s only in my nature. It’s how the world works, and sometimes we just have to accept it and do our part. If we don’t, the balance is lost.”
“The incubi and succubi are demons too, and they chose to protect mankind, so I’m sorry that I can’t buy your bullshit.”
Gremory smiled indulgently. “Yes, but their way of feeding is much more pleasurable and less harmful. To humans and other creatures alike. Some types of demons have a choice, others don’t. Unfortunately, I belong to the latter category.”
Alexi wanted to say something else, but the mark on his back distracted him. It had been burning painfully just a few seconds ago, but now the pain was subsiding, turning into a dull feeling of discomfort, then disappearing completely. Another minute, and the burning sensation was just a memory. Like the mark itself.
“What did you just do?”
“I took it back.” The demon let go of his shoulders and stepped away. “I should have done this a long time ago, before Lure, before your first cases, before Ukraine.”
For a second, Alexi lost himself into the demon’s dark eyes, then he snapped out of it. “I won’t thank you.”
“I don’t expect you to. But now that my mark is gone, I still want you to have something from me. I’m selfish like that.”
“What?”
“The proof that nothing is ever black and white.”
?
When Kain’s warm hand sneaked under her blouse and cupped her heavy breast, Sophie closed her eyes and took in a sharp breath. She released it slowly when Alexi opened her lips with the tip of his tongue and claimed her mouth with a soft kiss. His fingers were caressing her hair tenderly, combing the large, brown curls, and stopping to massage her temples form time to time. Sophie gave in to the kiss and willed her body to relax under Kain’s touches. When she had come to see them in their room an hour ago, she had no idea she would end up under them so quickly. After all, she had told them they had to take things slowly because she couldn’t promise she would be able to control her powers. Apparently, by ‘slowly’ they understood making love to her… slowly. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been yearning for them for
days, but she was still afraid to relax completely.
Kain lifted the loose blouse over her chest and his eyes stopped on the two sigils for a while. He traced the angir one with the tips of his fingers.
Sophie tensed and bit down on Alexi’s bottom lip. The cambion smiled down at her.