Aiden let Grace's long hair trickle through his fingers as he watched her sleep, his inner demon happy to stay dormant again for the moment. He leaned back against the wall as he had earlier. Her head was in his lap, and her scent wrapped around him like a warm blanket as she slept.
He ached for her, physically and spiritually. It was bloody painful, this need he had to bury himself inside of her, to become a part of her.
His gums burned, his fangs ready to pop down at the slightest provocation, and he hissed softly as he pulled his lips back, seeking some relief. It didn't really help.
However, he was rather enjoying the anticipation of tasting her - in more ways than one.
Gazing down at her face, peaceful in sleep, he was again surprised at this trust she had in him after all he'd told her. She seemed to be taking him at his word that he wouldn't hurt her, and they'd picked up their normal routine again, only she was speaking to him now. Which was nice.
He'd discovered...by plying her with endless questions...that she often tried to use her healing powers to help patients undergoing heart surgery at the hospital where she worked, and that she had yet to succeed.
He could hear the frustration in her voice that she couldn't save them, and knew exactly how she was feeling. But she was wrong. Her powers weren't useless. Not at all. He could feel her power simmering beneath the surface, and believed that she only needed something to give it a boost before she would reach her full potential.
She'd asked him to tell her about his life, and he had. Fascinated with all he had seen and experienced, she'd sat quietly while he told her a number of outrageous stories. Most were true, some he'd embellished just a bit. But it was worth it to keep her mind off of the elephant in the room.
Or in this case, the demon.
It hadn't worked. She'd insisted on talking about it, and so they had. After coming at it from every possible angle and having no new ideas, she'd eventually succumbed to her exhaustion and curled up on his lap to sleep.
His chest tightened. He needed to get them out of there, and soon. He could feel his craving to keep this quirky, secretive female intensify by the moment, and if he didn't get away from her soon, he was afraid he might never want to. In spite of her horrible habit of calling him "dude".
Would that really be such a terrible thing?
Yes! Yes, it would.
He scowled at the mere idea. For one, he had his own problems right now, the greatest of which being this bugger of a demon hitching a ride inside his body. Two, he didn't want to be tied down like stodgy ole Nikulas.
But then he sighed in resignation a second later, knowing that he wasn't fooling anyone, least of all himself.
As he absent-mindedly played with the soft strands of her hair, he set to figuring out a plan to escape this coffin they'd inadvertently trapped themselves in. She should have never come back here once she'd gotten out.
Except that her Mojo was here. He wondered why she hadn't just taken him with her and escaped? If she'd made it to a store to buy something for her ruse, why not run off? Could it be she did care for him? Just a little?
Another good hour of brainstorming later, he arrived at the only possible conclusion. He would just have to fight his way out, hopefully distracting the demon hybrids away from Grace so she could escape. He would tell her to call Nik at the number on her phone. Nik would get her off of this continent safely.
As for him, well, maybe his bloody demon would finally come out to play. It was the only way he'd have a chance against the bastards outside.
But if he did, what would happen to him? Aiden? Would he ever be himself again?
The thought sobered him. He needed to get Grace away from him sooner rather than later, for he'd promised her that he wouldn't hurt her. And he always kept his promises.
His inner clock told him the sun would be coming up soon. They'd leave at sundown the following night, just as soon as he could safely risk being outside.
Suddenly, the wall shuddered against his back.
Aiden's hand stilled in Grace's hair as he listened. He heard Mojo scratching in his litter box, and the slight hum of the cameras on the monitors, but nothing else.
A frown creased his brow as he cupped his hand under Grace's head and slid out from underneath her, gently settling her back down on the bed. Walking over to the desk, he checked out the live feed.
There was not one demon on the screen.
One eyebrow went up, but otherwise his face remained passive. This didn't bode well at all. Where the bloody hell were they all?
Then he heard it. A scratching sound like nails on a chalkboard, so faint human ears wouldn't have noticed it. It came directly from the wall behind Grace.
The dimwits had finally figured it out. They were digging down to them.
Sure enough, the sound came again, louder this time, followed by a clank as they hit the outside of the shelter with something hard.
Everything went quiet and still for the span of a few heartbeats, and then everything happened at once.
Aiden burst into action as the things outside started slamming something against the outer side of the wall.
Grace's eyes fluttered open, and she jumped from the bed to stand in the middle of the floor, disoriented from being woken so suddenly.
Mojo ran into his house to hide.
Her head whipped around towards the noises coming from the wall. "They found us." Her voice wasn't quite steady.
She looked around frantically, but he already had her rucksack and was throwing things into it. Throwing it over his shoulder, he shoved Grace towards the ladder.
"We've got to go, poppet. NOW."
She didn't stop to ask questions. Grabbing her shoes out of the cubby by the bag, she started up the ladder without even putting them on. At the top, she started chanting, but paused suddenly. Looking back at Aiden on the rungs below her, she yelled over the noise.
"Mojo! Aiden, you have to get him!"
He jumped down off the ladder, shook the little guy out of his house and into his palm, and then, with a myriad of curses, stuck the prickly little bugger into his hood. When he got back to the ladder, Grace was just finishing up the spell and the hatch door was opening.
Leaning to the side, Aiden grabbed a knife and a 9mm off of the wall that he'd loaded after they'd arrived, and followed her up and out into the early morning darkness.
Stepping out onto the grass, he stayed down, gun at the ready. The moon was low in the sky, and he could sense the dawn wasn't far off. They'd have to find shelter, and quickly.
He scanned the area around him. They must all be on the other side digging. He could hear them, banging against the wall of it, trying to bust their way inside.
Funny they'd left no one to guard the rest of the area.
Keeping low to the ground, he crept around the side of the sculpture. The densest area of trees was on this side, and so he assumed Grace had gone this way. All they'd have to do is make it across the garden without being seen.
But when he got around to that side, she was nowhere to be seen.
His heart stopped as his eyes pierced through the dark, searching for but not finding her. He wanted to call out, but couldn't risk those things hearing him. Even Mojo was quiet in his hood, like he knew the danger they were in.
Had she already run across that quickly? Gone to the other side? Why hadn't she waited for him?
He hesitated, undecided on which way to go now, when he heard a noise behind him: the ominous and unmistakable sound of a number of pump action shotguns loading a shell into their chambers.
Slowly, he straightened out of his crouch position and looked back over his shoulder, holding his hands up in the air.
Grace stood in the center of a group of the human Suits, all armed to the teeth, the wooden box in her hands.
He hadn't even noticed her grab it from the bag.
But what he did notice was that she wasn't being physically detained. He also noticed that none of them were watching her, as if they had no fear of her running away.
And what he noticed most of all, was the defiant tilt of her chin, in direct contrast to the guilty tears streaking down her cheeks. Her lovely forest green eyes pleaded with him to understand.
A stab of betrayal pierced his heart, and he closed his eyes, suddenly unable to stand the sight of her. His breath whooshed from his lungs as pain clenched in his chest.
He'd been a bloody fool.
"Drop your weapon," the Chinese leader said in broken English. "The bullets in guns are silver. No wrong moves, or we kill you."
Aiden opened his glowing eyes and dropped the pistol and the knife. He didn't need the weapons to annihilate these wankers.
Baring his fangs, he leaned towards them with a feral hiss. Silly humans thought they were going to keep him from his lying female with a few little guns? He would rip them apart before the last one could manage to aim and fire, and add their heads to his collection.
Well, maybe not the horrid looking one on the left.
At his show of aggression, the humans took a step back almost as one, and the smell of piss filled the air as one in the back revealed himself to be the weakest link of the group.
Just as he gathered himself for the attack, something hard and cold jabbed Aiden in the back of the head.
"Hello again, Waano." The thing that used to be Steven crowed happily.
Aiden's guts churned at the name. Ignoring them, he leveled his glare on Grace and she recoiled visibly, turning her face away.
"Don't turn from me now, love," he growled at her. "Don't you want to watch? Enjoy the show you orchestrated all by yourself? I only wish you had let me know what my bloody lines were." He gave a derisive laugh. "I'm finding myself a bit at a loss here. Am I the one who lives? Or the one who dies a horrible death in front of your eyes?"
"Aiden, stop!" she begged. "Just do as they say. They promised to let you go if I gave them the box. I offered it to them. There was no other choice!"
He threw his head back and laughed out loud. He laughed for so long the Suits began to exchange worried glances with each other. "And you believed them?" Clutching his stomach to try to relieve the searing ache there, his smile turned into a sneer. "Come now, poppet. I know even you are not that naive."
"I had no choice," she insisted quietly.
"There is always a choice," he snarled harshly. "And I choose not to believe your bloody lies anymore." He smiled. "And also, I don't want to be in your bloody show."
Without looking he twisted to the side, knocking the gun at his head aside with one hand and throwing an elbow back into Steven's face. Blood spattered everywhere as the crunching sound of bone blended with the thing's scream of rage.
But before he could follow through with anything else, two others rushed forward and grabbed him by the arms, wrenching them up and to the sides behind him.
He tensed to throw them off, and then felt Mojo in his hood. It gave him just enough pause for Steven to recover.
Grabbing him by the hair, he yanked Aiden's head back until his blood-covered mouth was right next to his ear.
"Oh, you're going to be in the show, Waano. But we're not going to kill you. Not just yet."