When I opened the door, the next morning, I wasn't sure what I expected. I had immediately come home the night before from The Widow's Nest, armed with my little thumb drive and sat down to comb through the footage. It didn't show anything more than what the photos did And when I used other angles from different cameras, I never once saw a photographer or even someone with their phone up. I felt back to square one, wondering who the hell was fucking with me, and
why.
Was this a delivery of more potential blackmail evidence?
No... no it was not.
He was tall, dark and there was something about his energy that felt... familiar. Comforting, which was an interesting sensation... because everything else about him discomfited me to an insane degree. When he drew off the sunglasses the startling blue of his eyes contrasting with his dark hair, my heart skipped a little bit. I'm not sure what it is about that one... dark hair and blue eyes. I think maybe I have a secret Superman fetish. You'd think I would totally want a Bruce Wayne, all dark and broody and probably super into BDSM, but nope. I got wet just thinking about corrupting sweet, innocent Kansas cutie Clark... but that smile... there was
not a damn thing
innocent in that smile.
"Tempest Moon?" He asked, and the accent also gave me pause. It was also comforting and familiar, but it shouldn't have been. Because I'd grown up hearing those cadences and inflections, and I wasn't even raised where they originated to carry the tones in my own speech.
"Who's asking?" was what I tried to say. What came out was a squeak, followed by the awareness my mouth was so dry, I couldn't swallow. The smile widened just a bit and he took my hand, smoothly gliding into the apartment as he answered my failed question.
"My name is Naberius." His cool, charming voice said beside my ear as he closed the door behind us and led me into my own apartment. But after his admission, I stopped cold, frozen in stunned disbelief.
"N-Naberius?" I felt dizzy. He released me and this bright blue eyes met mine again and for a moment, I saw an image blurrily through this own, a massive beast with three sets of those blue eyes, each pair set in the face of what resembled a fierce black wolf attached to a single body.
"Yes." He gestured to the small couch in my living room. "Did you need to sit down before you fall down?"
"But you're—I mean, why are you—I mean..." I sputtered inanely.
Let me pause. You probably don't recognize the name. But you'd probably recognize his career-making dual identity as head of security for Hades. He had served Hades so loyally that he was released and had been an Earl in Edom for as long as I'd been alive. He was also known to be the equivalent of judge, jury and executioner among the Crypti. When things went wrong, when we fucked up beyond control, when we endangered the community, this was the being they sent to deal with it or one of his underlings. If you were lucky, it was one of his people and not him.
"It's alright, little one," he said soothingly, leading me to sit on the couch. "I am not here for you. Not in the manner you fear, at any rate."
I sat, shaking. I wasn't weak. I was the daughter of a very well-known and high placed demoness. I may not be a well fed demoness myself, but I was only one generation away from being a true-blooded specimen of my race, and had been raised among demons from Edom, though I, myself, had never gone. I could, at any time, and my mother asked to often. But... I feared it. I feared what that place would do to me. What being away from humanity would do to me. But this guy... he wasn't just a demon. He was next to being a god. I didn't have words for what he could do to me, if he wanted. He could stand toe to toe with Lillith and I am not certain my mother would walk away from that battle.
Sitting down, trying to breathe through the terror, the mental confusion that his voice, his tone, his appearance had on me, and ignoring the fact that he was quite simply one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen, I tried to focus on anything. I stared at the silky blue tie he wore, the only color on the dark three piece suit and tried to breathe.
"You're being hunted," he said softly. "I was sent to help."
"I'm sorry, what?" Somehow this didn't help the terror whipping through my mind and I raised my eyes to his.
"You know what I do, yes?"
"I... don't keep tabs on what happens in Edom, my lord," I said softly, trying to keep my expression blank.
A look of consternation crossed his features and he made a dismissive gesture. "No titles are needed, Ms. Moon."
"Tempest," I said, with an acknowledging nod. "And I know that you're the one they call to deal with... the problems." He knelt by my feet, looking up into my face, too close for me to avoid his eyes, as his fingers caught my chin.
"And do you consider yourself a problem, Tempest?"
I felt every cell in my body wake up and tell me to lay myself before him and beg to him to be merciful. Or... perhaps not. I was so damn confused by his very presence. And I considered myself a fairly strong woman. That I wanted to prostrate myself before him grated on my last nerve, but it also made a flush of heat run through me that made my breathing quicken, my lips part, and it took all the will power I had not to lean closer to him as I stared into those lapis depths. "I think I have a problem."
"I think you're right," he responded softly, and as quickly as it had happened, and with a knowing twinkle that said he'd been well aware of what he was doing to me, he stood and seated himself beside me on the couch, looking calm and relaxed. "I have people everywhere, Tempest. It's my job. I may not always concern myself with earthly matters but when the last daughter of Lilith is being targeted by Crypti Supremacists, that news makes it to my desk, I assure you."
"Crypti Sup—are you fucking kidding me?" the words were out of my mouth before they checked with my brain. I clapped a hand over my mouth. But he laughed. And it sent a shiver down my spine. I liked his laugh. "Is this because I interact with Regs and don't just... just..." I glanced at my bedroom door and finished in a quiet whisper: "Kill them outright, like I did with Keith?"
"I suspect that's why they felt they had to go to these measures," Naberius said seriously, "I think if they thought you merely using your extracurricular activities as means of feeding, they wouldn't have orchestrated it so that they'd have blackmail evidence on you. And if it was just a matter of making it go away, we would... but someone is moving pieces in the background so that even I, nor those that I answer to, can see whose hand moves them."
"So, what?" I said, pulling my emotional walls in tight around me, preparing myself for the inevitability that I was going to have to accept where this demon lord had come from. "Lilly heard her last, wayward disappointment of a child had landed in some hot water and got caught with a messy feed like an amateur and made some calls, pulled some strings and somehow roped you in to coming to keep an eye on her precious baby girl?" I couldn't help the sarcasm dripping from my lips, each word a searing indictment of my mother's judgmental, obsessive nature where I was concerned.
"No," Naberius answered, not a hint of that flirty smile on his face this time. "Your father did, actually."
