Among Demons : Succubus Divine

Ch. 10 : Broken Origins

*Devin Venenum*

I shouldn’t have been surprised by my s**t amount of luck, but I was.

My mind went blank when I was told the identity of the contact we needed to speak to and I lost control of my expression for a moment, revealing much more than I wanted to. The Team Lead looked like he wanted to ask me if I was ok, his brows furrowing a bit as a look of concern took over. Detective Izaak showed nothing but confusion as he looked at me, glancing back and forth between my exposed, emotional reaction and the screen on his computer. But it was Detective Daniel that spoke out, needing nothing more than the sight of my discomfort and anxiety to blurt out his question.

“You know her?”

I flinched away from his words as if they were blades and looked away, wishing I could be alone so I could compose myself before facing anyone of them again.

“Yeah…” I muttered, swallowing hard. “Olivia Klement is my aunt on my mother's side.”

Now it was time for them to fight against their immediate reactions to this bomb I just dropped. And I couldn’t help but smile a bit as they grew more uncomfortable, lost and shocked as the seconds ticked by.

“W-wait.” Once again it was Detective Daniel that spoke first, stammering through his words while I managed to calm myself. “I’m sorry, wh-what did you say?” He leaned back and sat on the closest desk behind him, looking flustered and a little funny as the wheels behind his eyes spun wildly. “You have Human relatives?... I didn’t think that your race was anything like the Nymphs.”

“We’re not.” I clarified, clearing my throat a bit to remove the last of my darker emotions. “It’s just that my mother was Human, and that woman, Olivia, was her younger sister.”

“Was?” My eyes locked on the Team Leaders striking gray eyes, my heart fluttering at the sight of his genuine emotions.

I fought against the pull I felt for him as much as I could, forcing the image of Hannah back into my head to remind me of the reason. I didn’t want those rumors and prejudiced opinions of my race to be fortified by another encounter with a taken man. It wasn’t just my own emotions that would be at risk if I let myself be taken in by my attraction to him. My people were thriving and have been benefiting from all of the programs that I had fought tooth and nail to get approved. I couldn’t just let them suffer because of my selfishness, they needed to be my one and only focus. And with our numbers still dwindling and many more still suffering, my job as Matron was nowhere near done. My life was forfeit the day I became Matron. I was nothing more than a meaningless tool that was going to be used as much as possible for the betterment and protection of my people. And I was more than happy to be that martyr so that we don’t become a memory in a world we didn’t belong to.

My eyes fluttered as my mind fought my heart, shoving aside my emotions so I could answer his unspoken question.

“My father died when I was only two, and my mother not long after that.” I smiled a little to try and remove a bit of that awkward pity people tend to feel during these conversations. “I was too little to remember them much, so please don’t get all sad and sympathetic.” I shrugged and went over to the boards on the side of the room, hoping they would catch on that I didn’t want to say more about it. “It’s in the past.”

They managed to see my cue to change the subject and we soon talked about what things we needed to ask my aunt about the case. I did share a few things with them that Nick and I had successfully confirmed. We had learned through a bit of snooping that several Demons had been approached by this unapproved gang of Demons in the last few months. We had also managed to get a few names out of a couple Demons too, which were added to the board in connection to the group. I had already left Nick and Nyla in charge of digging up everything they could find under those names, so I wasn’t worried about missing anything of anyone deserving of my brand of punishment. The three Detectives also brought up their own clues and even dragged me into their little theories as to how, who and why these Nymphs were being killed.

When it was time to grab our things and head over to my aunt's home, I went completely mute. The car ride was silent and I stared out the window, hearing the faint voices of those I had met throughout my life. The voices of those that knew my parents and told me their tale of love, betrayal and loss.

Draven Venenum grew up to be highly liked and had many friends surrounding him at all times, both Human and Demon. He was viewed as an open-minded man that defended everyone no matter who or what they were. And this was one of the reasons why his friends all listened to his words devotedly and why, at least while he was in school, no fights between Humans and Demons broke out.

Of course, he was living a lie.

He was hiding his dual colored eyes with contacts and never once talking about his parents that had long ago passed away. His powers were hidden very well too and whenever he needed to feed and replenish his energy, he traveled out of the city with the help of his uncle. Many of his Demon friends told me how he was a master multi-tasker and how he effortlessly worked as a Patron while maintaining his cover as a Human intact. They would tell me how, in his younger years, my father helped push for things that many still benefited from now. They would also say that it had been during his peak as a Patron that he had met my mother and when a lot of things changed in his life.

Sage Klement was a freshman in college when she met my dad who had already graduated from the same college. He had been walking around the campus one day after helping a few young Demons under his scholarship program get settled into the dorms. And she, being completely new and lost, called out to him for help. This was how they met and how, after a few more chance meetings, they started to grow close. Not long after that they started dating, and months before her final year as a student, my dad proposed.

They settled in as a happy married couple in a small home and spent their days in blissful, blind happiness. My dad continued to lie about what and who he was while working as a Patron, telling my mother that he was simply working beside Demons to manage their programs. And my mother, now working as a daycare employee, soon became pregnant with me. Everything was wonderful and great in their lives and some of my dad's friends believed that he would tell his wife the truth after I was born. Surely the wise and intelligent Patron of the NorthWest could see that the dual colored eyes of his first born would expose what he was. There was nothing else he could do but accept this fact and prepare himself.

But my dad had been preparing something completely different.

He had been altering my mothers prenatal vitamins almost immediately after finding out about the pregnancy. An old Sorcerer friend of his explained how he had made my dad a potion that would help glamour the secondary ring of color in my eyes while I was a baby. All he had to do was coat my mothers vitamins in the potion so that I would absorb it. And it worked far better than they thought it would, revealing only bright emerald eyes at birth and staying that way until I was nearing my first birthday. My dad's friends all told me how happy my father was after my birth and that it had been clear to all of them just how far he would go for his baby girl. Nothing was denied from me during those first two years and our little family was happy and content.

Then one day, an old friend of my moms came back for a visit, and everything came crashing down.

He had known my mother since they were children and had gone away for school and work after they graduated high school. My fathers friends had said that my dad hated the guy right away and tried his best to keep him away from Sage. The reason for that was because he could see the red thread of romance that the man held over his chest. He could see how that very thread aimed towards my mother yet remained unattached because she didn’t feel the same way about him. So he did what he could to keep our family too busy to have guests over, even going so far as to feign illness a few times so my mom would turn her friend away.

Eventually, his little plan to make the guy leave them alone faltered and he ended up tagging along on a family outing to the beach. We all sat in the sand eating and talking the day away and were thankfully joined by a mother and her slightly older kid that had been an old friend of my dads.

Something happened during their time on that beach and a fight broke out. My mothers friend called out my father for lying to his wife and concealing his true identity for so long. He had somehow found out my dad’s secret and was now ready to expose him. This sparked a physical fight that my mom and my dad’s friend tried to stop. A weapon was soon pulled out and my dad was fatally wounded, soon lying in a pool of blood at the feet of my weeping mother. Her friend took that moment to point out how my dad’s eyes changed as his body fought to heal him, and he had apparently tried to put hands on me too, telling my mother that she needed to get rid of me since I was an exact copy of my father. But the Human woman and her son kept me from him and he ran away right after that.

No one could tell me if my mom had been angry or felt betrayed by my dad's lie. No one could tell me if she still loved him as he was laid to rest.

The only thing that people could tell me was that my poor mother was consumed by it all. The grief, the lies, the betrayal. It had all been too much for her and she had completely shut herself out from the world. Nothing could stir her from her mute state and nothing could bring a reaction out of her or remove the blank, glazed stare from her eyes. She was like a living statue that would barely eat, sleep or drink, let alone move.

My fathers Human friend that had been there at the beach took it upon herself to help my mom and I as much as she could. She would stop by at all hours of the day with her child in tow and cook, clean and look after me. Some of my fathers Demon friends were apparently close to the woman as well and did what they could to help me and my mother after my father was buried. Things went on like this for months, yet nothing about my mother changed. My dad’s friends all described her as a living doll or statue that was slowly getting thinner, and paler as the days passed. Even the Sorcerer that had helped my father tried to see if any one of his potions would help her snap out of her own mind.

But none of them could pull my mom out of her coma-like state, not even me. And then, shocking all of my fathers friends, my mom snuck away from home. Reappearing on the beach a few days later, lifeless.

It was discovered that my mom didn’t know how to swim and that she had willingly paid for a ticket for a whale watching tour. Witnesses said that she had just stood there staring out at the water in a plain blue dress without anything else on her. No purse, no ID, no sunglasses against the glare of the sun. Nothing. She had refused to wear a lifejacket too and even signed the waiver that the captain of the boat handed her. And once they were all far enough into the ocean, my mother quietly slipped away from the crowd, jumping into the water while the boat was still in motion.

After this my fathers friends told me how they had all been outraged by my mothers sister, my aunt Olivia. She had refused to acknowledge my parents' marriage after the truth about my dad reached her. So little toddler me who looked like a perfect female replica of my dad was less than welcome around the last living relatives I had. My aunt denied any relation to me, refusing to take me in when the Human courts asked her after my mother was found. And though many of my dad’s Demon friends wanted to take me in her place, she made it her mission to block them from ever succeeding. She used everything at her disposal to stop anyone from taking me in after I was left in the orphanage. And from the little that my dad’s friends had gathered, the Human woman that had stayed to help had been one of the first that my aunt won against, somehow making the woman vanish or leave.

Olivia had also managed to take nearly everything my parents had left behind, including pictures and moved me to a different orphanage with the help of some of her friends. This had been how many of the grown-ups that had wanted to look after me had lost track of where I was. None of them had been told where I was moved to and many were blocked from searching for me thanks to my aunt's connections to Anti-Demon groups around the city. And as the years passed, many of my dad’s friends moved away, became too busy or died before I was old enough to go looking around for any living connections to my parents.

It was because of her that my memories formed in such a dark place and began to fill with moments of starvation, beatings and cruel words. It was also where I was connected with my brother Nick and where our bond started to form, though I wouldn’t ever thank the woman for that.

The motion of the car stopping had me looking up and I felt my stomach tighten and drop as I stared at the big house. It had been the source of a few nightmares growing up and a part of me couldn’t contain the panicked reaction I had to it. My palms were sweaty and a dizzy feeling swept across my head, making it throb as it left. Echoes of past fights and the ringing sounds of slaps and broken objects shook me a bit as we all approached the porch. I forced myself to shove aside those bad memories and prepared myself, knowing full well that my dear aunt was going to make me do something that was going to hurt like a b***h.

And if I wanted to leave this place as fast as possible, I would need to suck it up and follow along. Not just to get away quicker, but for the sake of the victims and the families that needed answers.