Among Demons : Succubus Divine

Ch. 9 : Eyes like Poison

*Marcus Ciaran*

She was the last thing I was expecting to see.

Demons as a whole had never bothered me, nor conjured up any sort of negative emotions from me. They were just different in my eyes. Beings with powers, unique eyes and secondary forms that came from a completely different world. And if I was being honest with myself, I pitied them.

Our history explains how, a very long time ago, hundreds of free standing portals appeared all over the world. These portals connected our Human filled planet to another world called Aether that was populated with all manner of Demons. And from what was taught to us in school, both Human and Demon were free to cross into these portals and travel between the worlds freely. Of course, wars were fought for control of these portals and a few other battles even tried to banish Demons from our world completely. This tension between Humans and Demons never died out, though there were many instances when it would climb new heights and break out in violent conflict.

Yet in every historical moment like that, Demons were the ones named as the villains, while Humans remained the just victims that punished them. Of course I never really believed that and had moments in school when I would wonder just how many times Humans attacked the Demons first. But the biggest moment in our shared history wasn’t the fighting and scheming. In fact, it had nothing to do with either Humans or Demons at all since it revolved around the portals themselves.

And those very portals that connected our two worlds, seemingly out of nowhere, started to break and disappear.

Teachers told us that it started out small, just one or two broken doorways announced to the public every few years. Then a few more every couple months until massive numbers were announced just days apart. Because of this, hundreds of Humans and Demons became trapped in both worlds, with many leaving behind families and loved ones behind. There was also no form of communication between these planets that could be reestablished, no matter what was tried. And not long after that, several natural disasters occured, claiming many lives before things finally settled down.

This was all blamed on the Demons and as the years passed the general opinion of them worsened.

I never saw why so many people had a problem with them, but I never made an effort to befriend any Demons either. I just quietly reasoned with my friends and others around me after their anger subsided and tried to help them see why they were wrong. This sometimes worked, while other times I would lose friends or get on the bad side of coworkers.

That was why Izaak, Daniel and I were constantly given cases that involved Demons.

No one else wanted to work them and if they were forcibly assigned, the bare minimum was done before they’d shove the case into the cold shelves to be ignored and forgotten. So, in an attempt to help those suffering during an already painful loss, I did my best to work and solve the cases I was handed. But my knowledge was always lacking, and it would take too much time to find the culprit. So I was a little excited to learn a bit more and work with the newly transferred D.I.L that was just down the hall.

But when I opened the door that day, my mind was stunned silent.

A short woman stood in the open corridor in a tight teal blouse with black dress pants and gray flats. Her impossibly long sandy-brown hair was curly and wavy at the same time and pulled back in a ponytail that spilled little tendrils of hair around her neck and face. Her skin was a delicate cream color that looked a little flushed and made her full pink lips stand out. Her frame was small too, with a very clear hour-glass figure that couldn’t be hidden. She was very well endowed as well which made it hard for me to look her in the eyes at first, and made my body stiffen to hide my attraction. But when I did look into those eyes, everything else fell away for a moment and I completely forgot what it was that I had planned to do or say.

Those eyes, those distinctive Demon rings of color, looked back at me with mild shock and surprise. The outer ring of deep emerald stood out the most thanks to the light make-up she wore and her soft complexion. And the inner lavender ring hugged her pupils and helped hide her other emotions, glittering softly when she spoke. But together those two rings made me think of poison. The kind of poison one would find in a movie or show being depicted inside an old forbidden and cursed bottle. They looked dangerous yet beautifully haunting and I found myself glancing back at her throughout the rest of the day.

No, that wasn’t the only reason why my eyes kept tracking her.

Something strange and persistent was nagging at me the second our eyes locked. It was a feeling of recognition, though I was certain that I had never met this woman before. And even if I had, how would I forget someone like this?

She was a hard worker, yet patient and almost maternal when she explained things about her people. She didn’t let Danny have his way, which was fun to watch since the dumbass had a habit of pissing people off immediately after meeting them. He enjoyed pushing people's buttons and finding out what kind of people they were when they were mad, which always ended in Izaak and me cleaning up after him. Izaak was, sadly, a bit anxious about working with any Demons since his parents' marriage had been painfully torn apart because of one. And he has had some bad luck with other Demons too, nearly losing his wife once during a fire when they were younger. So all Demons make him tense, and Devin wasn’t an exception.

But that nagging feeling wouldn’t go away as time passed. And everytime I would see her or hear her name at work I would get a pang in my chest. Yet nothing in my memories would help alleviate it at all.

Why did I feel like I knew her? From where?

If I had met her at some point in my life, why had I forgotten?

And where was that heavy sense of guilt coming from?

It confused me every time I saw her and I wanted to ask her if she recognized me from somewhere, just to see what her answer would be. But she never behaved as if she knew me at all and just focused on her work. She honestly only ever focused on the task at hand when any one of us was around, always standing there tense and keeping her distance. It bothered me a bit that she felt the need to be so guarded around us when we hadn’t done anything.

Granted, Danny was still an ass and Izaak was the one staying away from her because of his own hang-ups. None of us had outright said or done anything, I thought, that would make her behave that way though. But when we were on our way back from the morgue and she blatantly tried to defend and explain herself and her people to me, I understood. Guilt had filled me then and I wanted to say something to apologize to her. I wanted to tell her that I was actually excited to learn more about her people and that I wasn’t bothered in any way that she wasn’t Human. A part of me even wanted to blurt out that I found her extremely beautiful, though I bit back those words since I had only met her that day. But her brother appeared and escorted her away, preventing me from opening up to her.

Later that night, I stayed awake and thought about this moment excessively, realizing things that I was too stupid to notice at first.

She had gone her whole life being treated as something lesser than Human, with everyone judging her just because of what she was born as. The rumors and tales that spread around about her race were more than likely another reason why she was so cautious and distant too. And though I was surprised that her ‘brother’ was Human, it was obvious that she felt unsafe around other Humans. Always tense and coiled as though she were ready to brace herself against someone's attack at any moment. It deeply bothered me once I realized this and I spent a large portion of that night trying to think of a way to help ease the tension in her, since we would no doubt be working together quite a bit.

But the next day, when I was alone in our team office with her, my ex-fiancee Hannah appeared out of nowhere.

She was Danny’s younger step-sister that had always tagged along in our group wherever we went. And once we grew up, Hannah had somehow befriended my stepmom and then my father, easing her way further into my life before we started dating. And a little over a year ago, with my father’s annoying and persistent pressure, I proposed. But things weren’t working out well for us and I was growing tired of the constant on-again, off-again that our fights would break out in. So, three weeks ago, after our latest fight, I broke off our engagement and returned the ring that she had thrown at me during said fight.

Hannah has since spent her time begging my father and stepmother to talk to me and pestering Danny to reveal where I was since he was always with me and Izaak. And now, much to my irritation, she was here in my team office, clinging to me like she did when we first dated.

“What is she doing here?” Danny asked me, spotting his non-biological responsibility sitting on my desk after Devin ran out.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.” I sighed, pulling on my hair a bit. “She said that you had talked to her.”

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head, glaring at the blonde that was happily texting on her phone.

“I haven't talked to her since my mom's birthday…” He paused, sighing deeply before he shook his head, looking a bit apologetic. “s**t, Laura, the blonde receptionist that’s been trying to get in my pants…” He leaned on my shoulder before cursing again, handing me the small stack of papers that he had copied for me. “She was in the copy room with me and mentioned something about Hannah… sorry man, I wasn’t paying attention.”

I raised a brow at him, smiling a bit as I was momentarily distracted by his completely out of character behavior.

“So, are you going to deny that your new girl is much more serious than you thought?” He glared back at me then, fighting against the urge to smile while a look of excitement covered his face. “Because if you are, then you need to explain why you gave the cold shoulder to another woman that was willing and ready for you.”

He shoved me and helped me, along with Izaak, in booting Hannah out of our office so we could eat and work in peace.

But as the day went on and I went around digging up any bit of useful information that could help us, I spotted Devin sneaking out of work quietly. I covered for her when the others asked where she was, feeling that weight of guilt return when I noticed the tormented look on her face.

This just added more questions to the already long list of things I wanted to know about her. The reaction to Hannah made me wonder how they knew each other but I was more curious about the other things that I was feeling because of her. And I even asked my friends as we worked if they could help me figure it all out.

“Could she have been like a neighbor or something?” Danny asked, pacing in front of the boards back and forth while Izaak quietly typed away on his computer. “Maybe from before you moved and your dad remarried?”

I shook my head, thinking back to when I was younger, feeling a sudden ache in my head as I tried to remember more.

“I lived with my mom until I was six when she died.” I groaned a bit as the pounding in my head grew suddenly before fading. “My dad found me in an orphanage a year later and then remarried and moved us to a new house.” Something softly clicked into place in my head, forming a blurry image in my mind.

But just as I started to push past the ache that pressed into my eyes, Izaak jumped up a bit behind his computer screen.

“I found her!” He exclaimed, glaring a bit at the glowing thing in front of him. “I found a small page that had a bit of traffic around the time that the families say their daughters went missing.” He turned the screen and showed us a crappy little website that listed the group of Demons for hire that we had learned about. “The person running it all had linked their financial records and their real name was easy to find after that.” Danny and I crowded his desk as we read the name on file, smiling when I stepped back and made my way to my desk.

“Let’s see if they’re willing to speak to us about this.”

I contacted the woman in question and managed to get her to agree to meet with us all and answer our questions the very next day. My mind soon shoved all thoughts of my possible connection to Devin while our current case took over. I needed to clear this case first and rid myself of the many other things that were weighing on my mind before I fully focused on this unknown connection to the Succubus with eyes like poison.