So You Summoned a Soulmate

Chapter 6 - Mercy

A deft knocking on the front door answered my question before ? could utter a syllable in reply.

Fuck! I wanted to kick, holler, and shout.

“Mercy Mae it’s that time of the day!” The knocking continued as Melody bellows out her tradition of waking me up on Friday mornings for breakfast. s**t, how had I forgotten about that? Rolling my eyes at the sheer stupidity of that question I stage whispered across the table.

“You gotta hide, she can not see you!” For so many reasons. One being hello, seven-foot infernal hottie. Two being, oh my god would she judge me for drunken midnight manifestations going awry? Finally, three, because I was not ready to hear the ‘I told you to go on Tinder’ from her or her meddling son. Urgency raced through my muscles as I leaped up from the table.

“What? Why?” P questioned in a hushed tone reflecting mine as I grabbed him by the surprisingly firm arm and pulled him into the living room. Following me with little complaint I ushered him toward the bathroom as the haphazard plan came together in my mind. I just had to hide him and convince them to leave. Easy. I could do that. I hoped like hell.

“Well,” sarcastically glancing him up and down, “you’re seven foot tall, red and infernal.” Hustling him into the white-tiled bathroom I glanced around wildly. I couldn’t hide him any better than this. It wasn’t like it was going to fit in a hamper.

“Just, uh” glancing around I indicate a stack of random magazines, “stay here and look at these. I’ll get them to leave.” Eyes wide with inquiry he followed my gesture and nodded when I did. He looked as lost as I felt. The distinct jingling of keys outside the door spurred me into action as I backed toward the door. Shame lit me up as I made to abandon him here, hiding him away when I was the one that had accidentally brought him to this realm. What the hell are you going to do Mercy? I questioned for what had to be the hundredth time since I opened my eyes.

My heart felt like it could escape from my chest as the door slowly closed the door between us. Looking for all the world like a giant lost puppy in the middle of my bathroom. His eyebrows turned up asking silently ‘what do I do here’ as the door clicked closed.

“I’ll be right back” I whispered at the edge of the door. Guilt wormed its way into the ache in my stomach. He looked so damn lonely left there. It would be over soon. He was a fully grown Infernal demon, the guard of a prison in Hell he’d said. He will be fine, I reassured myself reproachfully.

“I’m coming!” I shout toward the front door as I begrudgingly drag my eyes from the normal-looking bathroom door. No one would know what it hid. There was no one on the face of this planet that would believe the last forty minutes had even happened. I could sell this. I can and I will!

“Hey, girl!” Poking my head out the front door I spot Melody, as I expected but behind her stands Leo. Both of them look like a fresh breath of air in a world of ‘what the f**k’. The pounding of my heart slows a notch as I step through the doorway decidedly blocking their path and lean against the door. The hallway has the feeling of a normal day as if my whole world wasn’t in a blender on the other side of the seemingly normal door I was awkwardly standing in front of. Exiting the atmosphere of rapt enticement that my apartment had become gave me a slap of reality I suddenly realized I was losing in my proximity to P, The infernal demon I had summoned drunkenly last night.

“Sorry, guys I’m just a bit busy.” Scratching my head as if I had not a care in the world I gave them a farce of a yawn to sell the line. Grasping straws, I was cultivating an excuse of ‘I don’t feel well’ or ‘I have to run out to a business meeting’ or really anything when Melody’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Oh? Aunt Merc, you’ve got a friend over.” Curly brown ringlets of hair bounced at her shoulders as she shifted from one foot to the other to glance around me at the narrow opening of the door.

“Umm,” the cogs in my brain sputtered to life as the excuse I was looking for came to life before me. “I do. Yeah, I do.” It wasn’t a lie, and for that, I was impossibly thankful. You never want to lie to your best friend, especially when this best friend could really sniff out a tall tale. Shrugging shamelessly at them I laughed at her high fives and cheers.

“Get it girl” They clapped and chattered on about needing the details as the image in my head of the infernal being hiding in my bathroom reminded me of the problem at hand. What a problem it was I reminded myself as my mind replayed the reel from the kitchen. Showing my mind's eye his muscled body in agonizing detail I again questioned the lack of equipment in one particular spot. Do not go there, Mercy! I admonished my disgusting brain as a blush lit up my face.

“I love you both, I do, but I have to catch you later.” Code for ‘Oh my god I have a huge mess to clean up, would ya’ll just get out of here?’ I tried to u them on their way as the questions ping-ponged between them in record succession. Who is he? Do I know them? How do you know it's a he? Finally landing on a pointed ‘wait, not gonna introduce us?’ The pair of the world's absolute best and most perfect found family members I could have ever found were going to drive me to an early grave.

“We’ll not...” I began another round of asking them to leave without saying ’you need to leave’ when I was interrupted by the door opening behind me. My gasp was audible as fear lit me up from the inside. Falling backward on my heels, the door I had been leaning on had been displaced suddenly, and with that came the horror of the only other person in the apartment that could have pulled it open.

My eyes studied the shock on Melody’s face. This was it. She was going to scream, I could surely count on it. Eyebrows up she instead smiled a warm interested question to me as her and Leo’s eyes ate up the demon that stood behind me. Where I expected gasps, even shouts of terror there were coy “hmmm” grins. Letting out a held breath I questioned how in the hell they were giving him those looks. Sure he was sexy as hell, even for a giant carmine-colored being but something didn’t make sense.

“Hello, it’s so good to meet Mercy’s family.” A deep rumbling of his chest suddenly took the place of the hard planks of wood where the door had been. The hand that snaked around me was deeply tanned olive complexion, and square neatly trimmed fingers were not the fingers of the infernal prison guard I had left in the bathroom, yet the voice was one and the same. Who? I questioned my sanity for a moment as the information raced the gauntlet of my addled brain.

Whipping around in abject horror I could not believe my eyes. Naked, save for a newly placed bathroom towel stood a remarkably human-looking man. Dark olive skin covered the same impossibly tall frame, muscles upon muscles and a far too charming grin found my eyes. Gone were his spindly blackened claws, replaced by the neatly manicured square fingers of a man that would be found doing any inane human activity.

When had my life come down to human and inhuman activities? I asked myself as the conversation trailed on around me. Melody introduced herself and Leo as ? grinned and nodded. Horns were nowhere to be found, I surmised as I began to take this new information and run with it. I guess this was happening now. Had he always been like this and I was just drunk?

“This is ?, sorry for cutting this short but I’ll catch you guys later.” Waving at them I didn’t bother to turn fully back around to the hallway. My hand shot out and pushed against ?’s chest as I was met with bristly course chest hair and muscles that could cut stone. Our eyes met with a flash, the whites that the had now did nothing to take away from the smokey core that his deeply black pupils barely contained. The ache in my stomach began to churn into a slow volcanic burn.

“Yeah, totally finish what you got started there, Aunt Merc’.” Leo chided as he pulled his mother away from my apartment. He could see the silent exchange that warred on in my doorway.

“Leo!” Melody admonished with a bright blush as she shot me an unabashed thumbs up. With both hands on him now I was shoving ? back into the threshold. Waving them off with no goodbye I slammed the door behind me. Sliding the deadbolt for good measure I heaved a sigh as my brain bounced around in the over-full container that was my head.

“What the hell?” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement. My hands were on his chest when I glanced down I had no idea why I had done that. Snatching them back I absentmindedly wiped them on my legs as the nearness ate up all my attention.

“Not in hell anymore.” ? grinned down at me with his newly flattened human-appearing teeth and charming dimple. Did he have that dimple on his cheek before? What was going on here? Side-stepping him to get a moment of air I whipped around with so many questions I had no idea where to start.

“What did you do?” Gesturing wildly at him he seemed to understand the intent of my inquiry.

“Oh, I was looking at those pictures in your bathroom and I made myself look like them, like humans.” Posing with his fingers ran halfway through his newly much longer curly hair he shined another smile at me featuring that the aforementioned dimple and I could hear a roar in my ears as the heat in my core rocketed several degrees.

“Like a human.” I repeat, the jello that my brain was becoming was struggling to keep up.

“Yeah, well you were so worried about how I looked so I just...” His shrug spoke volumes. He was insecure? Had what I said about him being big red and infernal really hurt him? How in the f**k did someone so objectively hot turn out to be so completely insecure with their body image. Yet, I had been freaking out about how he looked. To be honest this was a vast improvement for most of the world. I kinda missed the horns but at least Melody hadn’t had a total freak out. This was a good skill to have, I decided.

“Hey, oh hey no. It’s just that not many humans are very cool with other species. Not many humans even know that there are other species.” Like a deflated balloon ? slides himself on my suddenly too-small-looking couch and lowers his head in his hands.

“I just want to be yours, make it easy to be yours.” Something in the slump of his shoulders, the shake of his breath breaks through to me on a base level. He wants what now? Disbelief runs parallel in the triathlon that has become the inner workings of my mind.

“Hey now, it’s not like that.” I begin to try to make sense of this situation, make a plan or something. Plopping next to him on the couch I rest my hand on his forearm as he turns to me, eyebrows pulled together in consternation. “P, Christ we have to come up with a better name than that. Can I call you Pete? No. Paul? Nah. Pace?” Smiling at him in an effort to lighten the mode his tongue moistens his lips as I wait what feels like aching minutes for him to reply.

“Can you call me yours?” Smokey black eyes beg me to embrace him as a fire in me roars to life. What had been a molten puddle of lava is now explosive. The hand I have on his arm feels like a magnet pulling me closer to him as I struggle to breathe.

“That is a loaded question.” My words are weak, devoid of the firmness I once had. What was I saying? Why have I not moved my hand away from him? Why was my body leaning into his? What are we doing here Mercy?

“You summoned me, called out to me beyond our worlds, grabbed my essence, and brought me here.” Thundering assertions hit me wave after wave. Could this be real? Was this happening? How could he be so sure of this? “You can call me whatever you’d like, as long as I am yours.” His deeply smokey eyes clash with mine as our unspoken fire rages on between us. I don’t know what this is but I knew in my core that this was so much more than an accident fueled by wine and desperation. This was, maybe some f****d up form of fate?