“You have it down pat.” Kilian grinned back. “So, language lessons. What's up with that?”
Stephen sent his electronic werewolf into the sewers. “Mia insists on either language lessons or music lessons every day.”
“Why?” The Army valued translators almost as much as supernatural assets. They ran language schools on most bases; however, it seemed odd to train someone who housed a demon. It wasn’t as if the Army could ask him to translate intelligence or review local news for anti-American biases. And music... Kilian couldn’t come up with one practical reason to offer music lessons.
“In my more cynical moments, I wonder if it’s a plot of sorts. She says that learning new skills will strengthen brain synapses and make it possible for me to fight the demonic urges, but wonder if she isn’t hoping that the demon won’t reveal itself by being weirdly proficient in Mongolian or Quechuan. It’s better than being bored... except when it comes to Asian languages. I feel like I’m singing those and I hate singing in public. Nope. Not going there. Me and karaoke are not buds.”
And the world would appreciate that. Kilian had heard the boy sing, and it was not pretty. However, Kilian wondered if Stephen was avoiding any language that might reveal his demon’s origin, either to protect the demon or because the demon was influencing his choices. No doubt Mia had already considered the possibility. “Have you shown any strange skills that would reveal the demon?”
“Nada. Zilch. Nothin’.” Stephen shrugged. “I am still largely skill-less except for kicking serious ass at trivia. I am a fount of worthless knowledge. Did you know the hashtag symbol is called an octothorpe? The phone people named it because it didn’t have a name originally. It was the pound mark written as l-b, only with a tittle line through it that made it look like the hashtag we know.” Stephen wiggled his eyebrows as if he’d said something dirty.
“Weird.” Kilian obliged him by saying. Stephen’s fount of worthless knowledge, as he called it, filled the awkward silences that defined so many of Kilian’s professional relationships. He found it comforting to know he didn’t have to hold up his end of the conversation or worry about asking the wrong question.
“Yep.”
“What else is Mia doing to identify the demon?” The sooner she could do that, the sooner Stephen would be free and she could stop worrying about a demon rampaging through the world, not that demons rampaged. From what little Kilian knew from horror films, they were more likely to drag spectral claws through mortals, inspiring madness. Then humans would kill themselves in horrific ways. Of course, movies lacked accuracy, and Mia had not given him details because she said that without knowing what type of demon they were dealing with, they had no answers.
Stephen shrugged. “I don't know. She doesn’t tell me much because whatever I know, the demon knows.”
“She’s not telling me much either. It could be that she doesn’t trust easily.” Kilian watched as Stephen sent his character up a storm drain to attack a nest of electronic vampires. The characters in the game leapt from the warehouse rafters, piling onto Stephen’s character until the wolf died with another video game dirge.
Stephen put the controller down. “Mia was part of the team that responded to the summoning ceremony, so she's pretty much been there since day one. I have no idea what it's like to fight a demon without her standing two steps behind me, telling me exactly what I should do and how I should feel and how grateful I should be.”
Kilian winced at the frustration in Stephen’s voice.
With a sigh, Stephen propped his socked feet on the coffee table. “That’s probably not fair. She's worked hard to make all this happen.” He gestured toward the quarters that doubled as Stephen’s prison. “She's also a giant pain in the ass who is always trying to work some angle. If she were a man, it would be totally hot.”
“What?” Kilian didn’t follow that logic.
“A Machiavellian streak and good abs are the two most essential ingredients in hotness. Sadly, I’m missing both.” Stephen patted his emaciated stomach. With another ten pounds, he would’ve been hot, but right now his body inspired a desire to wrap him up and coddle him until he looked healthier.
“Gay, huh?” Kilian was not surprised. At least Stephen’s parents would have accepted that reveal better than Kilian’s had.
“Open-minded,” Stephen corrected him. “And my own manipulative streak is going unappreciated because the demon is draining me of energy I need.”
“Manipulative is not hot.” Kilian loathed anyone who manipulated him. He had left home at eighteen because his parents had tried guilting him into being a good Catholic boy. Nothing about manipulation was attractive.
Stephen narrowed his eyes and studied Kilian. “It’s like you’ve never even seen television. Mainstream culture maintains a high correlation between Machiavellian and hot.” He held up his hands with his index fingers linked. “The more manipulative the character, the hotter they are. But that only goes for men, so Mia is just a bitch.” Stephen cackled, and the hairs on Kilian’s arm stood on end. He chose to ignore the darkness that had crept into the conversation. “Some days I hate her.”
Kilian understood that sentiment. “When she teleported me here without even asking for my permission, I came very close to biting her.”
“I would've paid money for that floor show.” Stephen’s mouth twisted into a crooked grin.
“It would not have ended well, because once I bite someone, it is very hard for me to stop before I feel the heart fail and the blood sour.” A familiar guilt gnawed at Kilian's soul. This was the price he paid for becoming a Judas vamp. Unfortunately, sometimes it was the price others paid.
Stephen frowned. “I have to admit, a Judas vamp seems like a strange choice for an Army officer.”
“The stranger choice was being the only mundane on a supernatural task force,” Kilian countered. If he could’ve waved a magic wand, he would’ve changed the regulations to disallow mundanes on the task force at all, despite the fact that he’d busted his ass to earn a spot back when he’d been mundane. Ninety-five percent of the world was charmingly mundane, and now that Kilian had joined the five percent supernatural, he suspected most people were best staying on their own side of that fence. Even witches who normally flitted between preternatural and mundane communities found themselves rejected by people who distrusted anyone with too much power. Unease settled like a stone in his guts. Maybe the rejection of the mundane world pushed witches to become evil. Or maybe evil was humanity’s default.
Stephen's eyes grew wide. “No fucking way. You were mundane when you joined a supernatural unit? Do you have suicidal tendencies that we need to address, because if you're suicidal and I'm homicidal, this could be a very bad partnership.” He lifted his hand with his own binding ring.
“I was a Ranger, even before the vamp upgrade. I could handle myself.” And he had, up to the point where he hadn’t.
“Okay,” Stephen said slowly, drawing the word out. “Not to point out the obvious or anything, but you can be a seriously bad ass Ranger and still get your butt kicked by an only moderately badass supernatural. I thought most of these supernatural units included werewolves and witches.”
“Generally they do. The werewolf instinct to protect the pack translates well to military units, so most teams have wolves on them.” Kilian continued before Stephen could do anything unforgivable like asking about any of the werewolves Kilian had known. “Witches don’t have instincts, but they join the military in the same percentages as mundanes. The larger signing bonuses and promotions within the supernatural units does tend to attract them to those units. I also worked with a banshee, a pair of cyclopes, and a vodyanoy.”
“A banshee? Do you have any idea how rare banshees are?” Stephen sounded childlike in his excitement.
