Page 16 of Zodiac Demons

Extra spicy?

Fuck it, it’s summer vacation. I’m experimenting. Let’s play with nukes.

“You’re not taking summer classes, so I’m not sure why you’re calling me,” Adrian answered, always pretending he didn’t want to talk to me despite having picked up on the first ring. He seemed like the right person to start with for untangling the web and sorting out the problems. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Denton?” So formal. I almost sighed.

“So I heard you met up with your third grade teacher the other day.” I stated flatly, deciding I, too, could be obtuse and annoying.

The line went silent for several moments. I waited, and he waited, and we waited together for thoughts to be gathered, like the half mates we were.

“If you’d told me your mother’s maiden name was Rodanthe, both of our lives would have been much easier and less confusing these last six months. I could have told you at least a portion of what you were.” He cleared his throat, then added, “I’m hoping you’ve spoken to her, and I don’t have to be the one to break the news.”

“Yep, I’m one part Lamia, one part Virgo shifter, and one part… uh… harvested witch womb?” The whole organ harvesting thing was, in reality, far darker and more disturbing in practice than it was to talk about for some reason. I’d somehow managed to completely disassociate from the actual violence and murder of the matter. It felt so par for the course, that I couldn’t even mentally comprehend how grisly the process probably actually was.

There was a point where you kind of started to get desensitized to it all, considering all of the biting and bloodletting and organ paralysis I was now comfortable with during sex.

“A witch’s womb,” he repeated the phrase with a sense of gravity, before he inhaled sharply through the line. “Maybe that’s why you negate our curse when you…” He choked on what I could only assume were the words ‘come on my shifted dick’ and I allowed him to suffer without help. “Well that’s… certainly something.”

“Right, we can talk about that too. But can we please talk in person? I think I need some teacherly advice right now, and I don’t want to do this over the phone.” That may have been a lot to ask, considering the last time we saw each other we were not the best at not touching, but I didn’t want to be in a position where he could just hang up on me either.

“I think that might be for the best.” There’s the mature, thirty four years of life I was hoping for. “We have a lot to discuss.”

Yes. Yes we did.

Within about thirty minutes of hanging up the phone, he had appeared at the dorms in his fancy sports car, dressed in much less fancy loose sweats and a form hugging black tank top, while still sweaty from what I could only guess was an extra-long gym session.

I was not going to talk about the fact that the scent of hard work was not at all repulsive on him. Nor was I going to acknowledge that I apparently scented people now. Which was why I sat in very uncomfortable silence for the whole drive over as he whisked me away to the suburbs.

The prevalence of his Tobaccos and Rosemary notes were even more intense as I entered his home and settled in at his breakfast bar, while I was trying to blame his natural incubus aura for the reason I was blushing at the vivid mental images of him being all wet and glistening while lifting heavy things. I knew he was strong, but it was ten times more noticeable when he was sleeveless, and the lights were hitting just right.

“Coffee?” He offered, mercifully interrupting my lizard brain.

“Sure.” I fidgeted on my stool. He handed me a mug with no cream, no sugar, no nothing. Just bitter sadness in a cup.

Very Adrian.

He took a sip of his own coffee, before casually leaning against his countertop a few feet away. He looked so ordinary and human in his gym clothes. Again, I was reminded that Adrian was actually a normal person who existed outside of teaching or fucking me mid-air, and it was very confusing.

Theoretically, up until now, he had a routine and ordinary life of a teacher in a small-enough city, and our current day-to-day had disrupted that, but it was still difficult to imagine a rough and dominant sex demon having to do things like working out in a public gym to maintain their physique and putting their yogurt on a food scale so they wouldn’t gain an ounce of fat and disrupt the visibility of their abs.

“Apologies, I should have showered and changed before I picked you up.” He started, running a hand through his sweat slickened hair, neatly sweeping it back behind his head. His eyes were up there, and that was where I would be looking for the rest of this conversation. “I’ve been a bit off lately.”

“I’m not even sure what being ‘on’ looks like anymore.” I took my first sip and tried not to grimace with my whole face. Drinking coffee black was manageable in the way that you might lick a shoe and say ‘huh, it only has a little dirt on it.’

He shook his head and took another gulp of his own drink, then relaxed into an unexpectedly soft and amused smile. “You said it yourself. Let’s drop the pretense for a moment. This will be easier if we just speak honestly.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “So before we get too far into this mess, can you… tell me about the Cancer? Since we don’t have club this month, I’m a bit nervous about what the full moon could look like.”

Adrian continued to drink his coffee slowly, and I wondered what kind of wheels were turning in his head. We both knew I wasn’t planning to stay locked in a room, but we also both knew I had a permanent mate now—two, but I might withhold that fact if possible—and that wasn’t really an option. Which meant he might also get roped into all this if I didn’t spend the night behind wards.

“That’s a good start.” He glanced up, as if searching his mental database for anything I might find relevant. “The Cancer is, as you might expect of a sign symbolized by a crab, a water sign. It’s the Cardinal sign of the summer, and ruled by the moon itself, making it particularly volatile for a hybrid zodiac species. The power surge will be more intense than it would be for a sign ruled by Saturn or Mercury, even when it’s not the month of your birthright.” He tilted his head in thought as he pondered on that. “Though the positive side of that is being the Cardinal water sign also means that Cancers have both the natural tendency toward being caring and compassionate that you might expect of the element, while also having the take-charge mentality of a leader, so they tend to be proactive in wanting to nurture others. They have the proclivity to be exceptional partners and lovers, in addition to heavily valuing family,” gonna be testing family values this month, for sure, “and it’s probably the least likely to kill you of all of our potential transformations. It’s a fairly safe sign to experience stronger than normal celestial power from.”

“That seems… uh… positive.” I buried myself in the fragrant steam of my drink, as it was more pleasant than the actual taste, and mostly because I seriously needed to muddle the scent of tobacco and rosemary and muscles that was all very distracting. I liked to blame his incubus for why my head was always charged in all the worst ways around him, but that was just a lie I told myself. “And the dark side? Because I know there’s going to be one of those too.”

Adrian let slip a laugh, then he shook his head. “Always. Not even a water sign can be perfect.” He dragged a hand down through his stubble thoughtfully. “Being characterized as heavily emotional, they can also be rather moody, retreating into themselves rather than openly expressing their inner turmoil, and they can be quite petty when they feel you’ve wronged them. Despite being loyal and generous, they’re not quick to trust, so it can be a lot of work to create the safe environment they need.” He tapped his lower lip in contemplation. “I think that more or less covers it.”

“Sure, that covers the high level, generic information that I could find in any book about horoscopes. Now what does being a Cancer Incubus mean for you?” I pushed for the information I obviously actually wanted. “We don’t have an audience, so you can actually just tell me the real shit for once. No need to pretend I actually care about astrology,” I said with a touch of playfulness. One might think there’d be more tension between us at this point, but to be honest, this conversation felt pretty normal. He’d finally stopped trying to intimidate me, so we could just be functional adults or something.

Adrian shrugged. “I’ve turned a few times during the Cancer’s moon. The transformation itself is a bit more dramatic than most in terms of appearance, since it has a distinct animal to draw from, but it’s not really anything to worry about. It’s a gentle-ish monster, as far as my total-loss-of-control moments go. More giving and less take. Whether it’s me or Marcus you’re worried about, you’ll be fine.”