Fucked out.<\/em> Vin realized, his stomach sinking.<\/p>\n Rolling back his T-shirt sleeve, he inspected the bit of the tattoo pertaining to being able to deal with her without getting hijacked by his libido. Rather than flaring bright orange or yellow, which he took to mean it was on and working, that part glowed a dim red: active, but not working hard. “Huh. I guess easier does make sense.”<\/p>\n Tzella nodded. “As expected, then.”<\/p>\n “What did you do?” he asked, wincing as he braced for the answer.<\/p>\n She smiled languidly, stretching like a cat. “I do not have as strong of an effect on humans around me if I am… well fed, so to speak. Also your meat is burning.”<\/p>\n “Oh fuck,” Vin’s head disappeared from the doorway. It reappeared, along with the rest of him, a minute later, bearing a steaming mug of coffee. “Crisis averted, but thanks for the catch.”<\/p>\n He presented Tzella with the mug, which she accepted with a small squeak of delight. “Do I want to know what sort of breakfast you found last week?”<\/p>\n The joy immediately vanished from her face and she averted her eyes. “You do not.”<\/p>\n “Is this another ‘Vin requires delicacy’ thing?”<\/p>\n “Very much yes.” She sipped her coffee and looked up at him. “I do not want to make our mutual predicament any more uncomfortable for you than it already is, if it can be avoided.”<\/p>\n Something about her tone and the serious expression on her face instantly killed the biting rejoinder brewing in Vin’s throat. “It’s not like I don’t know what you are and what you do. My sensibilities can take a fair hit.” He smiled, unable to repress the sarcasm. “I’ve been able to see R-rated movies without a parent or guardian for years now.”<\/p>\n She gave him an exasperated smile. “At this moment in time, you truly are better off not knowing. I may consider telling you at a later time if you ask me again.”<\/p>\n “Noted,” he acknowledged, frowning as the timer in the kitchen began ringing. “Back in a minute.”<\/p>\n Tzella sighed, taking a sip of her coffee. Human men often turned out to be maelstroms of shame, fear and rage buried under their lust, a buffet for a creature that fed on strong emotion. Extracting all of those from Josh had been as delicious for her as it was terrifying and humiliating for him. She’d taken her time, peeling away all of the defense mechanisms, the bravado, the constructed ego, everything keeping it all to manageable levels, until she’d created a perpetual source of intensely spicy emotions she could tap at will.<\/p>\n At least Crys wouldn’t have to put up with him working over unsuspecting women anymore.<\/p>\n Vin didn’t need to know all that.<\/p>\n He came out of the kitchen with two steaming plates of biscuits topped with overgenerous dollops of gravy, one of which he handed to her before plunking himself into the gaming chair on the other side of the room. “Smacznego,”<\/em> he said, raising his plate to her in salute.<\/p>\n She cocked her head confusedly.<\/p>\n “Sorry. I’m a quarter Polish. Just means enjoy.”<\/p>\n “A different way of saying bon appetit<\/em>, then.”<\/p>\n “Basically. Always bothered me that every language has something people say before eating except English.” He carefully picked up a biscuit, tipping some of the gravy off of it before taking a bite. “Jesus Christ<\/em>, that’s good. Wait, should I… not say that?”<\/p>\n She managed to giggle through a mouthful of food at his horrified expression. “We are not hurt by the invocation of what humans consider holy.”<\/p>\n “So you’re not going to explode or catch fire if you walk into a church?”<\/p>\n “I would hope not, considering how many times I have been summoned inside them.”<\/p>\n He gasped, inhaled gravy, and immediately broke into a fit of coughing.<\/p>\n “Churches are generally quite lovely. The old ones, anyway. Most modern human architecture seems ill suited for pursuing an experience of the Infinite.” She shrugged. “I am sure exceptions apply, but I am not particularly invested in finding them.”<\/p>\n “Lazy again?”<\/p>\n “No.” She took another bite of biscuit. “Respect.”<\/p>\n “I don’t get it.”<\/p>\n She licked gravy off of her thumb before explaining. “Most practitioners of human religion do not take kindly to demons walking into their spaces of worship.”<\/p>\n “Well, how would they know?”<\/p>\n “They would not,” she acknowledged.<\/p>\n “So why would it matter?”<\/p>\n “In the cosmic scale of things, it does not,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “However, it matters to me. And there are limited circumstances in which I am comfortable being someplace where I am neither invited nor welcome, no matter how pretty it is.”<\/p>\n “Hmm, speaking of which,” Vin said, lighting up.<\/p>\n “Oh, this will certainly<\/em> be an interesting segue.”<\/p>\n The absolutely baffled expression on her face cracked him up. “Okay, bit of a weird transition, I’ll give you that. Anyway, I wanted to ask you something. It actually works out that you’re less of a wifi router for horny than usual.”<\/p>\n Tzella’s mouth quirked at one corner. “A collection of syllables for which I have zero context. Aside from ‘horny’, anyway.”<\/p>\n “Not important.” He waved his previous statement off. “Big Boss is hosting a gathering tomorrow for the Super Bowl. Everyone from the job was invited, but he does this every year and we know invited just means ordered.” He made a face at his last chunk of biscuit. “Mandatory fun.”<\/p>\n “Super Bowls are still a thing? Figured you would have been tired of them by the twentieth or so. Is there a question?”<\/p>\n “Would you come with me?”<\/p>\n She blinked. “You are asking me to accompany you to a human gathering.”<\/p>\n “Yep.”<\/p>\n “Do you not have other people to go with?”<\/p>\n “Everyone I’d ask is either already going to this party or has other plans.” He shrugged. “Or they hate football.”<\/p>\n “I see. But why ask me?”<\/p>\n “What was it you said about being summoned because people get bored and lonely? It’s true.” Vin smiled ruefully. “I also don’t want to be the only person at the party showing up stag.”<\/p>\n “I take your point. Still, it seems odd to bring a demon as your plus one.”<\/p>\n “It is. But weirdly enough even without that whole ‘power of sex goddess compels you’ thing, I kinda like hanging out with you. I know that’s probably mostly vibes at this point, but…” He shrugged again. “Honestly, I get the sense that you’re bored and lonely too.”<\/p>\n Her mouth twisted a little as she looked away from him. “You are not wrong. I dislike that.”<\/p>\n “Aw, too much perception of you for one day?”<\/p>\n Vin had to admit Tzella had one of the better quelling glares he’d ever encountered. Being able to make one’s eyes go completely black at will was probably an unfair advantage in that department. “I would curse you, but it would have no effect.”<\/p>\n “Anyone ever told you that for a supernatural being you’re kind of adorable when you’re annoyed?”<\/p>\n “Keep teasing me and I will actually set your carpet aflame,”<\/span> she growled.<\/p>\n “Entirely fair.” He flashed her an apologetic smile. “That said… you haven’t said no.”<\/p>\n “I have not.” She swirled her remaining biscuit half around her plate, sopping up the remaining gravy. “The party is tomorrow?”<\/p>\n “Yeah. Starts at five-thirty. Don’t know how aware of time you are when you’re not here, but if you show up here before five sometime we should be able to get there more or less on-time.”<\/p>\n She inclined her head. “Very well. Is there more of this?” she asked, holding up her now empty plate.<\/p>\n He grinned, getting up to refill both plates. “So we like biscuits and gravy. Will have to add that to the ‘what to feed a succubus for breakfast’ cookbook.”<\/p>\n “I suppose the ideal options would not exactly be publishable,” she conceded thoughtfully. “Not as a cookbook anyway. Perhaps erotica or sexual self help.”<\/p>\n “I mean, The Joy of Sex<\/em> does exist out there,” Vin replied as he returned with a freshly heaping plate for his guest. “But yeah, not in the cookbook section. Which is a pity really, you would think a sexy cookbook would make an ungodly amount of money. Just maybe not shelve it next to Betty Crocker’s.”<\/p>\n “Who is Betty Crocker?”<\/p>\n “You have the weirdest gaps in your cultural knowledge.”<\/p>\n “I am aware.” Tzella sighed. “Perhaps I should get one of those ridiculously tiny television screens people seem to be carrying around in their pockets and attempt to catch up?”<\/p>\n Vin blinked in confusion before realizing what she was referring to. “I don’t know, what’s the 5G signal like in Hell?”<\/p>\n “The what?”<\/p>\n “Never mind.”<\/p>\n Josh dropped his keys again.<\/p>\n It was nothing. An annoyance, especially because now he had to place all five bags of groceries on the ground, pick up the keys, unlock the building door, then pick all the groceries back up again.<\/p>\n The first two attempts had not gone well due to his hands shaking for an intensely stupid reason. A dark haired woman crossing his building parking lot and tossing him a smile used to be an easy dopamine hit for him. Lately, however…<\/p>\n “Get a grip, you pussy,” he murmured to himself. “You can’t go through life terrified of every black-haired broad you see.”<\/p>\n Especially since they were everywhere<\/em>. Josh had never paid much attention to his surrounding demographics before that week, as he was\u2014had been\u2014an equal opportunity lech. When he bothered to entertain a preference, it ran towards tiny blondes. But since meeting the axe-crazy Morticia Addams doppelganger the previous weekend, it seemed his entire world was suddenly populated exclusively by tall goth women, all of whom wore her<\/em> face for the fraction of a second it took for his entire lower body to clench up in protest and remembered pain.<\/p>\n That day he’d prayed for the first time since he was a kid, prayed that when he finally collapsed, that would be the end of it, that he could wake up in the morning and move on. Exhausted sexually, physically and spiritually after an hours-long nightmare of helpless terror mixed with painfully intense arousal and sex that left him bruised, said collapse was less falling asleep and more letting unconsciousness claim him. She’d been thankfully gone when he awakened the next morning.<\/p>\n It had taken him a couple of days to work up the nerve to leave the house, and another one to steel himself to walk back into the coffee shop despite the clawing terror fighting its way up from the pit of his stomach to his throat. Unfortunately, she had been there waiting for him, sitting in the same spot at the counter and casually chatting up the barista with the weird name he could never remember.<\/p>\n She’d dragged him back to his bed that afternoon for a repeat performance, degrading him past the point of either tears or terror, riding his cock until it ached from maintaining rigidity for well past the point where erectile dysfunction ads recommended seeing a doctor. He was a broken creature at the end of it begging for her to let him come so he could escape into unconsciousness again.<\/p>\n Who told you to speak, you sentient bag of diseased manure? You come when I say you come, not a moment before or after.<\/em><\/p>\n Inquiries as to her name were met with much the same sentiment.<\/p>\n That was the night after which he started seeing raven-haired sex monsters around every corner. He started seeing them in his dreams after she showed up a third time, leaning against his Porsche Cayenne when he left his office, smiling viciously.<\/p>\n Keys retrieved and groceries re-hoisted, Josh managed to get the door of his building unlocked and partially cracked before it suddenly slammed the rest of the way open, knocking him briefly off-balance. The smokey burnt toffee smell of her announced her identity long before her voice did. “Hey, loverboy,” she purred. “Need a hand with those?”<\/p>\n “Please, no,” he whispered, through a throat too tight to voice a proper protest.<\/p>\n Tzella’s grin was sharp as she pressed him into the door frame with her body, plucking at the shirt buttons visible through his open coat. “No?” she echoed, pouting. “After all the fun we had? You do not seem happy to see me.”<\/p>\n Josh wanted to yell into her face, curse her out, something, anything, but instead felt himself collapse into submission instead.<\/p>\n She grabbed two of the grocery bags out of his hands, the fear, anger, shame and resignation pouring off him making her a little giddy. Grinning viciously, she caught his terrified gaze with her own. “It does not matter. We will just have to have even more fun today, no?”<\/p>\n Josh sighed, resigning himself to his fate.<\/p>\n Vin was not sure what he was expecting on the drive down to the party, but it wasn’t whipping down down Route 202 with classical music roaring out of the speakers of his Toyota Tacoma, which Tzella had cranked as far up as it would go. And yet,<\/em> he thought as he idled at a red light, an entire string section threatening to blow out his woofers, here we are.<\/em><\/p>\n Tzella, for her part, was maniacally delighted, both by the obscene volume of the piece filling the truck cab, and also by the extremely weird looks the truck was getting from the drivers of the cars around them. Aside from the bombast pouring from the speakers, she seemed to be rapturously tracing the frenetic notes in the air in front of her, eyes closed.<\/p>\n The piece ended with a decisive low string note, and she opened her eyes, grinning. “Again!” she declared, reaching to tap the back track button on Vin’s console.<\/p>\n “You’ve played this twice already,” he managed to point out before being drowned out by the opening attack of strings. Not that he minded overmuch \u2014 while his usual genre was 00s nu-metal, he pretty much enjoyed any and all music. Classical wasn’t usually on his radar, but he had to admit the piece she was looping slapped pretty damn hard at ear-shattering volume.<\/p>\n When Tzella reached for the back button for the third time a few minutes later, he pressed down the volume control on his steering wheel, cutting the volume down to a much more reasonable 15.<\/p>\n “Louder is better,” she protested.<\/p>\n “Agreed, but I’d like to be able to hear people talking to me at the party without my ears ringing. What is this anyway?”<\/p>\n “Symphonie f\u00fcnfundzwanzig, Sol-Moll. Allegro con brio.”<\/em><\/p>\n “Was that demonic or just German?”<\/p>\n “Very funny. Symphony 25 in G minor. Mozart.” She continued to dreamily conduct along with the recording. “I have not heard this in far too long. Certainly not since humans figured out how to carve sound into wax. And now you say there’s no physical medium anymore, just ones and zeros?”<\/p>\n “Well, physical media isn’t gone<\/em>. Vinyl’s having quite the comeback.”<\/p>\n “But this,” she poked the screen of the truck’s console, accidentally causing the recording to hitch back several seconds. “You’re just pulling any music at all that you could possibly want to hear from the air, and it’s not<\/em> the radio?”<\/p>\n “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he protested. “But essentially, yeah.”<\/p>\n “Incredible.”<\/p>\n He chuckled, shaking his head. “So what is it about this one specifically?”<\/p>\n “Mozart wrote this when he was seventeen.” Tzella replied, a feral delight sharpening her smile. “As I understand it, late teens is when you all are contending with maximum hormonal saturation, correct?”<\/p>\n “Oh, God.” Vin shuddered.<\/p>\n “Now imagine all you had to express that constant state of unstable emotion and desire was a string quartet and woodwinds.”<\/p>\n “Okay, no one’s ever explained this sort of music to me like that before,” he laughed. “Is there maybe a less intensely hormonal piece of music you like, though? Four reps of this is enough.”<\/p>\n She looked thoughtful, then tapped the console a few times before settling back in her seat. As stormy and busy as the last piece was, the quiet dreamy piano that filled the truck cab was sweet and soothing.<\/p>\n “I know this one,” he said, surprised. “Clair de Lune<\/em>?”<\/p>\n “Mmm.” Tzella murmured affirmatively, snuggling herself down in her seat.<\/p>\n They both gave the piece a couple of haunting minutes to weave its gentle spell before Vin changed the subject. “So you know what a Super Bowl is.”<\/p>\n “I imagine this will not be the sort of party where several of us will be summoned as halftime entertainment,” she replied with a smirk.<\/p>\n “Did that happen?”<\/p>\n “Do you truly want me to answer that question?”<\/p>\n Vin sighed. “Remember how I said I’m allowed to watch the big boy movies?”<\/p>\n “My apologies. Will it be sufficient to say this will be the first such party I am attending voluntarily and clothed?”<\/p>\n “People will really have orgies for any reason, huh?”<\/p>\n She shrugged, still only lifting a single shoulder. “Is it that strange when you think about it? Sex serves so many purposes for you. competition, entertainment, ego stroking, selling point, power play, value signal…”<\/p>\n “Overcomplicated, if you ask me.” he huffed. “Also I can’t help noticing you said nothing about love, intimacy or bonding.”<\/p>\n A ghost of a sad smile briefly crossed her face. “We are very rarely summoned for those purposes.”<\/p>\n “I’m sorry.”<\/p>\n “Why? It is what it is.”<\/p>\n “It just seems like in your line of… existence all you see is the worst of humanity.”<\/p>\n “I will not argue that. Those casting spells to summon entities with which to enact their basest desires are not the purest of souls.”<\/p>\n Vin braked, guiding the truck into a left turn lane. “How do you not absolutely hate us then?”<\/p>\n “Some of us do.” She shrugged again. “There are definitely a number of us that view humans as little more than sustenance or a pathway to power. Others cannot fathom why you have been blessed with the existence you have and you squander your gifts in pursuit of goals that make yourselves and others around you miserable.”<\/p>\n “And you?”<\/p>\n Another shrug, this time accompanied by a small sad smile. “I have been lucky, I think. For every double handful or so of rotten souls I have encountered in my existence, there has been, by whatever happy accident, someone like you. Not perfect by any measure, but trying to make themselves and their corner of existence better than they found it. But that is not a universal experience for us.”<\/p>\n Vin would have liked to have discussed it more, but they arrived at Big Boss’s right as the track ended on a particularly haunting arpeggio. “You ready for this?”<\/p>\n Tzella quirked an eyebrow. “Are you?”<\/p>\n “Oh, never,” he chuckled. “But here I am, anyway.”<\/p>\n “Indeed.” Noting his hand still on the gear shift, she dropped her hand onto his, giving it a small squeeze. “Shall we indulge in some mandatory fun?”<\/p>\n\n\n
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