Ink

“It’s not that simple,” Aimon said, rising from his seat to snatch a towel off the rack. He tossed it to Jake and turned to leave the room.



Jake caught the towel, and stood up in the tub, shivering anew as the room temperature air slammed into his soaked body. Mopping up the water as best as he could he said, “I know. Shit, now that bastard has Cam and we have to be careful or he could hurt him. He could—.”



“That’s not what I meant,” Aimon called from the other room and Jake heard the sound of doors being opened. He hurried to get out of the tub holding the rim of it in a death grip as his wet socks slid across the tiled floor. Jake managed to make it to the door and hold on to the doorframe as he stared into the room at Aimon. Aimon was standing in between the opened door of his bureau tossing shirts on the bed, obviously searching for something to wear.



“What are you doing?”



Aimon ignored his question. “Everything has changed, mortal. My mark upon your flesh has damned us both.”



A frisson of fear crept up Jake’s spine.



“My contract with The Ordo expired the moment you drew my mark on your arm. There were rules mortal. Rules I was not allowed to break. Taking a follower was second on the list.”



Jake shook his head frantically. “I-I choose to do it. You didn’t make me! You didn’t want me to do it, but I had to find Cam. I just couldn’t sit home and worry about him! I could tell them, make them understand.”



“It doesn’t matter. Do you think The Order will believe in the integrity of a demon? That they will believe I had nothing to do with you taking my mark? My working for them was only under the sufferance that all living things deserved forgiveness. Their belief in me was only by the thinnest thread. Now I have proved what they always believed was true. I am still the same.” Pulling out a pair of black jeans Aimon tossed them on the bed as well.



“What does this mean? Are you going to continue to search for the other Demon King?” For Cam, he added silently to himself.



“Yes. It does not matter that council is no longer behind me. I can complete my mission with or without them. It only means that I am now caught between a rock and a hard place. We are now the hunted, Jake. I left you here because I did not want the others to see, but Antigone knows. She is duty and honor bound to share what she knows with the others. They will come for us. They will kill me outright, and they will very likely kill you because you are mine.”



If Jake hadn’t been clutching at the doorframe he would have fallen. His legs now felt as substantial as jello. Shit! Shit! Shit! Out of the frying pain and into the fire. It took him a few moments to realize Aimon was still speaking.



“-- changed on both fronts, Jake. Not only will the council hunt for us, but we no longer have your brother to assure this demon comes to us. Our roles are reversed. We have nothing he would want. Now we must go to him.” Aimon slammed the door to his bureau shut, and went to the bed. He shed his long jacket and started to unbutton his long sleeved white shirt, as he continued to talk. “Demons are good at hiding. That is how we have lasted through the ages when the guardians hunted us to the far corners of the Earth. We can hide in the dimensions, in the dark itself. We may even choose a grave to sleep away a few thousand years until our hunters give up hope or think we are dead. Although I do no think the one we are hunting would do such a thing. Not unless he became desperate.” He paused, sliding on a dark blue t-shirt. Then his hands went to his pants working the button and zipper loose, sliding the black slacks down his legs.



Jake swallowed hard trying not to notice the bare skin on display. And there was a hell of a lot of it, because Aimon had nothing on under the slacks. God he was golden all over! Shaking his head, he wrenched his gaze away and looked up to the ceiling, trying to recall what the hell they’d been talking about. His belly rolled, warmth spreading into his groin. He groaned. “W-what did you mean? Why wouldn’t this Demon King try and hide?”



“Because your brother is mortal. He could not survive living between the worlds or sleeping in a grave.” Jake dared to look and saw that Aimon was now wearing a pair of jeans and he was reaching for a pair of socks. For a moment his brain stuttered. Aimon looked so…normal. Like an ordinary guy about to hit the town. Not ordinary, he quickly corrected. Not that he was into other guys or anything but he wasn’t so ignorant that he couldn’t admit Aimon was hot. Demon King or not his human side was modeling material. Tall, muscled, and golden, with dark curly hair and green eyes, Aimon was a wet dream come to life. Uh, shit! He winced at the thought.



Tying the last lace to his square toed black boots Aimon straightened, looking more like a twenty-seven year old model than a soulless Demon King. Before Jake could think of anything to say Aimon turned, snatched up a shirt and a pair of jeans and tossed it to him.Then he bent down and scooped Jake's discarded boots off the floor. He tossed them too. “Get dressed, we must feed one of your hungers, or the others will rage.”



Jake nodded and disappeared back into the bathroom. He returned a few minutes later, bent over, trying to poke a hole through the leather of his belt. The shirt was on the long side but the pants were just too baggy so that the belt needed adjusting. His tall lanky frame was nowhere as filled out as Aimon’s.



Aimon was packing a small black bag when he emerged from the bathroom. “What is that for?” Jake asked.



“We have some traveling to do.”



Jake’s blood ran cold. “So we have to jump through another vortex!”



“No, I can no longer use large amounts of power unless it’s an emergency. At the puzzled look Jake gave him Aimon sighed and explained. “All forms of power are drawn from the fabric of the atmosphere itself. As a result using power leaves a trail.” Lifting one hand, Aimon drew a line in the air. Seconds after his finger passed over nothing a faint red trail glowed in its wake. “Mortals can not see unless we wish it. If I use enough power to call a doorway it will be as if I’ve left a calling card that tells my location. Immortals may follow my trail to its end, and anywhere I go they can find me. Small hands of power,” Pointing to his bag, he quirked a finger and it flew across the room to his hand,

“disappear more quickly.”



“Is that how you intended to find the demon that has my brother, following his trail?”



“Yes, but it is not so simple. You have to know what you are looking for. Many creatures leave trails, even psychics leave a distinct trail behind. A hunter must know what trail he is looking for. That is why I was most suited for the job. I knew the characteristics of the Demon King’s trail, just as The Ordo knows mine.”



“I get it. So no power wielding, but how are we going to find this Demon King? Is he going to stop using power, too?”



“Now that he has Cameron he may try to minimize his use, but if he is as arrogant as he used to be he will still wield power. We are going to have to track him the old way.”



“By foot,” Jake offered, moving toward the doorway to follow Aimon.



Aimon paused at the door and looked down at Jake. “By Firebird.” He grinned, displaying two rows of gleaming white teeth.



***

Aimon found them a diner that ran twenty-four ours just off the exit on the main highway. They hadn’t talked much on the drive. Jake had nodded off, exhausted after the ordeals of the last few days. It surprised him that he would feel comfortable enough to sleep in the presence of a demon, but the quiet of the car and the heat he’d asked Aimon to turn up lulled him under.



Aimon shook his shoulder when they reached the diner. There were a handful of cars parked in front of the building. It was a throwback to the fifties and sixties, the kind of place with checkered walls, neon signs, bottle caps and juke boxes.

Aimon’s car fit right in. He wasn’t kidding about the Firebird. Jake had spent the last three ours sound asleep in the passenger side of a first generation fully restored 1968 Pontiac, Firebird. After he got over the initial shock of such a classic being in the garage of a demon he’d climbed in almost afraid to touch the virgin leather of the seats. He was glad for nightfall and the fact that the diner wasn’t packed. They’d been earning glances wherever they went in the midnight blue beauty.



Walking inside the diner made Jake’s stomach rumble. It smelled like heaven to him, and he didn’t realize how hungry he was until the smell of hamburgers, fries, steak and various other foods hit his nose. Aimon, seeming to know what he needed even before his muddled brain could register enough to move out of the doorway, gently steered him to a window seat in a booth that sat not too far from where his car was parked. There were a couple of greasy menus occupying the slots in between a napkin holder, which Aimon pulled out. He handed Jake one.



Jake opened his menu and stared down at everything with covetous eyes. Damn he wanted just about everything on the fucking menu. He’d never been so hungry in his life.

“Jake, focus. Not all your hunger is for food.” Aimon said in a voice that was pitched so only he could hear.



Jake nodded, “Will this thing go away? I mean I don’t know how long I can deal.” It was dulling his other senses, this need simmering inside him. He couldn’t think straight with arousal throbbing just at the edges of his awareness, like some great tide waiting to consume him. Aimon was right. It was always there.



“You must.” Aimon caught his gaze and held it. Jake blinked, but the licking flames he saw in those emerald irises were still there. “Your need is affecting me, Jake. My instinct is to ease you, but I cannot do that. In the long run it will do more harm than help.”



Suddenly panting, feeling the heat in his lower regions rocket up a few notches Jake anxiously licked his lower lip. His eyes darted over Aimon’s face, to the dip of his collared shirt where just the barest hint of gold shown. “W-What exactly does easing me entail.”



Aimon broke eye contact and put the menu back in its slot. “It means becoming intimate with you. That’s something we must avoid unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”



Jake felt chilled and hot all at the same time. He had a sudden vision of him and Aimon, silk sheets, writhing bodies. Aimon’s eyes would glow, his teeth would nibble. And Jake’s face was twisted in an expression of pleasurable agony.



“Welcome to Bill’s Big Burgers. My name’s Maddie, and I’ll be you waitress this morning. How can I help you boys?” A plump lady in a hideous pink and white checkered dress with a white apron stood beside their table with her pen and notebook poised, and at the ready.



He couldn’t get his mouth to work if his life counted on it. Jake flushed guilty and ducked his head. What the fuck was wrong with him? Get it together, Jake!



Aimon spoke. “We’ll have four of your triple Burger’s, four orders of fries, two triple thick shakes, a Big Bill’s Steak dinner, and a extra large basket of onion rings.” He looked at Jake for a minute and then said. “And a glass of iced water, please.”



Maddie’s eyes rounded as she scribbled it all down. “Wow, you boys got someone else in that pretty Firebird I don’t know about?”



Jake had no idea Aimon was capable of a smile that didn’t look feral until he gave one to their waitress. Instantly his cock jammed up against his zipper. He groaned, and rolled his forehead on his clenched fist that sat on the table.



“No, ma’am,” Aimon answered charmingly. And Jake knew, without a shadow of a doubt that Aimon was capable of his utter and complete seduction. No matter that a part of his brain revolted at the thought of being touched by a demon and a male one at that. A bigger, hungrier part of him perked right up; begged for just that.



After finding out if how they wanted their steaks and burgers cooked Maddie sauntered off.



Lifting his head, Jake tried to keep the huskiness from his voice as he said. “I’m not really hungry anymore.” Not with the way his stomach was flipping end over end. He didn’t think he’d keep anything down. Not gay! He repeated silently to himself. Not gay! Got a girlfriend. Shit! Had a girlfriend. In the chaos he’d completely forgot about Sam. His girl; the first lips he’d ever kissed. They were supposed to be having the type of intimacy Aimon had talked about. He tried to imagine what Sam could be doing now. Crying her eyes out maybe? She was a very emotional girl, not exactly her best quality, but given the circumstances he decided she was justified. His mother was probably worried sick. The thought just made him feel even worse, though it drained away the arousal to be replaced by worry and guilt instead.



If he did manage to get out of this; find Cameron, kill Cithru, get Aimon’s soul back and remove the mark on his arm he was going to be elbow deep in some serious shit. Not only was he going to have to explain how he got out of a bathroom with no windows and doors but he would have to answer to charges of obstructing the law, refusal to corporate, fleeing from police custody or some shit like that.



The feel of calloused fingertips against his arm snapped Jake out of his thoughts to make him realize he had squeezed his eyes shut and laid his head down over his crossed arms. He couldn’t remember doing it but he straightened immediately. Aimon studied his face, in the eerie I see into your soul. sort of way that he had. “What?” Jake was finally forced to say, unable to stand the stare any longer.



“I had forgotten what it was to be connected to a human. It has been nearly five hundred years since I had a follower, a bearer of my mark.”



“Yeah, well, I’m glad I have that fine honor,” he quipped, self deprecatingly.



“Your worry of things that have not yet come to pass is clouding your view of the present, Jake. You must stay focused. You will need all your strength to control your hunger. Rash emotions only make them worse; fear most of all.”



“Then what do you suggest I do!” Jake yelled, half surprised that he was this upset. But things had been spinning out of control for a while now. He was a long ways from his comfy bed, studying for summer school classes. He was a long way from Cameron who was in God knows where, and his mother who was probably worried sick. He couldn’t imagine things ever being the same between him and Sam or between him and anybody. He’d seen too much, knew too much for things to go back to the way he had been. The way he saw it all his trouble had started when Aimon showed up. He thought he should hate him for that. Thought that he should…



Aimon suddenly exploded from his seat. His movement was such a blur that Jake struggled to see it. There was a group of three men sitting in the corner of the diner. All three men were laughing amongst themselves. Jake watched with horrified excitement as Aimon approached them and snatched one burly man twice his size out of his chair by the throat. The guy looked like a hillbilly; flannel shirt, well worn jeans and stained work boots. His greasy ball cap slid off his head to reveal a gleaming bald pink scalp underneath.



“Chaos demon!” Aimon snarled, shaking the big man like a rag doll. The man’s fat fingers tried to pry off Aimon’s hand but to no avail. His face was turning red with lack of oxygen.



Jake stood, mouth gaping wide, not believing what he was seeing. The other two men who had been sitting with the man Aimon now had in his grasp cowered at the table. The waitress that had taken their orders burst out from behind counter. The cashier, a young man who couldn’t be much older than Jake, scrambled through the back door yelling for someone.



“Aimon what are you doing?” Jake asked frantically, swiping at tears now spilling freely from his eyes. He couldn’t understand why he was crying.



“Release him!” Aimon said to the man in his possession. His voice had dropped down so low that he sounded more like the clap of thunder. In fact it rolled through the room, an unstoppable tidal wave of sound that set Jake’s ears to ringing.



An unearthly whine came from the two men cowering at the table. The man in Aimon’s arms might have made a sound but it was cut off by Aimon’s choke hold. “I….do…know…talk... ‘bout.” The man wheezed out. His cheeks were now swollen and rapidly turning purple.



“No?” Aimon waved a hand, and it was as if he had shone a light on something that Jake could not see. Stretching from the writhing man in Aimon’s grasp and attached to his body were dozens of writhing black bodies. They looked like snakes but they were not corporeal, more like shadows. Jake shouted, and tried to pry one off his arm, but his hand passed right through it.



“NOW!” Aimon bellowed. He placed one hand on the fat man’s gut and Jake watched as light crackled from his palm shooting into the man’s stomach.



The hillybilly screamed bloody murder and suddenly the writhing mass of shadows fell off Jake like dead leeches. Immediately he felt the difference. His mind was clear again, emotions weren’t backed up like debris in a clogged pipe, waiting to pour from him. He felt tired though, so very tired.



A door slammed open from the back kitchen and man in his mid thirties with a severe overbite, and beady brown eyes stood in the doorway. He wasn’t alone. He had a shotgun in his hands, and the boy who was about Jake’s age was at his back, hiding behind his broad shoulders.



Maddie was pale as a ghost clutching her notebook and staring at Aimon as if he were the devil himself. The fat man, what Aimon had called a chaos demon was dropped to the floor.



“We don’t want any trouble, stranger! You just get the hell out of here!” The man shouted, though his voice quivered with fear and his hands were shaking.



Aimon inclined his head, as if to say he agreed. Jake was surprised at the old world gesture. Then he remembered that Aimon hadn’t even been born in this century. It was still a little startling to see such a modern dressed man with old world mannerisms. “Peace, mortal. We should forget this ever happened, yes?” Lifting one big hand in a non threatening manner Aimon sent out a wave of something in the air.



Jake didn’t so much see it as he felt it like the slightest breeze. Maddie and the two men standing in the door blinked, turned around and went into the back kitchens. Their faces were blank, posture erect, as though they were zombies. A repulsion spell maybe? Jake thought. Like Aimon said he’d done for their mother when she would have come home to find him and Cameron gone.



Quick as a whip, Aimon turned his attention back to the three men. Jake no longer worried for their safety. It was clear these men were something other than human. The one Aimon had been choking still writhed on the floor, clutching at his belly where Aimon had touched him. The other two looked like petrified wood. It took Jake a moment to realize the men’s eyes were completely black; no white at all. He shuddered, yet another thing he wished he’d never found out. To think that such creatures could live here, interacting with humans so casually. That thing had had its ‘hooks’ in Jake from across the room and he hadn’t known.



It made him wonder just what hell had been unleashed on Earth and for how long?!



“We are sorry! So, so, so, very sorry!” the men begged, voices in perfect sync. They bowed and scraped before Aimon. “We did not see! We did not know this one was yours! Please, we mean no harm!”



“And this one,” Aimon glanced at the one writhing at his feet. The men rose as one, like Siamese twins, they scooted from the booth. They grabbed the arms of the one on the floor and began to drag him off. The man started screaming, started begging for his life. They disappeared out of a side door into the night air.



Jake was horrified. “What are they going to do to him?!” He really didn’t want to know, but then he had to.



Aimon looked at him for a moment, apparently deciding how much to tell him. “They will kill him, for daring to touch what is mine.”



He should not have felt a thrill go through him at the mention of the word ‘mine’ but Jake could not deny the lightning shock of it. He nodded, accepting what Aimon said as truth. He had a feeling that death by his hand would have been worse for that thing then if his friends had done it.



“Chaos demons,” Aimon explained before he could ask. “So like me in many ways, but not, lesser. They feed off emotions, cause confusion, and fear. They never kill though; just leave their victims feeling tired. Chaos demons are good at hiding what they are, that is why I had not felt them when we entered here. Had I been searching hard enough I would have felt the void, the shield with which they keep themselves hidden. I will not make the same mistake again. He must have saw where Jake was looking at the swinging door to the kitchen. “The staff is human. Chaos demons are very territorial. It is likely they come here all the time. Night is when they are most active. This is their hunting ground. The owner’s would only see them as regulars, a couple of friends that get together quite often over coffee.”



Jake thought that he’d certainly never have been suspicious. Until Aimon interrupted them they’d seemed like regular patrons; laughing, talking, looking human and vibrant. But he was quickly learning that things were almost never what they seemed.



“Get in the car, Jake. I wish to go check on the humans.”



Jake would have objected. He’d like to see how the staff was with his own two eyes. Not that he didn’t trust Aimon not to kill them, but he would have felt better if he could ‘see’. He was dead tired though; felt sort of like a zombie himself. Jake didn’t think he’d make it much longer being on his feet. He nodded to Aimon, and proceeded to drag his heavy limbs to the car. He got in, sat down and instantly dozed.



A few minutes later Aimon dumped a greasy bag into his lap. “Our food,” he said, starting up the car. “You need to eat.”



“I’m not hungry.” But he was already digging in the bag, rooting around for a French fry. “Where are we going?” he asked, watching Aimon reverse and head for the road.



“I’m putting miles between us and this place. I’ve used more power than I should have. As for where we are heading,” He cut his eye at Jake, who was unwrapping the foil on a burger. “I think it’s time you were educated about Wizards.”



Jake didn’t think he was hungry until he took the first bite, then he found out differently. He’d wolfed down most of the food by the time they’d crossed the border into Colorado.



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Thanks for the reviews, folks. Knowing you guys want more really inspires me to write. The guilt factor I suppose. lol
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