Point Blank

XXI

~Archer~

'What crawled up your ass and died?' Deanne asks, grinning ear to ear as I plonk down across her at Starbucks.

'Klotho is here.'

'Shhhh.' All the playfulness in her demeanor leaves without a trace, as she looks around in dismay. 'What happened?'

I narrate Kaitie's new dream. Deanne's expression turns sourer and sourer as the dream proceeds.

'It's not you, is it?' I ask, when I'm done. 

Deanne shakes her head no.

'Well,' she says when I'm done. 'I never thought we would even last this long without getting caught.'

I raise an eyebrow.

'What? One missing king of hell, and two missing angels. Not at all easy to track down.' She sounds sarcastic as she raises her own eyebrow at me. 

'What? I did manage a low profile.'

'Okay. So, Klotho now knows Kaitie is fully mortal, and is planning to kill her physical body. This would prolong the curse.'

The moment I get my hands on Klotho, I'm going to rip her apart. With my bare hands, I tell you. 

'Which means we have little to no time to save Kaitie.'

'Not helping, Lach.' I say, and Deanne frowns at the nickname. 'What is it that we can do?'

Deanne frowns,leaning back in her chair. 'I'm sorry, Luc. My threads are powerless against Klotho's.'

I slam my fist on the table, causing the cups to rattle. Disgruntled customers look up at me, and I growl at them, my eyes flashing.

Deanne places her palm over my hand. 'Lucifer,' she warns.

It takes all of me not to explode the shop into bits. Or set my body on fire. Or yell unto the heavens.

'Lachesis.' I growl. 'Can you help me or not?'

Deanne clicks her tongue. 'Look man, it is all up to Kaitie now. It's up to her to break the curse. We did what we can, and we helped her out. There is nothing else I can do.'

'So easy to let go and say whatever, huh?'

'Archer.' Deanne sounds pissed off as hell. 'Don't you dare downplay this. You know she is all that I have. You know what all I've done, for her and for you. Don't you dare say that I'm letting her be.'

Her nostrils flare in anger. 

'You forget that she is the strongest among us. The only disability she has is that she doesn't remember. Trust me, when she does get her memories back about what Klotho did, things are going to get ugly.'

I feel guilty. Trust Deanne to make me feel this way. 'I know, and I am sorry okay. It's just, it's been so long, L. I've missed being with her, and right now, she was letting me in, you know.'

I think about yesterday. How her body fit into mine. How her lips found my heart. How her soul bent for me, taking me in as I lounged in her aura, her beauty spilling into me. 

She had let me in, and though she might think it was her idea to help her forget, it was much, much bigger than that. Even though her mortal form hates my mortal form, her soul recognizes me. She tried so hard to fight the attraction between us. It was evident in the way her thoughts degraded me every single time. She wanted to hate me. She wanted to put that distance between us. She wanted to stay away.

I had waited an eternity for yesterday. To feel her skin in mine. She made me complete, made me a whole angel. She did not know it yet, but she owned me, from the moment she set eyes on me, seven thousand millennia ago.

I am the king of hell, and she was my queen. 

She was the one who could handle my moods, soothe me with her touch, protect me with her power as much as I protected her.

She was very, very close to being with me again, and I'd be damned if I let that Klotho bitch steal that away from me.

I am Lucifer, the King of Hell, Satan, the fallen angel, the most powerful demon, and I always protect what's mine.

And Kaitie McBarrow is mine.

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