“I go first.” Raziel said when the pair stood over the sleeping young man a little while later, she looked down at her slightly shorter sister, her steady eyes brooked no argument, and normally that was enough.

Not so easily this time.

“Why?” Lialah demanded, her arm moved of its own accord and her hand clasped Raziel by the wrist, keeping her from raising it without a struggle. She looked up at her sister and would not avert her gaze without an answer.

Raziel shook her sister’s hand away, twisting against the weakest part of the hold where her slender fingertips met. “Because I’m stronger than you. Because if some part of him resists, I can take him, because if something goes wrong, a demon is better suited to dealing with that than an angel. Because I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you, and because you…”

She hesitated and then rushed the words out, grabbing her sister’s wrist as Lialah had done to her a moment ago. “Because between the two of us, you have a better chance at survival here without me, than I do without you.”

That caught Lialah by surprise, ‘If it’s one thing she can do, it’s survive…’

Raziel’s lip turned up in a crooked little smile. “Angels are beloved here too, if something went really, really wrong, and you had to run? Appear in the nearest church, set yourself up as a divine messenger, and you’ll be fine. Or run off to some poor lonely soul and comfort them. You’ll charm their hearts and live out your days in peace. You would be celebrated, I would be hunted. I’m not complaining, that is just how things are. So, I’ll go first.”

Lialah pouted a little, “You always get your way.”

“I wish.” Raziel replied with a snort. “If this doesn’t work, we will try again tomorrow, but I don’t want to waste a day.”

“Fine, just be careful.” Lialah said and watched with one handed folded into the other in front of her waist.

Raziel’s wings spread outward, they beat a few times, and her body moved to hover over the sleeping young man. “Thanks again, Albaer, I owe you.” She said, and slowly dropped down on top of him, he stirred as she straddled his body, her knees coming down to either side of his waist, she lowered her head down and touched her forehead against his. A complex array of syllables that roughly translated would have meant [Demonic Trait], [Possession], and she felt her body begin to lose its substance.

She looked at her arms, they were already transparent after only a few seconds, her body lost its weight and she could see through her vanishing limbs that the place where her knees depressed the mattress had bounced back into form.

For a few moments her vision darkened entirely, and then she could see everything clearly. She was staring upward at the ceiling.

She moved her limbs, they were very human, she moved her hands, turning them out and back again. She wiggled the fingers, they moved the way she wanted.

“It worked.” Raziel said and sat up. “So this is how Albaer’s body feels.”

“You would say it like that.” Lialah said, she had a hand on her ample chest and she was breathing deep sighs of relief. “I’m so glad it worked.”

“This does make me think of one thing though… how did he know I’ll give his body back?” Raziel asked after planting her feet on the floor and standing up.

“That’s easy.” Lialah replied, “He didn’t.”

“Damn.” Raziel said, and whistled.

“Right. Go ahead, but take care of it, I’ll wait here in case his mother returns… she’s like a ghost.” Lialah pointed toward the door, “Go ahead, we don’t know how long this will last, but don’t run too hard.”

“Right, right…” Raziel said and put her hand over the solid chest of the host body, his heartbeat was quite different from that of a demon. Slower, with a steady rhythm, reminding her of her favorite river’s constancy of current.

“Wish me luck.” She made Albaer’s face smile and caught a reflection of it on the screen of the television. ‘He has a nice smile.’ She thought, and took a few tentative steps, then a few confident ones, then a few longer ones. And finally she was out the front door with a solid long stride that became a jog that became a run.

His body was in fairly good shape, as her arms and legs pumped, she touched the flesh beneath his shirt and found it to be far more solid than she initially believed. Raziel wondered about that for several minutes until it hit her. ‘The beatings. His body was toughening up… warrior training?’ She dismissed the optimistic thought as the wind she ran against continued to pound his face, warriors to be, they were typically enthusiastic about their growing strength.

Albaer was not.

She ran on, and on, and on. The minutes carried her forward over miles and still his body kept up, little by little she could feel her own frame benefiting from the effort she was putting into his.

It was the waning hours of the evening on this world, a red sky against which sat a fading orange tinted sun, itself behind some distant clouds, stragglers from the recent rain.

Raziel felt all her stress, all her worries, all her fears melt away under the pounding feel of his curious footwear over pavement. The shoes he wore were odd to say the least, and it occurred to her, ‘We forgot to buy shoes. I can’t ask him for money for that… we’ll just use the ones we have.’ She saw a few people walking past, and they all had different forms of footwear, her own might look a bit out of place, but she had to ask, ‘How often do you really look at another person’s shoes?’

That was well and good, and perked her mood up immediately over the tiny hill of brief self recrimination over forgetting something as basic as footwear suited to this new world.

But the world conspired to ruin it when she heard a voice she knew.

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“Albyboy! Miss your daddy! You’re running away because your dirtbag daddy died?! Huh?!” The voice was deep, masculine, and Raziel knew it form his memories.

‘Albaer doesn’t want to fight.’ She told herself, and ignored the voice.

But it rankled.

She heard the footsteps behind her, he was chasing Albaer.

Chasing him.

Chasing her.

He was chasing her.

Raziel began to feel the rushing pulse of the human body she possessed, the steady heartbeat had increased during the run, but it grew even greater when the sense of being pursued came over it.

‘Just ignore it, just ignore it, just ignore it. He doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wants to be left alone. And what if you lose? He’ll get hurt, maybe bad, and it’ll be all your fault! How will you make that up to him after he entrusted you with his body?!’

So she ran.

The pace slowed, relief overtook her. ‘Who knows what kinds of warrior arts humans are capable of?’

“Go on, run away Albyboy, just like your daddy did from you! Bet your mom wants out, maybe she’ll suck me off for a bus ticket away from the ‘Bad Seed’!”

‘Thank goodness he’s asleep inside, I couldn’t bear to watch it…’ She thought with relief.

She finally hit what she felt was a good turnaround point and began to jog back.

Her pace slowed some for the uphill jog, which proved a bit of a strain on the muscles. ‘Still, this has to be about four of their miles. I’ll just have to tell Lialah to go the opposite direction to avoid trouble-’

Raziel was so lost in thought that she didn’t know why she was falling until the pain hit ‘twice’. The side of Albaer’s knee, and then on the palms of his hands which she’d used to protect his face.

From the side, there was a string of laughs, familiar laughs from memories she’d seen in the first sharing. She pushed his body up, and glared over at them. “Gonna cwai? Go wun an cwai! Maybe ask daddy to teach you how to fight! Pussy!” Pointed fingers and stupid laughs, she looked them over, giving them a practiced assessment.

There were four of them, all male, dressed in short sleeve shirts in a rainbow of colors, and knee length shorts of black, gray, and tan, and white shoes. They were a little larger than Albaer in body, but not noticeably, and a look at a few told her it definitely wasn’t all muscle.

She picked up the stick that had been thrown like a spear and hefted it in both hands. The lack of reaction from ‘Albaer’ seemed to embolden them, this area was empty at present, leaving them all briefly alone.

“It wasn’t a bad throw. But I really don’t want to fight. I’m trying to keep a promise.” She said and rubbed the side of the knee where she’d been struck. ‘No serious damage, Lialah can heal it before going out. Even at ‘Square One’ she has that much power.’

Raziel watched them approach, ‘If I start to run before the knee feels better, they might get me from behind. Never let them get you from behind.’ She told herself as they came closer.

“You never fight, that’s what makes this so-” The largest of the four was cut off in mid sentence when Raziel reflexively lashed out, she thrust the stick faster than their eyes could follow, and got the blunt end of it directly in his eye.

He fell backward and landed on his behind, his hand clutching at his face and rocking back and forth, “My eye?! You hit me in the eye!”

‘Okay, you’re committed, I’ll apologize later.’ Raziel understood at that moment that she had no other choice, no wings, no magic, but the body she controlled was a good one. And more importantly, she had her instincts from her education at home. An education that included hand to hand combat training from the time she could walk.

And the demoness was unleashed.

The stick came out while stupid faces were still looking confused, it cracked across a second jaw, sending the wounded tumbling into a third, and as they fell in a heap she jumped at the fourth. This one, she had to admit, at least had instincts. He tried to swing and strike Albaer’s body, but she thrust out her elbow, catching him in the crook of his arm, sending it careening backward and then using the same arm to land a strike at his throat.

He fell to his knees, choking and grabbing at the place she’d struck when she used Albaer’s knee to hit him in the nose. A spray of blood went out.

“Mah node! You bwoke mah node!” He yowled from on the ground, while the others were rising, she held the stick in both hands, raised it up, and they had a single look of unmitigated horror at what they saw.

Albaer’s eyes were soft, gentle and brown.

But there they saw the bloody red of his demonic possessor, and a mask of endless hatred twisted across his snarling face as she used his body to bring the stick down again, and again, and again.

Until those three fell limp and unmoving, leaving only the first, who was finally staggering to his feet. Fear was etched on his face, his friends were unconscious, or so he hoped that was all it was. He found himself ensnared in the unblinking eyes of the angry demon, he took a step back, the stick thrust out, hitting him in the sternum, he fell, hacking, coughing.

Raziel grabbed the dark mop of hair and tilted his head back, he yelped at the sudden pull at his scalp, but couldn’t tear away from the grasping hand.

“You will never touch Albaer again. You will never speak to him, you will look away when you see him. Neither you nor your friends will ever cast your eyes toward him again, or I will take those eyes away.” Raziel growled down at him.

Confusion, fear, and pain were etched on his face, his mouth was open, but his head was shaky and no words came out, only hard breathing as he tried to make sounds other than huffing.

She gave his head a violent shake. “Tell me you understand!”

‘What is this… this isn’t Albaer… it sounds like him, it looks like him except for the eyes… but it isn’t…’ Taylor’s mind was a rushing stream of consciousness fixated on a path of horror and dismay. His friends moved ‘a little’ where they’d fallen, but the merciless beating they’d taken while on the ground would not be easily recovered from. The sound of cracking bone had reached his ears more than once in those few seconds, and now he had only himself to fear for.

“Please… please…” He whimpered and tried to raise his shaking hands.

“Tell me you understand me…” The low voice growled like gravel through a woodchipper.

“I-I yes, I won’t, I understand… I’ll tell them the same… I promise!” Taylor answered.

“Good. As for your trash friends, they’ll live. And you’re going to tell people that you got into a fight with each other, and that it went too far. Albaer, he was never here.” Raziel insisted again.

“Albaer was never here.” He repeated, the merciless bright red glowed like a red moon at night, and all he could think of was his desire to leave this spot.

The hand released its hold over his hair, and Raziel turned away, then threw the stick up on top of a nearby roof.

Raziel did not run the rest of the way back home, rather it was a steady, constant light jog, and she found her sister waiting on her just as she expected, inside the room they shared with Albaer.

No sooner than Raziel entered than Lialah knew something was amiss.

“Just heal me up, I’ll explain everything, then you can take his body out for a test run. It’s really pretty good, if he’ll ever let us teach him how to use it he might make a passable fighter.” Raziel said and waited under the disapproving frown of her sister while the most basic form of healing magic did its work.