“Ow,” I say, lying down on my bed. The simple act of brushing my teeth nearly brought me to my knees. I grunt, trying to get comfortable by turning and lying on my back. It has been a little over seven months since I received the most devastating wounds of my life. I was beaten so badly that my mom had to step in and save me. The fight was against a full demon named Rhal. I say ‘full demon', because I myself am not. My name is Mikael Balthazar and I am your average six foot two garden variety half-demon. We, of demonspawn lineage, are not as strong as a lot of full demons, which is the reason for the distinction. I had a pretty sobering lesson on that front in the not so distant past. Rhal had a blood oath to kill me and everyone I have ever known and I really didn’t want that to happen. But, I also couldn’t stop him like I wanted. He nearly pulled me in half just like he did to another full demon I witnessed him fight. It was pretty much my biggest fear and I almost realized it.

I still get nauseated when the whole ordeal flashes through my mind. As it ended, my arms were just hanging on by strips of skin and a few connected tendons. My legs were paralyzed by magic and he wanted to disable me to eat me while I was still alive. There is not much scarier than a sentient creature that wants to eat you and tells you as much. But, luckily, it didn’t happen. So, I have been laying around the last few months trying to get back to where I can be fully independent again. Finishing my stunted movements, I try to relax while pain spikes in my extremities and my muscles twitch, trying to settle.

How you doing buddy? I ask my demon. He is my other half in a very real sense and he has been really quiet for the past few months–since the fight really. He gave it his all–we both did. Rhal, however, was just too strong for us. Way too strong. Even burning. We were completely engaged in a demonic transformation, and more focused than we have ever been, and we lost. Badly. Burning is what I call it when my demon and I combine our mind and body in a unified front. It gives us added strength, combat prowess, durability and, yes, we do actually burn. With all of that going for us, he still tore through us like toilet paper. At what we thought was the end, my demon retreated, fully prepared to die. He took it pretty bad.

he says in a growl. We talk a lot more than we used to. I used to keep him locked away and he would rage whenever he was released. But we have come to an agreement, him and I. If I were to use his power without consent, he would get closer to being the dominant personality. I don’t really want that to be the case, so I try not to call on him for a lot. We do burn when training, though. Well, we would, but we haven’t been able to transform and train since we lost our fight. Our relationship has become more cordial, but right now, he is a little pouty.

Brimstone, the Hellhound I adopted before my fight, comes over and I try to bat them away. They normally have an enormous figure that looks like black molten stone with lava flows running in between, but they also take a more subdued canine form–which is what they are in now. Looking like a mixture between the height of an Irish Wolfhound and the muscle mass of an English Mastiff, they still carve an intimidating figure like this. I don’t want their affection at the moment, but trying to push the massive hound, even in their dog form, is like pushing against a brick wall after an extraneous arm and chest day at the gym–It does nothing but hurt me. The hound tried to help me in the fight against Rhal, but got knocked around as well. Oddly enough, I also fought them a few days prior to my fight with Rhal. It’s a long story–but now we’re good.

(Master needs wounds licked,) they say. They have been getting a bigger vocabulary since we bonded. I named them when I decided to keep them and didn’t realize that ‘bonding’ was an actual process with a Hellhound. Another thing I didn’t know was that they could hear my demon and I both, even when I was talking in my head and not out loud. There isn’t really anything I can keep from the Hound and, honestly, I am okay with it.

“Please don’t,” I say, as my arms give out, but the pleading does me no good. They lick my face and there is nothing I can do about it. “My face isn’t hurt,” I say after they pause for a moment. “Get your licks in while you can, B. When I’m well again, it won’t be so easy,” I say resignedly. They mostly ignore my protests, their tail wagging away until they feel they have expressed their love enough.

“Would you leave him alone?” Anna says and bumps them away with her hip. Brimstone huffs, licks their mouth, and lays down by my feet. “I told you you shouldn’t be moving without help. Now, let me help you lie back and check out your shoulders.” Anna is my girlfriend. We have been dating since right before I was injured and we’ve had a somewhat rocky start to the relationship. By ‘rocky start’ I mean things like my half-demon lineage, mind manipulations, my old boss, and wizard civil wars getting in the way. She has been helping to take care of me and, while I may not show it when she is checking my pain, I really appreciate it.

I grumble at her chastising tone but she helps me lie down on my back again and removes the blanket that was thrown over me. She takes a cold washcloth and wipes my face clean of the Hellhound’s kisses, then sets it down to put some pressure on my shoulders. Her cool hands on my chest cause the muscles to flex involuntarily. They twitch and I want to groan. The spasms do sting, but I can see the corners of her mouth twitch up when it happens. So I play up my injuries.

“You did that on purpose,” I whine. She smiles more broadly.

“Oh stop,” she says, continuing to rub my chest and shoulders. A small growl rumbles in my throat as she massages the muscles, trying to relieve some of the soreness. Her cheeks take on some color before she turns her head away.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says, still turned away.

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“Oh, come on. What’s up?”

“I… Like that sound that you made.” She glances at me sidelong, her smile turning devilish. I grab her hand on my chest and pull it to my side. She leans down with the motion. I kiss her on the forehead and she lies on my chest. This has been a process to get through, but she has been here helping me without complaint. I mean, I’ve been beaten up before–a lot actually–but I’ve never had someone to comfort me like this afterward. This has been my life since that fight and I can’t say that I hate it. The pain and nearly being literally disarmed, I could do without. But the company… The company has been great.

“Growling?” I laugh. “Oh, if only I could show you a real growl right now.”

She swings a leg over my waist and straddles me. Leaning down, she kisses my cheek and I can feel her breath on my neck. “I’m perfectly good up here,” she whispers in my ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to show me? Wouldn’t the dopamine help with your aches?”

“I wouldn’t say I ‘don’t want’ to, and you make a very strong case. Are you a biologist?”

“I think you mean neuroscientist,” she says with a snort. She starts to sit back up, but I sling my arms around her and hold her close to me with everything I’ve got–damn the pain.

She leans back down and laughs, her face close to mine. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

I turn her head to the side with my chin and bite her neck lightly. “It’s worth it,” I say between bites. She lets out a whimpering sigh, but pushes a hand against my chest and sits up.

“Heal first, then we can continue where we left off. We’ve waited a year and a half. We can wait a little longer,” she says. She must be counting from when we first tried to have a date. I screwed that up miserably.

I frown exaggeratedly. “Fine,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest in a pout and then immediately regretting the gesture when the soreness hits. “Ow.”

“See?”

“Yes,” I say with a sigh. “I see.”

I can feel the nervous energy in my roommate’s aura as he stands on the other side of the door. Vithar, my roommate, is my ‘apprehensive wizard turned close friend’. He helped me with some stuff almost two years back. After that, he was a fugitive from the local wizard’s guild. He came and stayed with me and I haven’t been able to get rid of him since. I’m just kidding, he is probably my best friend–just don’t tell my hound.

“You can come in, dude,” I say aloud.

The door opens slowly and a shock of messy red hair precedes Vithar’s pale as he peeks his head in. “Hey guys, are you decent?”

“Not if I can help it,” I say. The bad joke elicits an eye roll and a light slap to my stomach from Anna.

“I was just checking on his shoulders,” she says to him.

“Checking out my shoulders more like it. I can’t get her off of me, dude.” She hits me again and her cheeks take on color. With a sheepish grin, she moves to sit on the bed next to me instead of on my waist.

“Yeah, that must be awful,” Vithar deadpans, rolling his eyes and stepping all the way in. “Anyway, Reggie messaged me.”

“Mr. October himself?” I ask, perking up. “What did he want?”

“He was wondering how you were doing. When I told him you’re still mostly bedridden, he said you should be able to be more active. He wants to come by again and check you out with something I can’t remember the name of. He said it will give him ‘The ability to see under the tissue on a deeper level.’”

“Bedridden? Don’t make me sound like I have TB in seventeen-hundreds England, jeez. It’s hard moving around without the full use of your arms.”

“There are people who are born without arms and legs,” he says with a shrug.

“You,” I begin, but realize I don’t really have a comeback for that. “Shut up,” I finish, definitively winning the conversation in my head. “What did you tell him?” Reginald ‘Reggie’ Jackson, or ‘Mr. October’ as I sometimes ironically call him, is a wizard in the local branch of the wizard’s guild here in Toledo, OH. He is a short, thin, pale kinda guy with dark colored messy hair. We have had some run-ins that were not so friendly and he and Vithar used to be close. He came to us to seek asylum when the guildhouse was dealing with an attempted coup. That is how we found out that some bad demons and some bad wizards were working together. He was in my house coordinating the counterattack on the guild while I was off getting the bejeezus whooped out of me–and I can’t thank him enough. He kept the whole thing from turning upside down and kept people important to me safe when I couldn’t.

“I told him I would talk to you,” he says with a shrug.

With a deep sigh, I tilt my head from side to side trying to gauge if I am up for a visit from the wizard. Ultimately, what could it hurt? “Yeah, tell him to come by. Maybe something went wrong and he can figure it out.”

“Right-o,” Vithar says, thick with his accent. He turns and leaves the room.

“Now, where were we?” I say, trying my best mischievous grin.

Anna looks at her watch. “You were realizing that I was right, and I was just leaving for work,” she says.

I groan in response. Sitting up to my elbows, I feel the weight of my body stretching the muscles. It stings, but I am really tired of lying around. “Do you have to?”

“Not all of us have wizard bosses that pay us to take time off,” she says, then blanches. “That sounded meaner than I meant it to, I’m sorry.”

“No, I get it,” I say, but the comment did sting a little. Ephraim, my boss, has been keeping me on his payroll since I got injured. It was an unexpected gesture and I am very appreciative. It has kept me in my home.

“You know I’ll be here right after work,” Anna says.

“Yeah, I know.”

She leans down to kiss me once more and I return it. “We’ll see what Reggie can do for you. I hope it’s something good.”

“Me too,” I say as she pulls up. I grab her hand when she turns. “Hey, I like you a lot.”

“I like you a lot too,” she says, squeezing my hand gently. “I’ll be back later. Don’t be mean to him.”

“To who?”

She squints her eyes in a glare. “Mike…”

“I make no promises,” I respond, knowing she is talking about my back and forth relationship with Reggie. “Have a good day.”

“You too,” she says, leaving the room.

Brimstone lifts their head and looks at me. (Master needs more help?)

“No, you’ve done enough, thanks. I just need to rest.”

They huff and lie their head back down. I do the same and close my eyes.