him like this, her understanding of him changed. He was something more than what she had known him as. Something amazing. Something undefinable.
He was extraordinary, in every sense of the word.
He was beautiful.
She watched him come back to himself with a sigh and a hard shake of his head. His whole body began to visibly shake and for a moment it seemed as though he would pass out as he lowered his arms and hung his head for a brief moment. Stepping toward her, away from the roaring flames, he slowly made his way over. The fires parted from his steps, and another shake took the gold tint out of his eyes. When he reached her side, he was Jake again. Brianna could not help but feel relieved to have him back. In his other form, she was more afraid of him than the fire or the demons.
Brianna looked around once more at the devastation, at the destruction of this place. The two men or demons or whatever they had been were nowhere to be seen. They were simply gone as if they had never existed.
Brianna knew they must be dead, or some form of dead. She didn’t know if demons could even die or not.
“But…how?” she asked him.
“They were going to kill you,” he answered.
“Okay. I…I understand that. But, Jake…how?”
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, holding the breath for a moment before blowing it out. As he did, a streamer of flame followed the exhalation from his mouth.
His eyes opened, and he was looking straight at her.
“Simple,” he answered her. “Because I am a demon, too.”
“No. Oh, no. No no no,” she whispered. It couldn’t be. Demons were evil. They were nasty. They were…well, they were ugly. Jake wasn’t any of those things. She knew he was not human, of course. But somehow she expected him to be some sort of angel or something, not a demon.
“I told you I’m complicated.” He looked around them, at what he had done, and winced. Brianna didn’t understand his reaction at first. But then she got it.
He was embarrassed and probably afraid she would take off running again.
“Jake, I—”
“No. It’s all right, Brianna. I understand. Believe me, I do. I’m a lot of things. At heart, I’m not a bad guy. But I am what I was born as. I am a demon. I wanted you to know. I just wish I could have told you some other way; preferably one that did not involve destroying everything, locking you in a cooler, and scaring the wits out of you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. If she hadn’t been standing where she was right now, hurt, shot, and surrounded by the remains of a burning building, she would have labeled Jake as a man to run from without a second thought.
But knowing what she knew now, having seen all of this, she knew Jake wasn’t crazy. And that left only one possibility. The truth.
Jake was a demon.
Did that mean he was evil? Brianna realized that she really knew nothing about demons, and the stories she had heard probably weren’t even close to the truth. For example, Jake had said that the two creepy twin demons could “hear” them. That was something she’d never heard of before. Obviously she had a lot to learn, and she found herself eager to do so against her better judgment.
He nodded as he took in the mix of emotions that crossed her face. Fear. Pain. Wonder. Shock. After observing her, he offered her his hand. “Come with me.”
It had been more of a question than a demand, and it certainly hadn’t been one of his attempts to mind rape her. It had been an offer of help. From a friend. Being asked, rather than told, to go with him somehow helped diminish some of the anxiety she was feeling about letting herself trust him.
Brianna was ready and willing to accept his help.
He smiled back at her as she stepped closer and let him slip an arm around her waist. Turning, he held his hand out in a straight line from his body. The fires around them peeled away from where they stood, creating a path for them to the edge of the street where the
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