Demon Lover Read online

  That sounds like you feel your own sexual desire, Autumn thought impatiently, but she wasn’t going to push him to say it. He clearly didn’t believe it was possible, and who was she to contradict the person who’d been doing this for millennia?

  Placated either way, Autumn tipped her chin up and gave him a gentle kiss. “Because you’re mine,” she told him.

  His eyes turned black. I’m not there, yet, Autumn thought with a spur of hope. This is yours. Even so, the sight of him surrendering to need stoked an answering arousal in Autumn. She was too hopeful, too happy, to tease. She pressed her lips to his, sliding her hand down to find his erect length and guide him into her. They rocked together, clinging, kissing. Climax came in drawn out, languid waves. Autumn saw the bright blue veil wrap around them, but this time she didn’t sense the darkness filled with hollow faces.

  Irdu recovered more quickly, his eyes already receding back to their normal blue irises and elliptical pupils when Autumn opened her eyes. She brushed her fingertips along his brow, taking in the earnest affection in his gaze, the relaxed set of his harsh features.

  “It’s getting late,” Irdu told her softly.

  She reached for her phone to check the time. It was two hours later than she would normally go to sleep, which meant she’d get less than six hours of sleep. Even so, she changed her morning alarm to go off earlier. “Will you come to me when I dream?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  She clicked her lamp out and lay in Irdu’s arms, waiting for sleep to wash over her. The contentment she felt in his arms went so far above and beyond what she thought she’d had with Dylan that it was almost laughable now. Had she really thought to marry him some day?

  On the heels of that thought, a darker one came to her—you’ll never marry Irdu. No matter how happy they were together, someday, maybe soon, they would be parted from each other. She let out a pained breath.

  “Are you alright?” Irdu’s deep voice rumbled next to her ear.

  You promised you’d give me everything. Don’t lie to me. “No. I’m worried about losing you.”

  His arms tightened around her, but he was silent. There was nothing he could say.

  7

  “Hello, love.” Irdu wore his human face again—swarthy skin, broken nose, warm brown eyes. His black hair curled messily, blowing around his face in a teasing wind. She didn’t bother telling him to get rid of the illusion. He wanted to be human for a little while, and she was grateful that she was the person he could do that with.

  They sat at the top of a mud-brick ziggurat, overlooking the bustling streets of an ancient city. The city was encircled by a tall wall. From their vantage point above the ziggurat, Autumn could see the green farm fields outside the city walls, cut through with snaking irrigation canals. Down in the city streets, people and animals streamed past covered market stalls.

  “Is this where…”

  “Borsippa,” Irdu confirmed.

  Autumn inhaled sharply. “Why would you want to bring me here?”

  “You often ask about what the world was like when I was human. It’s easier to show than tell. What do you think?”

  “It’s fascinating. But macabre, considering what happened to you here.” Autumn turned her gaze back to city. “Can we walk in the streets?”

  Irdu took her hand, and suddenly they stood on the edges of a packed-earth street in the shadow of a towering wall. A man and woman passed by them, dressed in brightly colored robes, elaborately draped, belted at the waist, and decorated with tassels and fringe. Their dark hair was fashioned into curls, elaborately worked metal jewelry encircled their throats, fingers, wrists. Up ahead, less finely dressed people made up the bulk of the crowd, wearing shorter, belted robes and little jewelry. Laborers—men—dressed only in wrapped loincloths stood atop the wall, heaving bricks into place.

  “It’s not perfect,” he told her. “My memory is a little hazy.”

  “Well, it’s been several thousand years,” Autumn allowed.

  Irdu took her hand and pulled her towards the stretched awnings of a street market. Goats, chickens, and stray dogs milled among the people. They passed another temple, a square building, towering high above the street, but nowhere near as tall as the ziggurat they’d just left. Bas-relief sculptures decorated the walls leading up to the temple.

  “What’s that?”

  “The temple of Inanna.”

  Autumn stiffened beside him. Inanna—the very figure whose descent into the Underworld may provide the clues Autumn needed to… what? Save Irdu? Was it even possible? She glanced sidelong at him.

  Irdu’s gaze traveled over the city street, his expression remote.

  “Does it bother you to remember this?” Autumn asked.

  “I tried to wait for you to dream of a place you remembered. But your dreams were strange tonight. Darkness and faces…”

  “I can try to show you something.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Once I enter your dream state, only I—”

  Autumn ignored him, concentrating on the image of her paternal grandparents’ home. The ancient city whispered away like smoke, and suddenly the two of them were standing in the living room of a small Chicago bungalow. The walls were wood-paneled, and the shag carpet beneath their feet was some indeterminate color between green and brown. Kitschy green owls hung above a red brick fireplace. The mustard yellow couch and armchair were patterned with orange and brown flowers.

  Irdu blinked. “How did you—?” He stared at their surroundings. “You shouldn’t be able to do this!”

  “You also said I shouldn’t be able to remember you, and that I shouldn’t be able to break the dream state, and look at us now.”

  Irdu’s expression turned speculative. “You’re… different. In every way.”

  Autumn smiled, pleased. “Come on, I’ll show you my grandma and grandpa’s house.” She took him on a tour of a house she hadn’t seen in more than a decade. She brought him to the kitchen and showed him where her grandma had always stored black and white duplex cookies in a glass cookie jar above the fridge. She showed him the upstairs closet that she used to turn into a fort with blankets and pillows. She brought him to the bedroom she’d always slept in when she spent the weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s. She bounced happily onto the twin bed, snatching up the colorful afghan blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders.

  Irdu eased down next to her. He looked around the small room—at Grandma’s collection of ceramic cats on the bookshelf, the crate of 45s next to the record player, a framed poster of Elvis, the stuffed animals clustered on the bed.

  He picked up one of the stuffed animals, a purple monkey she’d named Gulliver. “What were you like as a child?” he asked.

  “Happier,” Autumn said. “I always liked art. I was always drawing. I liked animals a lot. I used to think I wanted to be a vet.” She glanced at him, at the careful way he handled her mangy old stuffed animal. “What were you like?”

  He was quiet for a moment. He set Gulliver back amongst the other stuffed animals. “I don’t remember much. My parents were… farmers, maybe? Not the owners of a farm, but laborers. Perhaps slaves.”

  Autumn leaned against him, offering silent comfort.

  “I remember my father’s death. I was young enough that I didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation until long after, when I finally realized that he was gone. Forever.”

  Autumn wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry you’ve been dealt such a horrible hand. I wish I could—”

  —save you. But she didn’t say it out loud. Tomorrow she would get some answers. She’d figure something out.

  Irdu turned to her. “It hasn’t been horrible. Not lately.” He kissed her gently. He looked at her, his expression inscrutable. He leaned in and kissed her again, deeper, longer. Gently, he eased her onto her back.

  “Not under my grandma’s roof!” Autumn gasped as his lips trailed down her throat. “If she saw you getting frisky with h
er granddaughter, she’d whack you with the big ladle!”

  Irdu continued kissing his way across her collarbone. “Let me be with you like this—as a man instead of a monster.”

  Autumn touched his cheek, tried to make him look her in the eye. “You’re not a monster,” she said fervently.

  He took her mouth again, kissing her into wordless acquiescence. When he broke away, they were both breathing hard. “Do you accept the covenant of fornication?” he asked.

  Autumn drew back, concerned. “Why are you asking this again?”

  “I have to in the dream state.”

  She regarded him for a moment. She didn’t like the hollowness in his eyes. She’d do anything to take it away. “I accept.”

  They undressed each other slowly, kissing and tasting every inch of bared skin. Autumn traced her fingers and lips over his warm, human skin—deeply bronzed, and bare of tattoos or piercings. She kissed a mouth that lacked fangs. She ran her fingers through curling hair uninterrupted by horns. When his eyes glazed with lust, they remained a warm, rich brown. The physical differences disarmed her, but she gave herself over to him as fully as ever.

  They moved together with familiar ease, hips rocking together as his body entered hers. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close as he drove into her, trying to touch him everywhere, hold him as tightly as she possibly could.

  “Irdu, Irdu…” she chanted his name with the reverence of prayer, trying to convey to him how much he—whether human or demon—meant to her. She wanted him to lose himself in her. That he wanted her for his own needs, independent of her desire, filled her with a chaotic swell of emotions—pleasure, love, pride, hope.

  He thrusts came more erratically, and suddenly he shuddered and buried himself deep inside of her, and she felt the hot flood of his release. The pleasure of it brought her to her own climax and they gasped and arched together in the throes of it.

  Later, he lay beside her, stroking her hair, staring distantly.

  “You came before I did,” Autumn said.

  “That can’t be…” He continued to stare.

  “You did. I felt it.”

  “I…” He shook his head. Giving up on words, he pulled Autumn tightly to him. They lay together in stunned, sated silence, feeling the pound of their hearts.

  Autumn woke to the sound of her alarm. She was still in Irdu’s arms, just as she’d been in their dream. She reached up to touch his cheek, stroke her thumb across his lip. She felt the point of one fang.

  “Good morning,” he said, lips moving against her fingers. He reached over her, grabbed her phone, and turned off the alarm. “You set it earlier than yesterday,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “I want more than a few minutes with you. The days are getting longer—sunrise comes a little earlier every morning, and sunset comes a little later every night.”

  They lay together in pleasant silence. The events of the dream weighed heavy in Autumn’s mind. He’d come on his own, without her orgasm pushing him over. Did that mean anything? Or were the rules of the dream state different than physical reality?

  When the sky began to lighten, Autumn clung tightly to Irdu. “Don’t leave,” she whispered.

  Irdu touched her cheek. “I have to.”

  And then he was gone. Autumn was alone in her bed, tangled in blankets that still radiated Irdu’s warmth. She sat up slowly, wearily.

  “I think I love you,” she whispered to the empty room.

  8

  “So, the thing about Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld, is that it’s commonly misread as a story of triumph over death, and a celebration of the power of Inanna, a goddess of life-affirming qualities like sex.” Dr. Leila Kader sat across from Autumn at a little cafe table. She paused to take a drink of her latte before continuing. “But it’s actually a demonstration of the Underworld’s power and the irrevocability of certain consequences. Inanna dies when she enters the Underworld. She’s only saved because her father—the most powerful god in the pantheon—intervenes. And even once she’s revived and escaped the Underworld, another must take her place—another god. In this story, even gods cannot totally thwart death. So really, Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld is not an adventure story about an intrepid heroine escaping death. It’s about an entitled bitch who got what was coming to her because she thought she was above the consequences.”

  Autumn’s hopeful bubble burst. “Oh,” she said heavily.

  “Sorry, excuse my language. I get in the habit of livening up lectures—”

  Autumn waved away her apology. “I’m not offended. It’s just that this interpretation really defeats the point of my project.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Liz said you’re an artist. You’re doing something involving Inanna?”

  “Well, I was hoping to. I’m not really sure, now. Speaking of which…” Autumn reached into her bag and pulled out her sketchbook. She flipped to the page where she’d drawn Irdu’s tattoos and handed it over. “Do these look like anything to you?”

  “Hmm… interesting.” Dr. Kader leaned over Autumn’s sketchbook, examining Autumn’s painstaking transcriptions of Irdu’s tattoos.

  “Is it cuneiform?” Autumn asked.

  “Yes, it’s definitely cuneiform.” Leila adjusted her glasses, peering closer. “Early Akkadian, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Can you read it?”

  She touched one of the symbols. “This is the ideogram for ‘night.’” She tapped another. “This is ‘death.’ Here we have ‘slave.’ And ‘body.’ A few of these I’m not certain about. This one could be ‘man’ but there appears to be some sort of modifier added onto it. And this one I’m not familiar with, but it looks similar to the ideogram for ‘power.’” Leila’s brows shot up. “Well, well. I believe this is the ideogram for the god Nabu.”

  Autumn went perfectly still. Nabu. The god for whom the tower in Borsippa had been built.

  “And… strange. This is definitely the ideogram for Inanna.” She frowned. “They’re from the same pantheon, but you don’t often see those two deities paired in Mesopotamian cosmology.”

  “Does it form a sentence?”

  “I’d have to check it against some references. Can I take a photo?”

  “Sure.”

  Leila brought out her phone and snapped a picture of Autumn’s sketchbook page. “I’ll look at these and get back to you.”

  “That’d be great. Thank you so much!”

  Leila handed the sketchbook back to Autumn and drained the last of her coffee. “Well, thanks again for listening to me go on. You can keep the books as long as you want.”

  Autumn scooped up the books Leila had brought for her—a primer on the Mesopotamian pantheon of gods, a collection of Mesopotamian myths, and Leila’s dissertation on Inanna’s descent into the Underworld. “Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. This is going to be really helpful.”

  “Of course. When you’re done with your project, I’d love to see it.”

  “Oh. Right.” Autumn cleared her throat. “Definitely. I’ll let you know.”

  When she got home from work, she turned her key slowly, filled with a mixture of anticipation and fear. She nudged her door open and peered into the dim quiet of her apartment.

  Irdu sat in the cozy chair next to her dresser, tail draped over his knee, flipping through one of her books. He looked up and smiled at her.

  “You’re home.”

  “Hello,” she said, unable to keep the relief from her voice. She kicked off her shoes and bounded over to him. Easing onto the arm of the chair, she looked down at the book in his hands. It was a photography book entitled Kinship. The photographer had traveled the United States, taking candid portraits of families of all different compositions and definitions.

  Irdu had the page open to a group of traveling circus performers sitting at a picnic table behind an aluminum trailer house. One man was on the tabletop, wearing a white undershirt and ripped jeans, doing a hands
tand on one hand with a cigarette clamped between his lips. A woman in a silk kimono and beat-up cowboy boots leaned over with a zippo to light his cigarette. The rest of their group looked on, smiling and laughing.

  Autumn stared at the image, feeling her throat constrict. She pushed off the arm of the chair and picked her shoes back up. She stepped into them.

  “What are you doing?” Irdu set the book aside.

  “I’m taking you somewhere where there are other people.”

  His eyes went wide. “What?”

  “You’ll have to wear a hat. And a big coat. And… maybe some makeup?”

  “I still won’t look even remotely human.”

  “We’ll go somewhere dark. A movie theater, maybe.”

  “You can’t be serious. Autumn. Look at me. I will never be able to—”

  Autumn grabbed her bag. “Wait here—I’ll be right back.”

  “What are you—”

  “Just wait here. Please?”

  Irdu sighed. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but this isn’t going to work.”

  “It will. I’m an artist, remember?”

  “Even the greatest artists can’t change reality,” Irdu said wearily.

  Autumn gave him a pitying look. “Aw, darling. That’s exactly what we do.” She whisked out the door and raced off into the night.

  It took her precisely thirty-seven minutes to race to the strip mall four blocks away, burst into the Big and Tall menswear store, buy clothing, sprint down the strip to the drug store, buy a tube of color correcting makeup and foundation and a pair of sunglasses, pay for them, and race back to her apartment.

  When she burst back in, Irdu was sitting in the chair, chin braced on his hand, looking agitated.

  “Here!” She dumped the shopping bags on her bed and began rifling through them. “This stuff might be a little big on you, but better than too small.” She plucked up a pair of cargo pants and tossed them at him. “You’ll have to tuck your tail down one of the pants legs. Sorry they’re not exactly the height of fashion. I was aiming for concealment rather than elegance.”