"My brother Taryn didn’t care that he couldn’t stop himself.” Taryn? That was the name he’d mentioned earlier. Orion had tried to tell me about him. “We soon learned he’d been going out on his own. Sometimes Taryn found people with magic, sometimes he fed on anyone. He loved the rush of draining everything from his victims. He loved the kill."
Orion always acted with such determination about catching Lex. A personal mission he’d do anything to complete. It seemed like hatred and old scars fueled him on, but now I could see the pain he was ignoring.
"Oh, you told me he took someone from you too. Is it, you lost him?"
"I wanted to be just like my older brother,” Orion confirmed with a heavy nod. “I knew him better than I knew myself. And then he became someone I barely recognized. He thought this was our destiny, that Earth could become our playground where we ruled and did as we pleased. He threw off the name our mother gave him and adopted our teacher’s nickname for him, Lex. And I…"
"You, you what?" I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore.
"I was horrified,” he said. “I thought our ancestors were bad. They hurt people and bewitched them to get the energy they needed. But they meant no actual harm. They lived underfed and half crazed on the edges of society until the hunger became too strong to ignore. Yet this…” He shook his head. “This was so muchworse.I’d be so much worse. I refused to become a killer and stopped feeding on supernatural people."
Finally I could breathe again. Maybe not normally but at least I managed a few shaky breaths.
"My master first intended to get rid of evidence of his failures before returning to his planet,” Orion said. “Mar spared me when he saw I had no desire to use what he taught me ever again."
Huh. I wasn’t sure exactly what I should be thinking or feeling after all the revelations, but I thought I understood the incubus in front of me better.
Orion was more troubled than the confident, in control wealthy incubus persona let on. He had sins to atone for. In the privacy of his own home, he had no idea how to be gentle or get along with me because he kept everyone at arm’s length when not feeding and never showed himself much kindness either.
He kept everyone else out. He made sure all the other sex demons in Ashvale and the Carolinas played by the rules while he looked for opportunities to make up for his past.
Then I entered the picture and challenged him at every turn and suddenly he had to remember how to get along with someone he wasn’t superior to or charming for the night.
Just when I thought I had a handle on the situation, Orion continued.
"Rob, there’s more. I begged my master to spare my brother too. I banished him and Mar took him to Hell. That was a mistake.” He took a breath, eyes full of regret. “It gave him enough time to go after another victim, after you. If I hadn’t interfered, Tommy would still be alive. If I only had strength to kill him, but I let my love for him cloud my judgement.”
Okay, now I had to sit down as my legs buckled underneath me.
“I won’t let any more deaths be on my hands,” Orion vowed. “I will end Lex."
~
Orion
For once, I hated the silence.
Rob dropped against the wall farthest from me and stayed quiet. He had a lot to process. He hadn’t gotten very far, judging by how all the color was still drained from his face. Everything in me screamed to comfort him but the knowledge I’d be the last person he wanted kept me in place. Comforting him wasn’t my right, not anymore.
I hated the silence and causing it like this, but maybe it was better than the alternative, than whatever happened when he regained himself and it all changed. When I lost the chance to—
Rob righted himself, squared his shoulders, and crossed the distance between us. I tensed, waiting for a punch. He knelt down to my level and offered me his hand instead. I stared at it dumbly for several seconds before he just clasped it in his own.
I expected the screaming or insults to start next. Maybe punching or a magical attack. Instead, Rob held my hands in his. I stayed still, trapped by the weight of everything between us.
"I kinda thought you might be bullshitting me when you said I’m not irredeemable,” he said. “That you’ve seen worse."
"It’s possible to change.” I knew that much, even if I had no idea what was going on now. “I know that better than anyone. I have seen worse, but I’ve alsobeenworse."
“I don’t know about that, man.” His hands were so steady in my own and he cracked a smile. “You don’t seem so bad to me.”
What? How? How could he hear all that and not hate me? He knew my darkest secrets, my lowest points. That me and my family were responsible for the suffering in his. And to make matters worse, I’d been too weak and ashamed to reveal the truth and someone else delivered the news first.
"You know, we really do have a lot in common,” he mused. “We haven’t always made the right choices and got in over our heads. We have trouble resisting our vices. And if I’ve got this right, then what, you’ve been blaming yourself for Tommy’s death since I told you about him?"
I hung my head, unable to look at him. "Rob, I’m so sorry."
"That’s a yes.” He cuffed me on the chin, getting me to look up at him. Rob smiled wryly. “And see, I always blamed myself."
