Page 1

M y Renewed Beginning

His entire life, the whole thirty minutes of it, Rafferty had not known what he looked like. He had dreaded getting up off that kitchen floor where he had been born, a new and complete adult human; he didn’t want to see. He would have continued to lie there if the woman he trusted with his entire being hadn’t pulled him to his feet.

“Rafferty, come on,” she urged, backing up until her shapely backside bumped the counter behind her. She had gotten dressed, having run into her bedroom to put on the clothes she now wore, while he had remained naked trying to wrap his head around the new facts of his existence.

Up until thirty minutes ago, he had been a demon, bound to hell, in a body made of unholy energies.

Now he was alive.

As he let her leverage him up, he immediately unbalanced. The wings that had once weighed on his back whenever he had existed in the real world were gone. His renewed body had no idea how to handle that. The world around him swam and turned upside down. Nausea flushed through, and there was nothing he could do about any of it.

“Woah!” Helena called out as she tried and failed to catch him. His larger being flopped against her. She staggered back against the counter, her arms coming around to catch him. His hands slapped hard as they instinctively caught his momentum on the edge of her counter, the cold stone easing into his sweating palms.As uncoordinated as it currently was, this body was strong. He still had a long, lanky frame, but it was also muscled and healthy. Nothing like the depleted nearly skeletal thing he had been before, even underneath the illusions he had woven. This was real.

“Rafferty, try to breathe slower,” Helena urged, her arms still around him as she stabilized his shaky legs. Her hand came around, pressing against the muscles of his back, his skin sweaty and slick.

“What’s wrong with…” His mouth felt dry, and his tongue wouldn’t work properly.So much had happened so fast. He cascaded up and down various emotions like a plastic bag caught in a violent wind, upending from elation to dread to anger to giddiness to tears and everything in between. Feelings he was hopeless to completely define or understand, all happening at once. What reaction was he suppose d to have?

Helena, beautiful Helena, tried to give him answers. “I… I don’t think anything is wrong with you. Just… everything has changed. I’m sure this is a normal reaction to being… alive… suddenly.”

He shook his head. “This isn’t possible … it’s….”

A miracle.

He wanted to say a miracle, but to express it out loud filled him with terror. Miracles didn’t happen. Nothing was ever given for free. What terrible price was paid in exchange for this? he thought but dared not ask. What more had he lost? What more did he stand to lose? What was left to take that hell hadn’t already stripped from him?

“I feel so heavy,” he said instead, and he did. He felt so solid and dense. The dulled edge of the counter pressed hard into his palms, and he lifted one of them to look at it. The indented line was so strange, so real, even as it faded.

He ran the hand through his hair and was shocked not to hit any of the horn that should have been cresting out of his skull.

“What’s wrong, Rafferty? Talk to me!” Helena insisted. “You were alright a minute ago, what happened?”

“My wings… my horns…” he said. “They ’re gone.”

She wrinkled her nose, clearly confused. “But Rafferty, they’ve been gon e before.”

He shook his head, understanding what she was referring to. “That was just an illusion. So I wouldn’t scare you. They were always there. At leas t, to me.”

“But…” she huffed, struggling with this concept. “You wore normal clothes, and your wings didn’t inhi bit that.”

He shrugged. “I could always feel them,” he said. It was the best explanation he had. She was right, when he had looked like a normal man, a hat set on his head would sit properly, and yet when he moved his head, he would also feel the horns shi ft weight.

Now they were gone.

And he mis sed them…

He closed his eyes, pained. “Why would I miss them?” he asked aloud, the thoughts too loud inside to rem ain there.

“Changes are complicated. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she assured him. He wasn’t sure he believed her, but…

She felt more real, too, as his hand landed hard on her shoulder, squeezing it. He could feel her, truly feel her. Bones covered by muscle and skin and the cloth of her shirt, all so very, very real .

“Rafferty… are you… do you think you’re going in to shock?”

He finally met her eyes. “I wouldn’t know. What’s shock?” Then he collapsed backward, flopping onto the kitchen floor, right back into the middle of the circle that had burned itself into Helena’s kitchen tiles. Though there were no traces of demonic energy, maybe just lying there was saf er anyway.

“Oh, no. Your head!” She was there by his side, gingerly touching around his head. He was only vaguely aware that he had thumped it onto the ground, but it didn’t hurt. Not hing hurt.

“I’m… I’m fine…” he tried to say, giggles chasing his words.

Helena was still panicking, but not about him possibly having hurt himself. “No, Rafferty. We can’t do this. We have to get out of here. With everything that happened to Scarlet and the demon… dammit, there’s a demon that’s been set loose in reality! We need to go to the cops. Or we need to run from the cops? Oh God, I don’t know what to do. I need to take you to the hospital. But how when you don’t exist… I mean in the system… But you could b e dying…”

Her hands were cool on his face, and he held them there a moment and focused on his breath. Breathing! He was actually breathing… because he needed to breathe… this body needed to breathe, not just to speak. The idea of that felt j oyful too.

“I don’t think I’m going to die. Again. I just…” But then words failed him once more.

Maybe it would just be better to lie and wait for his fate to be decided by someone else. Apparently, that person was going to be Helena, and he was okay with that.

“Just stay there. I’m going to go get you a blanket,” she said, and she was goneagain. Laying his arm down, Rafferty’s hand landed on a book also lying spine up next to him. He grasped it to bring it up to l ook at it.

It was the cookbook, the one that had summoned him in the fi rst place.

He opened the pages, letting them flutter above his nose, wafting that old book smell into his face. It smelled of familiarity, the closest sense he had had to taste in the before times. He brought his other hand up and opened the book wide. Assembled in tight little paragraphs, the typeface inside was an older style he didn’t know the name of. Yet, it was the margins he focused on, filled with the swooping cursive letters. Written by a woman he knew once but would never see again.

“Nana,” he whispered, saying her name.She was someone he had d one wrong.

As fast as the elation washed over him, darker emotions took their familiar places, swamping him with his recent memories.

This is all my fault, his mind rang out to him. He had summoned his fellow demons, a whole kitchen of them. He had been too distracted with Helena, too reckless in his actions and emotions, too angry at her to realize what Vassago was doing, that he hadn’t gone back to hell with the others where he belonged.

If only Rafferty had talked to Helena before Vassago had made his move. But Rafferty had been so sure that he was right, that she hadn’t cared for him, that she had just used him like so many of those that had com e before…

Why had it been so important to prove I was right? he aske d himself.

The weight of a comforter dropped down over him, covering his cold, naked, vulnerable new body. Warmth seemed to have been clinging to it, washing back over him. His warmth. He was generating warmth. It wasn’t the stinging burn of hell that was neither hot nor cold. The smell of that place was still in his sense memory, but he wasn’t there. He was i n reality.

The place he belong ed. Right?

“Just stay right here. I’m going to try to pack some things and figure out what we’re going to do next, okay?” Though she was asking, her gaze was already far away. “I need to call someone about Scarlet a nd Yosef.”

“Scarlet… Yosef…” he repeated, even though she didn’t hear as she rushed back out of the room. They were names Helena had spoken of: her boss and coworker. Names that didn’t really mean anything to him until he met… well, Yosef that night. Scarlet, he had only seen briefly at a distance, until Vassago had made his deal wi th Yosef…

The image of the poor man’s head being crunched between Vassago’s teeth shot a fresh spike of pain and regret through Rafferty. And recognition. He knew that desperation that Yosef felt, to do whatever it took, to make any deal to save the thing most important to him, and he, Rafferty, had put a vile thing like Vassago in his path. The reborn man knew better, knew the price that such an action would take, and now… Yosef was paying for it. Rafferty could have… should have… tried to keep him safe.

He had known better. And he hadn’t cared when it mattered because all he was concerned with w as Helena.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, the words falling out of him unbidden but true.

“Rafferty, Raffie, what are you sorry for?” Hel ena asked.

She had returned, but he hadn’t noticed. A small pile of clothes sat on the floor next to where she knelt at his head. Gently, she ran her fingers, her blessed fingers, through his hair over and over. He reached up to touch them, to make sure that she was still, in fact, real.Would he ever be able to trust it?

“I’m sorry, I… I can’t seem to get up off this floor,” he said, still realizing her urgency, even if he couldn’t feel it himself. He gave her a smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Maybe it was a lie or rather a truth that covered up a differ ent truth.

“It’s okay,” she assured, petting his hair again. Damn, he loved that. “Just take y our time.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “I know we got… we’re in trouble, aren’t we? Or you’re in trouble. Scarlet…”

Her beautiful eyebrows pursed together, concerned. “I don’t know. I don’t know what we need to do, but…” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. Should we run or do we just call the authorities and turn ourselves in?” She ran her anxious fingers through her own hair.

“Don’t be scared,” he pleaded softly, brushing her wisps of hair back from her face. She was so beautiful. “You’ve just been through hell and back. Of course, you are scared.” He needed to get up. He needed to help her save them.

“Maybe I can call Cindy. I shouldn’t after everything she’s going through but… she’d also kill me if I needed her, and I did n’t call.”

His brain had to chug a moment, but then he remembered Helena’s friend. Cindy was the emergency room doctor who had almost ended her own life under the stress of her existence and a little accidental push from his demonic energy. He truly hadn’t intended to do that, but he hadn’t really cared that it could have happened. Another surprise slice of guilt knifed through him, echoing the same cut as Yosef. He had always told himself that whatever the humans chose to do was not his fault or problem. And he had be lieved it.

Now, he had h is doubts.

But I also helped save her life, he reminde d himself.

Yet, it didn’t count, did it? He did that for Hele na’s sake.

Cindy owed hi m nothing.

“I’m going to call her,” Helena decided while he was thinking all this, standing with urgent, sharp movements. “Where’s my phone?” That brought her up short. “Oh, crap. I left it at the table at the venue. I don’t have a landline.”

“Helena,” he croaked out. He reached his hand out for her again. “Don’t b e afraid.”

She took it and kissed the back of his knuckles, then set them against her cheek. “I’m going to take care of you, Raffie. No matter what happens,” she vowed.

Then Fate tested th at pledge.

The door bell rang.