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I am C ompletely Human

“Y es, he’s completely human,” the doctor said, flipping his stethoscope over his head to lie across the back of his neck before slipping his gloved hands into hi s pockets.

“You’re sure?” Agent Archon stressed.

“Look, I have run every test known. I even got his bloodwork back already since demonic anything is the only way to get high priority around here,” he grumbled with the air of an old complaint. “He is a healthy, fairly average human male, approximately in his mid-twenties. When did you say you were bo rn again?”

“In the time of King Louis the XIV,” Rafferty answered obediently, feeling uncomfortable under the paper sheet and the strange paper shirt that opened to the front they had asked him to wear. He had every intention of complying with anything that was asked of him, but he had not imagined this. “Why aren’t you simply running me through with holy weapons and being done with it? Or attempting to burn me at the stake?” he muttered.

Agent Archon and the doctor both looked at him with neutral faces and pity in t heir eyes.

The doctor sighed. “Whatever is wrong with him, it is definitely mental. Considering there is no trace of demonic power, it could be something as simple as PTSD due to stress. You saw a man’s head bitten off, correct?” the doc tor asked.

“Yes,” Rafferty conceded. While it had not been the worst thing he had ever witnessed, it was the mo st recent.

“Yeah, there you go. But I would want a shrink to make the final determination,” the doctor said. “But it’s not that big of a surprise. If this guy was a witness to your other guy getting eaten in half, I’d probably lose all my marbles, too, and be better of f for it.”

“Thanks forthe medical opinion,” Agent Archon s aid dryly.

With that, she left the room.

“You’rewelcome,” the doctor said just as dryly as he turned to write some more things on a chart, glancing over at Rafferty. “You can put your clothes back on.”

The man didn’t leave, so Rafferty simply did as he was bid, standing up and letting the paper sheet fall to the ground. Retrieving from a nearby chair the precious clothes Helena had given him, he dresse d himself.

“What… is going to happen now?” the former demon dared to ask as he sat in a chair to slip the shoes on.

The doctor didn’t even look up as he went to leave. “Don’t know, my friend. All I do know is my part with you is over.”

“Where is Helena?” Raffe rty asked.

“Who?” the doctor asked, pausing with the door already partially open, clearly impatient to leave.

“The woman I came with. Where is she?” Rafferty asked, fearful of t he answer.

Outside in the hall Agent Archon’s partner Sophia leaned inside, glancing between the doctor and him with a questioning e xpression.

“No idea, you’ll have to ask her.” The doctor gestured at her with his clipboard before handing it over to Agent Sophia. “He’s a ll yours.”

She took it, but before she could mutter any thanks, the doctor left as abruptly as he had come.

“Um, alright, why don’t you come with me? We’ll get you something to drink, and we’ll just talk, okay?” Agent Sophia gestured down the hallway. “Don’t forget y our coat.”

Rafferty had already risen to follow her, only to double back into the room to grab it with alacrity. They had brought him to their stronghold, but it was the strangest dungeon he had ever been in. Mostly it was cubicles and offices, but there were a few rooms with specialized functions like the one he had just left. Not a single rack or whip in sight.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Lares. Everything is going to be okay,” she assured, catching him looking around and probably interpreting it as anxiety. She flashed her sympathetic smile as she gestured for him to turn left out of the room.

“Are you serious?” He was disgusted by this whol e… farce!

“Look, I understand. We all understand. Something really terrible has happened to you. It’s alright. It’s not unusual for people who have been victims of a demonic attack to be confused. You might even have supplanted memories that are preventing you from—”

“What are you talking about? I am who I say I am!” Rafferty stopped in the hall, blocking traffic both ways, utterly aghast at what he was hearing. “I am a demon!”

Agent Sophia hushed him, holding her hands up to calm him down his shouting. Other agents were glancing at them with equal parts concern, pity, and professional indifference from their cubicles, but no one intervened. This was worse than flaming h ot pokers.

Maybe he really was going mad.

“Why don’t we come in here?” Agent Sophia asked, gesturing toward a ne arby room.

Helplessly, Rafferty complied with her request. Inside the new room was a couch with a coffee table and a regular small kitchen table. Both seemed completely out of place in an office. Along the right wall were a couple of cabinets and a bin full of toys. The table had paper and a small bucket of crayons waiting. It also had a padded rocking chair in t he corner.

“Where is this? A nursery?”He sneered at his new tortur e chamber.

“This is where the counselor meets with kids, but it’s also the only room with a couch in it. In case you want to lie down,” Agent Sophia said, moving to the cabinet to pull out a pillow.

“Fine! Fine,” Rafferty snapped, dropping to sit on the couch, his elbows braced on his knees as he covered his face with his hands.

“It’s going to be alright. You’re not in trouble. There is plenty room for mercy here, whatever you might have done. We’re not the bad guys. We want to help you,” Agent Sophia said gently and carefully. Her words brought him to tears. “I’ll… I’ll get you so me water.”

Rafferty had never been so frustrated in his entire existence. This was worse than dragging Helena into hell. As he sat there, it came back to him. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Helena suffering in torturous blackness and him unable to get to her, to shield her, to save her.

Despite the horror of those memories, he felt a sense of calm, or at least a sense of calmness , settle over him.

No. That had still been worse. There was nothing worse than hell.

This was… a different kind of bad , but still nothing compare d to that .

Yet, why wouldn’t they be lieve him?

The door opened and closed, but he didn’t lift his head. He expected a small cup of water to appear in the tunnel of his vision, but instead, someone pulled the rocking chair forward to the other side of the small coffee table. A person sat down and crossed t heir legs.

Rafferty waited for what he assumed was the agent to start babbling more inane words at him, but the silence continued. Gooseflesh skittered across his arms as a feeling of familiar wrongness prickled his skin, then worked toward seeping into his bones. Inhaling a sharp breath, Rafferty’s head s napped up.

Vassago grinned too many teeth at him. “Salutations, mon vieil ami,” he said, his French lilting an d musical.

Fear, the sort that Rafferty hadn’t felt in centuries, gripped his heart. His very mortal, pounding heart. Suddenly, it hit him how much he had gained back and how much he had to l ose again.

“Retourne dans les ténèbres, immonde démon,” Rafferty intoned, his mother’s old words coming back to him. Return to the darkness, f oul demon.

Vassago’s grin remained sharp. “You are not my caller anymore. You know that. And our obligation to each other is paid.” He had switched back to English, but for whose benefit, Rafferty wa sn’t sure.

The demon cocked his head to the side as his eyes roved over Rafferty’s body as if he could see through the clothes he wore and relished the skin with lustful intensity.

“What the ever-hating hell did you do to get such a fine body? Is it yours? Did you manage to trade for it?” Vassago leaned forward, dropping his crossed leg and mirroring Rafferty’s posture, his uncanny black eyes, two whirling pools of ink, staring unblinkingly. “How did you do it? How did y ou do it?”

Rafferty curled up his lip as h is answer.

Holding their standoff a second too long, Vassago sat back again, recrossing his leg, his giggle uncannily disconnected from the move. “Well, you didn’t sacrifice your ‘old soul’ I see. Checked i n on her.”

That snapped Rafferty’s control, and he jumped to his feet and over the coffee table in one fluid motion. The demon laughed as Rafferty grabbed the front of the kitchen garb he still wore. The momentum shoved the rockers of the chair, sliding it backward into one of the cabinets. Rafferty pulled back a fist, righteous fury fi lling him.

“So, you are human!” Vassago crowed as if he had just proved something. “My hells, this is some sort of reverse miracle.”

Just as fast as it came on him, the feeling of loathing and rage left, the compelling need to destroy the monster in front of him drai ning away.

Vassago’s dem onic aura.

It had an effect on humans, often making them violent and hateful, pushing them to do acts their higher minds wou ld resist.

The fact that it had affected him like that was as much of a shock as any of the others he had experienced in the few short hours of his rebirth. Then Vassago pulled back on the aura, shielding it behind his fake human facade, and Rafferty found he could breathe and think clea rly again.

“Hmm, better put that away. Don’t want to alert the other fishies,” Vassago cooed, pleased with his discovery, not at all bothered that Rafferty still gripped his shirt. “They got all sorts of nasty devices in this place and too many things of protection or whatever. I only got in through the tiniest crack in their armor and even just sitting here my skin’s all itchy. They already want to destroy me, just like you. Best not to throw gas on an existing fire.” He grinned again, too-sharp teeth and all. “If only I had your skills, shift that anger into lust. Ha, and you weren’t even a proper incubus.”

Another tendril wafted through Rafferty, this one pinging his groin into a spiderweb of sensation throughout his body.

Rafferty let Vassago’s shirt go and stumbled back, breathing heavily. “No, ” he said.

“See, I’m too ham-fisted to play on lusts,” Vassago crowed, clearly still pleased with himself. “Boy, if you ever needed proof that you were alive, yo u got it.”

Rafferty ran his hands through his hair. “But what… what does this mean?” He hated that he was asking Vassago this, but so far, the old demon was the only other being in existence who had some understanding of the context Rafferty was dea ling with.

“Look at you, Lares. A demon, not only risen from hell but also… redeemed ,” Vassago continued, purring. “I have no idea what it means, but I’m excited to find out.” Vassago licked his lips, his own desire for what Rafferty had unm istakable.

Then the old demon shuddered, wincing in s harp pain.

Cocking his head to one side, Rafferty suddenly understood something. “You have no anchor here, do you? You ate him. And the circle has been closed and sealed.” They both knew what that meant. A demon couldn’t exist in reality without either a human anchor or the active circle they had been called through. The manic tension in every twitch and flinch betrayed Vassago’s nonchalan t posture.

“How much energy are you spending to just remain here in reality?” Rafferty asked, already knowing t he answer.

Shrugging, Vassago turned away. “I’ll figure that out. And don’t flatter yourself. I’m not offering a deal of that sort to you… since you and I have already done that tango?” An eyebrow arched with the implied question, testing if his statement was, in f act, true.

“Never,” Rafferty affirmed, a smile slipping over his face. He had no intention of endangering himself or Helena further by making a deal with this same demon who had tricked and condemned him the first time. But deals were something familiar. Something he felt confident in now. Despite all the changes, deals were no thing new.

“So, I’m glad I didn’t ask.” Vassago sniffed with the indignity a cat would admire. “Besides, I think your little old soul has everything well in hand.”

Rafferty flinched. “And you can’t touch her. You know she would never accept a deal from you,” he warned.

“Well, of course. She’s not an idiot,” Vassago chuckled, his implicat ion clear.

Rafferty didn’t rise to the baiting. He only waited and smiled. Even though he said he wouldn’t make a deal with Vassago, they both knew that was a lie. It just needed to be the r ight deal.

They stared at each other, smiling, until finally, Vassago shifted away, yielding to Rafferty first to study the scarred arm of the rocking chair. It was a kind of tactic to make the mark feel superior to the demon. A fa lse sense.

“What I want is really simple. Peace,” Vassago fin ally said.

Rafferty furrowed his brows.

“No, I mean it. I leave you alone. You leave me alone. You don’t tell anyone what you know about me. We go our separate ways, and that’s the e nd of it.”

Letting those words flow over him, Rafferty parsed them in his mind to try to find the flaw. “Define lea ve alone.”

“I will do no physical harm, exert no influence, and make no bargains with you and your little old soul, other than this bargain I’m making with you right now. I can take no action that would do either of you any mental harm either. No driving either of you insane. You’ll have to do that on your own. You will both be completely safe from me. You can just get on living yo ur lives.”

“Not just us,” Rafferty added. “Her frie nds, too.”

Vassago’s eyes narrowed, then he let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m going to need specific names,” he conceded.

The demon wa s serious.

It also meant that Vassago feared what Rafferty’s knowledge could do to his chances of staying in creation.

But Rafferty conceded. He didn’t have the stomach for this. The humans didn’t seem to be interested in sending him back, or even believing his story, but if they were going to let him, he would prefer to just be done with all of it. To live a life wi th Helena.

“Helena’s friends. Cindy, Charlie, Chris,” he said, reciting the names he knew for them, hoping it would be enough for Vassago. “And Scarlet.”

Vassago’s lips thinned at the mention of that name; his latest victim and the one most likely to want to make a deal with him to undo the dama ge caused.

“Fine. Agreed. I will extend my amnesty to those individuals as well. Satisfied?” Then Vassago cocked his head to one side. “And we speak of this agreement t o no one.”

Rafferty was surprised that Vassago didn’t even try to haggle about Scarlet. He felt emboldened to push it. “And one additional condition. I can tell Helena about this deal,” Rafferty countered. “I won’t keep anything from her l ike that.”

The demon huffed through his nose. “Agreed. But just your old soul. Anyone else you tell voids the a greement.”

Only one step left. “These terms remain in effect as long as we both uphold them in letter and i n spirit?”

Vassago returned a thin smile. This was all part of doing business as demons. It was impossible to craft a perfectly worded contract that couldn’t be loopholed and exploited eventually, so smart humans, or other demons, would bind contracts to the “spirit” of the meanings as well as th e literal.

“I swear by my mind, body, and soul,” Vassag o intoned.

“I swear by my mind, body, and soul,” Rafferty repeated.

And just like that, it was done.

Which was strange. There was no uncomfortable feeling of power creeping over Rafferty’s skin, but Vassago shivered. He could feel the power of the contract.

Then his shoulders dropped a half in a semblance of relief. “Thank you, my boy. I’m glad we could come to an accord. And in the spirit of our old friendship, I’ll give you this. No other strings attached.” He pulled a spiral-bound book out of his pocket. It was uncanny to watch as the book was clearly bigger than the pocket and yet popped out of it all the same. Vassago dropped it onto the table with a defin ite thump.

Rafferty stared at the cover.

It was Helena’s grandmother’s cookbook.

Before he could lift his head to ask, Vassago moved to the door. “We’ve got our agreement. If we both keep it, you’ll never see me again. Have a good life, mon ami.”

And he left, leaving Rafferty alone in the quiet.