A Thing She Just Can't Fight Ch. 01

Most times, he won't even answer to Bart -- unless it's me and he knows that he's in trouble and has a reason to be."

She looked at Sammael and chuckled, "I guess I ought to tell you what they look like, so it's not such a huge shock."

She pushed her hair behind one ear as they walked, "You ever seen any of those pictures of the most unlikely couples, I mean, ... just what an advertising executive probably put together of the 'typical American Family'?

You know what I mean? The young upwardly mobile pair with killer bodies; the man who's tall, dark and gorgeously handsome married to the incredibly beautiful Nordic-looking blonde -- and if either of them really were office types, they for damn sure wouldn't look that good unless they spent every evening at the gym.

They have more disposable income than at least several third-world countries combined between them, and their kids look just like them, only their hair color is reversed?"

Yeah," Sammael laughed a little, "I see them all the time, depending on the product in the ads. Why?"

Delia's chuckle turned into a laugh as well, "Well, hang onto your socks and try to imagine if we had kids between us, you and me -- only we're not that human couple, are we?

That's what I mean, though. Hanna looks like she could be your daughter or little sister and Bartholomew looks a lot like me when they let themselves be seen.

That's also what I meant when I said that I've never been able to figure it out. As far as they know, they're brother and sister. But both of them have told me that their parents were humans.

Supposing that they're right about that - and they can feel things just like you and I can, then it's not possible. I've even thought about that couple maybe allowing a demon to have a little fun with the woman, since I've heard of that kind of thing before.

That could work," Delia said as they turned onto the road, "But I can't see an angel doing her. I mean, you're proof that it can happen between a human male and an angelic female, but I doubt that even that happens very often.

And for what?" she asked, "Why would a human woman want to get knocked up by both kinds and then abandon her kids? There's not enough sense in it to go on for me, at least.

All I know is that I love them to death. I'd kill for them. I already have -- well, in a roundabout way that they don't know about."

She related a story of when she'd been stealing a few vegetables for her kids to eat in a garden one evening and an old woman came out and snuck up from behind her.

Delia had been so tense and guilty over what she'd been doing that she hadn't felt the woman's approach until she was being hit over the head and shoulders with something -- which, it turned out later -- had been the old woman's hickory cane.

She'd turned around, partially shifting in self-defence as she did and the woman had yelled out that she was evil and damned her.

Damned her to Hell.

For stealing a few vegetables.

Delia had seized the old bitch by the neck. "I try to keep two small children -- human children - among the living, and I am forced to steal a little here and there for them to eat.

Look at me. Do you think they'll give me welfare money?

The woman got over the first of her fright and said that Delia should go back to Hell for stealing, since it was where she'd likely come from anyway. Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed.

Delia could sense a lot of things - like a frail and aged heart. She just couldn't sense a faulty pacemaker, though she did dial 911. When the emergency operator came on the line, Delia dropped the phone in the woman's hand and walked away.

And she took five carrots more as she left.

Three days later, after the woman's condition had been stabilized, Delia walked into the intensive care ward of the hospital and drew the curtains closed around the woman's bed. She moved her hand and everyone, from the doctors to the patients was struck deaf and unable to move for a quarter of an hour. Then she nudged the old girl -- who cowered clutching her bible as she watched Delia change before her -- all the way.

Delia wrenched the book from the old hands and the woman cried out.

"No one can hear you, Beverly Gartner. And this won't help you much either." She smiled then, showing her teeth and beginning to chuckle as she tore bite-sized chunks out of the book.

"You damned me to Hell, you greedy, miserly, wealthy old cow. Stupid people like you who really have no idea tend to throw that word around like it's nothing.

There is such a place, though not one living human knows of it or what it's like; not one of you, not even the ones who use it in their sermons.

Well I've got relations there and they know some people on the other side. A little professional courtesy in both directions and Perdition is keeping a cell open just for you, now that they know ALL of the things that you've done.

So you're not going where you'd hoped to go, Honey. I didn't have anything to do with that. I just got them to take a look at you and your high and mighty life.

If I ever get to Hell, I'll look you up.

I've never been there, Sweetie, but I've looked in through the gates to talk to my aunts about you."

Her face lost much of it's humor and she growled low in her throat -- a shuddering, seething sound as she said, "I'm just going to set you on the road to the right place, that's all."

Old Mrs. Gartner only managed to stutter half of her way through the Lord's prayer when the inside surfaces of the curtains turned crimson and ran with her blood.

"I guess this is about where I tell you that I'm not completely good, Sammael."

She sighed a little, "I'm not evil either, well I don't think I am. I'm just not above stealing food for my kids and getting pissed over hearing something beyond stupid after getting cracked over the head with a stick a few times."

Sammael shrugged, "So? I think it's more important that you raise your kids right so they know the difference themselves.

Look, I know how I look, alright? But I'm not from there. I'm pretty sure that if I showed up, I'd find the gates locked to me. As far as I can tell, they don't want to know about me anyway.

I don't really care, Delia. I just try to live my life doing what's right, not what somebody else says is good. If I was that way, I don't think that you and I would have had as much fun as we did.

And the word for you is chaotic Delia, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Look around. This whole planet runs on it and always has. It can't ever be good and I doubt that, aside from the odd reign of terror here and there, it can't really be evil either.

Just read a newspaper sometime and think about it, I don't think that you could tell me that it's anything BUT chaotic."

They walked on then, not saying anything as Delia absorbed it.

When she looked at him again, he took her hand in a very definite way as though to say that THAT subject -- the one whether she was good or evil -- was closed, now that he'd settled it.

Delia wanted to kiss him again just for that.

"Sammael," she said very quietly after a minute. "I doubt that you'd know of it, but there are many kinds of demons, and probably several species of each kind. The one which I'm like is something like the hellish equivalent to angels in terms of what they do, though I guess it's out of what you might call a darker intent, I guess.

They have their customs -- like any sort of creatures with a brain, I suppose."

Before she could lock up again out of any discomfort from her human side, Delia said, "What you did to me there on the deck is one of them, licking under my tail the way that you did."

He turned to look at her in curiosity, "Really?"

She nodded and was quiet for a moment as she chose her words.

Sammael waited.

"It's, ... well, it's done quite often among pairs who mate out of more than just the moment. Lots of the different species do that, of course, but not the kind that I'm, ... um, ... like. They don't do it to just anyone."

Sammael looked a little confused for a moment, "Well, who do they do it to?"

Delia was running out of road, being rapidly overtaken by her human side again, but she tried to go on anyhow.

"That one kind, ..."

"You mean the kind that you're like?" he smiled, liking the way that she could look so uncertain as she searched for the best ways to say something to someone different from her.

She nodded, "Yes."

She looked up, trying to find the best way to say it, "Demons, ... well, the higher kinds, they aren't always nasty to each other. Sometimes, ... sometimes they even manage to feel love in a real way, and ... they, ..."

"They do that," he suggested, trying to coax her a little, "Go on, Delia, please."

She shrugged, "Obviously, I've never seen it, but I know that they, ... do that as a way to, ... state their desire to another that they have, ... well, a hope for...

If that one likes it and the one doing it, the gesture can be looked at as a sort of ... um, ... proposal in a carnal sort of way. It's like saying that he or she likes that and would want to do that with the other one, in sort of a relationship sort of, um, ... way."

Sammael nodded in silent understanding. "So was that the reason that you made that gesture to me?"

Delia looked to be about a quarter of an inch away from being mortified.

She nodded, "Yes. Sammael, I didn't even think about it. It -- it just happened. I felt that way about you instantly. I -- I even knew that you'd like it and then it just happened."

He nodded again, looking thoughtful "But you meant it, didn't you?"

Delia nodded, "I couldn't help it."

He still looked thoughtful. "What is the correct response to the gesture -- if it is welcomed and shared between those two hopeful types?"

She sort of slowed to a stop and looked at him.

"What you did. It was the correct answer. What you did was the perfect reply.

If we were two demons of that sort, it's a way of asking and answering and both then know that it would be welcomed by either one."

"A way of saying that it's on the menu, so to speak?" he asked.

Delia nodded, "Yes. Only we're not the -- "

"Well I'm glad that I got that right, then," he smiled.

She stopped dead right there and her mouth didn't just drift open. Her mouth fell open. All that was missing was the clang from her chin hitting the ground. She just gaped at him for a moment. She recovered in the next instant and threw her arms around him and kissed him right there in the middle of the dusty road.

When they pulled apart a little, Delia was a little shocked at the sort of growls that he made -- or tried to -- in her speech. It confused her a little, since he mixed up the placement of some of the words in the sentence.

"This one," she said, trying to make it flow by moving his words to help him, "wishes ... to ..."

He said it again, the way that she had phrased it.

"You wish to try with me?" she asked.

He nodded, "As you said it, not the way that I tortured it. I should have left well enough alone and used English."

"'Sho' is to say a love which is of all types," she said quietly, "the heart, the mind and the body - well, the emphasis is probably in the wrong order, the way I said it.

'Nesht' is giving or the giving of, and 'si' is just conjugation. 'Si' means me or I. 'Su' means you. "Seh' means he or his, 'sa' means her or hers, and 'sik' means they or theirs."

She stopped as a realization came to her out of left field suddenly. Her face moved side to side a little in a searching manner, "Sho nesht si?"

He looked perplexed, "I understand the question, but I don't know the right way to say it from my side, I think.

But yes, I do, Delia."

He smiled with a small laugh that he couldn't really help, "I really do."

"Close enough, Blondie," she laughed, "I heard and saw what I needed to in there someplace."

They walked along a little further, Delia with her hands jammed into the pockets of her jeans and feeling like a thirteen year-old in love for the first time -- well, just about eight years late, she guessed. She reached for his hand as they walked and kept her eyes on the road ahead, maintaining the small smile on her face which just wouldn't leave, no matter what she did.

She knew that he was looking at her. It didn't matter.

"Sho nesht su," she said quietly, still not taking her eyes off the road.

He asked and she smiled, still walking, "That's what you say to me if, ... well, if you meant what you said."

He stopped and she did too. Delia looked up slowly and she saw his face as he concentrated for a moment. Then, to her pleased surprise, he moved his head in the right way and said it, "Sho nesht su, Delia."

She was so happy, she wanted to cry.

It was the dumbest thing, she told herself over the way that she felt and acted. There had never been this for her, not ever. But to her mind, the time for feeling like a glowing star and almost dancing just as she walked because of what a male had said and shown to her for the very first time was long past.

Rationally, she'd missed out on that time, since it had never happened for her.

She began to chuckle.

"Oh, what the fuck," she laughed and let go his hand to reach around and walk with her arm around him.

"What was that all about?" he asked and she lost the rest of her self-control and just giggled, "I think I'm having the kind of young girl moment that it's just too late to have."

He nodded to allow her to have her moment, and she knew it at once. She would have questioned it, but then she saw the expression on his face as they began to walk again and she knew.

Sammael was having his own too late to have moment.

Several minutes later, he'd been able to move on to something which had troubled him a little. "Stop for a second," he said.

Delia stopped and looked up, "What is it?"

"I don't know yet," he said honestly, "Just stand still. There's something that I want to see."

Delia had no idea what this was about, but she stood still as he stepped behind her and lifted her long hair.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Wait a sec, ... " he said as he fished his phone out of his pocket.

She held still a little longer, listening to the device as he took several photos. He let her hair go and tried to smooth it out for her for a moment as he looked at his phone, "There's something on your skin, just at the hairline at the back of your skull."

She reached back and her eyes widened, "What the hell is that?"

He held up his phone, "Small scabs. You've been bitten by something there."

Delia was about to freak, "What, like I've got fleas?"

He shook his head, and she saw only concern in his face and she knew why he'd used the phone in an instant. She wasn't completely certain, so she asked, "You could have just shown me with your hands, right? You could have made a place in the air for me to see."

He nodded, "I didn't want you to think that I was trying to steer you in any way. Something's been feeding on you, likely while you slept."

She grimaced and shook her head trying to suppress the way that she wanted to shudder, "Oh, I feel so dirty."

His arm went over her shoulders then and he leaned in to kiss her cheek. "Well don't. This isn't from something like fleas. The marks are from something larger. I don't know the word for it. I only have my name -- and I don't want to say it -- at least not until I know better. Don't worry about it for now. There's no infection -- outside OR inside of you."

"You can tell that?" she asked, a little amazed and he nodded.

"Come on, there's my car. Let's go pick up your kids."