Chapter 44: Unfinished Business

Knock knock knock!

After waiting a minute, I knocked at the door again, but there was no answer. I was going to peer in through a window, but...

“Can I help you?”

I turned. A short, curvy woman with brown hair and glasses was approaching the house from across the street. “Patty Calloway?” I asked her.

She stepped up. “Yes?”

I thrust the romance novel at her. “Just returning your book.”

Her face broke into a grin. “Oh, I’ve been missing that! I ... umm...” Then her eyes went wide. “Umm, I mean that’s ... not mine...”

I gave her a flat look. “Uh huh ... where’s Eros?”

Her eyes went even wider. “Um ... umm ... who?”

There was a loud clatter from inside the house, followed by a deep grunt and a higher-pitched yell. Demie! She had gone around the back.

“Eros!” Patty quickly opened the door to see her flipped-over coffee table and Demie and Eros fighting. Eros still looked like Fabio, and seemed to be winning ... he had pinned Demie to the floor with his knee while his arms held hers immobile. Even with her shape-shifting, he seemed to be adapting just as fast.

“Tom...” Demie looked up at me.

Right, Plan B. I grabbed Patty from behind and put her into a headlock.

“Eros!” Patty yelled again.

He looked up. “Let her go, Tom,” he growled menacingly. But he couldn’t come at me, or Demie would be all over him.

“You first,” I told him firmly.

“Fine, fine.” He disengaged from Demie and stood back. “I know you’re not going to hurt an innocent woman, nerd.”

“Gukhh!”

I had squeezed, cutting off Patty’s oxygen. “If she’s your summoner, then she killed someone already, so she’s not innocent. I’m gonna ask you nicely, Eros: what’d you do with Otie?”

“Who?”

“GGHKK!” Patty was pulling at my arm now, unable to breathe.

“My brother, asshole! Looks like me?”

His eyes flickered to Patty’s reddening face and back to mine. “I’m right here, bro.” Then he transformed into Otie, which meant that he looked just like me.

I lessened my grip so that Patty could breathe, but I covered her mouth with my hand. She might know this one. In my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression I said, “Chill out...?”

Eros blinked, confused.

“ ... dickwad,” I completed the line from Terminator 2, Otie’s favorite movie. “Did you kill him?”

Eros’ features shifted back to Fabio’s. “Yeah, he had the primal matter I needed to get away. Sorry, man.” He gave me an ‘aw shucks’ look.

“I should send you right back to Hell for killing Otie and Tillie...”

“Who?”

“Oh, for FUCK’S SAKE!” I tightened my grip again.

“Hnngghh!” Patty gurgled.

Eros held up his hands. “Right, right, the siren. Had to make sure the changeling -- Otie -- was all gone, and killing his girlfriend confirmed that. What can I say? I’m a demon, man! Now would you let her go?”

Demie stepped up next to me. “Hate to be the party crasher, but she’s looking kinda blue, Tom.”

“Oh, shit.” I gently let the unconscious woman down to the floor and made sure that she was still breathing.

Eros just stood there, looking petulant. “First my pet project falls through, and now this. If you’re not going to kill Patty, then what do we do now?”

I pulled out my phone. “Now we call the Enforcer.”

Eros stiffened. “She will kill Patty.”

“Mom says she won’t,” Demie informed him, “at least not while we need you.”

His mouth quirked. “You ... need me?”

I hung up the phone. “Enforcer’s on the way,” I informed Demie before turning back to Eros. “Your mother told us that The Deal’s been compromised, by someone other than you. Something to do with a baby. She still hasn’t told us everything; says it’s a secret. We need to go to some safehouse named Gehenna, and she insists that we need the whole family, plus the Enforcer.”

Eros stroked his prominent Fabio chin. “A baby? Weird.”

Across the street, Abel softly, lovingly, stroked his cock into his roommate Chrissie’s pussy in the missionary position. The slim ash blonde woman orgasmed again, her stomach muscles cramping up from overuse as she squirted a mixture of their combined cum onto the bed once more. A repetitive squelching sound could be heard as Abel continued to thrust into her overflowing vagina. They had been fucking and making love for hours at Patty’s direction.

“Abel, I...” she began.

“Yes, Chrissie? Huff huff...”

“ ... I hate you.”

“Cumming!” He reared up, his raw cock dribbling the seminal remains from his spent prostate along with the last of the sperm his body could dredge up from his depleted testicles.