God's Gone AWOL

[4] The Prince's Concubine

It had been an hour. There was still no sign of Bentley or Atticus.

Xander paced around the Cupboard, occasionally stopping to poke at an ancient artifact or read the cover of some withering, old book —although often he couldn't actually understood what the writing said. Every time he tried to stay still, he'd start getting even more restless. He wasn't in the mood to go out and kill something, so the only way to alleviate the nervousness was to just keep moving.

After a little while, the Hellbourne family trait finally kicked in and Xander felt the inexplicable urge to cause a little mischief. However, he couldn't mess with Frances under their own roof —especially not while they were making tea for everyone. So he could only turn his attention to the innocent-looking human on the couch.

He glanced over and noticed she was already staring at him. Once their eyes met, she quickly looked away, but eventually returned the gaze again.

"So you're..." she started, "You're another demon, then?"

"Are you scared?" he asked.

"Not really,"

Even though there was nothing interesting about this girl on the surface, Xander could already tell that there was something unusual about her. She didn't seem to have a particularly remarkable personality for a person her age, nor did she look or smell different. But when she looked at him, it was with curiosity, not fear or even the slightest bit of nervousness.

"You should be." Xander's voice was low, as intimidating as he could make it sound.

"Why?"

He tilted his head.

"Have you never opened a Bible? Or read any of the ancient texts?"

"Why would I? I'm not Christian or Catholic or anything,"

"Yeah, but you've heard of demons before," he said, "Somewhere in pop culture or wherever,"

"Of course I have. But one conversation with your sister threw all my assumptions out the window, so I've just decided that I probably should stop thinking about anything demon or angel related until someone actually explains stuff to me properly,"

Seeing how Hazel had already accepted that she was misinformed on demon-kind, Xander realized there wasn't a whole lot else he could do to mess with her. If he had the patience, he'd sit her down like a toddler and stuff her empty brain with pro-demon propaganda just for the hell of it. But he didn't have the patience nor the energy to even bother, so instead he just turned away and fidgeted with his bracelet.

Luckily, he was spared the awkward silence because right at that moment, the door opened for the third time that night.

First came the ringing of the bell against the wood. Then came the sounds of a scuffle, followed by a burst of drunken laughter. Everyone down below fell silent and looked over towards the stairs. Xander frowned.

"Hang-on-hang-on-hang-on I think I'm gonna puke!" said an unfamiliar voice.

The voice was smooth and masculine. It had a strange human accent to it that Xander couldn't identify. He wasn't all that familiar with human language, let alone the various regional accents of the world, but if he had to make a wild guess, he would say that this particular accent was from somewhere in Europe. Xander wondered if the voice might belong to Atticus's new male form. But then he realized Atticus would never say such a thing, so his frown only deepened.

"Shhh! Go puke then!" came the sound of Bentley's voice, "Don't talk so loud. You're gonna wake the human,"

There was another scuffle, followed by more muffled laughter. At least Xander had found his sister, even if he could already tell she was drunk before seeing her in the flesh. It wasn't like she would be any more reasonable if she were sober so really he couldn't complain. But he could still roll his eyes at her behavior either way.