Faith in Frying Pans

 The buildings raked the sky like claws as ash and brimstone drifted down from the sky. Demons flitted everywhere, snatching up people and flying off with them. Lots of cackling, Alec noticed. Nate had flown off to do his Super Hero thing, leaving Alec alone after making him promise not to do Anything Stupid. It'd taken some convincing on Alec's part on the basis of if Hell was breaking out everywhere, where exactly would be safe? He might as well just stay home. As for doing anything stupid; considering that he was blind in one eye and in nearly constant physical pain, he doubted that he would be doing anything like that.

"I wonder why there are always demons," he mused to himself, watching a particularly nasty cloud of them fly by the penthouse window. Flicking some ash off the tip of his cigarette he watched it drift away. Over his many years, he'd traveled to many different realities with super heroes in them and they almost always had a demon attack of some sort. Most of the time Alec could deal with such things; but most of the time Alec had his reality warping abilities that let him do whatever he wanted. Here, trapped in a broken body without a single bit of power to his name, not even ever a twinge he could only sit on the sidelines and hope things would turn out all right. They probably would, they generally did. But there was always that one reality where it might not happen. That one reality where demons won. If that happened here, if something happened to Nate, he didn't know what he would do; he didn't know what he could do.

Nothing, really. Not without his powers.

"Well, well, what do we have here," a sultry voice purred behind him breaking him out of his thoughts.

Startled, he spun around to see a woman standing... no lounging... against his wall. Alec stared at her, tilting his head so he could see her with his good eye. He could honestly say, without sniggering out loud, that she had curves in all the right places, all visible as she wore barely any clothing made out of what he hoped was black leather completely spikes and a long flowing black cloak.

Demoness.

Buggerfucknuts.

Just what he needed.

"Should I know you?" he asked politely, stubbing out his cigarette. She wasn't any demon he recognized in his travels, but that didn't mean anything. It would be like trying to remember a person you met briefly on the street.

"Should you?" she repeated. "I don't think so. But I was attracted to you... your lack of fear."

For a moment, Alec didn't know what she meant but then realized that most people wouldn't be calmly watching everything go to hell – literally – from their apartment window as if it were the latest disaster movie while having a smoke. Or Ah... his lack of self preservation instinct kicking in again. He really needed to remember that yes, he was human. Apparently being blind in one eye and aching all the time didn't really do it. Then again millions of years of not needing one was a hard habit to shake off.

"Yeah, I've been told it's a bit of a – if you'll forgive the pun – fatal flaw in my life."

She slithered up closer to Alec and he could see slit pupils in red irises and tiny scales on her skin. Something else tried to slither into his mind and he shook it out almost unconsciously, years upon years of practice keeping things out of his head. It wasn't a power trick so much as a learned skill. Keeping a telepathic boyfriend out of his head had made him very good at that. Apparently not good enough; for her eyes widened slightly.

"You used to be a man of power," she said seriously intruding into his personal space bubble. Her body radiated enough heat to make him sweat and she smelled like cigarettes and forbidden promises, "And now you're trapped here in a broken body."