Rating: Mature
The face in the mirror was a stranger. Still, only two days had past. It could grow on her as soon as she figured out how to shave. Stacy lowered the silvered surface and nearly jumped out of her new skin. “Trey! What are you doing here?” She whispered.
The handsome warlock closed the door behind him, banishing the sounds of the hospital and preventing mundane eyes and ears from observing what they shouldn’t. He smiled and Stacy shivered. Despite her nearly sixty years practicing, she had never had his professional smile aimed at her. Shit.
“Visiting a friend.” He touched the coma patient in the second bed on the head and hand before pulling curtain closed between the beds.
He touched her forehead, taking a moment to dig fingers into the black curls. His coal eyes softened a moment. Then Trey took her hand in both of his. For the first time his grip didn’t completely swallow hers. She felt what seemed to be a spider tread breaking between her fingers. Stacy arrested her new green eyes from investigating the enchantment.
She licked her lips. The new body didn’t have an overbite so she no longer bit her lips. Strange how some things are body-related. Her twisting stomach and hardening dick indicated that fear and attraction were not so limited.
“Thanks for coming by.”
“Couldn’t help it.” Again the professional smile; the black eyes had no emotions. “When Thanatos drops by and asks me where someone from my ward is, I get worried. When he mentioned he needs the answers for two different demon clients, who are each claiming to be missing a soul promised to them, I get really worried.”
“I c-c-can explain.” Stacy stuttered in fear, still not comfortable with forming words in her new mouth. “I was young and stupid, and I meant to pay them back before I died.”
“And how did that work for you?”
She tried a smile that never failed to turn the nurses into mush. “It doesn’t matter. I have a long time now, another whole lifetime, to get things the way they should be.”
“Actually you don’t.”
“I didn’t steal this body! It was empty when I found it. “
“And it will be empty again within the year. Sorry Anastasia, you got at least a month and no more than a year.”
Stacy gasped. “You knew! You knew I could body hop!” She hit him hard, pleasantly surprised at the thunk her male body could land. Then weakness took her. The body had been in a coma for over a week before she found it; she had claimed total amnesia with the doctors since she had woke it up. She needed time to regain its strength.
Trey easily grabbed her wrists. “And you are to tell no one how you did it. Anyone you tell, I will have to kill. Anything written down, I will have to destroy.”
“Why?”
“Because this path always leads to the dark.” The Warden sighed. “Stacy, I’m sorry. I will give you until Samhain and then we will close things. If you feel yourself slipping away before then, come to me sooner. I can make the passage easier.”
He dropped the wrists and started towards the door.
“Damn you Trey!” Her tenor voice carried. “I don’t want it easy. I want this new life! I damn well earned this new life!”
The door opened and Trey’s professional demeanor was complete again. “See you in October. Don’t make me come and get you.”
(words 588 – originally appearing at Sunday Fun on Breathless Press 12/16/2012 based on a photo there. Could not find permission so did not copy it – first published 12/16/2012; republished new blog format 8/14/2016)