The sun tickled Edwin, as he tossed and turned. His dream was still not letting go of him, even when it had long since turned into something one might call a nightmare.
There was Orion, fighting in a field of brimstone and fire. Souls in shackles all around him, a smirk on his lips. For a split second, Edwin could see himself, no, not himself, but his ghostly self, by Orion's side.
When had he floated to him? Why were they in… wait, was this Hell?
"Oh, my lady, good to see you again!" Edwin watched in mute horror, as Orion hacked the head off something that had horns, and purple skin. He tried to take a couple of steps back but found that he could not.
He was rooted to the ground, his bare feet beginning to sweat from the heat he should not be feeling, for he was dreaming.
"I came by to visit, but you were asleep!" Orion looked around as he said that. Edwin did not know what Orion was searching for, but when the man just shrugged and undid the topmost buttons of the being's collar, he sighed.
There was a chain around the neck. Edwin could imagine that the only reason why it was still stuck to the corpse was because it had never been removed before.
Orion giggled then, winked at him, and placed a finger on the chain. The brunette watched as it broke, and a single blue gem fell on the ground.
"Since you liked the candy wrapper so much," Orion bent, slowly, so slowly, as if he wanted for Edwin to admire a certain body part of his and picked up the gem. "I figured I could give you something nice again. Here, my lady, add it to your hair tie!"
Orion made a couple of steps towards Edwin's ghostly form, grinning all the while.
"After all," Orion said, as soon as he was a breath away from Edwin. Edwin, who, no matter how much he wanted to scream, could not force a sound out of himself. "What sort of boyfriend would I be, if I don't give you anything on our anniversary? You remember, right?"
Edwin wanted to move, he wanted to shake his head. Anniversary? Had Orion walked into his life on this day?
Or…?
"The anniversary of our first kiss, Edwin! Honestly, I might get angry if you don't remember something like that! What sort of a boyfriend are you? Get me something, or I will visit you again!"
Orion took a hold of the blue silk ribbon, which was still holding Edwin's hair together, and a light glowed.
The gem was hanging from it now, stitched and set in place with a rune.
Orion leaned in, wrapped an arm around Edwin. He came closer and closer.
Edwin's heart would have beaten like a caged songbird against its bars, had it still been capable of beating.
"I think I deserve another kiss. What do you say, lovely?" Orion's smirk made Edwin's knees weak. He did not want this.
He did not want to be reminded of his own death.
A spark flared in his soul. Orion screamed, being thrown back, his lips bleeding, the stench of charred pork heavy in the air.
Orion was a snowstorm, but as Edwin woke up, and touched the gem which was now a part of his ribbon, he could not help but hope that he was a big enough bonfire to hold it at bay.
0000
Damon was an enigma, or so Edwin thought. The man was in an apron with the cringe message "kiss the cook". Neither of them needed to eat. Why was the man making pancakes?
"Ah, good morning, Edwin. Did you sleep well?" The man was not like the vampires about which Edwin had read so much, during his teenage years.
He was all smiles and sunshine, easy jokes, and merciless teasing. But he had managed to keep Orion at bay, and Edwin was no fool.
Staying with Damon would increase his chances of survival. There was nothing more to it than that.
"Orion came to me in a dream," Edwin touched the blue gem stolen from the other demon, and thought really hard if he should ask Damon why a demon would kill another demon, just to give him this trinket.
Deciding that if he did not ask, he would have to break his own head against the riddle, he just went to the sink and started to battle with the mountain of dishes which the pancake making process had demanded as a sacrifice.
Something dripped on his nose, and he looked up. Forgetting about the gem for a while.
Wait, why was there an egg yolk on the ceiling?
"Damon, just how did you make the mix for the pancakes?" Edwin asked, as he snapped his fingers, and then began to move the yolk slowly off the ceiling, and towards the sink.
"Oh, it was quite the experience," Damon said, flipping the pancake. Edwin could not help but note that it was so burned, that not even pigs would eat it.
What a waste of food!
"Do tell," Edwin nodded to himself as the yolk finally made it down the drain, and he turned the water on. He wished he had not, seconds later because the water that came out of the faucet was brown. "Damon, when was the last time you came to this house?"
Edwin was homeless, he honestly should not think that he was above a house in disrepair. But he was beginning to think that even a rat-infested back ally was safer to live in than this old place.
"Oh, I think more than fifty years!" Damon flipped the pancake again, even though he had been cooking it for the past hour. If it was not completely charred, Damon had always told himself, when he started to teach Lich how to cook for demons, then it would not be convincing enough.
Edwin blinked, considered his options, as few as they were, and then looked at the dishes once more. The question which came to his mind was a simple one: Would his rotting limbs dissolve in that green sludge that was on most of the pots and pans in the sink?
"I can make the pancakes, if you do the dishes," Edwin said, as he took a step back from the health hazard and its brown water, which was still dripping from the faucet, even though Edwin had turned the water off.
"Sure! Let me just take everything to the washing machine!"
Edwin's right eye twitched. Washing machine? Oh, if he did not need Damon so badly to stay alive, he would have ripped him a new one.
Not that he could, even if he wanted to. He had googled the name of his savior, and he knew for a fact that him going one-on-one with the vampire was like a kitten facing off against a bear.
0000
Edwin collapsed in his chair, after making enough pancakes to feed the army. They were soft, warm, and the butter was already melting on his mountain.
He could not eat them all, he knew, but he had not been in charge of serving them. No, Damon had piled up half of the pancakes on a large porcelain plate, which for some reason had snowflakes on it, and just placed a slice of butter on top.
"Man, these are some good pancakes!" Damon said, as he continued to eat the food, that he did not really need to eat. "Edwin, let me hire you as my chef!"
Edwin took his knife and fork and cut himself a small piece from his pancake mountain. Bringing it to his lips, he could not help but think that the pancakes were good, yes, but not good enough for Damon to want to hire him.
He could smell those backhanded thoughts of the vampire a mile away. And yet, what choice did he have?
Sure, he could go around wandering the country again, sleeping under bridges, in cardboard boxes or on benches in parks. But if Orion found him again…
This new development of theirs brought a shiver down his spine. Orion could have done whatever he wanted during the dream. He could have taken advantage of Edwin; he could have stolen more than a kiss.
The gem which he had failed to remove from the ribbon was the proof of it.
"Sure," Edwin took a bit more of his breakfast. He was a Lich, not a demon. He could still taste the food, but for some reason, this time the food was somewhat… more nourishing.
He had not cooked ever since he had made the decision to run away from home, and to start living off graveyards.
It had not been easy. But the thing was that without a job, and with the police breathing down his back, he had simply had no other choice.
All his memories were now probably already recycled. He had not had space in his backpack for his photo album, for he had thought, back then, that his camping sleeping sack was a better choice to make, when it came to living in the streets.
Said sack had been stolen long ago, together with the backpack. Before, the jokes about the biggest artistic attraction in the capital being the pickpockets, who could steal everything from everyone, had made him chuckle.
Now, not so much.
"Good! I will pay you ten gold coins per month!" It was exploitation, Edwin knew, but he knew only this cottage as Damon's property. The man might be as old as dirt, Edwin reasoned with himself, but that did not make him rich.
Edwin took another bite from his pancakes, licked the butter off the topmost layer, and smiled.
Ah, to eat good food once more was just a gift.
"What would you like for lunch?" Edwin asked, as he reached out for the jam and whipped cream. A year had passed since he had allowed himself such a luxury. It was not like Damon was going to slap his hand away, was he?
"I was thinking baked chicken with some rice stew! Let me just fish your ten gold coins, and then you can go shopping!"
Edwin blinked. Wait, did that mean that he had to foot the food bill?
"My ten gold coins?" Edwin's right eye twitched. If he paid for the food, went back to the life he had lived while he had figured that he won't get his paycheck for the month, which he never got to find out because his phone got stolen on the third day of his new life, and with it, his savings, then he would still be no better than being homeless!
"Edwin, my little and adorable kitten, you did hire me to guard you, remember? You don't think I'd do it for free, do you?"
Damon chuckled; Edwin took a deep breath.
"I give you blood!" The outrage was clear in his voice, but he was answered with another chuckle.
"If blood was the only thing I took as payment, I'd be homeless, kitten," Damon cut himself a huge piece of his pancake, and then stuffed it in his mouth. "Man, so tasty!"
The man was tricky, Edwin had to admit. But to be angry at Damon was like being angry at a capybara. For the man was calm, joked around, and seemed to enjoy your company, and all that without faking anything.
Edwin sighed, decided that if he had to feed two people on ten gold coins per week, he had to use any chance he could get to get some good food in, and then started to make plans in his head how to make the ten gold coins stretch.
As for Damon, he was already thinking about what he could get from Orion in exchange for the leftover pancakes on Edwin's plate, which were soaking up with the man's mana.
Getting nice and ready for a demon to be able to taste them.
Oh, Damon thought to himself, as he took the maple syrup container, and dumped a generous serving over his pancakes, Orion was going to think him a saint, after Damon thought Edwin how to cook so, that the food was perfectly saturated in his Lich mana, and the leftovers of the souls he had ingested.
And for that, Damon had to make Edwin learn to enjoy cooking food from scratch.