Chronicles of the Orchid Court

I got out of the car and headed to the cabin door. "Come on in. It's not much. I will light the fire and the lanterns, so we have light. I have peanut butter cookies on the sideboard if you want one. I baked them yesterday."
Adrian stepped out of the SUV, his boots crunching against the earth beneath the willows massive canopy. The air here felt…different, heavier. Like the forest itself was holding its breath. He glanced up at the tree. Its branches swayed gently despite there being no wind. It almost felt like they were reaching for him. He moved away from them toward the cabin. It was small and rustic. No electricity lines were visible. He followed me towards the door, his hand instinctively resting near his concealed pistol. Not because he didn't trust me, but because years of training made caution automatic. Inside the cabin it was exactly as I had told him. Outdated, simple and almost frozen in time. No modern appliances, no electronics, just wood and stone and the faint smell of baked goods. Adrian's eyes swept the space methodically, checking corners, windows and all exits, which consisted of one.
"Peanut butter cookies sound good." His voice was softer now, almost normal. He watched me move through the cabin, lighting lanterns one by one. The warm glow spread slowly pushing back the shadows. It was oddly peaceful. He picked up a cookie from the sideboard, studying it for a moment before taking a bite.
"These are really good!" A flicker of something almost like a smile crossed his face, brief but real. He finished the cookie and turned to face me properly.
"Alea, I need to ask you something important." His tone was serious again, but not unkind. "Have you ever felt the urge to hurt someone? To…feed? Even once?"
I looked at him shocked. "Feed? Like Dracula? Don't look so surprised. I may have been raised simple, but I read. The answer is no. Blood grosses me out. When Dad would clean a deer, I couldn't watch."
Adrian's expression softened. "That's good! Really good!"
He leaned against the cabin wall, arms crossed loosely. "Most demons can't control the urge. It's not just hunger, it's compulsion. Biological need." He watched me move around the cabin lighting the last few lanterns. "The fact that blood grosses you out instead of triggering anything is…significant."
The small sparse cabin was fully lit now. The light from the lanterns gave it a surprisingly warm glow, making it feel cozy despite its simplicity. Adrian's eyes roamed around the room. It was decorated with handmade furniture. A small bookcase with each book neatly displayed on its shelves. A small wooden table in front of the large hearth and on the opposite side what appeared to be a counter with a wash basin and a hand pump for water. A large barrel stood just under the counter, fed from a funnel that came in through a hole in the wall. Rainwater, that is the water I used. That explains why under the demon scent, I smelled like stormy nights and forests. There wasn't a speck of dust, nor a thing out of place. Adrian picked up another cookie.
"Your parents kept you isolated that's for sure. Tell me the reasons why they called you hybrid? Was it only when angry? Why did they never teach you about who or what you are? Did they ever take you into town?"
I stood staring at him. He seemed to fill the entire cabin. He leaned casually against the side of the counter nibbling cookies, but his face was furrowed in concentration. Like he was trying to work out a particularly hard puzzle. "Demonique…that word, it triggered something inside you." His voice had dropped to almost a whisper. He was clearly talking to himself. "Two forces, fighting. Interesting."
"You are doing it again." I said as I sat in one of the two only chairs in the cabin. The warmth from the fire at my back soothed my frayed nerves. I had never had anyone in my cabin. This was my escape from the world outside. When things became confusing, or painful, I would come in here and the world just disappeared. I could pretend that nothing had changed, because inside the cabin, nothing had. The only thing I had changed was my old bed. It had taken years, but eventually I removed it from the cabin, added the feather sleeping pad to my parent's larger bed and slept there. Now, here stood a man, a stranger, one who killed things like me for a living. Eating my cookies.
Adrian glanced up at me surprised. It was like he had forgotten I was there. He came over and sat at the table across from me. "Doing what?"
I turned to face him. "Asking questions, not waiting for answers. Mumbling and rambling."
He sighed heavily. "I am trying to understand what you are."
That simple statement made me angry. "I am a person.
He looked at me with something akin to sympathy. "You are anything but human. I'm not sure what you are. Demons are created when human blood is poisoned by demon blood. But if one of your parents were something else, an angel maybe, or something we don't have a name for…" his voice trailed off at the thought.
"My parents were just people. They slept, they ate, they laughed, they cried. My Dad broke his hand when a log fell on it. That doesn't sound special to me. Mom miscarried babies over the years. Nothing supernatural about that. So how did I become this…this…" I flapped my hands helplessly in front of me. "This."
Adrian sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I don't know. I've never heard of anything like this. Not in any of the Hunter records at the Academy. Not in the Great Library. Not in any of the stories or lore."
He scanned the cabin and his voice, which had become softer in the glow of the lanterns, asked. "How long have you lived here alone?"
I laid my hands on the table. Trying to remain calm, even though I was screaming inside. "I told you. Since I was 16." A memory flashed in my mind. My Dad, pouring over an old leather-bound book. One he had forbidden me to read. The only book he had forbidden me to read. "Maybe my dad's book has some answers. It's really old and he forbade me to ever touch it. When he died, I never had the heart to go against his wishes, so I never read it."
Adrian's entire body went still. His eyes locked onto mine with a sudden sharp intensity that made me sit back in my chair. Fear fluttered slightly in my chest.
"You have your father's book? Here?" His voice was calm, but there was edge beneath it now. An urgency. "Alea, this could be the answers you are looking for. Real ones." He leaned across the table, not threatening, but focused. "Old books, in Hunter circles, are kept locked away in the Great Library, but there are stories of some that were stolen. Hidden away by a small faction of rogue humans, demons and angels. They contain the genealogy of angels and demons, the forbidden rituals, and records of things that aren't supposed to exist. But they have always been just rumors." His expression softened when he saw the fear on my face.
"I know you couldn't bring yourself to read it. I respect that. But if we are going to figure out what you are, and more importantly, how to keep you safe, we need any information that it may contain."
His gaze began travelling around the room. "Where is it?"
The fireplace crackled softy behind me and shadows danced across the cabin walls. Adrian's hand moved instinctively towards his weapon, but he caught himself and pulled back. Old habits are hard to break.
"I won't touch it without your permission. But if you let me, I'd like to see it." His blue eyes searched mine. "Please."
I sat staring at him. He was a stranger. A killer, but he had shown me nothing but kindness and concern since the alley. He had answers I didn't. He knew things like me.
"You are right. I've spent decades, or more, in the dark. I've watched life change, the city change. I need to know. It's on the bookshelf."
Adrian's head snapped toward the bookshelf. He stood and took a step towards it then stopped.
"Decades?"
His voice was flat, almost disbelieving. Turning slowly, he faced me.
"You said your parents died when you were 16. You look no older than your 30's. That isn't decades."
He furrowed his brow and looked more closely at me. He noticed things he had missed before. My skin was too flawless, no signs of aging, no scars. My hands were smooth, unblemished despite years of hard living in the wilderness. The cabin was old-fashioned but not just stylistically, it was genuinely outdated. Like time had stopped a century ago.
"The city changed." He repeated. "You said the city changed…"
He exhaled slowly, running a hand through his black hair. The first sign of a break in his iron clad calm.
"How old are you?" Then before I could answer, he shook his head. "Never mind. Book first."
He moved towards the bookshelf carefully, respectfully. His eyes scanned the spines until they came to rest on one book. Older than the rest. Leather-bound and lacking a title on the spine.
He reached for it slowly, then turned to look at me. "Are you ready for this? Once we open it, we can't go back."
I took a deep shaky breath. "I think so. And to answer your question, 57,345 days."
Adrian froze, his hand halfway to the book. "57, 345…days?"
His voice came out barely above a whisper. "That's over 157 years!"
Silence spread through the room. The fire crackled. The lanterns flickered. Adrian turned and faced me fully. His expression was one caught somewhere between shock and the beginnings of understanding.
I shrugged. "Give or take a day or two, yes."
I started pacing in front of the fireplace out of sheer nervousness. He just stood there. Staring. Like I had sprouted a second head.
"H…h…wha…how? What?" he stammered. The second crack in that iron clad veneer he had. Slowly he approached me, like I was some rare creature he was afraid to scare off.
"Okay, book can wait a moment. Way to bury the lead." He shook his head, as if to clear it. I could see the questions forming on his face. Where did I come from? How had I survived this long undetected? What was I?
"I am good at hiding. As you can see. I don't know where I came from. This is the only home I have ever known. And I don't know what I am. Does that answer the immediate questions?"
Adrian blinked. I almost giggled. It would have been cute if it wasn't such a detour from his normal face.
"Take a breath Adrian. You said yourself; I was a demon. Maybe that side is how I've lived so long."
That seemed to snap him out of whatever shock he was in. "Demons live a shorter than human length of time in their host. They burn up the body once the soul is completely taken over."
He turned back to the bookshelf. "So, you've been here since 1869? Is that when you were born?"
I shook my head. "No, that is when we came to the cabin. I was maybe 4 or 5. Before that we moved a lot. I don't remember sleeping in the same bed twice until we came here."
Adrian let a slow breath escape his lips. "I don't know what to say to all that."
I moved to stand beside him at the bookshelf. I looked at my father's book. Memories of him writing in it every night for hours, staring at me, then scribbling frantically across the page, flitted through my mind. The hours outside, his endless questions and 'games'. They were all tests; I know that now. He would spend the entire night writing his findings in that book.
I nodded at Adrian. "Do it. Take it from the shelf. Let's see what my dear old dad wrote about me." I was angry now. Angry that he never trusted me enough to tell me the truth. Always hiding behind some silly game, or challenge.
Adrian turned and put a hand on my shoulder, gently turning me to face him. "You've been alone in this cabin for over a century and a half. Watching the world change from a distance. Never part of it, never aging, never…" his voice trailed off. He cocked his head to the side and his expression changed. He was looking at me differently now. Not with fear, nor suspicion, not with a detached cold analytical mind, but with something closer to awe, and a deep aching sympathy.
"Alea…" he exhaled slowly. I stepped back, breaking the moment. I could not, would not, be pitied. Not now. I chose to stay hidden after my parents died. I chose to continue the silence. I will choose when I change that.
 "You were going to say, never been loved, before. That I have never known love outside of my parents, and that was a warped kind of love. No, I've never loved, or been loved. I've never lived a normal human life. I've wanted too, but now, since meeting you, I know that is impossible. I think I knew that all along, I just didn't want to admit it. I'm scared of what is in that book. Right now, I'm not normal, but I'm safe. What if that book changes that? I've known you all of five minutes, but you are the first person since my parents to talk to me, to even show an interest, to be kind."
Something raw flickered across Adrian's face. "You're right." His voice was low and steady, but it was honest. "I was going to say that. 157 years, most of it alone. Watching the world move forward while you stayed the same. Hidden in the mountains. Never having any sort of connection with another person. That's not living. That's surviving." He looked at the book. "I spoke to you in kindness because that is what I feel. You don't scare me, you don't feel like a threat. You feel…fragile. Not physically, but there is an energy around you that feels delicate. It touched something in me. We are in this together. I gave you my word."
He turned back towards the book. "I have spent years hunting demons. I've seen true monsters, creatures that laugh while tearing families apart. Ones that manipulate that destroy without remorse. You…you are not that. I don't think you ever were. Nothing in this book is going to change the fact that you are a person who has been alone way to long."
The icy indifference slid back into place and the vulnerability was gone. I was beginning to think this was his default and it was hard for him to be open. I appreciated the effort.
Adrian pulled it from the shelf. He carried it to the small wooden table and set it down gently.
"Come here. We open it together." His voice was firm but kind. "Whatever is in here, you're not facing it alone."
The leather was ancient, cracked. The pages yellowed with age. The cover had no title. Just a symbol, burned into the leather. It was intricate with curving lines intertwined with each other.
"This is unfamiliar to me." He said, tracing it with his finger. "I've never seen anything like this before."