Genre/Tropes: Paranormal Romance / Demon x Witch, Lovers to Enemies
Voice: First Person Close
Context: After a shared history and binding him to another realm for a century, Neko, a powerful Japanese witch, releases Rakuen, Black Angel, Powerful Demon Lord, and son of Lucifer to help her fight an even bigger and stronger entity, at the cost of her soul and his revenge.
My mother thought it was a bright idea to name me Rakuen, Japanese for Paradise, a striking synonym for Heaven, as if she was manifesting and willing me to be good, which I find hypocritical considering she slept with Lucifer, the king of hell.
And she was only a human.
An angel born of Lucifer is still just a demon, even if he has white wings.
Unlike my mother, she knows this, and she's the only person who understands it, who doesn’t expect me to be some proverbial good angel, which is why I like to flirt with her. But, I'm afraid killing her up until her last life is not her definition of flirting, and now she's pissed at me.
My bad.
I blame my dark sense of humor; I inherited it from my father’s side, but what was I supposed to do when I’d never met a yõkai?
Six hundred years ago, she was a kuro neko, meant to ward off evil, to protect, and attract good romantic fortune, but she’s been poisoned over the years, partially my fault, and now she's become corrupted—a bakeneko. That’s what happens when kuro nekos live for too long—they learn to control the dead and curse people. They become evil.
Just how I like it… just how I like her.
But as much as I like her, this would be the first time I’d be seeing her in a century… since she put me in time out.
Dark mist announced my arrival with a hiss, and the voices of many witches chanting inaudible Latin words in unison assaulted my ears even before I was pulled into this wretched human realm. My wings cushioned my violent descent with a force so strong I heard the floor crack. Gravel crunched under my weight, and it took a hot minute for me to catch my breath as the air was knocked out of me.
Heavens, this nauseating chanting.
The dust raised from the force of my fall hadn’t settled when I felt warm fluid pool and seep out of my ears in response to the inaudible chanting of the twelve figures circling me in white robes. I winced, the words they sang like a song, forcing a powerful migraine in my head so painful that I couldn’t open my eyes, causing me to writhe and moan in pain on the floor.
“Almost a millennium and you still moan like a baby,” came her whisper of a voice.
Despite my predicament, I couldn’t help but smile.