Hell & Back

Part Two

Part Two

Present Day

I have exactly six months of freedom left. Six months until dooms day is upon us. And if that isn't enough to drink for a week straight, I don't know what is.

I'm not entirely sure what day of the week it is, I just know that today is the sixth. And there is six months until my birthday. And six months and one day until dooms day. Aka my blood exchange with the guy my father picked for me.

There are countless perks to being in a family that are half-human and half-demon, like the physical strength, the amazing hearing and the fact I'm near impossible to kill without the right weapons. But there are also several downsides that kind of don't seem worth it.

Like the dark urges I have no control over, the immense desire to act upon them and sometimes blacking out during those moments and then coming to standing over bodies. Another downer is the blood exchange, a sacred tradition many other half-demon families follow.

Different families have different ways of completing the tradition, my family has an unspoken rule that our exchanges happen the day after our twentieth birthdays. Something that has been upheld for many generations.

And because not everyone finds the one, they are meant to be with at such a young age, the bulk of the marriages and unions in my family are arranged.

I've been arranged to exchange blood with Liam Quinn, some guy my dad chose. I didn't get a say in it at all. I've tried to get out of it, but everyone just keeps telling me it's the way it goes. That's tradition. That's our family's tradition, it's up to me to continue it and uphold it.

The only way out of an arranged blood exchange with Liam Quinn is finding some other pour sod to exchange blood with.

The thought has crossed my mind several times of the past couple of years and it's far too late to bother now. I have six months left until dooms day, nowhere near enough time to find the guy I want to be stuck with for the rest of my life and beyond.

I'm just going to have to learn to live with this regret.

I swing my legs out of the bed I've just been laying aimlessly in for the last couple of hours. On the other side of the curtains, out of the window the bright full moon beams down on the world. The sky lit enough to light up the grand backyard of my family's estate.

Making deals with demons can do wonders for your family. My family's estate is just scraping the surface of those deals.

I grumble under my breath as I pull the curtains shut once again. "I've had it!" I declare to no one in particular.

I've been doing so well resisting my dark urges and desires, I haven't even been drinking. It takes an awful amount of alcohol to get my body even buzzed, generally I need a full day's worth of drinking to get there.

It's what I consider a major downer of being half-demon. The metabolism is far too high, just as quickly as the alcohol is in my system it's gone. I don't even know the simple punishment of a hangover.

And I've been on some benders at my young age, nothing.

I throw my bedroom doors open and pad down the hallway to the stairs. Despite the late hour of the night, I doubt many of the people in my family are turning it in for the night.

A good perk of being half-demon, don't need as much sleep as humans. I can go a couple days before need a couple of hours to restore my energy. Sometimes I sleep purely out of boredom, anything to pass the time to my inevitable doom's day.

I'm far too aware I can be dramatic; in my defence I get it from my mother. She's the most dramatic person I've ever met.

On my way to the cellar, I come across my parents lounging in the informal lounge room. My father has his head in a book while my mother is far more relaxed lounging on the couch with her legs propped in my father laps watching some movie on the TV.