One Plus Two Equals... - 26

"I become the most barbarous and vicious of all animals," Duane replied. "Another human being. In my case another man, one who is stronger and wilier than I'll ever be."

"You don't think much of us, do you?"

"Us? Meaning you think I'm not human?"

"Are you?"

Duane smiled just slightly, seeing by his question that Julyan seemed to be accepting what he'd been telling him. "I consider myself human, yes. Different, enhanced, for lack of a better word, but still human in my heart and mind."

"And the man you shift to?" Suddenly Julyan's eyes widened. "Auden. That's why… The eyes… The times you've said almost the same things he has." He sprang from the bed, backing away, fury in his expression. "You bastard! You… you…"

"Son of a bitch, fucking asshole, motherfucker? Stop me when I hit the right one."

"All of them. Every damned one of them. You've been toying with me, trying to seduce me as Auden while you were coming on to me as…as yourself. Trying to make me think you cared for me."

"Julyan," Duane said softly, reaching out a hand to him, "I do care for you, more than I'm sure you will ever believe. I wasn't toying with you."

"What the hell do you call what you, what Auden was doing?" Julyan ignored his hand although he didn't move any farther away.

"When I shift and become Auden, well…he’s bolder than me. He's a man who sees what he wants and does his best to take it. Id to my ego maybe, for lack of a better description. He's also…"

"Also?" Julyan asked when Duane stopped speaking.

"There are other supernaturals. Not many. It's not like in the stories where there are as many as there are humans, living side by side with humans without them knowing. But they do exist and some of them are not nice creatures."

"So?"

"So Auden, well, by extension both of us work for an agency formed to deal with them. It's why he was up on your roof. I swear he had no idea you lived there the first time you met him."

"Not true. You said yourself you knew where I lived from my application."

Duane nodded. "I would have, if I'd actually done more than glance at it. You know filling it out was just a formality."

"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

"I've been around long enough I've learned I need to."

Julyan inched closer to the bed now, his fascination with what Duane had been telling him overriding his anger. "How long?"

"Not thousands of years, if that's what you're afraid of. A bare sixty years."

Julyan couldn't help it. "You don't look a day over forty."

Duane clutched his heart. "You wound me to the core."

"You're addicted to that gesture."

"Yeah, I guess I am." Duane studied Julyan then, trying to figure out exactly where he stood with him now.