Page 101 of Spit

“He has, hasn’t he?” Quinn nodded, resolute. “I am happy for him. Severin is not an easy person to love. He often guards himself.”

“Love?” I sat up. “Woah, who said anything about love?”

“You are bonded.” Quinn cocked his head to the side, and before I could interrupt, he continued. “Severin used to trust implicitly. Lucifer came to him and promised the world. He promised Sev that they would go to Hell and rebuild. That Nova, the goddess of light and life, would understand. That she wanted it to happen. It wasn’t treason because she had instructed Lucifer to give the order.”

“That’s not what happened.” I guessed. “I know that Lucifer stole the scepter, and she kicked the devil out of hell. I know that she kicked out everyone that took Lucifer’s side.”

Quinn snorted a bitter laugh. “She culled everyone that she saw as a threat. Everyone disagreed with her war on Hell. Severin used to be a peaceful person. Now, he watches. Always watches. He once told me that he used to listen only to words; now he listens to actions and ‘ignores the bullshit’ as he put it.”

“I’m getting the feeling that being bonded is different than I expected,” I told Quinn. “You know Sev very well?”

He tipped his head. “We went to war together. We mobilized against hell when we had God’s favor. We killed the first demons at her behest; we unleashed the devouring beasts that finished the job and laid the dimension to ruin. When God tried to take the spoils, she realized she had made the dimension unlivable. She sent her angels, us, to kill the beasts. It wasn’t a war, not really. It was a massacre.”

“But she didn’t kill all the demons.” I pointed out. “Demons still exist.”

“Not as you know them,” Quinn replied. “To be bonded is to know their thoughts. Their soul. To know their very essence and to accept it.”

I rubbed my sternum as if to soothe my aching chest. “We haven’t bonded in that way. Sev and I are friends.”

Quinn, the demon, hummed.

“Do you think he’ll be able to reach me here?” I asked.

“One should hope.” Quinn winced as he pushed his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands. Though his red hair was much shorter than Legion’s, I saw the pride demon in the gesture.

I stifled a chuckle.

Quinn cocked his head in question.

“Legion does that,” I said, mimicking how he had pushed his hair back.

“We are bonded.” Quinn nodded in confirmation.

“I know that you shared a body once and that Legion traded a hundred years of service so that you could all be free again.” I had seen it with my own eyes, how the seven fallen angels had become one person. That explained why they could read each other’s minds. Did that mean that when I was intimate with Trey, I had technically been with all of them? Just thinking of the implications made my head swim.

Quinn put his finger to his lips, and before I could argue, the sickly-sweet taste was back. Quinn mimed plugging his nose, but I wasn’t sure how long I could hold my breath.

I could still try, though.

I lay on the floor as if the drug had been effective, taking shallow breaths and making my body limp as I waited for the doctors to return.

They didn’t.

Eventually, I needed to breathe, and the air tasted different when I did. Not the sickly sweet vapor that had made my head swim and my vision fuzzy, but something else entirely. It wove around me, making my skin hot and my cheeks burn.

I sat up when I realized that no one was coming. It would have been easy to discount what I felt as a fever or psychological, but I knew my own body. I prided myself on always being in control. Careful.

I fanned my face with the neck of my scrubs, groaning as my skin prickled and a bead of sweat rolled down my neck and between my breasts.

The soft whirr that had signaled the door opening in the past set me on edge as Quinn played dead on the other side of the glass, obviously more adept at avoiding oxygen than I was.

The glass lowered, ever so slowly, disappearing into the floor until Quinn and I shared a single cell.

I had no idea what was happening.

Quinn sat up as soon as the glass was gone, his brow furrowed as he stared at the floor where it had gone. Resignation painted his features as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like a man walking to the gallows.

“What’s happening?” I asked, but my voice was slurred and husky. Wanton, for lack of a better word. “Have they made it hotter in here?”

---