Page 32 of Bad Demon

I lay there in silence for several moments, numb. Every part of me felt disconnected.

A slow thump reached me, a repetitive sound over and over again. I turned my head. The door to the other room was open. He’d done it on purpose—it wasn’t the first time. The Chemist wanted me to see him.

He was on his favorite gurney, fucking his medical mannequin while he stared at me, his gaze locked between my thighs.

I turned away again as his grunts grew louder, flinching when he finally groaned my name.

My phone started ringing again, and I jumped. I quickly hit End, put it on silent, and shoved the phone into my pocket.

I clenched my teeth. Grady was scared of the hound. Relic was the only thing standing between me and a fate worse than even Hell itself.

Rushing out of my apartment, I took the stairs back down to the shop and peeked around the doorframe. Relic stood with his face so close to the door at the front of the shop that his breath was fogging up the glass.

He growled suddenly, so loud that I startled.

Was Grady still on the roof across the street? Without a doubt. If he’d been told to come for me, he wouldn’t leave until he did just that. The demons who’d been hanging around, they’d stopped, and now I had a feeling I knew why.

I hurried back upstairs and grabbed my laptop. I logged in to my security software and opened the files from the last week.

I hadn’t really been checking the footage; all I’d had to do was look out the window, and I’d see them. The demons had stood just a few shops down, and either they were terrible at stealth operations, or they hadn’t really been trying to hide because they were constantly looking this way. Every night, they got closer, getting bolder. Now, I knew they’d wanted me to see them so I knewhewas coming for me. They’d been toying with me at Grady’s order.

I clicked around, searching through the footage.

One night, they were out there, and the next, they weren’t, as if … as if something or someone had scared them off. I opened the next file, fast-forwarding to after closing time, and froze.

There.

Relic.

Standing across the street. Then, later, outside my freaking shop door, like a giant sentry.

It was him. He was the reason they were staying away. He was the reason Grady had come himself and why even he was too scared to come closer.

Then I remembered what he said in the forest, about the demons I’d planned to bring to Agatheena, well, when he asked if I’d seen the them following me, and I said I hadn’t.

“Because I strongly encouraged them to fuck off.”

Holy shit.

My giant stalker had inadvertently saved my ass—at least for now. Like a humongous, deranged bodyguard that I had absolutely no control over.

I chewed my lip. Now, I knew The Chemist was alive, and I knew he wouldn’t stop. Now that he’d finally found me, he wouldn’t leave, not until he had me at his mercy again. The demons, now Grady—they were waiting for Relic to leave. And as soon as my stalker hound got bored and left, I’d be screwed. I could leave, I could try and run, but where would I go?

I chewed my lip. If I had control over him though—over that big, powerful male—I could make sure he didn’t leave.

You’ve lost your fucking mind.

Ten minutes ago, I’d wanted him gone. Now, I was trying to think of ways to make him stay—and fetch, and sit, and beg like a good boy. Was I really contemplating this? What choice did I have?

Agatheena still didn’t have any information for me on what a threeling was and, more importantly, how to unleash all the power she’d said I had.

I needed protection, and the hellhound could give me that.

There was only one way to make sure he couldn’t leave my side.

The demon blood that ran through my veins was ancient and powerful—a soul collector, according to Agatheena. It was the only way to ensure I had control over him, but Relic wouldn’t just sign away his soul to me because I asked him to. He was a hellhound; he’d know what that meant more than most. I didn’t like tricking people or deceiving them, but this was life and death—mine.

I needed to get him to drop his guard, to convince him this was a good idea—his idea. But to do that, I’d have to let him in. This was insane. I guessed I only had a fifty percent chance of this working. He could absolutely turn on me. He’d said hounds were protective of females though, and he’d seemed genuinely unhappy that I was scared of him. So, maybe my odds were fractionally better. Maybe around a sixty-five percent chance of success. Compared to the alternative, which was a one hundred percent chance of losing everything and suffering horror and agony for the rest of my life—then sixty-five percent didn’t seem that bad at all.

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