Page 42 of The Demigod

“The fuck?” I hissed, seeing the scorch mark on the ground.

“You’re taking big chances coming here,” a disembodied voice reached out to me.

“Jesus,” Nox gasped, eyes round.

I couldn’t blame her; Arick had one of those voices that made women wet just in casual conversation. All deep and smooth. He could literally bring women to orgasm just from speaking to them. Likely, I imagined, with a small bit of magic involved.

“That’s Arick,” I said, though he didn’t sound like himself.

I’d always known Arick to be fun and light, always down for fun, for party drugs, for lots of good times with women.

He sounded… tired. Weighted.

“You weren’t wrong about this,” Nox said, turning in a circle to look around the house.

While the bones of the house were all clean lines and cold, Arick’s decor was rich and in abundance.

Canvases of art leaned several deep along the walls, rich fabrics hung from windows and were under our feet.

As we moved deeper into the house, couches and cozy chairs were in abundance. As were the houseplants Arick had in abundance. Though they were looking sadder than I’d ever seen them—maybe reacting to their caretaker’s strange mood.

“He’s probably in the den,” I told Nox, pressing a hand to her lower back.

Arick’s den was the coziest place in his home. The walls were draped in green velvet, and the floors were made from foam mattresses that were covered in an abundance of pillows and blankets. Nothing matched, but the chaos created a strange sort of cozy comfort.

I’d never seen his den empty before. Anytime I’d ever been to his house, the den was always full of beautiful women, half of them draped over Arick himself.

“Wow,” I said, seeing all the pillows lined up and the blankets folded neatly. “That looks like the coziest bed known to mankind.”

“Feel free to enjoy it, lovely,” Arick’s voice reached out to us, sounding a bit more like his usual self.

“Arick, man, where the hell are you?”

Then, out of a cloud of swirling gray smoke, he appeared, making Nox gasp and move backward.

Whether that was from the magic itself or the man who’d created it was a toss-up.

Arick definitely was a surprising man. He was almost freakishly tall at about six foot seven, with a long, fit, thin body. While he was typically shirtless with his nipple piercings on display, he stood there just outside of his den in black jeans and a rumpled black tee.

His long black hair hung around his chiseled face; his strange, bright, grass-green eyes were on me at first but quickly moved toward Nox.

“A demigod,” he said, making my spine straighten. “How did you get in here?”

“What?” I asked. “I brought her in. She nearly got killed by a bolt of lightning on the doorstep.”

Arick’s chest expanded as he took a deep breath. On his arms, his tattoos started to pulse—a sure sign of temper. They moved ever so slightly at all times, so subtly that most people wouldn’t even notice. Depending on his mood, they might pulse, twirl, twist, undulate, or shimmer.

“That’s rude, old man,” Arick said, staring up at his ceiling, but clearly speaking beyond it. “Killing guests is uncalled for.”

“Arick…” I said, watching him closely. “You on something?” I asked. “Get your hands on some bad hallucinogenics?”

That was the main reason Arick was happy to have the demons at his parties. We brought the party drugs. That was the work Ace had settled on years back, bringing in a shit ton of money for the club, allowing the demons to live in relative luxury.

And while Arick did love the ‘shrooms and Molly—or whatever else we could get our hands on to bring to him—he never seemed to get truly fucked up off of them, no matter how much he took.

That said, we brought him the good shit. With the club busy with the whole ‘old gods’ thing, maybe he’d needed to branch out to less reputable dealers who gave him some bad stuff.

“I wish,” Arick said, sighing.

---