Page 67 of My Funny Demon Valentine
“Answer the question.”
“Fine.” He made an illegal right turn on a red light. Again, no turn signal. She was starting to wonder if he knew they existed.
“Like I said, demons aren’t like humans, since we don’t have souls. When humans die, they go to Heaven or Hell. If they’re good, they chill in Heaven for a while until they get bored, and then they reincarnate on Earth and do it all again. If they’re not good, they get sent to Hell and, well, bad shit happens. It’s supposed to make them improve, though I’ve never really seen how torturing someone will make them a better person.” He shrugged. “But that’s not my problem.”
“Wait, reincarnation is real?”
“For humans it is. For demons, not so much. When a lesser demon is destroyed, they just dissolve. Their consciousness merges with the consciousness that upholds the universe. They’re just gone. But greater demons, the more powerful demons—and this goes back to my theory—I think they start to develop some kind of soul. When they’re destroyed, I believe that ‘soul’ gets trapped in a special area of Hell, since there’s no way Heaven would take them. I don’t know where, and I have no idea what happens to them. But they still exist.” He visibly shuddered. “To me, that’s worse than dissolution. I’d rather vanish from existence than end up trapped somewhere in Hell I could never escape.”
“But you think that would happen to you if you were killed. Because you evolved.”
“Yeah.” The tightening around the edges of his mouth betrayed how much he didn’t like the sound of that.
“Who is Raphael?”
“An angel.”
Eva stared at him. “Anangel. Angels are real too, then. Okay.”
“Yeah, and they’re self-righteous pricks.” He floored it through a yellow light and shot her a glance. “You’re doing great, by the way. Most people would hyperventilate the second I flashed these.” He stuck out his hand, and in the blink of an eye, those deadly claws shot out of his fingertips.
She screamed and jerked back. “What the hell!”
The claws disappeared, his hand landing back on the steering wheel just in time to whip around a corner. During another red light. “See? You’re taking this well.”
“Damn it, Ash! You’re going to give me a heart attack!”
“No, I’m not. Which proves my point.”
She glared furiously at the side of his perfect head. “Tell me about the angel.”
His mouth twisted. “It wasn’t one of my finer moments. I don’t like telling this story.”
“Tell me, damn it.”
“A few thousand years ago, I was sent to this crappy village full of shitty humans. Killing, raping each other. Bunch of assholes going straight to Hell. But there were a few decent ones. In particular, this one chick, Sarah, was pure of heart, and she was the one I was sent after. I was still the Prince of Lust back then, so naturally, my job was to tempt her, try to corrupt her, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s part of the never-ending war between Heaven and Hell. We want to make more evil humans so we can claim their souls for Hell, and Heaven wants the opposite. Supposedly, there has to be opposing dark-light forces on Earth to balance everything, but then, Heaven always takes credit for everything anyway, and I’ve long since given up trying to understand.”
“So what happened to Sarah?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh god, don’t tell me you killed her.”
“I didn’t killher.”
Eva winced. “I still don’t like the sound of that.”
“Sarah was the most beautiful woman in the village, and she was considered even more so because of her innocence and purity.” He scoffed. “Gross, if you ask me. Innocence is not beautiful in itself. Anyway, she had suitors lining up outside her door. Seven of them—well, eight if you count me.”
“You?”
“That was my job: to go undercover in Sarah’s life and try to corrupt her. And I succeeded too. Innocent,pureSarah took a shine to me, and we started, um... fooling around a bit. If you catch my drift.”
Eva made a face. “That’sgross.”
He shrugged. “I was just doing my job. Poor Sarah didn’t know I had no intention of sticking around long enough to marry her, and she told the rest of her suitors she had chosen me. The entitled pricks didn’t like that in the least, especially since my fake human identity was an orphaned farmhand without a penny to his name.”
“That poor girl,” Eva thought, imagining some innocent woman falling helplessly in love with a demon who tempted her into sex before marriage. Talk about your rude wake-up calls.
