Page 75 of Demon with Benefits
“Nothing,” she said quickly, feeling defensive on Meph’s behalf. “He didn’t do anything.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She was working out how to answer his question without actually answering it when she suddenly blurted out what she really wanted to know. “What happened to him in Hell? Why did he tattoo that binding sigil on himself?”
She pressed a palm to her forehead.What are you doing, Iris? Do you really want to go there?If she wanted a clean break from Meph and all the complications that came with him, now was the time to do it.
But was that what she wanted?
“Did you ask him?” Raum said.
“I did, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“I don’t know if it’s my story to tell either.”
“Right, yeah, that—”
“But... if you’re getting involved with him, you should probably know.”
Now would be the time to tell him she had no intention of doing any such thing and then suggest making plans to meet so she could give him the phone.
She remained silent.
Raum took her silence as an affirmation of his assumption, and Iris’s curiosity got the better of her. She had to know.
“Meph’s demon form is... fucked up,” Raum began. “He’s fairly young for a demon, and he can’t summon hellfire or turn to mist or whatever, but his demon form makes it so he doesn’t need any of that. He can defeat almost anyone on his own.”
“How? What is his other form?” The not-knowing was eating her alive.
Raum ignored her question. “You have to understand, my brothers and I are... the way we are... partly because we’re old. We’ve been around so long, we’ve seen and done it all. Even a demon, created solely for evil, has enough awareness to realize over time that violence and chaos never actually make anyone feel better, as much as it might feel like they will at the time. But Meph, he’s only been around about nine hundred years.”
Iris’s eyes widened.Onlynine hundred years? That didn’t sound young to her.
“Most would disagree, but Meph’s always been a pretty deep thinker. He says a lot of stupid shit, but underneath it all, he thinks about stuff. And that’s probably how he managed to change as much as he has in such a short time. Because when I first met him, he sure as fuck wasn’t like he is now. And it didn’t help that Valefor got ahold of him pretty much the day he was created—”
Iris’s blood went cold. “I’m sorry, did you sayValefor?”
“Yeah, you’re not the only one with a good reason to hate that bastard.”
“W-what did he do?” Her voice was a whisper, her heart racing. She was still standing naked in the middle of her kitchen, but she felt numb to the cold nipping at her skin.
“Valefor has always been greedy, and he’s obsessed with collecting unusual artifacts of power. That’s why he went after you and Lily and why he was so fixated on Meph. Meph was fucked up back then—we all were. He was... hungry. Val gave him something to hunt. The arrangement worked for a while.
“Thing was, Val was using Meph to help him gain power, and he only wanted Meph hunting things he wanted gone. He wanted Meph to be like an attack dog he could unleash on his enemies. But Meph was pretty feral, and he was too chaotic to follow any structure or rules. So Val did what you do to any wild creature you want to train: He broke him.”
“Oh god.” Iris could just imagine what that would entail when you were a demon in Hell.
“Yeah. And just like any wild creature, eventually, Meph learned to behave on Val’s terms. He became Val’s ultimate weapon. No one could touch that fucker back then. And Meph enjoyed it at the time too. He reveled in the power trip, and he loved eating people.”
“Eatingwhat—?”
“I met him about four hundred and fifty years ago, when we were both on Earth for a job. It was the first time Meph had ever taken human form, and damn, he was a nasty bastard. He was sent to fuck with this one human who’d been trying to summon demons for a while until Hell finally decided to give him what he wanted. Meph got assigned to him, and boy, did he ruin that fucker’s life.”
“Oh my god, you’re talking about the Faust legend.” Iris’s eyes traveled down to the puppy sitting at her feet.
“Yeah. The story got told enough times that it stuck around. It’s been retold so many times now, most of it’s made up, but Meph never lost his notoriety. He loves it, the idiot.”
“Wait, so that’s when you met him? What were you doing on Earth?”
