Page 5 of Nine Inch Nasty
He sighs, covering my hand with his and lacing our fingers together. It sends a little shiver down my spine, which we will not be discussing at further length, thank you. “There may be something to their ideas, but…I don’t see how you can help. Vegan food is…”
“May I ask, out of pure curiosity, why are you all vegan? You told me all unicorns here are, and that seems like a bit of an exaggerated demographic of vegans…there aren’t usually so many in a population. Is it something with your anatomy? Do you react badly to dairy or meat products?”
He thinks about this, seeming a bit stumped. “I guess…it’s just how we are. I don’t... we’re pretty much just taught from a young age that’s our diet. It’s like saying we have manes. We just are.”
Bill leans forward, and I can see his brain working. “Okay, Saladriel, was it? Yes, okay, how did you feel when you had that bite of macaroni and cheese?”
He’s far too serious for what that question actually was.
Eventually, Saladriel cracks and starts crying, covering his face as great, wracking sobs take over his body.
What the hell?
I scoot closer, putting an arm around him. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”
He mumbles something.
“What was that?”
He finally pulls his hands away from his face and looks me straight in the eye as he says, “I snuck into the kitchen when everyone else was asleep and ate all the leftovers. I’m also ashamed to say I dug through the trash to find the bits and pieces that people scraped off their plate and ate those, too. I’m so gross! My body is no longer a holy temple for the goddess! No wonder she punished me by sending me away, she knew how weak I was! It was the most godsdamned delicious thing I’ve ever put between my lips, and I hate that I loved it so much!”
He runs off crying to the other room, slamming the door behind him, leaving us all very perplexed. To put it mildly.
“Well.” Wil drops next to me on the couch, casually grabbing my hand to plant a kiss on it like he’s been doing it forever. It’s actually a challenge to get myself to stop looking at his mouth after that, because my brain is stuck on a loop remembering every filthy thing he did to me using that exact mouth last night.Fuck.
Bill makes an uncomfortable coughing noise and pulls his collar away from his neck. Oops, lust check. Yeah, that shit’s running all over the place. My bad. I suck it all back in and make sure it’s nice and locked down before I shift my attention back to Zac’s parents. “So, you were saying?”
They outline the plan they’ve come up with, pointing out there were no explicit instructions that I couldn’t get help in my quest to save the realm, which I guess is true. And really, what do we have to lose? Other than like, well, everything. But if we do nothing, I’ll likely lose it all anyway, and this seems like as good an idea as any.
Not quite sure how we’re going to pull it off, but maybe I need to take a page out of Saladriel’s book and head to a store of some sort to pick up ingredients.
Chapter Three
Rush
Funny how at one point in my existence I was actively trying to flee anyone that so much as mentioned ‘cupcakes’ and now I’m actively helping my mate find decent vegan recipes for them online. It feels like an oversight that we can use the internet on our phones here.
There’s a whole lot of substitutions happening because this realm really doesn’t have many ingredients to work with, but maybe they’ll turn out okay?
Better idea. “What if I just popped down to Hell, demanded a minion gather the actual ingredients for normal,realcupcakes, and then just jettisoned back here? I’d be back so fast, and then we might actually have a chance of testing this theory about the terrible food being the reason this realm is depressed.”
“Wait, you can leave here? You don’t need the portal?” Wil screeches.
“Honey, if I could get out of being a cursed tree, I can get out of some other realm. Son of Lucifer, remember? I can get home no matter where I am. There’s literally nothing that could overwrite that ability.”
Wil looks to Delaney’s other menagerie of men before gaping at me once more. “B-but…we’re trapped!”
“I don’t follow your rules, though,” I remind the shy cutie.
“Better get the vegan stuff, too, because I have a feeling there are some unicorns that might not be so keen on eating butter and eggs,” Delaney says, completely unphased by my ability to leave.
I kiss her on the cheek and pinch her ass, silently promising to do dirty things to it later, before blinking myself back home.
I take a deep inhale of hot garbage before going about my mission, feeling far less itchy in my skin with the screams and wailings echoing around me.
Not a damn rainbow in sight.
Unless you consider the hilarious statue my father commissioned made of cursed demon heads in a rainbow of colors— they’re not in pain, don’t worry, they’re just very, very uncomfortable because their bodies are somewhere being tortured with tickles. It’s so fucking evil, I love it.
