Page 59 of Demon Kissed
I raise my hands gently and stroke his arms, speaking soothingly, like I do when Adam’s upset. “I don’t hate you.” It’s the truth. I don’t. The other guys give me surprised looks, shocked that I’m comforting him, but I ignore them and focus solely on Akor. “But a guy is dead. And that’s huge, Akor. You can’t just undo that—”
“YES! That’s it! We can.” Akor releases his hard hold on me and grabs my hand instead, yanking me toward the van. “We can go back to our place and undo it all.”
I glance over my shoulder, wide-eyed, at Raz, but he just nods and gestures towards the van like he thinks this is a good idea too.
Regret blooms in my chest like a golden dandelion, and I’m tempted to pluck it and peel off petals chanting, “This works out, this works out not.” Because that seems as logical a way to predict the outcome of this shit as anything.
Can demons really undo death?
As the van starts up and I hurry to fasten my seatbelt, I realize that I’m about to find out.
We arrive at a townhome after a twenty-minute drive. And it looks like a normal brown, dull place built in the eighties, with those windows that are inset and never let in enough light. Not at all what I expected for a demon lair, but then, I just learned the most basic of facts about them tonight.
Kastros opens the garage door and parks inside. He shuts the door before we climb out, and I follow the guys in a daze through a mudroom with a very suburban-looking washer and dryer. Do demons do their own laundry?
It’s not until we come to the living room that I see what I’m expecting. The floor sinks down thirty feet into a black rock cave. At the bottom of the cave, there are three red couches with curved arms—those definitely look like sex couches—arranged around what might be called a demonic fireplace. Only, there is no fireplace. A huge column of fire roars up from the black stone, not surrounded by brick or hemmed in by glass. It just dances upward, trapped by some kind of invisible magic.
I stand at the edge of the hallway and peer down at this hellish room, wondering how the hell people don’t fall to their deaths just walking into this place, when suddenly someone scoops me up.
I find myself in Van’s arms. I start to smile, but that smile turns into a shriek when he walks right over the edge and we tumble into the pit.
“Fuuuu—”
Black wings erupt from his back and catch the air, acting like a parachute. We glide slowly down to the rock floor, where I proceed to smack his shoulders for all I’m worth.
“You dickless bastard! You clumsy, evil, motherfucking—” I cut off my insults when the rest of the guys all swoop down around me and there’s a plethora of leathery bat-like wings everywhere. And horns. Oh, the horns.
They aren’t trying to look human down here. Raz has thick black horns that curve like a ram. Akor has white horns that are as delicate as a deer’s and branch off just as wildly. Kastros’s horns are pale blue and look more like dinosaur spikes than anything. Zolroth’s horns are sleek and delicate, ivory-colored and tipped with gold. I glance back at Van’s horns, which I hadn’t really studied before. They’re pink and have a swirl and are reminiscent of…dildos.
“Dickhead!” I giggle and point, taking a step backwards as Van frowns and swipes at me playfully.
“Don’t start,” he warns.
Zolroth grins and comes to swing an arm around me, an arm that I notice has black fingernails tipped with silver points. I snatch his hand from where it lolls in the air near my shoulder and examine his claws.
“These are amazing,” I whisper, but I give a little shriek and drop his hand when the claws elongate into black blades and he turns into freaking Edward Scissorhands.
“Pretty useful for plucking angel wings,” Zolroth says. “Or roasting hotdogs.”
His mundane campfire cookout image for the gleaming weapons in front of me makes me giggle. Or maybe I’m overwhelmed. But a fit of chuckles takes over and won’t stop until I’m bowled over and gasping for air.
Akor and Kastros shove aside a couch, and I realize that Raz has brought in Jason’s body. He lays it down on the stone floor near the fire and then cuts his own wrist.
I gasp as his blood shoots onto the ground, but Raz doesn’t even whimper as he uses his own blood to create a pentagram around Jason’s corpse.
The guys each take up a spot at a corner of the star.
Raz licks his wound, and I watch in awe as it seals right back up. Then he points a black claw at me. “Stay back and stay silent.”
I nod once, trying not to notice how dry my throat has gone.
I’m about to see a demonic ritual. What has happened to my life? This used to be the kind of thing I’d only ever see on TV after Adam went to bed. And now, I’m surrounded by nightmares.
Ok, fine, not nightmares. Not really. Not when I can laugh off their dildo-looking horns. Not when I can bowl with them for hours. Not when they’re my friends.
First off…woah. When did I start considering them my friends and not stalkers? During bowling? Before that? Second, what does this mean exactly? Being friends with murderous demons? What has my life come to? I want to be scared of them, I honestly do—I know that I should—but I can’t muster any of my original terror. Don’t ask me why. Maybe Jason’s death broke something fundamental inside of me…like my pesky sanity. There’s no denying that they’re dangerous creatures, but I have the distinct feeling that they’ll never harmme. The other humans? I’m not too sure.
And when the fuck did I start calling them ‘the other humans?’
