Chapter 17
17
Sucks to Be a N ep h ilim
“O nce upon a time,” Meph began, “there were a bunch of stuck-up angels protecting Earth, floating around with their thumbs up their asses. Then, a few of them got a little too interested in humans, if you know what I mean, so they got the boot from Heaven because sex is bad for sanctimonious douchebags.”
“They became fallen angels and did the nasty with the humans, and all was right in the world. Except they still felt the need to fulfill some boring heavenly mission, so they took it upon themselves to be protectors of humanity from the evil forces of Hell plotting to corrupt their innocent souls. The angels were called Grigori, Earth’s heavenly Watchers.”
Bel growled in annoyance. “This is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
Ash was inclined to agree.
“Shhh, bro.” Meph held up a finger. “I’m not finished. Eventually, the Grigori knocked up their humans, and lo! A race of human-angel hybrids was born, called the Nephilim. The Nephilim had special blood, and demons, being the weird, perverted fuckers we are, discovered that if they drank that blood, they would become untraceable, among other cool things. So if a demon wanted to, say, escape Hell, all he had to do was take a hit of blood, and ta-da . He’d be invisible.”
Eva looked part overwhelmed, part revolted. “So you guys just found one of these Nephilim and drank its blood?”
“It’s not that simple,” Belial cut in. “Nephilim are ceaselessly hunted by both Hell and Heaven. Hell, because demons want to use them for their abilities. Heaven, because angels don’t want demons to have the blood, and consider human-angel hybrids an abomination. If a demon gets its hands on a Nephilim, they’re looking at a life in captivity, being kept alive solely as a blood source. If an angel finds one, they kill that sucker faster than you can say, ‘Have mercy.’ Which they don’t.”
“Sounds like it sucks to be one of these Nephilim guys,” Eva said.
“It sucks a lot,” Meph agreed.
“Okay.” Eva took a deep breath. “I think I’m nearing the point of information overload. No one talk for a second while I put this together. You guys drank the blood of some poor creature, and now you’re untraceable. Or something.”
They nodded.
“You can travel through gate thingies, and wherever you end up, Mist won’t be able to track you. But the catch is that somebody on the other end has to draw the same sigil in order for us to be able to travel through it, which means we have to find someone we trust.”
“Bang on the money,” Meph said, grinning. “You’re smart for a human.”
“You’re dumb for a demon,” Raum shot back.
“Hey, that was unwarranted.”
“Look, while all this sounds very scary, I can’t just leave Montreal indefinitely.” Eva was starting to sound more like herself again, which was such a relief to Asmodeus that he felt light-headed. Or maybe that was from blood loss. Yeah, that was more likely.
“I have a job, and I have to pay rent and get the window in my apartment fixed. And I have a gig in two weeks.”
Had he thought he felt relieved? With those words, that fist around his gut clenched nice and tight again and the feeling evaporated. It was his fault Eva’s life was being upended. That kind of thing had never mattered to him before, but suddenly, it did.
He wanted to promise her he’d keep her safe and disembowel anyone who touched her, but he was using up all his focus staying upright and keeping his eyes open. His heart pounded in his temples, and he was so damn tired . The tile floor at his feet was starting to look really cushy.
“It’s either come with us or let the Hunter get you,” Meph pointed out bluntly.
“So what, you guys can never return here?” Eva’s voice rose like she was starting to panic again. “And what about me? Am I going to be in danger for the rest of my life?”
Ash tried to drag a hand through his tangled hair again, but his arm felt heavy, and when he lifted it, his head spun. He gave up on that and focused on speaking. “All of us want to find a permanent solution, but we’re more concerned about immediate survival at the moment. There’s no point worrying about the future right now.”
She looked at him and took a breath. “Fine. But I’m beyond pissed at you for dragging me into this. Before you came along, I was a clueless human living my life with no knowledge of any of this. And I never would’ve had to have that knowledge if you had left me alone in the first place.”
His fingers clenched around his bloody T-shirt, sending a fresh trickle of liquid down his side. Hearing her say that made him feel more uncomfortable shit. This emotion settled like a lead weight in his chest and made his skin crawl. For once, he could actually name this feeling because he’d experienced it before.
Guilt.
The last time he’d felt it had been when Miguel was killed. Now, he felt it for upending Eva’s life. Mist had said it best: If you really cared for her, you would have left her alone.
“Don’t blame Ash, sugar,” Meph said, flashing his customary devilish grin. “You’re the first woman to be into him in thousands of years. What would you expect him to do? He’s a lust demon, after all.”
“ Was a lust demon,” Ash grumbled. How many times did he need to make that goddamn clarification? “And don’t call her that.”
Eva threw up her hands. “Oh, well, that’s totally fine, then! Of course I understand. He’s completely forgiven now.”
“Really?”
“No, Meph,” Raum drawled. “That’s called sarcasm.”
“I know what sarcasm is.”
“Can we get back to the fucking point?” Bel snapped. Flames flickered in his eyes, and everyone snapped to attention. They were not risking another blown-fuse Belial. “I’m the oldest and most powerful, and I say all five of us are leaving this city. If you don’t like it, too bad.”
“No one’s objecting, bro.” Meph held his tattooed palms up. “But we need somewhere to go.”
Unfortunately, no one had an answer for that.
“Fuck.” Ash dragged his free hand down his face. He was having the damnedest time focusing on the conversation.
“You okay, Ash?” Meph asked, studying him. “You’re looking pretty pale.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“He’s right,” Bel said suddenly. “You look like shit.”
“I’m fine,” he growled, suddenly impatient to escape the scrutinizing gazes of his brothers. Unfortunately, as he turned to step around Eva into the hall, he got really light-headed and staggered into the wall.
He would have gone down if Bel hadn’t been there to catch him. “What the fuck?”
Ash straightened and tried to jerk out of his hold. “I’m fine.”
“How much blood did you lose?”
“I said I’m fine.” He tried again to fight off Bel’s grip on his arms.
“You don’t look fine. Move your hand and let me see the wound.”
“I’m fi—” Except as soon as Bel finally let go of him, he staggered again.
Bel caught him and jerked his chin at Raum. “Move his hand so I can see the wound. I’ll hold his arms.”
“Fuck you!” Ash protested, struggling in Bel’s iron grip, but he was weak from blood loss and couldn’t break free. Raum came over and yanked his hand back from the wound, still clutching the blood-soaked T-shirt. Blood immediately leaked over from the gaping wound.
To make matters worse, his hand had tightened around the shirt when he was forced to move it, and he ended up accidentally wringing it out. A steady stream of blood dripped from the shirt into a nice little pool at his feet.
Eva gasped. Her cat hissed again, just because.
Belial cursed a blue streak. “Turn on the stove and get a knife. We have to cauterize this.”
Raum rushed to obey while Bel shot a glare at Eva, eyes flickering with flames. “You didn’t notice how badly he was wounded?”
“This isn’t her fault,” Meph said, uncharacteristically reasonably. Ash would have said the same, but he was suddenly using up all his concentration on not passing out.
Eva flinched. “He said he was fine.”
“He can’t feel pain,” Bel snapped. “He’ll always say he’s fine.”
“Leave her out of this.” Ash’s voice came out slurred. “I said I’m fine.”
“Shut up. Raum, get that blade heated up.”
“Already on it.”
Eva gasped from somewhere. “You’re not actually going to—”
“You’re a fucking idiot, Asmodeus,” Belial snapped. “Bleeding all over yourself and not telling anyone or doing anything about it.”
“Fuck you,” he mumbled. “Go ahead and rage out and make this about yourself like you always do, asshole.”
“Maybe if you didn’t excel at pissing me off, I wouldn’t have to!”
“Heyyy now, let’s not fight,” Meph interjected.
“Shut the fuck up, Meph!” they both said simultaneously.
“You never know when to quit, do you?” Belial bellowed in Ash’s face. “Always sulking around with the weight of the world on your shoulders, blaming everything on me!”
Ash mustered strength from somewhere and said, “I’m not the one who can’t carry on a conversation without bursting into fucking flames!”
“You should have told me you were bleeding out, damn it!”
“I’m not bleeding out!”
“Yes, you are!”
“Told you... I’m fine...” The room was spinning.
“Shit—”
“He’s passing out!”
“Bel, you dickhead, I’m sure you can see how shouting at him really helped!”
“Oh my god!” Eva screamed. The cat was howling again.
Ash rolled his eyes. He was so sick of the goddamn drama.
Oh, no, actually his eyes were rolling back into his head because he was about to pass out. When the blackness came, he welcomed it. Maybe when he woke up, he’d find that none of this shitty night had happened, and things would go back to how they were before.
He would show up at Eva’s and they’d play some music together and then fuck nice and slow, and then they’d wake up together in the morning and eat tasteless pastries naked by the window in the sunlight. Yeah, that sounded nice.
He held on to that little fantasy as the blackness claimed him.
“Fuck, he’s out cold,” Belial said, catching Ash as he sagged. “Raum, get over here and seal this wound. He’s bleeding everywhere, the idiot.”
“Blade’s not hot enough yet.” Raum was holding the tip of a short dagger into the gas flame of the stove, and it was starting to glow red.
“Here.” Meph handed Belial a dishtowel, which he took and pressed into Ash’s side to stem the flow of blood. Ash’s bloody T-shirt had fallen to the floor with a wet slap when he lost consciousness.
Despite herself, Eva’s eyes filled with tears. She felt awful. Ash had been bleeding a lot the entire drive home and then throughout the entire conversation, and she’d ignored him. She’d been so mad at him for lying about what he was, and since she’d discovered he wasn’t human, she’d believed him when he said he was fine.
“I thought he was okay,” she said. “He said he was.” She set Thelonious’s cage down and hovered behind a still-shirtless Bel as he scooped up Ash like he weighed nothing.
Bel carried him to the other room and dumped him unceremoniously on the couch. All Ash’s gorgeous black hair was tangled, some of it stuck to the dried blood on his shoulder wound, which had closed, thankfully. Her heart ached looking at him, though she kept telling it to shut up because she was still furious with him for lying to her and being an evil demon from Hell.
“He will be.” Crouched beside Ash and keeping pressure on his wound, Bel looked over at Eva wringing her hands and sighed. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you. He’s a stubborn prick and wouldn’t have told anyone he was bleeding out. It’s not your fault.”
“Is he really bleeding out?” She really didn’t like the sound of that.
“He’s fine. We can’t die this way. He’ll just feel a little... parched for a while. We could feed him some blood, but I don’t have an easy source unless you’re volunteering. It has to be human blood.”
Eva choked. “ Feed him... ? Blood?” Surely he didn’t mean what she thought—
“Annnd that’s enough chit chat.” Meph jumped between her and Bel from out of nowhere. “Eva, you want to keep some pressure on that wound? Thanks, doll.” Without waiting for her to comply, he grabbed Bel by the arm and dragged him back to the kitchen.
Eva hastened to Ash’s side, pressing the dishcloth against the wound, and heard furious whispering coming from the other room. They were trying to keep their voices down, but she picked it up anyway.
“Don’t you think she has enough to deal with tonight without you trying to feed her blood to Ash?”
“Well, I don’t know! I thought she liked him. He’d heal faster with it, so I thought I’d at least ask.”
“All you’re going to do is freak her out and make her not like him. Poor bastard deserves a break after three thousand years of misery.”
“Fine.” Bel sighed. “He’s an idiot for not saying something.”
“You’re an idiot for shouting at him.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too. Go deal with the human. And put on a damn shirt so you don’t scare her. You look like a berserker with Ash’s blood all over you.”
“Shut up. And you deal with the human. I have to figure out where the fuck we’re going to go now that Ash is unconscious.”
“We can’t go anywhere.”
“We don’t have a choice!”
“We can’t leave the wards, and we can’t use a gate until he wakes up.”
“Damn it, Meph!”
“How is this my fault?
“Because it’s always your fault, jackass.”
While Meph and Belial argued, Raum suddenly rushed into the living room carrying the now red-hot knife. He bent down beside Ash, brushing Eva’s arm aside and pulling off the dish towel, holding the knife out—
“Wait!”
Raum glanced at Eva, who was suddenly seized with horror. “Can’t. The blade will cool.”
“If I give him my blood, will he heal?”
His face softened. “He really won’t feel a thing, Eva.”
“But—”
A hideous sizzling sound filled the air, followed by the sound of melting flesh. Eva gagged and stumbled back, sickened by the sound and smell and the sympathy she felt for the unconscious demon on the couch.
In that moment, with him lying unconscious, his skin pale from blood loss, it was hard to hate him for what he was. He just looked like Ash to her. The guy she’d thought she was falling in love with.
A moment later, Raum stood and lowered the blade to his side. “He’ll be fine. His wounds will heal in a few hours, and he’ll wake up with a bit of a hangover from the blood loss, that’s all.”
Eva stared at Ash’s still form, unable to keep from staring at the hideous burn mark on his side. He had gotten injured protecting her from Mist. He’d attacked him to keep her safe.
Suddenly filled with resolve, she looked back at Raum. “I’ll give him some of my blood.”
Raum shook his head. “We don’t have needles or medical shit. We’d have to do it the old-fashioned way, and Ash would kill me if he found out.”
“We won’t tell him, then.”
“He’s really going to be fine—”
She held out her arm. “Do it or I will.”
Why was she so adamant about this? She was too exhausted to think about much of anything, and she didn’t have the energy to question her motivations. She just knew she didn’t like that grayish tint to Ash’s skin.
Raum must have read the determination on her face. “All right. I like you, human.” He smiled suddenly, and she realized she hadn’t seen him do it before. While Meph seemed to be the joker of the family, Raum was darker and broodier. Something in his golden eyes told her there was a reason for that.
But of course there was. He was a demon .
“It’s going to freak you out,” Raum said.
“Why? I mean, besides the obvious fact that he’s drinking my blood.”
He cocked a brow. “Come here and I’ll show you.”
With only a little hesitation, Eva did as he bade, and they crouched besides Ash’s still form. He really did look pale, and her resolve strengthened.
“Give me your hand,” Raum said, setting the knife down on the floor.
Eva put her palm out. He curled his much bigger hand around it, holding out her index finger. With his free hand, Raum reached forward and parted Ash’s lips.
“See his canines? They look sharp, don’t they.” He gave her a look.
“No...” Her eyes widened. “He’s not a—”
“No. But they’re created with demon blood, and since Ash is the real deal, he’s got the hardware.”
“Wait, vampires—?”
But her thoughts scattered quickly as Raum pressed the tip of Eva’s finger into Ash’s canine. Somehow, the tooth was sharp enough to draw blood, and as soon as she touched it, both canines elongated.
Eva gasped and jerked back. “Oh my god.”
“Not exactly.” Raum looked at her. “Still offering?”
She stared at those intimidating teeth and considered saying no. Then she thought, What the hell . She’d already seen him turn into a seven-foot-tall, red-skinned monster with horns. What were some measly vampire fangs after that?
She looked into Raum’s gold eyes and nodded.
“Okay.” He gently grasped her wrist in one hand and her forearm in the other. “Unconscious or not, he’s going to bite your wrist when I put it in front of him. It’s instinct. Fair warning, it’s going to hurt. Ready?”
She nodded, so nervous she felt sick.
Raum lowered her arm over Ash’s mouth. Just as Raum warned, he struck like a freaking cobra, jerking forward and stabbing those sharp teeth right into her arm. She gasped at the pain, her eyes watering.
Ow. There was nothing romantic or sexy about this. Screw all those vampire kinks because this fucking hurt !
One of Ash’s hands jerked up and grabbed her wrist, holding it to his mouth so she couldn’t escape, and he growled deep in his chest. The sound was kind of sexy. Ugh, she was messed up. He was drinking her blood, for god’s sake.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Raum said. “He doesn’t need much.” In one fluid motion, he ripped Ash’s fingers off her arm and disengaged his fangs from her wrist, shoving Ash back when he instinctively lunged for her again.
Raum held him down with two hands. “Enough.”
Ash growled like a feral animal while Eva sat on her ass on the floor, looking between him and the twin puncture wounds on her arm. “Holy shit.”
She’d let a demon drink her blood. She was doomed for sure.
“Holy shit is right. Look how fast he’s healing.” Raum glanced at Eva with a frown. “You must have some pretty potent blood.”
Eva sat up onto her knees to watch Ash’s horribly burned wound healing before her eyes. Within minutes, it had faded to a scar. She looked at his face, amazed to see the color coming back to his cheeks. He exhaled deeply and relaxed into the couch cushions.
Raum stood. “Let’s put a bandage on your arm.”
She glanced at her wrist. The fang wound pulsed a little blood when she stopped putting pressure on it, but already seemed to be slowing. Damn, those teeth were sharp. She couldn’t stop staring at Ash.
“He’ll be fine,” Raum said.
She finally dragged her eyes away and climbed wearily to her feet.
She followed Raum down the hallway, past the silently staring Belial and Meph, apparent witnesses to that entire spectacle. On her way past, she scooped up Thelonious’s cage, feeling sorry for her poor claustrophobic cat.
In the bathroom, Raum opened a medicine cabinet with cracked glass and pulled out two Band-Aids. He motioned for her to hold out her arm and, with exquisite care, put them over the wounds.
“There.” He tossed the garbage and turned back to her. “Good as new.”
“Thank you.”
He shrugged. “We can’t go anywhere by gate until Ash wakes up, so you should get some rest.”
“Won’t the Hunter come looking for us?”
“As long as we stay behind the wards, he won’t be able to find us. We’re fine here for a bit.”
“Where are we going to go?” She was trying to follow Ash’s advice and take things one step at a time, but it was hard not to panic about her uncertain future.
With another shrug, Raum turned and dug through the cupboards behind them. “You want a shower? Here’s a towel.” He tossed a terry cloth bundle at her. “You can sleep in Ash’s bed. You’ll probably want to borrow some clothes to sleep in. Follow me.”
He pushed past her into the hall, and she followed obediently, more curious to watch the demon playing gracious host than anything.
In Ash’s room, he pulled a black T-shirt out of the dresser and threw it on the bed. “There.” He turned to leave, but his gaze caught on Thelonious’s carrier, still in her hand. “That your cat?”
“Yeah.”
Raum’s bright gold eyes lit up. “I like cats.”
Oh god, please don’t tell me he eats cats or something.
“Can I see him?”
Eva hesitated. “Ash told me cats hate demons.”
“Except for me. They like me.”
“All right.” Hoping she wouldn’t regret this, she bent and opened the pet carrier.
Thelonious shot out like a rocket, and she expected him to go straight into the closet. But instead, he leapt... right into Raum’s outstretched arms. The demon stroked her cat lovingly, the little fur ball dwarfed by his big arms. To Eva’s amazement, Thelonious curled right up, purring louder than she’d ever heard him before.
“He really likes you.” He didn’t even like her that much, damn it.
“Can I keep him with me?” Raum asked, blinking at her with puppy-dog eyes.
“Sure.”
He smiled, and she blinked in amazement. It wasn’t fair to human men that he and his brothers were that gorgeous.
Raum left, and Eva was alone in Ash’s room. She stood there staring at the wall for at least a minute without moving and then glanced at the clock and recoiled. Almost four in the morning. No wonder she felt like she was viewing the world through a big glass bubble over her head.
Scooping up the T-shirt from the bed, she trudged down the hall in a daze, deciding that no matter how exhausted she was, she wasn’t passing up a shower. And it was worth it—the hot water felt amazing cascading over her stiff muscles, and it seemed to wash away any residual terror and panic clinging to her.
By the time she stumbled back to Ash’s room, she felt almost normal. She could almost pretend she wasn’t sleeping in a house with four demons because her life was in danger. Imagine that.
Curling up in the blankets, she inhaled the scent permeating the sheets and her borrowed clothes. It was a delicious, spicy man-smell that made her toes curl.
She was fast asleep the next instant.