My Funny Demon Valentine (Hell Bent #1)

Chapter 19

19

Guilt Trip

A fter a quick detour to the bathroom, Eva pulled on a pair of leggings and then tiptoed into the kitchen, nervous about facing the other demons. She couldn’t believe they’d heard her entire conversation with her mom. She hadn’t exactly held anything back.

She was still pissed at Belial for commandeering her phone and involving Jacqui, but try as she might, she couldn’t think of a better escape plan, and she was starting to get panicky about leaving. If Ash could heal from his wounds in just a few hours, then surely Mist could too?

The demons’ lack of concern about their situation was both comforting and unnerving, and her trust in them wasn’t exactly high. Having her mom’s input would be helpful, she decided. She promised herself they would stay with her parents only long enough for them to come up with a better plan.

As Belial promised, there was a plate of food waiting for her by the stove, and she stared at it in amazement. The omelet was full of vegetables, garnished with parsley, and served with toast and cheese slices. It was a simple meal, but the presentation told her there was nothing simple about the quality or ingredients.

She carried the plate into the dining room and froze when she found Meph and Raum already there, staring at her.

Raum was sitting at the far end, Thelonious purring in his lap. The furry little traitor had his head tipped back, eyes shut in bliss while Raum scratched his chin with two hands.

“’Sup,” Meph said.

She took the vacant chair at the end of the table opposite Raum. There was a chair open beside Meph too, but she just wasn’t comfortable sitting that close to him. With all the tattoos and those freaky red eyes, he was intimidating as hell, and that was before she’d found out he was a demon.

She forced herself not to think about that and started eating. As soon as the first bite melted in her mouth, her eyes fell shut. “This is amazing.”

“Bel likes to cook,” Meph said.

“He’s good at it.”

Raum transferred his intense gold eyes back to the cat in his lap, dark brow furrowing in concentration as he continued diligently scratching Thelonious’s chin.

She watched her purring cat in amazement. He’d always been friendly, but not that friendly. “I think my cat likes you more than me,” she said, scowling a little.

“Raum has a thing with animals.” Meph smirked. “You should see him with the crows in the park.”

Raum glared at him and shrugged at Eva.

Awkward silence fell again. While she ate, she studied the two brothers and they studied her too, though everyone tried to be discreet about it.

Meph sipped a cup of coffee, tattooed hands wrapped around the mug. He was definitely scary, but he was almost always smiling. Raum, on the other hand, exuded a dark intensity that was all coiled strength waiting to strike. He reminded her of a panther stalking through the bushes.

“Where’s Ash?” she asked after swallowing her last bite.

“On the deck sulking and chain smoking,” Meph said. “Bastard stole my headphones too.”

“Is he okay?”

“Oh yeah. All healed up. Your magical blood did wonders.”

“Too bad it couldn’t heal his personality,” Raum added, and the brothers snickered.

“Does he remember... ?” She trailed off, unable to actually say drinking my blood out loud.

Raum shook his head.

Meph said, “And we’re not about to remind him either.”

“Works for me. Did he eat?” Why did she care?

“Ash doesn’t eat much.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have to eat to survive, but demons love indulgences, so we choose to because it’s fun. But Ash doesn’t taste anything, so he doesn’t get any enjoyment out of it. He only eats when Bel makes him.”

“Oh.” Poor Ash.

Eva finished her breakfast and went into the kitchen to wash her plate just as Belial appeared, holding her cell phone. He took one look at her standing by the sink and smiled.

“Hey, assholes, look at this. Eva’s washing dishes. You should come here and take notes. Or better yet, help her.”

“I hate dishes,” Meph complained. “I like to kick back after eating. That takes all the fun out of it.”

“You know what really takes the fun out of it? Me punching you in the stomach.”

Eva couldn’t stifle her grin. The crazy brothers were growing on her.

“Here’s your phone.” Bel set it on the counter and then crossed his bulky arms. “Your mom seems cool.”

She dropped the dishcloth and turned to glare up at him, pretending she wasn’t still severely intimidated in his presence. She summoned all her courage for her next words. “She is cool. And if anything happens to her because of this, I will study witchcraft for as long as it takes to learn how to trap you and force you to experience burning agony for the rest of all time. Is that clear?”

Belial nodded encouragingly. “Very creative and descriptive. I like it.”

“I’m threatening you. You’re supposed to be cowed, not impressed.”

He patted the top of her head like she was a toddler and went into the other room to speak to Meph and Raum. “We’re going to meet Eva’s mother, and we need to leave now. One of you go get Asmodeus and tell him the plan.”

“You go,” Raum said.

“No way,” Meph replied. “I already went out there, and he tried to stab me with a lit cigarette.”

“He shouldn’t be outside at all,” Bel grumbled. “He knows the wards don’t extend onto the deck.”

“I tried to tell him that, but he wasn’t exactly in a listening mood,” Meph said.

Bel sighed. “He’s extra moody today.”

Raum dropped his voice to a whisper. “Give him a break. His human’s going to dump him.”

Eva winced. She may have underestimated their hearing, but she was pretty sure they underestimated hers as well. She continued washing dishes as quietly as she could, straining to hear.

“He’ll be fine,” Bel whispered, “we just have to get him to play music and figure out how to make the curse lift. Women will swarm him again, and he can go back to being the Prince of Lust if he wants.”

“You’re sure that’s how it happened?” Meph asked.

“It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

Eva stared at the soapy dishwater, recalling the events of that night. Was that why those women had approached and Skye had suddenly noticed him? Because playing music somehow counteracted the curse?

“You’re forgetting something important,” Meph whispered. “He had a crowd of women after him, but he didn’t want any of them. He just wanted her .”

Belial scoffed. “This is so like him, the idiot. Always wanting what he can’t have. The last time he got involved with a single human female, he decimated a whole village and got saddled with this fucking curse.”

Eva gritted her teeth. They made it sound like Ash was stupid for wanting to spend time with a person he shared common interests with, and she didn’t like it. And, though she didn’t condone his actions in the least, blaming him for what had happened to get him cursed didn’t seem fair either. She’d bet money his brothers had done worse in their lifetimes.

Drying her hands on a dishtowel, she marched into the dining room, silencing their whispered conversation. “Ash is on the balcony?”

They all nodded.

“I’ll go tell him the plan.”

She turned to go, heading toward the patio door in the living room.

“Neither of you should be outside,” Bel said. “The wards—”

“I’ll just be a couple minutes, and then we’re leaving the province altogether, right? It’ll be fine.”

“Just make it quick. Oh, and Eva?”

“What?”

Something flashed in his eyes. “Ask Ash to tell you how a human can travel through a gate.”

She frowned. “How?”

“Just ask him.”

She found Ash sitting on a plastic deck chair in the sun, dark sunglasses over his eyes, Meph’s headphones on his ears, smoking like a tree. The ashtray beside him was piled full of butts. At least she knew the cigarettes didn’t affect his health now, but it was still super gross.

He was wearing a pair of sweats and a black tank top that looked sexy clinging to his muscular upper body. Still wet from a recent shower, his hair hung over the back of the chair like a black waterfall, almost brushing the ground.

Eva sat on the other flimsy chair beside him, and he glanced over, pulling the headphones off his ears and then looping them around his neck under his hair. She could just make out the sound of a sultry trumpet solo coming through.

Actually, the melody sounded familiar. “Is that... ?”

“Miles.”

Of course he was listening to Miles Davis. Because it wasn’t enough that he was the most perfect male specimen she’d ever seen. He had to have impeccable taste in music to go along with it.

He smokes. And he’s a demon. Right. Not so perfect.

“Nice,” she said lamely. When he said nothing, she blurted, “I told my mom everything, and Belial stole my phone and asked her to draw the other sigil thingy. So we’re going there.”

Ash just looked at her, giving no indication he was even listening.

She kept talking to fill the silence. “It’s all ready now, and we should get going. I mean, no one else seems to be in a rush, but I thought we were worried about Mist finding us, and I don’t see why we’re not taking this more seriously. It’s making me nervous, honestly. So, I came out here to tell you we’re leaving.”

He nodded and took a drag of his cigarette. “All right.”

“Are you feeling—”

“I’m fine.”

Okay, then. She fell silent and focused on her hands fidgeting in her lap. Miles wound his way around the notes of a sultry scale from the headphones around Ash’s neck.

“You told your mom everything?” he asked eventually.

“Yeah.”

“What did you say about me?”

She shrugged. “I told her how we met and what I saw at the nightclub, and how we connected through music. And I told her how I thought we had something special, but then I learned who you were and how this was only about sex for you, and yeah.”

“Oh.” He looked away at the admittedly terrible view.

They were facing another equally ugly, gray apartment building with water stains on the brick under all the window sills. On the balcony opposite them, a man wearing a stained undershirt was scratching his armpit.

Eva frowned at Ash. He looked dejected, sad even, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t trust any of her assumptions about him since learning what he was. “You’re the one who said that, Ash.”

“Yeah.” But he didn’t sound all that sure of himself.

What was she doing, talking about this with him? She didn’t want to date a demon, right?

He could shapeshift into a creature from nightmares... but he was still Ash. Try as she might to forget everything she’d learned about him while they were getting to know each other, she couldn’t. She’d been blown away by how compatible they were, how many similar interests they share, and how easy it was to talk to him.

It was somehow easier to keep pretending the red-skinned monster was a figment of her imagination than to forget all that.

In her head, she kept hearing his laugh when they talked for hours on the phone, seeing his eyes light up when they played music, and worse, remembering the way he moaned when he came inside her. Or how he looked naked. Or how amazing it felt when they’d had sex on top of her piano. Or how—

Okay. So she was still wildly attracted to him. Demon or not, he was still the hottest man, creature, person, thing she had ever seen.

So where did that leave her? Was she deranged? Deeply disturbed? Shouldn’t knowing what he was kill any desire she felt for him?

“I’m having these... feelings,” Ash said suddenly, and she glanced at him in surprise.

He looked about as relaxed as a man sitting on a cactus. His muscles vibrated with restless tension, and a grimace twisted his features. All the while, Miles kept up his soulful trumpeting from the headphones.

“Um, what feelings?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and dragged hard on his cigarette. “I don’t know feelings.”

“Right.” God, he was weird. Guess she knew why now, though.

His eyes narrowed. “Like, when you were scared, I kinda felt like puking. And I had this urge to make sure you weren’t scared anymore.”

“Oh.” Okay, gross. But also kind of sweet.

“And when you told me you couldn’t leave your life here, I had this kind of achy feeling.” He rubbed his chest. “It hurt. Which is strange because I can’t feel pain.” He frowned. “I didn’t like it. And I also felt guilt. That feeling I know.”

Damn, her heart hurt now too. It was sad and a little sweet, but mostly just sad. Poor Ash had no idea how to identify his own emotions. It made her want to cry for him. It made her want to hug him.

She remembered his theory about demons evolving. Was it possible he had evolved to the point where he was genuinely experiencing human emotions, and he couldn’t understand them because he had no past experience with them?

If that was true, it brought up a thousand more questions. In her understanding of demons—which, granted, was very little—they were supposedly the antithesis of positive emotions, the pinnacle of those being love.

But if Ash was having these humanlike emotions, did that mean he was capable of experiencing love? He might have no clue what it was if he felt it, but it might be there all the same. It would explain so much about him. His relationship with his brothers, his passion for music...

Was it possible he could learn to love her ? Did she want him to?

Ash puffed hard on his cigarette. He was inhaling that toxic, formaldehyde-laced poison like it was the air he needed to breathe.

“I feel... attached to you. Like I am to my brothers, but different. More.” He scowled, keeping his gaze locked straight ahead. “It’s uncomfortable, and my chest aches all the time, and I fucking hate it.”

She couldn’t help it. She smiled. It was the sweetest, most incompetent way she’d ever had someone tell her they cared.

“Ash...” What was she going to tell him?

“We should go,” he grumbled, taking another drag of his cigarette. The thing had burned into a pencil-shaped point, he was smoking it so hard.

She couldn’t help it. She reached forward and ripped it out of his hand and crushed it in the ashtray.

“What the hell?” He glared at her, and she was immediately transfixed by those midnight-blue eyes.

“Smoking is gross.”

“I like it.”

“It smells nasty.”

“I can’t smell.”

“It’s addicting.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s bad for the environment.”

“I don’t care about the environment.”

“You should care! The more you damage the Earth, the less enjoyable it will be for you to live here in the future when all the resources are used up, the air is polluted, there’s garbage in the rivers, and all the forests have been cut down!”

She suddenly realized she was shouting and shut up. Then she realized their argument had nothing to do with smoking or the environment and was really about something else altogether.

Still glaring, he crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge. That hair. Those eyes...

She wanted him. It didn’t matter if that made her a demon consort, devil worshiper, or in need of serious therapy. She still wanted him. And she wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

“You’re right,” she said suddenly, not ready to think about it yet. “We should go.”

She might still want him, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d blatantly told her he was only interested in her for sex. His emotions might say otherwise, but she told herself that he needed to learn how to understand them before she would consider anything more.

She stood. He stood too. They stared at each other for a moment, and then he gestured toward the door. “After you.”

Right, then. She turned and slid the heavy glass door open, slipping back inside. She was too aware of Ash coming in behind her. Too aware, because it felt like she had turned her back on a fire. She could feel heat on her neck and a sort of tingling that made her want to spin around and look again. To stare into the fire in fascination and never look away.

Mishetsumephtai the Hunter ghosted up the side of the concrete building and reformed on the roof. As soon as he took physical form, the sizable hole in his throat began gushing blood, but he ignored it. He was used to suffering.

The persistent hum of multiple air conditioning units filled the air, and the noxious fumes of scented laundry gusted from numerous vents, causing his sensitive nose to wrinkle. What was it about the human world that fascinated others of his kind? Parts of it were hardly an improvement from Hell.

And what was it about human females that made them willingly submit? Humans were soft and seemingly harmless, and yet this was not the first time Mist had witnessed a powerful demon fight his nature to cater to a female’s wellbeing. Nor was it the first time he had witnessed a female’s apparent acceptance of a demon’s true form.

Asmodeus was unaware Mist had been eavesdropping when he had admitted his “feelings,” and Mist felt quite sure he wouldn’t have spoken of them had he known. That a Prince of Hell was capable of “feelings” was... unsettling.

It was true Asmodeus had severely wounded Mist during their fight, but vapor could not bleed, and it had been simple enough to remain in his nonphysical form while he followed the car to this secondary location. Which also appeared to be the hiding place of Belial, Raum, and Mephistopheles. And, though wards prevented him from entering the apartment, thanks to the conversation he’d just overheard, he now knew exactly where they were going.

Mission accomplished.

It was time to return to Hell and report, since reinforcements would be required in order to force Belial’s compliance.

And yet... Mist hesitated. Again.

Indeed he had faltered in his duty once before. He had broken the rules. The remembrance caused his heart to thump and his tail to flick nervously. Rule breakers were punished. The consequences were never worth the infraction.

So why did he persist in this rebellion?

Why did he protect those that owed him nothing? Why was he sitting upon this roof, holding his ruined throat together while his blood spilled over his fingers, pondering Asmodeus’s relationship with a human instead of reporting his whereabouts to Paimon? And why was the Duke of Hell Eligos still safely ensconced in his oceanfront hideout with his human lover? Mist had proclaimed him destroyed rather than revealing his location, and he still wasn’t sure why.

The last time he had checked on Eligos and Natalie, he’d found them sharing a meal upon a blanket at the top of the cliffs, Natalie’s small frame intertwined with Eligos’s hulking, monstrous one.

It was bizarre. It was wrong . A violation of so many rules it was impossible to count. And yet, Mist could not erase the gnawing hunger and emptiness that consumed him when he pictured himself in their shoes.

Was he experiencing “feelings” of his own? Which ones? Longing? Jealousy?

Pondering this was an exercise in futility, however. Such freedom was not an option for him. There was no escaping his fate, and he had long since given up hoping otherwise. There was only so much disappointment a mind could take before it lost its will to live.

The smart thing to do would be to return to Paimon’s lair now and report the location of Asmodeus and his so-called brothers. It was too late to admit to his lie about the true fate of Eligos, but he could still save himself from repeating his mistakes.

Mist rose to his full height and stretched his wings. He crouched and then sprang, pumping them hard to gain altitude until he was among the low-hanging clouds. There, he dissolved his physical form until his essence mingled freely with the mist.

He reformed again above Evangeline Gregory’s apartment, folded his wings against his body, and shot like an arrow straight through the hole in her window.

Landing neatly, he surveyed the wreckage of the flat, once again questioning his motives. He couldn’t for the life of him explain why he had returned or why he was still hesitating. But he couldn’t make himself leave either.

The sight of an upturned plant caught his eye. The soil spilled upon the hardwood was mildly disturbing to his somewhat compulsive nature, and he decided he would right it. It was he who had upended it in the first place, after all.

But when he stepped forward to complete the task, he hit an invisible wall of pure, concentrated energy, the antithesis to everything he was. White light flared, blinding him, and he was thrown backward to land in a heap.

Shock coursing through him, he climbed to his feet. It was only then that he noticed the design inscribed upon the floor around him.

He was, in fact, standing in the middle of a powerful binding sigil.