Chapter 10 #2
“Ah,” he said, nodding while his eyes burned into me.
“My greatest regret, my biggest mistake. I will suffer for an eternity in your hands with whatever punishment you decree.” His gaze dropped to my lips and I remembered the last time I’d made him suffer my vomit breath.
He was apparently willing to relive the suffering indefinitely.
What were the odds demons minded disgusting things when they smashed heads like…
I shuddered and turned away. Nope. Not reliving that moment. “Nothing was ever legally binding. Were we going somewhere?”
“I suppose we’d better get back to the cave. I thought it was a den, but if Tom says that demons live in caves, that’s what it must be.”
“Of course, because you’re so agreeable. Were we going? I’m hungry.”
The ride to the club was quiet, and I looked out the window so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
What was I doing with my life? What life?
I had my shop, my employees, maybe some of whom were not demons, but why hadn’t I dated again?
Did Roberta have to do with that, or was it just me needing therapy.
Who could I talk to about the demons in my life?
A vision of Robert’s head had me flinching and struggling to breathe.
The Halloween display would be so great.
The theme would be…Not demons. Definitely not zombies.
Absolutely not vampires. Maybe I should skip Halloween.
Or witches. Witches could be cute, and maybe have a gingerbread house people could go inside and eat?
We could do a gingerbread house competition in the shop.
It would be good to push the trending age of my customers down a bit.
Roberta had been talking about doing a wine tasting at my next opening. Kids were better.
I’d wanted so much for my baby to have a sweet, happy childhood like I’d missed.
My childhood had been pretty traumatic, even if I hadn’t been kidnapped by a zombie queen.
I didn’t remember a lot of it, but what I did remember was fear and pain.
I’d been too quiet and sad for my first foster parents, so they sent me away.
It didn’t help that I didn’t know the language.
My birth parents were mostly shadows broken up by bright lights and a sense of fear that clung to everything.
Dorian covered my hand with his. It felt so good for someone to touch me, to not be entirely alone.
I pressed my lips together and pulled my hand away from his, folding it in my lap instead.
I wasn’t his object to keep or throw away according to his whim.
I needed to learn to trust again, but not with someone who had broken my trust so absolutely.
He sighed but didn’t touch me again.
When we got to the club, I got out of the car quickly, walking like I knew where I was going.
I did. I was going to the kitchen that wasn’t a kitchen, and eating and drinking on the couch until I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I’d go back to my shop and work as usual for a Tuesday morning after a launch.
The plan worked pretty well, because as soon as Dorian got there, he was surrounded by demons saying, ‘Hail the demon king,’ so I got to slip off without more than a look from Dorian while Straldi took his place beside me.
“You look pale,” he said as we walked down the stairs.
“You look paler. Your skin must burn terribly, it has so little pigmentation.”
“You also smell of vampires.”
“You smell of misery and desolation, but do I mention it?”
He laughed. “You smell of demon more than vampires. You didn’t enjoy spending time so close to your mate?”
I stopped walking. Could I stab him in the face? Chop off his tentacle beard? What could I do to shut him up? I smiled slowly. “I’m afraid not. Ever since I saw you and your mystical rainbow eyes, I’ve wanted nothing more than to take you into my shower.”
He blinked those rainbow eyes at me while his expression shifted. Mischief. That’s what he was. “Drigo would tear me limb from limb, but it would be worth it.” He wiggled his tentacles at me.
I rolled my eyes and kept walking down the stairs. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s the idea. You should flirt with me, though. You need practice so that when you’re serious about Drigo, you know how to get him where you want him.”
I shivered at the thought of Dorian being where I wanted him. I’d had him this morning, wrapped around me, making a wing cave that shut out the rest of the world. “He’s the cunning demon king. I’ll never get the upper hand with him.”
“Probably not, but why should that stop you from trying?”
“I’m tired and hungry, okay? Can you please stop talking?”
“Drigo kept you busy all day? Maybe you already have him eating from your…”
I stabbed him with my pocket knife. In the shoulder. For a second his eyes widened in surprise and then he leapt away from me, frowning down at his shoulder and my small blade with the red handle sticking out of it.
I stared at it, even more shocked than he was. I’d wanted to stab him, and I had my pocket knife, but it had just happened so easily, almost like I was getting stab happy after the Roberta and the vampire thing.
“I said please,” I said, my stomach roiling at the smell of his blood. Not maple syrup. “That means that you should listen and use your manners. Your mother didn’t teach you any manners? What a surprise.”
He shook his head, bemused as he carefully eased my blade out. “I apologize, my queen. Also, my blood is incredibly toxic, and you are incredibly vulnerable, so try to make a point not to stab me in the future.”
“Ah, finally something that works for you. If you keep talking, I’ll make a point of drinking your poisonous blood and dying all dramatically on Dorian’s bed. Speaking of, where is it?”
He blinked his rainbow eyes at me. “What?”
“Dorian’s bed. I’m assuming he has one. He used to have two.” I wasn’t sleeping on the couch. There was no door I could close to the couch room.
“Ah. That door over there is his personal sleeping chamber. If you sleep there, he might join you.”
“Then I’ll stab him.”
“He’ll like it.”
I shrugged. I was hungry, but I needed to be alone. I needed to curl up in bed with a blanket over my head and be miserable. Also freak out about Roberta. Also take five million naps to rebuild the blood Lucy drank.
So I did.
The trouble is that I woke up with a demon standing next to me, mouth gaping open, tongue flicking in and out, eyes the color of glowing cinnamon, and wearing a tuxedo and a white knit hat with an orange pompom on it.
I inhaled to scream and he pressed his palm over my face, the smell of his skin rapturously delicious, like fresh cinnamon rolls mixed up with a freshly opened bag of strawberry licorice.
“I’m going to kill you slowly,” he purred back, licking his cherry-red lips. His skin was chalky, gray with green smudges. Maybe he was a zombie, but how could a zombie taste so good?
His hand came around the back of my head and I freaked out because I had a flashback of Dorian twisting off Roberta’s head.
I bit his palm as hard as I could, burying my teeth in his flesh, tasting his blood, but it was sweeter than cherry jam. So sweet. So absolutely delicious. I’d never tasted anything so good, and I was so hungry and…
The world went fuzzy and weird.
For a long time, everything was Candyland, and I was the Candy Queen. Until with a lurch I came out of the haze to find myself was sitting on the floor, in six inches of cherry jam.
Straldy was there, leaning down to grab my shoulders and shake me.
“What happened? You’re covered in blood! Are you okay?”
“Blood…” I looked down at the cherry jam and really saw what I was sitting in.
I croaked and struggled out of the viscous fluid coating everything. Blood. So. Much. Blood.
Straldi fished around in the blood and came up with an orange beanie. Not orange anymore. Then he pulled an arm up, mostly bone, stripped of its demon flesh.
I shrieked and scrambled away from him, the body, landing on the bed in a slither of black silk satin. I kept screaming and struggling until I got to the bathroom on the far side of the bed and got inside it and locked the door behind me.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror without seeing it for a long time.
It finally registered that my face had some color for the first time since Lucy. Oh. This must be me turning into a vampire. That explained me eating the demon.
Right. It was perfectly normal to turn into a vampire.
It went with Roberta being a fear demon, and Honey being a werewolf. Everything was totally fine. Completely uneventful. I was just…
I yanked my fingers down when I realized that I was licking the cherry jam off them.
Not cherry jam, blood. I turned on the sink and started scrubbing, watching the water swirl pink down the drain.
Finally it was clear.. Great. Fabulous. Absolutely perfect.
Now I’d just go ahead and get the blood off the rest of me.
I stumbled into the shower and turned it on full blast. Cold. Icy cold that wasn’t cold enough. I sank down on the floor and watched the water run down the drain, red then pink, like a candy cane swirling over the gray tile.
This is what insanity looked like. Midlife crisis eat your heart out…No, actually don’t. Did I eat his heart? There was still arm bones and ligaments, so I didn’t eat the demon entirely. What about his brains? I didn’t notice cracking his skull open.
I shuddered hard and pressed my face to my knees. I was still wearing my lady tea skirt. The seam pressed a line into my forehead while I crouched there, trying to undo reality. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe I’d hallucinated eating the demon.
I grabbed my stomach and shuddered. Yes, that’s definitely what it was. A hallucination. All that red stuff was…cherry Kool-Aid. Because I’d been working on the Halloween display, and fallen asleep and then had really vivid weird dreams.
I looked down at the wet skirt and blouse on the floor. The brownish tinge of dried blood was definitely not Kool-Aid.
I stumbled out of the bathroom and rifled through Dorian’s drawers until I found his enormous shirts including wing holes. I pulled one on over my damp yet mostly clean skin. He needed a loofa in his shower. Good thing I’d worn my lady’s tea party outfit so I could roll around in demon gore in it.
I shuddered hard and gripped my bag while I walked outside.
“You’ll never get out of here if you go up the main stairs,” Mixl said from his place on said stairs. He leapt over the railing and glided down to me before he dropped and studied me. “What did Regis do to you? Demons are terrible, aren’t they?”
I tried to hurry past him but he grabbed my arm and held me back.
He let go of me before I could panic, raising his hands, eyes sincere.
“I want to help you. There’s another way out.
Actually there are three other ways out, but I only know of the one.
Do you want to leave? I’ll help you if you let me meet the wolf queen and the vampire queen. ”
“You want to meet them? Why? They’re all dangerous and unstable.” Like I could talk. Whatever was happening to me was so dangerous and unstable. If it was real. That drying blood color seemed really real. It was hard to fake that. I’d tried a lot of times.
“Sure, but don’t they have kids my age? We could all be friends.
” His eyes danced because he’d probably sooner eat them than be friends, but he hadn’t asked to meet the children, just their parents, so they could decide what would be the safest thing for their kids.
Also, like I could talk because I’d eaten…
I was hyperventilating, and officially on the far side of freaking out. I’d eaten a demon. What the crap was wrong with me? Depression was on one side of insanity, but to jump off the deep end like that… What was I? Freaked out. That’s what I was.
“Okay. Sounds fair.” I swallowed because those words came out like I was breathing helium. That wasn’t on the list for this year’s Halloween display.
He grabbed my hand and tugged me back to the fireplace. “We have to go through the fire and up the chimney.”
I dug in my feet, staring at those flickering flames and thinking of Dorian.
What would he think about me eating Regis?
That’s who it was, right? Or just some random demon in an orange knit cap.
If he wasn’t dead, because demons were hard to kill, particularly fear demons like…
I wasn’t thinking about Roberta right that second.
Or ever. Anyway, if he wasn’t dead, word would get around.
Don’t wake up that woman, she’ll eat your face off.
Literally. I could nap anywhere and no one would bug me. It would be a perk. Truly.
“Come on,” Mixl said, tugging me towards those mesmerizing flames.
“I’m not a demon. I can’t go through fire. But I might be turning into a vampire. Can they handle heat?” I couldn’t remember.
He made a disgusted sound. “You’re not turning into a vampire. Anyway, it’s Drigo’s heart fire that burns for you. It’s not going to hurt you.”
I gave him a long look. Seriously? I was supposed to jump into a fire? What was that saying about frying pans?
“Hurry up. Straldi’s going to come back any second and then you won’t be able to get away.”
I’d eaten demon and been eaten by vampire. Wasn’t jumping into a fire the next obvious step of my mad and maddening life? I put my purse over my head and across my body, took a deep breath, and then stepped into the flames.