Chapter 11 #2
“Yes,” Mixl said with a firm nod. “My head can break glass easily.” He flexed his hand, bringing out razor thin claws, and then he started plucking out the shards of glass one after another, quicker than Slippin’ Slides.
Tom grunted and continued his slower work. Working together, my arm was glass-free very quickly, and then came the fun part, getting cleaned out and having my deep cuts sewn back up.
First, he poured vodka on my arm, then handed me the bottle while he stitched me up.
I usually didn’t drink a lot, and I shouldn’t have drunk then because I had to open the store early tomorrow morning, but that’s all the pain reliever he had on hand.
So I drank until my stomach churned and the pain receded to a bearable distance.
“Now, why don’t you tell me why you were breaking into my theater,” he said once the last stitch was knotted and my arm looked like Frankenstein’s monster.
“I need to look at your book.”
He raised his brows. “You couldn’t call?”
“I don’t have my phone. I left it with my outfit.” I looked over at Mixl who was trying to put the pieces of glass together, like it was a puzzle that would fit. “Mixl, why don’t you go up on the roof to watch for Dorian?”
He blinked at me. “You don’t want me to hear you talk? Maybe you’ll do more than talking.” He wiggled his brows.
Tom cuffed him upside the head. “Speak respectfully to women. Particularly to your king’s mate. Get on the roof and watch unless you need to be stuck in a barrel until you’re more agreeable.”
Mixl made a face at Tom and then slipped across the room and out the high window. Tom followed him and then closed the window before coming back to me.
I was shocked that Tom had hit him. “Tom, you can’t hurt him. He’s just a baby demon.”
“Yours?”
I blinked at him. “No. He remembers his mother dying. How awful is that?” My heart ached for the poor little guy.
“Weird. Usually they die if their mothers die. They’re very attached to their mothers. What book did you want to read? Maybe you can tell me exactly what you’re trying to figure out and I can help you find your answers.”
I grabbed his wrist and leaned close to stare into his eyes. “I ate a demon.”
He blinked at me. “What? They forced you to eat a little bit of demon? How sick are you?”
I forced a smile. “Pretty sick, right? I think I belong in a mental institution. First eating that demon like it was normal, and then putting my elbow through the window. I think Lucy gave me brain damage. Also Roberta…I’m not talking about that.”
His brows rose almost to his hairline. “You chose to eat demon? That is weird. And it didn’t make you sick?”
He went to the shelf with his Tom Sawyer and other boring classics and then came back with the Wind in the Willows. He opened it to somewhere in the middle.
“I don’t think that’s the right book.”
“The dust jacket protects the demon-skin cover. It gets brittle when it’s exposed to light.
So, we’ve got all these different kinds of demons.
Soul suckers, money grubbers, lust puppers, and death muggers.
None of them eat demon. Nothing eats demons except for the angels.
” He flipped through the book too quickly for me to see more than a flash of illustrations of teeth, claws, and general scariness, until he turned open to a page with angels.
“Ugh.” I said because it was the ugliest creature I’d ever imagined.
Not that I’d ever imagined demons. This was like a bloated slug with gray chalky skin covered in warts with mini spikes, stained darker gray where the spikes pierced the skin.
The eyes were milky without a pupil, and overall, it was just ick.
“Yeah, they’re pretty, right? The main thing is that they’re immortal, so maybe your demon did something, a spell, or some angel infection… No, it says here,” he said, reading along with his finger. “Angels cannot infect a human, but books don’t know everything.”
I frowned at that picture of the warty slug creature and shook my head. “I’m not the prettiest thing in the world, but I’m no angel.”
“Let’s see. Here it is, power of compulsion, feast on the flesh of demons, and mates with strongest demon to make him the king, also produce offspring.” He gave me a pointed look.
“Oh. Mixl said that his mother was an angel. That’s what he meant? His mother was one of these?”
He squinted at me. “He saw his angel mother die? Very peculiar. What I’ve heard from my connections…”
“You have connections? What kind of connections.”
He waved my question away. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
“Running a movie theater?”
He stared at me.
“Right. The slayer thing. I’m still a bit stunned. Sorry. So, what did your connections say?”
“The Zombie Queen, you know, she’s defeated everyone except for the fairies. She defeated the demons by slaughtering all the angels.”
“Wow. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The angels are the great demon’s mothers, right?
There are some females of various demon species, but the angels are the sworn mates of all the strongest demons.
The Zombie Queen had her white rabbit slaughter the angels, and then the demons wiped out the Zombie Queen’s armies, but then they all killed themselves afterwards. ”
“So basically everyone was insane.” I could relate. I’d been eating demon just a while ago.
He shrugged. “The thing is, the White Rabbit is in the Grand Master’s dungeon.”
“That seems to be a good place for someone who goes around slaughtering angels.”
“But don’t you think he could answer your questions?”
I stared at him. My mind was just kind of blank.
He nudged me. “You know, if we broke into the Grand Master’s dungeon and chatted with the White Rabbit, who knows more about the angels than anyone, since he was able to kill them all, he’d know why you’re having your issues.”
“Are you insane?” Mixl demanded, coming out of the shadows where he’d clearly been lurking.
I jumped, but Tom didn’t seem surprised. “Tom’s joking.” That was the only possible explanation.
“Not at all,” Tom said, very reassuringly. Not.
I started giggling. “You want me to go into the Grand Master’s dungeon to talk to the White Rabbit about the angels? Wow. That sounds like the worst idea in the world and I’m the one who just put my elbow through a window.” Also eaten a demon, but I was trying not to focus on that.
“I’ve checked it out. It should be a breeze to get in.”
“And getting out?” Mixl asked, getting right to the heart of the matter. Kid was a genius.
Tom smiled and looked positively cheerful. “Sandra’s one of the fosters. She’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be fine? The last time she was around her friend, she lost most of her blood,” Mixl said, scowling darkly. “Unstable vampire is not a good exit strategy.”
Tom smiled at Mixl and tapped his head. “You’ve got a good head for strategy. What do you think?”
He got shifty looking. “I think that we take the Candy Queen back to the den and hope Drigo doesn’t notice the damage to his mate.”
“I’m not his mate,” I said, shaking my head. I stood up and then sat back down. I wasn’t sure if it was from blood loss or vodka, but either way, I swigged from the bottle, capped it, and put it under my arm before I stood up and stayed there. “We’re going to the dungeon.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding soberly at Mixl. No, that was probably a drunken nod. Either way, I nodded and then went towards the stairs.
“Wait, are you serious about going to the Grand Master’s dungeon?” Mixl sounded positively panicked.
“Tom thinks it’ll be fine,” I said, but honestly, at that point, I didn’t care anymore. I’d eaten demon. And Roberta… This made way more sense than any of that. “You can stay here if you’re nervous.”
“I’m going to go tell Drigo,” he said.
Tom put his arm over his shoulder. “Can’t have that. This is a seriously delicate mission.” The demon went boneless and slumped to the ancient orange carpet.
“Did you just drug the baby demon?” I frowned at Tom. “That seems wrong.”
He smiled at me. “Trust me, it’s better this way.”
“Trust you?” I looked at my bottle of vodka and then at the slumped demon.
I went over to the couch, got a pillow and a throw blanket, and made the little guy more comfortable.
He was so adorable with his face relaxed in sleep.
I smoothed my hand over his hair and adjusted the blanket just so before I staggered to my feet and nodded at Tom.
“Let’s go see what a vampire dungeon looks like.
It’ll give me great ideas for my Halloween display. ”