Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Torin
There’s silence, so much silence that I’m drowning in it. My footsteps echo off the walls as I spin and look around at the destruction, the blood, the death. It’s everywhere, familiar faces I’ll never see again.
I rush forward, running through empty hallways while I scream their names, but when I reach them… I already know that it’s too late.
They’re all gone.
And I’m alone.
Everyone I loved. Everyone I cared for… all gone.
“Torin!”
I jerk awake, startled by the sound of my name which pulled me out of a strange dream I want to remember no part of. My chest is tight and my entire body hurts, but the first thing I see when I wake up eases me.
“Hey, you were thrashing pretty badly in your sleep,” Riley says as he leans over me, looking half asleep. I notice when he’s tired or first wakes up, the illusion over his eyes isn’t always in place and I can see the darkness that has consumed any pigment his eyes once held.
I reach up and cup his cheek, but he just seems confused and starts to ooze back toward the couch with Kit on his shoulder. Her eyes are closed, so he’s feeling his way back toward it.
“I can’t sleep. Comfort me,” I say, grabbing his wrist and dragging him on top of me.
“What the hell is this? No!” he protests as I drag him down with no intention of letting him back up again.
“Shhh… I need to be comforted,” I demand as I pin his body, which is weakened by sleepiness, to me. He’s kind of sprawled over me, his head pressing into the wall the bed is up against and his feet hanging off the other side of the bed, but he’s not fighting too hard, so I consider it a win.
I smile, especially pleased when he closes his eyes and begins to drift. I’m sure he’ll be feisty as fuck the second he wakes up, so I must try to soothe the beast while I can.
My fingers trail down his wrist before I draw his hand close to me and feel his fingers that are stained in black. Will this just consume him until one day it reaches his heart and kills him?
As a god, I’ve grown used to people dying around me, people who I will outlive, but…
My mind sinks back into that dream, and I know what it means.
I have to go back, but there’s a chance that I’ll never be able to return here if I do.
Honestly, what is it about this human that interests me so much? When’s the last time I’ve been so fascinated by a single person? I’ve always enjoyed all the pretty men and women… yet today I turned down a succubus because I was too caught up in thoughts about this peculiar human.
My finger trails down one of his, and he seems to partially wake up because he grumbles, “Why am I in your bed?”
“I’m pretty sure you dove into it, saying that you missed me.”
“I miss my bed.” He slides off me and squeezes between the wall and my body before giving me a solid push, ripping a blanket off me and onto him as he proceeds to roll himself into a burrito… very much like the burrito we had for dinner that was somehow even better than the pizza.
“I would like to eat a burrito,” I say, eyeing the burrito laid out before me.
“Go find yourself one. Have fun.”
I grumble, displeased that the burrito I would like to nibble on has ducked into its shell so I can’t even sample any part of him.
I roll onto my side, slide my hands around the burrito, and press my dick against the spot where I feel like the burrito’s ass is.
The burrito unfurls with a vicious look, and I’m left retreating to the far end of the bed while he smugly takes up three-quarters of it and his vermin wraps around his head.
He plans to torture me to death. That is what is happening here.
I watch him from a distance since I’m not allowed to hold him and find myself soothed for the first time since I woke up with one of those dreams that plague me every night. Maybe it’s worse tonight because I know that I plan to make the trek back home.
Maybe he’d give me a pity fuck if I told him I might never come back, but it’s oddly satisfying just watching him.
When has Torin, God of War and Love, ever been satisfied just by watching someone sleep? I decide it must be the fun of the chase… which he is determined to make me do.
I wake up in bed with sunlight shining through the window. It has to be the first time I’ve woken after dawn in a very long time. The burrito is pressed up against my body like he thinks it’s okay to press his dick against my leg first thing in the morning, but I can’t spoon him.
Riley opens his eyes, though Kit is still asleep, so I have to assume he can’t see me. But when his hand presses down on my chest, I know he can very much feel me.
“Why are you crowding me?” he asks.
I glance over at where one of my ass cheeks has to be hanging off the edge because the smaller man has consumed three-quarters of the bed for himself.
As a god, I’ve never been treated in such a way.
I’ve had people contort themselves into strange configurations to make sure I am at my most comfortable, but not this man.
“Which part of this is my fault?” I ask as Kit finally opens her eyes before she stretches and shows off her mighty fangs while she yawns. Then she looks down at me, pulling in the tragedy of it all: this god suffering.
Riley seems to take note of the fact that I’m the one being sacrificed and then proceeds to crawl over my body, like knee on my chest, no care at all for my dignity, as he gets out of the bed like he doesn’t even care that I’m rather horny on this fine morning.
I growl a bit, which causes him to throw a look over his shoulder at me, via Kit.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had sex? I’m offering you a delightful experience!” I declare.
“What, like twelve hours?”
“Twelve hours? I haven’t left your ass since I got here!” I whine before abruptly sitting up. “What if I watch you jerk off?”
He slams the bathroom door, and I realize that I’ve been placed with the most sex-repressed man in existence. Most beauties I come across drop their clothes the instant I even arch an eyebrow at them. I never even have to ask; I just look and am granted whatever I want.
When he eventually comes out looking as half-asleep as he went in, I hurry over to him.
“Your happy face in the morning just annoys me,” Riley complains before he puts a hand on my face and pushes me away from him, shattering all of my plans to finally seduce this man. “Happy people make me miserable.”
I ignore all of that, already used to his displays in the morning. “I was thinking that we could have a pizza-burrito-pancake for breakfast.”
“What about cereal?”
“I’ve named it pizzritocake.”
“You’re far too happy for seven in the morning. It sickens me. What about cookies? That sounds like a balanced breakfast,” he says as he pulls out a package and hands me four cookies. I nibble one and quickly determine that this could be crumbled on top of the pizzritocake.
“These are good. Very good.”
“I’m starting to believe you just like everything I feed you.”
“Not that lemon. That shit was toxic. I thought for sure you were poisoning me.”
“It was poison, but you foiled my plan,” Riley says.
“You said someone would know where the Door I opened is. Can we see them?”
“Yeah, I only work until noon today, so we can go after that and talk to him.”
When we reach the department where Riley used to work, I can tell he’s already on edge.
While he seems to prefer to pretend like he’s done with it and tired of it all, I know he’s not.
Even so, he plasters a smile on his face and hurries inside, greeting people who all seem eager to see him and stop him for small talk.
The door to the room Riley is heading for is closed, so he pushes it open and pauses when a man with a hole in his head greets him.
“Good morning, or… is it afternoon now? Look at the time, it’s already a quarter after twelve! Time sure flies when you’re having fun!” the man says in English that I’ve done a pretty decent job of learning over the past few days. I should have learned it in just two days, but I was a bit rusty.
“Uh… is Mickey here?”
The man gives Riley two thumbs up as I question why Riley isn’t at all concerned that the man appears to be missing part of his ear as well.
“He sure is!”
I’m pleased that my language skills have me following the conversation, but my comprehension skills still seem to be lacking because I have no idea what is happening here or why no one is concerned about the man’s well-being.
We step in and look over to where there’s a body on a metal table and a person staring down at it.
The body on the table goes, “I know it was that bitch Miranda that killed me. I know it was her. I knew she was bad news the moment I met her, but her tits… her ass… that woman knew just how to con me. And it felt so good.”
“If I have to hear you mention her tits one more time, I’m going to murder you myself,” the man growls before he waves his hand and the person on the table seems to immediately die… again.
The man pauses, looks over at us, then glances around the room at the woman who is busy working on a computer, the man who is sorting things in the corner, and the man who led us into this room.
“Mickey, are you bringing victims back to life to do your work again?” Riley asks.
The man named Mickey quickly looks around like he can somehow disguise the fact that everyone in the room other than the three of us are reanimated dead.
“No! These… are… new hires.” He’s a smaller man with curly hair that currently falls messily around his face.
He’s giving us an innocent look, but something about it tells me he’s not as innocent as he’s pretending to be.
He looks to be in his mid-thirties; possibly around Riley’s age.