Chapter 7
Julian
Julian’s dream was a disjointed thing. The weight of a blade in his hand. The winking light of the disco ball. The strange allure of glowing purple eyes. Sloan’s cruel, ice-blue gaze across the table. He floated from one to the next, passing them like trees on a riverbank, never stopping at one.
Until he reached a blank space. The world was gray, fog obscuring everything around him.
The ground was flat and earthy, with no grass or rocks to help him identify his surroundings.
There were no markings or footprints on the uniform ground.
He turned a slow circle, dimly registering surprise at how lifelike it all was.
“Hello?” he called, and his voice sounded muffled, like the fog was a solid thing preventing sound from traveling.
When his gaze landed on a familiar figure in the fog, he stepped closer.
Tall and muscular, with his tattooed body still dressed in only the black shendyt, Valac stood watching him as though he’d been waiting for his arrival.
The violet glow of his irises seemed bright compared to the dim, colorless fog around them.
“I haven’t entered a human’s mind before,” Valac said. “Are you in any distress?”
Julian’s brow furrowed. “Entered my mind?”
“It’s a power some demons have. Not one I’ve ever needed to use before. I wanted to be certain it didn’t harm you in any way.”
It was hard to focus on what he was saying. “You’re telling me this is real. You’re really here? This isn’t a dream?”
“It is a dream,” Valac said. “And I am really here. They are not mutually exclusive. Physically, you are asleep alone somewhere on Earth, and I am in Hell. It takes effort to send my consciousness so far, but I wanted to try.”
Julian was having trouble processing that. Valac wanted to try… entering Julian’s mind?
“What for?” he asked dumbly.
“I wanted to see you.”
Those words didn’t make sense. “Why?”
Valac stepped closer, his head tilting. “You intrigue me.”
Julian had to crane his head back to maintain eye contact.
Valac’s hand came down on his shoulder, and awareness flooded back into Julian.
He suddenly remembered all the dreams he’d been having of Valac, of wrapping his own hand around his cock while thinking about him.
He tried to recoil, but Valac held firm.
“Stay,” Valac said. “My touch grounds your consciousness.”
Julian’s mouth went dry. He looked away from Valac’s intense gaze, squinting at the gray fog that surrounded them. “What is this place?”
“This,” Valac followed his gaze, “is Purgatory. I recently traveled through it, which is why our surroundings manifested in this way. I can change it, if it unnerves you.”
That was tempting, but Julian had more pressing concerns. “You can’t be here.”
The demon’s dark brows dropped downward. “Why?”
“You’re a demon. It’s wrong.”
Valac’s violet gaze was piercing. “Is it? According to whom?”
Julian opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
The guild insisted that it was wrong to associate with demons, but they had no power over him anymore, did they?
He’d sworn that he wouldn’t reach out to the Sentinels when he left the guild, but Valac didn’t know that.
The only danger here was if the guild somehow found out Valac was here, and they would only know that if Julian told them.
He wasn’t dumb enough to do something like that.
Still, it felt like he was breaking his word by speaking to Valac. His word was about the only damn thing he had left.
Wait. “Have you… Have you entered my dreams before this?” Was that why he’d been dreaming about Valac?
Valac’s head tilted. “No. Have you seen me before?”
Julian flushed. “No, of course not. Why would I dream about a demon?”
Valac’s curious gaze didn’t waver.
“Y-You can’t be here,” Julian said again.
Valac still didn’t move. “You understand your guild has done you wrong, yes? You know I am not the enemy.”
“It’s not my guild anymore.” Julian lifted his chin. “I left.”
“As foretold,” Valac breathed.
Julian frowned. “What?” He shook himself. “It doesn’t matter. Look, the only reason they let me go is because I swore I wouldn’t have anything to do with the Sentinels or demons. Sloan might be a bad person, but I’m not. I made a promise, and I intend to keep my word.”
“But I wanted to see you,” Valac said. “Don’t you feel it, too?”
Feel what? Julian wanted to ask, but he bit the words back. He couldn’t go down this path with a demon. He wouldn’t. “It doesn’t matter. It’s safer for everyone if we never see each other again.”
A low growl spilled from Valac, and he suddenly stepped closer, the line of his body brushing Julian’s clothes. “They will not keep me from you.”
It was on the tip of Julian’s tongue to ask why—why did he care, why was he interested in Julian, why did it matter—when a distant beeping caught his attention.
Valac reeled him in, crushing their bodies together urgently. “They cannot stop us from being together. You have nothing to fear here.”
“Being together?” Julian repeated dumbly. The beeping was getting louder. “What? I don’t understand.”
“I will return,” Valac growled.
“What? No, you can’t.”
“I will see you—”
Julian woke with a start, reaching overhead to grab his phone off the accent table by the couch and turning it off.
He stared up at the slowly twirling ceiling fan in shock.
His first instinct was to disregard the dream as exactly that: a dream.
But he knew his own mind better than that, and nothing about their conversation or that weird gray place—Purgatory—had felt conjured by his imagination.
Valac could actually enter his dreams. His dreams had started out normal, drifting from image to image, sensation to sensation.
Everything that happened after Valac appeared was… different.
What was Valac’s interest in him, anyway? He said the guild couldn’t stop them… from what? What did Valac want?
It didn’t matter. It was too dangerous to let himself get close to the demon.
Just because the guild couldn’t find out about what happened in his dreams didn’t mean that made it okay.
He’d sworn, both to them and to himself, that he wouldn’t get involved with the Sentinels or demons when he left the guild, and he intended to keep his word.
If Valac appeared again, he would tell him as much and demand that he leave.
But for now, he had job interviews to focus on.
One in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
He’d never been on a real job interview before, but he had a suit and tie, and he knew how to be personable.
His resume left something to be desired, since he had no marketable skills and no previous job history.
He’d lied and said he graduated from one of the public schools nearby, and he didn’t think the local grocery stores and gas stations he’d applied for would bother checking into it.
Hundreds of people graduated from those schools every year. Why not him?
The day was one gut punch after another, though.
The bus was late, and even though he’d left with plenty of time to get there early, he wound up being a few minutes late for his first interview.
The middle-aged assistant manager of the grocery store gave him an arch look as he came running breathlessly into the store, and the barrage of questions that followed about his lack of experience in a store setting left him feeling unqualified and belittled.
He fought to keep a smile on his face when it was over, shaking the man’s hand with his head held high.
He went home feeling defeated, ate some ramen, and…
fretted. About whether he’d find a job. About how he’d pay his bills.
About the friends he’d left behind at the guild, and whether he’d made a mistake after all by walking away from it all.
He missed having a purpose with them, feeling like he was doing something good for the world.
He missed the companionship of being on a squad, too, but he’d already been mourning that before he quit.
Going back wouldn’t actually make anything better.
All he could do was keep moving forward.
And hope he didn’t see Valac again when he laid his head down to sleep.
He tossed and turned on the sofa after night fell, waking fitfully each time he drifted off. Maybe if he didn’t sleep too deeply, Valac wouldn’t appear. But that wasn’t sustainable. People needed sleep.
He gave up as the sun rose, shuffling to the kitchen for coffee. He didn’t see Valac. Maybe he took Julian’s command to heart and wouldn’t return.
He tried not to think about the twinge of disappointment he felt at the idea. Just because Valac was interesting didn’t mean they could actually be friends. He couldn’t be friends with a demon.
After that, the days passed like leaves on the wind.
Job interviews were exhausting, but he put on a brave face for each one and carried on.
Each day, he watched the sun fall with an increasing sense of despair.
He had no qualifications that employers looked for.
He couldn’t very well put the Paladin Guild down as a reference or previous work experience.
His dwindling nest egg reinforced his desperate need for a job, and soon he wouldn’t be able to pay his bills on time.