Chapter 39
Angry people made mistakes. Angry demons might not, but Hazel was taking any small victory she could manage.
She’d survived the night, she’d angered the demon, and she’d gotten one of its more powerful minions a bit more on her side.
Tactically, it wasn’t bad for an hour of terror and another ten of numbness and disgust.
It also meant she had said minion in her living room, eating pretzels in a way that somehow called attention to his forearms. Hazel hadn’t known that was possible.
The rest of her questions—and there were dozens—flitted around in her brain, just beyond her capacity to put into words.
Three hours wasn’t nearly enough sleep, she was almost two decades away from handling all-nighters well, and while Maxwell’s presence had given her a burst of energy, it was fading fast.
When the specifics blurred, the basics became clear. “How are you, anyhow? I should have asked right away.”
Maxwell blinked. “Oh. No, that’s quite all right—I’m well enough, and you had every reason to assume that.”
“I don’t generally do very well with assumptions.”
“I promise I’ll tell you if I’m in agony,” he said, “or about to explode. Neither is the case. What about you?”
“Not about to explode. Not in agony.” Painkillers helped with the latter.
The EMTs had diagnosed Hazel with some strained muscles, a number of small cuts, and a lot of bruising.
None of her injuries merited a hospital visit or even the good drugs, but she’d been taking ibuprofen like she got paid for it.
Maxwell scrutinized her like he knew what she wasn’t saying. “Dead tired, though, if I’m any judge. And I’d bet that’s understating matters by half. I know what condition I’d be in if that creature had attacked me.”
“Maybe I’m just tougher.”
“Ha. I know what condition bloody Tarzan would be in if he’d fought the thing—how’s that for clarity?”
She laughed, which made her prove his point by wincing.
“I am sore,” she admitted. “And pretty exhausted. And”—one question, fairly urgent, did come to mind—“I’m guessing that I have at least a day or two before your master makes another try?
Sending a kaiju after me must have cost it some power, but I don’t know how much it has. ”
“Not nearly enough to worry about just now. I can’t swear to how many days we’ve got, but I’m certain it’s at least one.”
“Thank you.” One of the knots in Hazel’s stomach unwound. “And in that case, I probably should be boring and go sleep for a while. Can’t avoid my bedroom forever.”
Whatever Maxwell saw in her face made his soften. He stood up when she did—much more smoothly than her, since his whole left side probably didn’t ache—and met her eyes with calm certainty. “I’ll keep watch,” he said. “On the other side of the wall, of course, but I’ll be there.”
To hell with it.
He wouldn’t kill her, he couldn’t drag her back with him, and Hazel was too tired to be paranoid about any other situation. “You can stay wherever you like,” she said.
* * *
He wanted her. Of course he did; he’d wanted her since she’d had him bound in thorns and battled him with questions, and he’d stopped denying it when he’d caught her in the ruined city.
To be close to Hazel was to be aware of her nimble hands, her agile body, the curve of her lips, and desire was inevitable after that.
Not only was Hazel injured, but she had a ludicrously narrow bed. “It was cheap,” she said, when Maxwell looked askance at it. “And I didn’t expect to have much of a social life here.”
“I’d think not. It seems rather improbable that you don’t roll off every night as it is.”
“I’m not much of a roller.” Hazel sat down on the bed and started taking off her shoes. “Though apparently I do steal the covers. It hasn’t been a big problem lately.”
The allusion, mild as it was, squashed the conversation. Hazel set her second shoe neatly by her first, then hesitated. “Um. Well.”
“Yes,” said Maxwell inanely.
When Hazel hadn’t known his true identity, keeping up his facade had also, for the most part, meant thinking out what to say in advance.
When he’d faced her as Ligat, necessarily her opponent, conversation had been both armor and weapon.
Smooth superiority had come easily, even if he’d mostly known the superiority to be false from the start.
He’d gotten out of practice being genuine.
“I’ll turn around,” he offered. “But I can leave if you want.”
“Both seem pointless. You’ve seen it all before—it’s not like you lose your memory when you change your appearance.” Though she spoke to him, she seemed to half address herself.
Memory, in fact, washed over Maxwell with overwhelming force as Hazel spoke. He started toward her, then caught himself. “I wouldn’t presume. You’d have every right to change your feelings, especially after last night.”
Hazel stood up. “I would,” she agreed, a small smile on her lips, “but I haven’t. Though if you have—”
He’d taken her in his arms before she got the next word out, though he managed to remember her injuries and restrain himself.
Hazel, of course, immediately tested that control by leaning upward to kiss him.
The contact was light compared to their previous encounters, but the longing it stirred in Maxwell was just as strong.
“No more,” he said, pulling back. “Not until you’ve healed.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Hazel reached up, brushed her fingertips along his jawline—and then hissed as she stretched a little too far. “Or maybe I do. Stupid middle-aged bodies.”
“I’m quite fond of yours.” Maxwell kissed her one more time, barely touching her lips with his, and then released her. “Which means I’d better turn around.”
* * *
The evening turned into night while Hazel slept, and Maxwell mostly stayed in the chair he’d brought beside her bed, dozing for brief, light stints before waking and checking on both her and the house as a whole.
She didn’t stir; once she’d turned over on her side and fallen asleep, she stayed there.
Only her breathing reassured Maxwell that she was still alive.
Neither Perthrux nor Chapman nor Albert Gordon’s restless shade disturbed the house.
Maxwell left the room a few times to peer out the windows, never seeing more than moonlight on the trees and, once, a bat soaring past in search of prey.
Most likely he could have really slept for a stretch without even remotely dire consequences, but he wouldn’t tempt fate when Hazel was injured.
On one of his trips, he picked up a book from the hall table, a luridly red paperback with an embossed title: Incursions: Demons, Ghosts, Extradimensional Invaders, and the Human Resistance Through the Ages. A snarling human face with fangs and goat horns looked out from the cover.
Hazel had clearly been doing her research—and been either curious or desperate.
In her shoes, Maxwell would have been both.
He wasn’t too far from either as matters stood.
God knew his own quest had taken him down some paths both dubious and laughable before he’d encountered the horrible reality of Perthrux.
He’d read pamphlets by men trying to be the next Crowley, who’d only really managed to copy his nastier aspects, and attended lectures by ladies whose claims to mediumship were as transparent as the “ectoplasm” they produced wasn’t.
One or two of them had even hit on some truths, if only by accident.
He still didn’t expect that much when he took Incursions back to his chair, and the next few hours of reading didn’t produce many surprises.
The stories were entertaining in their way—he’d been only vaguely aware of the mania for interplanetary visitors, much less so of the theories about alien parentage and secret bases beneath the earth—and reading them kept Maxwell from peering at Hazel too closely and too often.
That was really all he’d been looking for.
* * *
Plywood could only do so much. As carefully as she and Brandon had nailed the sheet to the wall, light still came in around the edges, enough to wake Hazel up not much past her usual time.
At first, she froze. Her memory was too hazy to supply immediate answers for why the room was much dimmer than usual, why various bits of her still ached, and why the hell there was a silver-skinned figure in a dark robe sitting beside her bed.
Sleep paralysis, suggested her unhelpful mind, or alien abduction.
She inhaled slowly, trying to process. The sound caught the figure’s attention, and when they raised their head and Hazel saw their face, her mind caught up with the situation.
Maxwell. Ligat. Whoever. One form had shifted to another during the night.
Now that she knew who he was, his worried expression looked the same in both identities.
“Hi,” she said, becoming aware that her mouth felt like she’d eaten a gym sock and her hair probably resembled a college freshman’s abstract metal sculpture. “The world’s still here, I see.”
“I haven’t checked beyond the front door, I admit, but it seems likely,” he said. Closing the book in his lap, he leaned forward to get a better view of her. “How are you?”
“You like asking tough questions, don’t you?”
Maxwell chuckled. “It’s the academic in me. I’ll save the meaning of life for later.”
“Good.” Hazel tentatively tested her muscles. “I’m…better. I’ll save specifics for after breakfast and a hot shower. Possibly not in that order.”
In the uncertain light, she could still see Maxwell’s smile, and she wondered how she hadn’t recognized him before. “If you need your back washed,” he said, casual but sincere, “I’m eminently available.”
Arousal wasn’t morphine; while Hazel felt her pulse speed up and heat uncurl between her legs, she also felt the pain of her injuries, even after sleep had taken the worst edge off.
Still, the edge had come off. Other sensations could—and evidently did—coexist. “Give me fifteen minutes,” she said. “Then come in.”