Chapter 6
“Half? Half of what?” My curiosity sparks to life, bright and electric, and before I can stop myself, I’m pacing the length of the kitchen like I’ve unleashed it and now must chase after it.
“Half what? Powers? Super strength? Speed? Magic? Immortality? Evil? Soul-sucking? How exactly do you suck half a soul? Do you take the top layer? Is there a measuring cup involved?”
Through my barrage of questions, Jonah doesn’t move. He just tracks me with his eyes, something glinting there. The rest of him is preternaturally, predatorily still.
He is a demon. I can feel it. Fuck, I can see it.
But—
“Let’s start there,” he says at last.
“Where? Evil? Are you half-evil?”
It takes him a moment to answer. “I was. For half my life, I suppose. But I’ve spent the other half trying not to be.”
That shuts me up for approximately three seconds.
Before I can press him, he continues. “How much do you actually know about how demons feed?”
“You just hoover it up like this,” I tell him, then make a rough, strangled sort of inhalation sound, like Batibat coughing up a hairball but in reverse.
Jonah looks offended. “Are you comparing me to a vacuum cleaner or a dying cat?”
“You suck out someone’s entire soul until they collapse,” I say defensively. “At least, that’s been my experience in sixty-seven years of demon slaying.”
He tilts his head. “Is that how old you are? Sixty-seven?”
“Yes.”
He looks intrigued. And annoyingly delighted. “I didn’t realize slayers were immortal.”
“We’re not,” I sniff. “We have a longer lifespan, but we’re not fully immortal. That’s your whole deal.”
“Well,” he says lightly, “I’m only half, so I suppose we’re in the same boat. Prolonged lifespan. Not immortal.”
I narrow my eyes. “How old are you?”
He smirks. “Eighty-four.”
I start doing math against my will.
The smirk widens, infuriating dimple reemerging. “Seventeen years, Nightmare. Not a catastrophic gap.”
Horrified, I reach for my dagger. “Are you going to explain demon feeding,” I demand, “or should I just go ahead and stab you in the heart?”
Jonah’s fully smiling now, that predatory, beautiful curve of his mouth that makes my magic jostle under my skin like it can’t decide whether to lunge or listen. It makes his face look younger (well, obviously younger than eighty-four—but he looks like he’s in his thirties).
“All right,” he says, lifting both hands in mock surrender. “Let’s start with something your slayer family apparently skipped.”
“My family didn’t skip anything.” Except, perhaps, positive reinforcement. Praise. Professions of love.
He arches a brow before walking over to a counter. “Souls are layered,” he says calmly. “Not one single, glowing marble sitting in the chest waiting to be ‘sucked’ out.”
I glare at him.
He continues anyway, picking up a knife and slicing through an onion. “There’s a core to a soul.” He holds up an onion-half, sliced lengthwise, and points at the middle. “It holds things like identity, memory, will. The part that makes someone who they are.”
“Well, obviously—”
“But then,” he barrels over my interjection, “there are the layers just outside of the core.” He gestures just above the center of the onion-half. “Those largely hold personality traits, say, temperament, preferences, fears, habits. The traits that color the soul, rather than define it.”
“So human souls are like onions,” I say flatly.
“An allium analogy is basic, but it suffices for this explanation.” Jonah’s voice lowers slightly. “But let me explain the outermost layers.” He points to the crinkly, flaky skin of the onion.
“What do those contain?” I ask impatiently.
“Accumulation,” he says. “Guilt. Obsession. Violence. Cruelty. The parts that build up when someone feeds the worst impulses they have. ‘Rot,’ if you want a simpler word.”
My fingers tighten around my dagger.
“Demons don’t need the core to survive,” he adds.
“But you can take the core.”
“Yes.”
The word lands heavily between us.
“There are two ways we feed,” he goes on. “The first is a ‘partial’ feeding. It’s controlled and intentional.”
“Convenient,” I mutter.
He ignores that. “A demon can siphon the excess rot,” he says, peeling the outer layer off the onion. “The violent intent someone’s nurturing. The cruelty they’re rehearsing. The possessiveness that’s about to become harm. A demon can take all of that from them.”
“And the human?”
“Lives,” he finishes simply. “Often feels… lighter afterward. Confused, maybe. Exhausted, definitely. But that doesn’t last very long, maybe a day at most.”
My brain trips over that. “That’s what you were doing in the alley?” I ask.
He meets my eyes. “Yes.”
“That man was looking for that woman and her son, but he wanted to hurt them.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s alive.”
“Yes.”
I swallow.
“But most importantly, he’s no longer filled with ‘rot,’” he quickly adds on. “He is, in the most basic of terms, a ‘good person’ now. He’s going to realize and acknowledge his sins, and he will leave them alone.”
I frown. “So you’ve just changed the entire makeup of what makes him human, against his will. Even if it’s the bad parts.”
Jonah vigorously shakes his head. “The core and the inner layers remain intact.” He shakes the onion-half still in his hand.
“Their identity, will, personality traits don’t change.
And that’s not to say that rot can’t accumulate again.
After all, the core of someone’s soul determines the layers that come after it. ”
“So you’re putting a band-aid over the problem,” I retort.
He raises his eyebrows. “Would you rather I let him walk around with rot in perpetuity? Would you rather I took it all?”
“I’d rather you didn’t feed at all.”
He scoffs. “Please, Mayari, you’re smarter than that. Demons exist whether you like it or not, and demons have to feed to survive.”
I chew on my lip.
“Rot-feeding,” Jonah continues quietly, “requires proximity, focus, and restraint.” A beat. “It also requires a conscious decision not to take more.”
“So, ‘taking it all?’” I repeat his words.
He frowns, ever so slightly. “Yes. That’s the second way demons can feed. Full consumption.” His tone goes flat. “Core and all.”
I don’t like how easily he says it. “The person dies?” I ask.
“Or disappears,” he replies. “Depending on how clean the extraction is.”
A chill creeps up my spine.
“It’s easier. But more importantly, it’s addictive,” he adds. “Once a demon feeds on a core, the distinction blurs. Rot and essence stop feeling separate. Everything tastes the same. After that…” He shakes his head faintly. “There’s no moderation.”
My mouth goes dry.
“Most demons cross that line very early in their lives,” Jonah says, and for the first time there’s disgust in his voice. “They don’t bother distinguishing anymore.”
“And you,” I say slowly. “You’ve never—”
His jaw tightens. “I had a choice. I made it, in the end.”
My magic hums again, unsettled and searching, as if it’s trying to reconcile what it knows with what it’s hearing. “Why,” I ask carefully, “would any demon choose restraint?”
Jonah’s eyes flicker—something else there now, something that doesn’t feel like flirtation. “That,” he says softly, “is a longer story.”
For some inexplicable reason, I find myself taking pity on a demon. “Fine,” I say briskly, as if I’m doing him a favor. “What about the rest of it? The half part.”
His attention resharpens, zeroing in on me. “Like what?”
“The biological part?”
The dimple on his right cheek reappears. “Must I explain basic procreation to you, Mayari? When a human loves a demon very much, or, in fact, even if they don’t—”
“I didn’t realize they could.”
He shrugs, looking away for a moment, but his expression is still soft. “In an ugly world,” he says eventually, “creatures have a way of connecting with the ones who can live inside it with them.”
Huh. The philosophical musings of demons. I clear my throat. “Okay. How about your powers? Your magic?”
A corner of his mouth lifts as if my sudden unease is amusing.
It emphasizes that right dimple, and with a jolt, I realize why it’s so notable—it’s a hint of human asymmetry on what is otherwise a supernaturally symmetrical face.
“I have a mix. I can sense other demons, and I can read humans’ souls.
I’m abnormally strong and fast. I’m also harder to kill than the average person.
” He pauses. “But I’m not immortal. I heal quickly, but I still feel pain. ”
I tilt my head, remembering. “You bleed.”
He nods—and then reaches for the hem of his sweatshirt.
My mouth goes dry as he lifts it, taking the t-shirt underneath with it, revealing smooth skin and defined muscle that have absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. “You’re stripping because…?”
“Like what you see, Nightmare?”
“N—” I start automatically, then stop. My shoulders drop a fraction when I mutter an admission. “Yes.”
It’s been a while. A whole week! I’m not blind. And like I said, slayers only have one thing in common with demons.
He grins, delighted. “Relax. I’m showing you my arm.” He tugs one sleeve down and pulls his arm free, and I almost resent the way his t-shirt falls back into place.
Massive cloth bandages wrap around his bicep and his forearm. They’re both stained through, the middle damp with reddish-brown.
I wince despite myself. “You’re still bleeding.”
“You did real damage,” he says, and there’s something dangerously close to admiration in his tone.
I lift my chin, trying to recover some dignity. “Not my best work.”
Warm, intent eyes travel across my face, slow enough that my magic tingles everywhere they pass. He’s reading me. “No,” he says slowly. “I think that was your best work.”
I blink at him, not about to out myself as the world’s worst demon slayer.
He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the warmth, the heat of him through the air between us. My magic vibrates, restless and curious now, instead of erratic.
“And that,” he continues softly, “might be why I don’t feel the urge to feed from you.”
My pulse stutters.
“I should,” he says, gaze dipping briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes. “Standing this close, I should feel something. Hunger. Instinct. The pull.” His voice lowers another shade. “But I don’t.”
My grip tightens on the dagger, though I’m no longer sure whether it’s defense or something else entirely.
“You don’t have rot in you, Mayari,” he says, like it’s a discovery. Like it surprises him. Almost like it pleases him. “At least, not the kind that calls to me.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “And what kind calls to you?” I ask before I can stop myself.
His mouth curves slowly. “The kind that tastes like cruelty,” he says. “Not…” His gaze flicks over me again, unhurried. “This. This is different,” he says, almost to himself.
The silence between us stretches, thick and charged. There is no more air in this room, and I’m acutely aware of the pulse pounding in my neck, the flush creeping up my chest. Of the dark, satisfied smile of a predator that’s just identified its prey.
“That’s very convenient for you,” I say, though my voice comes out a little strangled.
“For both of us,” he replies.
Am I thralled again? What is a thrall, anyway?
“There’s another rather inconvenient demonic biological trait I’ve inherited,” Jonah continues, his eyes still studying my face. Dipping down to my neck, flashing—annoyed—at the high collar of my catsuit. “Something else that I’m hungry for, all the time.”
I squeak.
He beams, toothy and feral, at the noise. He licks his lips, slowly, deliberately, and I track the movement of his tongue. “Like what you see, Slayer?”
The word hits me like cold water.
Slayer.
It sticks me in the chest, sharp and corrective, dragging me back into my body, back into the leather stitched around my limbs, back into the weight of the dagger at my thigh, scraping over every lesson drilled into me since childhood, every warning.
Slayer.
Not girl. Not woman. Not Nightmare.
Slayer.
The warmth that had pooled low in my stomach curdles into something harder, more disciplined. My magic, which had been humming lazily under my skin, snaps upright like it’s been called to attention. The kitchen smells return—onions, steel, detergent—replacing the heat of him in my lungs.
You need another kill, Mayari.
“Stop flirting with me, demon,” I say, my voice steadier now. “Didn’t you say you have a wife?” I say lightly, but I regret it the second it leaves my mouth.
The remaining charge is sucked out of the room, and the change in him is as immediate as mine. It’s like watching a door slam shut behind his eyes. The grin disappears, followed closely by the warmth. His body stills, every line of him going rigid.
He takes a slow step away from me, not defensive but distancing, and the air between us cools as if he’s taken the heat with him.
“I did,” he says flatly. There’s no flirtation left, no teasing.
“I did have a wife.” He turns his face slightly, jaw tightening.
When he looks back at me, whatever softness had been there has entirely disappeared.
“She’s gone,” he says. “Killed. Slain.” The word is uttered with something darker than anger.
“Almost forty years ago. By one of your kind.”
I blink.
The weight of it lands heavily in the sterile kitchen air.
“Go, Slayer,” he says, but now the word is imparted with hatred and disgust rather than drawled with heat and playfulness. “I think it’s time for you to leave. I hope I’ve convinced you to leave me and my family alone.”
Wait. Hold up. Why does my chest feel tight? Why is it suddenly so hard to swallow? I take a step toward him without meaning to, hand outstretched as if to comfort him. “Jonah—”
He whirls around, eyes blazing now, grief cutting clean through the composure.
“Get the fuck out of here, Mayari,” he half-growls. “Leave us alone.”