26 HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
L UNA WALKED SO CLOSE TO R AUM’S LEG, HE MIGHT AS well not have bothered with the leash. But she didn’t cower, and her tail stayed up.
He wished he could join in her newfound bravery. Instead, if he was a dog, he’d have dug himself a hole so deep he’d end up back in Hell.
Then again, he’d already dug a figurative hole deep enough for that.
Why was he so mad about this? Why did he feel like tearing apart Sunshine’s entire apartment when she told him so plainly she’d always been planning to get the book and return to her former angelic glory?
Of course she was planning that. If she’d tried for even a second to throw that away for him, he’d have dragged her back to Heaven himself.
She deserved the world. She deserved everything she wanted and more. She deserved to be elevated to the highest position an angel could rise to. He wanted that for her.
Learning about what she’d been through had made him so goddamn angry, he was liable to pull a Bel and burst into hellfire.
The thought of her trapped and suffering in Hell made his hands clench into fists and his claws shoot out of his fingertips, digging into his palms until blood dripped onto the sidewalk. The world disappeared in a wash of red.
A slight whimper had him blinking and looking down into Luna’s concerned eyes. He’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and passersby were giving him wary looks. Made sense. There were two little puddles of blood beneath his fists.
He retracted his claws, forced his fingers to uncurl, and examined his bloody palms. Fucking great. He wiped them on his hoodie. It already had bloodstains from when Bel had stabbed him, so he might as well add to the collection. At least it was black.
“I hear I missed all the fun,” Asmodeus said when Raum made it home fifteen minutes later.
His happy little demon family was all gathered there, minus the girls. Mist lurked by the fridge, Ash and Meph sat on the barstools across the island, and Bel stood with crossed arms by the stove, glaring at the world like a rage inferno poorly contained by thin glass walls.
Luna immediately shrank behind Raum’s legs.
He really needed to take her back to the shelter—she wasn’t going to like hanging out in a house full of demons—but he didn’t have a ride. He’d just have to keep her close and calm her if she got scared.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a downer, the fun would follow you,” Meph said to Ash. “That’s what happens to me.”
“That’s not fun,” Ash replied. “That’s total fucking chaos.” He looked at the quivering pit bull at Raum’s feet. “I hope you didn’t adopt that dog.”
Raum bent and picked her up. Yeah, Luna was no teacup poodle, but he was strong and she was scared. He could deal.
“How many damn animals do you people need?” Belial growled. “I’ve already got fucking cats coming out my ears, and now you’re bringing home a rat?”
Raum held Luna closer and pinned his brother with a glare. “She’s a dog. Not a rat.”
“She does kinda look like a hellrat,” Meph said. “Big, gray, and wrinkly.”
“Don’t insult Luna.” After shooting Meph a threatening look, Raum looked back at Belial. Evidently, Bel’s anger at him was very much alive and well. Considering the apartment was still trashed from their fight, it made sense.
Also, it was Belial. He was always angry about something.
Bel stared back at him, and tense silence reigned. The only movement came from Mist’s tail, flicking restlessly.
“Are you really under a contract with the angel?” Meph asked, always first to fill the quiet. “Are you going to try to kill us now?”
Raum looked at him, choosing to ignore Bel for now. He wasn’t in the mood to manage his brother’s perpetual shitty mood. “I was. It’s dissolved now. And it wasn’t for that. I just couldn’t talk about it to anyone who didn’t know.”
“You’re actually defending her,” Ash said incredulously.
“According to Bel”—Meph jabbed a finger at the enormous, scowling demon as if he wasn’t already the most noticeable thing in the room—“the angel threatened to sell us all out if you didn’t cooperate. And she made you go to Hell to steal some grimoire for her.”
“Yeah.” Raum chose not to mention that he’d failed to get said grimoire. That part was a little embarrassing.
“I’m finding it kinda hard to like this chick, not gonna lie.”
“I didn’t like her at first either.”
“But … ?”
Raum looked at him.
Meph cocked the eyebrow with the tatts above it. “We all know there’s a but there.”
“But … I found out she was lying. She never planned to sell us out. She needed my help, so she said what she had to to get it.” He shrugged. “It was smart, honestly.”
Belial made a noise halfway between a grunt and a growl. “If by smart you mean the stupidest thing she could’ve done, then sure.”
Raum’s jaw shifted.
“Did she really think I wouldn’t find out?
What was her clever plan for that? I would have been sweeping up angel ashes by now if you hadn’t tried to play the hero.
” His tone turned biting. “Why are you cozying up with angels anyway? Sure, she’s hot, but is it really worth selling out your entire family for a piece of ass? ”
Raum gritted his teeth and breathed through flared nostrils. The only thing that kept him from launching at Belial was the frightened pit bull in his arms. He could feel Luna trembling as the tension amped up.
“Whoa, you made Raum mad ,” Meph said like he was studying a frog dissection in science class. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him proper mad before.”
“Everybody calm down.” Ash sounded tired. “Bel, chill. Raum, you owe us an explanation at the very least. If Bel can relax long enough to hear it, I think we would all benefit.”
Ash was right, but that didn’t make this any easier. But if Raum was going to say anything besides threatening or cursing Belial, he needed some space.
He headed over to the couch, dropping into the cushions and setting Luna down beside him. She proceeded to climb right back onto him, curling up like a lap dog when she was so heavy he could already feel his legs going numb. But she’d stopped shaking, so he wasn’t moving her.
Mist stalked across the room to lurk over by the windows like he also needed space from Bel. Meph and Ash turned on the barstools to face the couch, putting Bel at their backs.
The distance made everyone calmer, and after a minute, Raum forced himself to start talking.
He started with Sunshine kidnapping him from the nightclub—which Meph found hilarious.
Then he explained their contract and what happened in Hell, including Naiamah and the amulets, Murmur busting him, and Sunshine saving his ass. Which Meph also found hilarious.
“Naiamah knew who I was,” Raum said. “She left me this weird message for Bel.”
Bel gave no physical reaction, but the energy around him churned like a brewing storm.
“What’d she say?” Meph asked, oblivious.
“She said he was playing hard to get, and some other creepy shit.”
“What creepy shit?” Meph looked way too excited.
“She called him precious . And she said, repression never works .”
Everyone went silent and tried to look at Bel without making it obvious they were looking at him. Except Meph. Meph burst into laughter. “Precious? Fucking precious ? Beautiful. That’s absolutely beautiful, I can’t even—”
Ash elbowed him, and he managed to limit his laughter to silent wheezes.
Meanwhile, Belial was now vibrating with tension. It was clear that if he allowed himself to move an inch or speak a word, he was going to lose it, so it was probably wise not to push him. But Raum was dying to ask about Naiamah.
“She knew about your bargain with Murmur,” he said, watching Bel carefully. “She knows you set up a meeting and negotiated a truce.”
“What?” Ash spun around to look at Bel. “How?”
Silence. And a fuckload of tension.
Ash figured it out first. “Holy shit. It’s her, isn’t it? Naiamah is the mysterious contact you’re always reaching out to for favors that you won’t talk about. That’s why she knows. Because you used her to set up the meeting.”
“Oh damn,” Meph said.
“She was the one who got us the Nephilim blood when we first arrived,” Ash continued. “She was the one who bargained the first favor with Murmur to get him to help Mist. She’s the one who set up the second meeting with Murmur, and she’s the one that got you that cuff for the angel.”
Belial might as well have been hewn from stone for all the reaction he gave.
“I know you’re not stupid enough to trust her on her word alone, and I doubt she’d be keen to be your errand boy anyway, so what do you have on her? How do you control her?”
Bel unclenched his jaw enough to say, “She owed me one thousand favors.”
“One thousand ?”
“We’re down to the last hundred now. It was a long time ago.”
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Meph said.
“What the hell did you give her to make her agree to owing you a thousand favors?” Ash asked.
But Bel shook his head. “None of your fucking business.”
Ash opened his mouth.
“I mean it,” Bel growled. “Don’t push me.”
“That information is irrelevant at present,” Mist said, speaking up in Bel’s defense. “We should focus on the matter at hand.”
Ash and Bel were still glaring at each other, but a moment later, Ash exhaled and dragged his hair out of his face. He spun around on the stool to face Raum again. “What happened after you saw Naiamah?”
Crisis averted, Raum continued with his story.
As much as he didn’t want to talk about this with anyone but Sunshine, he knew that telling his brothers everything was the best way to get them to stop trying to kill her.
He finished by explaining the dreams, how he was certain there was something in his past with Sunshine, and their resulting argument.
“So you stole her dog?” Meph said. “Low, dude.”
“I didn’t—Luna’s not her dog.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Wanna hear some wisdom?”
“No,” Ash, Raum, and Bel said simultaneously.