28 BIRD’S EYE VIEW #2
He stopped his thoughts with a shake of his head. There was no point imagining a life where they weren’t hunted anymore, because it was never gonna happen. For the rest of time—or until they got caught—they were rogues. That meant living in secret, hiding in plain sight.
Honestly, they’d lasted longer than Raum had thought they would. Maybe he was a pessimist, but the whole escape plan had seemed like a suicide mission to him. He’d been willing to give it a go because he was reckless, but he hadn’t really believed it would work.
Hell, they’d already been found. If it wasn’t for Sunshine’s compassionate heart, their run would have ended the night she’d spotted them in the bar.
Thoughts of Sunshine made his stomach clench, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket to see if she’d called him though he knew she hadn’t. He’d put the ringer on, and with the way he was obsessing over it, there was no way he’d miss a call.
Shaking his head at himself, he pocketed the phone and led Luna up the ramp to the shelter’s front door. Poor Luna immediately started trembling as soon as they got inside, and it made him feel like shit for bringing her back here.
You can’t keep her, so don’t even think about it.
His apartment was too small for a traumatized dog to live with a deranged demon prone to rage attacks.
Bel was already pissed about Faust, and he was only there part-time.
And it wouldn’t be fair to Luna, who was already scared of everything, to have to get used to Bel.
When he opened Luna’s cage and led her inside, she looked at him like he’d just told her they couldn’t be friends anymore.
She looked like he was leaving her on a deserted island while he rowed off in a lifeboat.
She looked like he’d just revealed Santa Claus wasn’t real, and neither was the Easter Bunny, and unicorns were just horses with fake horns strapped to their heads.
“Don’t give me those sad eyes,” he groaned, dropping his forehead against the cage.
She continued looking at him.
“You’re killing me, Luna.”
Fuck, I can’t do it. Shaking his head, he went into the cage and sat on the ground. Just like she had when they’d first started hanging out, Luna lay down beside him and put her head on his thigh, blowing out a relieved sigh like she’d just escaped a terrible fate.
How the hell was he supposed to leave her here?
His phone rang and he scrambled to answer it, dislodging Luna’s head. She watched him curiously as he fumbled with the stupid thing, feeling like an idiot, but he was desperate for this call, damn it.
Except the display said “Meph.” He groaned again but answered anyway. “What.”
“Nice to hear your voice too, darling brother.”
“I’m expecting a call. Can’t talk.”
“From Sunshine?”
“Yeah, from her.”
“I just talked to her.”
“What?” Raum sat up straighter. “She’s there? Let me talk to her. What’d she say?”
“Damn, I’ve never heard you talk so fast. You’ve got it bad.”
Raum glowered. “Look who’s talking. You and Iris are so gross together, no one can stand to be around you.”
“That’s called jealousy, my friend.”
“It’s called being disgusted.”
“Deny it all you want, but we both know—”
“I don’t give a fuck about this right now!” he snapped. “Is Sunshine there? Did you tell her where I was? What did she say?”
“Calm down, calm down, I was getting to that.” Meph took a long breath during which Raum envisioned reaching through the phone connection to punch him. “She was here, but she left.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She got summoned and had to go somewhere. Dunno where. But she told me some crazy shit.”
“What?”
There was another painfully long pause. “Man, you really have terrible taste in women. I mean, she’s a knockout, don’t get me wrong.
But Bel’s going to need some serious convincing to stop wanting to kill her.
You couldn’t have found a cute little witch?
Or a vampire chick? Blood drinking can be fun in the bedroom—”
“Meph.”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
“You’re set on her then? I guess you could do worse. She’s definitely into you. Loyal too. Some of the shit she told me …”
“What did she say? For fuck’s sake—”
“I’m gonna let her share that herself. But she gave me a message for you.”
Raum spoke through clenched teeth. “Which was … ?” How he’d survived four hundred plus years of knowing Meph without murdering him was suddenly beyond him. Forget being a demon, he had the patience of a goddamn saint.
“She said to tell you that everything you guessed was right, and she was wrong.”
His blood turned to ice in his veins.
“She said the dreams were real. She said she’d find you as soon as she could. Oh, and she said Heaven’s close to finding us, we’re all in danger, and we should leave the city ASAP.”
The dreams were real. He was right.
He’d had his memories of Sunshine stolen.
He sat frozen stiff as the shock set in.
I was fucking right. About all of it.
He and Sunshine had known each other in the past. They’d been lovers. No, in love . There was no mistaking the shit he’d said to her in the dream. That he would live for her, kill for her, die for her.
Fuck, he still felt that way now. Did that mean he was in love?
Had he ever fallen out of love? Had he been in love for the last four and a half centuries and just not known it? Was that what heartbreak felt like? Was that why he’d gone numb? Because it was the only way to go on after what he’d lost?
“Raum?” Meph’s voice echoed from somewhere far away. “You okay?”
He still remembered that haunting grief back when he’d met Meph. It felt like he had a gaping hole in his chest. It hurt so badly, he’d barely been able to breathe. The crushing emptiness, loss … The memory was so visceral, he could still feel it to this day.
And now he knew why. He finally fucking knew.
Fucking angels had stolen his mind and his love. They’d torn the heart from his chest and left him an empty shell.
No wonder he’d been fucked up. No wonder he’d shut down. No wonder he hadn’t given a shit about anything. It was pure chance he’d found Meph and ended up doing something halfway decent with his life. In his grief, he’d have been liable to go on a murder spree.
Then again, he was still liable to do that now.
I will kill the angels that did this.
He’d crush their skulls and tear out their hearts, and he’d do it again every time they regenerated, forcing them to experience a fraction of the violation he felt knowing what they’d done to him.
“Dude, I can hear you losing your shit. Don’t pull a Bel and go to rage town, yeah?”
And that wasn’t even starting on what Sunshine had suffered in Hell. Raum could have been there to rescue her if he’d fucking remembered her. But his memories had been stolen, and he’d had no clue she’d been alone, in agony.
None of her kin had come after her, but they’d been all too ready to fuck with her memories when she’d finally been rescued by someone else.
He’d spent years wondering what crime he’d committed. His mind had gotten away from him and he’d imagined the terrible things he could have done until he felt sick.
But no.
His horrible, terrible crime was that he’d fallen in love.
“Wherever you are in your head, it’s not a good place.” Meph’s words finally filtered through the chaos. “Trust me, I know all about it. Focus on my voice.”
The familiar sound started pulling him back to the present.
“Take deep breaths,” Meph was saying. “In and out.”
Raum blinked several times until he was aware of his chest rising and falling in time with his brother’s words.
Concerned. Meph sounded concerned. It was such a bizarre occurrence that he would have laughed if he’d had any control over his body.
The sound of a soft whimper had him glancing down, and he finally remembered he was still sitting in the kennel with Luna. She was looking up at him with wide, startled eyes, like she was debating fleeing from the sight of him.
Raum noticed she looked farther away than before and then glanced down at himself. In his anger, he’d shifted into half-demon form. Right in the middle of the kennel.
“Fuck,” he breathed. His shirt had torn in ten places when his wings appeared—now folded awkwardly against the wall behind him—and he’d been digging his claws into his palms so hard, they were bleeding again. He’d just put on a new fucking shirt after the last one was ruined. “Fuck.”
“Tell me you didn’t half shift.”
Raum was too busy taking deep breaths to respond.
“Better shift back now. Haven’t seen your scaly form in a while, but as I recall, it’s pretty fucking ugly.”
Raum managed a snort. “You’re one to talk.”
“Iris says my demon’s cute.”
“Iris is fucked in the head. And so are you.”
Meph just laughed.
It was hard to get the idiot to take anything seriously. Most of the time it was annoying, but at moments like this, Raum appreciated it.
Shifting back to human form, he tore his shredded T-shirt over his head and chucked it across the kennel. The shirt smacked the opposite wall and slid to the floor.
Setting his phone beside him, he hunched forward and put his head in his hands, suddenly so exhausted he wanted to sleep for a hundred years. But he wasn’t doing that until he talked to Sunshine.
“Sorry, Luna,” he muttered, patting her head. “If you’re going to hang with me, you have to get used to some fucked-up shit.”
She lowered her head onto his lap again, her wariness dissipating now that he was back in human form. Honestly, he was surprised she hadn’t run away, but then, she would’ve recognized his scent. She was a tough cookie, he thought affectionately, giving her ears a scratch.
Meph’s voice filtered up from the phone on the floor. “While I’d love to ask for all the juicy details of that , I’m going to focus instead on the part where your girl said Heaven’s gonna find us and we should leave the city. Do you know why?”
“No.” Raum picked his phone up again and checked for notifications. Nothing. Where the hell is she? He ran a hand over his skull. “But if she thinks there’s trouble, I’d be inclined to listen.”
“You really trust her then.”
“Yeah.”
“Bel’s going to lose his shit.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
Meph laughed. “I like this snarky side of you. You’re always such a sullen grump. You know, I used to try to rile you up just to get a reaction out of you.”
“I know.”
“Never worked though.”
“Sometimes it did.”
“Not as well as Bel threatening your girlfriend.”
“I’ll kick his ass if he tries anything.”
“I should probably go pass on the warning. See what everyone thinks. Bel will probably try to veto the idea of leaving. He’s way too proud to run away.”
“It’s not just about him,” Raum said, thinking of Eva’s grin as she bid him farewell. “We have other people to look out for now.”
“Trust me, I know. I’d cut my own head off before I put Iris in danger.”
“Iris is more likely to agree with Bel,” Raum said with a shake of his head.
“She’s feisty like that. Doesn’t matter though. I’ll haul her ass out over my shoulder if I have to.” There was a long pause, and then Meph surprised the hell out of him by saying, “I know I’ve been ignoring you lately, and I feel shitty about it.”
Raum winced.
“We haven’t gone out to party in ages. We haven’t even gone to the gym together in a few weeks. We—”
“Stop. We’re not doing this.”
“We are. You were lonely, and I haven’t been around. Because I’m always with Iris.”
“I wasn’t lonely —”
“I’m obsessed with her, dude. It’s bad. She just looks at me and I forget about everything. But I should have been … there for you and shit.”
“Stop. Before I puke all over myself.”
Meph laughed. “Fine. But I just want you to know I’m gonna make more of an effort.”
“You don’t need to do shit.” Raum’s skin crawled with how much he hated this conversation. “I get it. I don’t blame you—”
“Yeah, but—”
“I know how you feel now too.”
“I bet you do.”
There was a pause, and then Meph laughed again. “What happened to us? Remember when we met, and our idea of a good time was jump scaring humans and chopping up gargoyles into tiny little pieces?”
Raum snorted. “Yeah.”
“And remember when I used to help you steal shit? Like that one time we raided Marax’s treasure hoard and took half his stash?”
This time, Raum actually smiled. “We could’ve taken it all if we’d been able to carry it.”
“Hell yeah, we could’ve. But look at us now. We’re simps with a capital S . Monogamous simps. Committed to one pussy for the rest of time.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t change a thing.”
Raum’s smile dropped as he considered Meph’s last statement. There was so much wrong with his relationship with Sunshine, past and future. No matter how he looked at it, they were doomed.
But he wouldn’t change a thing either.
“Wellll,” Meph drawled, “that was sufficiently awkward, and I’m going to hang up now before you’re not the only one puking on yourself. I’ll gather the troops and see what they think, and you try to find your girl. Report back.”
He hung up before Raum could even get out a goodbye, probably eager to escape the overpersonal conversation he had initiated. Dumbass.