3. Rowan
Author’s Note:
I’m sorry to inform you that this chapter came off without a hitch and I had a perfectly normal week. Well, Jude did get arrested (sort of), Fluffy went all fiery, and I think a few people were probably murdered. But still, a pretty normal week.
PS: Did you know that if you search how heavy a bomb is or how heavy enough explosives to destroy a cabin would weigh, the search engine actually WILL NOT ANSWER YOU.
An author just needs to find out how to blow up a cabin, and the internet won’t help.
But don’t worry, my boo’s brothers came through and were able to answer the question.
I don’t think they blew up any real buildings in the process. (No guarantees, though.)
ROWAN
Milo had hung up on Riley. I stared at the phone like it was going to grow teeth and bite me. People did not hang up on Riley. My sister was vicious.
I took a bite of the tuna wrap, trying not to wince at the flavor. At least the tuna here had pickles in it; that was probably the only reason I was still eating the damn thing.
Milo was grinning maniacally at me, like I had just shit rainbows because I’d eaten some tuna.
“Don’t look so nervous,” Milo said. “Your sister seemed perfectly lovely.”
I almost choked on the wrap, but I managed to swallow the bite in my mouth.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence, but it was a weirdly comfortable silence.
Maybe because Milo kept looking up at me and smiling, like I was doing something right just by eating the wrap.
I had to choke down the tuna, but the caesar salad one was actually really tasty.
When the waitress dropped off the check at the table, I grabbed it without thinking, pulling out my wallet and counting out the cash to leave. (Yeah, I was old-fashioned. When you grew up before credit cards, you got used to always having cash on hand.)
Milo beamed at me again, like a ray of freaking sunshine. Shit. Did this mean it was a date?
“You want half for mine?” Milo asked, but he still had that big-ass smile on his face, like I had bought him a diamond ring or something.
I just grunted in response, getting up out of the booth and standing there.
Milo took one last sip of his water, then he popped up, too.
He called out farewells to what seemed like half the diner.
He almost walked into someone when his head was turned calling out goodbyes, but I used a hand to guide him.
When we made it out the front door, he managed to trip on the door frame, but I caught his arm in my hand to prevent him from falling.
Somehow, I wasn’t quite sure how, I was then holding hands with Milo. It was… nice. His hand was warm, his fingers long but still smaller than mine. And every once in a while he’d give my hand a squeeze and smile at me, like me being there was a job well done.
He was clearly leading the way, walking with purpose and bringing me along with him. We had gone a few blocks before we made it to his car. It was an older chevy pickup—maybe from the 70s?—and it was in amazing condition. I whistled in appreciation.
“I know. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Aunt Anabelle took good care of it, and now it’s mine,” Milo said, patting the truck with the hand that I wasn’t holding.
I supposed it was time to let him go. I was weirdly sad at the thought. Milo looked at me and must have noticed.
“I’ll let you drive it if you’re helpful with the abusive husband,” he stated, then he let my hand go and walked around to the driver’s side. I sort of stood there, unsure if he was serious or not.
I was debating whether or not I was actually supposed to go with him when he started the car, and I found myself pulling open the passenger door and hopping in before he could take off.
Because, honestly, if Milo was going to go face down someone’s abusive husband, it was the responsible thing to go with him.
Milo would end up threatening the guy with a knife, tripping, and injuring himself or something equally ridiculous. The man needed a keeper.
I guessed I was volunteering for the job.
Milo pulled out into traffic. He seemed, at least, better at driving than he was at walking. He really paid attention to what he was doing.
Right until he looked over at me and started talking.
“So, Kevin is a piece of shit, and he’s abusing Marcy. They have one son together, Aaron, and he’s a good dad to the kid, according to Marcy. So she doesn’t want him dead or anything, but she wants to get a divorce, and she wants him to leave her alone.”
I grabbed onto the seat and braced myself as Milo turned back to look at the road just in time to swerve around a car that was making a left. He then slammed on the brakes, throwing me forward, in order to let a woman with a baby carriage cross the road.
Milo looked back over at me, but I gestured his eyes back to the road, because the woman was almost all the way across. He hit the gas, and we jumped forward. We then continued on our way, and I felt like I was in one of those racing games where you swerved around cars and tried not to crash.
He was not better at driving than walking. I was so very wrong.
Mostly he filled me in on Kevin, Marcy’s husband, and every time he talked, he looked over and took his eyes off the road. My jaw was clenched so tightly that I couldn’t even tell him to focus on driving!
After an interminably long, death-defying ride (although maybe it wasn’t actually that long, but it definitely felt like it), we ended up at a cute little single story house in a nice-looking neighborhood.
Milo parked in front, then he shut off the car. I stared at the house, breathing in deep. One human inside. Not a hellbound human, either, so killing him was out of the question. Not that Marcy wanted him dead, anyway.
“How are we supposed to get him to leave Marcy alone if we can’t kill him?” I asked. “I’m not really a fan of torture. It’s so… messy. And awkward.”
Milo was staring at me, and I played back what I said in my head. Oops? I probably shouldn’t talk about torture and killing people. I really wasn’t used to human-ing. I didn’t intermingle with them all that much.
“Boo, I’ll take care of any torture. You just stand there and look intimidating, okay?” Milo asked, patting my chest.
He hopped out of the car, and I followed. We walked up to the front door, and rather than knocking, Milo tried the door. It swung open, and he called out, “Honey! I’m home!” He walked into the house, and I followed behind him.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t just kill him?” I asked. “It would be less messy.”
Kevin groaned from where he was tied up in a chair, gagged with one of his ties we’d found laying across a kitchen chair.
“Nah. we’ll just rip a couple fingernails out. That’s really painful. Or we could kneecap him. That’s an option,” Milo said.
He was walking around Kevin, and the guy’s eyes were wide and pleading. He got no sympathy from me, though. No, he wasn’t hellbound, but when we’d entered the house, Kevin had recognized Milo and had gone charging at him, yelling about him being a nosy motherfucker.
Well, that didn’t sit well with me, and I’d ended up knocking out the guy before he could get hands on Milo. The little chaos demon had been thrilled about that, and he’d insisted we tie him to a chair and gag him. So here we were.
“Ripping fingernails out is… really bloody. Very big mess. I do not recommend,” I finally answered.
Kevin was nodding his head and mumbling what seemed to be agreement with me.
Milo smacked him across the back of the head. “Shut the fuck up, asshole. When you beat your wife, you don’t get a say in how you’re punished.”
The guy looked pissed off at that, spitting and yelling unintelligible words behind the gag. He was looking at Milo, and I didn’t appreciate the anger in his eyes.
“Settle down, or I’ll make it so you can’t talk,” I growled.
“Ohhhh,” Milo said, clapping his hands. “We can cut out his tongue. That would be fun!”
I tilted my head in thought. “I mean, that’s just as bloody as ripping out fingernails, but maybe we could break all the bones in his hands? It sounds pretty awful, but there’s no blood. I mean, not as long as you make sure no bones poke through the skin.”
Milo was behind Kevin, and he winked at me for some reason. Kevin was looking at me like I’d just betrayed him.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t rip out your fingernails because I feel sympathy for you. You beat your wife. You tried to attack Milo. You deserve to suffer.”
“Aww, boo, you really do care,” Milo interrupted.
I rolled my eyes and continued. “I just don’t like things to get bloody, but there are lots of ways to hurt you.”
Before I could say anything, Milo reached over, grabbed the guy’s pinkie finger, and bent it in a way it should not have bent. I heard the crack, Kevin screamed, and Milo cackled in glee.
He was so cute. For a human, he was vengeful and had no problem getting messy. It was really cute.
Milo only broke one other finger, then he did a lot of talking.
I was fascinated, and I knew he would be fantastic at psychological torture.
I think even my sisters would be impressed.
He talked to Kevin about all sorts of shit—his parents, why he hit Marcy, his son, his anger, his inadequacy issues, being a bully…
Kevin was a crying, blubbering mess not even two hours in, agreeing that he was a piece of shit for what he’d done.
Most impressive of all, I could sense actual regret from Kevin. Milo really had made him feel like a shitty human being.
I sniffed again, but Milo was all human. Maybe he was raised by a demon? He was just so damn good at chaos.
Kevin was barely aware of his surroundings, still crying and blubbering, when Milo meandered over to me. “I think that’s pretty good, but I wish there was some way to guarantee things. He’s scared of us, and he feels bad now, but who knows if it’ll stick.”
I grunted. I could take care of that.
I walked over to Kevin, knelt in front of the chair, and put my hand on his shoulder. “Look at me, Kevin,” I commanded.
He lifted his head, and I let my eyes go all blazy with hellhound fire. Kevin whimpered.
“If you ever touch Marcy again, I will hunt you down. If you ever bother Milo, I will hunt you down. If you ever do anything to hurt your kid”—Kevin was shaking his head in denial—“I will hunt you down. And you will suffer.” On the last word, I let some of my hellfire burn through my hand and into his shoulder.
He screamed in agony, whimpering and blubbering. I smelled urine; he’d wet himself.
I stood up, sighing, then I looked over at Milo. He looked suitably impressed, and also a little adoring. I might have proudly puffed out my chest a bit.
“Do we need to clean this up?” I asked, motioning towards the mess on the floor beneath the chair. “I don’t want Marcy to have to do it.”
“Nah,” Milo answered. “We’re gonna grab some of Marcy and Aaron’s stuff, and Kevin here can clean up his own fucking mess. After all, he made it.”
I grunted in agreement, then followed Milo down the hall to help pack up a woman and her kid. All in all, it was a pretty good day. Cultists dealt with, abusive husband threatened, and I’d gotten to spend time with this cute chaos demon of a human.
I wondered how I could do it again tomorrow.