Chapter 4
Demon Merman
Grace
I rouse feeling groggy, but better, and still thirsty as hell. Rubbing my temples, I realize I drifted off briefly. I don’t know how long I was out, but it still must be early afternoon because the sun is shining brightly behind the clouds through the windows.
“Witch, I still need your help. I’m very thirsty.”
I stiffen. The circle… The demon…
My ears prick, listening for more. It’s the first time he’s said anything since I splashed him and ran. Maybe he heard me wake up.
I’d been hoping that breaking free of the circle would have somehow broken the ritual too, and that he would either be unsummoned or he’d just leave. Unfortunately, neither of those things seems to be the case.
He’s still here. He’s waiting for me in the room and unless I want to climb out a second-story window, I’m going to have to face him and get on with my plan. The problem? I’ve never faced a demon before, let alone anybody of higher authority than me. I avoid confrontation like I avoid cockroaches.
Still feeling damp all over, I rise to my feet, side-eyeing the faucet. I’m desperate for another drink, but if I turn it on, the demon will definitely hear me, and I’m not sure I want that just yet.
Bastard.
“There’s dirty lemon in my eyes from the water you poured on me, naughty human.”
I roll my eyes to the ceiling. Then wince and curse again under my breath. Mine hurt too.
The sticky sensation of wetness prickles my skin, reminding me of his inhuman body against mine.
I immediately try to quell the memory, not liking how strangely thrilled it makes me feel.
Death. Death is where my thoughts need to lead, because this psycho might kill me if I don’t get out of here and soon.
He might be goading me right now, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be threatening my life later.
This is not how I die.
I grab the can of Febreze kept behind the toilet and brandish it in front of me, my finger poised on the trigger. Stopping for a quick drink of water, I turn on the faucet and gulp several sips before bracing to make a run for my life.
Praying for a little bit of luck, I turn the corner into the master with my spray can raised like a shield, taking several swift steps into the room and toward the door.
Now that I can finally see again, my gaze goes directly to the circle, the remaining lines of the star within, and the demon merman inside.
Lying with his back flat on the floor and his hands resting under his head, he's languidly laid out like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
I didn’t expect to see… this. Not him lounging with a bored smirk.
I halt and narrow my eyes at him, and as I slowly walk the rest of the way around the bed to get a better look, his eyes shift from the ceiling to mine, and the boredom vanishes from them.
Filling with curious darkness, his eyes are a brilliant light green, like sea foam and jade coral.
A color so pretty it makes me… helpless.
Like I can do nothing else but stare at them and the creature they belong to.
“It is about time,” he says, and his whispery deep voice makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.
He’s not human, not by a long shot. He drips. He gleams. Fluid and long, he must be something from the ocean, or wherever aquatic beings live in other realms. Atlantis?
I shake the dumb out of me as my eyes break from his chest to look back at his face.
I catch him gazing at me in turn, pausing at my own sodden shirt and chest.
The abrupt need to cover my body from his view has his eyes flicking to mine.
“You weren’t lying,” I whisper, trying hard to do the polite thing and not stare at his body beyond my first stunned perusal. I mostly fail, desperate to get a clearer sense of what was hanging directly below his hips…
But the moment my eye catches several thin tentacles emerging from him down there, I blink hard and keep my gaze locked on his face.
“How do you know?” he asks, his voice just as deep and soft as before, though tinged with a hint of barely contained glee.
“Lying shows caring, and I like to do it.” He smiles and my gaze drops to his mouth.
Pointed sharply on either side, his lips are a curving arrow, and terribly wicked. He has fangs.
“Are you… also a vampire?” I ask with sudden grave concern, staring lasers at his sharp incisors. His mouth is wicked for numerous reasons.
His smile grows wider, and it’s not fair that even though I’m standing over him and on two strong legs, I’m the one feeling intimidated. If he’s intimidated, he’s not showing it.
He cants his head to the side, his lips twitching out of the smile and flattening. “Some of the things I eat have blood running through them. Some of what I eat does not. It depends on happenstance while I am hunting the waters I rule over. I am not a vampire.”
I bite hard on my bottom lip, unconvinced.
His tail curls into the space in front of him and between us, his fins taunting me to shift my eyes downward. “I do not eat humans, but I could if I wanted to,” he goes on. “Such are carnivorous beings. But I do not require blood to survive.”
Caught in his hypnotic voice and his fantastical appearance, my gaze trails over the side of his tail and the long fins at the bottom.
I always expected mermaids to be beautiful, to have tails that stunned and danced while being pushed around in the waves, because that’s what I’ve always seen in movies.
It’s also what I’ve heard from witches who have met them.
Although his tail is similar in shape to the accounts, it's quite a bit longer, and thinner too, like an eel’s.
Also like an eel’s, it’s jet black, not colorful or shiny at all, covered in perfectly woven scales in the shapes of diamonds.
The scales lead down to two long and frilly black fins with a hint of green in the interior wrinkles.
Besides that, and his eyes, the only other color upon him is the grayish beige skin starting from his hips upward.
He looks like something evil, something not to be trusted. All the same, he’s compellingly intriguing.
Another bloom of hope fills me, excited that maybe, just maybe, I did summon him—even if it was by mistake—and I have more within me than I thought.
“That’s good to know.” I take a step back, abruptly remembering how dangerous he could be. “I’m going to leave and figure out a way to get you out of here. Just stay put and I’ll be back soon…” I wave my broken phone, still brandishing the Febreze in the other hand.
“I would not do that if I were you,” he warns, rising onto his elbows at the same time.
I stop as I’m about to turn and flee down the hall. “Why?” Then I pause, my concern growing stronger. “Why? Am I going to be dragged by hellhounds back to you? What happens if I leave?”
I can’t stay here without at least some protection against a large male specimen with rippling abs and an otherworldly dark mystique. One who has inhuman green eyes framed in black and gray that keep luring mine to them. He’s the most attractive man I’ve ever seen.
He’s not a man. I shake myself again, trying hard not to focus on the long black tentacle now moving in and out of my peripheral vision, mentally stamping out the desire to drop my eyes to the huge bulge hanging from him, out in the open for anyone’s purview.
Putting in my best effort, I manage to keep my eyes glued to his face, noting that his tentacles and tail aren’t the only long black things hanging off him. His hair is long and black too.
The sides of his head are shaved—or hairless, I’m not sure—but dense dark hair falls from the top of his head and down to his lower back, swept away from his face.
It spreads out behind him and on the floor, puddling into a silky mass.
Some is plastered to his shoulders—the rest of it out of my view.
There are two small black horns on either side of his hairline, right above his temples.
Sharp and pointed upward, they seem smooth as rolled stone and look like weapons.
I can tell instinctively that they would hurt badly if I were to be stabbed by one.
His ears are pointed and long, like a fae’s. When he draws one of his hands in front of him, my gaze tumbles to it. It has six digits, although two are thumbs, placed one on top of the other. The other four are fingers, webbed and too long to be human.
He doesn’t have a belly button, only a slightly curved indentation in the same spot.
I’m still stunned that he’s here at all, and that I might have been the one that brought him here.
Because if he really is a demon, then whatever the Cyane witches were up to had been done with powerful dark magic, so powerful that there was enough magical residue left from the spell to open another portal and pull something through it.
A portal into Hell? Maybe. If he were telling the truth.
Only those with true power could accomplish such a feat.
I swallow thickly and finally drop my eyes below his waist, straight past it, and at the ground around him.
The circle and star have been destroyed except for a pale red that seeped throughout the entire inner space.
Though the carpet isn’t wet anymore, which is odd because it was soaked earlier.
Several thin black tentacles, as thin as a pencil and as long as the merdemon’s tail, sway in and out of my vision and across the white fibers.
I swallow again, reminded of his tongue on my eyes and the pressure of it tickling the skin under my eyelashes. It’s not that I’m a prude—I just don’t like getting into trouble. Which is why I’ve never been a good witch, because trouble always finds me anyway, even when I try to avoid it.
“Hellhounds? Ridiculous creatures. You seem afraid to look at me, little witch, and yet you summoned me here. Am I that hideous? Or are you afraid to look because of something else? Your eyes are avoiding a certain part of me.”