Chapter 35
Kendyll
(Present Day)
I SAT AT A TABLE with Xander as the two of us waited on the guys from Sinners Do It Better to arrive.
Hell’s Gate was just as popular tonight as it had been the last time we were here.
Countless demons danced or fucked around the room while heavy pop rock music played and colorful lights strobed overhead.
“Demons definitely know how to let loose, don’t they?
” I pondered, watching some curvy dark-skinned beauty offer her bare breast for one demon to suck on while hiking her leg over another woman’s shoulder to let that demon shower her bare center in delirious licks, all while smiling and gyrating to the music.
Xander chuckled next to me, though he didn’t actually pay much attention to what I was referring to. His golden eyes were on me and the purple thigh-length, skin-tight dress I wore. After showing up in a t-shirt last time, I wanted to be more club appropriate this time.
“We know how to have a good time, yeah,” he agreed.
It had been awhile since Xander looked at me with those hooded eyes, though I knew that was because he’d been purposefully trying to hold those feelings back.
With the distance I’d put between us and the very business-like manner in which I regarded him these days, it was like he didn’t want to push my boundaries out of fear that I’d run from him again.
Yet tonight, he watched me with enraptured desire, and a flutter broke free inside of me. I had to shift as my own wants surged, and I quickly tossed my black hair over my shoulder and looked away from him before I got swept away by both of our locked-away feelings.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I hissed.
His breath teased over the flesh of my exposed neck. Delicious goosebumps unleashed along my body, and I practically melted into the warm, familiar feeling of him while he leaned in closer to me.
“Like what?” he questioned, his lips grazing my throat as he spoke.
I could hardly catch my breath as my heart hammered in my chest. “The way you used to. Like you want to ruin and love me all at once.”
His fingers ran through the ends of my hair, and he chuckled lightly.
With his other, he grabbed my chin between his thumb and bent finger to turn me toward him.
His handsome face with its sharp, golden eyes, flawless skin, lush lips, and strands of black hair falling across his forehead was inches from mine.
The fanged smile he wore made the pulsing in my body grow.
“Once I started looking at you like this, I’ve never stopped. I just hide it so you don’t notice. But I’ve never stopped wanting you, and I never will.”
His mouth drew closer with the threat of closing over mine. My lips parted with a shuddering breath and an unconvincing warning of his name. I couldn’t pull away, too lost in how I’d missed his closeness. My head slanted, and our lips became separated by a mere breath.
“Did you call us here just so we could watch you make out?” Perseus asked blandly.
I gasped and quickly yanked my face out of Xander’s grip, staring at my lap as my face heated to dangerous levels.
“Perseus,” Harper admonished.
“I really hate you sometimes,” Xander announced gleefully to his best friend, though there was ice laced into the expression.
I finally peered up through my hair to see all the members of the rock band here, along with their girlfriends.
The vivacious Addie wasn’t here this time, but our table was still plenty full.
Harper and Perseus sat across from us while Zagan, Iyla, Dante, and Serenity packed in around us.
Coldin sat at the end of the table and leaned back coolly in his chair.
The three Incubi—Zagan, Perseus, and Dante—shared a look before fixing their gazes on Xander.
Zagan opened his mouth, but the words that came out didn’t sound like words at all.
My eyes widened, and the girls at the table mirrored my shock as they listened to their partners and Xander converse among each other in a language that sounded part growls, snarls, and archaic.
“Woah,” Iyla squeaked while staring at Zagan.
Zagan’s pierced lips quirked up in a smirk, and he looked down at her. “I can tell how hot you found me just then.”
Iyla’s cheeks turned a dusty pink. “I didn’t know you could speak …” She trailed off and waved a hand helplessly.
Dante growled another archaic word before realizing how futile that was. With a roll of his eyes, he said, “Just call it the language of demons.”
Xander draped his arm around my shoulder and asked cheerfully, “Can my Incubi friends tell me if Kendyll’s attraction to me ramped up, too?”
“No,” all three men answered flatly.
I grinned triumphantly and held my chin high while Xander frowned.
“But,” Perseus began with a smug smirk fixed right on me, “that’s probably because she’s already so into you, it’s impossible for her interest to grow any larger.”
Xander and I traded expressions.
“So what’s up?” Zagan asked Xander. He leaned his tattooed forearms on the table. “You said you needed to talk about something with us?”
Xander nodded. “There’s another Mischief demon at the haunted hospital we’re working at. He’s made it his hide out, and he’s … strong. He has hundreds of ghosts. Kendyll and I want to free them.”
“What if they chose to be with him?” Perseus questioned. “They could be there because they enjoy getting used in mischievous or even malicious schemes.”
“These ghosts don’t want to be there,” I stated firmly.
“They were screaming and crying for help. Besides, what normal ghost would choose to be a prisoner, a captive, like that? I certainly wouldn’t, and I can’t imagine any other sane person would, either.
Ghosts should be free if that’s what they want to do with their afterlife, not bound and attached to a demon. ”
Perseus went uncharacteristically still with his red-and-black eyes firmly locked on my face.
I realized that my words were probably offensive to demons, but I stood by them.
No spirit should have their afterlife claimed by a demon with no say in the matter, especially if it was a demon like the one who ran Mountview.
I had no doubt that the demon in question tricked and trapped the many ghosts.
Iyla cleared her throat to dispel the weird tension now hovering over the table. She stood and passed a look between me, Harper, and Serenity. “Why don’t the four of us go dance? We can let the guys discuss their demon things.”
I wanted to hear their plan for dealing with the Mischief demon, but I trusted Xander to handle that. Besides, stepping away from the weird energy now covering the group sounded great.
As the girls and I left to move closer to the dance floor, I glanced back.
Xander stared at the tabletop, a vacant expression on his face.
Pain tugged on my heart, because even though he gave nothing away, I could practically see him cracking on the inside like the splintering of porcelain.
And my words, as always, had been the hammer to that fine ceramic.
I hadn’t meant being with a demon was awful or that I hated it. But it probably sounded that way to him—that being with him felt like a prison sentence or a companionship forced upon me instead of one I’d always …
Xander’s golden eyes finally yet slowly lifted to meet mine. I waited for him to crack a smile like he always did, lying behind his perfect grin. But instead, his detached expression shifted, not with a grin, but with a dejected grimace. He turned away.
“Kendyll?”
I quickly whipped around to find the three human women smiling at me as they waited at a standing table right by the dance floor.
Shaking off the swarming jitters, I cleared my throat and banished the mental image of Xander’s heartbroken face. Or rather, I tried to. “I thought we were dancing.”
“We don’t actually dance that much,” Serenity laughed nervously, twirling the ends of her curly silver ponytail. “Not a lot anyway.”
“Except this one,” Iyla said with a point at Harper. “Our lovely ballerina.”
Harper, who stood beside me, gave a small bow. “You flatter me. I’m certainly a dancer, but the one best suited for dancing in a place like this is—”
“Addie,” the three girls said in unison with a shared smile.
I grinned. “She did seem at home on the dance floor that last time we were here.” I passed a look around the girls.
“Also, I’m sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings back there.
I didn’t mean anything against demons or those who choose their company.
I just meant it in the sense of spirit-demon relations.
I get pretty protective over ghosts, and I don’t like the claim or control that a Mischief demon can wield over them without their consent. ”
Harper hummed a bitter, understanding sound under her breath while staring at her clasped hands on the table. “I get it. If there’s one thing I get, it’s the importance of consent.”
We shared a look, and suddenly, I saw clearly what I hadn’t noticed before.
In the time I’d spent with Harper, I’d caught her wearing a detached gaze when a male demon came too close to touching a spot of bare skin that her dress didn’t cover or when someone who wasn’t Perseus looked at her lustfully.
I wanted to reach out as though to silently express that I stood beside her in those feelings, but I just clenched my hands tighter where they were crossed across my chest.
“Don’t worry,” Iyla told me. “I don’t think any of us took it that way.”
Yeah, except every demon at that table, I grumbled ruefully in the safety of my head.
Oblivious to my thoughts, Iyla continued, “Ghosts and demons are the world you’ve always belonged to. We can guess how much both mean to you.”
“Especially a certain demon,” Serenity teased.
I wanted to smile alongside them, but at the mention of Xander, my chest ached anew. Hurting him was nothing new to me, and I’d convinced myself that doing so was in his best interest long term. Getting involved with me wouldn’t be good for anyone.
Yet this time felt different.
This time felt deeper.
My harsh words rang in my ears. A prisoner.
A captive. I bet those same words were playing on repeat in his mind right now.
I hated that I’d planted those painful seeds, but what else could I do?
How was I supposed to lean on him and accept his affection while giving mine in return when all I knew how to do was hurt and run and protect myself?
“Can—Can I ask you guys something?” I questioned while refusing to meet any of their eyes.
“Of course,” they said.
I licked my dry lips while fighting the urge to look back at Xander. Instead of doing that, I laid myself bare. “I’m a bitch. I don’t really know how else to put it. I’ve always been … I don’t know. Prickly, I guess. Especially to the person most important to me. But I don’t want to be. I want …”
I closed my eyes and thought about every moment in my life when I was at my happiest, my safest, my truest. The one constant in each of those memories was the demon I never stopped hurting.
I blew out a breath and finished, “I want to be with him. I just don’t know how after everything we’ve been through.” I swallowed hard. “After everything I’ve been through. He deserves better than my ugly, broken pieces.”
Everyone was quiet for a beat with only the club music and demons talking, screaming, moaning, or laughing. I chanced a look at the girls, dreading the judgement or awkwardness I’d no doubt find, but I was rendered frozen when I saw all of them wearing wistful smiles.
“The three of us have been through some pretty difficult things,” Iyla began slowly. She raised her hand. “For example, I have a controlling and manipulative mother who hates me and used my sick little sister as leverage to keep me in the cage she’d built for me.”
My brows rose.
Harper leaned back with her hands on the table to fix her blue eyes on the ceiling above us. “I was raped.” Her nose scrunched, and her eyes closed tightly. “A coworker, a woman, helped him do it, too.”
My lips parted in horror while my blood ran cold.
Serenity tugged on the end of her silver ponytail and shifted from foot to foot.
“I was bullied, belittled, and abused by my boyfriend of eight years, yet everyone in my life saw me as the problem instead of him. Including myself. I … hated myself and wanted to die for a long time. Tried dying a few of those times.”
I snapped my mouth shut with a miserable frown.
Iyla reached out to grab Harper’s and Serenity’s hands. The girls, tears in their eyes, reached back until six hands all crossed and clung to each other in a pile at the center of the table.
“None of us,” Iyla continued while staring at their joined hands, “felt worthy of love. We didn’t think we were allowed, capable, or deserving of it. The world and those near us certainly didn’t let us think so.”
Iyla’s glittering brown eyes looked past Harper and toward the table where we’d left the group of demons.
I knew if I followed her line of sight, it would lead right to Zagan.
“But he did. They did. While we felt alone, broken, and helpless, we found a home with a demon who didn’t ask us to be anything other than exactly who we are.
Flaws and all. Past and all. They love us, not because we’re easy or perfect or even whole.
They love us because we are worthy. We are allowed.
We are capable, and we deserve to be happy. ”
Iyla looked across the table at me. “The same goes for you, Kendyll. No matter what you’ve been through, no matter what you’ve done, there’s a home with a love-sick demon who’s waiting inside for you. All you have to do is open the door and go in.”
I stared at that pile of hands across the table.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until I felt the fat droplets splatter onto my arms. A tightness took up residency in my chest as Iyla’s words struck a chord deep inside of me.
Hadn’t Xander said something similar long ago?
Had he been waiting inside that house all this time with the light on, just hoping I’d open the door?
The thought made a shaky, wet breath sputter past my lips.
I wanted to open that door.
I wanted to come home to him.
But how did I do that? I had a feeling it started with overcoming my fears, which were plentiful.
I feared touch. I feared being happy since the only thing left after that would be heartbreak.
I feared losing Xander forever and never finding my Mr. Monster waiting in the dark ever again.
Xander once said he thought I was brave.
I didn’t feel very brave, but I wanted to be.
I didn’t know how to push past all of my worries, but maybe I could start small. I could start here.
Taking a deep breath, I uncrossed my arms and reached out to hold tightly to the many hands in front of me.