by E J Frost
“Wha—” I swallow around a sudden lump in my throat. I haven’t thought about Saul since the demon crashed into my life, but the unexpected mention of him brings all the suppressed hurt welling back up. “Saul leaving didn’t destroy me.”
“Fucked you up pretty good.”
“Keep out,” I say furiously. “There are places in my head that are just none of your goddamn business.”
He arches an eyebrow and continues eating.
“Fine, I was in love with Saul and yes, it hurt that he left. It hurt a lot. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothin’. You’re human. Just don’t expect me to be like that. I can’t afford that kinda weakness.”
“What’s weak about loving someone?”
“It makes you hesitate. Just like you’re hesitating about figuring out a way to send me back.”
“Fuck you,” I hiss.
The demon glances at the counter, but the sushi chef has disappeared through a curtain that I assume leads into the kitchen. “Simmer down,” he says. His voice holds no anger, only faint amusement, and after that one glance, he goes back to eating. “It wouldn’t piss you off if it wasn’t true.”
I am not falling for a demon. Not even my screwed-up heart would do that to me.
“You’re lookin’ at this all wrong, sweet meat. You’re focusin’ on the downside—”
“The downside?!”
He inspects a seaweed roll full of dark red roe. Tips some of the fish eggs onto his tongue before he says. “I’ve got no problem with what you are. I’ll never bolt because you call lightning or ‘cause a werewolf shows up at your door. Although that fucking pixie’s got to go. And I’ll never screw you over. I’ll never neglect or ignore you. Once your soul’s mine, it’s mine forever. An’ I take care of what’s mine.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” I ask incredulously.
“Don’t it?”
“Strangely, no.”
“Then you’re still looking at it wrong. Have another drink.” He refills my cup.
“Getting me drunk is not going to make me change my mind about giving you my soul,” I say mutinously.
“I don’t expect it to.”
A sudden thought makes me eye the saki like it’s a viper. “You’re going to get me drunk and make me sign those papers, aren’t you?”
“No.” He chuckles. “Don’t work that way.”
“Then why are you getting me drunk?”
“Told you, I got my reasons. You’re not drinkin’.”
I take a large swallow of the saki, which is somehow still exactly the right temperature, despite the fact that it must have been cooling the whole time we’ve been talking. It rushes warmly down my throat, through my belly, up into my head. “You can’t blame me for being suspicious.”
“Blame’s a waste of energy. So’s suspicion. Paranoia, now, that can be useful.” He hands me a piece of the tentacle. “Try this.”
I bite into it warily. The texture of squid usually makes me queasy. But it’s wonderful, firm and smooth without being rubbery. “It’s excellent.”
“Yeah, it is.” He sighs in a very satisfied way, which, given that he’s completely decimated the sushi boat, is understandable. A handful of pieces remain. Yellowtail, salmon, tuna. My favorites. Has he left them for me? “I’ll miss this to fuck if you do figure out a way to send me back.”
His voice is deep, rich, the way it usually is. There’s no self-pity. But I feel a rush of guilt. As if I’ve done something wrong. “I’m sorry,” I say automatically.
“For what?”
“Everything.” I rub my forehead. I’m getting buzzed from the saki and my head feels floaty. My thoughts disconnected. “Being afraid of you, and thinking you’re trying to do something bad to me when you’re not . . . wishing this wasn’t happening . . . enjoying being with you more than I should . . . and . . . everything.”
He reaches across the table and curls his hand around my wrist, fingertips stroking the soft place where my pulse beats. “Wanna go home and fuck?”
I make a small, involuntary sound in my throat. One less cup of saki and it would have been a protest. One more and it will be a sob.
“Yes,” I say finally. What else is there?
He releases my wrist and reaches out to slide his fingertips underneath my chin. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”
With that, he rises and goes to pay the bill. I eat the last few pieces of sushi in silence, and utter confusion.
Chapter 24
He fucks me unmercifully. For hours. Or what feels like hours in my alcohol-induced daze. Each moment feels broken, each movement disjointed, and I know I’m passing out, graying into unconsciousness, only to be pulled back by his unrelenting fucking.
The bed spins. His cock pounds into me. Whatever’s down there licks me. I lose track of what’s happening. Of who and where I am.
When he turns me over to take me from behind, I bury my face in the pillow and plead with the fuzzy darkness that keeps trying to suck me down to keep me.
Eventually, it does.
I wake to a pounding hangover, and an empty bed.
Sitting up makes my head and stomach whirl, and I squint against the Sunday morning light shafting through my curtains. Why does the light on Sundays feel sharper, more judgmental, than any other day of the week?
Jou? I clutch at my throbbing temples. The room stinks of sex, and the smoky smell of his skin.
Yeah?
Where are you?
In the basement.
What’s he doing in the basement? There’s nothing down there but the washer-dryer and the oil tank.
Is everything okay?
Yeah.
I can’t tell anything from his response. But the idea of him being down my basement makes me nervous, even through the hangover. I begin getting out of bed, ungluing myself from the sheets. My thighs are smeared with sticky red goo. It doesn’t look quite like come or quite like blood or quite like anything I’ve seen before. I put a hand down to push myself up and more of the goo squishes between my fingers.
What the hell is all over the bed?
His liquid chocolate chuckle, warm and soothing through my aching head. I’da cleaned up but I didn’t want to wake you. Take a shower, you’ll feel better.
Is this? It dawns on me what it is. What it must be. Eww. This is your . . . stuff, isn’t it?
My stuff? That’s poetic. Demon seed. Hellspore. The Burning Grain. I’ve heard it called all kinda things, but never my stuff before.
Don’t make fun of me. My head hurts too much. I grind the fingertips of my ungoo-ed hand into my eyes. I thought you didn’t come. That it gave you amnesia.
It does.
Do you— I begin hesitantly. Do you know who I am?
If he doesn’t, do I really want to know? Maybe that’s what he’s doing in the basement. Trying to get back home. In which case, shouldn’t I just leave him to it?
Yeah, I know who you are. It only lasts an hour or two. You slept through it.
And the reason he was so insistent on getting me drunk last night finally dawns in my throbbing, foggy brain. He wanted me unconscious while he was vulnerable.
Oh. I manage to extricate myself from the bed. Standing makes my stomach protest. Makes me feel delicate and shaky in a very bad way. I don’t think I’m up to a shower yet.
Hair of the dog’s in the kitchen.
I don’t understand what he means, but a good, familiar smell is beginning to penetrate my hangover. Coffee. Everything will be okay after some coffee. And maybe a healing potion or two. I draw on my robe and moose slippers and make my way downstairs, clinging to the banister. I need the support. I ache all over, like I’ve been hit by a bus, and my knees feel so shaky I’m not sure I could walk far on my own. Did I really have that much to drink?
A full breakfast – scrambled eggs and a toasted bagel spread with cream cheese and lox and a pile of deeply browned sausage links – sits beside a steam
ing cup of coffee on the kitchen table. There’s a tall glass of tomato juice next to the coffee, with the fluffy top of a celery stick sticking out of the drink.
I pick it up and take a tentative sip. Did you make me a Bloody Mary?
Uh-huh. Nothin’ better for a hangover. That’s what Martha says anyway.
I sink into my chair, ignoring the aches and pains and the horrible stickiness between my thighs.
You made this all for me?
Yeah. Now stop distracting me. I gotta concentrate.
I stop, and eat, and brush away the tears that slide down my cheeks before they drip into the wonderful food he’s made me.
His heavy tread on the stairs startles me. I drop my coffee cup into the suds, retrieve it hastily and rinse it under a stream of cold water. Placing it into the draining rack, I turn to face the basement door as it opens.
He steps into the light, and carefully closes the door behind him. He looks different. Tired. His shoulders are slumped. His dreadlocks shade his face, but I can see lines of strain around his mouth. Maybe coming is bad for demons? Maybe it hurt him somehow?
He crosses the kitchen without comment and places Izzy on top of the ‘fridge. The salamander immediately curls into a ball and begins licking its tail.
“Jou, are you okay?”
“Yeah. There any coffee left?”
“No, but I can make another pot.” I glance from him to the salamander, who is making small, piteous noises. “What’s wrong with Izzy?”
“I needed blood for what I was doin’,” he says. At the salamander he growls, “Stop whining.”
“He’s hurt?” I approach the salamander and hold my hands out. Izzy jumps down into my hands and huddles there, wrapping his tail tightly around his barrel-shaped body. Tucking him into the curve of my arm, I carefully pull the end of his tail free and examine the long wound that runs down the length of it.
“Don’t waste that mouth on him,” the demon growls. Behind me, he yanks the coffee pot out of its holder and begins to fill it with cold water.
“I wasn’t going to.” I press my finger against the lizard’s tail to stop the bleeding as I carry him into my herbarium and sort through my healing potions. The one I did for Hisaka shifters before the clans declared Mass. General a safe harbor should work on the little Elemental. It’s in an open vial, tucked away at the back of my worktable on a ceramic trivet, because even though I brewed it several months ago, it’s still boiling. I pick it up with a set of tongs. “Sorry, Izzy, you are my favorite salamander, but I draw the line at licking scaly lizard tail.”
How ‘bout hairy demon balls?
A hot shiver runs through me at his thought, but I fire back, Ugh.
The demon chuckles wickedly, but also, I think, a little wearily. Your mind ain’t the only thing I can read.
I carry Izzy and the healing potion back into the kitchen. In case the salamander belches, or worse, vomits, after I feed him the potion, I’m going to give it to him in the sink.
Jou’s standing next to the coffee machine, his arms braced against the counter, head down, dreadlocks hanging around his shoulders. The grinder is whirring and the life-giving smell of freshly ground coffee fills the kitchen. I inhale, hold the breath in my lungs. Wonderful. It does more for the remnants of my hangover than the healing potion I dumped into the Bloody Mary.
There’s clearly something wrong with the demon. But he’s not bleeding, at least not anywhere I can see, so I’ll deal with the salamander first. One wounded infernal creature at a time.
Izzy takes the potion without complaint, flicking out his tongue to lick it off his scaly lips. He wriggles in my hands as it goes down. Shakes his tail like a rattler. I watch the wound fill in, pink flesh rising up through the raw slash. The flesh lightens to cream, and then darkens to scarlet. I brush my thumb down it experimentally and smile when all I feel are smooth scales.
“There you go, Iz.”
The salamander gyrates madly, legs waving, and I give him the tummy scratching he seems to be begging for while I turn toward the other injured creature in my kitchen.
“Jou, you’re clearly not okay. What’s wrong?”
The demon starts, pushes back from the counter. He grabs the grinder and dumps the beans into the coffee pot’s filter. A few grounds spatter onto the counter. I’ve never seen him spill anything before.
“Nothin’,” he grunts.
Okay, he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Is there anything I can do?”
He doesn’t answer, and for a moment I think he’s ignoring me, because he turns his head away. But then I hear the hiss coming from behind him. From my gas stove.
He backs away sharply, arms spread to either side. He shoves me behind him and keeps backing up.
We’re past the refrigerator, almost to the door to my herbarium, when the stove explodes. Blue flame billows across the kitchen. The plastic placemats on my kitchen table curl and melt. The wooden table chars. With a roar, the gas jets shoot up to the ceiling, scorching the plaster.
A white-hot inferno washes over me. Sucks all the air out my lungs. Jou reaches back, wraps his arm around me, tucks me tightly against his back. In the pocket of his skin, I can breathe again. I clutch at him with my free hand, feel the rock hardness of the muscles under my fingers, the familiar, bearable heat that radiates off him. His tail snakes between my legs, wraps around my waist, bringing more of my body into contact with his. The whip of his will lashes out at the stove.
At the face that appears in the flame of the gas jets.
“Insolent scut!” the face roars. Rage turns its classically handsome features hideous, stretching a Van Dyke beard and moustache around lips peeled back from too many, too-sharp teeth.
“Fuck off, old man,” Jou growls. “We’re done.”
“You dare turn your back on me, you worthless pizzle-spit? I’ll impale you on the Barbicon for a thousand days!”
“Yeah, yeah. You gotta catch me first, and you’re down there and, oh, look, I’m up here. So shove your threats up your fuckin’ ass.” Jou’s snarl makes the cups and bowls in the drying rack rattle.
“The Furies will sharpen their whips on your bones!” The face roars. Paint peels from the walls to crisp in the flames. The glass cabinet doors over the sink shatter and the glassware within chimes in agony. “The little witch cowering behind you won’t save you. Hide amongst the humans as long as you’re able, whelp. When you return, I’ll be waiting for you.”
The face disappears and the flames die, leaving just my blackened, smoking kitchen.
“Well, that’s somethin’ to look forward to.” Jou’s shoulders slump. His head, crowned with horns, bends as though under a great weight.
I clasp his shoulder with my free hand and press myself against his back. I’m shivering, and his heat doesn’t seem to warm me. “Jou, who was that?”
“Asmodeus. Prince of Hypocritical Bullshit. My sire.”
“Jou—”
He straightens and turns. The horns and whip and tail are gone. The arms he puts around me are warm and firm, but not demon-warm, not demon-strong. I look up at him uncertainly and he kisses my forehead. “It’s okay, sweet meat.”
That’s hard for me to believe, given what I just saw. But I can’t see him lying to me if there was any danger. He’d want me on my guard.
He pushes my hair back from my face. The singed tips of my hair flutter around his fingers. He reaches between us and gives Izzy a scratch. “Nice to hear from home, huh, Iz? Looks like nothin’s changed.”
The lizard promptly flops over in my arms and presents his belly for scratching.
“Nothing’s changed here, either,” I murmur, watching the salamander.
“No?” Instead of scratching the lizard, he strokes my hair and when I look up, I find him watching me closely.
“What?”
“Thought you might feel different after last night.”
I rub my temple uncertainly. “Why?”
“Took me a l
ong time t’get where I wanted to go. A thousand years of control, hard to break. Harder than I thought. You weren’t exactly enjoyin’ it by the end.”
No wonder I’m so achy this morning. “I don’t really remember.”
“Good. It’ll be easier next time.”
Next time? “You’re, uh, you’re not planning to get me drunk every time—”
He looks down into my face and there’s such sadness in those dark eyes that my breath catches. “Yeah, I am.”
I blink against a hot scratchiness and a tear rolls hot down my cheek before I even know I’m crying.
He leans in and licks the tear away. “Shh.”
“I—”
“Shh, sweet meat.” He presses his open mouth against my forehead. Breathes heavily against my skin. “Let’s go take a bath. You stink.”
“Oh, thanks,” I choke.
“C’mon.” He takes my hand. “Leave Iz down here. He’s too young to watch.” He laughs a ghost of his wicked chuckle.
I reach up and put the salamander on top of the fridge, expecting him to curl up into his usual torpid ball. Instead, he jumps onto the counter and then down to the floor. With an ungainly waddle, he scoots over to the kitchen table and begins batting at the blobs of melted plastic hanging off the edge of the table.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the ruin of my kitchen as the demon leads me upstairs.
In the bathroom, he sits me down on the closed toilet while he turns on the taps. When he goes to put the tub’s stopper in, I say, “I’m okay with a shower, really.”
“You don’t want a bath?” He rolls his shoulders like he’s sore. “I could use a soak.”
“I thought you didn’t like, you know, being immersed in water.”
“Gettin’ in your tub’s not gonna do me any harm.” He puts the stopper in. “You got any bubbles?”
I nod and retrieve my very small selection of bubble bath from the linen closet. He takes a Crabtree and Evelyn bottle that Linnie got me for my birthday and dumps half of it in the water. The sweet scent of lavender fills the bathroom.
I inhale, and smile. Lavender is one of those scents that immediately makes me feel better, no matter what’s going on.