Page 5 of Calling Chaos (Demon Bound #3)

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Chaos

C haos stared down at the human who’d summoned him.

He had lowered him oh so very gently onto the floor after he’d collapsed. Chaos hadn’t even dropped the human’s head to hear the crack.

He was already taking such good care of his puppy.

The slumbering human wasn’t at all like Chaos’s usual summoners, who were more often than not wild, brutish men hungry for power or mayhem. Or both.

Why else would one summon a chaos demon? The reward had to be worth the risk.

This summoner, though, was slight and fearful, with a quiet voice and soft hands. His delicacy was actually a bit…disturbing. Chaos would need to pay attention to keep him protected. From the sound of the telephone call his puppy had accepted, there were enemies in the area. Enemies with projectile weapons.

But protected Cooper would be, enemies or not. Chaos had decided so.

He’d been all ready to snap his teeth and threaten to bite his summoner’s face off—show them who the real boss of this arrangement would be—but Cooper clearly wasn’t the megalomaniac Chaos had been prepared to subdue.

His soul piece was…soft. And sad. And tired.

Chaos couldn’t stop prodding at the little niblet in his chest, wishing he could take the piece out and study it. How did one so young become so sad and lonely? Humans, like much of this realm’s creatures, seemed to roam in packs, even the modern-day ones. Chaos had spent quite a bit of time watching them through the portal in the Void, so he knew. So…where was this Cooper’s pack? Why weren’t they taking care of him?

Chaos couldn’t see any obvious reason Cooper would be cast out. He hadn’t lied before—Cooper’s looks were quite pleasing. His lips were plush, and he had that pretty reddish-blond hair, like a fox’s fur. And those mismatched eyes? Wonderful. He had skinny limbs and a soft tummy, one Chaos wouldn’t mind laying his head against. Slender, clever fingers too. Ones Chaos would not bite off, no matter how nibbly they might look.

Yes, quite pleasing. A sad, yummy soul piece and a pleasing meat suit. So why all alone?

It would have to be a mystery for later. For now, Chaos wanted to explore. He wasn’t going to stick in one place while he waited for this new puppy of his to rouse. Who knew how long that would take? His summoner had clearly been running on fumes even before the summoning, and a contract took it out of a human.

Although, before he left… Chaos stopped in the doorway of the room, looking back at Cooper, sprawled out on the floor. If this human was to be Chaos’s puppy to care for and tend to, he should make sure he was comfortable as well as safe, yes?

Chaos scurried into the hallway, checking the rooms until he found one with a bed, before grabbing the blanket off it and bringing it back to place over the unconscious human.

There.

Chaos whirled away, only to pause again.

A pillow. Humans used pillows when they slumbered.

He didn’t want to go all the way back to the bedroom—been there, done that—so he grabbed one of the large tomes off the desk and shoved it under his puppy’s head.

It was the right shape for a pillow, even if it was a bit firm.

Perfect. All tucked in.

Should Chaos take Cooper’s glasses off? But no. Chaos couldn’t have anyone poking out those delightful eyes while he was away. He straightened them on Cooper’s face instead, then left the room for good.

He took a cursory look around the dwelling, scoping out the rooms he’d missed. There wasn’t much—it was just a typical, boring human home. There was a living area with couches and a television. A gleaming kitchen Chaos had no use for. A bathing room and the aforementioned bedroom. Plus the room with the machines where Cooper lay unconscious.

It was all spacious and clean enough, but only the machine room really felt like Cooper, with his sweet candy scent and aura of nervousness permeating the air.

Chaos switched over to his preferred human form, one that was similar in build and face to his demon presentation but with brown hair and ordinary brown eyes. It was funny to be so ordinary, wasn’t it? No wings or tail, not even a little stubby one poking out of the back of his pants.

Speaking of clothes…

The modern world had too many to choose from, and Chaos wasn’t interested in human fashions the way Nix was. So he copied what his summoner was wearing, dressing in sweatpants and a matching hoodie. If he wanted, he could scrunch the hoodie strings tight, tight, tight so only the tip of his nose was poking out of the little circle the hood made.

Hilarious.

Chaos headed out the front door to find himself in another hallway, one with doors with little numbers hanging off them. He knew what this was—an apartment building. Those doors were other apartments, with other humans living in them.

Were they all the same? Maybe. Or maybe one of Cooper’s neighbors had a disco ballroom and a creepy clown fun house.

Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Now Chaos was curious, and he was never one to ignore a curiosity.

There were four doors on this floor, including Cooper’s. The first two Chaos knocked on—how polite was he, knocking on the door?—no one answered. Rude.

But at the last door, a woman opened up. She had artificially light hair and lovely wrinkles. On her face, at least. There wasn’t a wrinkle to be found on her clothes, stiff and starched as they were. Did she not move in them? Perhaps she stood there, as still as a doll on the other side of the door all day to keep them pristine.

She looked down her nose at Chaos, keeping the door open only a crack. “Can I help you?”

Chaos tried to peer around her, standing on his toes when he wasn’t able to see much. She had shoes on her feet with pointy bottoms that gave her added height. “I want to see inside,” he finally told her, pushing at her arm so she’d move aside.

“Who the hell—”

Chaos was bored of the doorway now. He ducked under her arm and went inside. The lady started yelling, following after him, so Chaos waved a hand, securing her inside a ring of fire to keep her contained.

That made her yell louder, which was kind of fun.

The apartment, though, was less fun. There was no disco ballroom. No creepy fun house with a murderous clown. The rooms were the same as Cooper’s, just with more…stuff.

There were things on the walls and things on shelves. Why didn’t Cooper have more things? Not that he should emulate this exactly. These specific things were ugly and boring—why was every item either white or beige?—but surely there were more exciting things to decorate with.

Oops. Now Chaos had thought “things” too many times, and the word had lost all meaning.

Things, things, things, things, things.

He left the apartment and the yelling woman behind, releasing her from the fire at the last minute. She yelled after him some more, something about calling the police.

He hadn’t even singed her, so he wasn’t sure what she was so annoyed about. Maybe she’d wrinkled her clothes trying to escape the fire.

The police could be interesting though. He’d never been attacked with modern weapons before—it sounded exciting. Apparently Nix had been shot, and Chaos was a little jealous.

If the police came…

Well, maybe later. Chaos wanted out of this apartment building first. If he hurried, maybe he would be back from exploring before his puppy woke up.

Then he could be the very first thing those mismatched eyes saw when they roused from slumber.

How lovely.

The air outside was cool but not freezing. Not that it would have mattered to Chaos if it was—he didn’t have a human’s sensitivity to heat or cold.

But still, it was nice to have a different flavor of air rushing through his lungs, something other than the stuffy, still air of the Void.

He breathed it in deeply, walking against the rush on the crowded sidewalk. The humans abounded, all different ages, shapes, and genders. Some dressed elegantly, some slovenly, most somewhere in between. A wonderful mix. Chaos could smell their different scents as well as food, and gasoline, and the not-so-faint scent of urine coming from an alleyway.

Delightful.

He was pleased to have been summoned into a city—there was an inherent chaos in the makeup of them, wherever they fell in humanity’s timeline. The modernity was a nice change, though, from the last time he’d been summoned. He could hear the beeping of a truck backing up to make a delivery, the buzz of one-sided conversation from people talking into their phones, the honking of cars and the drone of construction across the street.

It was much better than watching through the portal only. Chaos could feel it—the mess and disorder of it all, filling him up.

He walked through the crowd, bumping people on purpose just to see how they’d react. Most ignored him and continued on their way—boring—but a few cussed him out viciously as they walked by, which was fun.

He spent some time doing a sort of circuit, not going too far in any one direction. He didn’t want to stray too great a distance from the apartment where his puppy slumbered. Not just yet, at least.

But after a while, after the thrill of the hum and buzz of humanity wore off a little, there really wasn’t much for Chaos to do. The shops in the area seemed to center around food, and Chaos didn’t eat human fare. The rest were apartment buildings, and Chaos had already established those were quite boring.

Why wasn’t this more fun?

Perhaps because he had seen it all through the portal before. And perhaps because he was doing it all alone. He had no one to talk to, no one to spill his twisty, bendy thoughts to. He’d been stuck with the same three demons for so long, and now he was finally here , but he didn’t even have those fuddy-duddies to chat with.

Maybe he should have brought his summoner with him. It would have required waiting for him to wake up, though, which would have been a drag. But then Chaos would have had him here, and he could ask his questions.

Questions such as, Why pee in the alley when buildings had toilets? Why have lights that told people when to walk across the street only for everyone to ignore them? Why did men yell come-hithers to the women walking by when not a single one so much as smiled back at them?

Yes, it would be nice to ask his questions.

Chaos sighed, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk with his hands on his hips and looking around. It made the people walking by him give him dirty looks, which was amusing. He threw his head back and cackled loudly, and the dirty looks were now given to him from a bit of a distance. Like he was a large rock in a river, and the water was rushing all around him, forced to part around his steady presence.

Did his puppy like to laugh? Cooper hadn’t looked very jovial. More timid, like if he laughed, it might be a quiet sort of giggle. Still, it could be nice to hear. He had a pleasant voice, to match his pleasant looks.

Maybe Chaos should go back and see if he was awake.

He could always set a building on fire to pass the time, but using his power like that might draw attention to himself sooner than he’d like. Nix was clearly in the area, which meant Kai might be as well, and Chaos didn’t want that big, old warrior raining on his parade just yet.

It would be a gamble: Kai might try to fight Chaos, which would be hilarious. But he also might try to lecture him (“Grr! Argh! We do not set human dwellings on fire for no reason!”), which would be decidedly less hilarious.

Although…Chaos had felt Kai’s energy leave the Void completely not long before he himself had been summoned. Which meant either Kai had completed his contract and been sent back to the demon realm permanently, or he’d found a mate bond to keep him here in the human realm.

It was an interesting thought. This wasn’t Chaos’s last contract—not even close. Summoners were wary to call chaos demons because they were harder to control than most, which meant he had fewer summonings under his belt than the other demons.

So if Chaos completed this contract with Cooper, he’d maybe have to wait ages and ages for someone to brave the Book and call him again.

But if he had a mate…

Yes, yes, an intriguing thought. Chaos demons didn’t mate often. Apparently, from what Chaos had been told, they were, if one roughly translated the demon sentiments into human jargon, “annoying” and “too much for anyone with more than two brain cells to shackle themselves to.” Chaos would need to find someone desperate. Someone…lonely.

He brightened, cackling again for good measure. His puppy was desperate and lonely, wasn’t he? Maybe he’d be willing to mate with Chaos.

It would probably be unwise to mate with the first human he saw—that was a long and binding arrangement to jump into—but acting wisely was boring.

Plus, Chaos liked the little soul piece he’d acquired. Its sadness had a heft to it. Like it grounded Chaos in some way, just by being in his chest. And while Chaos normally didn’t like being held down, this wasn’t some forceful holding back. It was more like…sinking under the weight of water in a warm bathing pool.

What would the entirety of Cooper’s soul feel like, if this little piece held such comfort?

“Christ on the cross. Go lose your mind somewhere you’re not in everyone’s way.”

Chaos focused in on the stern, bearded face frowning over him. Right. He was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk, laughing. Chaos quieted his cackling, grinning at the scowling man instead, then flashed back to his demon form, quick as a blink, flapping his wings and showing sharp teeth.

He switched back to human form immediately.

The man blinked at him, mouth gaping open. He looked around nervously, perhaps hoping for someone else to confirm what he’d just seen, but no one else was watching them. Chaos had been too quick for that.

“Careful who you scold, little man,” Chaos purred, even though technically the man was much bigger than him. Chaos was using poetic license, okay? The man was small in spirit . “You never know whose mind is going to go next.”

The man scurried off with a few more muttered curses.

What a silly bean.

Ah, well. Chaos twirled, blending into the flow of the sidewalk. It was time to return to the apartment.

If Cooper was still asleep, perhaps Chaos would try nibbling at one of those elegant fingers after all. He’d be very careful though.

It wouldn’t do to damage his future mate.