Page 36 of Demon Loved (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #5)

Belshegar had always known this moment would come.

Perhaps he hadn’t thought it would arrive in such a spectacular fashion — clearly, the Collector had wearied of his stalling and had sent one of his minions to rectify the situation — but still, it would have been impossible to forever hide the truth of his nature from Brianna McAllister even without such an attack to precipitate the revelation.

Brianna, who had just proven herself to be far more than she appeared. True, she had never spoken of her magical gifts with him, simply because she had believed him to be a civilian, but still, he’d never sensed that she carried such a deep well of talent within herself.

And, if her utter astonishment at what she had just done was any indication, she’d never realized it, either.

“Perhaps you should sit down,” he said.

For a moment, she remained resolutely in the same spot where she’d been standing, her jaw set at a stubborn angle.

But then she seemed to realize she would only be hurting herself if she didn’t allow herself to be seated, because she took a few steps backward and collapsed onto the overstuffed sofa behind her.

“Okay, I’m sitting,” she said, and shot him a defiant stare. “Now will you explain yourself?”

As much as he would have liked to sit down next to her, he doubted she would welcome such proximity at that moment.

Perhaps never.

Belshegar did his best to banish the unwelcome thought, especially since he knew the attacker and his motivations were of far greater importance than their relationship…

if he would even have one with Brianna after all this.

The attack by the Collector’s minion had been far more painful than he could have ever imagined, and each second those magical chains had been wrapped around his wrists and ankles, he’d felt more and more of his life force being drained from him, even as he had gotten closer and closer to being removed from this plane entirely.

It was not an experience he wished to repeat anytime soon.

Although he’d only paused to gather his thoughts, it seemed Brianna believed even that scant second or two was too long to go without some sort of explanation, for she said, “What’s this Council? Why would they have come after you?”

Those were, he thought, easier questions to answer than any that might have pertained to his actual identity.

“The Council,” he said, “is made up of a group of extradimensional beings who resonate on a far higher plane than yours — or mine, to be honest. However, I believe our assailant was purposely misrepresenting himself and that he was not sent by the Council at all. No, I believe he must have been working for the Collector.”

At once, Brianna’s big blue eyes flared even wider, and her fingers splayed against the pale linen couch cushions as she made herself sit up a little straighter. “How do you know about the Collector?” she demanded.

“Because your father told me about him,” Belshegar said simply.

Her fingers dug into the sofa. “My father knows who you really are?”

It was something of a relief that she’d said “who” and not “what.” Still, this was going to be uncomfortable no matter what he said or did.

“Yes,” he replied. “Your father is not originally from this dimension, of course, and neither am I. That is why he was able to sense that I was not the simple human I was pretending to be.”

Brianna went silent for a moment. Then her brows pulled together, and she gave him a very direct stare.

“Those artifacts that Angela and Connor are babysitting,” she said slowly. “Are those why you’re here?”

Again it seemed as if she wished to focus on the externals of the situation and not on anything that had passed between them over these last few days. Belshegar could not fault her for that, not when some cowardly part of him wished to avoid that topic for as long as possible.

“Yes,” he replied. “I was summoned by a being whom I thought was a member of the Council. He told me I needed to find those artifacts and return them to him, that they were far too powerful to be kept in the hands of mortals.”

“But it was really the Collector who was asking you to steal them.”

A bald way of phrasing it, but accurate. “Yes,” he said heavily.

Now Bree crossed her arms, making it look almost as if she was hugging herself, doing her best to maintain her composure while she attempted to process what he had told her. “Why would you believe him? Why would you go along with what he wanted?”

Both very good questions. A single chair faced the couch — the only other piece of furniture the room could really hold without feeling overcrowded — and he went ahead and sat down on it, thinking it felt strange to stand there and loom over her while they spoke.

True, this human body was much smaller than his true form…

he’d experienced moments of almost vertigo while he switched between them during the attack, struggling to acclimate to how much bigger and taller he was when he lost his mortal disguise…

but still, he thought it might be more comfortable for them to be mostly at eye level with one another.

“The Council — the real one,” he added, just to clarify, “in general does not interfere in the lives of those they watch over. At the same time, it is their business to ensure that all runs smoothly. I still have no idea how the Collector could have learned all this, but somehow he knew that I had been on this plane before, and used this same body once during that time.”

One tawny brow lifted at an ironic angle. “What, to pick up chicks?”

Belshegar wasn’t quite sure what “chick” meant in that particular context, but he guessed it was some sort of reference to female humans.

“No,” he said, wounded that she would believe him capable of such shallow interactions. “I had been here in my true form when I was summoned by a girl named Elena Salazar. That is her magical gift — calling in beings from other planes.”

To his surprise, Brianna looked almost sympathetic. “That’s kind of a rough talent.”

“It did pose her quite a few difficulties,” he allowed, thinking there was no need to elaborate too much.

“But she overcame those difficulties and married the man she loved about a year ago. I had promised her I would dance with her at her wedding, and of course I needed a human guise to do such a thing.”

Bree went silent again, her brain clearly working away at everything he’d just told her. “And you didn’t think it was suspicious that someone on the Council would give you grief over something so trivial, something that happened so long ago?”

“I did,” he said heavily. “But you must understand that the higher up you go on these planes of existence, the less meaning time has. I merely told myself that the voice — the person who tasked me with retrieving the artifacts — did not have a clear grasp of exactly when Elena’s wedding had taken place, or of the times when I visited her before then. ”

“You couldn’t have refused?”

“I could have,” Belshegar replied, then paused to consider the best words to give her to explain how he truly had little room to maneuver when the voice — the Collector — had summoned him.

“But the Council has broad power. If they’d determined that my transgressions were too egregious to be forgiven, they could have simply made sure I no longer existed. ”

Brianna’s eyes widened again, and now she seemed pale under the light tan that still lingered even as summer faded. “They would have killed you?”

“That is a crude way to put it. They would have ensured my energies would have been dispersed and that I, myself — Belshegar — would cease to exist.”

“That’s your name?” she asked. “Belshegar?”

He nodded.

“That’s kind of a mouthful,” she continued, and now she appeared almost amused. “No wonder you were going by ‘Bill.’”

“Yes, I needed to blend in as much as possible.”

She uncrossed her arms and set her hands on her thighs, something about the movement signaling that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Right then, she looked oddly vulnerable, like a child who’d just been told the truth about Santa Claus and didn’t know what to do next.

Her next question was the one Belshegar had been dreading the most.

“And this…this thing between us? Was that more protective camouflage?”

How he wished he could get up from his chair and go over to the couch so he could take her in his arms. However, her posture remained stiff, as though she was holding herself still with every ounce of control she possessed, and he doubted she would appreciate such an overture.

“No,” he said at once. He was new to this body, to making it do what he wished, but he hoped Brianna would be able to hear the sincerity in his voice and see it in his face.

“I didn’t even know of your existence when I came here to Jerome.

My sole thought was to retrieve the artifacts and deliver them to the voice so I could go back to my quiet existence.

And then I met you…and I began to realize there was so much more to myself than I had previously understood. ”

Those words felt hopelessly inadequate to explain the sea change that had taken place within him over the past week, but again, he could only hope that she would understand what he was trying to say.

“You never…?” she began, then paused delicately, every beautiful plane and angle of her face showing she didn’t quite know how to phrase the question.

“Never,” he said firmly. “The body you saw me shift into — that is my true form. It would not have been feasible for such a thing to occur, even if I had wished it. If we are being honest with one another, the thought had never even entered my mind. I interacted with humans at Elena’s wedding reception, but I did not experience an attraction to any of them. ”

Brianna was quiet, those sunlit-sky eyes of hers fixed on him for a long moment. “Then…why me? I’m nobody.”