Page 33 of Demon with Benefits (Hell Bent #3)

Raum ignored her question. “You have to understand, my brothers and I are... the way we are... partly because we’re old.

We’ve been around so long, we’ve seen and done it all.

Even a demon, created solely for evil, has enough awareness to realize over time that violence and chaos never actually make anyone feel better, as much as it might feel like they will at the time.

But Meph, he’s only been around about nine hundred years. ”

Iris’s eyes widened. Only nine hundred years? That didn’t sound young to her.

“Most would disagree, but Meph’s always been a pretty deep thinker.

He says a lot of stupid shit, but underneath it all, he thinks about stuff.

And that’s probably how he managed to change as much as he has in such a short time.

Because when I first met him, he sure as fuck wasn’t like he is now.

And it didn’t help that Valefor got ahold of him pretty much the day he was created—”

Iris’s blood went cold. “I’m sorry, did you say Valefor ?”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one with a good reason to hate that bastard.”

“W-what did he do?” Her voice was a whisper, her heart racing. She was still standing naked in the middle of her kitchen, but she felt numb to the cold nipping at her skin.

“Valefor has always been greedy, and he’s obsessed with collecting unusual artifacts of power. That’s why he went after you and Lily and why he was so fixated on Meph. Meph was fucked up back then—we all were. He was... hungry. Val gave him something to hunt. The arrangement worked for a while.

“Thing was, Val was using Meph to help him gain power, and he only wanted Meph hunting things he wanted gone. He wanted Meph to be like an attack dog he could unleash on his enemies. But Meph was pretty feral, and he was too chaotic to follow any structure or rules. So Val did what you do to any wild creature you want to train: He broke him.”

“Oh god.” Iris could just imagine what that would entail when you were a demon in Hell.

“Yeah. And just like any wild creature, eventually, Meph learned to behave on Val’s terms. He became Val’s ultimate weapon. No one could touch that fucker back then. And Meph enjoyed it at the time too. He reveled in the power trip, and he loved eating people.”

“Eating what —?”

“I met him about four hundred and fifty years ago, when we were both on Earth for a job. It was the first time Meph had ever taken human form, and damn, he was a nasty bastard. He was sent to fuck with this one human who’d been trying to summon demons for a while until Hell finally decided to give him what he wanted.

Meph got assigned to him, and boy, did he ruin that fucker’s life. ”

“Oh my god, you’re talking about the Faust legend.” Iris’s eyes traveled down to the puppy sitting at her feet.

“Yeah. The story got told enough times that it stuck around. It’s been retold so many times now, most of it’s made up, but Meph never lost his notoriety. He loves it, the idiot.”

“Wait, so that’s when you met him? What were you doing on Earth?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“Because I don’t remember.”

“You don’t... remember?”

“No. But that’s not important.”

Iris frowned. “But—”

“All you need to know is that after Meph and I met, we were drinking one night, and he told me he never wanted to shift back to demon form. He said he’d only been able to shift because, when Belial had assigned him the job—Kings and Queens of Hell are the ones who hand out Earth assignments—Bel had roasted his ass with hellfire until he cooperated. ”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, Bel was a piece of work back then too. But once Meph was in human form, he said he could suddenly think clearly for the first time in his life. He told me he didn’t want to shift back, and he didn’t want to go back to Valefor’s lair. He asked me to help him escape, so I did.”

“How do you know all that if you don’t remember?”

“I remember that night. It’s the three hundred years before that I don’t.”

“What? But how... ?” She struggled to put her churning thoughts into concise questions. There were so many. But at the root of it all, there was one thing that had been nagging at her since the day she’d asked Meph about his sigil tattoo.

“Both you and Meph make it sound like he’s separate from his demon form somehow, like they’re two different people. But Mist and Ash are the same no matter what form they’re in, so why is Meph different?”

Raum hesitated before responding. “As I said, Val broke him, but it took a while, and he had to work hard to keep him in line. I guess Meph developed a way to dissociate from what he was going through. He kinda... split himself into two personalities. One side of him is the normal guy you know—well, normal-ish—and the other is the kind of monster that survived centuries of torture and depravity and did a lot of fucked-up shit for his fucked-up master. It’s dark. ”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah. His personalities are tied to his two forms, human and demon. I don’t think he realized he’d even split himself like that until he shifted for the first time.

That’s why he got that sigil tattoo. Because if he ever shifts back, he unleashes that part of him.

As long as he stays in human form, he can control it.

It’s one of the reasons we escaped Hell too—being around too much darkness makes it harder to keep his demon form contained.

He’s been a lot more stable since we got to Earth. ”

Iris suddenly saw Meph and Raum’s friendship in a whole new light. They weren’t just two friends shooting the shit. They were brothers . Raum had gotten him out of a horrible situation, and they stuck together. All the brothers did.

“I guess I’m just warning you to be careful,” Raum said. “And maybe just... keep your guard up. Sometimes, managing him is a full-time job, and it’s exhausting. He’s my brother and I want him to be happy. I just don’t want you to go into this blind.”

“We’re not together,” Iris finally blurted, still feeling sick to her stomach. “He told me he had feelings for me, and I shut him down. And then he left and forgot his phone, and now I’m worried about him.”

There was a pause.

“He said that? To your face?” Raum sounded incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“Meph. Said he had feelings.”

“. . . Yeah.”

“And you rejected him.”

Immediately, her hackles rose. “I don’t owe anyone any—”

“You have no intention of being with him, and you let me tell you that whole story? He’s going to flip when he finds out, and I did it for no fucking reason. Thanks a goddamn lot.”

Oh. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” she said weakly.

“Whatever, Iris. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Lily, I wouldn’t bother with you.”

She flinched, but for the first time, she had no snarky comeback. All she could think was, I wouldn’t bother with me either.

“I gotta go,” Raum said. “Keep Meph’s phone on you. I’ll call again to come get it.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I’ll call you when I’m coming to get the phone.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

“Do you know where he is?” she asked again.

“If you’re not getting involved with him, you need to step out now. You’ll only make things worse.”

“But—”

He hung up.

Iris stood in the kitchen of her empty house and stared at the wall.

It was better this way, she told herself. Raum was right. She should step out now before she got any deeper into this mess. She should let Meph’s brother take care of things. She should stop prying and leave Meph to live his life.

Faust stared up at her and whined softly like he sensed something was wrong.

Faust. Oh, who was she kidding? She had named her dog for him, for fuck’s sake. Somehow the sight of those adorable red eyes was the final straw.

All of a sudden, she burst into tears.

Standing naked while her dog whined at her feet, she cried real tears for the first time since her parents had died. All the hatred and coldness she’d built up over the last decade was suddenly too much to bear, and it burst out of her.

She was sick of the anger. Sick of the fear. Sick of her never-ending fight to keep the world at bay, to push away any good feeling before it got too close, because deep down, she didn’t believe she deserved to be happy.

She was so fucking mad .

She was mad at herself for being weak. She was mad at Lily for being stronger than her and not being filled with the same vengeful rage.

She was mad at her mam for coercing her into that vow, and she was mad at her dad for going along with it.

She was mad at Valefor for ruining her life simply because he wanted some witches for his collection.

And she was mad at Meph for not being the “shallow piece of shit” she’d originally judged him as. She was mad at him for giving her a glimpse of his pain, which was a thousand times worse than she’d imagined, and thereby forcing her to confront her own.

She sank to the floor and sobbed, pulling Faust into her arms and squeezing him so tightly that he squirmed to get away. She didn’t let him go. That little ball of fluff was her only lifeline, and she clung to him.

Eventually, the tears dried up. When they did, everything was numb. Her shame and guilt. Her fears. Her anger. All of it was wrung out, dried up, exhausted, and done.

Without that anger constantly simmering under her skin as it had for years, she was left with a clarity she hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. She saw herself, her thoughts and her actions, in a new light, and she finally accepted that she needed to make some changes in her life.

Starting with herself.

The forest outside was covered by the dark blanket of night, and Jacqueline Gregory stood alone in her art studio, studying the incomplete sculpture before her with a frown.