Page 54 of Demon with Benefits (Hell Bent #3)

A LEAP OF FAITH

T HE WORLD SPUN LIKE A TOP, AND THE MOMENTUM OF Iris’s arrival sent her careening out of the sigil into the wall. She smacked the drywall and then crumpled to the floor beside the edge of the gate.

It was still open. Valefor could step through.

She reached out to smudge the chalk line and break the magic but hesitated.

Just do it. Her hand hovered above the line, fingers trembling. He’s not coming back. He chose to stay.

Her hand shook harder. JUST DO IT.

I can’t! she shouted at herself. I just... need to leave it open. I can’t explain why I feel so strongly about it, but I do, and I’m choosing to trust my instincts.

The door to Meph’s bedroom banged open, and Belial stooped under the frame, followed by Raum.

“What the fuck?” Belial said.

“Hey,” Iris said weakly, lifting a hand.

Raum asked, “Why do you smell like Hell?”

Climbing to her feet, she lifted her arm and sniffed the sleeve of Meph’s hoodie, noting the unmistakable sulfuric scent clinging to the fabric.

“Because I just came from there.” She was pleased to hear that her voice didn’t tremble even though she felt like crying. She wanted Meph so badly it hurt.

“You look like shit,” Raum said.

“Thanks.” She felt like shit too. There were flecks of demon-blood overspray all over her from Meph’s feeding frenzy, and she was filthy from her time as Val’s prisoner and hiding out later in the cave.

“What happened?”

“Valefor has Meph. He made him shift and—” This time her voice hitched a little, so she stopped and swallowed hard.

“Fuck,” Bel said, and she realized she didn’t need to explain more.

“How?” was Raum’s next question.

Where to begin? There was so much to tell, but it was too difficult to speak with her throat closing up. She didn’t want to give a damn play-by-play. She wanted to crawl into Meph’s bed and make the world go away for a little while. Forever, maybe.

But the two demons were staring at her expectantly, and she had to say something.

“Valefor found us. On Earth. Murmur sold us out and told him how to find us.”

“That motherfucker,” Belial growled. “I’ll show that pale bastard what it means to be dead.”

“And then Val came and took Meph and me, and he used me to make Meph shift, and—”

“What about the binding tattoo?” Raum asked.

“He cut it off him.”

“Shit.”

“And after Meph shifted, I thought—He saved me from Valefor, and I thought maybe I’d gotten through to him, but—”

They all felt it at the same time. The unmistakable skin-crawling tingle of Sheolic magic, coming from the hellgate beside her.

Iris fell silent and stared into the empty sigil with a pounding heart. She didn’t dare to hope, yet she couldn’t help it at the same time—

Two figures appeared in the center of the gate.

One was tall and slender and garbed in a cloak of shadows. His face was like a skull, with sunken eyes and a long slash for a mouth.

And the second figure was...

A desiccated husk. A husk with the head of a horse-donkey-goat and the body of a lion-man.

There wasn’t much else recognizable about him.

His fur had turned white, and all his healthy body tissue had withered away like a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy.

The only reason he was upright was because he was being held that way.

Everyone stared at the picture for a moment in silence.

And then Belial brushed his hands together and said, “Well, that was easy.”

Raum snorted.

Meph unceremoniously dropped Valefor’s husk, and it landed with a muted thump.

Iris crouched and finally smudged the line of the sigil. So that’s what it feels like to have intuition , she realized, thinking about the times Lily had explained it to her and she’d hadn’t had a clue. Now, she did. If she hadn’t listened to herself, Meph might not have been able to come back.

She stood and approached him, careful to avoid the withered body on the ground. “Hi.”

He stared down at her. She craned her head back to meet his empty eyes.

When he lifted a hand, she lifted hers too, and their palms pressed together. “I’m so glad you came back.”

“ Isss ,” he said.

It was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard. “Yeah. That’s me.”

Remembering their present company, she looked at Belial. “We brought you Valefor so you could kill him, since neither of us can summon hellfire.”

Belial looked at the carcass. “You planned this?”

“I mean, kinda? It got a bit derailed for a sec there, but this was how I was hoping it would turn out, yeah.”

Now the hulking demon was staring at her. “So you purposefully brought your trash into my house to demand I dispose of it for you?”

“Yes... ?”

Bel did not look happy. “And since when am I your errand boy or the dog who barks on command?”

Iris swallowed, glancing at Meph, who was observing the scene with uncharacteristic calmness. It hadn’t occurred to her that Bel wouldn’t approve of their plan. “I mean, I thought—”

“Bel, shut up,” Raum said. “We’ve wanted to off this fucker for years, and now we can.

He was untouchable in his lair—his territory’s more heavily warded than Lucifer’s stronghold, and we couldn’t break the rules back then anyway.

But now we’re rogue and here he is. He’s already half dead. Quit whining and fry him.”

For a minute, Iris thought Bel was going to attack Raum instead. Then, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath while clenching and unclenching his fists. When his eyes finally opened, they flashed with hellfire. “Fine. Go chop his head off.”

“Do I look like I have a sword on me?”

Bel lifted a hand like he was imagining strangling Raum, his fingers tensed. Then he curled them into a fist and took a few more unsteady breaths. He swung his head around and pinned Iris with a glare. “Well?” he barked. “What are you still standing there for? You want to fry with him?”

“Oh! Um—” Iris grabbed Meph’s bony hand and pulled him out of the circle with her.

Bel marched forward, bent down, and scooped up Valefor’s withered body. Gripping the skull with one hand and the torso with the other, Bel tensed and... pulled. His powerful back muscles rippled and seemed to swell. His enormous arms flexed, and tendons bulged in his neck.

With his bare hands, he ripped Valefor’s head clean off his body.

“Jesus,” Raum said.

Belial dropped the pieces, and before they’d even hit the ground, they burst into flame. Bel’s arms did too, the fire consuming them from the elbow down, launching out of his palms like something from a superhero flick.

“Bloody hell,” Iris whispered, shuddering. It was a damn good thing Bel was on their side. She hadn’t expected him to just... do it right there though. She’d thought they would go outside—

And have a bonfire on the deck for the neighborhood to see? There was no great place to cremate a demon, was there?

The smoke alarm went off in the kitchen.

“Shit,” Raum said. “I’ll get that.”

The smell was awful. Coughing, Iris covered her mouth with her sleeve and went into the hall, closing the bedroom door behind her. Meph slunk along with her.

The blaring alarm silenced and Raum returned. “Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to roast a demon in the house.”

Her thoughts exactly. Except: “Where else would you roast a demon?”

“Take him to the park and make a bonfire out of it, I dunno. Roast a marshmallow.”

Iris snorted and then looked between him and Meph. “Why hasn’t he tried to eat you? He tries to eat everybody.”

She was almost offended. Meph had needed thorough convincing not to eat her, but he hadn’t looked twice at Raum or Belial. What made them so special?

The bedroom door banged open before Raum could answer, and Belial stepped out into the hall, the smell of smoke clinging strongly to him. It was vastly overpowered by the smell of demon carcass coming from the bedroom, however, and they all grimaced.

“Meph’s gonna kill us for doing that in his room,” Raum said. “He’ll be pissed about the ash on his clothes.”

“He shouldn’t leave them lying around if he doesn’t want them to get damaged,” Bel growled.

“Besides, I’m going to kill him first for bringing his bodies here for me to clean up.

We went over this three hundred years ago.

I told him I didn’t care who he ate as long as he stopped bringing the carcasses back to the lair and dumping them outside my chambers. ”

“They were presents for you.”

“I didn’t want those fucking presents!”

“He didn’t know that. He was trying to be nice.”

Iris was staring at the crack in the bedroom door. “It’s... done? Just like that?”

“Yeah. Fuck, I need a drink.” Belial stormed off.

Raum followed him. “That was a pretty epic decapitation, brother. You sure you’ve got the rage under control?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I’m just asking...”

Tuning them out, Iris leaned forward and pushed the bedroom door open. The smell was truly foul and likely to stick around for a while. She should just open a window.

She stepped inside Meph’s room, heart racing for some reason.

And then she saw the pile of ash.

It was indeed all over Meph’s clothes, although most of it was contained to the cleared space on the floor where the hellgate was drawn. The ashes were a light, colorless gray.

A lump rose in her throat, and she dropped to the floor right then and there.

This was it. This was the end. Valefor was dead. Her parents were avenged. Her sister was safe. Just like that.

It was so easy. Just another day in the life of Belial, she thought with a snort.

The laugh burst out of her, and with her emotions all haywire, it quickly turned into tears.

All this pain and suffering, for years , and it was over now. It could have been over ages ago, she realized, staring at that ash pile.

The ashes meant nothing. Valefor had never meant anything. The only importance he had was what she had ascribed to him.

Well, she was done.

She was done wasting her energy over a donkey-lion demon who wasn’t even that cool or powerful at the end of the day.

All his power had come from controlling others.

Belial could launch hellfire from his hands.

Mist could turn to mist. Meph, well, she already knew what he could do.

But Valefor had just been a master manipulator.

A useful skill, but it wasn’t that exciting.

It certainly wasn’t worth the pedestal of supervillain she had elevated him to.

She stood suddenly and kicked the ash pile. “Fuck you and good riddance.”

While she was at it with the metamorphosis, she decided to forgive herself too.

Yes, she should have told Lily the truth about the fire from the beginning, and yes, she should never have allowed the lie to fester for as long as it had, but her poor choices had been made with good intentions. All she’d ever wanted was to keep her twin safe and happy.

Lily had seen that. It was likely the real reason she’d forgiven Iris as easily as she had. They were sisters, and they loved and protected each other no matter what. Lily knew that. Iris knew that.

And maybe Iris’s difficulty accepting Lily’s forgiveness had nothing to do with whether she deserved it or not and everything to do with the fact that Iris hadn’t forgiven herself .

Well, now she did. She had fucked up, but she’d done her best, and in the end, everything had worked out. They were safe and happy and alive. The absolution she had sought had been hers to grant all along, and she did so now.

And god, what a relief. She felt so light, she half expected to lift off the floor and start floating toward the ceiling.

She gave herself permission to be happy. To fall in love. To finally put her grief to rest.

She loved her parents and would always miss them, and she would likely still wake from time to time with that pain in her chest after dreaming memories of her childhood, but she was done with the anger and resentment.

From now on, she was going to live the life they’d fought so hard to give her.