Page 13 of My Demon Hunter (Hell Bent #2)

12

SUMMO N I N G UP T H E COURAGE

A s the black mist spun like a vortex inside the summoning seal, Lily finally admitted she’d been a little reckless. It was her first time being confident, and she might have gone overboard. She had spent all night and half the morning readying for this, and she realized she was still woefully underprepared. If she could go back now, she would’ve taken that demon’s offer of help in a heartbeat, whether he threatened her life or not.

She’d banked on Mist knowing it was her when he was summoned and not fighting back, but that wasn’t happening at all.

The magic in the air was so thick it choked her. Wind blasted through her flat, knocking things off shelves, blowing the coats off the racks and the cushions off the sofa, and oh god, her fabrics were a mess—

She tried to silence her thoughts. Distractions would get her killed, and she already knew she was losing the battle against the demon because the chaos should have been confined within the sigil. The fact that it was leaking out was not a good sign.

Must... keep... focused!

Blinded by the wind, bent nearly in half to keep from falling backward, she lifted an arm to shield her gaze and visualized the seal with all her concentration. She kept chanting the syllables, sweat dripping down her back, limbs shaking with exhaustion. The roaring was so loud, she began shouting, and— Oh no, had she just mispronounced the last—?

The sigil ruptured in a blinding flash. Lily screamed. A furious snarling deafened her, and suddenly, black mist swirled everywhere. Amid the cloud of rage, she caught glimpses of sharp teeth and claws and knew they were coming to kill her.

So she turned and ran.

Racing down the hallway, following a purely instinctual urge to flee, she ran with no thought to where she was going or what she would do when she got there.

She didn’t make it far, anyway. The mist crashed into her back, knocking her flat. The air gusted from her lungs and, winded, she couldn’t draw another breath. Clawed hands formed from the cloud over her wrists, pinning them to the floor. Sharp teeth opened over the side of her neck from a mouth wide enough to tear out her throat in one bite.

But he didn’t.

He froze.

Everything froze, in fact. The snarling, the winds, the mist—all of it, Lily included.

She lay there pinned beneath the demon she should never have underestimated and waited for him to kill her. The teeth were still at her throat. She could feel their sharp tips digging in with a stinging burn, breaking the skin.

Cheek pressed to the floorboard, eyes squeezed shut, she waited. And waited. And still, she wasn’t torn apart or beheaded or any terrible thing a demon might do to a witch who failed at a summoning.

Slowly, she cracked an eyelid and saw a dark shape. A wing. Fine boned and leathery, the talon was planted on the floor beside her head. Her gaze shifted, and she saw gray skin—a long, muscled arm was reaching over to pin her wrist down.

“M-Mist?”

A low growl was his response. His teeth still hadn’t left her throat, and she didn’t dare move an inch.

“It’s me. Lily.”

Silence was the only response she received, but he seemed to vibrate with tension. She hoped that meant he was battling against the urge to eat her. She hoped he was winning that battle.

“I’m sorry I s-summoned you.” Her voice cracked with tremors. “I thought— Well, I didn’t think— But I hoped—”

Her babbling was cut short as he suddenly lunged off her. Scrambling away, she rolled over and sat up to find him crouched in the hallway, staring at her with wild eyes.

She took one look at him and gasped. If she’d had more air in her lungs, she would have screamed. And not because he was currently in the form of a huge, gray monster with sharp teeth, glowing yellow eyes, and leathery wings.

And a tail. She hadn’t seen that when he’d shifted the first time. Like a supple whip, it snapped in the air behind him.

But all that had become the least of her concerns.

“What happened to you?!”

He was positively bathed in blood. It looked as though he’d taken a swim in a slaughterhouse sewer. His hair hung in wet clumps, and red ran in rivulets over his skin. Skin that was covered in wounds that looked like... burns?

His proud wings were full of holes as if they too had been burned, and, somehow worst of all, gray flecks of... something were stuck all over him, commingling with the blood.

It looked like brains from a zombie movie. Chunks clung to his mangled skin and dripping hair, and strings of sinew tangled with his claws like spiderwebs. The scent of gore fouled the air and turned Lily’s stomach.

Mist stared at her without recognition. If she’d been the prey fleeing the predator, then he’d been lost to the hunt. But as she watched, he blinked several times, eyes coming into focus, and she knew the moment he finally realized where he was.

“Lily?”

His voice was deeper than the Mist she knew but only slightly, and it was more than a little disconcerting hearing it coming from the sight before her.

“H-hi.”

He blinked some more, but each blink seemed to get heavier. “Lil... y?”

“It’s m— Oh my god!”

As she spoke, his eyes rolled back, and he toppled forward to land on the floorboards in a pool of blood.

Mist regained consciousness to a cool sensation against his brow. The wet, soft thing stroked several times, and then he heard the sound of water splashing and fabric being wrung out. The sensation returned, this time along his jaw.

His eyes snapped open with the speed of one who’d learned long ago never to be caught vulnerable. He heard a gasp and a shuffling sound, and his blurred vision showed him a shape lurching back instinctively.

He jolted upright to face the unknown foe, his head spinning and his movements sluggish. Everything shifted as he met a pair of wide green eyes. He saw round cheeks with a red flush and honey-blond hair, and then he finally remembered where he was.

On the floor in Lily’s apartment. Because she had summoned him.

He swung his head around to stare at the remains of the seal, and then he swung it back to stare at her. In all his long existence, no human had ever achieved what she had.

He became aware of the bucket of red water, the stained, wet cloth in her hand, and the fact that he was significantly less bloody than he had been.

While he’d been unconscious, she had... cleaned him.

Now that his vision had focused fully, there was no mistaking the row of tiny punctures along the side of her throat in the shape of a bite mark. His bite mark. Because he’d been seconds from tearing out her throat. If he hadn’t taken that one instant to inhale before he bit down, causing that heady wildflower scent to flood his senses, he would have killed her.

And yet, he couldn’t deny he liked the look of his mark on her skin.

“Lily,” he said again because he couldn’t seem to find other words.

“Hi.” It seemed she couldn’t find words either.

A long silence ensued in which they stared at each other from across the hallway.

“What happened?” she finally asked in a small voice.

Where to begin? Despite how they’d parted, he didn’t want to upset her any more than he already had, so he opted for an abbreviated version of events. “My mistress was displeased, so she threw me in a pit of goraths as punishment.”

“Mistress? Who—? What—?” She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “What is a gorath?”

“A centipede the size of an airplane that consumes flesh.”

“An airpla—” Her mouth dropped open. “It tried to eat you?”

He nodded. “I killed one, but there were five more.”

It suddenly occurred to him that Lily had summoned him at the exact second he was about to be consumed. He could not have dodged his fate a second time, and yet he had. Because of her.

But perhaps the bigger question was, why had she summoned him? The last he’d seen her, she’d been staring in horror as her sibling made death threats. Did she hope to enslave him?

That would be just his luck. From one cruel mistress to another.

Then again, he thought, inhaling another lungful of her scent, he might not mind belonging to this mistress.

“For what purpose did you summon me?” he asked.

“I was hoping we could talk.”

“About the task you want me to perform?”

“I don’t want you to do any task. I just want to talk.”

His brow furrowed. “You don’t wish to enslave me?”

“No!” she said emphatically, and he cocked his head.

He wasn’t sure he believed her. Everyone wanted something. There was always a motive. Even Eva, whom he had formed a bond with, likely only tolerated his company because she felt safe within the vow he had sworn into to protect her identity. That was okay. It was something he understood.

“I know it looks bad,” Lily continued, glancing at the sigil in the other room, “but I swear, it’s not. I really just wanted to talk, and I didn’t know another way to get you to come back, especially after your friend told me you returned to Hell.”

“Which friend?”

“The one with the tattoos. And another with a scary voice.” She shifted until she was sitting on one hip with her feet tucked under her. She was so round and soft, and her scent was so tantalizing. Even now, it teased his senses and made it hard to concentrate.

Want to chase her again. Want to bite her again. Not to hurt her. Just to mark her.

“I made him mad,” she said, “and I think he might show up here looking for me.”

She must have been speaking about Meph and Belial. He wasn’t concerned about either of them. “What do you wish to talk about?”

She finally looked at him and then blanched, as if she had forgotten whom she was talking to. “It can wait. Maybe we should treat your wounds first.”

He was a powerful demon, and he healed quickly. Though his senses felt dulled and his mind sluggish, he could tell he was already much improved.

“Talk now.”

“But your skin—”

He looked down. His skin was already regrowing, but he could see how it might be upsetting to a human. The easiest solution would be to wash. By the time he finished, his wounds would be mostly closed and would not bleed more.

“I will use your shower,” he decided, climbing to his feet. His head swam, his legs felt rubbery, and he immediately swayed.

Lily dropped the bloody cloth and raced to help, only to freeze with her hands out as if reluctant to touch him. While he was sure the blood was part of it, it was obvious she was repulsed by his demon form.

He had seen the look on her face when he shifted. It was not one he would soon forget.

“I am fine.” It came out as a growl, and he swiped his claws for her to stay back.

Using the wall for balance, he maneuvered down the hall, his wings dragging on the floor, leaving bloody handprints on the walls and a trail in his wake.

To his surprise, Lily slipped past him and rushed ahead into the bathroom, and he heard the water turn on before he made it to the door. Once inside the cramped space, he found her bent at the waist, testing the temperature from the tap before pulling the lever to activate the shower. He couldn’t stop his growl at the sight of her on display for him. Want to chase. Want to bite.

She jumped up and spun around, her cheeks’ flush deepening, reminding him that she was not actually offering herself in that way. At least not when he looked like a demon.

She wrung her hands. “I made it warm but not too hot. I figured hot might hurt your wounds, but nobody likes a cold shower, so I thought somewhere in between would be better. Is that okay?”

The temperature mattered little. One did not serve Paimon for millennia without developing a high tolerance for discomfort. He stepped further into the bathroom, and Lily flattened herself to the wall to avoid him.

Part of him wanted to shift to human form because he missed the way she responded to him, and he wanted to experience it again. But another part, the darker, wounded part, wanted to force her to see this form. If she didn’t like him as he was, why should he change for her?

He stepped into the tub wearing his pants because they were as filthy as the rest of him. Wyrm leather cleaned easily and would dry in seconds, faster even than skin.

He’d never been inside a small human shower before as Belial had specifically outfitted the one in their apartment for a being of his size. The ceiling was too low for a creature with wings, and he was forced to wrap them awkwardly around himself to fit in the narrow stall. Worse, the shower nozzle was below his head height, and even when he ducked, he couldn’t fit beneath it.

Lily stared at him, muttering, “A demon is in my shower. A very large, very bloody demon. Is in my shower. That’s fine. Demons take showers. Of course they do. This is perfectly normal.”

Mist gripped the curtain bar to aid his balance as he tried again to duck beneath the spray. Unfortunately, the moment he put the slightest amount of weight on it, it ripped from the wall in a cloud of dust and tile chunks. Without the plastic barrier, water sprayed everywhere.

Growling, he dropped the bar and curtain. He reached up to the nozzle, intent on tearing it from the wall to change the position of the spray.

Just as his claws fixed around the attachment, Lily suddenly leapt into action.

“Let me help!” She reached out and grabbed his arm. “I’ll do it. I’ll hold it for you.”

He looked down at her. “You can’t reach.”

“Just... sit in the tub. And I’ll stand here and wash you.”

She would? He almost didn’t believe it, but he was curious enough to try. Dutifully, he sank into a crouch, angling his wings overhead so they wouldn’t crumple beneath him. Then he looked up at her expectantly. He didn’t have to look up very far. Crouching brought him nearly to her eye level.

She swallowed. “Okay. Time to wash the demon in my shower. Totally normal. Let’s do this.”

She rose on her tiptoes, slipped the nozzle out of the slot it rested in, and then aimed it in his direction.

Lily was washing a demon. Had she said that aloud enough times already? It didn’t seem to help it sink in.

She watched him sort through her body wash collection on the side of the tub, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed each bottle until he finally found the unscented one. He squirted half the contents into his large palm and then got busy washing himself.

First, she angled to spray over his thick hair and winced as he scrubbed it vigorously with those wickedly sharp claws. His poor hair. It was so tangled, he hadn’t a hope of getting his fingers through it, and he didn’t try. Then, he moved straight to his body, running his big hands over the planes of muscle stretched under that dark gray skin.

The water ran red as it rinsed down the drain, and the chunks of awful flesh that had been stuck to him went with it.

That should have been the detail she fixated on. Not his strong hands sliding over his wet skin. Not the way the strength in his arms and back shifted as he moved, the tight muscle rippling with each motion.

He was gray . He was also a demon. This was not a normal man in her tub. Nothing about the situation was normal, despite what she kept muttering to herself.

She was further reminded of that when he flexed his wings, opening them up at his sides and angling them under the spray. She helped by moving the showerhead so the gore would rinse off while he continued using those big hands to rub them clean.

He struggled to reach the back side of his wings, and before she knew what she was doing, she was reaching forward and taking over the task. Showerhead in one hand, she used the other to sweep down the back of one leathery expanse.

As soon as she touched him, he stilled, and so did she.

“It’s so soft,” she whispered. Somehow, she hadn’t expected that.

His head turned, and he pinned her with a glowing yellow stare over his shoulder. Her hand was still out, frozen on his wing. The shower continued spraying everywhere, and she had to wonder if she was flooding her own flat. She’d be enacting her favorite scene from The Shape of Water if she kept this up.

She immediately regretted thinking of that because images of Elisa and the Asset embracing in the bathtub immediately sprang to mind. Mist may not have been an amphibian man, but he was certainly strange looking, and he was sitting in her bathtub and staring at her with those reptilian pupils, and she couldn’t help but compare—

“Why did you summon me?” he asked, snapping her out of it. Good thing too, because her bathtub fantasizing had shifted to images of her and Mist, and she was not going there with him. That wasn’t what this was about.

Iris’s words ran through her head. There are no good demons. But then so did the tattooed guy’s ... He’s really not a bad guy.

“I need to understand,” she said finally. “Why did you seek me out? What did you want with me?”

“I sought you because of your scent. And other things about you that appeal to me. I wanted...” He broke off, turning away to stare at the tile. “It’s irrelevant what I wanted. This is what happens when the rules are broken. This is the consequence of insubordination.”

She frowned. By the mechanical way he spoke, he seemed to be repeating something memorized. “Did you break the rules? How so?”

As a blood-born, she knew about the rules that governed the actions of supernatural beings on Earth. She knew because those very rules had put a target on her back from birth, and she resented them more than a little.

“I should not be here,” Mist said quietly. “I should be facing my punishment.”

“How did you break the rules?” It suddenly became essential that she understood.

“That is what happens. That is the consequence of—”

“How did you break the rules, Mist?”

His head swung around again, and she fought to keep from flinching from the intensity of his stare. “I wanted to taste freedom. I wanted to bond with a female. I wanted to be something other than myself. But I cannot. I am the Hunter, and I don’t get a choice.”

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you get a choice? Why can’t you—”

“Because I am nothing.” He lurched suddenly to his feet, causing her to stumble back. The showerhead sprayed everywhere, but she wasn’t paying attention to that anymore. She was staring way up at the enormous demon above her, his wings spread across the tub and beyond, his tail whipping furiously against the tile.

“I am nothing, and I have the marks to prove it.” He thrust his wrists out. “These cuffs—”

He froze, staring at his arms. “Where are the cuffs?”

She couldn’t have been more confused if she’d been dropped into another dimension.

At his wrists were two bands of textured black-ink designs that were almost invisible on his gray skin. She saw no signs of cuffs.

His eyes lifted to hers, and this time she saw shock. Awe, even. “You summoned me.”

“I— I tried, I guess.”

“You summoned me from Paimon’s lair, and you summoned me out of the cuffs.”

“What cuffs?”

“The manacles. How did you do it?”

Manacles? “I didn’t do anything special,” she said weakly, struggling to keep up. “And I didn’t do a very good job, considering you escaped—”

His eyes had widened. “You’re a very powerful witch.”

She scoffed. “No, I’m not—”

“Your magic overrode that of the brands. It should be impossible.”

“What brands? And why do you say you’re nothing? That’s not true. You’re—”

“Enslaved,” he growled, holding out his wrists again. “Bound here.” He placed one hand over the matching circular design on his chest. “Controlled here.” He pointed a claw at the tattoo encircling his neck. “Tethered here.”

Her blood went cold, and suddenly, everything started to make sense. What the tattooed demon and the one on the phone had said. The way Mist kept referring to a mistress. His mechanical repetitions of the futility of rebellion.

If he was trapped by some kind of magical binding, of course he would have an obsession with rule breaking. It would have been drilled into him, probably with a lot of pain, that he should always obey the one who controlled him or he would be punished.

So why had he disobeyed in the first place?

I wanted to taste freedom. I wanted to bond with a female. I wanted to be something other than myself.

Her heart cracked, her throat constricted, and it was hard to force the words out. But she had to know. “That’s why you wanted to spend time with me? Because you—”

“It’s irrelevant,” he growled, his brow low over his glowing eyes. “It’s against the rules, and rules are not to be broken.”

He stepped out of the shower and around her. Without thinking, she dropped the showerhead, sending water spraying across the room, and grabbed his arm.

He froze, staring at her hand.

“Where are you going?”

His gaze snapped to hers, his eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”

She couldn’t speak. She honestly didn’t know. Years of Iris drilling into her the evilness of demons could not be forgotten so quickly, and yet, she couldn’t ignore her own instincts.

He loomed over her, dropping his head to pin her with a fierce glare. His enormous size was never more apparent than it was now. She’d never felt small or delicate a day in her life, but she certainly felt it now. He could crush her in a second if he wanted to.

“Release me now, or I’ll give in to the urges I’ve been fighting since I caught your scent for the first time.”

She didn’t let go of his arm.

A cruel smile twisted his near-black lips. “I will hunt you and bite you and taste you, all of you, and I will do it in this form that repulses you.”

Repulsed her? Her head was spinning, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t how she’d describe her feelings. She was scared, yes, but not in the way he thought she was.

“I— I don’t—” Her useless stuttering silenced when she felt a sleek rope sliding across the backs of her thighs.

His tail. Oh god, he had a tail. Because he was a demon and she was a witch, which meant he could kill her at any time without breaking his precious rules, and no one would come to save her.

The tail went across both her legs and curled around her thigh.

She let out a rather undignified squeak of surprise and dropped his arm, clutching her chest instead. Her heart hammered, though not with fear for her life.

“That’s what I thought,” he hissed.

He stepped past her without another word and disappeared down the hall, leaving a trail of water behind him.