Page 8 of My Demon Hunter (Hell Bent #2)

7

MIST VERSUS REALITY

T he black mist circled the apartment building before finally slipping through the crack in an open window.

Mist solidified in his bedroom. Through the closed door, he could hear Belial banging around the kitchen and talking to someone—probably Raum, since he knew Meph would still be waiting in the park. Meph had offered to wait there during the date in case of emergency, though he surely hadn’t imagined anything like this happening.

Mist surveyed his surroundings and finalized his plan. He had to move quickly and quietly. There was a greater chance of someone realizing he was missing the longer he delayed, and he wanted to be long gone before anyone thought to look for him.

It was for the best.

The brand on his neck burned fiercer than ever, and he had only a few days left before he could no longer fight the compulsion. He’d known he couldn’t ignore Paimon forever, but he’d been in denial. Excitement at playing human and hunting Lily had distracted him from contemplating the futility of his entire sojourn on Earth.

He felt a pang of regret at the thought of leaving. He would miss his... friends. Yes, he supposed that was what they were. Eva had explained the concept of friendship, and he felt certain he had formed such bonds with her and the other demons.

And Lily.

He’d wanted to pretend he could live like Asmodeus and Eligos with a human female that looked upon him with acceptance instead of horror. But he had seen Lily’s face tonight when confronted with his true form, and it was nothing like the way Eligos’s female regarded him.

Lily’s eyes had been wide, her mouth open, her expression one of revulsion.

Something inside Mist had withered at that look, and he realized he no longer cared to find a human female if he had to pretend to be something he wasn’t.

And if he couldn’t have Lily, he didn’t want another anyway. He had scented every female he’d come across and none appealed to him as she did. He wanted her or no one.

In the end, however, it didn’t matter what he wanted.

The truth was that he was the Hunter and nothing more. He did not have a choice in his future. He was not free. He served a purpose, and it was not to form bonds or indulge his desires. He was bound to his role for eternity by the brands on his body.

After carefully setting down Lily’s flower, he stripped off his human pants—a little tight now that he was back in demon form, but not much. Ash had explained how they always bought their clothes slightly too big so there was room to shift. Unfortunately, human pants in any size did not have space for a tail, so it was only after he’d removed them that Mist allowed his to reappear.

Folding the human garment and setting it on the bed, he extracted his wyrm-leather pants from the dresser drawer and donned them. If a demon shifted into a drastically different form—like his mist form or Raum’s crow form—the magic would shift the clothing with them. But a minor shift, like the transformation from human to demon, was not enough to affect most materials, and it would stretch or tear.

Wyrm leather, however, could grow and shrink along with a shifting demon, and it was a hot commodity in Hell, selling for exorbitant rates on the Blood Market. Mist’s two pairs of pants, custom-made for a demon with a tail, were the only thing of value he owned.

After dressing, he cleared floor space by moving the dresser and then retrieved the chalk he’d hidden in the drawer for this purpose. He traced the hellgate on the floor, adding a lock sigil so it could not be reactivated once he passed through.

Finished, he stood back and surveyed his bedroom one final time. He’d never had possessions before, besides a few meager trinkets to hide in the corner of his cave. It would be a shame to leave them behind now.

He hoped his friends wouldn’t be angry he had left without saying goodbye—especially Meph, who would be waiting in the park for a very long time. Just in case, he removed his cell phone from the pants he’d discarded and typed a text message.

I have returned to my hunting duties. The blood contract remains binding, and I will not reveal your whereabouts or Eva’s existence.

He paused, struggling to find words to express his feelings. In the end, he couldn’t think of anything, or perhaps just wasn’t comfortable exploring it, so he simply added, Thank you , to the end of the message.

As he sent it, he told himself he was expelling such sentimentalities from his mind forever. Taking a breath, he banished all thoughts of Lily and his friends and stuffed his newfound emotions in a cage deep within. He locked them up tight and mentally discarded the key.

They were gone, and he was the Hunter once more.

And yet, at the last moment, he reached over and grabbed the lily he’d placed on the dresser. It was his flower, and he was keeping it.

Then he stepped into the hellgate and disappeared.

Lily and Iris didn’t move for at least two minutes after Mist vanished into the night.

“Bloody hell,” Iris said finally.

They went together into the house after rubbing out the ward on the front door to hide the evidence from the neighbors. Lily collapsed at the kitchen table. The aroma of her uneaten dinner permeated the kitchen, but her appetite was long gone.

How could Mist be a demon? But he was. Undeniably. And yet she couldn’t get the look in his eyes before he’d shifted and flown away out of her head. And she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d kissed her and held her against him so possessively. And the way he’d fixed his teeth on her neck and growled when he thought she was trying to escape.

Against her will, her stomach fluttered.

In truth, he’d been pretty terrible at acting human, and she was a little embarrassed that she hadn’t figured it out sooner. But his desire for her hadn’t seemed faked, and she couldn’t reconcile what her instincts were telling her with what she knew about demons.

“I can’t believe it,” Iris was mumbling, pacing across the kitchen so fast it was making Lily dizzy. “I can’t believe you had a demon in your flat. And he just broke through my ward like it was nothing. Damn it!”

Lily flinched at her shout.

“You know how long I’ve practiced to master that ward? Who the hell is this guy? Mist... It’s short for something, but I don’t know what. What I can’t figure out is how he found you.”

“What do you mean, found me? You make it sound like he was looking for me in particular.”

Mist was obviously powerful, but she had nothing that would be enticing to a demon. No money, power, or influence. She could have believed she was a target because of her bloodline, but she wasn’t even a practicing witch while Iris so obviously was. It didn’t make sense.

“What did you guys talk about?” Iris asked, ignoring her question. “Did he ask you about anything?”

“He just— He bought me ice cream the night we met. And he asked about my designs, and he just seemed interested in... me.”

She couldn’t talk about this. All it was doing was reminding her of the sweet things he’d done. And the way he’d kissed her... If it was all an act to lure her in, he had done a perfect job. So perfect, she was still affected by it even after learning it was a lie.

“He didn’t ask about Mam and Dad or anything to do with the coven?”

Lily shook her head. “I never told him I was a witch.” He hadn’t even asked about her bookshelf.

“Did he know about me? That we’re twins?”

“I told him I had a sister, but I don’t think I mentioned we were twins. Why would that matter?”

A banging on the front door cut off Iris’s reply, and they froze.

“Who is that?” Iris whispered. “He didn’t come back, did he?”

When neither of them moved, the banging sounded again. “Open up or I’ll kick it in!” a male voice shouted. Not Mist.

Lily stared at her sister. “What should we do?”

Iris shook her head, her eyes wide.

“Let me in, that’s what you should do!”

How had he heard them? They were whispering all the way across the flat.

“Not joking about kicking in the fucking door!”

“Oh my god,” Iris whispered, recognition flaring in her eyes. “I think it’s...”

“Yeah, it’s the scary guy from the park. Boo. Now open the damn door.”

“Let’s slip out the back.” Iris whipped open the utensil drawer and dug out Lily’s biggest knife, clutching it like a lifeline.

“You do that, I’ll just follow you, and we’ll still end up having this conversation. Or you can open the door and save yourself the trouble of replacing it later.”

“We should talk to him,” Lily whispered, unsure why she felt so strongly about it.

“He’ll kill us!”

“He won’t hurt us.” Again, she had no idea why she was so certain about that.

Brandishing the cleaver, Iris looked dubious.

Unwilling to ignore her instincts, Lily jumped up and raced down the hall before her sister could stop her. Iris called out, “Damn it, Lil!” but Lily didn’t stop until she was at the front door, unlocking and throwing it open.

Iris reached the end of the hall right as Mist’s tattooed friend walked in like he owned the place, closing the door behind him and staring down Lily like he was a pissed off parent and she was the naughty kid.

The loose tank top he wore bagged under his arms and showcased the tattoos covering his torso. On his face, an illegible gothic script ran above his pierced left eyebrow, and the strange symbols beneath his eye looked like something out of a grimoire. More writing ran in vertical lines down the left side of his face. He had a ring in the center of his nose and two on either side of his lower lip. A backward hat held down short black hair, and his eyes were red.

Not reddish brown. Red.

“Where the fuck is he?” He glared at Lily, who had frozen like a deer in headlights.

“Where the fuck is who?” Iris snapped.

“Mist!” He hadn’t stopped looking at Lily. “He was here, and now he’s not, and I got this weird text from him, and now he’s not answering his...” He trailed off as his gaze finally landed on Iris. “Phone.”

His eyes flared in blatant appreciation as they ran up and down her body. He started to smile. “You have blue hair.”

Iris gaped at him. “Yeah, I have blue freaking hair. So what?”

“So, it’s cool. I like it.”

“Brilliant!” She threw up her hands, including the one still clutching the meat cleaver. Both Lily and the newcomer flinched as the blade passed inches from their faces. “And if you’re looking for your friend, he shifted into a fucking demon and flew off!”

“Shit. You’re witches, then?”

“Powerful ones,” Iris said haughtily, chin up and hands planted on her hips.

He started to grin again. “I’ll bet you are, sweetness. So what’d you do to Mist to make him run away?”

“What did we do to him? He’s a demon!”

“Yeah, a demon who was trying to have a nice, romantic dinner date with his girl.” He gestured to Lily and shot a glare at Iris. “Don’t tell me you scared him off. I recognized the remainder of a prison ward on the front door, not that that measly thing would keep him in.”

“ Scared him off? He was here to hurt my sister! I would have killed him if he hadn’t fled!”

He scoffed. “Yeah. Okay. Good luck with that. And he wasn’t here to hurt her, unless it hurt when he— Never mind. So, Mist was having a good ol’ time before you started painting prison wards and threatening him. Then what happened? Where’d he go?”

“I didn’t threaten him! He threatened her!”

“Answer the fucking question!” he snapped with a sudden ferocity. Until that moment, he had retained his cool. Something flared in his eyes then that was dark and deadly.

“You’re a demon too,” Lily breathed, shrinking back.

“Uh, yeah.” He looked at her like she had slugs for brains.

“B-but—”

He rolled his eyes, chill demeanor firmly back in place. “But what? You’re expecting me to call on the fires of Hell and threaten to steal your soul?”

She winced. “Well... maybe.”

“Nobody wants your soul, okay? You’re too... good, or whatever, to be useful to Hell. Trust me, the humans we deal with are scum. Real lowlifes, backstabbers and liars and rapists; the kind of people you’ll probably never come across in your life.” He shot a warning look at Iris. “Unless you go looking for trouble.”

“But...” Lily couldn’t find the words.

“But what was Mist doing here? Told you, doll. Try to keep up.”

“Don’t call her that,” Iris snapped.

The demon grinned at her. “You this fierce for everyone, doll, or am I special?”

“Tell me what you want with us, or I swear to god I will find a way to kill you.”

His grin widened. “Chop off the head and burn the body to ashes with hellfire—that’s how you kill a demon. Has to be legit hellfire, and you have to incinerate it completely. Otherwise we’ll just regenerate and come back really pissed off.”

They both gaped at him.

“What? You’re witches. I hope you knew that already. And if you ever got close enough to succeed, the demon would deserve to die for being an idiot.” Abruptly, his expression darkened. “Now tell me where Mishetsu is.”

“Mishetsu?”

“Mist.”

“Told you,” Iris said, “he sprouted wings and flew off.”

“He didn’t say anything about where he was going?”

Lily shook her head.

He yanked his hat off and dragged a hand through his hair before jamming it back on. “He’s probably done something stupid.”

Pulling his phone out, he made a call right there while the two of them were staring at him. Part of Lily wondered if she was asleep having a vivid dream because every minute of this night kept getting stranger. She’d barely been able to believe it when Mist had kissed her, and now this?

“Yo. Is Mist at home? Tell me he’s there.” A pause. Then, “Fuck the motherfucking fucker.”

Well, he certainly knew how to express himself.

“I’m at Lily’s. That’s his girl. Yeah. Apparently, she’s a witch. No, he didn’t know. Crazy, right? But it gets worse. Her sister’s a crazy-ass bitch”—he grinned shamelessly at Iris when she pointed the cleaver in his face—“and she crashed their date, drew a prison ward, and threatened to kill him. Lily said he shifted in front of her and took off.”

He paused, nodding in agreement with whatever the person on the other line was saying. Oh god, it was probably another demon.

“I know. It’s messed up. And he’s not answering his phone. Do you think...? He wouldn’t be that stupid, would he? Shit. All right, I’ll be back in a few.”

He hung up and looked at them.

“Well, ladies, it’s been a slice”—he gestured to the cleaver with a wink—“but I’m out. Gotta go save a demon, if you know what I mean. We were trying to help Mist get out of a bad situation, but it seems he’s gone right back to the lion’s den by choice. Idiot.”

Undaunted by the knife still in his face, he shot Iris a heated look, goofy grin back like it had never left. “It’s a shame we had to meet like this, sweetness. Any other time, I’d have loved to take you out.” He looked at Lily. “Sorry you had to find out your date was a demon, but he’s really not a bad guy.”

Turning toward the door, he glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, and if you’re going to practice witchcraft, stay away from summoning, yeah? Easiest way to get dead, guaranteed.” He waggled his fingers. “Toodles.”

The door slammed, and he was gone.