“Amazing,” she whispered. “If you were born of all those things, why are you not more evil? Why aren’t you cruel and vicious?”
Her words left me speechless. She was the first to believe I wasn’t those things. That was exactly what I was, what I had always been and would always be. Except with her, I wasn’t that way for some reason.
“I am,” I said flatly. “Don’t ever doubt I’m not. I will do what must be done in order to survive and put an end to all of this. I’ve twisted and tortured souls in ways you could never imagine possible, and I thrive on it. There is a reason I was forged in those fires.”
She swallowed before nervously licking her lips. My gaze fastened on her mouth; I resisted leaning down to follow her tongue with my own. To taste her. I had a feeling she would taste better than she smelled, and feel even better beneath my hands.
“How are you created from the fires? How is that possible?” she asked.
I shrugged as I dragged my gaze away from her enticingly wet lips. “It is simply the way it has always been.”
“The demons who are born, are they born babies who grow?”
“They are and they have the same developmental time frame as humans do.”
“Do they stop aging at a certain point and become immortal?”
“It is different for all, but most stop aging between their mid-twenties and mid-thirties when they reach their strongest potential.”
“What other kinds of demons are there?” she asked.
“So many,” I replied. “There are fire demons, visionary demons, lanavours, adhenes, canaghs, chimera, and many more. Plus, there are demons who are mixes.”
“What about the demons who are always with you, what are they?”
“Most of them are a mix. Corson is the only purebred amongst them, and he’s an adhene. They’re mischievous and what you would know as elf-like demons.”
A small smiled curled her mouth. “That makes sense for him.”
I didn’t tell her Corson may be the most easygoing and fun-loving one of us, but when he unleashed his abilities, he became one of the most savage and brutal bastards I’d ever encountered. It was why he’d risen to his position by my side.
She licked her lips again. “May I have a drink?” she inquired.
Rising to my feet, I lifted the pitcher from the table beside the bed and poured her a glass of water. I helped her to rise and made sure she was comfortable before handing her the glass. She tried to take it, but the needle in the back of one hand and the broken rib on her other side made it difficult for her to move.
“I got it,” I told her and held the glass against her lips.
She drank some of the water before pulling away. “Thank you.”
I returned the glass to the table and sat again.
“Why do most of you look almost human?” she asked.
“All the beings on the three planes have some of the same features, as you can tell.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Millions of years ago, when the planet itself was created, the three planes were also forged. In the beginning, the planes were more together, fighting against one another to try to thrive, but as time moved on and the colossal force of energy that created the planet expanded, the dimensions were more clearly divided.
“Hell broke off first, leaving the planet cooler and more inhabitable. The increasing amount of water on the earth made it easier for life of all kinds to flourish. The kinds of life meant to flourish in extreme heat and with less water went with Hell. That life thrived in the underworld and evolved into demons and other creatures who resided within Hell’s bowels. As humans evolved, so did demons,” I told her.
“And what of Heaven?” she asked.
“The energy that had originally created the three planes broke Heaven away after Hell. It is believed by demons that Heaven was separated to remove the toxic gases remaining on the planet after creation and leave the air more breathable on your plane. Over time, the air within Heaven has filtered itself out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the fallen angels have been able to survive on Earth and Hell; they wouldn’t have done so if their air was drastically different than ours.”
