Page 24 of Indecent

“I don’t know,” Chaol gasped, taking one of Daniel’s hands and laying it on his chest where the angel had touched him. “Hurt. Bad.”

“What did he even do?” Daniel asked, searching and failing to find any sort of wound.

Chaol shook his head. “It felt like… he was eating my life-force or something. It made me feel so weak. Like he was draining all my energy.”

“Like what a sin eater does to a human soul?”

Chaol met his eyes, dark brows furrowing. “Yeah. But demons don’t have souls.”

“You have… something. You’re alive. You exist. You have some sort of life-force.”

“I don’t know what you’d call it then,” Chaol said, staring up at the sky.

Daniel’s mind swirled. Why would an angel be stealing the life-force of demons? Sin eaters ate the souls of sinners. What could an angel want with demonic souls, or whatever they had?

“And nothing like this has ever happened before?” he asked.

Chaol huffed out a laugh. “Hell no.”

Daniel blew out a breath. “Okay. I have a lot of questions and probably no way to get answers.”

“Pfft, same.”

“We should probably keep moving, though. He’s still in the city nearby. Can you walk?”

Chaol paused, as though taking stock of himself, and then nodded. “I think so.” He pushed himself upright. “What about you? How are your hands?”

Daniel had been trying not to think about them, but now that he focused on the pain, he realized it was milder than before. He lifted them and found newly healed, pink skin, and swollen blisters that were steadily shrinking.

“I don’t need my hands to walk,” he said. “But they’re okay.”

Chaol studied them intently for a moment, then met Daniel’s eyes with something akin to wonder. “You fucking fought an angel for me.”

That demon is mine. He still felt the truth in the words. What the hell did that mean for them?

Daniel cleared his throat. “You’ve killed demons for me.”

“Demons and angels are pretty different,” Chaol said.

Daniel shrugged. “Not to me. He was hurting you. I had to stop him. That’s all there is to it.”

Chaol’s eyes widened slightly, like that was even more wondrous.

“Come on. We should get moving.”

He helped Chaol stand. His body trembled with weakness, wings sagging, and Daniel stayed close, keeping an arm around him.

“Can you transform?” Daniel asked. The wings would probably be a hassle in the narrow alleyway below.

“Not yet. It takes energy I don’t have. Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”

There was luckily a ladder on one side of the building, which they were able to take to the alley between buildings. True to his word, Chaol tucked his wings against his back as he descended. At the mouth of the alley, Daniel noticed a toolbox sitting beside the front door. A hammer sat on top of it, and before he could think better of it, he picked it up and hung it through his belt.

“Petty theft now, darkling?” Chaol murmured.

“I don’t want to be caught by surprise again, and a hammer hurts just as well as anything if you swing it hard enough.”

Chaol chuckled. “I don’t think you can kill an angel with a hammer.”