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“It’s an easy mistake to make,” she says with a little smirking grin.
She’s giving me shit too, but it hits different coming from her.
“The good news is that your hand doesn’t seem to be infiltrated with glass, and the cuts aren’t that deep.” I wrap a bandage around her hand and consider that fixed, for now. She’ll be fine.
She yawns. I yawn too. This has been the definition of a fucking long day, and I think we’re both ready to nap.
I pick her up and carry her to bed. This is our wedding night. It should be passionate and intense, but the moment we lie down, me feeling the weight of the day on my shoulders and eyelids, she not fighting me for once, sheer exhaustion sinks its claws into us both.
“I saw a demon,” she whispers.
“What?”
“Crichton showed me his flaming demon head.”
“Did he now.”
“Yes. He seems nice, though. Are demons actually nice? Does that mean angels are actually secretly bad?”
“No,” I mumble, snugging my arm around her waist. I don’t want her going anywhere again. I’m too tired to chase her. That means pinning her down with me on the bed. She’ll sleep whether she likes it or not.
Elise
He was sweet when he fixed my hand, and now, lying on the bed with him, I am surprised to find that I don’t feel like wriggling out of his very possessive grasp. I thought I would want to be as far away from my rescuer cum abductor as possible, but my feelings toward Cosmos are surprisingly complex. I am angry at him and I feel a bit sorry for him. I’m grateful to him for rescuing me, and furious at how he went about it. Cosmos is one of the most flawed people I’ve ever met.
He is hot, though. And protective. And stubborn. Maybe as stubborn as I am. I am warm and I am safe. Before I know it, I am asleep.
6
Cosmos
“Master Cosmos! Get your boots off my coverlet at once!”
I open my eyes and discover Mrs Crocombe glowering down at me.
Elise is still with me. She’s been woken up by Crocombe too and is squinting up at her. She looks adorable with her messy hair and slight air of confusion.
“Sorry. We were exhausted after a ten-hour drive,” I say, swinging my feet off the bed.
“Hardly a proper wedding night,” Crocombe huffs.
“Don’t worry. We consummated our marriage in Germany.”
“Cosmos!” Elise lets out a scandalized little gasp, which I enjoy immensely. She is such a proper thing, until she is angry, and then she is as feral as I am — almost.
“The two of you should shower and come down to breakfast,” Crocombe says. She is not the kind to bring newlyweds breakfast in bed. She is the kind to barge in and complain they’re not fucking. As much as a demon might try to pretend to be human, they always fail in the little things, the small social niceties and awarenesses that only real humans notice.
“We’ll be down soon,” I tell her. I don’t mind the intrusion, because to me, being walked in on by a demon is as meaningful as being walked in on by a house cat.
Mrs Crocombe huffs her way out of the room. I turn over and look at Elise. “Good morning, wife.”
“So this is real,” she says in a half-wistful, half-confused tone. “It’s all real. The marriage. The demons. The attempted murder.”
I brush golden hair from her eyes. “They’re all real. I am impressed. Yesterday you were absolutely refusing to believe any of it. Today you are willing to accept it all.”
“That’s because science is about collecting data. The multiple murder attempts and the flaming skull butler were convincing. I’ve always been able to trust my senses. So far, the evidence points toward it all being true. Heinously, bizarrely true. I wonder if the part about the resurrection is true too.”
“Fleisch is an end times death cult.”
“They’re scientists. Geneticists. Undertaking the strangest and perhaps most significant project in recent history. Trying to use the blood of humans of certain lineages to somehow animate the flesh of a Nazarene. Fascinating.”
“Not fascinating,” I chastise her. “Mad, and dangerous. The return of the Lord might have been prophesied, but it also means the end of the world is nigh. For everybody to keep living their lives, we want the divine to stay firmly on their side of the playing table.”
I don’t think I’ve convinced her. I think I’ve intrigued her.
“They would use you as a blood slave and then kill you as a sacrifice.”
“Maybe. But imagine the data. If I could get into that laboratory you keep talking about, the things I could see…”
I grab her and throw her over onto her stomach. She’s going to be spanked long and hard for even teasing about getting into league with Fleisch.
