AllFreeNovel
Share Us
During one of his supervised trips to Earth, Lauren?iu remembers the first time he saw a reanimated person gnawing on a deer’s intestines, and he thought,They’re just like me, but there’s nothing inside.Yet, the reanimated eat with gusto.
Lauren?iu hasn’t strategically shut himself down. It’s who he is now. The aftermath of failure; if he just languished over it, he’d fall into an emotional chasm, so he became cold.
But if he kills Anthony, he might be able to feel alive again. Flood himself with warmth. Joy. Ecstasy. Peace. Heart—quite literally tearing Anthony’s heart from his chest. Once he accomplishes the average Hell milestone of revenge—he’d already done murder—yes, revenge, true, bloody, grotesque revenge, he can stop obsessing over it and live.
Maybe not even find a new purpose, just relax. That might be the most realistic.
Joy. That’s a faraway dream. As if anything can ever eclipse the bliss of drinking someone until they’re only crumpled flesh and bone. Feeding as a vampire, that’s an exquisite delight that no one can understand until they’ve done it. And after...
Joy. Peace. What is he talking about? He was never made to relax and smell the roses, like his overworked mother would encourage him to do with bags under her eyes. He’d go mad sitting still. He thrives off stress because that means he has a purpose.
But at least, for now, Paimon is giving him the chance to look forward to that, and he can worry about the details after.
Darkness thrashes in him. A welcome feeling, since he sometimes struggles to feel and understand what to feel.
I’m going to make Anthony pay for all those years I was left lonely and rotting. Him and his husband. I’ll slice their heads off and drink from them like chalices. Finally. Finally, finally, finally. I kill him, kill them, and I can thrive again. I can kill this shambling ghost I’ve become.
Standing to face his king, Lauren?iu’s frown—his resting face—deepens. “Souls can’t be on Earth for more than one day at a time.” Occasionally, they get a supervised “vacation” day on Earth, such as when he’d walk around his childhood home, now deserted, and saw the zombies. But any longer, and souls simply fade back to Hell. Fallen angels and demons are different, more powerful. He might be a vampire, but in the end, he’s seen as just another soul.
Lauren?iu sometimes forgets that he’s dead, particularly when fallen angels and demons tend to simply say “on Hell” or “on Earth.” It’s as if death was a cab ride. The main reminder is that while he may be allowed to travel throughout Hell, he cannot exit whenever he pleases. And after the death that marks his right hand, after this journey, he will never again see Earth even once a year.
Paimon is unfazed. “I could make it so you could. Just a moment.”
He disappears and comes back with an item. He extends an open hand, a golden chain dangling from it. At the end is an ice crystal. Though it looks like one of the Ninth Circle’s stalactites, and glitters like one, the ice doesn’t melt when Lauren?iu touches it. It only emanates a faint chill, and a soft sound flutters through his head, like a knell.
Once you go too far down, Hell’s frost never thaws. It feels hard.Like my heart.He isn’t being dramatic—well, nottoodramatic. Once he died, rather than his heart shriveling and only feeling full when he feeds, it calcified. A stone. Perhaps if Anthony’s husband were to try to stake him again, the silver would snap in twain. Imagine the look on both their faces gives him grim satisfaction.
He can dream.
“This is a piece of Hell,” Paimon tells him. “When you take it with you, it’s as if you never left.”
“This is impressive.”
The king grins. A pleasantness, like drinking hot cider, pools in Lauren?iu’s stomach. “Oh, I just took it and kept it, just in case. There’s no shortage of ice around here.” It annoys Lauren?iu that Paimon is diminishing what he did, but he says nothing because he’s unsure if his feelings are substantial or just the usual irritation he has all the time. He got the grousing from his father, apparently, his mother said as she shook her spoon over her bowl of ciorba de legume with extra sour cream.
Looking at the offered necklace, Lauren?iu asks coolly, “Will you help me put it on?” The last thing he wants is to fumble in front of a king.
After a brief stare, Paimon’s grin doesn’t quite match his eyes, which are...curious. “Of course. Turn around.”
Lauren?iu does, facing the fire and reaching up to pull all his hair into one hand and raise it out of the way.
Paimon reaches over his shoulder, his cuff slightly brushing Lauren?iu’s collarbone. In one swift motion, he hangs the necklace around Lauren?iu’s neck and clasps it the first time. When he lets it go, the tension in the chain loosens.
When he faces Paimon again, the “thank you” wells on his tongue, but he can’t manage to say it. The demon doesn’t seem to mind because he’s looking at the fireplace.
Snapping his fingers, Paimon calls, “Come here.”
The shadows of the room move, swaying out of sync with the fire. They pool on the red floral rug, until they rise and create a vaguely canine form, albeit a massive, hulking one with red eyes. Not two red eyes—dozens of red eyes and rings of teeth stippling her writhing mass as she becomes more corporeal.
A hellhound. No,thehellhound, about five feet tall and a smear of brimstone, fur, and muscles. A relentless killing machine. Her sharp canines protrude from her mouth like white daggers.
Wagging her pitchfork tail, she trots over to Paimon and licks his offered hand with her maw and a cluster of mouths at the base of her neck.
The king pets his hellhound’s broad head. Shadows wisp around his nimble fingers. “Where was your ex living during your last confrontation?”
Lauren?iu has to wrap his mind around Anthony being his “ex.” They never really dated or called themselves partners. Anthony hadn’t even been able to get Lauren?iu’s name right, even though he avoided the deadname after the transition. Lauren?iu had just been “L,” which had to be good enough from the friend and roommate he also slept with. After all, Anthony was all he had because there was Mama, but she didn’t know much about his life after high school.
Even, well, the most major change of all before his vampirism.
