AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The king tries to decipher his tone, but it’s carefully neutral. Only a note of curiosity.
Paimon leans his seat all the way back. Really gives his horns a break. “Because making his head explode would be messy. Or his entire body. Now, that is super fun, but I don’t like when gore gets on my suit. I can magic it away, but that’s not really the point.”
“Ah. Makessomuch sense from someone who wanted to blow up a vehicle.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
A sigh.
Paimon could snap away the wetness, but as strange as it sounds, Lauren?iu doesn’t seem to mind, and he likes the feeling. Something about it feels refreshing and clean. And he likes the smell. There’s something...normal about it. The only rain in Hell is blood, fire, or ash.
“I thought it made perfect sense. Need me to drive? You look tense.”
The vampire scoffs. “What would give you that idea?”
Paimon really feels the need to defend himself. Maybe the whole pride thing. “Come on. He was a prick, and worse, he was annoying.”
Lauren?iu arches a brow. “Is that worthy of death by Hell standards?”
Paimon shrugs, ignoring the implication. “I don’t see why not. You only live once. Well,heonly lives once. No need to dampen things with petty irritation.”
“Was he really a threat to us? Or Daisy?”
Daisy whines in the backseat.
“You’re right, girl,” Paimon comforts. “I should’ve let you eat the body.” In the end, with one motion, he incinerated it. Easy. As if it never happened.
Lauren?iu’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, and he sighs. “I don’t care that he’s dead. I care that it might inconvenience us, more so than if we endured him for an extra minute.”
With more earnestness than he’s used to giving, Paimon insists, “It won’t. Trust me.”
“I’ve heard that before. You can’t control everything. You’re powerful, not omnipresent.”
“Except, youcanactually trust me. I want to keep you safe, so you can have your vengeance. God is omnipresent, but he doesn’t stop bad things from happening. I can.”
Lauren?iu’s expression softens.
Eventually, they come across an area that seems a little less melancholic. The world around them is, at least, more lively than the desolation outside of the safe zone.
A little place of neon red and yellow with large glass windows. A diner, which feels more open than anywhere else, where the tenements and apartments they pass are all shuttered.
“Are you hungry?” Paimon asks.
Lauren?iu gives an abrupt, joyless laugh. “What a question.” Still staring ahead at the road, where they’ve started to encounter minor traffic, Lauren?iu blinks slowly. “I feel...something. But I don’t think regular food will make it stop.”
“Howthirstyare you?” Paimon asks.
A shrug. “I’ll manage. I’ve gone longer before.”
Paimon isn’t so sure. A human soul can go from never hungry—at least, not for food, all souls hunger—to ravenous in seconds once they’re allowed back on Earth.
A vampire—he imagines it’s the same, though he’s never known Lauren?iu to lose control. Indeed, he always sees Lauren?iu as a little too in control, so pent up and unreadable.
It’s a balance. Lauren?iu is driven. All that stuff he said about the crown...the fury, the fire.
But he wonders if Lauren?iu will ever truly rest, or once they kill Anthony, he might become a shell of himself with no immediate purpose outside of his long fixation.
He hopes that Lauren?iu’s ambitions live past the consummation of his hate. Hell, Paimon once thought that overthrowing God and being by Lucifer’s side on that throne of carnelian, jasper, ozone, and star-bones was everything. Once he fell, he had no direction, might’ve drowned in his own feather-ashes and blood, if Lucifer hadn’t dug him out and held him close against his half-healed chest.
