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Paimon offers, “Cannibalism with benefits.”
Playing along, Lauren?iu says cheekily, “I wouldn’t go that far. The benefits aren’t quite that great.”
“That’s true. You eat it raw. Imagine what it’d taste like with some ketchup and barbecue sauce. Cooked, with some parsley and oregano.”
“Hm,” Lauren?iu says noncommittally, less enthralled by the ketchup than the idea of consuming more human flesh. “I’ll have to try it. We’ll need to buy a grill.”
A dramatic sigh when the demon king lowers his hand. “Let it be known that I’m no match to your audacity.”
“Few are.” Lauren?iu watches as Paimon takes another drag of the cigarette. “Is it poisoned?”
With his usual nonchalance, Paimon replies, “Of course it is. It’s a cigarette.” Fair enough. Despite that, the smell reminds Lauren?iu of home. That, along with Paimon’s mingling brimstone and carnation-spice, is pleasant.
Paimon says, “I don’t think we’ll stop being watched until they try to put us on the grill. As much as I enjoy a little adventure every now and again, we should go, probably. It’s your call.”
Lauren?iu can’t explain it, but they’ve been followed since they left Terminus. Rather than keep going, he wants to confront whoever is following them.
He’s not sure how to explain it to Paimon.
“I think maybe we should play sitting duck for about a day. Let them try to take us.”
Paimon’s eyes flash in excitement. “Provoke them and then massacre them?”
“Yeah.” Well, he would hope that Paimon does most of the work. Not because he fears killing more people, but he wants to let himself fast a little, so murdering Anthony is so much sweeter. Like passing up breakfast before going to a buffet for lunch.
Throwing the cigarette on the cracked asphalt, Paimon bursts into a robust laugh. “My brilliant vampire. I like it. God, I’m so happy I’m tagging along.” He stamps out the smoldering cigarette with his polished shoe. “I wasn’t made for a crown. I was made to go around murdering people. You know?”
A stab of guilt. Guilt. Lauren?iu is so used to simply lying. To get what he wants. To cover up his true motives.
They get in the car and keep driving, but Paimon’s last words echo in his head as they go deeper into the bowels of the holler.
“We could always switch places,” Lauren?iu says casually.
Paimon scans the side of the road for a good place to set up. “How do you mean?”
“You could be the dashing courtier, and I could be king.”
“Maybe, but you know, there are benefits.”
“The orgies?”
“You don’t need to be a king to participate in those.” He looks off to the side again and points. “Hm, what about this place?”
Lauren?iu slows the car, looking at a square concrete house, painted clay-red and devoured by moss and black mold. A deep creek trickles beside it, and crows commune on a stretch of dead grass. “This looks unoccupied enough. I’m sure if it’s off-limits, they’ll let us know.”
They’ll find us anyway, and we’ll be ready.
The country night, bitingly cold, is as black as cigarette ash when Lauren?iu goes outside and hears rustling in the nearby blackberry patch, alongside a stifled welp and unstifled squelches.
Making his feet silent and thin as mist to keep from shuffling on dead leaves, crushed cigarettes, and shriveled mulberries, Lauren?iu glides down the small hill leading to the briars and the creek.
And he finds the source. A person kneeling above someone, a middle-aged woman he doesn’t recognize, with a pulpy, red chasm for a chest cavity.
God.
Wait, he knows who this is, the person above. The sickly-white anemic face, ghostly in the moonlight, now dripping with blood.
The stranger from the diner—
