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Daisy catches the bullet with one of her rows of teeth, darting toward the man and clamping another set around his neck, hard and sure as a vise completely clamped around his windpipe.
And their assailants freeze in place.
Paimon always finds it really cute when Daisy protects him and relishes in bloodshed; she’s even wagging her tail as she loses her “normal” disguise, and the toothy mouths on her protrude out like tendrils from her “normal” mouth and fur.
Yanking out another bullet before it can sizzle and melt in him, Paimon says, “Now, sweetie, leave some for the rest of us.”
Daisy erupts into horrible shadows, and screams cluster the air like lightning bugs.
“Well, that was fun. Oh, darling, you’re covered in blood again.”
“You don’t say,” Lauren?iu retorts.
“Good work.”
“Thank you.” Tsk. Always serious or sharply sardonic.
A creak. The two men look behind them, and Adrian is standing there with damp hair and a face pink from scrubbing, as they wear a fresh green flannel shirt and black pants.
Daisy pants and wags her tail before lapping up more blood.
With a curious cock of their brow, they look up at the ceiling, where a dead body is plastered. With a squelch, it unsticks and plops on the floor.
It’s still before dawn, the sky starting to pale on the ruined horizon.
To say that Paimon had a blast killing those people with Daisy would be a vast understatement. The cannibals had even tried to stop them by slashing the Chevy Impala’s tires, but he fixed them in a snap, as easily as killing someone without touching them.
“I’m so glad I have my powers, but it’s still so annoying. No matter how careful you are, there’s always that speck of blood on the white cuff. Imagine if we were normal.” In the passenger seat, he gives a mock shudder.
Hands on the steering wheel, Lauren?iu says, “You’re lucky you don’t need to pay for dry cleaning.”
“You’re telling me!”
Chapter 13
Lauren?iu
Surrounded by dead cannibals, Paimon says to Adrian, “Kid, if you’re coming with us, we need some rules.”
Adrian wrinkles their nose. “I’m twenty-two.”
That boggles Lauren?iu’s mind a bit; despite how he must look, with all the time in the hospital and the years he worked to master his vampirism, stunted with a deadbeat sire, he was thirty-eight when he died the second time, but, having taken a break with Anthony before they attended college together, twenty-three during his first death from mortal to vampire, so he mustn’t look much older than Adrian.
A paradox strikes him: He both feels so much older than Adrian, and yet he understands their youth and fear; that fear that becomes bravado, like a frightened, otherwise nice dog that bites in retaliation. That was his years in the hospital. A nuisance. Noncompliant.
Good. I’ll be a nightmare for the whole world, and they’ll have to deal with me forever.
Except, Lauren?iu was never nice, and he never said sorry for biting.
Condescendingly, Paimon sticks up his nose with both hands on his hips. “I’m as old as the beginning of time. To me, you’re a pup.” Though Paimon is talking to Adrian, Lauren?iu wonders how the demon king must see him.
“I’m not a pup. I’m not anyone’s dog. I was...I was...you should be bowing to me.”
“Bowing.” Paimon bends and sweeps forward his arm. “My mistake, Your Majesty.”
Adrian snaps back, “You’re as old as time. When were you born, the twentieth century?”
“I’m a fallen angel. A demon.”
