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He wonders if Adrian can drive. What a curious fledgling vampire, but they’re tough to have endured being in a casket and escaping, so they’re all right with him. And despite Phanuel’s plaintive objections, their casual sadism toward everyone they cross is pretty funny.
Yet, they tolerate Daisy and don’t complain when dog fur flies everywhere, smelling of brimstone, so they’re okay with Paimon.
Eventually, several hours into their journey, they come across a barbed wire fence, but the entrance is open. Curious, Paimon steps out of the stopped car and approaches, gliding past the fence and examining a one-story house that, despite everything, looks livable.
This house beyond the overgrown weeds looks very much intact, and like a lot of effort went into it—but currently unused and untended to, stained with moss and rain. It’s painted a soft green
The others come to inspect it, too. Adrian glances at a small stone fountain with a cherup, a crack along its right eye.
Sensibly leisure-minded, Paimon tells them, hand sweeping toward the white-stained porch. Or maybe it was once white. “We could stop here.”
Lauren?iu regards him skeptically. “We’ve made exceptionally good time, if you think about it. How long does a trip from Terminus to the Smokies usually take, six, seven hours?”
“This will take us days. More, if we stop and get comfortable.”
“Your last days on Earth,” Paimon reminds him, stopping for fear of going too far.
Lauren?iu watches him somberly, and Paimon expects a riposte. However, Lauren?iu nods. “My last days. My mother would push me so much, and yet she always told me that I needed to learn how to stop and smell the roses.”
Standing next to them and brushing off their sleeve, Adrian’s frown deepens. “What is he talking about?”
Lauren?iu’s eyes are dark with consideration. Thinking about how, indeed, these are his last days on Earth, and how no matter if it’s ruined and overrun with militia and peril, he can never truly come back home.
Paimon knows the feeling well. Even if he can physically visit Heaven, it’s lost to him.
But soon, he will give Lauren?iu what he wants.
Their journey is almost over.
Lauren?iu says to Adrian, “We told you that he’s a demon.”
They give a brief sound in their throat. “Yes, the horns. The tail. I’ve digested it.”
“We made a deal that for his assistance, I would forfeit my days visiting Earth.”
Adrian visibly processes his words. “You’re dead. Is that why you’re trying to find someone and kill him?”
Lauren?iu gives a nod.
A tension settles in the air. A question. The only noise is the rustle of wind through the branches and trees.
Adrian’s look is shuttered, but as always, every look and word has a sharp edge, like they were born to be a knife. They cross their arms over their chest. It might be meant to be a strong gesture, but they look guarded and small. Their heartbeat, however, engorged from feeding, is perfectly steady. “I don’t care. I’m on my own. Once you two leave for ‘Hell,’ I’ll move on.”
They’re lying. They don’t blink or look away, and their heartbeat doesn’t speed up, but he can tell.
Or maybe it’s just what he wants to believe. That, despite not knowing each other for a week, there’s a connection happening here. The sort of family that isn’t like the fallen in Hell. Isn’t broken and at times more hate than love.
It’s hard being around multiple people who don’t just say what they’re feeling.
Then again, even he’s guilty of that. Always worried that if he voices his pain, it’ll make it more real. A true weapon.
After all, what is Hell but constant misery made sentient? A place, a mindset, a place created by the mindsets of billions of angry, sad, lonely, vengeful, sadistic, regretful souls.
Paimon gets out a cigarette and lights it without help. “Want a cig, kid?”
Adrian stares, as if Paimon said a joke that didn’t bounce.
He clamps his mouth shut. He doesn't mean to call them something they don’t like; it’s not as if he thinks much before something pours out of his flytrap. But they really just feel like a kid to him. young, with a bad shot in life. It might be wrong to infantilize them, but he wonders if they've ever had someone treat them like a kid.
