But that didn’t stop Nicolas from missing him.
The last one he sparred was the captain, James. He took his place in front of Nicolas and calmly raised the stick he’d been beating Nicolas with all afternoon.
“If you see a demon, what do you do?” He lunged, and Nicolas parried.
“Kill it,” he growled, swinging clumsily.
James backed away. “If you see a halfling, what do you do?”
A halfling. Red eyes and as close to human as a demon could get. A damned soul, changed.
The stick slammed into his ribs. He staggered but didn’t go down.
“Kill it,” he spat like a swear.
James nodded, and a few onlookerswhoopedin agreement. “If you see a traitor, what do you do?”
A traitor. A human being who’d left the guild. Someone whose only sin was disagreeing with the guild’s current modus operandi. Someone like Daniel. Like Julian.
Nicolas parried with a war cry. “Kill them!”
The squad cheered. James caught his next swing, his mouth curling into a grin. He smelled like sweat and dirt. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Garcia.”
“God willing,” Nicolas said. “I live to serve.”
James released him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. I’ve got to say, I had my reservations about you. But maybe you’re not as bad as we thought.”
Nicolas smiled, hoping it looked more‘aw shucks’and less‘fuck you too.’“Glad to hear that, Captain.”
He got lucky when it came time to hit the showers. He hadn’t brought a spare change of clothing, so he washed the dust from his face and hands and bid them farewell. He couldn’t risk them seeing the bite wound on his shoulder, and he didn’t want to spend any more time here than he already had.
Alone in his car, he still didn’t feel safe. He kept anupbeat smile on his face until he was all the way down the street from HQ’s wrought-iron gate. Only then, sitting at a stop sign, did he blow out a breath and let his shoulders slump in defeat.
The street in front of him blurred, but he blinked away the wetness in his eyes. Innocent kids needed him to do this, so he’d suck it up and do whatever it took. Nothing else mattered for now. Not his guilt over the way he’d pushed Ashmedai away, not his worry for his brother, not his suffocating loneliness.
“Focus, focus,” he told himself, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Just drive.”
So he just drove. He turned on the radio, listening to whatever was playing on the pop music station and pushing away all the sadness and guilt and fear. When he got home, he locked the car and made his way up to his apartment. He told himself he wasn’t disappointed that he didn’t see orange eyes waiting for him in the darkness of his living room. That he hadn’t left all the curtains drawn in the hope that Ashmedai would ignore his plea to stay away and show up anyway.
It was better this way.
He stripped on his way to the bathroom, shoving all his sweat-stained and dirty clothes into the hamper, and stepped under the spray before it was warm. The squad had been merciless with him. Every section of his body bore bruises from their practice swords. Welts that were in the process of turning blue in the middle. They’d been aiming to hurt, not to train. His shins, his thighs, his already wounded back, his ribs. His forearms took the worst of it, as he’d started using them to block when he could. One even clipped his jaw, though they generally triednotto hit each other inthe face or head while sparring. He supposed that kind of training etiquette only applied to the people they agreed with.
As his soapy hands roamed, finding each new wound, one hand gravitated to the scabbed bite on his shoulder. For a few moments while they’d been together that night, Nicolas had felt whole. It wasn’t fair that it was a demon who made him feel that way.
He just had to focus on finding the kids. That was all that mattered. He could deal with this thing with Ashmedai, one way or another, after he rescued the kids.
Chapter 10
Ashmedai
The paladins were predictable.Ashmedai was certain they didn’t think so, but their patterns were decipherable enough for a being as ancient and clever as him. They were prey as easily caught as the damned souls in the Pit. Fodder on which to feast, to lay waste, to take out his frustrations. He didn’t just eat their sins. He rended the skin from their bones before he feasted on the energy from their blackened souls, watched them bleed and delighted in their screams before he finally ended their filthy, worthless lives.
He barely noticed the passing of time. The rising and falling sun was a blip, an inconvenient pause he was forced to take on the hunt each day.
He had nothing else. Only the hunt. The kill. The hollow taste of sin.
Sins had never left him feeling unfulfilled before. No amount of eating could fill the void Nicolas had left behind. It was a cruel fate he’d been given, to need someone so fiercely who didn’t want him in return. What was thepoint in feeling this way? Why should he have a connection like this with anyone at all? It did nothing but cause him pain.
