Page 4 of Run Like the Devil

“So you were never a demon at all? It was all a lie? Why would you do that?”

“Because I needed to. Souls began to go to the Chasm, souls cut off from Hubis, but there was no order there. I thought I could do something, could make something of that place, so I went to the Chasm and set myself up as the first Demon Lord. It wasn’t a lie, not entirely. Just like Hubis takes a human form, just like you have a demon form, I took a demon form as well. It is why I could bind souls to me and rule there, and it is why when you stabbed me, when you destroyed my demon form, you gained my position and power. You killed the part of me that was demon, that had a connection to the Chasm.”

I tried to make sense of his story. In some ways, it made sense. All the details I’d heard, the fact that he had been a Demon Lord the longest, the way he didn’t seem to fit with the others—being an angel made it all fit.

Still, I couldn’t accept it. It was like he changed everything about him then, like he turned it all around. Instead of looking up to him, instead of thinking of him as the best of us, it turned out he wasn’t even one of us.

Which also took me down another path. I recalled the way Azael had followed Hubis, his loyalty to him.

Asking if I could trust a man who had lied to me so much was probably a stupid question, right?

“Where are we?” I asked.

“A place I have on Earth. I thought if we remained in the Chasm, we would get found and interrupted faster.”

“And why did you come back?” I asked, my voice quiet. “You let me think you were dead for so long, you let me mourn alone, so why come back now?”

“Because you, as always, chose the most difficult path. If you had chosen to simply do your duty as a Demon Lord, I would have watched over you as I have since I left. I would have allowed you to live your life as you pleased, content with merely serving as a shadow. You, however, can never do things the easy way. When you made the choice to gather the other Lords to do the unthinkable—attack God—I had no choice but to step in.”

Which told me what I’d been pretty sure but too afraid to say out loud.

Gorrin had heard our plans. He knew exactly what I intended to do and had shown up for that reason.

I met his gaze head-on. There was no reason to hide from it, to slink away. If he wanted to face me, there was nothing I could do. I wouldn’t run, though. “Are you going to kill me?”

He tilted his head, the action so familiar to the man I’d known that it took me back to all the fights we’d had before, all the times when we’d butted heads over what we each thought was right.

Was this the end of it? And the sex? Just some weird parting gift? I’d faced off against Azael and he had nearly killed me—if Gorrin wanted me dead, I doubted I could do a damn thing to stop him.

He let out a soft breath as though disappointed in my question before shaking his head. “No, Loch. If I haven’t killed you yet, that should show you I don’t intend to. Even after you lied to me so many times, after you worked against me, after you tried to kill me, if none of those were enough to make me want to end you, I doubt there is a thing you could do that would make me willing to lose you.”

“What does that mean?”

“I call you little fish because you always seemed so fragile, so insignificant compared to the sharks around you. You said your mother called you Salmon because you always swam upstream, always went against the current no matter how difficult. Well, little fish, trying to stop you has never worked. It seems I will swim upstream with you, no matter how foolish.”

And fuck me, because I would have sworn my heart just skipped a beat…

I am in so much trouble.

Chapter Two

Well, isn’t this awkward?

I never thought I’d have to sit through another meeting with Gorrin, and suddenly I missed the months he’d been gone.

Don’t get me wrong, I was glad I hadn’t actually killed him, but somehow being forced into another tense meeting where he would probably be incredibly annoyed with me was not the reunion I’d wished for.

And if I could have, I’d have just stayed in bed longer. It was hard to think there were any better ways to spend our time than another roll—well, not in the hay but on the hard floor? Damn my vagina for not being able to keep up!

The spirit was willing, but the body was bruised and exhausted.

So here we were, in Tyrus’ place since we’d already pushed our luck by meeting at my place once. It was far less suspicious for us to come here this time.

Yazmor hadn’t looked surprised at Gorrin’s arrival, but I had no idea if that was just because he generally enjoyed the unexpected or he had some inkling that Gorrin wasn’t as dead as I’d thought. I could never put anything past Yazmor.

Hale and Tyrus were a totally different matter, though.

Neither man appeared happy about the turn of events, and their gazes kept flitting to just above Gorrin’s shoulders, as if they could see the wings that were safely hidden away.