by Ella M. Lee
He met my gaze, and I looked away quickly from those assessing green eyes.
“Go on,” he said teasingly. “Ask the question on your mind.”
“Why—” I started. “Why do you have food?”
He smiled that wide, feral smile. “Because I eat food. Sheesh. It’s like you have no idea what I am.”
I stared at him unabashedly this time, forgetting that I probably wasn’t supposed to. A vampire who ate food? That wasn’t a thing.
His gaze sharpened. “Oh, I see. You don’t know what I am. That bastard didn’t even warn you, did he, after I returned you to your table?”
“He never really told me anything,” I muttered, shrugging.
“I’m not a vampire,” Ren said, his eyes back on the road. “I’m a Baphometic Demon.”
Chapter 8
Ren’s words meant almost nothing to me.
A Baphometic Demon? I dug through my tired mind for hints. Baphomet was…something related to hell and the devil. Demon… well, that could mean many things. Vampires referred to themselves as “demons” sometimes. Did he mean he was a type of vampire? Or something else entirely? Was that why they seemed scared of him? Was that why he could hurt them?
“You are seriously frustrating,” he said, the words bordering on a whine.
That seemed unfair; I’d been a good little girl for him so far.
“Your eyes are wide,” he went on, “but you aren’t scared right now. You’re surprised, maybe? You have no idea what you just got into a car with, and you’re sitting there like it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. He’d startled the words out of me.
He sighed. He seemed to like sighing.
“Don’t you want me to explain?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“Aren’t you curious?” he tried again.
I closed my eyes, bracing my hands on the smooth leather seat beneath me.
“What if I’m dragging you back through one of the dark portals to my home, where I’ll torture you and kill you slowly before eating you?”
He glanced at me and rolled his eyes at my lack of reaction, but he seemed curious and amused rather than truly annoyed. His eyes weren’t flashing or clouding over like they had earlier with Jenna or the Origin staff.
“I’m not, by the way,” he added. “My realm isn’t a good place for humans.” He shook his head. “Why aren’t you talking? Or eating? No one warned me humans were so frustrating.”
A tiny laugh escaped my lips involuntarily.
He glanced at me again. “If I ask you direct questions, will you please answer them?”
“Sure,” I choked out, surprised by his polite question.
“Okay, I’m getting somewhere. Why did you laugh just now?”
“Irony,” I said. “You want me to talk when your kind spent a year beating that inclination out of me.”
He bristled, and the car seemed to get darker for just a moment. “I’m not a vampire,” he repeated, “and I won’t beat you for talking.”
“How about for not talking?” I asked.
“Not for that, either.” He glanced at me again. “You’ve known vampires for only a year?”
“Yes. Exactly a year, actually. I was taken on my eighteenth birthday.”
“Why did your master sell you?”
I shrugged. “I guess he got sick of me. Wasn’t worth the trouble anymore.”
“Trouble?” His tone was interested. “Are you troublesome?”
I snuck a glance at him, but his eyes were fixed on the road. “Maybe a little. I don’t know.”
I haven’t decided yet whether being troublesome will help me or hurt me.
His lips curled into a small smile, revealing those canines again. “Glad to hear it. I don’t mind a little trouble.”
I swallowed, the bottom dropping out of my stomach. I had no idea what that meant.
“Are you from around here?” he asked.
“No.”
“Would you like to go home?”
Pain shot through me, so powerfully and quickly that tears sprang into my eyes. The question had caught me off guard, and I hated that. I gripped the edge of the smooth seat under me, trembling.
“Why would you ask that?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “I’m trying to understand you. You’re the first human I’ve spoken to like this in a while. So…closely. I’m not used to it.” He paused. “Why aren’t you asking any questions?”
“I learned pretty quickly that asking a vampire questions isn’t allowed.”
“I’m not a vampire.” He was obviously sore about this point.
“You said it yourself,” I ventured, “I don’t know what you are. Whatever rules you have, I don’t understand them yet. Humans have this thing called ‘self-preservation.’ It keeps us alive even when we don’t want it sometimes. I’m using it now by not doing anything to annoy the strange creature sitting next to me.”
He smiled. “You are annoying the strange creature by not talking or eating or sleeping or asking questions or doing any of the things I expected a human to do.”
“Sorry,” I said.
He glanced at me, those pretty eyes pinning me. “You want rules?”
“Yes,” I said, because that had been a direct question.
He chuckled— a low, throaty, growling sound. “Sorry, I don’t have any for you. That’s sort of a demon thing. I’m averse to creating arbitrary sets of rules—or adhering to them.”
Great. No way to anticipate him. Vampires loved rules. They had heaps of them, some arbitrary, some not. Ren would be different.
I cleared my throat. “So how am I supposed to know what might anger you?”
“How do you know what will anger a vampire?” he asked.
“They tell me.”
“Hmm.” His expression was thoughtful. “How do you know what will anger a human?”
I shrugged. “That’s harder. I’d have to get to know them.”
His thoughtful expression vanished, melting into a grin. “Ah, yes. So get to know me.”
“That’s, um, a risk,” I said. I glanced at him. He raised his brow at me, inquiring. “You see, I am human. I grew up with humans. I know things about them. I can, um, navigate those conversations because I can read a human’s reactions. I know what generally makes humans happy or unhappy. I’ve never met a…Baphometic Demon. What if I offend you? What if I say something wrong? What if your reaction is to break my neck?”
He nodded as though what I’d said made perfect sense. “Okay, excellent. We’re getting somewhere.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel thoughtfully. “What if I promise to…be lenient? What if I understand that you are young and learning? Nineteen is young for a human, I think.”
“I don’t know what that means. What is ‘lenient’ to you?”
“What if I promise not to hurt you?”
I had to stop myself from agreeing to anything he said just for that one silly promise. I tried for a casual shrug instead. “What is ‘hurting’ to you? You could promise that, I guess, but there’s plenty that can hurt a human without physically injuring them. What if you withhold food from me? Lock me in a closet? Hold my head underwater? Rape me? Not physical pain, but…”
Anguish. Shame. Fear. Humiliation. Violation. I would not admit that I was speaking from experience.
“Would those things displease you? Would they harm you?” he asked, and the questions were completely genuine. He really had no idea what to do with me.
“Yes.”
“Then I will not do them.”
“I really don’t get you,” I said.
“I’m trying to fix that.”
I decided to test a little of his generosity. “Where are we going?”
“New York City. I live there.”
“I thought you lived through…through a dark portal.”
He chuckled. “That is where I come from. I live in the Mortal Realm right now, not the Sho
rn Realm.”
Shorn Realm. I’d never heard of it. I was about to ask, but he preempted me.
“Have you been to New York City before?”
“Once,” I said. “A long time ago.”
I’d been eight. My dad took me to see The Lion King, back when he was around more and cared about doing things with me. We ate hot dogs in the park. I fed bread to ducks.
Somehow, I’d gotten from that innocence all the way to having late-night conversations with demons about other realms in a fancy car after being bought at an auction.
Life was wicked and unrelenting, and I hated it.
Chapter 9
“Will you ask me a question?” Ren said quietly, after a minute of silence. The petulance was gone from his tone, and that sultry purr was back, dangerous and low and irresistible. The lights from other cars on the road made his eyes sparkle.
“Why did you break Jenna’s arm?”
He tilted his head back and forth, as though considering the proper way to explain. “Vampires understand only one thing, in my experience,” he said finally. “Consequences. She displeased me, so I hurt her. She’ll heal. Eventually. Bones aren’t quite as quick as flesh, so she’s in for a painful night or two, but now she has learned her place.”
“Brutal,” I said.
“Effective,” he countered, issuing another of those cat-like smiles.
“And the other vampire? The one you hit?” I asked. “Why did you…?”
Ren’s motivations would tell me a lot about what I was dealing with. Was he just protective of his “property,” as he’d said? Or was he concerned about me getting hurt? And if so, why?
“Consequences,” he repeated. “He did something I didn’t like—he hit you—and I gave that experience to him in return. Vampires don’t get hurt enough, in my opinion. I make a point of doing it when I can to remind them that there’s someone higher on the food chain.”
Higher?
“They all called you ‘my lord,’” I said tentatively. “Why?”
“I am above them. They would never have dared to address me by name.”
“Does your kind, um, rule over vampires?”
“Vampires rule over vampires,” he said. “My kind created them.” He hesitated. “We aren’t the ruling type. That’s part of how they ended up here.”
Ice crept over me, and I huddled further into the seat. I was trapped in a car with a creature who could casually state, “Oh, we just made vampires and set them loose on the human world, no big.”
I looked out the window. Only dark highway roads around us. If I tried to throw myself out of the car at this speed, I’d likely end up very painfully dead. Or at least with far too many broken bones.
“No more questions?” Ren asked, and his soft tone now seemed rich and amused.
“Do you want me to call you ‘my lord?’” I asked. “Or is ‘master’ okay?”
He let out a sharp huff of air. “Absolutely do not call me either of those things. Call me Ren.” He glanced at me, and his tilted brows told me he was looking for approval.
“Um, yeah, okay,” I said.
“What would you like me to call you?” he asked, and that genuine curiosity was back.
“Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “Franklin just picked a name for me without asking.”
“Your human parents did that, too, didn’t they?” Ren pointed out.
“That’s what humans do.” I glanced at him. “Didn’t your parents name you? Do you even have parents?”
He smirked. “I have parents, but they didn’t name me. My kind name themselves. I guess you could say we just know. Our names are the essence of us, ingrained. We pick each other because we are each other.”
“So your name means something?”
“My full name, yes. Ren is a shortening, an adaptation.”
“What’s your full name?”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. It’s in the language of my kind.”
Duh. Of course.
“Well, what does it mean?” I asked.
His eyes sparkled gently, still focused on the road. “You would laugh, I think.”
“And you’re afraid of that?”
“No.” He smiled. “My name means ‘patience.’”
“Is that funny? You’ve been patient with me.”
But it did seem a little funny. A patient demon—who would’ve guessed?
He waved a hand. “To be completely honest, it’s closer in meaning to words like endurance, tolerance, and self-restraint. A different form of patience, I guess.”
“Is that, like, a cool name for a demon? Or do you wish you got something fearsome, like ‘savage’’ or ‘bloodthirsty’ or ‘deadly?’”
He laughed, a stronger laugh than before, deep and full. “I don’t wish for anything. This is what I am.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. Clearly his norms were different from mine.
I had one goal right now: figure out his triggers and avoid them. I didn’t want to be hurt or killed. If I could get past that, I’d take the next step: figuring out what he wanted from me.
We both stared silently out the windshield at the dark highway for a few minutes. I didn’t know much about the area, but we probably had hours left to drive before reaching New York City.
“Could I call you Ari?” Ren asked suddenly. “Is that too familiar? Arianna is pretty but long, and its meaning is weak.”
“Meaning?” I echoed.
“Arianna means ‘holy’ in Hebrew,” he said. “Ari means ‘lion.’”
“You speak Hebrew?” I asked.
“I speak all languages.”
Of course he did. Of course this otherworldly thing spoke all languages. But that told me his powers were indeed much stronger than a vampire’s. As if all the broken vampire bones I’d seen tonight weren’t proof enough.
“You said you would answer direct questions, but you ignored mine,” he said. The petulance was back. For someone who didn’t like rules, he was certainly confused when I broke them.
“Ari is fine,” I said, the words more tightly than I’d intended. It was too familiar, but at least it didn’t needle me like the gross sourness of being called Trixie.
“I like that you’ve been answering my questions, you know,” he said. “I like that you’ve been asking them, too. I was a little worried you’d be too broken for that. I’m glad you aren’t.”
Yeah, sure, that would be fine until I hit the wrong question, and he wrung my neck for it. I’d just have to get by with saying as little as possible. So far, questions about his home and his name and his nature had been okay.
His nature.
“So…do you drink blood?” I asked. He hadn’t touched mine earlier. I looked at the still-open bag in my lap. He’d said he ate food.
“I drink anything,” he said. “I also eat anything. I have tried human blood a few times. I can survive on it, but it isn’t that interesting to me.”
“How about humans in general?”
“A whole human?” he asked. “That would be a trial. Maybe when I’m grown up. I haven’t tried human flesh. Are you offering?”
My heart shot into my throat, choking me. Ren glanced over at my silence and said, hastily, “That made you uncomfortable. I was playing, not threatening.”
I closed my eyes.
When I didn’t say anything, he pressed, “Did my clarification not help?”
“How should I know?” I asked. “Maybe you have a big cauldron at home that you’re going to throw me in, and you’re just reassuring me so I don’t jump out of the car and get hit by traffic to avoid that fate.”
“Oh.” The word was guileless and light. Child-like.
“Grown up?” I said, casting my mind back a few seconds before his lame attempt at humor. “Are you young?”
“Young for my kind, yes. As young as you, in my own way.”
Huh. That explained a lot. The mood swings. The shifts in tone. The blundering through d
ealing with a human. He wasn’t a vampire. He wasn’t some creature who’d lost humanity and now lived a jaded existence on Earth. He was a kid. A dangerous kid, who’d tortured and cowed vampires right in front of me, but not a hardened killing machine.
Unless, of course, “young” for a Baphometic Demon somehow meant thousands of years of brutal warrior training or something.
“Are you going to eat, Ari?” he asked suddenly, and I jumped at the sound of my name. “Or maybe you would like to sleep instead?”
What I wanted was to figure out what the hell was going on. Obviously, Ren had plans, but he hadn’t mentioned them. I didn’t want to bring it up yet, because I didn’t want to push the limits of his generosity, but this whole thing was unnerving. More unnerving than the world I’d gotten used to.
Why was it scarier that I might end up safe with him, instead of drained of blood and dead at the hands of some asshole vampire?
He glanced at me, apparently waiting for an answer.
“I’ll eat,” I said belatedly. Hunger still ripped at my stomach, and my mouth watered at the idea of food.
“Hand me an apple,” he said. “One of the red ones. You can have whatever you want.”
My fingers brushed his for a moment, and I tensed, pulling away immediately. Chills ran down my spine at the feel of his smooth, cool skin. He didn’t seem to notice. He simply took a large, crunchy bite of apple and stared disinterestedly at the road, holding the steering wheel firmly in his left hand.
I opened one of the sticks of string cheese and tore it to strips, eating quickly.
“Why did you do that?” Ren said. “Tear your food up.”
I held up a second stick. “These are meant to be torn. That’s why it’s called string cheese. You tear it into strings.”
“Oh.” There was that word again, in its bald innocence.
I sighed. A young demon. I pictured him biting into the cheese stick or stuffing it into his mouth whole and shook my head.
I was on my fourth cracker, after three string cheeses and a bunch of grapes, by the time Ren had eaten his apple down to the core.
With a slight splaying of his fingers upward and a strange shift of pressure in the air, the apple’s spindly remains disappeared.
