16
All the Rage
Ash led Eva up to his third-floor apartment, wondering why it was so hard for him to climb stairs right now. Maybe he’d been injured worse in the fight with Mist than he thought. Made sense—the T-shirt still pressed against the wound in his side was steadily soaking through with blood.
Oh well. He couldn’t die from blood loss, and thanks to his curse, he could take the pain. That was the one and only benefit of Raphael’s fuckery.
He hauled his exhausted ass all the way up to the third floor and unlocked the door to his place, pushing it open and gesturing for Eva to go inside. He could feel her eyes taking in their apartment, and he took a breath.Wait for it, wait for it—
“Oh my god, what is that!”
“It’s a ward,” he said, closing and locking the door behind him. There was another one drawn on the inside of the door.
“Is that—”
“Blood.”
“Whose—?”
“Ours.”
“But—”
“Ash?” It was Belial’s voice.
“Yeah.”
Bel stepped around the corner from the kitchen, caught sight of Eva, and immediately, flames danced in his eyes.Shit.Then he glanced down at Ash’s bare torso—wound in his shoulder, T-shirt balled against his side, blood smeared all over him—and those eyes got wide. “What happened to you?”
“Mist happened.”
Belial blanched. “Mist?”
Ash nodded. “You might want to put your cat in my room,” he told Eva. “He’s going to hate Bel more than he hates me.”
The cat responded to this by hissing.
Eva was too busy eyeing Belial warily to respond. Some innate, intuitive sense was probably telling her she was close to something deadly, and it was right. Bel looked pissed, and it wouldn’t take much for him to go off.
“What happened with Mishetsu?” he growled. Flames flickered in his eyes. “And why did you bring a human here?”
Meph and Raum appeared from the dining room behind him, moving slowly and staying quiet. Everyone was walking on eggshells.
“Thehumanis standing right here,” Eva grumbled.
“She knows,” Ash tried to explain, but Bel wasn’t having it.
“This isn’t the fucking time, Asmodeus. I get you’re attached to her, but if Mishetsu actually found you, the last thing we need is—”
“She knows.”
“Shut up. If Mishetsu caught you with her, he could have tracked you back to her place, and—”
“He already did. He already has. She already knows.”
“And if she ends up involved, we—” Bel blinked. “She knows what?”
“If you’re talking about the creepy, gray demon trying to take Ash back to Hell,” Eva said, “then yes, I know.”
