Chapter 17

Iblink at the stunningly beautiful creature who just snarled at me.

The curvy bombshell in a tight black sweater and pleated, checkered red-and-black mini skirt seems to have stepped out of an anime. She has golden eyes, blazing-red hair, light mocha complexion, and of course, those elegantly-ridged, glistening-onyx horns.

And no one else seems to notice her sauntering about as if she owns the place.

There are two explanations. I was put back wrong after the Divining, and now I’m seeing things. Or I was put back in a way that only I can see through that demon’s Glamor. Maybe an extension of the way only I can see Angel Essence?

Either way, I must keep my cool. If I’m seeing a demon who isn’t there, I can’t alert anyone to the fact. If she’s really here, and I already stared, I can’t let her know I’m seeing her for what she is.

“I asked you a question, Mortal Slime.”

Without the least volition, I find myself snarling back, “I’m looking at the horns, Bog Breath.”

My heart stops with horror. Way to go misdirecting her.

Now, according to her response, I’ll find out which explanation is true. Whether she is a hallucination—or my probable murderer.

From the way she slinks closer, like a boa constrictor approaching a guinea pig, I’d go with the second option.

She leaves me in no doubt when she says, “Didn’t whatever shit you into the world covered in slimy secretions teach you those who stare get their eyes gouged—and eaten?”

My mouth takes over again as I toss back, “Didn’t whatever hatch your putrid egg teach you talking goats aren’t entitled to an attitude?”

I’m busy shrieking shut up inwardly when she whistles and growls at the same time, the polyphonic sound hair-raising. “Ah, you’re one of those.”

I want to grab one of those blithely walking around, unaware of the enemy in their midst. I want to yell for help, to run away. But I do none of that.

Compulsion? Some demons have that power. Or is it knowing that if I attempt anything, these long, red nails can slash my throat in a second?

Whatever it is, I only ask, “One of what?”

“Demon snacks.”

“And you’re one of those,” I shoot back. “Demon brats.”

As I groan that I said that, and worse, that I didn’t come up with something better, she draws in a spectacular snort, purses her crimson-painted lips and spits—spits—up in my face.

A copious glob splotches in my right eye. As I squeeze both shut, a dozen dreads explode in my mind. That her saliva will eat through my eye and into my brain. That it will spread a demonic infection that will consume me from the outside in.

In a literally blind panic, I rub my eye in a frenzy. I open the other in time to see the glob, frothy and pristinely-white, landing over my drool stain with a wet smack.

As it slides off my jumpsuit to land on the ground without eating through either, I let out a whimpering breath.

It’s just regular phlegm. Thank Hell.

Shuddering in disgust, I wipe my eye vigorously on my sleeve, glaring down at her with the other one. “You’re also a gross asshole.”

Her lipstick un-smudged, she shrugs in ladylike elegance. As if she hasn’t just snorted and spat like a tobacco-chewing, black-toothed sailor. “What do you expect? I’m a demon.”

She’s admitting it out loud for anyone to hear, and those closest to us do look at her. I can swear they notice her horns. But no one seems to care. What’s going on here?

“What’s your excuse, human?”

Since I can do nothing else, I go with the flow of this weird encounter, come what may.

I spit back at her.

I only end up spraying my own chin with pitiful droplets. And she’s actually tapping her foot waiting for an answer.

“How about spending sixteen years and eight months as a Demon-Owned?” I snarl. “And having the day from Hell and Heaven, while PMSing?”

Her puffy lips quirk in a mischievous smile. She’s really one of those heartbreakingly gorgeous hellspawn. “So you’re demon droppings, too, huh?”

Demon droppings again? That’s a thing now, it seems. And both sides used it. We Demon-Owned can’t catch a break, can we?

I sigh. “I was also recently told I’m a Nothing.”

She throws her head back and lets out a cacophonous yet delightfully melodic laugh. “Well, that’s new.”

“That’s me. Brand new here.”

“We’re all brand new here, Maggot Brain. It’s everyone’s first day at the Academy.”

“I’m brand new to it all, Fly Magnet.” I’m really not coming up with adequate insults to do her creative ones justice. So I pull myself to my full height, my only advantage over her, with maybe four or five inches. “Till yesterday, I didn’t know this place existed…” Her words suddenly hit me like a mallet in a cartoon. “Hey! Are you saying you’re attending the Academy?”

She flashes me two rows of dazzlingly-white teeth with too-sharp canines. “It’s called diversity, Junk Genes.”

I swear I hear that comic blinking sound effect as my lashes flutter.

Then I blurt, “You’re really a student here? And everyone can see you?”

She gapes at me, before bursting out in snorting snickers. “You thought you’re the only one who can? Wow. How do you even walk and talk? Creatures with your IQ sit around and drip slime.”

“Excuse me if the only thing anyone told me is that demons are off-limits here,” I mumble.

This wipes off her merriment, and her face literally darkens with a frown. “Yeah, if they’re not invited, like I am. Lucky them. But this damned Academy is required to accept a five to ten-percent quota of all Supernatural races and Demon-Blighted. The same percentage of Angels, Angel-Graced and Nephilim also attend Pandemonium Academy.”

I stare at her as the whole situation gets rewritten in my mind.

So everyone sees her, and no one cares because they already know about this. A demon student among the angelic brood.

Wow.

At least that means she won’t kill me to silence me. That’s a win for sure.

As the fear of decapitation deflates, I realize this demoness told me more than anyone did so far. And she can tell me more. If I manage to ask nicely.

I attempt a grin and hope it doesn’t look sour or provocative. “So you’re not the only one? Other demons and Demon-Blighted go here?”

“I can demand your firstborn as a price for answers.” She inspects her long, perfectly manicured nails. “But I wouldn’t feed your squalling offspring to my pit buzzard and spoil her healthy diet of roadkill. So yes, Blighted go here, as students and teachers. I don’t know about other demon students this year, but they have demon teachers.”

I whistle, genuinely stunned. I never thought angels and demons could collaborate, let alone in something like this. “How progressive of them.”

She waves my comment away. “The blowhards on both sides are the definition of stuck in the rotting past. One that stretches back unto eternity. But this little exchange arrangement was in the fine-print of the Armistice Accords. Both sides loathe it, but the agreement was forged in one of the most powerful alchemies in Hell and Heaven—a consenting mixing of an archangel’s and an archdemon’s blood.”

Wow. Just wow.

I stash the new info for later examination, and rush to ask my next question before she decides to stop answering. Or take my head off.

“I know about the ‘By Invitation Only’ part. But how do they know you won’t expose the Academy’s location?”

Vermillion flames invade her golden eyes, swirling around the pupils as she sneers, “A Bog Golem is smarter than you, when all it does is fart methane and wait for its next prey to stumble in its open maw. What do you think? They rely on my good character or earnest word?”

I snort, but it doesn’t come out as effective as hers. “As if. But how can I possibly know how they stop you from spilling the beans?”

I get the feeling I’m not the target of her flaming fury as she grits, “The provision for that is in the Accords, too. Part of the admission process is binding the applicants. We’d burst into eternal flames if we attempted to reveal anything about this angel-infested dump or what we learn here.”

“Whoa. That’s some cool—or should I say blazing hot—security system.”

I sense her mind leaving me and wandering into some bottomless hellpit. Of resentment. Wisps of crimson smoke start billowing from her nostrils.

Anyone else would walk away now. Smoke means fire means her next exhalation might grill me.

But she’s providing me with vital info among the verbal abuse and not-so-implied menace. If I can stroke her ego, she may be amenable to answering more questions. The beautiful demons are as vain as the Fae. They love talking about themselves.

Risking a burst of flames in my face, I draw her attention back to me. “So, you’re gorgeous.” Just the truth. “What kind of demon are you?”

She blinks, as if coming back to the moment. Then she flings her ponytail back like a model in a photoshoot, striking a pose as sultry as her croon. “An archdemon.”

I’m congratulating myself that my ploy worked when I almost choke.

Archdemons are way up there, on par with the archangels. They’re an exclusive echelon right below the heaviest hitter of all evil, if he really exists. As far as I know, there are very few archdemons in existence. I never heard of a female one, since they also go by Princes and Kings of Hell.

And here I am, standing with that rare creature, a Princess of Hell, having what amounts to a water-cooler chat. If one full of scorn and threats of mutilation.

“My father is one of the original Princes of Hell, which makes Beelzebub and the rest my uncles.”

She said that like a girl trying to impress. This makes me wonder if she is as young as she looks. She did sound young right now—and insecure with it.

If she is, at least in demon terms, that may explain why someone as powerful as her has been sent here.

But someone like that would throw around her father’s name. Which means she doesn’t know who he is.

Refraining from making a comment that may separate my head from my body, I whistle again. “That’s some big guns you have in your family.”

She huffs, and tongues of flame issue from her red lips. “It’s why I’m here. Hell invented nepotism, after all.”

“But I get the impression you don’t like being here.”

Her golden eyes turn full-on obsidian, glittering and fathomless. “I hate it!”

I’m numbed to seeing all kinds of horror-show demons. But that impossibly gorgeous creature still spooks me. There’s something deeply horrifying within her, and I just got a glimpse of it.

Knowing it’s bad for my vital functions to show demons that they rattle me, since they feed on weakness, I twist my lips in the nonchalance I’ve long perfected. “So why didn’t your family use their influence to spare you the ordeal?”

Eyes back to that hypnotic gold, she shakes her head pityingly. “Do you even think before you open your chow chute, Imbecile?”

“That was a legitimate question, Asshat!”

I really need to lay off the name-calling. With the imbalance of power here, it should be a one-way thing.

Thankfully, she only rolls eyes gone blood-red this time, at my lameness, no doubt. “My family are demons.”

“So?”

“Imbecile was the wrong adjective, since it assumes some sort of IQ. You do have ‘Nothing’ between your ears.”

“Got nothing better than century-old jabs? Or was that the last time you were let out of your cage?” Lava begins to bubble in her irises, and I rush to add, “Consider me a moron all you like, but with the most powerful demons in existence for a family, you should be getting exactly what you want. I don’t get why you’re here against your will.”

“I’m here because they, more than any hellhole-variety demon, show you they care by torturing you.”

Huh. She was right. That was stupid of me. I should have worked that out after being around demons’ reverse logic all my life. I just never considered what they do to each other could sometimes be a demonstration of twisted love.

I cough a laugh. “Talk about tough love.”

“Lethal. My mother told me to either pass with honors, or die. A couple of cousins took bets in their festering gaming community that I won’t survive the first semester. They must be trying to arrange my death now, so they’d win that bet.”

I goggle at her. “You’re being melodramatic, right?” When her exhalation singes me, I yelp, “Hey, you demons breathe lies as easily as fire and brimstone.”

“You know, Nothing, you’re so pathetic, I may give you a primer of how this world really works, so you don’t get splattered on your first day. Or, better still, I can just kill you and spare you the suspense.”

As she advances on me, Godric reappears. Between one breath and the next he’s looming over us like a skyscraper of overriding maleness and aggravation.

He tersely nods at my demonic companion. “Demoness.”

Her nod is as curt and hate-filled. “Nephilim.”

The certainty hits me, that they know each other, and not as members of the eternal enemy species. There seems to be an abyss filled with mountains of corpses and rivers of charred blood between them.

Interesting.

The way her eyes simmer with animosity rather than the derision she’s been slinging at me—or the swooning every female has been fluttering at him—makes me warm to her. Enemy of my enemy and all that.

All newfound fuzzy feelings splinter into a million shards when she walks away through me, a steel shoulder ramming into my arm.

Before the burst of pain and fury makes me tackle her to the ground, and get disemboweled by those lovely horns, she tosses cheerily over one elegant shoulder, “Catch and fry you, later, Nothing.”

Fearing she may have broken mine, I gingerly examine it as she prowls away like a lioness deciding which prey to shred next. Her ponytail flits behind her as if with a life of its own, making it clear who she is. Future resident mean girl.

And I managed to attract her attention, even while trying to blend into the background. Then I proceeded to make myself her primary target.

Another jerk on the leash reminds me there’s always worse.

And as I stumble after Earth’s and Heaven’s Ultimate Angelthug, I wonder.

Between these two monsters, the archangels’ finite interest in me, and my punchable expressions and runaway mouth, how long can I possibly last around here?

By now, I only hope I last long enough to make certain Sarah is safe.