Chapter Seventeen

Merihem

With his heart lodged somewhere at the back of his throat, Merihem’s demon darted past the police officer and scooped up their blissful one. “Peni. Peni, what’s wrong? What happened?” his growl was sinister as the officer approached, appearing like he was about to reach out and touch.

“Do you need the paramedics to come back?”

The goat lifted its head immediately and licked the side of the demon’s cheek, heading up towards his horns. The fright turned to something equally unhelpful, but it helped their heart to shift back to where it belonged. “No… no, we’re fine. We’re leaving,” he answered, spying Scott and the driver pulling up.

We need to have a little chat with our goat because something is off.

Off? Our blissful one fainted! Their demon side sounded totally affronted.

No one recovers from a faint like that.

“—can’t leave the scene of an accident till I have all the details,” the officer blustered, red-faced.

They tuned back in. “Scott, give this officer details of where to find me,” he informed the demon, approaching them.

They didn’t wait for a reply, and Merihem, for once, was glad for Scott’s efficient nature when he pulled out a card as they stalked off.

In the back of the car more suited to his size, Merihem didn’t give his demon a chance to do anything, forcing their shift. Holding onto Peni, he stroked a hand over his back. “Can you tell me what that was all about? Did you really faint?” In hindsight, despite what his demon had seen, Merihem wasn’t exactly sure the goat had fainted for real.

There were several bleats before Merihem chuckled, and Scott got into the back of the car.

“Where to?” Scott asked, altering the cuff of his suit jacket as he crossed his legs.

“Take us to Dakata’s house.”

Scott gave the instructions to the driver, and Merihem tried to coax Peni to shift.

By the time they’d got to Dakata’s the only conversation he’d had was with a rather giddy goat who’d attempted to climb his chest. Scott had watched them, not revealing any of his thoughts. “I need you to follow up with George, the cab driver. Go to the hospital and pay any bills for his care. See that they look after him.”

His blond hair never moved as Scott nodded. “Of course.”

Merihem got out of the car, forgetting he was naked, as a woman walked past and gasped. His little goat started bleating and kicking his hooves in the woman’s direction when she stopped to stare. Merihem grinned at his possessive little goat's actions. “That told her,” he murmured in the goat’s ear and got a lick to his face.

He returned his attention to the open door and Scott, hugging his goat closer to him. “I’ll not be in the office for the rest of the week. Can you email me everything you want me to look at and courier over anything requiring signing?” He wasn’t going to be leaving Peni, he might have healed, but Merihem wasn’t taking any chances until he knew what had caused the accident.

“Of course.”

A demon of few words, Merihem didn’t prolong the conversation when he wanted to find out what was wrong with their blissful one. Something was fishy, and he was more concerned about that than where the driver of the other car who had caused the accident had vanished to.

Inside the house, in his bedroom after translocating, he placed the goat down and turned around, knowing how shy Peni was. “I won’t look, so you can shift and get dressed.”

There was muttering a second later and Merihem held back his humor.

“Why couldn’t I have gotten a less dramatic goat? Why? Did you need to be so…”

“Cute,” Merihem supplied helpfully when Peni appeared at a loss.

“He’s not cute. And could you please put on some pants? I’m sure when you shift, you could do it wearing pants to stop folks gawking at you, it’s not right when you’re mi…”

This time he couldn’t hold back the chuckle at how peeved Peni sounded at anyone looking at his naked body. “I’ll try harder to remember,” he answered, doing his best to sound contrite.

He huffed. “That would be a start.”

Merihem glanced quickly over his shoulder and caught Peni eyeing his backside with a look that made his cock plump. When their gazes locked, Peni blushed. “Pants. Pants would be good.”

As Peni had dressed in the few things he’d deemed to bring from the basement, he turned and in the blink of an eye Merihem had on sweats and a T-shirt. A look from Peni when his gaze traveled down his clothed body showed… confliction .

Merihem could work with that.

Then Peni placed his fisted hands on his hips. “I think it’s time you and I talked about why you’re here.”

“Huh?” Changing track, Merihem’s head tilted. “Why now?”

“Tell me, please.”

Something was most definitely off. Merihem tucked a hand under Peni’s elbow. “You need food, and so do I, let me make us something and we can talk while I cook.”

“You’re going to cook?”

He didn’t resist, but he sounded doubtful of Merihem’s skills in the kitchen. “Yes, I know you’re vegetarian, so I’ll make a pasta dish that works for you.”

Once in the kitchen and Merihem had helped to seat Peni, getting him a fruit juice, he then went to retrieve everything he’d need for a vegetable pasta dish. Taking a moment to wash his hands, he gathered his thoughts. Peni sipped at his juice, watching him closely.

“Silas’s sister was taken to the demon realm, kidnapped because of me.”

“You?” Peni croaked, spitting out a mouthful of juice.

Merihem nodded and got a cloth to wipe the counter, knowing Peni wouldn’t like it messy. “Well, not me exactly, but it might just as well of been. I asked Kisha, another demon, to help Dakata find Silas. It led us all to the forest. Kisha has a big mouth, and he told some other demons about Dakata’s blissful connection to a dryad. Only he didn’t make it clear that the blissful one was a male, not a female, so evil demons who wanted to hurt Dakata went into the forest and took Wanda.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Merihem watched Peni mull that over as he chopped up mushrooms, garlic, onions and egg plant. Before making a tomato sauce. The sounds of bubbling came from the two pans on the stove and broke the silence between them.

“How is that your fault?”

Merihem layered sheets of pasta into the base of a big oven dish. He added the vegetables grated cheese, then the tomato sauce. “I didn’t consider how Kisha was.”

“So you brought yourself up here as penance?”

“No.” Merihem sighed as he picked up the cheese sauce, and poured it over the top layer of pasta. He picked up the packet of grated cheese and sprinkled it liberally over the top of the sauce when he was finished. “I helped Dakata find Wanda, and understandably, he took his vengeance out on those who’d wanted to hurt Silas, and subsequently Wanda. Dakata left a trail of destruction, and the king of our realm wasn’t happy.”

“Oh…”

“Yep. I should have gone to him. Taken five fucking minutes to clue the king in on the situation as my position deemed, and… things would’ve been different.”

We would’ve missed out on meeting our blissful one, his demon snarled. But Peni had other things going in that delightful head of his.

“Position? What position is that?”

Merihem turned to look at Peni, who wore a deep frown. “I’m—or was—Controller of the demon realm and the human realm. My role was to deal with those who worked outside the laws by inflicting harm—death on those who didn’t deserve it,” Merihem explained, thinking he was probably digging himself a grave with how Peni’s forehead was a mass of wrinkles.

“So, like a police officer?”

It wasn’t technically lying to say yes, but Merihem wasn’t going to lie. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t take a minute to figure out how to explain what he did without scaring Peni. He placed the dish in the oven and covered it with a lid, setting the temperature. When he couldn’t avoid it any longer, he turned to glance at Peni. “In a manner of speaking. Only with greater authority.”

“Greater authority?” His brows rose and Merihem could see the cent drop into the slot. “You kill bad people,” Peni declared breathlessly.

He nodded. What more was there to say?

Peni shifted on his seat, and Merihem eyed the blush coating Peni’s skin. “You aren’t put off by that?”

There was more shifting on his seat, before Peni finally shook his head. “You only kill bad people, right?” Once more, Merihem nodded. “Then why would that ‘put me off’, as you put it? So your penance for helping Dakata and not speaking to your king was being sent up here and losing your job?”

“Yeah. That about sums it up.”

“Would what you did be seen as a bad thing by other demons? Black demons, for example?”

About to take a step away from the stove to clean up, Merihem halted. There were only a handful of black demons in their realm. Merihem knew them all, but one in particular, he knew very well. The differing skin color denoted the part of the realm where a demon was born.

His demon growled, and Merihem’s stomach twisted into a painful knot at the sense of foreboding that came at Peni seeing a black demon in the first place. “Why are you asking me that?”