I’d spotted several CW stars and at least one fresh-out-of-rehab pop star during my brief time on the patio. Loads of options for the demon to choose from. Too bad he’d never get down there to try.
This fight wouldn’t look very fair to an outside observer—if there had been any—and the Vegas oddsmakers would not have liked my chances. I was a five-foot-two human woman with a sword and no obvious supernatural skills to speak of. He was a seven-foot-nine demon who had already thrown me over the edge once.
Yeah, yeah, I know. But trust me when I tell you, I’d made it through worse and lived to tell the tale.
Except that one time I died. But that was a whole other story.
He looked at my sword as if it were no scarier than one of those cute little plastic ones bartenders use to skewer orange slices and maraschino cherries. My sword was not a martini-glass mockery, thank you. It was silver-coated and several hundred years old, and had once belonged to a Japanese vampire.
&
nbsp; I had found out the hard way how much it hurt to be stabbed with it.
This guy would soon join that special club as well.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Belphegor,” he replied too quickly, his cracked lips curling up to show those creepy reptile teeth.
“Yeah and I’m Charlize Theron.”
“I loved you in Atomic Blonde.”
Get a load of Mister Jokey Pants over here. He obviously wasn’t born yesterday though. Some wee baby demons were hella stupid, pardon the pun, and they’d brag about their names to whoever asked. Why was this one smart? Well, for starters, he’d told me his name was Belphegor. Belphegor being one of the seven princes of Hell, according to Christian theology. It would be like walking into a hotel and giving your name as Elton John.
And this guy was no Elton John.
For him to casually toss the name out like that meant it most certainly wasn’t his, because he wasn’t about to give me control over him. Knowing his name would give me—or someone who actually had magical powers—the ability to bind him.
I would have to settle for cutting him up into really small pieces, taking those pieces to the office, and shipping them to different depots across the country where they could be dealt with accordingly. Witches who could bind and banish demons were great, and my sister Genie was one of them, but they also weren’t conveniently available at my beck and call.
Chopping someone up was something I could do on my own.
In theory.
“Who sent you?”
“I answer to no one.”
“I mean, come on now. You can’t expect me to believe that.”
He Who Was Not Belphegor took a few steps towards me, his gait impressively even considering how hard it must have been to walk on gravel with those hooves. I was wearing some pretty nice Chloe heeled ankle boots that were now exceedingly soggy, and I had to be honest, I was having a hard time looking cool.
Demons have a hierarchy. There are greater demons, like the one he’d named, but they had such a rock star status I had a hard time believing they really existed no matter what the big books said. Then there were all number of lesser demons. I did not think this guy was a first-tier demon, despite what he was trying to convince me of. He was bottom of the barrel, especially if he was so hungry to stay in the mortal world. You know that saying, Would you rather be a slave in Heaven or a star in Hell? Well for demons, the answer was neither.
They wanted to be on Earth.
And I did not want to let that happen.
They also loved to claim they were bigger and badder than they were. I met a demon once who claimed he was Grendel, of Beowulf fame. That guy might have actually been telling the truth.
He was dead now.
“Look, we can keep chatting about this like what you say matters, but I’m very wet and uncomfortable, and I’d like to go home and shower.”
“I could come with you.” He licked his teeth.
“I’m not your type, sweetie.”