him and threw him in the shed, and that’s when he’d run headlong into himself. Physical abuse Evan could handle. The prospect of being stuffed and roasted by the witch made his nut sack shrivel, but the weeks of up close and personal with the inside of his head had nearly driven him bonkers.
Hello, Evan Beck: panderer; goon; carjacker; kidnapper; robber; burglar; and drug dealer. Like that guy? Then you’re gonna love Evan Beck, murderer.
The streets where he and the god demons had lived were mean and dirty, and he’d killed to survive. Pervs, mostly, who assumed a skinny kid was an easy mark.
Wrong.
Those deaths didn’t eat at him. The poor suckers he’d lured with the promise of money, drugs, or a good time? The ones he’d knocked unconscious and dragged there by force?
Those deaths bothered him plenty. Though, technically, he didn’t kill them.
Nah, he served them up like cold cuts.
Would have been kinder to do the deed himself. Death by demon was not a pretty sight.
The bright spot in his world of suckage? Demonoids can’t be possessed, thank you Lord Jesus.
He’d witnessed the change more times than he could count, and he never got used to it. The demons would leak out of their old, wasted bodies, stringy, amorphous wisps of horror eager for new shells and good times in someone else’s crib. The poor norms Evan had snagged invariably screamed and begged for mercy.
Too late. Demons didn’t do mercy. They poured into their new vessels and took root like cancer.
Bye-bye norms; welcome to hell.
What was left of the used carcasses—not much by the time the demons were done with them—puddled on the floor like overcooked cheese. The smell, the god-awful smell of rotting scorched flesh permeated everything around. It clung to Evan’s clothes, the furniture, even the goddamn walls.
After thirty-one years of living with the djegrali, demon stink was perma-blasted to the inside of Evan’s nose.
Possession sucked ass. It was downhill from there for the norms. Demons partied like rock stars. By the time the new bodies were worn out—six months, maybe a year—there was nothing left. A demon trapped in a human at the moment of death died, so Hagilth and Elgdrek were always on the lookout to trade up.
No help for the norm there, either. If the demon vacated a unit early for a spiffier model, the abandoned body didn’t last long. Too weakened and used up.
Sometimes Evan envied the norms. Death was not an option for him. He belonged to the masters. He could do them no harm, nor himself. If he ever doubted it, all he had to do was look down. The details of the ironclad contract were carved into his flesh.
He was well and truly screwed. So Evan danced to their tune. Like the poor S.O.B.s he brought to the sacrificial altar, he had no choice.
It was a dirty job, but he didn’t lose sleep over it. Most of the time. He trafficked in a certain class of norm: greedy; violent; looking for fast cash or a quick fix.
Not all, though. Some happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Those were the deaths that had haunted him in the witch’s shed, the victims’ images playing in a continuous loop. Awake or zonked out on the witch’s dope, he saw them.
Until Sassy came along. She was a Pollyanna, the spoiled, sheltered daughter of a rich bitch and her even richer husband. She’d never known evil, terror, or want. He should have hated her on sight. Far from it. Funny, sunny little Sassy Peterson had gotten under his skin in an instant. The anger and bitterness faded when she was around.
She was unadulterated joy in a world jammed bunghole to earlobes with ugly.
Or so he’d thought.
Evan rubbed his chest, the pressure building inside him. He should have known it was too good to be true. Sassy seemed uncomplicated, but she had layers. The freaky scene at the restaurant had racked him in the nuts. She was an emotional nuclear reactor. What if she went vampire-fairy-badass on the air in front of millions of faithful viewers?
The sponsors would hit cancel on The Sassy Sunshine Show so fast it would make your head spin. The golden ring he’d grabbed turned out to be brass. Typical rotten luck.
God, he was pissed. He’d been on simmer since the shed. He had to keep a lid on. Didn’t want to hulk out again.
Damn that witch. When he got his hands on her . . .
He inhaled.