Demon Kissed - Katie May Page 0,43

better scour the damn town for her, because we’re gonna find her and end this shit. I’m not having any damn Center mess things up for us.”

“I will. But I already told you, we should have refused this summons.”

“Couldn’t. It was our number,” Zolroth responds. “None of the other squadrons would have taken it anyway. Not with the big battle going on down South and a chance to put those cherubs in their place.”

“Staying here is stupid,” Raz retorts, getting heated. “With our Center around, we’re fucking vulnerable.”

“Yeah! I bloody well fucking know!” Zolroth points at his own eye, which is swollen. “I experienced it first-hand. But you know what happens if we back out on a summons and a chance to convert someone.”

Convert someone?

To Jesus?

To Satan?

What does that even mean?

There’s silence for a moment, and I use that time to try to process what I’m hearing. I can hardly follow their conversation. I mean, I can guess the battle with cherubs means angels, maybe that’s a derogatory term? But what the hell is a center? Is it my town? A place?

Zolroth’s voice is low as he announces, “If I find our Center, I’ll kill her.”

Oh. Question answered. A Center is a person. Well then, I’m on board. Let’s find this she-demon bitch and off her.

Zolroth and Raz whip around and stare at me. And I realize that my stupid mouth once again blurted things out and I’ve been caught spying on demons.

Insert face into palm.

14

When I curl up in bed, I have a hard time falling asleep because my mind is still whirling.

The guys laughed at me when they’d heard me spout off about killing demons. I’d started to get embarrassed, until Zolroth had scooped me up into his arms and called my violent tendencies “adorable.”

My mind keeps flickering over how I’d felt as I applied wound cream to Zolroth’s cuts and bruises. I’d had to bite down on my lip in order to keep silly, girlish smiles from constantly creeping over my lips as Zolroth complained that he wasn’t a child who needed a nursemaid. But somehow, despite his verbal protests, he kept unbuttoning his stained, collared shirt and finding new scratches for me to treat. My hands had gotten to slide over his abs.

Real man abs. Or demon abs, I guess, if you want to be technical about it.

I’d gotten to touch them. Not just ogle from afar, not just imagine them as I read a dirty book, but touch them.

And then after Zolroth, I’d gone to treat Akor. His eyes had burned a path from my heart right down to my panties as I’d gently taped gauze over his scratch.

I swallow hard and squeeze my eyes shut, my fingers clenching the covers tightly.

It’s not real, I tell myself.

I think about the lust that Van exudes and how it’s been making people at school go crazy. Four students were hauled out of the bathrooms earlier today for getting it on during school hours, because he saturates the very air with lust.

That’s all this is.

It’s not real. It’s not like what I feel for William.

I picture William’s face as I snuggle into my pillow and force myself to take deep, calming breaths. It works for a minute, but his face is quickly replaced by Raz’s face leaning over my own, his dark eyes soft for once.

Somehow, a tender look on Raz’s face is shoving away my daydreams about William. Maybe because finding a gentle expression on that asshole’s face seems even more impossible than getting William to like me?

But I’d seen Raz’s eyes go soft earlier tonight.

Heat flares in my stomach as I think about the she-demon that is apparently out to get my guys. This Center. I’d panicked, of course, as soon as I’d learned about it and gotten caught—launching into the guys and going on a tear.

Raz had been the tiniest bit sympathetic to my fear at first, particularly when I started spouting off about demons attacking Adam. That was when the Hell’s-frozen-over, call-an-ambulance-because-I’m-hallucinating, soft eyes had come out and stunned me into silence.

“No she-demons are going to attack you. Demons don’t attack humans. We only fight angelic bastards.” The tender look had faded as Raz’s normal asshole expression returned, and he added, “So stop freaking out and being dramatic.”

Dickwad.

Like I know all the rules of Heaven and Hell.

I blow a raspberry at no one and quickly decide that’s a terrible idea, because the spit ends up all over my pillow and I have to swap