Chapter Text
“He’s still making a dumb face behind me, isn’t he?” Mira asked, sort of in an undertone.
Baby glanced back to check and hummed skeptically. “...Gotta be honest, I think his face just looks like that.”
“Has anyone told you that you look especially short and pathetic today?” Romance inquired sweetly. Clearly still sulking then; good to know.
“Aw, no, come on, Ro,” Abby chided. “He’s not especially tiny and pitiful today…he’s always like that. Don’t worry, buddy, we still like you; we just have to be extra careful not to trip over you—ah, no, no claws, Mira help—”
Mira ignored them all as Baby lunged past her at Abby, who ducked behind Rumi and Jinu for cover. Romance lengthened his stride a little to drop into step with her, and since he wasn’t scrambling to go save Abby from himself she figured that meant Baby wasn’t actually trying to kill him like it sounded. Rumi or Zoey probably would have stepped in to stop it if he was.
Probably.
“All this fuss just because I offered a massage,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t know why you always insist on assuming the worst; I know you had a very busy schedule today and I’m sure a massage would help.”
A massage from an actual masseuse probably would help, at least a little—currently, the biggest source of tension in her life were the former Saja Boys, and not even the most gifted masseuse in the world could get rid of them for her. She definitely wouldn’t be accepting his offer, however, or any other offer that would entail letting him touch her for any reason.
“No messing around on hunts, remember?” she told them pointedly, as Abby darted back around to more or less hide behind her and Romance. For a given measure of “hide”, anyway; he was almost a foot taller than her and even Romance only came up to his shoulder. And he was greatly mistaken if he thought Mira would intercede on his behalf. “If you’re going to come with us, at least don’t get in the way.”
“We never do,” Abby said with a touch of wounded pride. Mira wouldn’t say they never got in the way, but admittedly, the five stray demons were...not entirely useless. Some of them could even manage to focus for a whole ten seconds at a stretch if they had to—mostly Baby and Jinu; Mystery only counted if the object of focus was Zoey. Abby and Romance were capable of not getting entirely on her nerves, at least when they were focusing on fighting other demons still on the wrong side of the Honmoon. But without a viable target to aim them at yet…they were mostly still just getting on her fucking nerves.
“No massages then, if you’re so insistent, but surely there’s something else we could do to help you relax then?” Romance added, playing at innocent but his tone leading.
Mira glanced despairingly to the side to see where Baby had ended up. His presence was usually enough to deter them at least slightly, on the grounds that he was a complete dick to everyone except Zoey and sometimes Mystery, but Zoey must have called him off before he could do any real damage to Abby and he’d gotten pulled into a conversation with her.
She could chase them off on her own, of course; she’d done it plenty of times. But she was certain there was a pack of some sort of demons or spirits in the area, and there was always a possibility of getting jumped if she let herself get distracted by Romance and Abby. And then she might just have to kill them on principle, despite having promised Rumi she wouldn’t…without a good reason, anyway.
Instead of arguing with them—because engagement of any kind would only give them the attention they wanted, and lately she was fully committed to the strategy of ignoring them as much as possible—she tried to walk a little faster and outpace them. It might have worked if they’d been more distracted, but they were both focused on her at the moment and they were, unfortunately, tall enough to easily match pace with her. It backfired too, because now they’d moved too far from the others to be easily in range, and when the gwishin finally made their appearance they converged on her as the closest human around.
Gwishin were a lesser kind of spirit, hardly more than wisps of fog with claws and wide, gaping mouths set into blank, featureless heads—deadly to a normal human, but hardly a threat to Mira except for how many there were. They’d expected more than one because they tended to travel in packs, moving in clumps like a tangle of spiders, but this was more than the five or six they’d expected to find. There had to be dozens of them here, like they’d gathered here for some purpose, but they were hardly even sentient so what reason could they possibly have?
It was a little strange, but nothing she was overly concerned with at the moment. Gwishin of any variety weren’t much of a threat to a hunter, even in a large group. And although she would never, ever admit it to them…the five Saja Boys weren’t terrible in a fight. Hunting with them required some adjustments to their usual fighting style to avoid hitting one of them by accident, but they were pretty good about staying out of the line of fire. Romance and Abby were still flanking her, but they dropped back once she summoned her woldo and were careful to stay out of her range. The demons fought with their claws rather than with weapons, but they didn’t seem to need any other weapon—they tore through the gwishin as easily as the hunters did, and in short order only a few remained.
One of the gwishin flickered past her just out of range, but before she could chase after it, Romance shredded his claws through the center of it, scattering its wavering form and destroying it in seconds. That left only four gwishin remaining, clumped up together and trapped on all sides by the eight of them. Zoey held back—she couldn’t throw her shin-kal without the risk of missing and hitting Abby or Jinu across from her, but Rumi and Mira closed in to deal with the final stragglers while the others kept watch.
A thick plume of oily black smoke boiled up in the center of the remaining gwishin, obscuring their forms in seconds. Mira and Rumi both stopped short as the gwishin shrieked within the smoke, their voices high and shrill with animal terror. One of them lunged as though to escape the smoke, not so much heading toward Mira as away from whatever was within the obscuring cloud of smoke, but a long, pale hand tipped in black talons snatched it out of the air and crushed it. It died with a last wordless howl of terror.
Mira snapped her woldo up to bear on the cloud of smoke and could see Rumi doing the same with her saingeom off to her left, but for a long, tense moment no one moved. It was obvious some sort of demon or spirit was hidden within the smoke, but this was utterly unlike anything they’d ever encountered before and the uncertainty was enough to hold them all back.
In the next instant, the black smoke seethed and roiled like a pot boiling over and it rushed toward Mira. She dodged but wasn’t fast enough to avoid a swipe to the ribs, a heavy, glancing blow that knocked her off balance and sent her staggering back. She caught her balance on her woldo, burying the blade deep in the pavement to brace herself up. The shock of seeing her own blood splattering the dirty concrete overrode the pain for a few jarring seconds. She sucked in a breath and wrenched her blade free as Rumi and Zoey both leapt at the new demon.
She’d taken a hit from demons before. Not often, especially as the three of them got more experience with fighting together, learning to move as a team and cover for one another, but it had happened. It had never felt like this before, burning like acid, wending deeper into her veins and spreading like fire. Worse was the feeling of something flickering, as though her very soul guttered like a candle in a hard breeze. She faltered, gasping, and reflexively tightened her grip on her woldo.
A hunter did not drop her weapon. Mira hadn’t spent so long training, so long fighting, just to do something foolish like drop her weapon mid-battle.
She tightened her grip on the shaft of the weapon, feeling the comforting weight and gathering herself for another attack...and the woldo vanished. The sensation of the candle burning in her chest guttered and died in a wisp of acrid smoke. She was left empty-handed, wide-eyed with shock, feeling hollowed out in a way that was hard to describe. Something like evisceration, something like heartbreak, more painful than either. Too stunned to move, even to get out of the way of the—the whatever the fuck that was, the demon of some sort that they’d never encountered the like of before—could only stand stock-still, clutching the bloodied wound over her ribs and watching the flash of purple-black claws emerging from a cloud of thick, oily smoke—
A body knocked her out of the way. Not Zoey or Rumi—they all knew how to catch each other in a flying tackle, had practiced and practiced to do it without hurting each other. This was someone bigger, heavier, and clearly had absolutely no idea how to soften against another body. It was less like a heroic save and more like being hit by a truck. But they cleared the reach of the claws safely and landed in a tangle with only minimal bruises, so it was a win overall. Even before catching sight of the bright magenta-pink hair, a few shades deeper than her own, she knew who it was.
She didn’t have time to decide how to respond or find leverage to shove Abby away—she could see Zoey twisting to try to avoid another flash of claws that would have torn her abdomen open, instead catching a slash across the dip of her spine. Past her, Rumi was already bleeding, her whole right arm red with it, and at this distance Mira couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt. Rumi didn’t have her sword either, and Mira could see her clawing at empty air as she tried and failed to call it from the Honmoon. Mystery pulled Zoey safely away from the demon’s claws just as her shin-kal vanished.
Whatever affliction had taken her weapon from her, it had worked on them, too. All three of them were weaponless. Defenseless and surrounded by demons. A nightmare scenario. It had gone all wrong so quickly.
“Go!” Jinu was shouting at his little demon tagalongs, his Saja Boys, while simultaneously grappling to pull Rumi away. “Take them and go! Run!”
He finally managed to get an arm securely around Rumi’s waist and they both vanished, leaving behind no trace except for the trademark puff of purple-red smoke.
“Rumi! No!” Terror shook her out of her shock and she fought against Abby’s hold, twisting and clawing to escape him. Across from her, she could see her own horror reflected in Zoey’s expression, but before she could do more than open her mouth, Mystery pulled her away in his own cloud of smoke, Baby vanishing in almost the same instant.
Mira was strong enough to flip Abby over her head with the right leverage. She knew she could; she’d done it before to prove a point. Even with bad leverage, she was strong enough to send him sprawling if she put in the effort to really try—and she didn’t see any point in pulling her punches, because if they were close enough to catch her fists then they probably deserved it. But she was trying now, fighting with everything she had...and he was unmoved. To his credit, he looked almost as startled as she did about this development. But he already had a good grip on her, so when Romance dropped down to catch his shoulder and hiss, “What are you doing? Move,” it took no effort at all for him to pull her with him as he teleported away.
Mira had never been teleported by a demon. Point of fact: Mira had not actually known they could take anyone with them when they teleported, at least until tonight. She was completely unprepared for how terrible it would feel, like getting pulled inside out and dissolved. She and Abby had been tangled up when they vanished and they were still tangled when they landed, though he made an effort to catch her. It would have been better if he’d just dropped her, she thought sourly—his attempt to catch her threw him off balance too, and he flattened her on the ground where they’d fallen in a heap. He’d had the forethought to cushion the back of her head with one hand, which was a surprisingly considerate thing to do, but it wouldn’t have even been necessary if he hadn’t been clinging onto her in the first place. Romance landed on his feet beside them, as gracefully as a cat, seemingly for the sole purpose of making their crash-landing look even worse by comparison.
“Get off me,” Mira snarled, elbowing Abby squarely in the throat. That should have sent him rolling across the ground and choking, regretting his choices for at least the next half hour. Instead he made a startled little umpf sound, reflexive like he’d expected it to hurt, but then blinked at her in surprise. Notably, he was not in the slightest bit crumpling in agonized pain at having invoked her hunterly wrath. Rather, he looked mildly startled, then flattered, the big idiot.
“Aw—you barely even hit me that time. You do like me!”
“Get up,” Romance said impatiently. “They got hit by whatever that thing was; she doesn’t have her powers. None of them do.”
Fuck. Fuck. So that really had happened.
Worse—it really happened, and demons had noticed. Demons had seen her weakness first-hand, and demons had scattered her team. The demons in question were Rumi’s pet project, so it wasn’t as cataclysmic as it sounded on paper. Yet. But it was a terrible development in a night that had otherwise started off fairly promising. And now her friends were gone, and she was alone, outnumbered two to one without any ability to defend herself.
“Wait, is that what happened?” Abby pushed up to his knees—briefly straddling Mira; as soon as she had her full strength back she was going to kick him so hard Jinu would have to rewrite all their songs to accommodate a castrato—and then clambered up to his feet, bending to offer her a hand up. She batted his hand away impatiently (he let her bat him away; her fingers stung where she’d clipped him too hard and he hadn’t even noticed) and pulled herself up. It hurt, a lot, and she couldn’t manage to catch the hiss of pain that escaped. They both saw her grimace and pale. She wavered on her feet and Abby stepped closer to press a steadying hand to her hip. She wanted to elbow him away on principle, but for one thing, she actually did need the help right now while she was still weak-kneed and shaky. That was another thing—there was a very real and humiliating possibility that he wouldn’t actually notice if she tried as weak as she was now.
Instead, she ignored them both and fumbled for her phone with her free hand, her other still clamped tight across the bloody gashes on her ribs. Fortunately the screen hadn’t cracked when Abby landed on her. Twice. Why was he so heavy anyway? He was a demon; they had preternatural strength or whatever, it wasn’t like he actually needed all of those muscles.
As she pulled up their group chat, the first notification came in from Rumi, a garbled spasm of meaningless letters. Mira frowned at it and started to type u ok? when Zoey’s responses started in, rapid fire like always.
Zoey: everyone ok???
Zoey: we’re ok rn but i can’t pull my weapons
Zoey: can either of you pull weapons???
Zoey: i didn’t know we could teleport w them; Rumi did u know that?? Do you teleport w Jinu?? Mystery doesn’t teleport w me :(
Zoey: bb says the demon thing might be poison?!? D:
Zoey: n thats why no weapons :(
Zoey: bb says he can’t teach me to teleport but i think he means won’t teach me; will update when he agrees. he can be bribed.
Zoey: srsly r u ok i'm freaking out
Well. At least that was proof that it was really Zoey. Couldn’t be bothered to capitalize or type out full words, but she could still drop a semi-colon in a sentence and find the time to pout about her weird-ass relationship with Mystery and Baby.
She typed, I’m ok and, because she knew what the next questions would be, grudgingly added, I can’t pull a weapon either. R&A are with me.
Rumi finally got herself together, wherever she was (probably having a thank god we survived makeout with Jinu, ugh) and started a video call instead of texting. Mira accepted the call and barely had to wait more than a second before the screen divided and Zoey was visible too. Or, specifically, Zoey’s jaw and part of her shoulder, with Baby wedged in against her neck to see the screen. Mystery wasn’t in frame, but Mira could pick out the silvery-lavender of his hair on Zoey’s other side, all three of them smushed in close.
She bit back a sigh because she already knew Abby would see it and take it as a cue to do the same, and—yep. He pressed up close against her back and ducked down to bring his face level with hers, practically breathing down her neck. He reached over her shoulder, and because he was stupidly tall he had the freakishly long reach to catch Romance’s arm and reel him into their huddle. There was no way Romance would be able to see the screen around Abby, so he leaned up against Mira’s other side instead. Stubbornly, she held her position and pretended not to notice where either of them was pressed against her.
(Shifting her weight would bring her more into contact with one or the other of them; there was nowhere to move even if she didn’t feel like she might fall down without them to help brace her up. It was temporary, but for now she could ignore the curl of Abby’s broad hand over her hip and the light press of Romance’s arm across her back, his hand on Abby’s shoulder to tuck her between them. This would only be tolerated for the duration of their conference call, and it was fine, Mira was completely fine with this.)
“Is everyone okay?” Rumi asked frantically. She was somewhere indoors, Mira could see, but couldn’t make out enough of the background to tell where she was. Not their penthouse, but somewhere dark and quiet. Jinu’s shoulder was visible in the frame, like Rumi was leaning on him, but he hadn’t tried to contort himself down to fit in the frame. Unlike Abby, the idiot.
“Fine,” Mira lied, curt even by her standards. Zoey was delivering a high-speed monologue that more or less translated to, “I’m hurt but not dying, and I’m trying to find the right leverage to bribe my situationship into teaching me demon magic”.
Mira whished she could say this was a new development, but unfortunately it was old news at this point. Rumi was learning from Jinu how to control her demonic abilities, which had been long-suppressed. Zoey had decided a fun bonding activity would be to, apparently, pester the shit out of Baby and Mystery to teach her, too. Baby had, at least so far, mostly tolerated this with fraying patience, but Mystery had actually tried to accommodate her in his own (mostly non-verbal) way. As far as Mira was aware, Zoey’s side of the project had gone absolutely nowhere, given that she wasn’t actually a demon and was more just a gremlin, but she seemed to be having fun anyway.
Mira had declined to join this project when Abby and Romance offered, but had conceded that Rumi should learn and it was (probably) harmless for Zoey to try to learn, too. As long as she didn’t have to get involved or spend more time than was strictly necessary with any former Saja Boys, she didn’t care. She was trying to be supportive of them and their (weird as hell) relationships, but her resolve was mostly still in a baby-steps stage where she didn’t ask for any details and they didn’t tell her any details, and she could skate along on the thin ice of plausible deniability a little longer.
“Where are you?” Mira cut in impatiently. “We shouldn’t split up while we’re...while we can’t access our weapons.”
Not defenseless and never helpless, but...unarmed. Lacking their usual strength. And now scattered who even knew where.
“We’re in my mom’s old apartment,” Rumi admitted a bit uncomfortably. “I, um. I showed it to Jinu recently, so he knew where it was.”
“We’re...wait, I don’t actually know. Where is this?” Zoey craned her head to look around. Somewhere with a lot of neon lights, but no one close by from the sound of it.
“Yongsan,” Baby told her. “Near the Electronics Market.”
“Oooh, right, we were here last week to get you a new laptop.” Zoey brightened with recognition. “So, you can only teleport somewhere you’ve been before? That makes sense.”
“Picked somewhere far from where we were,” Mystery murmured, his voice barely carrying to the camera.
“That was a good idea!” Zoey told him brightly. “Good job!”
“We’re in Hongdae,” Romance added. Was it suspicious that he didn’t try to narrow it down more than that? Or was he just trying to stay on topic? He continued before Mira could decide to interrogate him further. “We shouldn’t go back to the penthouse yet. That thing might go looking for the hunters. We can all find somewhere to stay the night and regroup in the morning to figure out what to do.”
“Ro, you catch that thing’s scent?” Baby asked.
“No. Too much smoke,” Romance told him. “You?”
“Nah. Too much smoke for me, too. But it scratched up the hunters so we might be able to catch something from that. We’ll find somewhere safe first and then try—we’ll text if we find anything.”
“Hang on, catch what? Catch what from what?” Mira demanded, overlapping with Zoey saying, “You can smell what attacked us from the wound it left?”
Which, fuck, that was probably a better question, wasn’t it? Was that what he was implying, that they needed to...what, sniff the wound? Gross.
“You can do that?” Rumi, startled, looked up at Jinu. “Wait, can I do that?”
“Find a safe place, then explain. Text later. If it shows up and kills you in the night, maybe try to send someone a text about it first,” Baby said impatiently, then ended their side of the call. Sometimes Mira forgot how much of an asshole he was.
“Wait—damn it, Jinu, what’s he talking about?” Mira snapped, clenching the phone so hard it hurt her hands. Which was just embarrassing, honestly; usually she had to be careful not to grip it too hard in case it broke. It was like she’d been reduced down to how she’d been at fifteen, when she’d only just properly started her training with Celine, still fumbling and ineffective and scared all the time. It sucked to go back, but it was even worse to have Abby and Romance for company while it happened.
Rumi obligingly angled the camera up, so Mira was able to see the way Jinu froze up and got all awkward and evasive. “Uh—I mean. Well, we can...the wound might have traces of...Ro, you can explain it better than me, talk to you later, stay safe, bye!”
“You—” Mira began angrily, at the same time Romance yelped, “Why me?” but then Rumi’s end of the call was gone, too.
“That little fucker,” Mira said wonderingly. Jinu had gotten too comfortable with not being afraid of her—she’d definitely be fixing that just as soon as her powers were back. “What were they talking about?”
It was definitely suspicious that Romance was avoiding an answer this time. “We should get off the street and find somewhere safe.”
The blatant evasion was obnoxious, but even more annoying was the fact that he was right. She was still bleeding and they were all too recognizable to loiter in an alley in the middle of the night. “Fine. Where exactly are we?”
“Hongdae,” Romance said again, which didn’t help at all.
“Why Hongdae of all places?”
“Can’t remember the street name, but there’s a nightclub around the corner from here. Ro and I went there last weekend,” Abby told her, which didn’t really answer the question but did offer a clue as to why they might have been here recently. It was also a little concerning—she knew that sometimes the demons would go out on their own from time to time, although not often as far as she could tell, but knowing it abstractly was different than having to wonder what two demons would be doing in a nightclub full of helpless, intoxicated humans.
Setting aside the not unreasonable concerns, however…she rolled her eyes. “We ran from a fight against a demon more powerful than all eight of us and you took us to a nightclub?”
“I didn’t take us to the nightclub,” Abby said, becoming snippy with the insinuation that his floundering attempt at a plan hadn’t been perfect. “I took us to the alley behind the nightclub, which you’ll notice is empty. Nobody around to start screaming when three people appear out of thin air.”
Which begged the question of what they’d been doing in the unpopulated alleyway in a red-light district that made it memorable enough for Abby to go back there as a first reaction, but the first rule of media interviews was to never ask a question you didn’t want to hear the answer to.
“There’s a hotel close by,” Romance added. The implication that they’d stayed at the hotel last weekend was left unspoken. Mira didn’t question that, either. Huntrix had an event at an awards show last weekend and they’d left the former Saja Boys behind; Mira hadn’t asked what they’d done while the girls were gone and she hadn’t given it much thought when they didn’t offer up any information. Plausible deniability; Rumi made them all swear to be on their best behavior, and Mira pretended to believe it when they agreed.
The thing was. The thing was, Jinu was obvious with his infatuation with Rumi. Any subtlety or subterfuge vanished when she was nearby. And maybe that could have been chalked up to an individual quirk—and what a revelation that quirk had been, discovering that the mastermind behind the plan that nearly shattered their group and almost caused the downfall of the world was actually an awkward dork who was clumsily, ridiculously in love—but then there was Mystery. On his own, he was stand-offish, cold, reserved, composed...and then he spotted Zoey, and he turned into a lovestruck puppy. He followed her everywhere, he did anything she asked and things she hadn’t even mentioned. He brought her drinks and snacks and blankets and pillows and notebooks and new pens like a dog that had learned it would be rewarded for playing fetch. He had no chill, in other words. A measurable lack of chill. It’d be funnier if he wasn’t, like...mildly terrifying to be around. Baby was hardly any better; he had a hint of composure by comparison, but anything Zoey wanted, Zoey got—Baby and Mystery would see to it personally. Baby might scoff and roll his eyes and put up a front about it, but he’d damn well do it.
So. That was three examples of how a down-bad demon behaved. They obsessed, and they fumbled around their object of affection trying to make themselves into some cavemannish provider. Which brought her around to Romance and Abby, who, by all appearances…were courting each other. Mira sometimes caught strays from their absurd little mating dance around each other, but it hadn’t taken more than a few days of observation to realize what was really happening: she was getting caught in their crossfire. With Rumi and Jinu oblivious to anyone else’s presence while they spent hours staring lovingly into each other’s eyes and the complicated three-way tango happening between Mystery, Zoey, and Baby, Mira’s presence around Abby and Romance became default. If Bobby spent more time in the penthouse (and if they’d actually told him about the Saja Boys) then they’d probably just as easily flirt with him instead of her. It had stung a little, in a way she didn’t care to examine more closely, but it made it easier to ignore them when they made flirtatious remarks at her, or tried to bring her things. The same routine had played out enough times that she had the rhythm of it down. It was Abby, all faux innocence, saying, Oh, Mira, I brought you a drink—and here, Ro, I have one for you. It was Romance, his words perfectly innocent and his tone turning it to something sly and insinuating as he waved her over to the space between them on the couch, saying, Mira, come sit with us while we watch a movie—oh, you don’t want to? And pouting about her refusal until Abby made a production of pulling him close to cuddle.
So when Romance led the way up to a love hotel, Mira didn’t bother to raise an eyebrow at them for it. She still seethed about Abby’s arm around her waist but had accepted it as a necessity: he was helping her stay upright, and his body close to hers helped hide the blood on her shirt. Most of her focus was on keeping herself walking; she was in the unenviable position of trusting him to keep her upright and trusting Romance to lead the way. She also accepted that Abby was using her as a convenient prop: they didn’t get more than a second glance from anyone who passed them, not the way they would have caught attention if he’d been wrapped around Romance like this instead. She was a convenient third-wheel and nothing else, and she knew it.
And it was fine anyway, because she wasn’t Rumi and she wasn’t Zoey; she wasn’t going to date one demon, much less two, and wouldn’t have wanted them even if they’d been serious. She just wished they’d take the hint and stop trying to draw her into their nonsense—she didn’t care what they did with each other, as long as they didn’t try to involve her.
They’d picked a hotel that didn’t require ID, which made sense since they didn’t officially exist, and didn’t have a human manning the service desk. Self-service, all electronic. Paid for in two-hour increments; Romance checked the current time and then logged eight hours with a shrug. They had cards to an expense account Rumi set up for them—Mira had laughed when Rumi told her about it, but she had to admit it was better than letting them teleport around and steal things. It wasn’t even that they were malicious about it, they just genuinely didn’t seem to care. It took Jinu putting his foot down to make them use their cards consistently. She had an idle thought about finding someone who could make them fake IDs; they’d have to pick better names for themselves. She refused to help submit paperwork for someone calling themselves “Romance” or “Baby”.
She’d sort of been expecting more from a love hotel picked out by demons. At the very least a heart-shaped bed and some strategically placed mirrors she could make fun of them for. Disappointingly, it was a very normal-looking hotel room. At least it was clean. A queen mattress, white linens turned down neatly. An armchair tucked in the corner by a small trashcan and a curtained window behind it. A nightstand on either side of the mattress and a lamp on each. A surprisingly nice bathroom just to the side of the entrance with a walk-in shower.
She was still bleeding, which ruled out the clean white bedspread as a place to sit. The chair looked like plastic faux leather, something easily wiped clean. When she pushed away from Abby he let go slowly, making sure she stayed on her feet when his support was removed. She eased down into the chair gingerly and kept her hand pressed tight to the bleeding gashes on her ribs. Fuck that hurt. “Okay. Talk.”
Abby sat at the foot of the bed and made himself comfortable, legs spread wide and elbows braced on his knees. Romance didn’t. He was between her and the door, but less in a way that suggested he was blocking her in and more in a way that said he was leaving his escape route open. She raised her eyebrows at him for it—granted, of the three Huntrix, she was the one most likely to attack him, but she’d been very benevolent about the whole process so far (really!) and had only ever attacked as a retaliation for having them intrude on her space. Non-lethally, at that. Rumi had asked her not to harm any of them unless given a good reason to, and Mira had agreed. If that agreement came at the end of a long, heated argument that brought all three of them to tears at least once each, well...that was between them.
Jinu was tolerable, when he wasn’t mooning at Rumi. Baby was a bitchy little asshole, and if he hadn’t been a demon Mira thought they could have been friends immediately. Most days she almost didn’t mind having him around. Mystery was...weird, frankly, and a bit off-putting, but he was entirely wrapped up in Zoey’s world and otherwise was a quiet, unobtrusive presence in the penthouse. Abby and Romance, though...ugh. They had each other, so there was no reason why they should seek her out unless it was from boredom. Which would have been fine—Baby did that, too, when he tired of the Zoey-and-Mystery show, and honestly he wasn’t bad company most of the time. But where Baby was content to hang out with her at a respectable distance and make snide, cutting commentary about the trashy shows she watched with him and eat spicy foods too hot for any of the rest to tolerate, Abby and Romance seemed to want her attention on them. They pressed too close, they tried to trap her between them, they wanted her focus solely on them even if they had to annoy her to get the attention they wanted.
The point being, they’d never indicated much understanding toward the concept of personal space. It was suspicious that they were both being conspicuously careful about it now. Not just of her space, but keeping some distance between each other, too.
Gamely, Romance tried to evade one more time. “We’ll need supplies for the night—clothes that aren’t bloody, food. Bandages? Other...human medical things? I should—”
“You should explain what Baby and Jinu were talking about,” Mira said bluntly. “Spit it out. Something to do with the scratches? What is this poison? What is it doing to me?”
“Right. That.” He shifted in place, restless in a way nobody would think a demon could be, visibly uncomfortable. “Well. I don’t know about the poison. I’ve never seen it before. It was a guess that it took your powers, cut you off from the Honmoon—that’s why you can’t draw your weapons and why you’re not as strong as usual.”
“Figured that part out already,” Mira agreed tetchily. The reminder stung. “But what was he saying about it’s...scent?”
“The smoke in the room, from every time it teleported around or whatever it was doing—that was deliberate. To conceal it’s scent. Otherwise, we might know what kind of demon it was, or be able to track it. Younger demons might not know how to pick apart scents and track them down, but most of us are older and we know how. Me, Jinu, Baby—maybe not Mystery, but I don’t know for sure.”
Mira blinked and considered this—and noted how he was still talking around the answer instead of just telling her—then turned a skeptical stare on Abby. “Wait, are you the youngest? I figured...I mean, his name is literally Baby.”
“Baby’s almost as old as Jinu,” Abby told her with a quick grin. “I bet there’s no more than a decade between them.”
“Abby’s the real baby of the group,” Romance added, smirking at Abby when he flipped him off in a good-natured kind of way.
“Okaaaay,” Mira said slowly, drawing out the word. She shifted and winced, clamping her hand harder against her side and felt more blood seep through her fingers. Fucking fuck that stung like hell. “So, you have stronger senses because you’re older, got it. What’s that got to do with that fucker clawing us up?”
“It touched you. It attacked you physically and magically. I might be able to...um, detect traces it left behind.” He paused, almost visibly weighing his options, then added delicately, “I might be able to taste it. If I tried. If you let me try.”
Mira squinted at him in the lamp light. Fuck him for still managing to look perfect and pretty after all the stupidity of the night—at least Abby had the decency to look a little rumpled after flopping around an alleyway. Damn, she’d bled onto his shirt, too; they’d both need to find a way to cover that before they left.
Whatever. Focus, Mira, for fuck’s sake. “Taste it. Like. You mean my blood?”
“Yes. Well,” he amended, “yes and no—not just the blood, but the wound itself.”
Well. There went her next suggestion, which would have been to point out the blood on Abby’s shirt and tell him to knock himself out.
She could, reluctantly, see why Jinu hadn’t wanted to be the one to break the news. His delicate, old-fashioned sensibilities probably ruled out saying something like “Hey, can me and my buddies lick you a little, for science?” in a group call. But Baby was a fucking coward and she was going to watch the season finale of Devil’s Plan without him for it. This was exactly the kind of terrible news he would usually enjoy springing on people, but he’d bailed out and now she had to listen to Romance fumble his way through it from the questionable safety of a love hotel. What an asshole.
“So,” she said slowly, working through the problem with the tired despair of someone who knows the ship has struck the iceberg and now it’s only a matter of how fast it will sink, “So, you’re saying you. You need to, like...lick it?”
The hotel room wasn’t interesting enough to justify the way Romance was studying everything in it except her and the stupid wipe-clean cuck chair. “…Yes. It’s a little more involved than that, but...basically, yes.”
“A little more involved how?” She demanded, instantly suspicious.
“Not for you,” he clarified. “For me. To pull apart the tastes and isolate just the demon. But I need somewhere to start, and...for that I need a taste of it.”
Of you, he didn’t say, which was terrific forethought on his side because Mira would have thrown something at him if he’d said that. Well, alright, there wasn’t actually anything to throw and the chair was too heavy, but like. She would have glared at him at bare minimum.
“You’re still bleeding,” Abby observed. Like most of his observations, this one was extremely obvious. Mira threw him a dirty look for daring to point out what she very much already knew. “And we really do still need supplies, like Ro said. I can go get what we’ll need while you and Ro, um, handle the other part. If you want.”
Arguably the only thing worse than letting Romance lick her ribs in front of his boyfriend was making his boyfriend leave while he did it. Fuck, she wished she hadn’t ever thought of the stupid chair as the cuck chair, because now that was all she could think about.
“No,” she croaked, and had to clear her throat to try again. “No, it’s. Whatever, it’s fine. Stay if you want to. Will you be able to tell more about the poison if you do this?”
Romance shrugged again. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I’ve never seen hunters incapacitated by a poison before. I don’t know enough about it to make any guesses. But maybe. I’ll tell you if I notice anything.”
Demon powers were stupid. Who had to lick things to activate their magic powers? It was fucking absurd.
It...also made a certain kind of sense though. Even they needed a starting point. Just, usually the starting point wasn’t an open gash on her ribs. This was going to be so unhygenic, even if they hadn’t been in a fucking love hotel.
“Just. Give me a minute,” she told them, striving to sound calm and collected. She landed on “grumpy” instead, but. Close enough or whatever.
She pulled up the Huntrix group chat again, which was always pinned to the top of her texts. There was also one that included all eight of them, which she rarely responded to, and the unanswered invite to the one Romance and Abby kept trying to start with her; while she was in her conversation logs she deleted it again. One of them would send another invite every time she deleted the notification and it never seemed to deter them when she deleted them.
Zoey had been the one to first add phone lines into her plan, for Baby and Mystery, but Rumi had followed suit to add the other three “so everyone can keep in touch”, as she’d explained to Mira. It had taken them all of an afternoon to get it set up. Mira’s only comment on it had been to point out that it might have been nice for someone to tell her that before arming the demons with phones, because the very first thing Romance and Abby had done was try to add her into a chat. From Mira’s perspective, two unknown numbers had suddenly started texting her private number—a horror movie cold-open scenario that had not improved with the realization that she was being texted by literal demons. Rumi had only explained it when Mira cut her workout short to come back and tell them about the strange messages she was receiving.
She typed out a message to Zoey and Rumi. Are you hearing the same thing I’m hearing about the poison? Licking? Be serious. Really??
Zoey responded with a string of emojis, exactly none of which Mira was prepared to respond to constructively right now. Eggplants featured heavily. She also linked to an article about something called a Jacobson’s Organ, which, gross. Whatever that was, Mira wasn’t clicking the link. Rumi replied on a delay, but more helpfully, so Mira forgave her.
Rumi: You don’t have to. 100% don’t have to if you don’t want to.
Rumi: But it might help. We need information and this is how we can get it.
Easy for her to say. Mira rolled her eyes and very firmly shoved away any and all thoughts about what the others might be getting up to right about now. Fucking Zoey and her eggplant emojis—Mira hadn’t ever noticed that the demon-face and eggplant emojis were the same shade of purple until now, so. You know, thanks for that, Zoey.
Fuck, she’d bled on the cuck chair and was sticking to the leather as the blood dried. Every part of this night sucked.
“What would you need me to do?” If she thought of it as a kind of training exercise, she could almost pretend it wasn’t the worst suggestion she’d ever heard.
“It’d be easier if you were laying down.” To his credit, Romance delivered this with an absolutely neutral voice. If there’d been even the smallest suggestion of his usual insinuating tone, even a hint of a smirk, she would have thrown him out the window.
Or tried, anyway. She kept forgetting she didn’t have her usual strength. So that probably wouldn’t have ended well for anyone, least of all her.
“I’ll bleed all over the sheets if I do that,” she pointed out. “That’s a bad idea if we’re trying to keep a low profile. Which we are.”
Perhaps predictably, neither of them seemed to have considered that. Or maybe they had and just hadn’t cared; demons were weird. They gave her a blank look, then traded a considering expression at each other. Romance shrugged. “I’ll...get a towel?”
A place like this probably budgeted for linens getting destroyed on the regular, Mira figured. Better a towel than the entire bedspread. Romance headed for the bathroom, but Abby rolled up to his feet from the bed and came to loom over her for a beat—god, he really was tall for absolutely no reason—before he lowered himself gracefully down to his knees at her feet. She stared at him, too tired to downplay how unsettling it was to have him so close. “What are you doing?”
“Can I take these off for you?” He tapped the edge of one of her knee-high boots. None of them had stopped to switch to the courtesy slippers in a basket by the door.
“I can do it.” It would hurt, but theoretically she could. Any second now, she might actually try to lean forward and see if she could actually make it that far.
“I know.” Whether or not he actually believed her, he said it simply and sincerely. “But can I do it for you?”
She hesitated. The no was instinctive and knee-jerk, but she made herself take a beat to think it through. She could do it herself (probably), but it would hurt like hell and she didn’t really want to. Abby was offering, and by his standards he was even being kind of normal about it. “...Okay.”
His fingers found the zippers on the back, barely brushing the sensitive hollow behind her knee. She suppressed a shiver—for fuck’s sake, he’d barely even touched her, probably not even on purpose; get it together Mira—and helpfully lifted her feet one at a time to let him pull the boots off and set them aside. He smoothed his thumb over the top hem of her sock, just below the curve of her knee, and okay, yeah that time it was definitely on purpose. Before she could say something cutting or gather herself to push him back, he settled back on his heels and raised his gaze to meet hers. “It’d be easier to move to the bed if you’ll let me pick you up. Can I?”
Romance came back in time to catch the question—or maybe he’d been able to hear them the whole time; the room wasn’t that large—while pulling the blankets off the bed. Without looking up from this task, he added, “He’s right.”
Taking her shoes off for her was a vastly different proposition from letting them pick her up and carry her around.
“I’m not helpless,” she said waspishly, and then could hardly follow that up with help me up like she really probably should have. She braced her free hand on the arm of the chair and started to push herself up, but Abby hadn’t moved and he was blocking her in. She collapsed back down into the seat and scowled at him. “Move. You’re in the way.”
“We know you’re not helpless,” Abby told her, his voice low and soft in the quiet. “We want to help. Will you let me? Please?”
“The puppy-eyes only works on Zoey,” she told him irritably.
“It works on Rumi too,” he told her, flashing a quick smile. Which was unfortunately true; Rumi was also a sucker for big sad eyes in a handsome face. Exhibit A: Jinu’s everything.
“Zoey and Rumi,” Mira conceded, because, well. That the former Saja Boys currently lived with them was plenty of evidence to support that fact. “But not me.”
He nodded slowly, and she could almost see him shifting strategies. “Not you. But it’d be practical to let me help you up. And you’re the practical one, right?”
Mira had never been accused of being practical a day in her life. There was actually a pretty strong argument to be made that Bobby was the practical one, the honorary Huntrix with no idea about their hunting. She nudged his shoulder with her knee, but gently. “Nice try. Get up. Thanks though, for helping with my shoes.”
She pretended not to hear Romance’s soft laugh, or the murmured, “Stubborn,” as Abby pouted at her but rocked back and up to his feet. He at least took a step to the side but undeniably was still looming in a way that would usually have gotten him a lecture. This time she let it go and ignored them both. She was too busy fighting for her life to peel out of the stupid cuck chair; blood had dripped down past the waist of her shorts and stuck her thigh to the pleather seat. She grimaced as the shift to stand pulled against her ribs and swore under her breath when her skin peeled away from the seat. “I’m leaving them such a bad review online. That chair sucks.”
“We’ll take you to a nicer hotel the next time you’re bleeding everywhere,” Romance promised, and Mira huffed a little laugh despite herself. Even that hurt.
It was only a few steps over to the bed at least. If it had been much farther than that she probably would have embarrassed herself by having to give up and sit right on the floor. Romance had found a roll of small trash bags in the bathroom and used his claws to cut a slit in a few of them so he could spread them out wide. This showed unusually good foresight for someone who hadn’t seen any problem with getting blood all over the place, but she was glad he’d done it. She hadn’t even realized how much she’d bled, how much she was still bleeding. Was this because she’d been nerfed back to a normal human’s ability? Or was it some side effect of the poison?
“This should have stopped bleeding by now,” she muttered. “It didn’t even cut me that deep. I’ve had worse and didn’t bleed like this.”
“Bleeding isn’t in my blood,” Romance sang, teasing. Mocking, really. “Isn’t that how the song goes? It’s probably the poison. Lay back.”
“You don’t like the lyrics you can take it up with Zoey,” Mira grumbled, but she braced her free hand carefully behind her for leverage. She eased back slowly, trying to keep her torso straight and take most of her weight on her arm. The mattress dipped behind her as Abby settled himself on her right and reached out with careful hands to take her weight as she settled back. It hurt like hell anyway, and she blinked back reflexive tears of pain and breathed slowly as she settled on her back, trying to stay steady and project a level of calm she didn’t feel. Abby helped support her until she was lying flat and even gathered her hair out of the way to keep it out of the blood. He was out of her line of sight and it was unsettling to have his hands on her like that, but admittedly, he was helping.
The trash bags crinkled faintly as she shifted and tried to find a comfortable way to lay, then gave up when it was clear that there was nothing comfortable about this at all. Even her joints hurt, in an aching, feverish way that was honestly pretty worrisome. How fast did it take for an infection to set in? Not that fast, surely?
Romance, still standing beside the bed, leaned down to catch her eye. “Still okay? Do you need a minute?”
“Just do whatever it is you need to do,” she told him irritably. It could have been a completely innocent and polite question, but he was using that overly sweet, fake voice he’d used when he was still playing at being an idol. Teasing, maybe even trying to joke, but she was in no mood for it while laying in a slowly growing puddle of her own blood.
There shouldn’t be a way for three adults to fit on a bed this size, much less for two of them to manage it gracefully, but that was demons for you. Mira tried not to be resentful when Romance managed to knee-walk up the mattress beside her on her left and somehow didn’t look like an idiot doing it. Abby curled around to lightly tug at her left arm, his body curved in a protective frame around her.
“You’ll have to let go for Ro,” he murmured to her. “Take my hand.”
“I’ll get blood on you,” she protested, but reluctantly pried her hand away from the wound on her ribs. Immediately she could feel fresh blood well up and spill over in hot trails.
“I don’t care.” He tugged on her sleeve again and she fumbled to catch his hand, letting him lace her blood-slick fingers through his. Whatever; she’d go back to being annoyed by their existence tomorrow. For now, her ribs fucking hurt and she was uncomfortable, and she could hold someone’s hand if she wanted to.
Romance touched her lightly, the pads of his fingers barely making contact with her waist. The high-waisted shorts and cropped t-shirt had been comfortable and practical at the start of the night, but were considerably worse for wear by this point. “I’ll have to move your shirt up. Is that okay?”
Damn it. She should have realized that on her own. The idea of letting him—either of them—tug her clothing around was intolerable. She tangled her fingers of her free hand in the hem of her shirt and pulled it up, wincing at the drag of blood-soaked fabric across the torn edges of the claw marks, and held it firmly in place high enough to show the wound but low enough to cover her bra. A girl had to have standards.
Romance lowered himself down until he was propped up on one elbow, his other hand still splayed over her stomach. She could feel her pulse under his palm and it was disconcerting to know he would be able to feel it too.
“It won’t hurt,” he murmured, his voice soft. Kind, even. She thought he might actually mean it that time; it wasn’t his fake, simpering idol voice. It made a surreal, unnerving contrast to the wash of eerie lavender seeping over his skin, the sudden flash of deeper purple patterns and the glowing gold-coin eyes glancing up at her through his hair.
Right, so. It made sense that he would need to go demon mode to do...whatever the hell this was. She probably would have realized that if she’d given it any thought at all. She watched him dip lower, close enough to feel the feather-soft ends of his hair brush her skin, and squeezed her eyes shut as he opened his mouth.
For a moment she thought he hadn’t moved, or that he might pull back, but then she felt the subtle wash of his breath across the thin skin over her ribs and fought back chills—he was breathing her in, drawing air in through his mouth like a snake scenting for prey. (Oh, right—Jacobson’s Organ; she remembered why that sounded familiar now. Thanks, Zoey, all those nature documentaries were good for something after all.) She breathed in and out in slow, mechanical increments, steady like Celine had taught them, and tried very hard not to notice anything other than the movement of air through her lungs.
That moment of white-knuckling her way into zen lasted about a second and a half, and then evaporated on the spot when the press of firm, wet pressure dragged across the bottom claw mark. Her measured breath in stuttered and hitched, somehow stupid enough to be surprised even when she knew it was coming. At the very least she managed to hold still on her own—if he tried to hold her down she was going to either break her knuckles or his nose, whichever gave way first. She clenched her bloodied shirt in her fist and tried to even out her breathing, and only realized she was gripping Abby’s hand just as tightly when he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Romance smoothed his hand over her stomach in a slow stroke, possibly in an ill-considered attempt at being comforting, but didn’t apply any pressure to hold her still.
“Anything?” Abby asked. He’d dropped his voice low and soft again, but the break in the quiet made Mira twitch, not quite a flinch. She blinked back into focus as Romance lifted his head. His eyes were closed and his face was—um. Okay, so. There was a possibility she hadn’t entirely considered that demons might like the taste of blood. Might, particularly, savor the taste of a hunter’s blood. His lips were stained with it like dark gloss, sticky and shining in the low lamplight in a way that drew the eye.
She never quite managed to stop noticing that he was beautiful. They all were; she’d thought after a while the shock would wear off and they’d fade into the background, but they were inhumanly lovely and there was just no getting used to it. The golden gleam of his eyes opening drew her focus away from his mouth, but not before he’d noticed her looking. He licked his lips slowly (which, gross, that was blood) and hummed thoughtfully. “Didn’t realize hunter’s blood would taste so strong. Give me a minute.”
And without so much as a you don’t mind, do you? he ducked his head down and licked up another mouthful of blood straight from the source. She hadn’t expected him to try again and flinched that time. Abby pressed closer to her, lying curled around her almost protectively, and made annoying little hushing sounds in her ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Stay still a little longer.”
“Oh my god, stop talking.”
Romance’s jaw worked as he lifted his head again, his eyes half-lidded. It was a bit like watching someone tie a cherry stem with their tongue: deeply uninteresting for the outside observer, but she could tell his focus was turned inward.
“Got it that time,” he breathed out, with that content, pleased, sleepy-eyed expression and his mouth stained red like he’d been kissing someone, and just.
It was just. A lot to deal with right now. Was the thing.
“Abby. You should know how to find it, too. C’mere.” Romance lifted himself up, an easy one-armed push up like it was no effort at all, and leaned over Mira. Kind of like he—wait, he was—
They were kissing. Directly over her head. Open mouthed and deep, slow and sweet. There was. There was definitely a lot of tongue involved. Mira stared up at them, frozen in shock. They were both in their demon forms now; she hadn’t even noticed when Abby changed.
Romance broke the kiss and leaned back. Abby leaned into him, chasing for another kiss, and got a chaste peck and soft laugh for his trouble. “Focus. Did you pick up on it? The other demon?”
“Just tastes like Mira,” Abby murmured, which. Which was. Hm. Alright. That made an impact from point-blank range, okay. Mira was learning all sorts of interesting things about herself tonight.
“What—what.” She pulled fruitlessly against Abby’s hold, but he’d laced their fingers together and was leaning his weight down on their hands for balance, keeping her stuck in place. “Are you fucking serious right now—”
“He’s new at this,” Romance protested, holding his hands up in a gesture of innocence. “It takes practice to separate out the notes. I pulled the demon’s note to the top first, but it’s still a lot to unravel. He just needs more practice, that’s all.”
She was going to show him unraveling, for fuck’s sake. She’d been trying, really trying to give them the benefit of the doubt with this idiotic and invasive plan, and now they were just using it as an excuse to…to…hell if she even knew; be horny at each other about her blood? Fuck that.
“We’ll try again. You’ll get it this time,” Romance assured Abby, shuffling back to bend low over Mira again, but she dropped her grip on her shirt and shoved his face away.
“No, fuck that, get off of me—”
Tried to shove his face away. She tried. And failed. He blinked at her, slow like a cat, with her hand pressed across his mouth. She snatched her hand back before he could bite her or lick her again and snapped, “This was a stupid idea. Get the fuck off me.”
“I should have explained what I was doing first,” Romance acknowledged mildly. He folded his hands primly under his chin and gave her another slow blink. It should have looked prissy and absurd, but he was still in his demon skin and it looked an awful lot like what it was: a patient predator at close range. He tilted his head inquiringly and his eyes caught the light like an animal’s, turning it back in a hollow yellow-gold flash. “Sorry. Does it help at all if I say it’s not what it looks like?”
“No.” She pushed against Abby until he let go of her, dried blood peeling their hands apart unpleasantly.
“I was trying to pass him the top note,” Romance explained, unbothered. Mira started to struggle up—yep, still intensely painful, good to know—and he gently pressed his palm to her shoulder with careful pressure to nudge her back down flat. And there was that urge to break his nose, right on time; she clenched her fists and held herself very still. “There’s really only one way to do that. But I should have at least mentioned it first, so I’m sorry for that. He should learn how to do this, though. Can I show him?”
“Do you really need more blood to do that?” she snapped. She was flustered and somehow both too cold and too hot even in her torn clothing, angry and embarrassed in equal measure. The ragged claw marks burned in the open air, exposed and shock-sharp with pain, and blood was everywhere, sticky and cloying with a metallic reek. She wanted to get rid of it, all of it; get rid of any trace that this night had ever happened.
“I told you, it’s not really about the blood. It’s the traces left in the wound itself,” he explained again, unruffled. Catching her expression, he looked as though he was fighting back the urge to roll his eyes as he added, “And yes, I really do need another taste if I’m going to share it with him. Can I?”
He absolutely did not have to phrase it that way. There was no reason at all to say it like that unless it was specifically to embarrass her. Worse, it worked. She glowered at him. Thinking of it as a training exercise was getting harder the longer this went on.
“Fine,” she grit out, but jabbed a finger at him as he started to lower himself back down. He jerked back before he lost an eye to her stiletto manicure. “But. Last time. After this I’m taking a shower and someone’s buying me bandages. And a hoodie. Got it?”
“Got it.” He eyed her nails warily, then unexpectedly wrapped his hand around hers. He pressed lightly on her knuckles until she got the point and relaxed her fist, then threaded his fingers through hers like Abby had with her other hand. Like Abby was doing again with her other hand, as it happened. She shot him a warning glare over her shoulder and got an angelic smile in response, which. Yeah, in hindsight, that was about what she’d expected. It might have been more effective without the purple skin and patterns, the gold eyes and flash of fangs in his smile; Abby was exceptionally bad at the “poor innocent me” expression, but he was incredibly good at looking sinister as fuck. “Last time.”
He pressed their joined hands down at her side while Abby did the same with her other hand, pinning her down with gentle pressure. And paused there, just for a moment, golden eyes flickering over her body disconcertingly. It felt unspeakably exposed, like a rabbit turning its belly to a wolf’s teeth, but she shoved the feeling away. She wasn’t prey and they could never be predators to a hunter.
(They could. They had, once, and nearly succeeded. And she’d still had her powers then, her weapon, her friends—now she had none of it. The scales had tipped decisively in their favor. They all knew it.)
He settled back where he’d been before, lying on his stomach beside her and propped up on one elbow. She got another evaluating glance from him before he tried to move toward her—a polite “May I?” would have been nicer, but also would have been rejected on principle so maybe it was for the best that he didn’t try—so she at least had some warning before his mouth was on her again.
The creature, the demon, had gouged at her and caught her with three claws. Mira hadn’t necessarily realized Romance was working his way up the lines from bottom to top, but she definitely noticed this time, with the flat of his tongue dragging down the sensitive (painful, fuck, would it kill him to be a little more careful?) laceration just below her bra band. He hadn’t made as much contact with the other two tries, she noted with some resentment, but before she could decide what to say about it he was pulling away again. It didn’t take him as long to sort through the “notes”, whatever that meant. She was reminded of wine tasting notes and immediately tried to banish that thought because it was laughably vampiric in this context. But maybe now that he knew what he was looking for it was easier to work through it, because it was only a few seconds before he was leaning forward again and murmuring, “Abby,” soft and heated, and—
Right. Okay. So maybe she should have been more clear about not having them kiss over her. Or pass notes, whatever, but like—come on, that was kissing. With tongue. And, huh, their demon patterns got a little brighter when they were...excited, a ripple of hot magenta across the deeper plum. That was good to know; she’d seen it happen from other strong emotions (usually killing rage, at least in the demons she encountered on the regular, or sometimes terror), but not...you know, this specific strong emotion. Abby made a soft sound from low in his throat, and while it wasn’t a moan it also...wasn’t not a moan, exactly, and really, guys, was this necessary? Actually strictly, professionally, necessary? She had doubts about it, that’s all.
Romance was the one to break the kiss again, settling back contentedly like he had no higher aspirations than to lay pressed against Mira. His demonic form faded back to his usual human mask. “Get it that time?”
“I think so. Yeah?” Mira tilted her head back to look up at Abby where he was still leaning over her head, so she caught a good view of the way he licked his lips like he was chasing the taste. “Bitter. Like tar. I think I can taste the poison too. Sharper? Astringent.”
“I could too,” Romance agreed, turning a contemplative look back at Mira. At her ribs, specifically, like he’d forgotten there was a person attached to his personal taste test. “Not sure what to do about it though.”
“Could we draw the poison out?” Abby mused. “Like sucking the venom from a snake bite?”
“That doesn’t even work with snake bites,” Mira felt obligated to point out. Nature documentaries were one of Zoey’s favorite pastimes to unwind; Mira and Rumi knew a lot of random animal facts by osmosis. “That’s not a thing.”
“We’re demons though; maybe it’d work for us. If Ro can pull out the poison enough to identify it in your blood, maybe he could draw it out too,” Abby pointed out in turn. Which sounded like bullshit, frankly, but so had most of the rest of this and yet, apparently, there was a grain of truth to it. She turned a skeptical stare on Romance to see if he had an opinion on the matter. Noticing it, he shrugged. It should have looked awkward and stupid, trying to shrug while leaning all his weight on one arm, but he made it look graceful like everything else he did. Mira resented it especially strongly right now.
“I mean, maybe? Not like I’ve done it before. Do you want me to try?”
Licking the lacerations was already a deeply questionable medical practice, unhygienic, and painful; it was difficult to imagine that actually sucking on it would be helpful in any capacity.
“No. Absolutely not.”
He shrugged again. “Your call. You looked like you were thinking about it.”
“I was thinking about how much of your demon powers are actually just bullshit you made up on the spot,” she told him bluntly. “Get off me. I’m gonna go take a shower. Someone go get some bandages while I’m cleaning up.”
Romance winced, like he had a suggestion she wasn’t going to like, and she was already preemptively glaring at him when he said carefully, “You’ve lost a lot of blood already and this is still bleeding—if you try to stand up that long for a shower you’re going to faint. And then Zoey and Rumi will probably blame us for it.”
A distinct possibility, admittedly. Not that she was going to admit it, but like. Yeah, plausible.
Noting the lack of a counter argument, he pressed his luck. “Abby will go get supplies. I’ll help you clean up, if you’ll let me.”
He didn’t offer to let Abby stay with her, she noticed. Not that it particularly mattered, neither prospect was more appealing than the other, but it stuck her as odd. Suspicious, even? Maybe. Hard to tell.
Still. It was a sensible suggestion. She relented, if only because the idea of standing up for that long or making the long trek to the bathroom a few feet away sounded like her personal hell right now. “Okay. Fine.”
“Specific requests?” Abby asked as he faded back into his human form too. “I don’t know what humans do when they’re hurt. I assume there have been some changes in the last few hundred years.”
Right. Sometimes she almost managed to forget they were actually all creepy old men.
“Sports drinks; anything that says ‘electrolytes’ on the bottle,” she instructed. “It’ll help with blood loss.”
“…‘Electro-light’?”
She tugged her hand free from Romance’s hold and fished around to find her phone. A quick search brought up image search results for a few common brands. “Something like these.”
He leaned in unnecessarily close to look at the screen and hummed thoughtfully. “Got it. Sports drinks, bandages, food, and a hoodie.”
There was a quick brush against her temple, warm skin and a trace of dampness, like—
Hold up.
Did he just kiss her head? He did not just kiss her head.
He propped himself up (safely out of reach) before she could retaliate and said cheerfully, “Ro, any requests?”
“Something with protein in it, so Ms. Huntrix doesn’t get crabby,” Romance told him. “And something sweet for me, thanks.”
“Will do.” And he was leaning over her again to brush a soft kiss to Romance’s mouth, light and quick, and then he was rolling gracefully to his feet. “I’ll be back soon. No fighting, you two.”
Right. Like she even could. She glowered at his retreating back as he left the room.