After a week or two, I had it.
After a couple of months, I no longer had to really think of the wall. It was just always there, protecting me. Keeping him out.
Sometimes, after so long, I forgot the wall was even there.
Until I needed to take it down.
It got harder and harder to do, actually.
I stood there for a long couple of moments, taking deep breaths, trying to envision an actual wall in my mind crumbling, disappearing.
“Come on,” I grumbled when the wall stayed stubbornly in place.
Clearly, some part of me that was still thinking right, was trying to protect me, trying to keep me from reconnecting with him.
But the part of me that needed the release was getting more and more desperate by the moment.
And that part of me out-stubborned that self-preservation part of me.
The wall wobbled, then collapsed down.
I felt the immediate sense of openness inside, but didn’t actually feel anything from Minos for a long second.
Long enough that I started to worry that maybe the tie had severed.
No, not worry.
I mean, that would be good if it had broken.
Right?
Before I could really start to consider the ramifications of that, there was suddenly just… the sense of him.
I don’t know how else to describe him.
It was him, but not.
It wasn’t anything distinctly clear.
Just the feel of his energy if that made any sort of sense.
I went right ahead and pretended that it meant nothing to me. Because anything else would be completely insane.
But I sort of… leaned into the sense of him, knowing it would help him lean into me, and therefore locate me.
Because while I was clearly idiotic and reckless about the whole situation, I wasn’t stupid enough to exchange numbers with the man.
No.
Not man.
He wasn’t a man.
He might look like one and feel like one, but he wasn’t a man at all.
To be a man, he would need to have the thing that all demons were lacking.
A soul.
Humanity.
It was important that I kept reminding myself of that. Because, quite frankly, when he did show up, things started to feel a lot more muddled, a heck of a lot less clear.
Because despite his lack of a soul, despite his absence of humanity, his body felt like a man. He touched and breathed and kissed and fucked like a man.
Fine, like a man, but better.
I imagined all those extra years of practice gave him a leg-up in that department over normal men.
In my mind, I could sense his movement.
His decision was made almost instantaneously. It always was. He didn’t even pretend to put up a fight.
Why, I had no idea.
Because this had to be just as toxic a situation to him, right? I mean what demon wanted to fuck the very person who existed to wipe his kind off the surface of the Earth?
Maybe, to him, it was like a feather in his cap.
I mean, it had to boost his ego to get a demonslayer to fuck him.
Ugh.
I needed to stop thinking about it.
The more I thought about things, the more likely I was to turn around and walk away from this situation.
Oh, please.
Who the hell was I trying to kid?
There was no turning back.
As I felt him moving closer and closer, it was like my body was already revving up.
As my mind got more and more malleable, I could swear I almost felt him, like, reaching for me. Like he could touch me through my own head. I swear I practically felt his fingertips graze my face.
No.
That was crazy.
I was just building the whole situation up because it had been so long.
Whatever the connection was, it was just sort of like a homing beacon. Nothing more, nothing less.
I couldn’t romanticize it as anything else.
It was weird, creepy, invasive, demon mojo.
That was it.
As I sensed him coming closer and closer, though, I swear the sensation of touch got stronger and stronger.
Then I heard the rumbling of his bike as it turned down the street, as it moved behind the building, as it parked beside my car.
Then there were just his footsteps.
And in one short, insane second, I could have sworn those lined up with the beating of my heart.
CHAPTER THREE
Minos
There was a party at the house.
If I let my memory stretch back far enough, I could remember a time when the parties used to be fun, used to fill me with excitement in anticipation of an event.
I mean, booze, women, drugs, and violence were all but ensured. What was there not to like about that?
And they served a higher—or lower, depending on how you were looking at things—purpose. We stoked the fires of debauchery and sin within our partygoers, ensuring their quick trip down to hell when they died.
We figured the big man downstairs would appreciate that we didn’t waste all our time on the human plane. We sent our brothers and sisters back home lots of new souls to play with.