Page 52 of Demon Demands

“Fuck with me, vampire,” she growled, throwing a biscuit from Jack’s plate at Novak. “I might look cute and prissy, but I’m brutal. I’ll shove stakes under your fingernails while I thrive off of your pain.”

“Savage, little succubus.” Novak smirked, pointing a spoon at her. “I like you.”

“You have no idea,” I muttered as Hyde skipped out of sight, her evil cackle floating through the rooms. “She wasn’t joking.”

I took Hyde’s seat beside Vaughn, observing him as he shuffled pieces of a ripped up biscuit into his mouth without picking his head up off the table. Running my hand up my fae’s back, I leaned down to peek at his face. “How are you feeling?”

Vaughn popped his glassy eyes open to glare at me through narrowed, icy slits, not saying a word.

I smiled sweetly at him. “You look like death.”

“Thank you.” He bit out sarcastically. “Coincidentally, I also feel like death.”

“That was a long, two-day trip.” Touching his cheek tenderly, I grimaced. “It gets better, but you’ll still have some flashbacks for a while.”

Dolyn chuckled. “Hey, Jack? Do you remember that time we drank the cappa beer and ran into Soren?”

I raised an eyebrow at the hellsteed in question. “When was that?”

“Mmm,” Jack rubbed his lips together as Grim rolled his eyes. “Last year? I think…”

Propping my elbow on the tabletop, I used the heel of my left hand to rub my forehead. “Gods, Jack. Do you have a problem we should know about?”

“Oh, no,” he replied quickly, lifting his hands up. “That was the last, last time I’ll ever willingly drink cappa again.”

Jack turned to my guys. “Soren is this spider guy we went to school with while we lived here. Scared the shit out of me and Dolyn when he came crawling around the corner of an alleyway, his legs clinking on the ground, all creepy and shit.”

Dolyn hummed his agreement. “Hyde’s dad found us huddled together on the bathroom floor hours later.”

Jack grinned at Vaughn. “Not my proudest moment. You got lucky with a good trip. Especially one that lasted like what? Thirty hours? You’re my fucking hero.”

Novak‘s hand shot in the air like we were in a classroom. “Are we just going to gloss over the part where you said spider guy or can someone explain that to me?”

Dolyn scratched his cheek as he stared at his plate, Grim gazed out the window, Jack studied the ceiling, and Stone looked to me, waving his hand for me to explain.

“It’s not that difficult.” I huffed in exasperation at the Underworld natives, though Grim wasn’t exactly from the demonic realm originally, so I’d let him slide. “Okay. Imagine a regular spider. You know how their bodies have two portions?”

Briggs groaned at me, “Why do you guys keep saying that? Think about or imagine and then name some Earth shit to compare… never mind.”

He shook his head, immediately changing his tone. “I answered my own question. Please continue with your explanation.”

I covered my mouth with my hand as I fought a smile. “Alright. So they have two segments to their bodies, an abdomen and a cephalothorax.”

Palmer bounced his cloudy gray eyes over each of my guys before furrowing his brow. “English, Love. Ya lost ‘em at ‘abdomen’.”

Briggs grunted at my mage.

“Fuck, guys. Really?” I took a deep breath, holding up two fingers. “Okay. Two main body parts to a spider. The front and the back. Now, the front part, where the eyes and mouth are? Imagine a human-ish torso there. Done. Damn. Did y’all get that or do I need to draw a diagram?”

Stone nodded, his lips twitching as he struggled to not laugh. “They got it, Kitten. No need to pull the crayons out.”

I narrowed my eyes at Stone, picking a grape off of Vaughn’s plate to flick across the table at my demon mate. The fruit flew wide, having a mind of its own, and hit York in between his eyes. Stone glanced from me to York before turning his head, his shoulders shaking as he laughed at me.

“Actually, I’d like a picture. Please, Sweetheart.” A devilish smirk crept over my druid’s face, his Australian accent heavier in those last two words than any of the others.

Novak nodded his head emphatically, either missing York’s sarcasm or not caring. “A couple of them. I’ve never seen what a basilisk looks like, but I’m dying to know.” Definitely not caring.

Briggs shrugged. “While you’re at it—”