“You won’t like it.”
“I’m a big girl,” I said, raising my chin a notch. “I can handle it.”
“Fair enough. I’m going to let my corporeal body pass away.”
Every muscle in my body stilled.
“It’s not like I need it,” he continued with a callous shrug. “It slows me down and, as you have witnessed yourself, makes me vulnerable to attack.”
“But in the camera, when you woke up from the coma, you disappeared. You dematerialized your human body.”
“Dutch,” he said, casting me a chastising gaze from underneath his dark lashes, “not even I can do that.”
“Then how did you just disappear? I saw the tape.”
“I can interfere with electrical devices anytime I want to. So can you, if you concentrate.”
I never knew that. “I just thought—”
“Wrong,” he said, his tone absolute. He was so testy when he was being tortured.
“Fine. I was wrong. It’s not like being a supernatural entity came with a manual.”
“True.”
“But that’s no reason to let your corporeal body pass away. I mean, what will happen to you? You just said that if you die, they’ll take you back to hell.”
“Even they don’t know if they can take me back to hell or not. That’s simply what they’re hoping for. There’s one surefire way to find out, I guess,” he said, raising his brows at the challenge.
“Wait, you don’t know what will happen? If they can take you back?”
He shrugged. “Not a clue. But it’s doubtful.”
“But what if they can? What if you’re sent back?”
“That’s not likely to happen,” he insisted. “Who would do the sending?”
“Oh, my god. I can’t believe you’re willing to take such a risk.”
“It’s riskier being alive here on Earth, Dutch,” he said, an angry edge to his voice. “And it’s a risk I am no longer willing to take.”
“Riskier for who?”
“Riskier for you.”
His answer frustrated me even more. “I don’t understand. Why is it riskier for me?”
He raked both hands through his dark hair. The gesture left it more mussed, sexy, and it took me a moment to refocus. “They’re demons, Dutch. And there is only one thing in this universe they want more than human souls.”
“The breakfast burritos at Macho Taco?”
He rose and stood in front of me, towering over me. “They want you, Dutch. They want the portal. Do you know what will happen if they find you?”
I bit my lower lip and offered a one-shouldered shrug. “They’ll have a way into heaven.”
“I can’t let that happen.”
“Right,” I said sadly. “I forgot, you’ll have to kill me.”
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “And I will, Dutch. In a heartbeat.”
Great. It was nice to know he had my back.
“You’re hurt?” he asked, lifting my chin with his fingers.
“Stop reading my mind,” I said defensively.
“I can’t read your mind. I’m like you: I read emotions, feelings. And you’re hurt.”
“How did a demon find its way onto this plane in the first place?” I asked, pulling away from him. I stood and started pacing. He sat back down, propped his feet again. For the first time I noticed the boots he was wearing. They were black, part cowboy and part motorcycle. I liked them. “I thought it was almost impossible for demons to get through the gate.”
“Yes, almost impossible. Every once in a while, a demon braves the void and searches for a way through the maze. It’s hazardous and they rarely make it. Most are lost in the oblivion of eternity.” He nudged my mouse and my computer came alive. Which meant my wallpaper popped up. Which meant Reyes’s picture popped up, his mug shot, the only picture I had of him. He frowned.
I resisted the urge to crawl under the barstool. He could probably still have seen me anyway. “You were saying?”
“Right.” He refocused on me. “If one miraculously makes it through the gate, it still isn’t really here. It has to piggyback onto the soul of a newborn. It’s the only way for them to gain access to this plane. The plane that you and I happen to be on,” he reminded me.
“But that’s not what you did when you escaped from hell. You didn’t have to piggyback.”
“I was different. Once I escaped, I could navigate between the planes as easily as you walk through a doorway.”
“How is that possible?”
“It just is,” he said evasively. “I was made different. I was created for a reason. When the fallen were thrown from heaven, they were banished from the light, thus the need for me. I was a tool. A means to an end. But being born on Earth was perhaps not the wisest decision I’ve ever made. My corporeal body has made me too vulnerable and should be destroyed. The physical evidence of the key hidden.”
When Reyes was born in human form, the key, the map to hell that was imprinted on his body when he was created, appeared on his human body as well. I wondered what his human parents had thought of it. What the doctors had thought. A tattoo on a newborn. I wasn’t sure how it all worked, but apparently the tattoo was the means for Satan to escape from hell. He didn’t want to escape, to render himself vulnerable, until a portal was born. And he sent his son to this plane to wait for one. Reyes was supposed to retrieve Satan and all his armies the minute I was born. Instead, he was born upon the Earth as well. To be with me. To grow up with me. But he was kidnapped from his birth parents long before his dream could come to fruition.