“How often do demons break through the Hellgate and get to your portal?” I ask. I’ve learned a lot already in this thirty-minute drive to my home. Apparently, the buildin’ at the graveyard behind their bar houses the portal to Hell. It’s the last line of defense before demons can sneak through to our world.
“It happens every so often,” Alder answers cryptically.
“So...a lot?” I venture.
His butterscotch eyes lift up to look at me in the rearview mirror as he drives down the highway. He has the A/C blastin’, and his sleeves are still rolled up, so the way his hand rests on the top of the steerin’ wheel looks real nice. “It’s been happening more often,” he admits. “The gate becomes unstable after a while and will need to have an additional Guardian to help stabilize it.”
“But there are five in Delta’s group and only two of you,” I point out. “Seems like an awful big job for you two to handle on your own for so long.”
He shrugs it off. “It’s our duty. Besides, as Ūnus demons, we’re powerful, so we have plenty to feed into the Hellgate to keep it stable.”
Call me strange, but when he says, it’s our duty, all macho like that, it really kinda revs my engine.
“And what’s an Ūnus demon again?”
“Hell is made up of five Rings. We’re from the First Ring—Ūnus. We’re one of the more powerful of our kind, only surpassed by the Center Ring, Nihil.”
“So y’all are kind of a big deal?”
Flint snorts and spreads his arm behind me on the back of the seat, his forearm restin’ above my shoulders. It’s comfortable. That’s the only reason I rest back against him. Definitely the only reason. It has nothin’ to do with the fact that my girly side gets some butterflies at the unexpected contact.
“Ūnus demons are respected, but the more elite are definitely the Abdicated in Nihil. Though, at least we aren’t as common as the Outer Ringers like Fourth and Fifth. There’s more of them, and they have the least amount of power usually. Well...besides the Diluted. They barely have any demon blood in them.”
“And the Diluted are…?”
Flint’s slate eyes cut over to me right along with the playful smile that etches into his face. “When demons and humans fuck and procreate, a Diluted is born.”
Those butterfly flutters in my stomach go a little quicker when fuck flies out of his mouth. “Gotchya,” I say.
I feel his arm move behind my neck, and then his fingers are absently playin’ with the strands of my hair, just like he did when they drove me away from the club. It feels so nice I could close my eyes and purr like a cat. It takes serious restraint not to.
“Do y’all ever get lonely?”
I feel Flint pause his ministrations on my knotted hair and look up to see Alder’s eyes on me. He really is a strikin’ specimen with that bright yellow hair and cool lilac skin. “Lonely?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s just the two of you havin’ to constantly watch the gate and run the bar, and you probably can’t visit Hell very often, right? Isn’t that where y’all’s family lives?”
“Yeah, they live in the Ūnus Ring,” Flint supplies, his fingers pickin’ back up where he left off on strokin’ my hair lightly. I feel so damn comfortable with his presence already.
“We don’t have to babysit the gate every minute of every day. Like right now, it’s perfectly fine for us to be away for a while,” Alder explains. “We just have to make sure we’ve fed enough power into it and that it’s stable before we leave. It has plenty of juice for the time being.”
“Yep, unless a horde of demons try to push through, all’s well,” Flint says jovially.
I make a face at him. “A horde of demons? That can’t be good. What happens then?”
He lifts a shoulder. “We fight them off.”
I nibble on my lip. “And if I were to become a Guardian, I’d have to do that too?”
Flint dips his fingers lower, lightly tracin’ over the curve of my neck and givin’ me an involuntary shiver. “Just by adding another Guardian, it would strengthen the gate even more. It would make it less likely for hordes to make their way through,” he tells me.
That response really doesn’t answer my question, but I’m gonna let it drop for now, because the thought of me havin’ to help fight off a horde of demons is laughable, even if Delta did do somethin’ similar. I’ve got my pride, but I ain’t stupid. I’m gonna have to work my way up to somethin’ like that.
“So what about you? We’ve talked a lot about us and what we do. I’m tired of my own voice at this point. It’s your turn now,” Alder tells me.
“Not much to know really,” I say with a shrug. “What specifically are you wonderin’ about?”
“Well, when we met, you’d just lost your job, so what was your plan before we showed up on your doorstep?” he asks.
I snort. “The only plan I had come up with was to drink at your bar until I came up with somethin’ better,” I admit. “But then that went to shit, so…”
“No big plans for what you wanted to be when you grew up?” Flint asks curiously.
I shrug. “I did at one point. I went to college and everythin’, but that didn’t work out. Next thing I knew, I’m grown and still haven’t figured out a better way to go about life aside from floatin’ wherever it seemed it wanted to take me.”
“What happened with college?” Flint presses, and I study his face for a moment, debatin’ on where to even start with that.
I reach up and take hold of the stones on my necklace, rubbin’ one between my finger and thumb to help ground me. “At first, nothin’. I was truckin’ away at my business degree, thinkin’ about applyin’ to some MBA programs.”
“MBA?”
“I wanted
