Page 18 of Beggars, Sin, and Wine

“Nope,” Pax said, popping the P. “These people already hate you because you’re supernatural. You aren’t together like that. You were just friends when you got taken. I’m your guide to being cured. We planned this. Now, let’s make a big show of you two being so docile and harmless, it makes sense I’ve named you my assistants.”

Pretending to be tame was so vanilla. I didn’t know if these people were supposed to be following that no sex rule since they got excommunicated, but I knew some of them weren’t. I caught some of them in corners when I was a kid. Some of their treatment included rape.

I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to traumatize her further, but my mate said the blue guy hadn’t laid a hand on her. That was a good thing. I mean, I was still going rip out his intestines and squeeze them down his throat like some fucked-up shit sausage, but I didn’t have to make him atone for that.

Cas and I pretended to be meek and tame as we acted like we were helping Pax. Pax was self-sufficient and the only reason he even needed us was because he mostly saw by magic now, but he couldn’t read signs on doors unless they were lighted or there was braille. These fuckers hadn’t bothered with any type of accommodations when they heard they were getting a blind priest.

Which was another reason I was going to make that blue fucker pay.

Something was very wrong here, and it all led back to those three chuckle fucks who hired us to break into New Eden Asylum. Seers were pretty rare. Real seers, that is. The real seers weren’t exactly offering their visions to anyone.

Most people didn’t really want the truth when they asked about the future, which was what a genuine seer was going to give you. They wanted pretty lies that made them sleep better at night. Some seers had been persecuted when their visions did exactly what they were foretold to because some asshole didn’t like it.

Everyone knew who Cassandra was. Apollo had a crush, so he tried to get her to love him by gifting her the ability to see the future. His gift came attached with strings and when she still didn’t want him, he cursed her so no one would believe her if she shared what she saw.

The fact that those three wankers did and were immune to silver had the hair on my bear’s back raising. What were they? They showed us the drawing of the sigil we needed to break. It wasn’t in a language I knew.

They didn’t seem to want to give us the name of the witch we were supposed to rescue. They said in the end, it really wasn’t important because the end goal was to get everyone out. Which I got but I wouldn’t be that cavalier about my mate. And if our mate and his were the same woman, he could have said something. Because the only reason I took this job was Benji and Pax. I wanted to say no.

We were pretending to guide Pax all over the building. This place smelled like fear and sadness. My bear didn’t like it. There were random supernaturals in a break room but they had to be miserable. They only played one type of movie in there.

They all would have been able to tell Pax, Benji, and I were like them. I just hoped they’d keep their fucking mouth shut while we worked. I tried to give them a look, so they knew we were on their side. Benji gave a sly wink to a few. They seemed to get it.

We found the basement door and there were little altars everywhere burning incense. This wasn’t even the good incense. After Father Nathan and Pax became friends, one of the things they bonded over was incense. Yeah, a priest and a warlock didn’t have a ton of shit in common, but good incense was one of them. New Eden burned this vile shit that gave me a headache.

We also found the kitchen. We knew where everything we needed to make the black salt was, but we didn’t know where the ventilation system was that was disbursing the angel tears.

I hadn’t met Hannibal yet, but he was running this place. Benji told me he was blue with shady eyes and I knew my boyfriend was barely going to be able to contain himself about that man. Which was going to be difficult because we all needed to be on our best behavior to pull this off.

Speak of the devil. A sweaty priest who was definitely blue came ambling toward us. Benji was barely going to be able to contain himself. I could feel my bear rumbling around in my chest. I couldn’t shift, but we both knew this man had been starving our mate. I really wanted to punch him in the face. He had a very punchable face. Maybe it wasn’t Benji I needed to worry about.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.

Hannibal had this weasley voice, and it sounded like he was out of breath just from walking up the basement stairs.

“Ah, these two are different,” Pax said. “They aren’t repeating that nonsense that they were born like this. They know they have a demon in them and they want it out. They’ve figured out how to put it to sleep. I’ve named them my assistants to show me around and help me figure out how to do the same with everyone here. We might be able to finally cure them.”

I could see every single supernatural in our vicinity trying not to laugh. That was utter horseshit, and they knew we knew that. They were trying to figure out what we were up to.

“How?” Hannibal demanded.

We had this whole speech prepared about breathing exercises, but we also had Benji with us. And Benji just found out his mate was here. He decided to go rogue.

“Butter, garlic, and hard cheese. The demons don’t like it. You know those rumors about vampires and garlic? It’s more of a holy trinity thing like onions, celery, and bell peppers in Louisiana. You can feel it, you know. The demon? We’re constantly fighting with it.

“I managed to wrestle mine into a deep sleep when I was first possessed. I was fighting keeping him at bay when I was cooking. That was when I figured it out. My friend was possessed at the same time. I helped him by knocking him out with a baseball bat and getting some of it into him. He was right as rain when he woke up.”

I held my breath. That was ridiculous as fuck. I was pretty sure Benji was just trying to gaslight this man into feeding our mate better. If she didn’t get at least a full meal, Benji was trying to negotiate garlic toast. Every single supernatural around us was leaning in and trying not to laugh because that was probably even dumber than all of us being possessed by demons and Hannibal looked like he was buying it.

“You know, in the historical records, we tried garlic on the vampires before and it didn’t work. It was originally believed that vampirism was a blood disease, and they hated garlic because of its antibiotic properties. It makes sense. Food is medicine. I’ll look into it.”

One of the vampires had to leave the room, probably to lose their shit laughing. Most people who knew Benji for longer than two seconds knew the demon part of him couldn’t help fucking with people. He was just standing there smiling innocently like he hadn’t just gaslit a blue priest into giving everyone better food because he knew this man was only giving our mate bread when he felt like it.

I adored this man.

“I wanted to look at patient records,” Pax said. “I have an app that does text-to-speech. I might have some ideas for patients that we did back home that you might not be doing here, but I need to know exactly what I’m working with.”

Everything in here was antiquated. I was guessing the good Monsignor had some pretty plush quarters, though. I really hoped their records weren’t all on paper.

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