Page 21 of Chaos Demons

I was turning to leave when another man approached. He was tall, with dark skin and a wide smile. There was a certain overly-happy-to-see-me sparkle in his dark eyes.

“Hello!” he called to me. “Are you here to see Ramses as well?”

I got a strange feeling from him. I hadn’t made the connection until now, but I felt this whenever I was near my guys or Harmonia.

“Are you a daemon?” I blurted out before it occurred to me that that was probably really uncouth and rude.

The tall, lanky man continued to smile. “Yup! I’m Anubis. Who are you?” He was just a bit too happy and reminded me of an excited puppy.

“Ana,” I said. “Anais. I’m a… friend of Ramsey’s.”

“I’m his sort-of cousin. Well, Iamhis cousin, but I wasn’t always. I was adopted, sort of. It’s complicated.” He’d reached me by then and looked at Ramsey’s door. “Not home?”

“Nope.”

Anubis nodded. “I’ll wait.” Then he looked at me and that wide smile spread wider still. “Has anyone told you you’re stunningly beautiful? You must be a daemon of beauty, right? Am I right?”

“Sex actually, but that’s close enough.” I didn’t know why, but I felt perfectly comfortable talking with this guy and telling him I was a sex daemon.

He grinned. “Nice! What pantheon are you from?”

“I… don’t know? I was adopted and—”

“Oh… sorry, my bad, don’t worry.” He quickly changed the topic. “Since I’m going to stick around here, is there a message you want to leave for Ramses?”

“Ah… yeah, thanks. Just tell him Ana stopped by and wanted to apologize.”

Anubis raised a brow. “Youneed to apologize tohim?” He laughed. “Usually, it’s Ramses pissing people off and needing to apologize. Yeah, sure, I can let him know.”

“Thanks,” I said, finding a grin on my face. Talking to this guy just seemed really easy. I was about to leave when I thought to ask, “What are you a daemon of?”

“The dead,” he said with a nod.

I blinked. “Really? But… you seem so happy?”

His constant smile widened again. “Well… yeah. I help the dead cross over into the underworld. I get to meet all sorts of interesting people! If they’re good, then I get to see them into the underworld, and if they’re evil… I get to feed their heart to a ravenous beast. Isn’t that cool? Also, if it wasn’t for me, then this world would be filled with restless dead, which would be bad. So yeah, I like what I do.”

Huh. All I could think to say was, “You do you.”

“You too!” he said, and I left.

Well… that was… odd, but not in a bad way.

ANAIS

My next stopwas a bit of a strange one. I wanted to track down Trent, Eva’s ex. I’d only had his first name to go by, but Grey was an excellent hunter and had ways of tracking down people, so he’d found me the man’s work address; a motorcycle garage on West 47th.

It was fair to say I stood out, walking into the small shop in my cream-colored blouse and black pencil skirt, and all the guys stared at me.

“Which of you is Trent?”

Several of them pointed to a back room, their eyes never leaving me as I made my way around parts and grease puddles. I didn’t bother knocking on the door to the back room, since it was slightly open. I just pushed on through.

“Trent?” I asked even as I took in the room.

A startled man spun around to face me. He was in grease-stained coveralls, his face smeared with oil as well. He was actually fairly handsome with a strong jaw, thick black hair, and bright blue eyes. And… the girl with him was attractive as well with a similar tanned complexion, wavy brown locks, large brown eyes, and a lush figure like mine, but probably a decade and a half younger. Then… there was the baby in her arms.

Suddenly I had a good idea why Eva had left.

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