Page 35 of Demon Queen
He blinked at me. “What? They forced you to eat a little bit of demon? How sick are you?”
I forced a smile. “Pretty sick, right? I think I belong in a mental institution. First eating that demon like it was normal, and then putting my elbow through the window. I think Lucy gave me brain damage. Also Roberta…I’m not talking about that.”
His brows rose almost to his hairline. “You chose to eat demon? That is weird. And it didn’t make you sick?”
He went to the shelf with his Tom Sawyer and other boring classics and then came back with the Wind in the Willows. He opened it to somewhere in the middle.
“I don’t think that’s the right book.”
“The dust jacket protects the demon-skin cover. It gets brittle when it’s exposed to light. So, we’ve got all these different kinds of demons. Soul suckers, money grubbers, lust puppers, and death muggers. None of them eat demon. Nothing eats demons except for the angels.” He flipped through the book too quickly for me to see more than a flash of illustrations of teeth, claws, and general scariness, until he turned open to a page with angels.
“Ugh.” I said because it was the ugliest creature I’d ever imagined. Not that I’d ever imagined demons. This was like a bloated slug with gray chalky skin covered in warts with minispikes, stained darker gray where the spikes pierced the skin. The eyes were milky without a pupil, and overall, it was just ick.
“Yeah, they’re pretty, right? The main thing is that they’re immortal, so maybe your demon did something, a spell, or some angel infection… No, it says here,” he said, reading along with his finger. “Angels cannot infect a human, but books don’t know everything.”
I frowned at that picture of the warty slug creature and shook my head. “I’m not the prettiest thing in the world, but I’m no angel.”
“Let’s see. Here it is, power of compulsion, feast on the flesh of demons, and mates with strongest demon to make him the king, also produce offspring.” He gave me a pointed look.
“Oh. Mixl said that his mother was an angel. That’s what he meant? His mother was one of these?”
He squinted at me. “He saw his angel mother die? Very peculiar. What I’ve heard from my connections…”
“You have connections? What kind of connections.”
He waved my question away. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
“Running a movie theater?”
He stared at me.
“Right. The slayer thing. I’m still a bit stunned. Sorry. So, what did your connections say?”
“The Zombie Queen, you know, she’s defeated everyone except for the fairies. She defeated the demons by slaughtering all the angels.”
“Wow. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The angels are the great demon’s mothers, right? There are some females of various demon species, but the angels are the sworn mates of all the strongest demons. The Zombie Queen had her white rabbit slaughter the angels, and then the demonswiped out the Zombie Queen’s armies, but then they all killed themselves afterwards.”
“So basically everyone was insane.” I could relate. I’d been eating demon just a while ago.
He shrugged. “The thing is, the White Rabbit is in the Grand Master’s dungeon.”
“That seems to be a good place for someone who goes around slaughtering angels.”
“But don’t you think he could answer your questions?”
I stared at him. My mind was just kind of blank.
He nudged me. “You know, if we broke into the Grand Master’s dungeon and chatted with the White Rabbit, who knows more about the angels than anyone, since he was able to kill them all, he’d know why you’re having your issues.”
“Are you insane?” Mixl demanded, coming out of the shadows where he’d clearly been lurking.
I jumped, but Tom didn’t seem surprised. “Tom’s joking.” That was the only possible explanation.
“Not at all,” Tom said, very reassuringly. Not.
I started giggling. “You want me to go into the Grand Master’s dungeon to talk to the White Rabbit about the angels? Wow. That sounds like the worst idea in the world and I’m the one who just put my elbow through a window.” Also eaten a demon, but I was trying not to focus on that.
