Page 38 of Demon Queen
“Unfortunately? Oh. Who did slaughter all the angels?”
“Oh, I slaughtered all the angels except for one. You.”
I stared at him, slowly frowning deeper and deeper while I struggled to process through the alcohol. “You slaughtered all the angels except for me… Because I’m an angel?”
He snapped his fingers, making the chain glint that manacled his wrists to the floor. “Exactly right.”
“Oh. Tom’s book really got the illustrations wrong.”
“Did they? Oh, no, you’re a preemie.”
“A preemie.” I scratched my ear. “That makes literally no sense, I don’t care how drunk I am.”
“Sure it makes sense. I cut you out of your mother early. It’s a miracle that you survived so underdeveloped. I was going to kill you, but you were so cute. You reminded me of those helpless human babies. When angels are born full term, they’re already ready to kill you, but you were so absolutely adorable.”
“You didn’t kill me because I was adorable?”
“That, and there was this sorcerer and sorceress couple who wanted a demon baby to do some kind of ritualistic sacrifice with, who paid me a very good fee for you.”
I stared at him. “You sold me to people who wanted to sacrifice me? So it’s like slaughtering me plus profit. That’s good business sense.”
He snapped his fingers again, tugging against the manacle that held him to the floor. “Exactly so. That’s just logic. If you’d looked like most angels, they never would have taken you, but as you were, it was hard to convince them that you were a demon at all.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Why are you telling me all of this? Aren’t you supposed to be impossible to get information out of? Maybe you’re lying. That’s probably what it is. Yes. That makes much more sense than…” I frowned at him while my brain slowly processed. “You came to my candy shop a lot. You’re one of my best buyers. Why?”
He smiled. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“I’m thinking…” I said so slowly while my vodka-fueled brain worked to put the pieces together. “It had something to do with my baby?”
He snapped his fingers again, and that time a little spark of purple came with the snap. “Exactly so. You see, the Queen wanted me to kill all the angels and take the babies to raise them as part of her army, but none of them survived without their mothers. Unfortunately, they’re very attached. So what I did when I stole your baby, was keep you alive and bring him the candy you made that had your scent and love baked into it, so he wouldn’t die. That way I could at least have one demon pet for the Queen instead of the dozens she requested.”
“But I thought Dorian saved other demon babies. They didn’t all die.”
He sniffed dismissively. “Not the king lines. Nasatch, Incubus, but none of the greater demons. The angels were the only ones who could give birth to the king lines.”
“Oh.” I stared at him and then sat down on the floor when standing didn’t seem to be an option anymore. “You stole my baby and gave him to the Zombie Queen?”
“Not exactly. The Queen didn’t have time to raise him properly, so I trained him up in dancing and other aristocratic pleasures like boccé. The Queen didn’t like that. No idea why, because a dancing demon is absolutely wonderfully quixotic, don’t you think? So then I had to train him in fighting, killing, you know, tedious things that take absolutely no cleverness, and one thing your darling is, is clever.”
I stared at him and started trembling while my stomach lurched. “How could you slaughter all those people? What kind of monster are you? You were so kind to me, but the whole time you were the one who stole my baby?”
“I am the White Rabbit.”
“What does that mean?”
He sighed heavily, studying me with something like pity. “Do you know what the angels were?”
“Demon’s mothers?”
“Where did they come from? Heaven. Where is heaven? The Queen’s castle is called heaven. That’s right. You are shocked, or you would be if not for the vodka and your lack of comprehension. The original angel was one of the Queen’s relatives thousands and thousands of years ago. Mine too. I was slaughtering my own kind. Why? Because they’re the only ones who can defeat the queen. How did the original angel become that beautiful creature you apparently saw in Tom’s book? By eating demon flesh. The Zombie Queen consumed her people, and the Demon Queens consumed theirs. The angels enslavedthe demons, the demons just didn’t realize it because the angels willed it so.”
I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”
He shrugged. “You aren’t wrong. The ridiculousness of my existence often strikes me with a great deal of force.” He jangled his wrist manacles.
That was a lot of information that wasn’t sticking in my gluey head. One thing didn’t make sense. Okay, nothing made sense, but one thing bothered me. “What happened to the sorcerers who were going to sacrifice me?”
He raised a pale brow. “It seems that someone reported them to the international guild of protective arts. You’d call those the good guys.”
