Page 7 of Discord
Ripley threw better birthday parties for me as a house-cat than I ever got when I was alive. I had totally forgotten today was that day with everything going on. Ripley always remembered the little things. She knew I preferred tuna in oil instead of water, so she always hunted it down at the store. That was what she presented me with today.
I grabbed her and pulled her into a kiss. How did she rope the Hellhound into baking for me? Hellhounds were fierce killers… but somehow she’d convinced Bram to bake me a fucking cake! Ripley had clearly been busy, as there wasn’t just a cake on the table but also eggs, sausage, and bacon. The spread was enough to fill even Reyson up.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the table. We all started serving ourselves. It was fun. We all briefly forgot the world of shit we were in. Even Gabriel lightened up and was laughing and joking.
Bram was a fuckingfantasticbaker. If Reyson wasn’t trying to get in his pants before, he definitely was now. We were such a weird team. Balthazar really wanted a god and librarian sandwich, and Reyson spentwaytoo much time in the werewolf porn section. I just wanted Ripley. I understood it was kind of a package deal, that the rest of these men came with her, but I was happy with just her.
“Holy shit, Bram. This cake is amazing!” I said.
“You are going to have to teach me this recipe,” Reyson said.
I took a moment away from enjoying my cake to think about just how fucked up it was that the God of Chaos and this Hellhound were bonding over a cake recipe! Reyson was much smoother than Balthazar with flirting. He wouldn’t be obvious about it at all, but I already knew that God was going to be putting out feelers for any opportunity to rope Bram into a threesome with Ripley so he could experience that knot he was so obsessed with.
And I couldn’t stop laughing about it. Even I could admit Bram was good-looking. He probably didn’t have to chat up girls at the pub, all he had to do was walk in, and women would throw themselves at him. It was different when I was still alive. They had outlawed slavery, but they still looked down their noses at anyone with dark skin. They could have beaten me in an alley for turning certain heads.
Bram was probably used to all kinds of pickup lines. Reyson was still getting used to this century and hadn’t learned all the jargon. Reyson liked to brag that he asked no one for sex. Everyone always asked him. While I didn’t doubt most of that was true, Ripley wouldn’t have been the first woman to play hard to get. Reyson probably had a few pickup lines stashed away…ancientpickup lines that I would pay a lot of money to see him try on Bram, because he was obsessed with shifter dick.
I looked around. Reyson wasn’t the only one who could eat massive amounts of food. All the breakfast food Ripley cooked was gone, and we had totally demolished that cake.
I wished we could have stayed there all day. It would have been nice to take a day off from the madness and just laugh. The library would open soon, and we would have to get back to work. There was so much we needed to do and not enough time to do it.
I sighed and brought my plates to the dishwasher. It was time to get back to work.
5
Gabriel
There were so many things we needed to be looking into. We needed to figure out how to get into Silvaria’s shipping container to free a demon I didn’t remotely trust. Bram was slowly winning me over. He wasn’t the one making deals, and although I didn’t like him at all, I didn’t think he deserved to be someone’s pet. I’d never met a Hellhound before, but I’d met plenty of shifters. They were all very proud creatures.
I knew everyone thought we’d hit a wall when the painting in the vault didn’t have Dorian’s soul, but I didn’t think it was a total bust. I knew Silvaria moved pieces to get the painting stored here, but neither of them was stupid enough to give the library a non-magical painting. Dorian was arrogant and would have left a bigfuck youmagical clue in it.
Ripley went downstairs to open the library. We all took our posts. Ripley was researching Balthazar’s curse. He was doing his hacking thing. We all knew Ripley could handle herself, so I went to the vault with Felix and. Reyson. Ripley threatened to castrate me if I didn’t bring the painting to her apartment or messed up anything in the vault.
The vault was something else. It was this massive cave of a room, with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Some of the books were running wild. This was where the sentient books were kept, some of which were content to sleep on the shelves, while some were flying around the room, snapping their spines.
As soon as we stepped into the vault, Felix placed his finger over his lips again. He told us why the first time. There were some books in here on battle magic that got a little volatile when provoked. There were books on shifters that had teeth and would bite. Some witches and warlocks were super fucked up with the magic they put into books.
The shifter books and the battle magic books were floating in the back of the room. Reyson picked up the painting and went to carry it out of the room. Don’t ask me what we did. We were totally silent. It started with one. As soon as Reyson picked up the painting, a book zipped towards his head and tried to smack him in the face.
“Shit!” Reyson growled.
“We need to get out of here, now. Ripley will kill us if we hurt these books,” Felix yelled.
Ripley and her library. We all knew she’d lose it if any of the books got damaged, but they were also trying to fight us. After that one book broke rank, they all woke up. Some started shrieking, some started flinging magic at us, and there was one hefty ass tome with teeth coming right for me.
I’d never run from a fight before, but I didn’t fuck with books with teeth. I mean shit, I couldn’t exactly fight back. Not only did I not want to upset Ripley, but I didn’t want to hurt these books either. These books were ancient artifacts.
I just didn’t want them to bite me.
We all took off running. One of the books slammed into my back. I couldn’t decide if getting punched by a book was better or worse than a fist, but it definitely hurt. I flung myself through the door just as a set of massive teeth caught the tail end of my shirt.
Felix slammed the door shut and locked it. We all leaned back against the wall, panting. I got what Reyson said about not getting involved before, but seriously?
“Why couldn’t you have thrown some god mojo at those books to calm them down?” I grunted.
“Not without disabling their magic. I’m the God of Chaos. Would you like to be the one to explain that to my witch?
Certainly not. This was my favorite shirt, and now it had holes in it from a fucking book.
