Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

out his long legs, and takes a bite out of one of Lin’s crisp apples, since he’s demolished everything else, including the pie. “You humans got no idea how good you have it.”

I watch a pair of roller-bladers skim down the bike path. Their matching high-viz, sweat-wicking lycra bodysuits glimmer in the early evening light. Their roller-blades probably cost more than my old car. All that expensive technology for a hobby.

“Do we?” I point out the roller-bladers with my potato-salad-laden fork. “They probably get out like this once a week. Maybe twice. The rest of the time they’re chained to their desks in some high-rise downtown. Making the money that pays for those expensive skates. Are they happy? Are they better off than people were a hundred years ago?”

“You’re a hellofa lot cleaner than you were a hundred years ago. Fuckin’ Puritans bathed once a week and stank like their pigs.”

I throw my napkin at him. “The Puritans were around three hundred years ago.”

“Yeah, well, humans were still stinky a hundred years ago. Trust me. Fuck.”

“Jou!” I look around for something else to throw at him.

He chuckles. “You’re lonelier than you were a hundred years ago. That’s the truth. Those boxes you’re addicted to.” He snorts. “You spend more time staring at ‘em than you do talkin’ to each other.”

I nod. The irony that the person I’ve talked – connected – to the most in years is a demon hasn’t been lost on me. “I guess you don’t have anything like that in . . .”

“Hell, sweetness.”

Right, Hell. “Sorry, it’s still hard for me to get my head around.”

“Why? I know the old woman read you the Bible—”

I stare at him in surprise. “Doesn’t it hurt you to say that?”

“What, Bible? No. I can say all kinds of shit. God. Yahweh—”

“Stop, that’s creepy.”

“Sweetness, I don’t know what they taught you at those fancy schools you went to, but I never Fell. I was born a demon. I can say all kinds of words you humans think are holy. I can go into places you hold sacred. I can even read the Word, in the original Aramaic, which mosta you humans can’t do anymore. I just don’t got a soul like you do.”

So, by definition. “Professor Uela always said demons were just another supernatural species. But you prey on people’s souls, Jou.”

He shrugs. “Don’t seem much different than eatin’ flesh, which you do all the time.” He nods at the chicken bones on my plate. “Just another source of energy.”

Totally different, although I admit that I occasionally flirt with vegetarianism for exactly that reason. “There’s the eternity thing.”

Another shrug. “Eternity don’t mean much to me. Not sure how it can mean anythin’ to you, either, since you humans barely live long enough to learn how to piss properly. Become my seggurach an’ maybe you can explain it to me after a millennia or two.”

“Is that what would happen to me? I’d become immortal, as your seggurach?”

Jou snorts. “I’m not immortal. I just live a fuck of a lot longer than humans do. Maybe human souls are immortal. I dunnow. All I know is that they’re fuckin’ tasty.”

“You don’t . . . eat them, though, right?”

He takes another bite of apple and grins around it. “Nope.”

“But you feed off them. The way you’ve been feeding off me.” It’s not really a question.

“Yeah. Kinda bland, now that I’ve tasted you. Like eatin’ everythin’ without salt.” He finishes the apple and tosses the core under the pine trees. “You’ve really opened my eyes to Nuevo cuisine, sweetness.”

“I’m not sure I appreciate the comparison.” I finally finish the huge pile of food he’s put on my plate. He’s tucked his own plate back in the picnic basket, so I follow suit. Discover that he’s thought of everything, including a plastic bag for dirties. And, in a thermos underneath the baggie, coffee.

“Pumpkin spice,” I say when I open the lid. My current fave.

“Mmm-hmm. I know you’re used to thinkin’ of yourself as the top of the food chain, but even you gotta admit that humans are food for all kinda things.”

“Sure, microfauna. Bengal tigers. The occasional Great White shark.” I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit back on the blanket, enjoying the aroma before I take a sip. “I don’t like thinking of myself as food, Jou.”

He pushes the picnic remains out of the way and stretches out on his side, lying along my legs. Trails his fingertips up and down my thigh, warm through the denim of my jeans. “It’s just the truth, sweetness. You know I don’t do illusion.”

I know he’s done his best to shatter mine. I reach out and flick one of his dreadlocks back over his shoulder. I’ve seen his true-form, and I know that whatever his dreadlocks are, they’re not hair. “This is an illusion.”

“Mmm, more like a protective skin. Like those suits you humans wear when you’re handling toxic shit.”

“A Hazmat suit?”

“Yeah, one of those. Helps me breathe your air an’ endure your sun.”

It didn’t occur to me, but of course the air of Hell would be different. And the light. Wherever Hell is, it’s not part of Earth’s plane. “Would the air and sunlight hurt you without the skin?”

He shrugs the shoulder he’s not leaning on. “Probably not right now, when I’m so pumped up on your power. An’ I’m stronger now than when I’ve been here before. But when I was a manes, breathin’ your air was like tryin’ to breathe ice. Felt like I was dyin’ the whole time. Fuckin’ torture.”

Yet another reason why it’s wrong to summon demons to our world. “Do you grow the protective skin? Is that why you looked different when you were coming through my shower?” The memory of that spined arm is still a little too fresh.

“Yeah, I kind of spin it. It’s hard to describe. Bein’ summoned’s like bein’ born. It’s painful. Disorienting. Everythin’ feels raw. When you put yourself back together, you shape the glove.”

“Does it cost you to hold onto