I had been talking business with Alastor, the pub’s owner and currently one of the most high ranking demons, when the small police man entered the pub. He looked uncomfortable and disgusted by the place. From where I sat I could see, he was wearing a white dressing shirt and a Scottish outfit complete from skirt to hat. He also had a bag with him that could only have papers inside.
Alastor saw him too and smiled instantly, he probably already had a plan that involved the little man. The last policeman that had entered the pub had ended up running away screaming with his uniform in his hands, I never knew when that had happened. Since Alastor knew he was here all the other in the pub knew too; this was going to get interesting soon.
The police man went straight to the bar, not noticing the change in atmosphere, but one of the lower demons grabbed him and pulled him to dance in between Tom and Jerry. Alastor and I pretended to talk while we watched him, after some time I decided he wasn’t a danger and decided to put him out of the joke.
“As I was saying”, said Alastor after clearing his throat, “I can’t do nothing about the maze to your office, you’ll have to discover what to do on your own”, then smiled brightly.
I glared at him for a moment; we had been talking about insignificant stuff and now he came up with that topic, which he knew bothered me. One day I’d broken all the beer barrels in a fight and I hadn’t paid them yet. He had summoned the maze there and hadn’t taken it off ever since. Alastor also claimed he didn’t know how to take it off.Now every time I wanted to get to my office it took me at least one hour, if not more. One time I spent one whole day and ended up going out because I didn’t find it.
I smiled when I knew why he had changed the subject, “You just can’t make more time, the police man came looking for me, if you don’t want to wait hours until he comes back you have to do something about the maze.”
“I can’t move the maze and you know that.” He said, his eyes sparkling now.
“Yes, and you were the one who put it there” I thought to myself. It seemed he took a greater pleasure making me suffer than taking advantage of the only human in the room. “Ok, then let me talk to the poor man, at least let him rest before the long trip to my office”
That made him laugh, he patted my shoulder and departed. I sighed and shook my head at him, the maze case was lost.
Tom and Jerry let the police man get away from the dance floor. He walked to my table but when he got to it he just stared at me.
I looked at him and smiled, “please sit down”. I would only take him to my office when I decided this was a private matter and when I decided that the others weren’t pulling another prank.
He sat down but didn’t look happy about it. The first thing I noticed was his controlling look and that he seemed to be one of those man that has everything in control, everything planned. He cleaned the table before putting his elbows on it and took his gloves off finger by finger, confirming my suspicion. The hands on top of the table also meant he didn’t have time to reach for the gun that was located behind his back. Then he extended his hand to me, “James Copper, nice to meet you”.
I regretted I hadn’t taken him to my office before the introductions. H e had doomed himself by saying his name. I’d thought he wasn’t a rookie, maybe I had thought to highly of him. He probably knew he was in a demon gathering place and still he had said his name, which gave the demons control over him. He had looked intelligent enough not to do that.
“Amber, nice to meet you too” I said taking his hand.
The next thing that happened shocked me. I took his hand unprepared and felt the threat of his magic come in, inspecting me. I had just one second to hide what I was. Know I was mad at myself; I should have been on guard. But nothing had happened. I could tell by the puzzled look in his face, he had been expecting me to be something else. I looked at him without changing my expression and he looked more confused. He took his hand back and looked at it as if it didn’t work, which almost made me laugh. Fortunately he wasn’t looking at me.
When he looked back at me again he had composed himself, but I knew by his body expression that he didn’t like his plan not going his way. He started taking one of his off the table, which made me nervous, but he just graved a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and a pen. He put it down carefully on the table and started writing while I just stared at him. Then he looked up and gave the paper to me.
It was a card that had his work, number and real name written down. His real name was Jefferson Smith and he worked for Alabast Co., one of the most famous private detective agencies in the U.S. The boss from the company was called Calvin, and didn’t like him, but I owed him a favor for letting me use some of his information for my own cases.
I looked up from the paper at him and he made a motion to continue reading. I turned the card around and read his nice handwriting:
You know my name know, and who I work for .I would like to discuss this matter in private.
I looked at him a little more and nodded. “What about we go to my office, please follow me”. I said, not for him but for Alastor and the others demons that looked at us from time to time.
I took him to the back of the pub and opened the door which was supposed to lead to the maze, what I found instead was a straight line to the door of my office. Alastor definitely controls it, I told to myself. Jefferson looked at me; maybe I had stayed at the door to long. I entered and told Jefferson to close the door. We entered the office next and I went directly to my desk, sitting on it instead of the chair and waited for Jefferson to close the door.
“It’s safe to talk here; they can’t hear anything at least if you don’t shout”. The last was a lie, my office had very thick walls specialized to keep sound in and I’d put a no hearing spell just in case. I just didn’t want him suddenly shutting me. “What does Calvin want?”
He didn’t look surprised that I knew his boss’s name. Instead he just relaxed in his chair, still managing to keep his back very straight.
Apparently something changed in my posture because he said, “He told what your reaction would be, so lets go straight to the point. As you may know there has been an increase in murders”, I nodded, ignoring his earlier remark, which implied he had more information on me than me on him and gave him an advantage. As a demon hunter, and sometimes a hit man, this weren’t new news to me, I had been investigating these murders for some time and they didn’t seem to too bad. Calvin probably knew that I was interested, and that’s why he had sent a messenger. But still, why bother with a trained guy as this one, Calvin didn’t like to pay much, something was getting on my nerve.
“Now, I’m going to take the information from my portfolio.” he said before reaching out for his bag, still I watched very closely, didn’t want him doing any unexpected moves. He took the photos out and arranged them neatly on my desk while I went to sit down, then waited quietly while I passed through the papers. The organization was interesting. From small to big, and each in its different area.
The first pictures I had already seen, some dead people lying down in a circle that I knew was meant for the blood to maintain fresh and so maintain its power. The pictures continued, there was the old man whose face I’d already memorized, and the little girl who just stared at the camera. Then the pictures continued to some I didn’t know. Every picture got worse, the last ones were missing body parts, and I was betting internal organs were on the shopping list of the murderer. Also, in every picture was the same circle of power that had grave my attention since the beginning, to maintain the blood fresh and powerful. I recognized it, it was a circle created for human sacrifice, but I didn’t remember the demon it was meant for, that’s what had kept me interested the case.
I finished with the papers knowing my face was in its blank expression I got when working. Then put the papers in a different order to see what he did. He arranged them as he had arranged them first, and then said, “So what do you think?”
I looked at him, took some of the papers and passed through tem without really reading them, “What you already know. You have already gone through the case, ant I bet you were in one of the crime sins. You’re already experienced in this field of work, or Calvin wouldn’t have sent you.” I looked up from the papers and looked at him directly, “You already know someone is trying to summon some powerful demon…” I left the papers exactly as he’d arranged them but put a pen on top of that pile, he looked at it and tried to ignore it, fidgeting with his sleeves, but ended up taking the pen and putting it with the others, which almost made me smile. “So, tell me, why did Calvin send you to get me when you already know the case? You even have reduced the list of suspects to five and you only have five days working on it, you don’t need me to solve this.”
He looked down and then looked back, as if apologizing, “Calvin said you would do that.” he sighed. “The truth is, I, we had a suspect, were very certain it was him killing all this people, but…” he looked down now, took a picture that was on his lap and gave it to me.
The moment I saw the picture I felt my whole body go cold. I was sure my face had gone cold as a ghost. The victim in the picture now had his heart in his hand and a knife on the other. This meant the summoning was complete and the demon walked the air. But that wasn’t what had made me cold to the bone and my mouth as dry as the Sahara desert; it was the circle of power. The one in every, Why didn’t I recognize it earlier? It was the circle to summon Asmodeus, The Controller, a really nasty demon that specialized on cruelty. He was now for his cruel acts and tortures in hell, even some demons were afraid of him. He had caused many disasters on earth, to the point where he was banned from the books for no one to be able to summon him back, unfortunately it seemed someone had found the recipe.
I took a deep breath, this was serious, a demon like Asmodeus walking the earth was a really bad problem. Then I just looked at the policeman, detective, that sat in front of him demanding and explanation with my eyes. I don’t know why but I had the feeling that there was something else to this.
He sighed, also took a deep breath and started talking. “I started working on the case and, as you said, quickly got to the suspects. We investigated for some days and decided we would go in if one of them started doing something suspicious. When we saw what was happening in Henry’s house” I assumed Henry was the owner of the house were the last sacrifice was found. “It was already too late.”
It all sounded veridical, but something was not right. He looked calm, wasn’t a bit accelerated, everything in his posture was relaxed, and he didn’t have any reasons to lie to me, except…
Just as the thought occurred to me he stood up and reached for his back, were his gun was supposed to be. I smiled, taking his gun from where I’d hid it and dangling it in front of his face with one finger. He stopped in mid motion. One hand still behind his back, his face becoming redder and redder. My smile widened and we kept staring at each other like that for a second that seemed like an eternity. I had won this round.
Deciding that the staring contest wouldn’t take us knower I said “Now, sit down slowly”. I waited for him to sit down, we both steel staring at each other. “Tell me, how was it that you couldn’t stop Henry from finishing the summoning if there was a team just outside his house?”
He dropped his gaze now and then returned it with a full blow of anger, “He deserved to die”.
That’s all he said. Yes, he definitely believed what he said. He was the leader of operations for this case. He’d given the team a late order, just late enough for the demon to come and kill its summoner. Trying not to raise my voice at him I said, “In your anger and disgust of Henry, who killed at least 10 people including families, you let the demon come to this world.”
“At least he will do a better job in this world than that trash”, the disgust in his voice surprised me. He genially believed that having Asmodeus in this world was better.
“Calvin hasn’t told you anything has he?” I asked him. He didn’t reply but his confused expression answered my question. “The demon Henry summoned is going to do more damage than just a couple of families if we don’t stop him soon. We have to catch him before he can gather his strength.”
“You know who it is” was the only thing he said.
“Yes, but the only thing I can tell you for certain is that he doesn’t have a body jet. The strength he gathered from the sacrifices wasn’t enough; he has to wait at least a weak more to be able to do something. We have until then to stop him.” I said, looking again at the papers, now I graved the fist that contained a message from Calvin.
“We?” he said, the disgust coming back to his voice. I didn’t like the idea of us working together either, but in the message I was reading Calvin said that I had to work together with Jefferson if I wanted information and a profit.
“Calvin won’t pay us if we don’t work as a team, and he won’t give me more info, if I don’t work with you.”
He grumbled something under his breath but nodded. “Ok. You have my card and can contact me at any of those numbers, if any of us discovers something or even has a suspicion we’ll call each other.”
We both stood up, “Ok, but remember we only have one weak, if not it may be too late.” I returned his gun and he started walking to the door were we had come in. “Wait, you better go out through the back door if you don’t want any trouble.” I pointed to the door near the right corner of the office. “When you go out turn left and you’ll go out directly to the street.” He nodded and went out, I didn’t see the walls of the maze.
I waited for a while, going through the data Jefferson had left behind. As I was in the last paper there was a knock on the door. “Come in”, I called out.
The door opened and closed, “What do you want Al?” I said without looking up from the paper.
“The police man, didn’t come back so I assumed he had left through the back”. He said, sitting down with his feet on my desk. He let me finish reading before he continued. “So, what did he want?”
“None of your business” I said, putting the papers together and putting away the papers on my desk. He didn’t need to know about Asmodeus yet, but I would tell him soon. Alastor and Asmodeus had been enemies for a long time and I didn’t want them fighting in the mortal plane. It was better to tell him when I had an advantage in the situation.
He opened his mouth to say some smart comment when we both felt it.

He had gone out of the office barely containing his anger. How could Calvin pair him up with a hit man? Especially one that coexisted with demons. The first thing he would do tomorrow was to go talk Calvin out of his craziness. But nothing could be done until tomorrow. For now he would go home and take a very long bath. The sheer thought of being near a demon made him shake in repulsion and today he even been touched by them. What had shocked him more was that Amber was human. Why would a human work with demons? He would never understand that.
By the time he got home it was around midnight. The shadows enclosed his house and sent a chill through his body, but he ignored it. What he wanted more was to get out of the stupid outfit he was wearing and clean the germs out of himself. Jefferson opened the door of his house, so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t know what hit him until it was too late.
When he opened his eyes he was lying just inside his door. A dark presence floated around him, but his head hurt so much and his body felt so heavy that he couldn’t move. Then a voice came from the darkness, round and round his head. “Call my name”, It said. He covered his ears, but still he heard it. “No” he said. Something told him that he shouldn’t submit to the voices’ wishes. Then the voice became more potent, inviting, seducing, promising him to accomplish his darkest wishes if he just called its name. But he didn’t know its name, “I don’t know your name”, he said out loud.

The strong presence could only belong to Asmodeus. The moment we felt it there was a small pause, then Alastor was gone, banished in a blink of an eye. I didn’t even had time to react. Why had Amadeus revealed himself if he didn’t have complete power yet? What will happen now? This and a bunch of other questions rushed through my head while I waited for Amadeus to come back.

Another presence appeared in the room and the voice became frantic. It showed Jefferson an image of his dreams, the perfect world, everything so perfect and organized, no demons, no crime, no nothing that bothered him. Jefferson opened his mind to that image, which was the world he wanted. The voice told him its name and Jefferson called it without any doubt, “Asmodeus!” He opened his thoughts and embraced the dark voice that called to him. The voice laughed the sound rolling through his head like music.
Jefferson heard a roar of anger from some place in his house. But he felt so weak he passed out again.
Jefferson woke up on his bead, he didn’t remembered going there. He stood up to wash his face and noticed he was still wearing the Scottish outfit, had he really gone to sleep on it? Maybe he had been too tiered. Whatever, first he needed to wake up completely. But as he looked down at his hand he noticed a mark and the moment he recognized it all the memories from last night returned. Feeling himself getting sick at the thought of what he’d done he ran to the toilet. Why? Why had he done it? Why had he let the demon reside in him? A voice came from his head, “Because you need me to create the perfect world”.

The moment Alastor returned I knew he’d failed. He was so angry some of his human body wasn’t human anymore. He screamed in anger and went through the pub destroying everything he put his hands on.
Fortunately all the demons had escaped when they felt his anger. It was only me and him on the pub now.
“If you continue like this I won’t have to worry about repaying the barrels.” I said to try to get him to his senses. Bad idea, it only made me his focus of attention, and he couldn’t control himself when he was angry. By now he’d lost his human appearance almost completely. In this form he looked like a huge red cat. The only differences were his face, still human, his huge horns, his seven tails, and his height, which I knew was about seven stories high when fully transformed. He was standing in four legs, in attacking position, looking down at me.
I just stayed there, reclining comfortably against a wooden pole, and stared back at him. I had transformed my eyes while he was growling around and now they were their usual orange. As it happened, I was a shape changer, and not any shape changer, but one whose original form was dragon. Of course, the only one who knew this was Alastor. I’d been hiding behind a human body and aura for a long time, maybe reminding him that I could take him on a fight would calm him down a bit. It worked, he didn’t change back to human or anything, but at least he wasn’t growling at me.
I thought about using his real name. As him, I was the only one who knew his name. In the demon world, when someone knows your original name, they can control you. A long time ago we had accidently discovered each other’s secret and agreed to keep it, no matter how much we hated one another. The fact that I knew every demon’s name was different. As a dragon in the old times I had been the keeper of the gates and thus learned a lot of things of the demon world.
Alastor took a deep breath and I paid more attention to him, stopping daydreaming. In a blink of an eye he returned to his human form, although his eyes were still blazing with anger. I turned my eyes back to human, if he wanted to be angry he would be angry.
“This is bad”, he said.
“I know”, I responded. He shot an angry look at me. “Hey, don’t be mad at me. It’s not my fault he came to this plane.”
“You weren’t going to tell me”, now I was the one confused, what did he mean with that comment? But I didn’t need to wait long for the answer. “Your little policeman, he knew something about The Controller, and you didn’t tell me.”
“Okay, I was going to tell you when I made sure it was really him who had come.” He opened his mouth but I bet him, “But that’s not the problem at hand. We have to make sure he doesn’t do any of his mischief’s here.”
“You’ll pay for not telling me” he said. The thought of my debt getting bigger seemed to calm him more. Plus, he was right; I knew the right thing was to tell him Asmodeus had been summoned and I hadn’t.
Even knowing that I tried to talk him out of it, but he didn’t budge. For the rest of the night we talked about what we would do while we cleaned up. In the end we had come up with a very simple plan. Asmodeus would come attack Alastor the moment he knew Alastor was weak. So we decided that Alastor would pretend to lose a fight, badly, even dough he didn’t like the idea. Soon the news would reach Asmodeus and he would come running to kill his enemy, just to be ambushed by Alastor and me. I involved myself in the fight, with the excuse of paying my debt. Alastor had protested, I don’t know why, but I finally convinced him he had a better chance of winning with me on his side. We decided the fight would be in four days and that was it.
At that moment it seemed as a good idea, but I would never forget what happened.

While we were planning, Alastor told me what happened to Jefferson. Even so I tried calling him. He never answered his phone. I also went to ask Calvin Jefferson’s address, which he gave me without asking a question. I made a mental note of never giving him my address.
I went to investigate Jefferson’s house and didn’t find anything interesting, he was gone. What made me inspect the house was that it was just too clean. Everything was ordered. Even his books and CDs were in alphabetical order.


________________________________________
Second day
Nothing new happened. I went to the pub, checked some papers and canceled all the plans I had for the next two days. Alastor seemed more nervous than normal. Only one table the pub had survived his rage attack, and there were only a pair of demons drinking beer.
________________________________________
Third day
The day had gone without and inconveniences. In fact, I had slept until one pm and felt really good. In the evening a mail got to my door. The envelope smelled wrong. I opened it and it only had one paper in it. The hand writing was so bad and the paper so crumbled I could verily read it, but what I read made me run out the door and toward the pub.
Amber, Alastor has invited me to his pub. How sweet of him, don’t you think?
I’ll be waiting with Alastor’s head on the pub. Hope to see you at the party.
Your dear, Asmodeus.
I couldn’t let that happen. If Asmodeus managed to kill Alastor he would have enough power to do anything he wanted. I didn’t even want to imagine what was on his mind. What was Alastor thinking? The two of them were even in power, last time Alastor had barley come out alive. But this wasn’t the same as last time, it had been many years since Al had come to the human plane and hadn’t been in any fight, while Asmodeus probably went into every fight he could.
I started running faster. The pub was just some miles away. If I had gone in car I would have risked the police stopping me. I had to figure out a way to get there faster.
If I changed to my other form I could go flying.
I stopped, deciding I would rather have others discover what I was than having The Controller rule. I jumped to the air and changed of form.
At some time of the flight it occurred to me this could be a trap, but it didn’t matter.
I got to the pub in less than five minutes, landing in human form. As much as I wanted to hurry up, if I wasn’t cautious I could just make things worse.
I hid in the bushes just outside the window of the pub, it seemed the fight hadn’t started; but everything stood still. The silence of the place was like the silence before the storm, you know something bad is about to happen. I looked through the window and saw Alastor and Asmodeus standing in front of one another talking.
“What are you doing here?” Alastor said, a growl coming out his mouth.
“You already know what, I came to take your head” responded Asmodeus with a hint of a smile.
The moment he said that the fight began.
They didn’t rush at each other, instead they just let go of the barrier that contained their auras and everything that they were.
The wave of power that came from both was so strong it barley let me breath. With their barriers gone they had shed their human forms. They hadn’t moved an inch and still the pub was already destroyed. Alastor was now the huge red cat, now in his full size. Asmodeus was a really chubby small creature, armed with some very huge knifes. But the amount of power he showed was no less from that of Alastor. This would be the first part of the fight, and then the real fight would start.
They stayed standing a little longer than I expected, testing each other’s aura, each of them trying to intimidate the other. Then Asmodeus struck.
He went directly for Alastor’s throat, but Alastor was ready and swept a big paw at him.
Asmodeus jumped and stood for a moment on the paw, then jumped and tried to slash it, but Alastor was faster than him and hit him with his other paw.
Asmodeus maneuvered his knifes, slashed the paw and moved from under it before it crashed him in doing so cutting himself with a claw.
Alastor seemed to have the advantage, but as the fight continued he started becoming slower. I didn’t know why, the fight hadn’t been so long. Until I had a better look at the knifes Asmodeus was using. They were blood eaters; with every slash Alastor received he not only lost blood, but also part of his life energy. If this continued any longer Alastor would lose.
I moved closer to the fight, preparing to come in. I went under the bushes and hid under a piece of wall. When I looked back Asmodeus was jumping around Alastor, slashing him here and there. Alastor slashed him two more times, then Asmodeus jumped to his back, Alastor roared, and sent himself to the ground to start rolling, Asmodeus put his arms upward, so when Alastor rolled the knifes would go all the way in.
I came out of my hiding place. Smashing my own aura at theirs and changing form. I smashed at Asmodeus completely transformed just as Alastor started rolling. Asmodeus ended up pinned under my claws; he’d lost a knife somewhere.
Al finished rolling but didn’t stand up.
I snarled down at Asmodeus, extending my wings. He slashed my leg and I let him go.
He jumped out just out of reach of my claws. The blood eater’s slash hurt as if I’d been burned; I watched the sword and it seemed to drink my blood. It gave me the creeps.
But Asmodeus was already coming at me; I dedicated myself to avoid the knife.
We had both slowed down by the time I heard Alastor moving. I looked away for a moment and Asmodeus slashed my shoulder.
I growled back at him, snapping my teeth just an inch away of his head.
He tried jumping on my back, but I suspended myself on the air before he reached it. I took advantage of his fall and smashed my claws at him just as he was going to hit the ground.
He rolled in the air until he crashed on what was left of the pub.
I went where he had landed, his body was motion less, his knife had landed ten feet away from him.
I went to check on Alastor, changing back to human. He was now standing up, some of his wounds already healed. He turned my way and opened his mouth, with expression that of complete panic. I turned around, but not fast enough; the knife hit me on the shoulder and went all the way through the opposite hip. Everything became slow motion. I heard Alastor growl, but ignored it, I was too concentrated on the knife on my hip. I took it out and managed stab the knife just between Asmodeus’ ribs, then I felt myself falling.
From then on I just remember some blurry details. Alastor taking Amadeus’s body, which had come back to Jefferson’s, off me. Then Alastor picking me up, saying something about me being a stupid brat. Police sirens on the back and someone cursing.

I woke up in a dark room, my head torbed, and it felt as if a loan mower had passed over me. I couldn’t move. What had happened? The last thing I remembered was Asmodeus cutting me almost completely in half. The thought occurred to me that I should be dead by now. I staid still on the bed when I heard someone approaching. The door to the room opened and someone turned on the lights. My headache worsened and a growl came out of my throat.
“Finally awake”, said a voice I didn’t recognized. But I didn’t had the strength to be scared, I tried to move my head so I could see who it was but all my middle body started hurting. “Don’t try to move or I’ll have to redo the stitches.” The voice ordered me, I staid still, it was a good ideas.
“Why am I not dead?” I asked before thinking.
The doctor, definitely a female doctor, thought about it for a moment, then said “I’ll call Alastor, he’ll explain. But before that you have to rest a little more. Don’t move and don’t try to use magic, your body is using all your energy to heal.”
“May I get some water first?” I asked.
I heard her open some drawers and then a straw appeared in front of me. “I’ll leave it here, you can reach the straw if you pull this, and she put a control on my hand, then said seriously “don’t click the other buttons or you’ll hurt yourself”.
“Yes mama.” I said with the best tone of little child I could do. Then heard her snort and leave the room, turning of the lights.
I woke up again, this time there was daylight and I could at least move my head. I turned to see the window and found Alastor sleeping on a chair beside my bed. I found the straw of the water I’d finished, pulled it off and managed to poce him on the nose with it. He woke up with a jump and fell from the chair, I started laughing but the movement pulled on the stitches and I stopped, it was Alastor’s turn to laugh.
“Ha ha, very funny” I said sourly.
“Good morning to you too” he said, and then added, “do you now that you speak on your sleep?”
I knew I didn’t but still said, “No, What did I say?”
“You cursed me and then you started some kind of fight with me which I didn’t understand” he said smiling, then sat back on the chair and became serious.
After a moment of silence I said the first question that had come up to my mind, “Soooooo…Why am I not dead?”
He looked at me, then sighed, “Of course you would want to know.” He sat down more comfterbly on the chair as if preparing for a long talk. “First let me make this clear, you WERE cut in half, from your right shoulder to your left hip, so don’t try any brusque movements. After you sent the controller back you were bleeding so badly you would have died in a minute. I didn’t have much choice, and I decided to share blood with you.”
I just stared at him. He had done WHAT?! When a demon shared blood with a human it was to make the human his slave. Fortunately I wasn’t human, but charring blood between races was a dead sentence. Besides, no one knew what could happen if a demon and a shape changer shared blood. I’d heard stories about it but never heard about it actually happening. Maybe he’d done it on purpose to make me some kind of slave. I wanted to punch him, and was deciding if the pain in my stomach would be worth it.
He saw something on my face because he said, “Don’t try to munch me, even if you do it won’t really hurt with your current strength. I promise when you are healed you can punch me as much as you want.” That made me reconsider my train of thought. This didn’t seem to benefit him in any way. Then why?
I asked out loud, “Why did you do it?”
“Because I wouldn’t let you die protecting me. And I didn’t want to owe you anything.” The last part he said in his classical attitude, as if tempting me to go against him.
I normally did, but I was tiered. “Whatever” I said, “for now you’ll just have to do what I say”. He started to protest but I interrupted him. “I’m hungry; go get something for me to eat.” He pouted and on his way out slapped my head. Then he came back with the most gruesome hospital food I’d ever seen.
“Doctors orders” he said, his eyes shining. This time I threw the remote at him and he started laughing. When I got out of the hospital my new demon companion would get a good beating.