“Of course not. Your pain brings me no value. Yet. For the moment, it costs me nothing to keep you as my pet, and I have no reason to abuse my pets. All demons do enjoy fighting, and fucking, with exuberance. But torturing souls is an acquired taste many demons do not have.”
“Not one you have?”
Zel shrugged. “Not as much as others.”
That wasn’t a no. Mia gulped.
“So all I have to do is just… be your pet?”
“Correct. Be my pet, stay in the spire, and do try to not get yourself killed. Kas is one of my more talented enforcers, but even he would lose to a group of brutes who decided they wanted to rape you and eat you once they were done with you. No doubt many demons want to know what the heart of an unmarked souls tastes like. Be careful.”
Mia sucked in a hard breath through her teeth, but kept her eyes locked with Zel’s, and even managed a solid nod, too.
“You think that’s a possibility?”
“Wildly unlikely. Any such demon would soon find themselves dying the slowest, most painful death I can devise. But I did not survive these centuries by taking unnecessary risks.” She tapped the table with a claw again. “Do not make me regret this leniency. As I said, I can simply tie you up, but forcing you to do what I wish may not prove as effective as your cooperation, and it is your cooperation that interests me.”
Nodding, Mia wrapped a hand around the amber crystal between her breasts.
“It’s a much better deal than I figured I’d get. I’ll do it.”
“Wonderful.” Zel stood up, and headed for the door. “Stay here and get settled until next rekindling. I will make sure the word is spread about who you are and your value to me. Perhaps you should get acquainted with your new guardian.”
“Acquainted…” Uh oh.
Giggling, Zel shook her head as she stopped by the open doorway, and tapped Kas on his long, flat head.
“No, Kas will not be touching you tonight. I want to experiment with the reach of your aura and your sexuality while you are unspoiled. And then again, once you are.”
Oh, great, Zel was going to make her do sexual things, too. For a second, that sent bile up Mia’s throat, and rage and heat up her spine. But it faded a moment later. Zel wouldn’t just throw a big brute or someone at Mia to rape her. That didn’t fit the whole ‘pet’ plan. She’d do something a lot more devious, and a lot more effective. That was still horrible, that Zel might force something on her, but… considering the orgy scene with Saldavin…
“I can feel that aura,” Zel said, chuckling again as she looked over her shoulder at Mia. “If you truly need satisfaction, masturbate. And perhaps give Kas here a blowjob or two. He could use some relief.”
The eyeless dragon snorted, clicked once in his throat, and grumbled.
“I… think I’ll be fine,” Mia said, standing up.
“Very well. You two should speak, nonetheless. You both know Adron and his feisty slave. Start there.”
And with that, the demon queen was gone, and the white teeth came out of the metal above and below her, effectively closing the door. It didn’t stop anyone from peeking in, but privacy didn’t seem to matter in Hell.
Sighing, Mia walked down the stairs, and stood in the center of her room. The pile of leather blankets, and even a couple silk ones, would make for a better sleep than even Caera’s room had provided. Plus, Caera’s room had been a tiny thing, and this room was bigger than a surface one-bedroom apartment. And much as she didn’t want to admit it, it was a cool looking room, with the dangling chains and skulls and stuff. Mia had gone through a bit of a witch phase in her teenage years, like all self-respecting girls did, and skulls and black metal were awesome.
Fresh blood and corpses were not. Thankfully her room didn’t have any of that. It was clean.
She scooped the bronze statue of Zel off the table. Wow, heavy, but the tiny burning flame in the statue’s grip didn’t fall off. And if it was anything like the burning bushes out in the mountains, it’d burn forever.
“Kas,” she said, setting the statue down before she walked down the wide bone stairs. “Can I call you Kas?”
He grumbled and clicked once. Whatever that meant.
“You know Adron?” she asked.
He rumbled deep in his chest, like a bear or something, before clicking once in his throat again. Was it in his throat? It bulged slightly when he did. Maybe it was something he did with his tongue in the back of his mouth?
“Is… that a yes?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“Uh, sorry, I don’t speak Hellian.” Shit, she said sorry again.
“Souls never do.”
“There a reason you don’t like speaking Estian?” It took some effort to not say English.
He tapped one of his big bull horns, grumbling. “The eyeless, like sarkarins and riivas, don’t usually speak Estian because the vibration in the throat can bother our eyesight sometimes.” He poked the flat top of his long head. It was almost bone hard, same as his horns, and made a soft tap tap sound.
“I… what? But you don’t have eyes.”
“We can see, with this.” He tapped the black bone skin his horns came out of again.
“That–nevermind. I’ll take your word for it.” Some species on the surface had weird ways of seeing, and she was no biologist. And it was Hell, biology didn’t make sense down here anyway. “Why’s it called Hellian?”
He groaned, rumbling deep in his chest. Yeap, he was annoyed, but he was also willing to answer her questions. She couldn’t pass up that opportunity.
“Because hellbeasts speak it.”
“What? Wait, what? The hellbeasts can talk?”
He shook his head. With how the two huge horns came out the sides of his head, and pointed almost straight forward, further than his snout did, head shaking was a dangerous gesture with him.
“Simple words. Kill. Eat. Fight. Fuck. Nothing surface animals don’t already make noises for.”
That was interesting, actually speaking the same language as animals.
“Can they–”
“No, hellbeasts can’t understand complicated Hellian words or sentences.” He turned and faced her, straight on. He sat almost like a cat might, but also almost like a bird might, and his huge arms were able to reach the floor. “You’re annoying.”
She stared at him, and waited for the follow up. But he didn’t follow up. He just stood there, and — supposedly — stared at her, after insulting her.
It was too good. She laughed, and laughed, and eventually fell to her knees on the pile of blankets.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, nothing. It’s just, that’s got to be the most normal reaction any demon has had to me, yet. It’s nice.”
He clicked a couple times in his throat, but said nothing she could understand. At least his posture relaxed a bit.
“You’re unusual,” he said eventually.
“I get that a lot. So, you really know Adron?”
He backed himself up a bit so his tail and back were in the corner of the room closest to the door.
“Yes.”
“How?”
Another rumble.
“We’ve worked together before.”
“Ah, interesting. Adron told me he–” She squinted at the door. She didn’t see anyone through the cracks between the giant teeth, but still, no reason to risk outing Adron’s secret agent job. “Yeah, he told me.”
“Adron is a moron, sometimes.”
Mia tilted her head to the side as she pulled her knees up to her chest, hugged them, and watched her shark dragon dinosaur bodyguard. Much as demons were all alien and weird, they were also kind of human-ish in a lot of their mannerisms and whatnot. And their inflections.
“He’s your friend.”
Kasimiro grunted again, but didn’t deny it, either. It was true, then. Good. Much as Adron was a mischievous troublemaker kinda guy, he also seemed like a nice guy, at least by Hell standards. If Kas was his friend, then hopefully that meant Kas was also a nice guy.
Of course, nice guy by Hell standards included Adron having his sex slave pin Mia down so he could get ready to sink his enormous dick into her tiny body.
Mia clenched her eyes tight and shook her head hard, earning a small head tilt from the horned shark.
“Do you… also know Hannah?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Um… how?”
His tail swished. Once.
“I fucked her with Adron, several times. He spoils her.”
Oh god. She shouldn’t have asked.
“At the… same time?”
He grunted, and nodded.
Mia groaned, and buried her face in her blankets. Christ, why did she fucking ask? The mental image of Hannah, lying back on Adron’s chest, his hand around her throat, choking her and holding her down, cock buried deep in her ass, while the shark demon with the body of a god sank his cock slowly into her dripping slit and–
She groaned louder. If Hell corrupted her anymore, she’d end up doing exactly what Zel suggested. Masturbate, and get to know her new bodyguard. She wasn’t that desperate. Yet.