Burn

CHAPTER 19

Fifteen minutes later, Carter was nursing a cup of tea at his desk, and Ryu was pacing agitated circles around his room.

He'd called an ambulance after he'd made Gloria's tea, and she'd sipped it tranquilly as she'd been escorted from the house, waving passively at Carter over her shoulder. He'd wanted to join her, but she'd shaken her head, insistent.

"Get some sleep, kiddo. I'll see you soon."

It was the best she could offer, he knew.

Now it was dark, the only light a scattering of moonlit fragments splayed across the room in sporadic patterning. Carter's window was propped open, gauzy white curtains flapping eerily on a chill evening breeze.

It all seemed fitting, somehow, the battleground of a war that was yet to begin.

Carter's blunt nails tapped rhythmically against the china of his mug, keeping in time to the tap of Ryu's feet against the flooring. It was like a countdown. Like a war cry.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"You've been lying to me," Carter said at length.

Ryu didn't cease his pacing. "Yes."

Carter set his mug down a tad too firmly, and Ryu winced. "Not exactly," he amended. "Does withholding information count?"

"Yes."

"Then yes. I have."

A headache was beginning to bloom at the edge of Carter's temples. He sighed, a deep sigh he could feel all the way to his bones. "Why isn't it ever simple with you?"

Ryu finally paused. He fixed Carter an incredulous stare, both brows raised, and gestured to himself with a taloned hand. "Carter, I'm a fucking demon. There's nothing simple about this at all."

"I don't care," Carter interjected, and he must've sounded as juvenile to Ryu as he did to himself, because the demon only clicked his tongue in disapproval. "I don't, Ryu, I don't fucking care! Why can't we just, like, hang out, without all this other stuff? Don't demons watch, like, tv or something?"

He blew out his cheeks with a frustrated huff and tilted his head to stare at his ceiling, hands running haphazard tracks through his hair. He knew he wasn't making any sense, but heat was boiling up within him; not the heat of Ryu's kiss, his body, but the heat of anger, of despair.

"Tell me, then," he continued after several long moments. "Just fucking tell me."

"I lied," Ryu began, which, really, was just a fantastic way to start any sentence, "when I told you the true desire of demons was to control mortals. It isn't. That's the short game. The long game is..."

He hesitated, and that made it worse, the silence between, where Carter was free to speculate and theorise and drive himself half crazy with worry.

"...to take mortal souls."

Carter was so startled, he could only snap a sharp, "What?"

"Mortal souls," Ryu reiterated, as though Carter had heard him wrong. "They want-"

"Why?" Carter demanded, sitting upright in his chair. A particularly cool draft blew over his desk, an icy shiver skittering along his forearms and leaving raised hairs in its wake.

Ryu shrugged and spread his palms. "Demons don't have souls."

"Of course they don't," Carter laughed, and it was a harsh, ugly sound in his throat. "Demons don't have souls. Fuck, that needs to be a t-shirt slogan. So what," he added, "you want my soul?"