Bad Company (Seven Deadly Sins #1) ✅ Completed

Chapter Forty: Rude Awakening

Rude Awakening

Dante and I made our way downstairs. Chase was passed out again upstairs. Dante hadn't bothered to take him down from the wall. He figured it would be safer to leave him there until we'd dealt with Asher.

I wasn't sure how I was going to explain that one to him when he woke up, but right now I was a little more concerned with what was happening to me.

Dante had gently but firmly pulled me off of Chase and put him back to sleep. Once I was no longer kissing Chase, I felt that weird heat take over everything but it finally faded and left. It took a few minutes but I felt normal again. Dante studied me for a whole five minutes to make sure I was really ok. Then he nodded as if satisfied that I'd gotten it all out of Chase and wasn't about to go all crazy on him.

I didn't really feel any different now that I wasn't near Chase. Should that be something I worried about? Wasn't I supposed to go all psycho and insatiable? Maybe I hadn't done it right. Maybe Chase still had some of Lust or the seed or whatever inside of him. What if I hadn't really gotten it all out of him?

Dante was talking to me but I wasn't really paying attention until he snapped at me. "Eliza! Did you hear anything I just said?"

"Er..." I shrugged. If he wasn't screaming at me it wasn't generally that important - at least not in my experience. I'd listen just as soon as he got all red and that vein of his popped out on his forehead. Like right about now. Now would be a good time to listen closely.

"What was that now?" I asked, pretending I hadn't been ignoring everything he'd been saying for the last minute.

"I said..." he started between clenched teeth. He did that a lot. "If you find yourself having a thought that's not totally yours, it probably isn't."

"Wait? Can it do that? Make me think something but it's not really my own thought?" That wasn't something a person could just prepare for was it? I wasn't sure. I didn't think so, but how could I even be sure that was my own thought right now?

Ugh, this whole situation was such a pain in the neck.

"Absolutely. Think of Lust as a virus. It has its own agenda and it can make you see, hear and feel things that aren't there, or isn't real. Asher can do it too, which is why you have to be extra careful when dealing with him in your weakened state," Dante explained.

"Is that what happened to Chase? Lust made him see things or believe things that weren't true?" That would explain a lot of what Chase had been ranting about before Dante had knocked him out (each time). It was a relief actually; at least it was better than thinking he'd gone crazy on his own. Now that I had the sin, maybe he'd be able to tell reality from fantasy again.

At least I hoped so.

Dante nodded looking pensive instead of furious for a change. "I'm almost sure it did. I think we can safely assume the reason he attacked Kara was because of whatever Lust had shown him. I can't be entirely sure without tapping into his thoughts but I think it's safe to assume he concocted a whole scenario where she was you and she did something to anger him."

I narrowed my eyes going over what he'd just said. "What do you mean by tapping into his thoughts? Do you mean like reading his mind or something?"

"Or something. I can't read minds like what you're thinking, but I can pick up a thought if it's loud enough."

I knew he was lying to me. There was no way he was telling me the truth on this one. Call it female intuition, or maybe it was the fact that I was actually starting to get to know him a little better. Either way, I knew for a fact that someone like Dante would never want me to know the full extent of all his mighty power. I could respect that. I really didn't want to know anyway. All it did was give me a headache and at this point I was long out of Tylenol and I was pretty sure the drug store was already closed.