Clyde held up a hand, rugged and tan in the dim light of her room. “Whoa. Hold it right there. As demons we can’t kill anyone, Delaney. That goes for any human who has a contract with Satan, too. I know that for a fact. We can freak them out, create illusions of their worst fears, and aid in driving them to the brink of madness so taking their own life appears almost utopian, but we can’t physically harm them. I may not have liked attending the ‘New-Millennium Demon and Your Role in Demonic Deviltry’ classes, but I heard a thing or two.”
If she didn’t keep going, she’d never get it all out. “And that’s just what Vincent did. Created an illusion. Gary was terrified of dogs. I know, me with a guy who’s afraid of dogs, right? Either way, he was petrified of them. Some bad experience when he was growing up or something. Gary was on the roof of his apartment building. He and his roommates had been having some kind of party, and he was cleaning up while everyone else was puking down in the apartment.”
Clyde’s hand jerked through his hair in a rough motion. “Jesus. He didn’t.”
“Oh, but he did. I know he did because when all was said and done, some of Gary’s roommates remembered hearing dogs growling. A lot of them, but the police chalked that up to their drinking because they found no evidence to support it. Gary must’ve seen those dogs, and in the kind of panic I just know they created for him, he took off running . . .”
“Right off the edge of the building.”
Delaney closed her eyes. “An eight-story building.”
“Holy Christ.” He lifted his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so what happened to Vincent? Where the hell is he?”
“It gets worse.”
“As only it can.”
“When Kellen and I got there, Gary was already dead. A crowd was gathering while someone else was dialing 911. In the middle of this already fucked-up mess, it began to pour. Kellen dragged me away from Gary’s mangled body. God, it was so awful . . .” Her voice hitched, her chest a tight ball of knots. Her mind’s eye had never allowed her the luxury of erasing that vivid visual.
Clyde drew her to his side, running small circles over her back, massaging the base of her neck, but he remained quiet, allowing her the time she needed to find her breath.
“So Kellen dragged me away from Gary—his body. I knew there was nothing I could do for him, and so did Kellen. In the middle of this, it began to pour. Thunder, lightning, the whole nine. Violent shit, and Vincent was still on the roof . . .”
Clyde’s head cocked to the left in question. “I’m going to assume there is justice?”
Her shoulders sagged as Clyde continued to knead them. “In some weird way, yeah, I guess it was just. Vincent got nailed. We heard his scream, and the cries from everyone around us. Kellen and I both ran to the roof, and we found Vincent, but he was still alive.”
“Alive?”
“He was when we found him—but just barely. I helped to keep him alive until the ambulance came. We spent hours in the hospital, and I hope the universe forgives me, but there were some moments when I hoped he wouldn’t live—came close to actually praying for it. I was sick with myself for it—but at this point, even though I didn’t know the whole story surrounding Gary’s death, I knew how evil Vincent was. I knew what he was capable of, and I knew in my gut he’d killed Gary to prove to me what he could do—to show the fuck off.”
The confusion on Clyde’s face was blatant.
“Kellen and I were his only living relatives—me being the oldest of the two of us. When the doctors told us Vincent was virtually brain-dead, I felt so little remorse it disgusts me to remember it. But they also told us a decision had to be made about whether to resuscitate him if his heart began to fail. There was all this medical talk of DNRs and he was hooked up to all these machines, and then the words ‘no chance of recovery’ came up, and finally, organ donation . . . It’s still kind of a blur, but I did know one thing—Gary was dead. Vincent wouldn’t ever pay for that by doing time or whatever. He might not have paid for it had he lived because of who he knew, but I knew he was responsible—so I did the next best thing . . .”
Clyde’s hands stopped moving. “I’m lost. Vincent’s execution wasn’t enough?”
“Vincent was healthy and strong. Vital, for all his faults. He took the ‘body is your temple’ to a whole new level. Despite his drinking, he didn’t smoke, he worked out, jogged . . . so I kept him alive long enough to donate his organs. All of them.”
Clyde’s hands on her back froze, his body stiffening with a rigid clench.