“Ryan, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He kicked the front door closed and dropped my bag on the floor. Then he seized me by my shoulders so that I was facing him. At this point I was so stunned by his bizarre behavior that all I could do was stare at him.
“Kara Gillian, Summoner of Demons,” Ryan said in a low but intense voice.
“Yeah, that would be me,” I said with a scowl. “What the fuck is going on?”
“You’re on the edge, foolish woman. You’re spent and strained, and you look like you’re on the verge of tears every other minute.”
“Well, the past couple of months have sucked major ass, y’know?” I said, tears actually springing to my eyes. Then, before I even realized what was happening, I was bawling. Ryan pulled me close, wrapping an arm around me and holding my head against his chest. He didn’t speak, didn’t murmur anything comforting. All he did was hold me.
After a few minutes of me sobbing into his shirt, he shifted and lifted me in his arms, cradling my head against his shoulder as he walked to my bedroom. I’d never been carried like that before, the way the hero carries the damsel, and it made me cry harder. It wasn’t a pretty crying either—it was full-body racking sobs, with a horribly snotty nose and my eyes swelling up. But Ryan just held me close, silent and there. He took me into the bedroom and laid me on the bed, shifting position smoothly to lie down beside me, pushing me to my side and wrapping his arms around me again from behind.
I cried like that, all wrapped up in him, until I fell asleep.
WHEN I WOKE up, I was alone in bed. I felt a brief stab of loss but, at the same time, relief. And then, when I came out to the kitchen and found a box of chocolate donuts on the table, I was even able to laugh.
My cell phone rang while I was making coffee to go with the donuts. I reached over and grabbed it, noting absently that it wasn’t the usual ring tone.
“This is Kara Gillian,” I said as I measured out the grounds.
“Ms. Gillian, this is Rebecca Stanford at Nord du Lac Neuro. Your aunt has woken up and she’s asking for you.”
I felt frozen in time for a thousand heartbeats, though it was surely far less. It worked. She’s back. Finally a breathless laugh escaped me. “That’s … amazing.”
The other woman hesitated. “Um, yes. Though I do want to prepare you; she may not be quite what you expect.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes after long comas, it takes a little while for the brain to work properly again. Patients will say things that don’t seem to make much sense, and it can be quite shocking if you’re not expecting it.”
“What sort of things is she saying?”
I heard the other woman sigh. “She said, ‘Tell my niece that if she thinks I won’t flay her hide for serving a demonic lord, she’s seriously deluded.’”
I burst out laughing. Tessa was definitely back.
Blood of the Demon is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.