She could barely breathe now. “The fire I see in your eyes… that’s part of your demon visage.”
“Yes.”
“The only type of demon who can be good is a former human.”
His jaw clenched. “Somebody’s been doing their home-work, haven’t they?” He swore again and looked away. When he turned his gaze to hers again his eyes were fiery. “I know how this looks. It’s bad. But I’m not going to lie to you anymore. I only lied in the beginning because I didn’t want you to be afraid of me.”
Her back hurt from pressing up against the stove edge, but her kitchen was so small, and she didn’t want to move any closer to him.
“No, you lied so I wouldn’t exorcise you.”
“Well, yeah. That, too. But I am not going to hurt you. I swear it.”
“You swear it?” she repeated incredulously. “You swear it? On what? A Bible?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know what to say to make you believe.”
“You don’t have to say anything. You know what the craziest thing is? Even after Selina told me all of that, I still didn’t believe her. Not really. But now… it’s over, Darrak. It’s over.”
“Which means what?”
Her throat was tight. “Exactly what it sounds like.”
Darrak nodded. “Normally if you’re planning on exorcising a demon, it’s best not to give him a heads-up about it first. The surprise factor works best.” He swallowed and raised his gaze from the floor to hers again. His eyes had returned again to their ice blue shade. “I know you won’t believe anything that comes out of my mouth anymore, but I’m going to try anyhow.”
“Try what?”
“I was a very powerful demon, and I did what I wanted to do for a very long time. But do you want to hear the real truth and nothing but?”
“More than you know.”
“I’ve changed.”
“Bullshit.”
He shook his head. “For three hundred years I’ve been trapped inside a succession of humans. Do you know what that’s done to me?”
“Made you into a lying, evil sack of shit?”
He huffed out a small laugh. “Other than that.”
“What, then?”
“It’s changed me. The humanity has infused me.”
“Humanity?” She held onto the piece of salt so hard she was sure it would leave a permanent mark.
“That’s right. I didn’t know what it meant to feel like a human back then — to love and fear and want things that weren’t totally selfish. That has bled into me from the humans I’ve possessed. Now I feel everything. Even the things I don’t want to feel.”
She didn’t think she could be any more confused by Darrak than she already was. She’d been wrong. “But… you said you possessed bad people. Was that a lie, too? How can you claim to have absorbed their humanity if they were scumbags like you said they were?”
“I wasn’t lying about that. But it didn’t matter if the humans were good or bad, they were still human. That alone has given me some of that intrinsic humanity.”
She brought a hand up to her aching head. There was not enough aspirin in her medicine cabinet — or, possibly, the entire world — to deal with her current headache. “But you were an archdemon. Why would you even care if you chose a bad or good human?”
“In the beginning I didn’t. As an archdemon I thought of humans as insects — less than worthy of life. Pests to be played with or squashed.” He actually winced at whatever horrified expression moved across her face at that statement. “But I’m different now. It was slow, but it happened. My former existence as an archdemon has been permanently dampened for me.”
She shook her head. “Dampened?”
“I remember well enough what I was like and what all I was responsible for, but it’s as if I’m watching from afar, seeing the horrible things I considered fun and games as if they happened to someone else. I wasn’t a very nice guy back then. Selina wasn’t the only one over the centuries to summon me and have me do her unpleasant bidding — but she was the only one to escape my wrath.”
“You killed the others?” Her voice was very quiet.
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. His jaw tensed and he looked down at the ground again. “Even after I changed, my single goal has been survival. I’ve only been able to observe.” He went silent for a moment. “But when you could hear me, and when you were able to help give me form, that gave me so much hope for the future. That I even had a future.” A smile stretched his lips, but it didn’t seem like a happy one. “Hope. There’s another human emotion I never would have felt as a full-strength archdemon. It would have amused me then to see myself now. See how weak I’ve become. How human.”
So Darrak was saying he was all kinds of evil in the past but ever since the curse he’d become steadily more like a human? More lies? Or was he finally telling her the truth? Part of her was still desperate to believe he had changed.
“You’ve been using me,” she said.
“Of course I have.” His lips curled with an unpleasantness that seemed directed toward himself rather than her. “My first chance in three centuries to fix this mess I’d gotten myself into? How could I possibly resist?”
“And then what would you do? Go back to the Netherworld?”
His brows drew together. “No. They’re not very open to change in Hell — especially when that change includes lessening the so-called evil inside of their high-ranking demons. Good is the one thing that scares them — it’s very unpredictable. If I didn’t go back to the way I was before I’d probably be destroyed. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
She repressed a shudder as well as a sliver of concern for him. “So what would you do?”
“I’d try to stay here in the human world for as long as I could. But as soon as my presence was detected they would send agents after me.”
Further confusion only caused the fog in her brain to thicken. “Then why try to break the curse at all? It might be a prison, being stuck inside a human, but at least you’re relatively safe.”
He swallowed and then met her eyes. “If I don’t break the curse, you’ll die.”
Her mouth dropped open. “So you were planning on becoming the hunted, on the run from the hordes of Hell on your ass, so you wouldn’t kill me?”
“Basically.”
“What happened to your pledge of self-protection?”
“It’s still very much intact. I don’t want to be exorcised. Being on the run is different from being destroyed all at once. At least I have a chance — even if it’s not a very good one.” He inhaled deeply. “So there you have it, Eden. The ugly truth about yours truly.”
She tried to process everything Darrak had told her. It was difficult. But what Selina had told her last night had rung really true for her. She’d felt in her gut that the witch had been honest with her. She had a similar feeling right now.
It was the truth. The bad parts and the good parts.
She’d opened up the can of worms and she still wanted to pick around at the gruesome contents. “I still don’t know what you really look like.”