Page 6 of Hellhound AU

When the waitress dropped off the check at the table, I grabbed it without thinking, pulling out my wallet and counting out the cash to leave. (Yeah, I was old-fashioned. When you grew up before credit cards, you got used to always having cash on hand.)

Milo beamed at me again, like a ray of freaking sunshine. Shit. Did this mean it was a date?

“You want half for mine?” Milo asked, but he still had that big-ass smile on his face, like I had bought him a diamond ring or something.

I just grunted in response, getting up out of the booth and standing there. Milo took one last sip of his water, then he popped up, too. He called out farewells to what seemed like half the diner. He almost walked into someone when his head was turned calling out goodbyes, but I used a hand to guide him. When we made it out the front door, he managed to trip on the door frame, but I caught his arm in my hand to prevent him from falling.

Somehow, I wasn’t quite sure how, I was then holding hands with Milo. It was… nice. His hand was warm, his fingers long but still smaller than mine. And every once in a while he’d give my hand a squeeze and smile at me, like me being there was a job well done.

He was clearly leading the way, walking with purpose and bringing me along with him. We had gone a few blocks before we made it to his car. It was an older chevy pickup—maybefrom the 70s?—and it was in amazing condition. I whistled in appreciation.

“I know. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Aunt Anabelle took good care of it, and now it’s mine,” Milo said, patting the truck with the hand that I wasn’t holding.

I supposed it was time to let him go. I was weirdly sad at the thought. Milo looked at me and must have noticed.

“I’ll let you drive it if you’re helpful with the abusive husband,” he stated, then he let my hand go and walked around to the driver’s side. I sort of stood there, unsure if he was serious or not.

I was debating whether or not I was actually supposed to go with him when he started the car, and I found myself pulling open the passenger door and hopping in before he could take off. Because, honestly, if Milo was going to go face down someone’s abusive husband, it was the responsible thing to go with him. Milo would end up threatening the guy with a knife, tripping, and injuring himself or something equally ridiculous. The man needed a keeper.

I guessed I was volunteering for the job.

Milo pulled out into traffic. He seemed, at least, better at driving than he was at walking. He really paid attention to what he was doing.

Right until he looked over at me and started talking.

“So, Kevin is a piece of shit, and he’s abusing Marcy. They have one son together, Aaron, and he’s a good dad to the kid, according to Marcy. So she doesn’t want him dead or anything, but she wants to get a divorce, and she wants him to leave her alone.”

I grabbed onto the seat and braced myself as Milo turned back to look at the road just in time to swerve around a car that was making a left. He then slammed on the brakes, throwing meforward, in order to let a woman with a baby carriage cross the road.

Milo looked back over at me, but I gestured his eyes back to the road, because the woman was almost all the way across. He hit the gas, and we jumped forward. We then continued on our way, and I felt like I was in one of those racing games where you swerved around cars and tried not to crash.

He was not better at driving than walking. I was so very wrong.

Mostly he filled me in on Kevin, Marcy’s husband, and every time he talked, he looked over and took his eyes off the road. My jaw was clenched so tightly that I couldn’t even tell him tofocus on driving!

After an interminably long, death-defying ride (although maybe it wasn’t actually that long, but it definitelyfeltlike it), we ended up at a cute little single story house in a nice-looking neighborhood.

Milo parked in front, then he shut off the car. I stared at the house, breathing in deep. One human inside. Not a hellbound human, either, so killing him was out of the question. Not that Marcy wanted him dead, anyway.

“How are we supposed to get him to leave Marcy alone if we can’t kill him?” I asked. “I’m not really a fan of torture. It’s so… messy. And awkward.”

Milo was staring at me, and I played back what I said in my head. Oops? I probably shouldn’t talk about torture and killing people. I really wasn’t used to human-ing. I didn’t intermingle with them all that much.

“Boo, I’ll take care of any torture. You just stand there and look intimidating, okay?” Milo asked, patting my chest.

He hopped out of the car, and I followed. We walked up to the front door, and rather than knocking, Milo tried the door. It swung open, and he called out, “Honey! I’m home!” He walked into the house, and I followed behind him.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t just kill him?” I asked. “It would be less messy.”

Kevin groaned from where he was tied up in a chair, gagged with one of his ties we’d found laying across a kitchen chair.

“Nah. we’ll just rip a couple fingernails out. That’s really painful. Or we could kneecap him. That’s an option,” Milo said.

He was walking around Kevin, and the guy’s eyes were wide and pleading. He got no sympathy from me, though. No, he wasn’t hellbound, but when we’d entered the house, Kevin had recognized Milo and had gone charging at him, yelling about him being a nosy motherfucker.

Well, that didn’t sit well with me, and I’d ended up knocking out the guy before he could get hands on Milo. The little chaos demon had been thrilled about that, and he’d insisted we tie him to a chair and gag him. So here we were.

“Ripping fingernails out is… really bloody. Very big mess. I do not recommend,” I finally answered.