An Eternity of Dead Sun (An Eternity of Eclipse Novel Book 2) (29 page)

Though this charm appeared to bear no effect on Coco, she listened to his command anyway. Before making her exit, she made sure to impart me with a glare. The deepening bruise on her left eye made her appear scarier than before. After effectively striking fear into my heart, she gunned down the stairs and disappeared.

To be honest, I felt bad about punching her. Coco had been surprisingly cool—it was shady of me to sucker punch her like that. I made a mental note to buy her cookies as an apology.

“Gracie,” started Phix when it was just the two of us.

“I’m not going home,” I interrupted stubbornly, setting my heels in and refusing to move.

“Fine, fine.” He gestured his hand for me to follow him down the stairs. “Let’s just take a walk then.”

Seeing no harm in that, I nodded warily. I walked down the stairs with him as we started an impromptu late night stroll around campus.

Ivy-covered brick buildings, lush gardens, and world-class statues ornamented my beautiful campus. All around, there was a lingering scent of rain in the air. The ground was still damp from the storm and the sky was seemingly preparing for another downpour.

“Gracie,” Phix spoke up after a lengthy pause between us. Outwardly, he appeared composed, but I knew he was anxious for me to get back to the apartment. He was charged to watch over Eclipse and I, and because Coco was still considered a very young Demon, I knew he wanted to get back to my place so he could watch over all of us.

“Coco told me the truth,” I interjected, plucking a yellow rose out of the dying rose garden that lined the pebbled walkway. I began to mindlessly pluck out the individual petals, the remains trailing after us like shadows.

“Yeah, she told me,” he responded with distracted amusement. He laughed to himself. “She came into the apartment freaking out. It took me a while to decipher that she was saying, ‘I accidentally told her that his Dark Majesty was punished with her and then the midget punched me!’” His chuckle grew louder as he lowered his eyes to me. “You have a thing for abusing me and Coco, don’t you?”

I wanted to smile, but I didn’t have the energy. Instead, I continued to pluck the petals off my rose, imagining that I was peeling off Eclipse’s skin.

Phix smiled awkwardly, noting how distant I was being.

“We got along pretty well before you found out I was a Demon,” he prompted innocently, staring at me with puppy-dog eyes.

I returned that look with a firm stare. “Was this before you fucked up and nearly got me killed or when you pretended to be an old man to gain my trust?”

Phix winced at the reminder of his failures. That awkward smile of his grew into a hopeful one. “What about the vending machine?”

I remembered liking him a lot when I was interacting with him at the vending machine, but that felt like a lifetime ago. He had been charged to serve Eclipse, which meant that his true loyalty was with Eclipse. In the grand scheme of things, it also meant that he was against me. It didn’t help that he was well aware that Eclipse had been punished with me all along. I didn’t like Coco very much, but at least she told me the truth.

Reading my thoughts, he quietly said, “I know that you’re probably mad at me because I didn’t tell you about his Dark Majesty’s dilemma, but it wasn’t my place to do so. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been fucking up around him a lot lately.” He sighed when I didn’t bother to respond to him. He went back to the original topic to try and win me over, or at least get me to converse with him. “I really liked you too,” he told me, the hopeful smile never leaving his face. “At the vending machine, when we were talking . . . I thought you were very sweet and nice. I felt like I was talking to my little sister.” His shoulders rose offhandedly. “If I knew how it felt to have one, that is.”

“I’m not a nice person in real life,” I finally voiced, for some reason ticked off that he believed I was a “sweet and nice” girl. “That girl you met at the vending machine, her charisma and her sweetness doesn’t really exist. In real life, I’m just a sick and disturbed girl who likes to enjoy people’s miseries.”

“I beg to differ,” he respectfully countered. “I would say that you’re a lot feistier than you look, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not the girl I met at the vending machine. Your propensity towards the more sadist sentiments of life aside, I think that you’re a genuinely nice girl.”

“Were you human as well?” I suddenly asked when the curiosity struck me. He had been talking about me being a nice person when he was a really sweet person as well. He was such a nice guy that I couldn’t fathom that he was a Demon in disguise. “Like Coco? Before you became a Demon . . . were you human?”

“No,” he answered coolly. “I was never human.”

“You’re very good at acting like it.”

I was amazed at how incredible he was at behaving like “one of us.” He seemed genuinely kinder than most humans I had met.

“You have this innocent and charming persona that gets people to put their guard down,” I continued. “You seem really human.”

“Not all Demons are gung-ho on power and not all Demons hate humans, Gracie,” he enlightened. “Some of us are more evolved than others and some of us are really indifferent towards your existence. For the most part, I couldn’t care less if any of you live or die. I am not offended by your presence, nor am I obsessed with it.” He stretched his hand out in the “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” manner. “This is me; this is my personality. I’m not faking it.”

“So, what did Coco ask for?” I asked, gradually finding myself becoming comfortable around Phix, just like I was when I first “met” him at the vending machine. I wanted to take my mind off Eclipse. There was no better distraction than rifling for dirt on a certain glaring hyena who seemed unreservedly offended by my existence. “Was it just for fame and fortune?”

“Yeah,” Phix replied, grinning reminiscently when reminded of Coco. “Fame, fortune . . . and to be tall and skinny.”

I came to an abrupt halt, nearly tripping over his words. “Tall
and
skinny?”

He bounced his head like a bobbing figurine. “Yeah, she was really short when I first met her. Like your height and really overweight, like this big.” He extended his arms as widely as they could go.

“Coco was a former short, fat girl?” I gasped, stunned by this new development.

He beamed, recounting the memory of her in such a state. “Oh man, she was so cute. Her cheeks were really big and you could hardly see her glaring eyes when she looked at you. I accidentally called her a midget and she’s hated me ever since. When I was finally able to convince her to make the deal, she demanded that I not only make her rich and famous, but also skinny and tall.”

My mind was spiraling with confusion. I couldn’t believe that Coco and I had so much in common. I thought over how much she seemed to be annoyed with me and I couldn’t help but say, “Why does she hate on me if she was once short and overweight too?”

He shrugged again. “Probably because you remind her of herself? People usually don’t like to be reminded of why they were once so miserable.”

I nodded dimly, understanding what he was saying.

“Gracie,” Phix said tensely, steering the conversation back to more pressing matters.

We had been on enough tangents tonight. As easygoing as he was, Phix still took his duties seriously.

“I know you’re angry—and you have every right to be—but it’s not safe for you to be outside alone. I’ve left his Dark Majesty alone, and if anything comes after him, he won’t be able to defend himself. I know you’re upset, but you can’t change the circumstance you’re in. Can you just come home with me so I can keep you both safe?”

“No,” I retorted, getting absurdly angrier at the mention of Eclipse. It was childish of me to behave like this, but I truly had no handle on my emotions. I was too infuriated. “I hope he won’t be able to defend himself and dies.”

Phix gave me a knowing look. “I know you don’t mean that, Gracie.”

I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I was about to loiter around campus for a while longer when a thought materialized in my head. I turned to Phix as I plucked off the last yellow petal from the rose.

“He can’t defend himself, right?”

Wariness treaded on his face when he noticed the vicious glint in my eyes. Phix hesitantly shook his head while from inside my bag, I could see OinkOink stare up at me in fear.

I got the answer I wanted.

Without forewarning, I threw my bag at his chest. “Let’s go back then.”

The confusion on Phix’s face graduated into mystification. Even OinkOink’s whimpering had become louder.

“Gracie, what are you planning to do to him—?”

Phix had begun to speak, but I couldn’t hear the rest of his words because I was already running back to the apartment. I had never ran so fast in my life. Before I knew it, I was already barging into the apartment without warning.

Coco was watching
Tears of the Rainbow
when she got up from the living room sofa. She uneasily watched as I sped towards the counter to grab a jar of salt. Just then, Phix came running in with my bag. His eyes shot open when he saw that I had salt in my possession. Before the Demons could stop me, I had already ran into the hall and poured a line of salt to separate the hallway from the living room—basically preventing them from coming into my room. I threw the empty jar on the floor and advanced towards the bedroom.

“Oh crap, Gracie!” Phix shouted while OinkOink barked fearfully from my bag. “What are you planning to do—?”

Boom!

I slammed the bedroom door with all my might, instantly drowning their screams into an ocean of indistinct mumbles. Chest rising and falling rapidly, I leaned my forehead against the door for a full second before I averted my gaze to the one who had caused me so much grief tonight.

Lying flat on his stomach with the white comforter clinging loosely to his bare back, Eclipse couldn’t have looked more at peace with himself. He resembled a beautiful Angel taking a nap.

Anger saturated my eyes when I recalled what I learned today.

He had lied to me.

The two-faced bastard had been lying to me this entire time.

I reflected upon all the embarrassment I felt tonight and I couldn’t control myself.

I was livid and I wanted Eclipse to pay for it.

As my insides rioted with a need for revenge, I seized a pillow and violently threw it at him. I watched as it hit his head and bounced off the bed. Not feeling the least bit satisfied, I grabbed another pillow that was bigger than the last and started hitting him with it.

Whack!

“You bastard!”

Whack!

“You miserable bastard!”

Whack!

I couldn’t stop myself from hitting him as shame plagued me. I was so lost in my fury that there was a point where I was tempted to kill him by smothering him with the pillow. I found myself not having the heart to do it. And because I didn’t kill him, I kept hitting him again and again because it was the only way I could deal with my emotions.

The entire time as I hit him, he didn’t react once. He continued to blissfully sleep, utterly unaware of the fact that I hated him more than anything in the world.

“You must really think I’m a fool, don’t you?” I whispered to his sleeping figure, my heart racing beyond limits.

In exhaustion, I felt my body slump to the sofa, the pillow still clutched in my hand. I shook my head, feeling my stomach twist in revulsion as I stared at him. My arms hurt from hitting him and I still wasn’t satisfied. If anything, I felt worse than I did before . . . and I didn’t understand why.

I clutched a shaking hand over my chest, where my heart laid.
What is this feeling?
What was this foreign emotion that was eating me up? I’ve had my pride hurt in the past and it was one of the most awful things I had experienced, but this pain felt different. It was a million times worse.

It felt like my heart was hurting, like it was breaking.

I remembered how grateful I was when he woke up from his coma—that someone I cared about was safe and healthy again. It was crushing to realize that one of my purest and most humane acts was wasted on a Demon who didn’t want to be here with me in the first place. I knew that he didn’t love me, but I thought he at least cared about me. I thought we were friends, but all of that was a lie.

I was worthless to him.

I was nothing but a worthless human to him.

“You were punished with me?” I finally voiced out to him, my lips quivering. Hearing myself articulate these hollow words made me feel worse, but I kept going because it was the only way to let this off my constricted chest. “You were sent to me because you had been punished with me? This whole time, I thought I was stuck with you, but it’s actually the other way around, isn’t it? It was you who was stuck with me.”

I truly thought that, despite all the doubt I had about him, I had found my first friend in the world. Someone I cared about and someone who cared about me.

It was illogical to consider a Demon your friend, and even though I knew better, I fought logicality and embraced the impossible. I realized now how stupid I was. He took care of me because he was responsible for me. He made me think he was attracted to me because he wanted to seduce my soul away from me.