I had Amir Talai read a snippet from this chapter when I went to GalaxyCon Orlando last August.

Yes. For real.

No, I can't believe it, either.

New drawing by the lovely nayapima done as part of the Valentine's exchange for Hellbent Con

Alastor slept comfortably in his hospital bed, his head turned to the side against the pillow and a sweet smile on his face.

Grace, on the other hand, was neither sleeping nor even comfortable. Her recliner was ‘reclined,’ and still she sat upright, perched on the edge of her seat like a vigilant owl—wide-eyed and unblinking—watching Alastor while he slept. He’d been asleep for a while now, likely the effect of the IV continuing to pump him full of sedatives and painkillers, which were likely provided him more for the hospital’s staff to feel safe than it was for him to be comfortable.

But if it meant that he was comfortable, regardless of the reasons why, then she was grateful.

She had no idea what time it was when she finally pulled her phone from her pocket and opened the group chat.

At the moment, to say she was ‘ok’ felt like an exaggeration.

She hadn’t realized she’d been crying until a tear hit the smartphone’s screen.

Holy shit, it felt good to finally just permit herself to cry after keeping a stiff upper lip all damn day.

I … probably shouldn’t have sent that. Any of that.

Shit.

Oh, well. Too late to take it back.

Grace took a deep, steadying breath and put her phone on silent before stuffing it back in her pocket. If her friends were going to be this way, then she would ignore them like a mature adult.

She swallowed, glancing once more at the patient across the suddenly expansive-feeling hospital room. Still asleep. Still with the most blissful smile on his face. 

He’s so beautiful.

Her attention shifted toward the patient monitor. Beautiful vitals, too.

The nightmare was still too fresh, too terrifying, and way too close to being irreversible for Grace to truly believe the worst was behind them.

Alastor had slept for much of the evening so conversation had been sparse after the last time Alexis had checked in on him.

Grace wished she and Alastor had talked more although she had no idea what they could even talk about—in general, but especially not after that trauma.

She ducked into the bathroom for long-overdue relief, glancing in the mirror above the sink while washing her hands afterward. She gasped quietly; her eyes were her eyes again. And Alastor had called them lovely. She began crying, anew.

As soon as she stepped, teary-eyed, from the bathroom, there was a series of quiet taps on the hospital room door.

For some irrational reason, Grace hoped Charlie had sneaked in to visit although she knew better. Charlie wouldn’t even know anything had happened, let alone where to find them. And, knowing Charlie, she wouldn’t defy hospital visiting hours which were now numerous past.

The door eased open and nurse Alexis let herself in. “How are we doing?” she whispered.

Grace gave two of the most enthusiastic thumbs-up she could muster, which were in no way enthusiastic.

Alexis returned a tight-lipped smile before tending her sleeping patient as Grace looked on with that obnoxious jealousy suffocating her. That could have been her doing those things. Should have been her. She swallowed, willing herself to cool the fuck off; Alastor needed to be properly tended more than he needed the psychopath who’d gone and fallen in love with him to be jealous about it.

As Alexis wrapped up her visit, she paused at Alastor’s bedside, eyebrows darting upward.

Only then did Grace notice the change to his vitals and in the disposition of his blanket over his crotch. It was not often that she saw him in this state—not that she could recall, anyway. 

That was one hell of an impressive tent he pitched. She blushed on his behalf; aceness aside, physiology was still gonna physiology.

Grace let herself fleetingly believe that he was dreaming about her.

Alexis flashed a silent, impish smile at Grace. Then she tiptoed over and whispered, “He’s good. Obviously. Do you need anything?”

Grace shook her head but tailed Alexis out of the room. She shut the door behind herself quietly. “Hey …”

Alexis turned. “Change your mind? Coffee? Tea? Me?”

Grace returned a deadpan stare.

“Graham crackers? Soda?” Her gaze dipped briefly from Grace’s face. “More covers? You look chilly.”

Grace cleared her throat and folded her arms over her chest self-consciously. She was chilly; without a doubt, those nipnops were hard enough to cut glass. “I hope this isn’t too forward but … what are you in for?”

“Taking care of sinners so they don’t expire permanently?” Alexis replied with a small gesture of demonstration toward Alastor’s hospital room.

“No, I—I mean … down here. In Hell.”

Alexis took a staggeringly long breath. “Well … I’m sapphic, so that probably doesn’t help my cause any. And before I learned medicine, I was a sharpshooter in the Old West who shot my Ringmaster’s balls right off his disgusting body when he refused to respect my boundaries.” She smirked. “He was only the first of many to find himself on the wrong end of my pistols.”

And I’m the scary one, here?! “Fair,” Grace mumbled, dropping her gaze. “I guess helping others isn’t enough to keep a soul out of Hell, then, is it?”

“Guess not.” Alexis paused then added with a shrug, “But at least we’re in good company.”

At that very moment, Grace wasn’t too sure about that.

Kofax followed her text with a video that took an agonizingly long time to load. It finally appeared in their chat window, the triangle ‘play’ icon in the middle of a static image of Grace enshrouded by Alastor’s shadows and tentacles as she clutched the beskad in hands spitting blue, sparking electricity.

A quiet grunt from Alastor’s bed drew Grace’s attention from her phone; he’d awakened from his most recent nap, although he was still groggy.

“Good afternoon, my handsome portent of doom.”

He rewarded her greeting with a dazzling smile.

Grace repositioned herself on the chair at Alastor’s bedside and he craned his head to try to see what was on her smart phone’s screen. Despite his sour smile, Grace held up her phone to watch the video with him. The clip was all of ten seconds long, but it was ten seconds of unparalleled nightmare fodder.

And although she was involved in it from orchestration to execution, watching it from an outside perspective made her shiver. “Okay … that … was pretty fucking frightening.”

Alastor gave her a wicked grin and a wink. “Just the way I like it!”

Well … no wonder Alexis was so scared of us! Grace supposed she needn’t worry about the Radio Demon’s reputation, after all.

“What was the rest of that conversation about?” Alastor asked.

Grace replied quickly, stuffing the phone into her pocket. “Nothing!”

“Our sex life?” he guessed.

She didn’t dignify the assumption with an answer, instead chirping, “Do you feel up to eating?” with a gesture toward Alastor’s untouched hospital fare.

He turned up his darling little pointed nose at it.

“You know they won’t discharge you ’til you’re eating normal food again.”

“Well then maybe they should provide me with normal food and I’ll eat it.”

Grace drew in a long, deep breath. “They will not provide you raw, rotting deer carcass, Spots.”

“Give me reason to eat this so-called food.” He flopped a hand toward the tray bearing the uneaten lunch.

“Because you’ll get ten years of bad sex if you don’t.”

He stared at her, unblinking.

Okay, ouch. That didn’t have the desired effect. His having told her that, then, was almost certainly the influence of the sedatives making him loopy. “You want raw, rotting deer carcass? You’re gonna have to eat this hospital shit, first.” 

Probably Grace wanted to be able to return to the hotel more than Alastor did. The guest recliner in the corner hardly lived up to its title and was awful to sleep on. Or, in Grace’s case, try to sleep on. So far, she’d been mostly unsuccessful in that endeavor, only managing cat naps here and there.

“So let’s play a game,” she suggested, picking up the little plastic cup with the red gelatin inside. She pulled back the foil seal. “You pretend this is …” The mere thought turned Grace’s stomach as she jostled the cup. “Deer … brains. See them jiggle? Look at those … deer brains … jiggle.”

Alastor glanced away with the most utterly perturbed smile. Nonetheless, when Grace offered him a spoonful of the gelatin, he opened his mouth for her.

“Worst-tasting deer brains ever,” he grumbled after a loud, pained swallow.

For the sake of avoiding puking on the Radio Demon, Grace changed the subject while she continued feeding him. “So … you've been looking out for me from the very beginning? That was you who chased off Vox when he cornered me after I was mugged … wasn’t it.”

“Well, yes, but not exactly.” Alastor shrugged, then winced with a tiny groan. “That was me, but my motivation was just to keep Vox from getting what he wanted.”

Grace pouted. “Oh.”

“But I ended up getting more out of doing that than I’d ever imagined.” He folded his hand around hers as it held the spoon.

“And … you burned down my old apartment building, too, didn’t you?”

“It was dangerous,” he explained. “I was providing a much-needed public service in demolishing it.”

“Such an altruist you are,” she said wryly. “Al, why? Sure, it was slums, but there were souls better off in it than homeless in Hell.”

Alastor sighed, glancing away from Grace. “I had to make sure you had no place else to go before I had the opportunity to win your allegiance.”

Grace knew back then it was a matter of his desire to convince her to sell him her soul, but she wanted to believe, regardless, that what drove him to keeping her around was a matter of the heart from the very beginning.

His voice a whisper, he added, “I couldn’t risk losing you.”

She swallowed hard and quickly changed the subject. “Why did you ask me if I miss my children?”

Alastor guided her hand with the spoon in it toward his mouth, clearly uninterested in answering her question. But after he swallowed that bite, he admitted softly, “It was the closest I’d get to hearing that my mother misses me.” His gaze flicked to Grace. “Do you think she misses me?”

Would I miss Hunter if he did all the things Alastor’s done? What a horrible thing to question! Of course I’d miss him! 

“I’m sure she does,” Grace replied, not because she believed it but because she hoped it was true. “If she loves you even half as much as I love my children, then I know she misses you desperately and that there’s not a day that goes by when she doesn’t think about you.”

He rewarded her thoughtful response with a sweet although watery smile. And then another hasty subject change: "Was there anything you wanted to do in life that you never got around to?"

Grace pursed her lips and thought a few moments. There was plenty she'd had on her bucket list. But of all the things she could think to reply with, she chose this: "I always wanted to skinny dip … but the time and place never presented themselves."

That wasn't exactly accurate. She'd had chances. She hadn't the guts.

Apparently, Grace became more of an exhibitionist after death.

And she knew this conversation was his way of avoiding the hospital food so she pressed him to eat more.

Alastor took another reluctant bite of gelatin and did little to hide his distaste of it.

Once he finished off the small container of gelatin, Grace asked how he felt about eating more of his meal and he resisted.

Without thinking, she asked how he’d feel if their situations were reversed and that appeared to have pissed him right the fuck off. For a flash, she was frightened. Quickly steeling her nerves, she said, “I’m not apologizing for that, Alastor. So are you gonna eat more or not?”

“Fine,” he groused. “Stop caring so much for me.”

Grace removed the cover from the plate to reveal … a hamburger … which, for some bizarre reason seemed so odd and mundane that a chuckle bubbled up in her throat at the thought of Alastor holding it in his hands and eating it. She brought it over to him, trying not to smell it. As offended as he was by the gelatin, the beef offended her. He took it from her, his smile turning to grit teeth, his eyes narrowing on the hamburger.

He took a tentative bite and Grace finally countered his demand, “You’re asking me to do something I am no more capable of than deliberately stopping breathing.”

Around slow, reluctant bites, Alastor replied sheepishly, “Thank you.” Then he gagged and grimaced, plucking a little piece of greenery from his tongue. “What is this?!”

“This is supposed to be a Southwestern flavored burger … I think that’s cilantro.”

“It tastes like soap!”

Grace failed at hiding a little smile as she took the sprig of cilantro from one very disgusted cannibalistic Overlord. To his dismay and further disgust, she popped it into her mouth. “Yep. Cilantro. I’ll take whatever’s left of it off your burger.”

Once the offensive greenery was removed from the hamburger, the Radio Demon managed, given time enough, to finish it—although he refused the rest of his meal. Grace helped herself then to the small pile of the blandest French Fries to ever be fried. At least it would give her stomach something with a little more substance than cilantro to think about.

Alastor leaned back against his pillow, his smile widening slightly. “When I was ten—”

“No!” Grace swallowed the mouthful of fries in a painful lump. “No. Please no more awful frog tales!”

His eyes twinkled with mischief. “Frogs don’t have tails.”

“No, not tails. Tales. And yes, they have tails … when they’re tadpoles.”

He continued his story: “One especially dark and balmy night, my mother took me out into our yard. We sat on the porch swing with glasses of fresh lemonade she’d made earlier that day and she pointed up to a beautiful blur amongst the stars. That was probably the most I’d ever smiled.” Alastor glanced at Grace. “It was Halley’s Comet.”

Grace put her hand to her mouth. “Oh … my god.”

“What?”

“When I was eight, Grampa Bedgood took me camping in Flagstaff. We couldn’t get into the observatory there, of course, but he let me see Halley’s Comet through a pair of binoculars.” Grace caught Alastor’s gaze. “I wouldn’t have thought something like that could connect us.”

“I thought your relationship with your grandfather was a good one.”

“Oh, it was, it was. I meant Halley’s Comet connecting you and me … seventy-whatever years apart.”

“Hmm.”

Grace glanced at the empty gelatin container in the ensuing silence. “You don’t really have a frame of reference for how deer brains taste, do you?”

“Of course not, my sweet,” Alastor replied.

“And you’re lying to protect my sensibilities, aren’t you?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Of course I am, my sweet.”

Her cheeks were starting to warm. “Wanna hear something funny?”

“Is it another story like that War of the Worlds incident you told me about?” Alastor asked, his eyes lighting up.

“No. I could’ve told the group chat exactly how we’ve been passing the time and they wouldn’t believe it.” Even if I have, indeed, ‘rearranged his DNA.’

“I’m hardly the monster everyone makes me out to be.”

Grace ran her fingers through the fluff of hair over his forehead, mussing it a little but then neatening it. “Well, you’re a little bit of a monster … but who among us isn’t? That’s how we survive here.”

“Until we meet someone who makes survival more bearable.”

She scoffed, glancing pointedly at his wound and then around the hospital room. “I hardly believe I’ve done anything to make your survival here easier.”

He pulled her hand from his hair and held it tightly. “Don’t ruin a tender moment.” Alastor met Grace’s gaze intensely, his eyes aglow. “My sweet.”

“Alastor.” Grace said sternly. “You’re making me blush. Stop that.”

“Not on your afterlife, my sweet.”

“Holy shit, you’re such a sap when you’re seda—” It was then that Grace noticed the infusion pump had been turned off. No wonder he’d seemed more irritable this morning. He wasn’t, in fact, sedated at all anymore. "Oh."

Alastor stared at her in silence with a pleasant smile on his lips.

She pointed at his IV. “When did that happen?”

“When you were taking a nap this morning. The nurse wanted to talk to you but I insisted she let you sleep and she didn’t seem especially eager to defy my request. Can’t imagine why.” He repositioned himself with clenched teeth and said haltingly, “I told you: you make me dizzy. My sweet.”

Grace leaned heavily on the bed’s railing, feeling at that moment more than a bit lightheaded. “You make me dizzy, too.”

So ... are you wondering what part I had Amir read?

It was this, since his aversion to cilantro inspired it:

Next Sunday, deer friends, is the last chapter of this fic. See you then!