Bonnie wasn't informed on whether demons needed food to survive, but proven by the rumbling of her stomach at the first sight of a meal, she did.

The take away they had found themselves in wasn't the finest of establishments. It was a place that perhaps health and safety missed on their roster a couple of times. However, it smelled good from outside, and often the places that looked the worst produced the most surprising results. In kebab ratings anyway. Plus, nestled under a brick walkway and cobbled street, its flickering lights outside weren't easy to see, and it seemed that only the people who knew of it were coming through the door.

Bonnie had been patient. She hadn't pressed them to talk the entire time they were ordering, instead letting them sit and mull over their own woes while boozy adolescents jostled them. And then, once they'd got to the unnervingly sticky table at the front window, they'd both barely looked up as they jabbed the overcooked brown meat with their plastic forks.

But as more people left, leaving only a few drunk stragglers who were attempting to get their cheese covered chips into their mouths, she'd had enough.

"Right," she announced, as she licked garlic sauce from her index finger. "Who wants to start?"

Kimaris picked up the soggy end of his pita bread and wrinkled his nose at it, his attitude to the question equally unenthusiastic. Meanwhile, the only visible parts of Gremory were his shoulders as he inhaled the food, deaf to her question.

After a moment of silence, Bonnie clicked her tongue. "No one? Okay." She pulled out the earrings and placed them on the table between them, careful not to touch where an unknown substance had discoloured it. "How about we start with these?"

Kimaris glanced over the lid of his polystyrene box with vague interest before slapping a hand onto Gremory's back.

"You're up, mullet boy."

The blonde lifted his head from behind his container, an unimpressed glare thrown as he wiped his full mouth with the back of his hand. He strained to swallow, and slowly his puffed cheeks receded. Kimaris grimaced and closed his box, moving it to the side with the tips of his fingers.

"Very appetising."

"Don't judge me, I'm hungry."

Bonnie shook her head at the two of them, her finger tapping the same spot on the table. "Hello? I'd like some answers please?"

Gremory shrugged his shoulders, running his tongue along his teeth as he removed pieces of food. "About the earrings? I don't know what else there is to know."

Bonnie let out a laugh of disbelief. "Maybe why you clearly used me to get them near Poyel?"

"Well pink isn't really Kimaris' colour, and as much as I love my bone structure, I think he might have noticed them on me."

Greeted by only the deadpanned expression on Bonnie's face, he stopped his excuse. With a sigh, he glanced around before leaning forward on his elbows, a downturn to his lips as he spoke.

"We just needed a failsafe. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I really thought we wouldn't have to use them. That's why I didn't take you with me when I went to talk to him; you were supposed to stay at a safe distance. But someone—"

"You're the one who wanted to bring her—"

"—had to spit out his dummy—"

"—and I am not a baby sitter—"

"—and come storming over—"

"—we were running out of time—"

"Enough!" Bonnie slammed her hands onto the table, making both of them jump and their words died as she gritted her teeth. "I don't care what the plan was supposed to be, or what stupid argument you two want to start next."

Gremory looked at her, insulted. "I was just—"

"Don't you dare!" She hissed, making him flinch back. "I've followed you to another city, kept my mouth shut multiple times when I should have run screaming and clearly, despite whatever bad thing it is that you've found out, I have helped on this mission of yours. So, forgive me if I have zero patience left, but it has been twenty-four-hours since that thing attacked me, and I'm still yet to know: what the hell is going on, what exactly the fuck you two are and where the fuck I fit into this, all the while being used without my knowledge. And yet you two find it more important to bicker like a pair of old ladies instead of just telling me what I want to know!"

The room around them had quietened enough to hear the buzz of the electric current flowing through the strip lights, and the low murmurs of the staff looking over at them made her ease herself back down into her seat. She cleared her throat and painted a smile onto her face as she took a calming breath, grateful when the people watching moved on to their own conversations and seemed to forget theirs.

Thank god for alcohol.

"So, I'll ask again—who wants to go first?"

Gremory's mouth hung open, apparently too stunned to speak. Kimaris meanwhile was watching her with what only could be described as the nicest he had looked at her yet. He seemed either proud or amused by her outburst.

When neither said anything, Bonnie felt a ball of anger rise and she tightened her fists, preparing another wave of words to knock them down.

"The gem in those earrings is one of the few things that can stop Poyel's control ability from working, and also hurt him." Kimaris' calm voice abruptly halted her rampage. "We needed information and we couldn't risk not getting it tonight."

"Why?" Bonnie questioned, not missing a beat and unwilling to take half answers anymore. Gremory warily glanced at Kimaris from the corner of his eye, but the raven haired mans steady gaze didn't falter.

"Because if it went badly then it could have taken us months for us to find him again, and we can't afford that time."

Now Gremory looked on edge. His chin tilted down towards Kimaris and his hands interlocked so tightly that his flesh was paling. It seemed the more at ease one of them got, the more agitated the other became.

"Kimaris..." he warned, eyes watching around them. "Careful."

"Why?" Bonnie pushed, her voice dropping with the tension that was building in her body. "What's going on?"

She had never seen someone so still. Kimaris debated what to say next, his fingers tapping in a slow sequence that she wished would slow down her beating heart.

"The thing that attacked you was a demon, but it was—"

"What are you doing?" Gremory hissed, a tone to his voice that Bonnie hadn't heard before. "We said we wouldn't tell her, it's too much of a risk. What if—"

"You're the one that brought her here." Kimaris' words were like blades, sharp with tone but blunted in finality. "If she wants to know, then let her."

Gremory shook his head, turning to Bonnie with a pleading look sinking into all his features. "Please believe me when I say it's better that you don't know. I wasn't kidding when I said it could be too much for you to comprehend."

She could see that he meant it. His usually sure and confident aura had receded into a fearful one that made his blue eyes glisten, and his shoulders drop. For such a big figure, he seemed small. He was truly worried about what this would do to her, but unfortunately for him, Bonnie was past the point of caring.

"I want to know," she confirmed, pushing down the bundle of nerves that was making her foot bounce. "I have to know."

Kimaris raised a brow at Gremory, offering him a chance to say something, but he only gave Bonnie a pained stare and then sank into his chair, succumbing to the fact that she wouldn't listen. They reminded her of children sometimes—one so smug and the other full of disappointment.

As Kimaris opened his mouth, she tried to look calm, but everything in her was going haywire at finally knowing the truth.

"The demon who attacked you wasn't the first, and it most definitely won't be the last," he said, watching her carefully. "You never hear about it because, unlike you, the victims don't usually survive."

What?

"People who statistically won't be missed are always picked: homeless beggars, isolated hermits, orphans with no relatives left to look for them. It's harsh, but that's just the way it works—it keeps demons fed and doesn't cause an outbreak of mass hysteria or society to crumble under the truth. It's a middle ground that, although slightly horrible, works."

"Wait, wait," Bonnie interjected, her mind already boggling. "What do you mean middle ground? You're saying that like there's some deal or something to allow demons to hunt here?"

Kimaris pursed his lips before turning to Gremory, his head tilting as one eye closed.

"I think this is your turn, Grem."

Initially, it appeared as though he would not talk. With a stubborn frown on his face and his arms crossed, Bonnie thought it was a dead end. But then, with a whisper of surrender, he let out a few choice words and joined them back at the table, taking his place beside Kimaris, who looked as though he was trying not to smile at the action.

"It's a bit more complicated than that, so let's take a step back." His words were hesitant as he struggled with how to explain. "You see when I told you before that I was technically a demon and an angel, I wasn't lying because they're... well we're the same thing. It just depends what side of history you're on. Originally, we were all called daemons."

Bonnie wanted to laugh. He had to be joking, didn't he?

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly that," Kimaris stated bluntly, looking almost bored. "He means that the truth was bent to fit people's narratives, and like in any conflict, someone had to be painted as the villain. Low and behold—demons. For every good angel that people want to believe in, there has to be a bad demon to blame for their sins. Everything needs its balance after all. While daemons changed to demons for the bad, the good ones went with angel—something that was completely different and had zero correlation to their original form, that way they couldn't be associated with it."

She hated he was making sense.

"But that thing that attacked me...?" She frowned, disbelief lining her words. "He wasn't like you guys?"

"That was a lesser demon," Gremory explained, seemingly happy to be discussing something factual. "In the same way that people say there's a hierarchy and angels have creatures that do their bidding on earth, so do we. It's just that while they get the cute nicknames like 'cherubs' or 'guardian angels', we get the more fun ones, like 'legions of darkness' or 'hell's children'."

"Legions?"

"Groups of soldiers—or at least that's what it meant in roman times. Now it can mean a group of anything as long as there's a couple hundred of them in it."

"And they all look like that?" Bonnie asked, trying not to think about the oozing sludge and vomit inducing garble. She'd thought that she'd only have to deal with one of those in her life, but were they saying that there were thousands of them out there instead?

"Depending on what they are, their appearance changes. The higher up the list you go the more developed and formed. The further down the more basic and... well, dumb and gross. Legions are born from power, the stronger the creator, the stronger the creation. There's a ranking system that entails the power level—you've got Kings at the top, then Dukes, Princes, Marquises, Earls, Knights and finally Presidents."

Bonnie found the names for them slightly amusing.

"And all demons have legions?" she asked slowly, trying to let it sink in. It had been a while since she felt like she was sitting in a classroom, learning.

"No—demon is a particularly broad term for the creatures you're thinking of. There're thousands of demons but only seventy-two of us have legions, the top of the pyramid and all that. Demons like the one that attacked you are created by power and born in the Abyss, whereas we weren't born there, we just moved there. That's why we prefer to be known as daemons—with an a in there—to differentiate between the two. It's pretty insulting to be on the same level as some of those things."

Before Bonnie truly listened to his words, she was nodding. It made her feel calmer. But, then her eyes widened with realisation.

"Did you say we? You guys have titles?"

Now Gremory was the one who looked smug. He nodded as he turned to Kimaris, his lips twitching and his arm settling on the back of his chair.

"Do you want to tell Bonnie where we rank, or shall I?"

The vein in Kimaris' forearm bounced. An arrogant refusal at whatever was about to be said painted onto his face.

"I have more legions," he pointed out, keeping his eyes on Bonnie and ignoring the man beside him who had started poking the side of his face. "I'd like to see you fight them."

"Buuuuuuuuut," Gremory sang, leaning in to him and tickling his sideburn with the tip of his finger, "Who has the higher rank?"

Kimaris sighed, and Bonnie wondered how many times they had had this argument. "You do."

Pleased with himself, Gremory sat back from his personal space and returned to picking at his food, dramatically tossing it into his mouth. "Exactly. I'm a Duke, while Kimaris is a... a President is it?"

"I'm a Marquise, and you know it," he grumbled, stealing the chip he had just picked up from his hand and throwing it at him. "I'm only two below you, and have double the legions, so watch it. There's no pride in a fixed game."

As entertaining as Bonnie found it sitting and watching them insult each other, she couldn't let herself get sidetracked. Plus, all the information they were giving her was only producing additional questions for her to ask.

"Sorry, but you have legions?" she double checked, thinking of the two of them standing in front of their armies of grotesque figures. It seemed unimaginable while Gremory was sat in front of her digging around his takeaway like a child. "Are they here?"

"Unfortunately not, it would make things a lot easier if they were," Kimaris answered, snatching the box from him and putting it where he couldn't reach, ignoring the whine of disagreement that came with it. "Legions can't survive on earth for very long, they belong in the other realms so they eventually die up here if you don't return, unless you have a way to harness a lot of power. I knew I wouldn't be going back anytime soon, so I left them down there for if I ever return. We don't really have a need for them here, either, so they'd be wasted. Demons bring food for sustenance to their daemon, here we can just get our own in other ways... although I usually prefer things a bit more upmarket than this."

"So, the demon that came after me," Bonnie said, ignoring his scathing review of the kebab shop. "Some other daemon ordered him to do that, but it broke some sort of rule?"

She thought it was a simple question, but by the way the lightness dropped from the air, it was clear she was wrong. Gremory stopped pawing at Kimaris for his food, and the latter looked the most troubled she had ever seen.

"There's only one rule—and that's to not leave any evidence," Gremory answered, his wary gaze coming back to Bonnie after resting on his partner. "Other than that, there's really just an allowance for how many humans go missing. And how many demons you're allowed up here at a time."

"And that allowance is being broken?" she guessed, remembering pieces of information they'd dropped over the last day. They nodded. "Okay, I think the entire situation is worrying but why is it you two are so worried about it?"

Of course she would be concerned at that news, but that's because it included the information that demons were real and murdering people. If they already knew that, then surely it wasn't a big deal if a few extra humans went missing. Clearly, human life wasn't valued highly anyway, wasn't it odd for them to find it such a big deal?

Her fingertips tingled.

"Because it means that someones pushing the boundaries," Gremory whispered, the glint in his eye returning as he surveyed the room subtly. "They're not afraid of the repercussions from the angels. So either they want them to react and a war to break out, or there's nothing that can stop them. If that's the case then we should be more than worried, because that means there's something stronger than the angels and their wrath, or..."

He stopped, his throat straining.

"Or the angels don't care." Kimaris finished, his flat tone filling in where Gremory was struggling.

The group of intoxicated teenagers from the corner of the room stood up and all three of them jerked back in their seats, alarmed. As the group bustled out of the cafe, shouting song lyrics and laughter at the trio as they did, Bonnie tried to keep a handle on her ever spiralling panic and slow down her racing heart.

Maybe Gremory had been right, maybe this was all too much for her human brain to know. She'd thought they'd have a straight answer for what was going on, that the conversation would be succinct and factual. She never thought that she'd fall into a hole of whether or not the earth could be saved.

When the boisterous group had emptied from the building, and quiet returned, she leaned back onto the table, her want to pry now noticeably subdued. The boys seemed more on edge than before, even with Kimaris trying to pretend they hadn't startled him.

"We've been trying to follow the trail for months," Gremory began darkly, his eyes hooded with something unknown. "There's always been a steady increase in the amount of people going missing as the population size grows, but this is different. There's been nothing at this rate, even over thousands of years. And there's especially never been bodies left like this. The last thing daemons want is for humans to be paranoid about them again, it would make it a lot harder if they were. It's why there's so little of us on earth in the first place, a lot of us got banished from here when people did truly believe."

"And the thing we have been looking for," Kimaris dropped his voice, his eyes guarded. "Is an artifact that could help us know whose ordering the killing. That's why we went to Poyel."

She knew there was more to know. She had at least a hundred questions to ask, but her head was starting to hurt, and it wasn't as if added knowledge was going to help her at the minute. They had to come up with a plan of what to do next.

"Okay, so if it's demons that are causing chaos, then can't we try to find an angel to help stop it?"

It wasn't that crazy of a question—after all, all signs pointed to it, but the two daemons seemed to find it hilarious. It was one of the first times she'd seen them both properly laugh at something together. If anyone was watching, then it would have looked like they were all real friends sharing jokes, not people forced to try and figure out how to stop people from being murdered.

"Good luck with that," Kimaris chuckled, stretching his legs. "Even if you could get to their realm—which is basically impossible—you'd be relying on them giving enough of a shit that they'd do something. Which, if Poyel didn't make clear enough, they don't. And the few that are on earth like him, are just as bad, if not worse."

"Plus," Gremory interjected, "It could take months to find them; Poyel was the only one we had a slight lead with. The rest are so hidden that no ones known their location for years."

"So," Bonnie could barely contain her frustration at the two of them. "What you're saying is that we can't do anything but wait because we can't reach anybody and even the people we can reach are useless?"

Gremory's smile down-turned. "Correct."

Now it was her turn to laugh. There was something calming about knowing that they were completely powerless—perhaps it was because she was used to it. Comfort in familiarity she supposed. "Wow. And here I thought other-worldly beings would at least have a way to communicate across places. Like a phone, or something."

"Yeah, as a species we haven't really adapted to technology all that well. Also, I think giving people your number requires a certain level of trust when they might want to murder you, so I doubt anyone could really—"

Kimaris' hand snapped out and covered Gremory's mouth without a word, making the two of them stare at him in confusion. His eyes were wide, which worried them at first, but when his crumpled brow flattened and one side of his mouth pulled up, Bonnie felt a surge of hope. Along with a fleck of fear.

"We don't have a mobile phone," he said with a click of his tongue. "But we might just have something better. And Bonnie—you're coming with us."

.

AN:// Happy Friday! It's another heatwave here in Scotland and it's safe to say we are NOT equipped for this life! Sweating is an understatement!! But I'm also sweating because we hit 400 reads! Thank you so so much! 

I hope you guys are enjoying the story and a couple things have been explained, it's new for me to have so much lore and  exposition in a book before—please let me know how you're finding it!! Obviously there's some things unexplained because of plot buuuuuuut I'd hate to think you guys weren't following along! 

Another chapter tomorrow!

Ellis 

P.S. I thought it was funny to include Music for a Sushi Restaurant while they're in a kebab shop—silly i know! I'm really enjoying putting in very scottish settings for a change, mon the scots!