Bad Company (Seven Deadly Sins #1) ✅ Completed

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Aftermath

The Aftermath

I watched Dante heal the cuts on the palm of my hands, the warmth seeping into my skin and doing much more than just knitting back my skin. I felt a strong calm envelop me, helping to keep the worst of my fried nerves together a bit longer. It really was quite a useful talent. All I knew how to do was roll my tongue.  

He pulled a particularly large shard of mirror out of the worst cut on my right palm, making me curse in pain. The reflective piece reminded me of Spring Dawn.

“Dawn saved my life,” My eyes were riveted on the slowly closing wound, “When I was fighting with Aunt Celeste. She was the one who told me to use the mirror against her. Do you think she’s ok?”

Dante’s face didn’t change as he focused on my palm, “She’s already dead, Eliza. Worrying about her well being is a moot point.”

“Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she can’t be hurt,” I shot back. Obviously Aunt Celeste had a way to hurt her. Heck, she’d trapped her soul in a freaking mirror and I couldn’t imagine that was pleasant in any way.

“Perhaps…” he sighed as if it wasn’t worth the fight, “but we have bigger issues right now. Spring Dawn will turn up.” They always do part of his statement was left unsaid, but I still heard it clear as day. I hoped he was right.

Watching him fix me up, a sudden thought popped into my head. “Why do you have that great big first aid kit if you can just heal yourself?”

“What makes you think I can heal myself?” he asked calmly.

“Can’t you?” I asked surprised. Surely the great and powerful Dante could heal his own papercuts or occasional shaving nicks, especially considering he’d just closed two gashes in my palms large enough to give me a good peek at what my own personal tissue looked like?

“I am…limited. I cannot always heal myself,” he said somewhat irritated. But whether he was annoyed at me for asking or because he wasn’t as powerful as he wanted me to believe I couldn’t tell.

It was probably the latter.   

“Really? Why is that?” I asked curiously. I examined the skin on my hands, it looked as good as it had before I’d cut them open in my fight with Chase. It was the same with the skin on my arms and face from my earlier battle with Aunt Celeste. There wasn’t even a hint of a scar anywhere where there should’ve been dozens at this point.

Dante looked like he didn’t want to discuss this any further, but he was learning that sometimes it was easier to answer one of my smaller questions if it meant I’d back off from the bigger ones later.

“I can heal you because you’re human. Healing your kind is easy. I can heal wounds derived from any man-made weaponry so long as the wound is not instantly fatal."  

"So no bringing back people from the dead for you, huh?" I joked.

Dante's face was stoic, "Correct. However, since I am not human I cannot always heal myself should I become severely injured.

“How severe?” I asked unable to help myself.

“Severe,” Dante answered in usual cryptic fashion. Then to my utter amazement he continued, "Typically this occurs if the injury is caused by a non-man made weapon. The first aid kit is a necessity of even my existence.”

“Do you get hurt by non-man made stuff often?” I asked, eyes going wide. What kind of stuff was he getting hurt by that wouldn’t qualify as being manmade? Wait. Did I really want to know the answer to that? Oh, who was I kidding? Of course I did!  

He snorted, “Often enough.” Then he gave me that look that meant he was done with this subject and it was time to move onto the next one.  

Too bad, this was most definitely an interesting Dante fun fact. When we had more time we were really going to have to discuss what he was in greater detail. Right now, I agreed with him and let the subject drop until next time.   

I looked over at Chase again. Dante was holding him down, even though he was still out like a light. After I’d had my good old fashion cry, I was able to get over my abject terror of what had almost happened. I was angry, hurt, and scared but I also knew it wasn’t something Chase could control.

Too bad that didn’t really make me feel any better.

“We have to chain him up,” Dante said now, interrupting my thoughts.  

“What?” I asked convinced I’d lost my mind and hadn’t heard him right.

“So he doesn’t hurt you or himself. Once we have him down you can take Lust back.” He still hadn’t told me how I was going to accomplish that but I thought now might be a prudent time to ask, although I was still reeling from the whole chaining-Chase-up comment.

“Ok,” I nodded like this wasn’t the craziest thing I’d heard in the last hour (which unfortunately, it was not). “Where are we going to chain him up at? It’s not like we can walk into the local police station and tell them we need to hold him for a while.”

“No. Not a holding cell. We need to get him in restraints, hence the chaining. We’ll have to take him to my room.”

“Where? Upstairs?” I asked incredulous. Ok, so I stood corrected. This was absolutely the craziest thing I’d heard all hour.

Dante only nodded, “We’ll chain him to the wall upstairs and then you should be able to get close without him hurting you.”

I could only stare at him across Chase’s unconscious body before finding my voice again, “What are you talking about Dante? Are you telling me you have a set of chains up in your room, as in anchored into the wall?”

He only glared at me, not bothering to deign my question with a response.

Awesome.

Every time I thought Dante might be an actual person I was quickly reminded that he was anything but normal. When was I going to learn?

I shook my head, still not quite believing that we were going to take my boyfriend upstairs into Dante’s bedroom and chain him to a wall that he conveniently had set up in there.

“Why do you…” I started to ask but held up my hand stopping myself. “You know, forget it. I really don’t want to know. Let’s just go and get Chase lined out so we can get this over with. At this point, I don’t want to know any more than what's absolutely necessary.”

"That’s probably the smartest thing you’ve ever said in your life,” Dante replied as he picked up Chase’s body like it weighed no more than a sack of flour. He tossed the good sized teenager over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and made for the staircase. He nodded towards the front of the shop, “You better go lock the door and block up the window. We don’t want anyone coming in until all this is over.”

I jumped up and ran to the front door. Grabbing the sign, I turned it from open to closed and locked it up tight. Just for good measure I pulled down the shade behind the frosted window, coughing as dust as old as I was floated down around me. Then I stacked a few larger pieces of furniture inside the broken window in case anyone really bothered to look too close.

Making sure to turn off the light, I turned and ran up the stairs after Dante, a little scared about what was about to happen. If I were being honest, I was more than a little scared about seeing the inside of his bedroom. Considering Dante was the kind of guy that just had chains lying around in his room, I couldn’t imagine what else he might have up there.

It looked like I was about to find out.