Demon's Embrace

by Devereaux, V. J.

  They’d just found this place. For some of the younger ones it was the first time in memory they’d set foot on this plane. For Ba’al and Mal it was a return to something they barely remembered. An idyllic place they’d only known as children…until the soldiers had come. He looked at Gabriel. Her child wouldn’t grow up to know that.

  Ash looked at Asmodeus as his own memories stirred once again. That particular fear now haunted them both.

  “We have to reach the Book before he does. We can’t let it fall into the hands of Templeton or someone like him, or none of us will be safe.”

  Looking up into Ash’s eyes as his pain echoed through her, Miri tightened her hands around his forearms.

  Ash dropped a kiss on her forehead to reassure her.

  There was something in his voice though that alerted both Asmodeus and Gabriel, and both straightened.

  Over millennia, it was difficult to keep anything from those who knew you so very well. Add empathy, telepathy and there were few secrets. Even so, there had been a tacit agreement that they wouldn’t speak of it, of the times Ash went off alone, of the nightmares that dogged him for centuries later, of the rages that sometimes overtook him. No one asked about the scars that laced his body and everyone took care not to come up on him unexpectedly.

  Seeing the look they exchanged, Ash took a breath, intending to explain.

  Shaking his head, Asmodeus said, “There’s no need, my friend.”

  Ash knew his Prince had a far better understanding now of what he’d suffered after Asmodeus’s own experiences at Templeton’s hands. He now had his own share of memories, scars…and nightmares, which he shared with Gabriel. He was lucky in that. As Ash now was as well.

  With a small shrug, Gabriel said, not unkindly, “We’ve experienced something similar in this time, too, Ash. I’ve had my own issues with it. Given everything you’ve been through these last few days, it’s no surprise your memories were…awakened…by recent events. It’s not even uncommon. You let your guard down here where it’s safe, with Miri, so you could allow yourself to deal with and face the fear.”

  Changing the subject, Asmodeus said, looking at them all, his mouth tightening, “The Book has to be recovered, if Templeton is making a concerted effort to find it. We must move and quickly. If he hasn’t found it yet, he’s certainly drawing closer. We have no choice and we don’t have much time. I won’t have any of us living with that hanging over our heads. We have to find the Book before he does.”

  Remembering the day Asmodeus had simply vanished from amongst them as he and others had before him, Ash grew grim. Some of these, the younger ones, hadn’t been able to imagine it, save it had happened to their Prince.

  Asmodeus could. He remembered. It had taken him.

  Heads nodded.

  Looking to his old friend, Asmodeus tilted his head to him and said, “Ash.”

  Effectively, in that one word, he passed the baton of command to his General.

  Ash looked at each of them. “We can’t take the chance Templeton hasn’t found another like Miri. Templeton hasn’t given up on hunting her, either. He can’t take the chance we’ll find and use her first. That gives him even more incentive to reach the Book before us, to forestall us. We have to go after it now, it’s a race whether we like it or not. There’s no choice.”

  Almost unconsciously, his tail slid around Miri’s hips to pull her closer and to stroke, an indication of his concern and agitation.

  Templeton threatened everything they’d built in their one short year.

  With the Book it was perfectly within Templeton’s capabilities to summon Asmodeus once again, although it would be harder now that Ash and some of the others had layered protections and wards around the house, but Asmodeus couldn’t stay inside them forever. Nor was Templeton restricted to just Asmodeus, as Ba’al had said, it could be any of them.

  “With that danger in mind,” Ash said, “With your permission, my Prince, I’d like to take Ba’al and Mal with us.”

  Both would be invaluable. Thanks to his magic Ba’al was quick and capable, for all his volatility he followed orders, but it would be Mal who would be their ace in the hole. His ability to turn invisible would be priceless against their adversaries. And Mal would be there to restrain and mollify Ba’al’s more volatile nature. They were the perfect foil to each other, for all they bickered.

  Ash held up a hand to forestall a protest from the others.

  “Too many will draw attention,” he said, “that Templeton and his people couldn’t ignore. With just the three of us and Miri, it should be enough.”

  Most Daemonae were easily a match for most men and more as he’d shown the day he found Miri.

  He also remembered her quickness, her skill.

  Mal, his gaze steady, looked to his more volatile friend as Ba’al lifted his chin, his eyes sharp, his mouth and jaw tight.

  If they weren’t enough, more wouldn’t matter.

  With a glance to their Prince for permission, both Daemonae nodded.

  Ash looked to Gabriel. “So, where do we need to go?”

  Looking at him levelly, Gabriel nodded.

  She called up the map on her tablet computer.

  “Here,” she said. “It’s in the middle of nowhere in Ohio, to the north of here by several hours. There’s literally nothing around it. It’s completely open. No cover at all.”

  She’d gone back after the building had been condemned to look at it. It hadn’t been pleasant.

  Mal, opening the cabinets to reveal the display again, said, “Shoot me the address, Gabriel…”

  “Done,” Gabriel said.

  With a few deft gestures, Mal had a street view display on the screen.

  Studying it, Ash shook his head.

  Gabriel was right. It was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing but highways and cornfields. A large sign outside the building advertised it as For Sale.

  “He can’t sell the building,” Gabriel commented with a glance at the sign in the picture, “He passed it off as a gas leak. That made a lot of people nervous, now no one will buy it.”

  “And that’s where we have to go?” Ash asked, walking toward the screen to study the image on it.

  Gabriel nodded.

  Ash looked at Miri.

  She met his gaze levelly and shrugged.

  What choice did they have? If that was where they had to go, that was where they would go.

  Ash looked to Ba’al and Mal, who both saw the difficulties, the limitations and yet they nodded, Ba’al lifting an eyebrow not in question but comment. It was what it was.

  Ash looked from one to the other, satisfied.

  “All right,” he said, nodding slowly. “Then we go.”

  They sat down and sketched out a plan of sorts, all of them knowing that whatever plans they made would only last until they faced the enemy.

  Then all bets were off.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Neither Ash nor Miri glanced at the two motorcyclists who pulled into the gas station as Ash gassed up Gabriel’s car. Repainted and redone, the car no longer resembled the police cruiser it had once been but retained the modifications to both the engine and structural integrity, save for addition of a convertible top and roll bar.

  Just looking at them made Ash smile a little, despite the circumstances. He shook his head in amusement. Only Gabriel would do such a thing.

  With luck, the change of vehicles would work in their favor. Templeton wouldn’t be looking for a modified silver Crown Vic circa the last century.

  Once Miri saw the car, she’d insisted on leaving the roof open despite the coolness of the air so she could look at the trees – all of which were at the height of their fall color. The drive through and over the mountains had been spectacular. It seemed as if the hills had been aflame the colors had been so bright. The air had been crisp and clean, full of the scents of autumn – the dry smell of aging leaves, the sharp tang of burning ones.

  Ash found
he couldn’t regret it.

  The only thing that rivaled the trees was Miri’s brilliant hair dancing in the wind of their passage, the sun sparking red and gold highlights from it. Her green eyes had been misty, soft as she looked up at the trees and the sky.

  For all of the seriousness of their mission, for all they pushed their speed as much as Ash dared, it had been a surprisingly pleasant drive. They’d talked or sometimes just shared silence, breaking it only as a thought occurred to one or the other of them. At times her head had been in his lap, to look at the trees and sky up above. Ash had played with her breasts, fondling them, teasing the nipples until they were as hard as he was.

  Green eyes glinting with mischief, Miri had turned her face into him, pressed her mouth against his jeans to blow her warm breath over his thickening shaft beneath the fabric. He’d been pleasantly hard for hours.

  In all his long life, that was something he hadn’t even imagined. Now all he wanted was to find a place to take her to relieve the delicious tension.

  It would have to wait, though.

  Ba’al and Mal gassed up their bikes, neither bike remotely resembling Ash’s, instead reflecting their own personalities. Ba’al’s bike was a muted red, with flames airbrushed on the sides, while Mal’s bike was black with a painted comet streaming from gas tank to tail fender.

  Neither looked at Ash or Miri beyond the curious glance of strangers.

  None of them knew how far Templeton’s grasp extended. It was better not to take chances.

  Ash’s instructions had been simple and explicit. Stay close, but not too close. If there were watchers Ash didn’t want them identifying Ba’al and Mal as being with them. If there was anything they knew about Templeton, it was that he wasn’t stupid by any long stretch of the imagination. Ash couldn’t afford to underestimate him. None of them could.

  For Miri it was a little disconcerting to see the two Daemonae in their human guise.

  For all the similarities of the color of their Daemonae skin, the two couldn’t have been more dissimilar when they were out of them.

  Ba’al reminded Miri of a lean and hungry wolf. His skin was fair, his cheekbones high, his blue eyes piercing, his hair dark and close cut. There was an intensity to him, an edginess. By contrast, Mal was sharper-boned but his features were fine and aristocratic. His skin was darker by far than Ba’al’s, a rich milk chocolate, his body as long and leanly muscled as Ba’al’s but more wiry. His eyes though, were a brilliant amber touched with green.

  Beautiful.

  She wasn’t the only one who stared at them.

  Both were incredibly handsome and there was that Daemonae allure. Sex just seemed to pour off them. Not to mention they were well-built, well-muscled men, something clothing couldn’t hide.

  Miri caught more than one admiring glance pass from the women around them to the Daemonae males.

  No few of those glances were also directed at Ash.

  Of the three, he was by far the most exotic, the most beautiful and the most intriguing. At least to her. It was difficult for Miri to keep her eyes off him. Even dressed in a simple white long-sleeved shirt tucked into jeans, he was impressive. Or perhaps because of it. His shirt stretched over the broad muscles of his chest and barely contained the strong muscles in his arms.

  Sensing her eyes on him, Ash looked at her and smiled.

  However desperate their mission the clear admiration and pleasure in her eyes as she looked at him was more than a little gratifying to see.

  There was also the way the sunlight sparked fire in her brilliant hair, the color of it rivaling the trees for brightness, the sunlight making her green eyes glow.

  For a moment, their eyes met. Something rich and warm passed between them, something that soothed and eased him.

  He took a long breath as Miri smiled at him in return.

  The car gassed up, Ash slid into the driver’s seat, not acknowledging by word or gesture the other two Daemonae.

  Around them, the high hills had fallen away and the land had become flatter, more rolling. Farmland stretched out around them in squares of gold and brown with the detritus of the fall crops, the bare stalks looking strangely bereft. Trees lost their leaves in drifts and billows of color.

  Unfortunately, they arrived at their destination all too soon and it was far worse than Ash had thought or imagined from the picture they’d seen.

  Once, like the land of his childhood, this place had been thickly wooded but no more. It was denuded, stripped for farmland. With the crops harvested it was now bare. There weren’t even stalks of corn for cover.

  They could see the building and its neighbor clearly from the cloverleaf of the highway as they circled around it. A large black glass structure it sparkled in the setting sunlight, each glittering pane separated by narrow brown stucco-like panels. A vast skirt of tarmac parking lot was giving way to weeds and grasses. If it didn’t precisely fit the area around it, it didn’t stand out either. It was just another bland office building.

  Otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about it, nothing to indicate what had once gone on inside it, no sign of damage.

  A sign outside said simply, ‘Prometheus Corp.’.

  Unfortunately, it was impossible to approach the building unseen as far as Ash could see. Certainly not in daylight.

  There was no cover. Not a scrap of it.

  Nor was there any sign the building was occupied. The parking lot was empty. The neighboring building’s parking area was sparsely populated.

  Once on the highway that ran past the building, Ash got off at the next exit to circle around so they passed it from the other side.

  That approach didn’t look any better.

  No one seemed to be watching but Ash wouldn’t make assumptions. There were watchers and there were watchers.

  Until he knew otherwise, he’d act as if someone was.

  Clearly visible from nearly every direction, with cover nonexistent, the closest he could get to a place where he could study the building somewhat unobserved was a small roadside picnic area in a small copse of trees alongside the road almost half a mile distant.

  Two riders on motorcycles passed by them as Ash and Miri got out of the car to stretch their legs. Both riders were hidden within their motorcycle gear and helmets, their bikes indistinguishable from a thousand others on the highway. On a day like this, bright and beautiful, they were among many taking advantage of the weather.

  Neither Ash nor Miri glanced at them as they went by.

  Ash knew Ba’al and Mal saw what he had.

  Drawing Miri into his arms as he leaned back against the car, Ash tipped his face up to the sun, holding her loosely. For a moment he just breathed in the scent of her, relished the feel of his mate in his arms. He wished he could shift, to feel his tail wrap around her as well.

  As Ash studied the building surreptitiously from beneath his lowered lashes, with the sun sinking and the thinning leaves providing them a cover of sorts, Miri looked around and smiled.

  It appeared to be a popular spot, with a thin litter of cigarette butts, cans and bottles of the most popular energy drinks and beers.

  “Well, at least no one will be surprised to see a car parked here,” she commented.

  Brushing his lips over her ear, Ash asked curiously, “Why is that?”

  “It seems to be a mouth popular ‘parking’ spot,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him.

  The emphasis she put on the word ‘parking’ gave it a significance Ash didn’t comprehend. He looked at her in question.

  Understanding Miri grinned. “A place teenagers come to make out…”

  She pressed her bottom against him and smiled.

  That suited Ash’s plans very well. Drawing her fiery hair away from her throat and shoulder, Ash nuzzled the curve of her throat, ran his hands up her arms to feel goose bumps shiver over her skin.

  He smiled and turned her in his arms so she faced him, her palms braced against his chest and her hi
ps nestled against his. She tilted her face to look at him with a smile, her ethereal eyes glowing in the fading sunlight. Those eyes had him entranced, they always would and he found he didn’t mind a bit.

  He smiled as he lowered his head to brush her lips with his own.

  “I wondered how we might spend the time,” he said.

  With a small shrug and a smile in return, Miri said, almost idly, flashing him a look from beneath her lashes, “I think we could probably find something to do.”

  “Do you?”

  He was fairly certain they could too.

  That solved another problem that had concerned him – where to leave the car. No one would be surprised to see a car here. In the event Templeton did have people in one building or the other, he didn’t want to leave their only transportation at the mercy of the enemy as he had his bike and her car in the University parking lot. Only to find them bugged.

  Several ways to spend the intervening time until darkness came to mind, if what she said was true.

  “So,” he said, quietly, pressing his growing erection against her mound, “no one would be surprised to find a couple sitting here in a car well after dark?”

  Miri shivered and sighed. His deep voice rumbled in her bones.

  Her voice unsteady as his thin forked tongue flickered over her skin, she breathed, “No, I wouldn’t think so.”

  Just at the thought, her pussy flooded.

  The sunset was glorious, truly beautiful, painting everything in rich shades of amber. Including Ash.

  The shadows around them deepened as Miri slowly unbuttoned Ash’s shirt, concentrating on the task as she tugged it free. She parted it slowly to run her hands inside and press her mouth against the warm smooth skin of his chest, against the curve of muscle there. As his shirt opened she found his nipple and traced her tongue around it, caught it between her teeth to nibble lightly as it hardened. His skin was wonderfully warm, stretched so tight over his hard muscles. Miri loved the feel of him beneath her hands, all the satiny curves and flat planes of him, the long, strong muscles of his back. She reveled in the feel of him, looking up into his dark eyes as they shifted to gold and glimmered a little in the gathering darkness. And smiled to see it.