As dark as it was even Ash had trouble seeing and he was wary of that, of anything that diminished his senses. Still not the slightest sound broke the darkness. He had no sense of a presence or presences, which was disconcerting in itself. He’d expected at least a guard. Something. It seemed unlikely Templeton had left the building, even empty, completely unprotected.
Resolutely, he turned them toward one of the entrances to the building itself. Each level had a small vestibule, with elevators in the center and stairs that went up and down to each side.
Only the emergency lights were on, casting an uncertain light between the support pillars and ramps. Intended only to light one's way out, they did little to light the way to the central core of the building.
Scanning around him, frowning, uneasy, Ash could find no reason for his nerves but his instincts shouted at him. Something was wrong. His jaw tightened as they entered the sheltered space.
Where was Mal?
Concerned, he sought mentally for Asmodeus.
As he reached for the door he heard it.
The sound was small, a soft foompf and then a tinkling, metal on stone or cement.
Instinct drove him.
He spun and swept Miri up in his arms as something struck the floor, bounced toward them, spewing smoke.
“Mal, run!”
The smoke billowed around them, swallowed them up even as Ash tried to get them away. He held his breath but it was far too late. In his arms Miri went limp. The dizziness hit him a second later and he staggered. Fear for his mate, for his people, nearly defeated the smoke, drove him forward another few steps.
It was a trap uniquely designed for Daemonae, distant, with no sights, sounds or smells to alert him.
He had a moment to send his alarm to Asmodeus but he was unconscious before he knew whether it reached his Prince, curling his body instinctually around Miri to protect her as they fell.
Chapter Fifteen
A hand wrapped in Miri’s hair, wrenched her head up and shook it viciously as it wrenched her up. Sick, dizzy and bewildered she blindly scrabbled for anything remotely familiar, her house in North Carolina, her University office, and Ash. Always Ash.
She tried desperately to open her eyes, to understand what had happened as her hands closed around the wrists of whoever held her hair because it hurt to be held like that, it hurt a lot. Something chinked and clinked, a dull oddly metallic sound. Her hands couldn’t separate. She couldn’t keep her balance against the relentless grip that brought tears to her eyes even as she struggled to her knees.
Ash! Alarm shot through her. She couldn’t feel him. Where was he? Something had happened. Something terrible.
“Look,” a hard voice demanded, sharply.
The voice was cold, cruel, the tone harsh.
He gave her head another shake.
Memory returned in a rush.
The parking garage. An odd noise and smoke spewing. Some kind of gas.
In shock and confusion, she opened her eyes.
The enormous chamber was dark, deeply shadowed, with a fractured, vaulted ceiling that had once arched upward to disappear into uneasy darkness. Whirring gas lanterns cast uncertain shadows. There was the oppressive feeling of something that hung precariously high above them. Cantilevered pieces of the ceiling had fallen to the floor to teeter precariously against what had once been something like a grandstand or an amphitheater, yet they were clearly underground. She could almost hear the stone as it ground against itself, it almost seemed to groan.
It was damp and chill. Somewhere among the cracked walls water had seeped in. The walls were covered with patches of mold. The air smelled musty.
At the very corners of her eyes, at edge of her peripheral vision, things moved and whispered through the shadows, half-seen half unseen things that made her skin crawl. Terrifying things. Unnatural things. Things that didn’t belong on this temporal plane.
It was a haunted place.
The walls between the worlds were very thin here, the ethereal realms very close. It would be so easy, too easy, to open them in this place, among these crawling shadows.
Fear shivered over his skin, a quick frisson of goose bumps.
“Look, damn it,” a bitter voice snapped and shook her head again.
She knew that voice. Hammond.
Terror shot through her.
Another light flared, focused on the center of the room and Miri cried out in denial at what she saw there. Who she saw there. Her heart shattered as tears sprang to her eyes. She shook her head in pain and sorrow.
Her eyes burned with tears she dared not shed. She wanted to cry out and pressed her knuckles against her lips so she wouldn’t and therefore betray him.
“Oh, Ash,” she whispered, seeing his worst nightmare made real.
There were chains on him, on Ash, as there had been in her visions of him from that time once long ago.
Iron chains on his wrists that secured him to a metal frame so he hung loosely from them, others around his ankles. One chain lead to a heavy bolt embedded in the black marble floor. They’d stripped him, leaving him naked. Exposed him.
Stunned, she fought tears, grief.
Whatever they’d planned, whatever Ash had anticipated, it hadn’t been this. They hadn’t counted on the gas. Some part of them had accepted they might be captured but not this.
Not this.
“Oh, dear God,” she breathed.
It felt as if someone had poured acid where her heart was, the pain of it seared, seeing what they’d done to him.
“Ash.”
His brilliant, beautiful golden eyes were half closed, his magnificent body lax within the frame but even as she watched he stirred, his muscles twitched as the gas wore off. Awareness was only seconds away.
The hand in her hair released her.
She wanted to weep.
All she could see was Ash.
He couldn’t awaken that way. He couldn’t awaken in chains. Not alone.
Miri threw herself forward to try to reach him. She came up short and hard, jerked completely off her feet.
Involuntarily, she cried out.
Her hands went to the band around her throat. A collar. There was collar around her throat. Shock went through her.
Ash’s brilliant golden eyes flew open, dulled only slightly by the drugs, by pain.
Too late.
Shaking his head to clear it despite the pain that throbbed in it, Ash tried to focus. As in his nightmares, his shoulders were on fire. This time he was more wary, remembering Miri and his dreams…but this time…
The great empty chamber around him echoed, the sound muted and distant, giving him a hazy idea of the size. It was bitterly cold and there was the near constant and all too familiar sound of water dripping. His wrists and ankles ached dully from the iron shackles and more pain burned through his shoulders as they were forced to take too much of his weight. The air was dank, fetid. Horror spun through him dully, as nightmare layered over a reality he couldn’t ignore. It was all too familiar.
And all too real, the pains too sharp, his senses too alert.
It wasn’t a dream.
It was real.
A part of him cried out in denial, another, more primitive part, roared in rage…and horror.
The sound echoed.
A dream… Had it all been a dream…? He couldn’t truly be back there again. There had been Miri, sweet Miri.
His heart wrenched, wanting to deny it, every nerve and fiber of his being going taut…
For a moment, he dared not open his eyes again, not to the reality he sensed around him. He steeled himself against it, his heart sinking.
Miri.
He smelled her scent somewhere close, sweet and a little spicy. Felt her desperate fear and horror through their bond.
In his mind’s eye he saw the way her fiery hair sparked with glints of gold and red, the way it looked against his skin, she the fire, he the coals, her green eyes brilliant.
There was a moment as his eyes opened and reality sank in, a moment when Ash, only barely conscious, knew it was true, that he was once more in chains. Despair lanced through him as sharp as a knife. Only half awake, half aware, he roared in fury, in agony and denial. He threw himself frantically against the iron chains that held him. It was a nightmare to wake from that horrific dream to find himself chained again in truth. It couldn’t be. Maddened, desperate, he wrenched at the bonds that secured him, fought them. Despair and fury flooded him as the iron bit into his wrists, his ankles, once again, the pain all too familiar. Blood flowed but he was hardly aware of it, rage and hopelessness drove him.
“Ash, no. Please, no. Ash, stop, you can’t…” Miri’s voice. Miri, here, in this place.
It shouldn’t be.
Ash looked up, his fury spiking even higher to see his Miri, her radiant hair tumbled and disheveled around her shoulders, her green eyes shadowed and frightened, tears brilliant in them.
His Miri with a collar around her slender throat and iron around her wrists, struggling to reach him.
His rage exploded and he wrenched at the chains with even greater fury, fought them, threw himself against them in a futile effort to reach her.
“Stop,” she cried, scrambling to her feet again, both hands going to the chain that was secured to her collar. “Ash, oh God, please stop. Let him go, please let him go.”
That cry, Miri’s grief and horror, her heartbreak, was the only thing that penetrated Ash’s despair and rage.
“What will you do for it?” a voice demanded. “What will you do for his freedom?”
It was like a dash of cold water.
With an effort, Ash fought for calm. He struggled for calm against the nightmarish memories of the past and the equally nightmarish reality of the present, hearing the tears in her voice. Her empathy for him rang through him. He wrestled with and fought his own fears as he tried to make sense of what had happened to them.
There had been that smoke when they had been in the garage.
Amidst the nightmare, he reached out to her. Miri?
Iron might inhibit his magic but it couldn’t touch the bond between them, the gift bestowed by his venom and their love.
Her green eyes lifted, flashed to him, all her heart was mirrored in them.
In that moment she sagged and he sensed the enormous relief that washed through her, that nearly drove her to her knees.
She let out a shuddering breath, her hand to her mouth.
Gas, she sent, knowing the question he hadn’t asked. That smoke was some kind of gas.
Silently, Ash swore. He hadn’t planned for that, hadn’t even considered it. None of them had.
Where was Ba’al? Overcome, too? And Mal?
What had happened while he and Miri had been unconscious? Had all their plans come to naught? Had Asmodeus received his warning? It seemed unlikely.
Ash knew this place, he remembered where they were although he’d only seen it twice, and that before the explosion had rendered it nearly unrecognizable.
Miri had said they needed to get close. They couldn’t get much closer than this. This was the very chamber where Templeton had held Asmodeus and Gabriel, although Miri couldn’t know that. And now it was their prison, too.
Calm was precarious, tried at each instant that he felt iron and steel against his skin, against his wrists, his ankles, the burn constant. His bones ached and his horror at being chained, being bound again, was atavistic, instinctive. He fought despair. The thought that he would be, was, chained again, burned in him like fire. He hated it with an intensity that was nearly blinding.
Surreptitiously, Ash tested those bonds, set his strength against them even as he looked for a chance at escape. There was the possibility that steel and iron, stone and mortar had been weakened after the explosion. After all, Asmodeus had set himself against some of the very same chains that now held Ash. There hadn’t been this metal frame then, but this time, though, there were no magical constraints, save for the iron that weakened his magic.
That was how, in the end, Ash had fought himself free all those centuries before, once the priests no longer had the Book and the spells within it to constrain him. Once Zefir had fled, taking the Book with him, there had been no one to prevent him. Without the magical constructs the shackles were only iron and they had rusted in the damp. They had been set in stone and stone could break. He’d strained against them until they gave.
He fought his rage, his horror and fury, throttled them back. It would do neither him, Miri, Ba’al or Mal any good if he lost control again.
There was no Book now or a circle like Templeton had cast to hold Asmodeus captive.
The force of the explosion had been strong enough that the marble floor had cracked and heaved in places. The iron, copper and silver rings that been inlaid in it were very likely bent, weakened or cracked by the explosion. Between those rings, Templeton had accidentally or intentionally created an opening to the ethereal or temporal planes. Even Templeton hadn’t dared take the chance of casting another circle with those protections weakened. It was a dangerous enough undertaking just to cast it. What you closed in on one side opened on the other to release what was within, and so it had proved.
This magic used here wasn’t Daemonae magic but Ash had worked with those who did. He’d also learned much during his time with the priests. He hadn’t been their only experiment by far. Despite their ‘calling’ they’d dabbled not only in white and black magic but blood magic as well, seeing their vocation as preventing them from being tainted by such.
Around the massive chamber, armed men were ranged, standing in or at the edge of the shadows cast by the lanterns. Judging by their clothing and weapons most were mercenaries, as no two were alike in uniform or weapons.
Two men stepped out of the shadows to join the third – Hargrove.
All three stood out, each in their own way.
Beside Hargrove, there was one other Ash had seen before this.
It had been a year since he’d seen him, and he was much changed.
Many had described millionaire financier Gordon Templeton as handsome. While not as tall as a Daemonae, for a man he was quite tall, well over six foot and imposing. It was evident from his manner that he was accustomed to command and to being obeyed. Instantly.
He had a thick head of graying hair touched by a deep widow’s peak. His deep-set dark eyes glittered. Over the last year, however, he’d lost weight and his custom tailored designer suit now fit him loosely, like a scarecrow. His cheeks and eyes were hollow.
CEO of one of the last surviving independent investment firms, it was said that he was worth millions, perhaps billions. Once he’d been a man not to be trifled with but now he feared two people and two people only – Asmodeus, the Prince of Demons, and his true mate, F.B.I. Special Agent Gabriel Nicholas.
Having kidnapped first Asmodeus and then Gabriel, Templeton had reason to fear both, but he didn’t know he had far more to fear from Gabriel than Asmodeus.
Gabriel had been supremely pissed to find she’d been kidnapped. She also had the power of the federal government behind her, while Asmodeus, Prince of the Daemonae, had the concerns of his people. Vengeance was an indulgence Asmodeus couldn’t afford, not for his exiled race. Nor would he lower himself to such a thing. Although if Templeton touched or attempted to touch Gabriel again, especially now that she bore Asmodeus’s child, all bets were off. He couldn’t swear his Prince wouldn’t rend the man apart with his bare hands, no matter the cost.
As Ash would if Templeton hurt Miri. As seemed all too likely. His hands tightened on the chains that kept him from her. He shook them in helpless frustration.
For a brief moment, their eyes met, his and his mate’s, Miri’s clearly frightened. He wished he could reassure her but until he knew what had become of Ba’al and
Mal, he couldn’t.
Beside him was Hargrove, holding Miri’s chains. Just the fact that she was leashed was enough to ignite Ash’s rage, but it was the man’s expression that was disturbing on an entirely different level. His face was vacant, empty in a way Ash had never seen.
The other, smaller, slender dark-haired man beside Templeton was one Ash didn’t know. Yet Ash’s senses all told him that there was more here than appearance.
All three seemed to ignore he and Miri.
“I told you they would come,” the smaller man said, his voice surprisingly deep, his dark eyes too bright, too aware.
Miri looked at the three. She easily recognized Templeton from pictures on the news. He worried her. The glint in his eyes sent a chill through her… But that other? Her spirit went cold just to look at him.
Something was very wrong here.
Ash?
Miri. She could feel his relief, and then it shifted as he sensed her disturbance. What’s wrong?
There’s something off…something strange…about that man, not Templeton, but the other man
To her astonishment, Miri realized she was terrified, deeply and atavistically frightened on a level so deep her very soul shook.
What is it? Ash asked.
Miri shook her head, helpless to describe it. I don’t know.
It was as if the man’s skin fit too tightly for the one inside it. It gleamed strangely, but not in the way Daemonae skin did, as if they were oiled, but rather as if it were stretched too tightly, too perfectly, over the bone and muscle beneath it like bad plastic surgery.
In his own way, the man wasn’t unattractive.
Of average height, his thick dark hair was perfectly styled, not a strand out of place. His liquid, almost jet black eyes and fine boyish features matched his slender and strangely underdeveloped boyish body. In a weird way, he reminded her of the reporters she saw on the local news, too manicured, too perfect. His voice was deep, sonorous, deliberately measured and he used it to his advantage. And yet there was an attraction to him, a sexuality that called to her.
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