by Eve Newton
The dread starts to well up in me that this essence-switch will somehow affect the ritual, but I reassure myself that now I know where she is, I’ll have Axelle back in this body to carry on with the trials soon.
I find comfort in that when I realize that if her essence won’t come willingly, I can have the pleasure of forcing the switch myself after I have beaten the crap out of her host body.
“Get up,” I order the female. “And don’t make me ask twice.”
The woman staggers to her feet, the fear bouncing off her and hitting my pleasure button. My nostrils flare and I breathe in deeply, closing my eyes briefly to take a moment of enjoyment with this pain-in-the-ass situation. I can take all the pleasure I need with Axelle when I get her back here, and she will be begging me for mercy when I’m done with her.
I know by now that I don’t have to touch her to torment her and it will be sweet to see her…crack. She won’t break, I know that by now, but she has her vices and I know exactly how to manipulate them. I have learned a lot in our short time together.
“I expect you to be gone for good by the time I get back,” I say to my ethereal ex.
“Not a chance,” Jezebelle retorts. “I will have my revenge.”
“You won’t last long enough,” I sneer at her. Her strength is waning, and it shows as her form wavers before my eyes.
“Don’t be so sure,” Jezebelle sneers back and disappears.
I let out a relieved sigh. One less problem to deal with. At least whatever forces are afoot here, they have managed to keep her out of Axelle’s body. For now.
I grab the female by her arm, and she yelps. I find it both annoying and pleasing. I tighten my grip until I can feel the bone about to crack and then I release her slightly with a wicked grin. She cowers from me and my touch.
I’m burning her soul; corrupting it with every second I have my hands on her, despite the protection that the Demonic form is giving her. Without it, she would be gone.
“Let’s go,” I say and concentrate on the place where I found Axelle before, residing in a male form that was most unattractive.
I shiver as I wonder what I’ll find this time.
Then, I grimace as something pops up that needs my immediate attention. I grab hold of the female and flame out to take care of this nuisance before I go and find my Demon Bound and force her to come back with me.
~ CHAPTER TWO ~
Evan
“Fucking fuck,” I mutter under my breath. Fucking Dashel and his plan. All that did was force us apart and away from Axelle. She will be frantically looking for us if she got out of there already. I’m sure she did. She was not happy to be in a host body that was so heavily pregnant. I chuckle in spite of myself. She was beautiful, standing there, her eyes flashing with desire as she looked at me, ugh, and Dashel. I don’t really care what she looks like, so I don’t care how her new host will outfit her. As long as she is free from Luc and whatever his ritual requires of her, I’ll be happy.
I duck out of sight of a horde of Araxi, nasty little shits, and mutter, “Fucking fuck,” again. I’m standing around here in the Demonic Wastelands, trying to stay off Luc’s radar for long enough until I reunite with Axelle. Sure, it won’t stop him from coming for me, but, at least if I’m with her, he will have to kill me in front of her, sealing his fate with her.
I hope.
I’m falling in serious like with you.
I grin. That’s quite the declaration. I will make her fall in love with me, just as soon as we can spend enough time together.
I tap my foot and roll my eyes. I have about five minutes before I can head back to Earth. Hopefully Dashel has been waylaid, and we can leave him behind as we make a run for it. He made the decision to go back to Heaven and inform them of Axelle’s choice to leave Luc. He thought it was best as they will be more inclined to stay off her tail if they think she’s abandoned the cause. I grudgingly admit that it’s a good plan. But it left me in this dump to scratch my ass.
I wonder briefly if Dashel is actually going to betray Axelle in some way, but then I dismiss it. His face when he looked at her, his words outside of the house, are those of a man caught up in her web.
I should know.
I ignore the stabbing pain in my head that I’ve no doubt Roberta is causing as she grows more and more pissed off with me for being a no show. A soul is in need of Reaping, but I’m so done with all of that. I hope that once I’m on Earth and have fully renounced my Reaper ways, I won’t experience any more of this pain.
By my guess, it is time to leave here and go back to Axelle.
I hope that she’s made it out of there without incident, even though it will take me way too much time to track her down again. Time that I want to spend with her, holding her, kissing her, fucking her.
I breathe in deeply and focus on getting myself back to Earth, when a hand lands heavily on my shoulder making me jump and I emit a strangled noise that makes me glad that Axelle wasn’t around to hear it and mock me for.
Luc
I land next to Evan in the Demonic Wastelands, slapping a hand to his shoulder and making the little shit jump a mile.
“Evan,” I growl at him.
He turns slowly. “What do you want?” he asks, his eyes wary.
I glare at him. “Is that any way to speak to your master?” I ask haughtily.
Evan holds my gaze for a few seconds, but then he drops it.
“Better,” I say, crossing my arms. “I need you to do something for me.”
When Evan doesn’t answer, I huff out a breath. “I need to know if Axelle has tempted a soul to his death in the last few hours.”
“Excuse me?” Evan splutters out. “How should I know? Why don’t you just ask her? She is living with you now.” The bitterness in his tone does not go unnoticed and while it pleases me that Evan is jealous, I also know the prick is lying. He has seen her. I know it.
“Not so much,” I have to grudgingly admit, hating this failure.
“What?” Evan asks, his ears perking up. “She left you?”
The gloating in Evan’s tone irritates me to no end. “She is currently taking a time out,” I snarl, but Evan isn’t convinced. It’s obvious now that he has seen her and knows where she is. However, I intend to throw the cat amongst pigeons and cause him some turmoil. “Go to Admin and find out if she has killed so that I can find her,” I order.
“Why should I?” Evan asks insolently.
“I will let you see your sister again,” I say slyly and the shock that crosses Evan’s face tells me that I have hooked him.
“Jez is dead,” Evan says carefully. “You killed her.”
“I did no such thing,” I say huffily. “And while she may not be entirely whole, she certainly isn’t gone.” Even I can hear the aggravation in my voice at this.
“I don’t understand,” he says with a frown. “Why am I only learning of this now?”
“For starters, I don’t owe you any explanations about anything, minion,” I drawl. “But it’s a new development. Axelle accidentally set her free.”
“Axelle did?” Evan asks. “How?”
“Does it matter?” I snap. “You will see her again if you do as I ask, otherwise…”
The threat lingers and Evan nods his head slowly. Good. He’s thinking about what I’ve offered him. He was always unusually close to his twin. He was a thorn in my side for years.
“I will try and find out what I can,” he says, but he is plotting.
I can see it as plain as day. His face is too much like Jezebelle’s for me not to notice. But I will let this play out. The longer I can keep him away from Axelle, the better.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this is of the utmost secrecy,” I say before he can leave. If word got out that I lost my Demon Bound, I would be a laughing stock and that is something that I cannot allow to happen.
Evan searches my eyes for a brief moment. I can see the wheels turning. “Got it,” he says eventuall
y with a quick nod.
“Come to the residence when you have word,” I add, and Evan vanishes.
I go back to the mansion and wait, pacing in front of the cage I have locked Axelle’s inhabited body in. Axelle is a wicked Seductress. If she is out in the world, she won’t be able to help herself and once she kills, I can locate her as easily as if she had GPS on her. It is more efficient than to land back on Earth and to try and locate her from there.
Moments later, I glower at the woman in the cage. She is still making that dreadful keening noise and I wish that I could smite her just to get her to shut the fuck up. But I cannot harm the body she inhabits. The trials are connected to it and I can’t do anything to disrupt them any more than what has already been done.
I growl when I remember that a trial could happen at any moment and that she will fail me because she isn’t here to champion my cause.
“Enough!” I bellow, clenching my fists.
The woman looks up at me in fear and cowers even closer into the corner of the cage.
I let out a huff of breath and turn my back to her. She is useless to me and is only agitating me further by being here.
I have no need for her. I’m only keeping her because if I send her back to her own body, Axelle will know about it. But she has gotten on my last nerve. I step through the bars of the cage, causing her wailing to increase. I crouch down and wave my hand over her. Her eyes go wide and the body slumps forward. I catch the soulless body and dismiss the cage.
I’ve sent her back. Maybe it will do Axelle good to know that I’ve sent Lacey home to reside alongside her in the host’s body. Now, this one is ready and waiting for Axelle to return. I dematerialize to my bedroom, cradling the body in my arms and lay her down on the bed gently. I erect a fire cage around her which will allow her essence entry should she come back, but will keep that pest, Jezebelle, out.
“How magnanimous,” the pest drawls as she floats into my view. “Since when did you care about lost souls?”
“I don’t,” I grate out. “She was getting on my nerves.”
“Hm, mine too,” Jezebelle mutters. “But why send her back? Why not just consume her soul and let her burn?”
“As much as that would please me,” I say, “I have Axelle’s mess to clean up. She left a body up there without a soul. That will cause conflict, and fuck knows that the other side has already sniffed it out.”
“Hm,” she says again. “So, is that for me now?” She indicates the body with her wispy hand.
“No,” I snap, giving her a death stare, which does nothing to faze her. She knows me too damn well. “You failed me.”
“And so has she by abandoning you,” Jezebelle protests. “Give me another chance.”
I fix my eyes on her. She appears to be genuine in her plea, but it is hopeless. “Impossible, and you know it.”
“You still love me,” she says, getting desperate. “Why are you so eager to see me fade away?”
“I have moved on from you, Jezebelle. A long, long time ago,” I say nastily and enjoy watching her flinch. “And I never loved you. I don’t even know how.”
“Well! Now Axelle has moved on from you,” she spits back, full of spite. “And you are a fool if you think that slut Demon loves you.”
“She will return,” I say firmly, ignoring the surprising stab of pain her words cause me. “End of discussion.”
I’m less confident in my convictions than I’m making out. I can’t go back to Earth to find Axelle, but I have given Evan enough of a reason to help me find her. Then, I have to convince her to come home.
Axelle
An hour later, I’m laying low, settled into a booth of a dive bar with a sticky floor. The only other patron in this hole in the wall, is an old man slumped over the bar with an untouched bourbon placed in front of him.
I sip my beer and keep my eyes on the door. I know I’m being slightly paranoid. Slade wouldn’t have called the cops on me because what in the blazes would he have told them? That some hack fortune-teller came along and stole his wife’s soul? He’d be sent straight to the loony bin.
I wiggle on the dreadful faux leather of the booth seat and growl low in my throat. This damn host is proving more trouble than she is worth. She is a fighter and she hasn’t stopped trying to regain control of her body since I entered it. This is one of the reasons why I favored Lacey so much. She was weak and didn’t have it in her to put up a fight, so I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, without having to worry about duking it out with her at an inopportune moment.
My warning growl has ceased the activity momentarily, but I know it won’t be long before the soul gathers up enough force to push me down and then I’m screwed. I can feel the mystical energy of this woman coursing through me and it makes me wiggle again. I’m uncomfortable because this power is ‘good’, and it obviously doesn’t sit well with my Demonic essence invading its host.
“I’ll give you your fucking body back soon,” I mutter. “Just let me find someone else, dammit.”
The door swings open and bangs shut with a noise that reverberates around the silent bar. I cringe, but then I stick my hand in the air and wave frantically.
Evan looks at me with a raised eyebrow, but then his grim face heads my way and my heart sinks.
Luc got to him.
He must have.
“Axelle?” he asks carefully.
“Obviously,” I snap at him, indicating he should sit opposite me. “Know someone else who looks like this that would wave madly at you?”
“You’re pissed,” he says with a sigh and sits.
“He got to you, didn’t he? What did he threaten you with?”
“He didn’t threaten me…he just offered up the one thing that I have wanted more than anything for centuries.” He avoids my eyes momentarily. “Until now.”
I narrow mine. “What do you mean?”
“He wants me to find you so he can come and get you. He offered to give my sister a body if I did, so she would be alive again.”
“Are you serious?” I snort into my hand. “You chose her over me? You fucking traitor!”
“No!” he says, standing up, sensing I’m about to kick his ass straight back to Hell. “I said until now, didn’t I? I want you, Axelle, more than I want anything else. I just made him think I was giving him what he wanted so that I could leave.”
I sigh. “You can’t win that game with him, Evan.”
He sits back down. “I know. I just needed to get away from him and back to you. He wants to know if you’ve killed since you came back.”
“So he can track me?” I scoff. “What do I look like?”
He gives me a scathing once over, which I take a mild bit of offense to. “You don’t want to know,” he mutters.
“Oh, nice,” I retort. “So, the body matters to you?”
He grins at me and takes my hand. “Not a fucking bit. I love you, Axelle. I don’t care that you look like a hippie and smell of sandalwood.”
I snort in amusement. “Well, you have me there.” I wrinkle up my nose. “I need to find a new host. This one is a pain in the ass.”
He nods and then bites his lip.
“By the way, where’s Dashel?” I ask, seeing as he isn’t about to offer up the goods on my gorgeous Angel guy.
He grimaces at me. “Are you sure you can trust him?” he asks.
“Yes, absolutely,” I reply instantly. “What happened between him and your mother?” I add about as innocently as a Demon from Hell can.
“Long story,” he says shortly.
“Got time,” I bite out.
“Later,” he mumbles. “He went back to Heaven. He is trying to throw them off your trail by convincing them you have left Luc.”
“I have left Luc,” I point out bitterly.
“Have you though? If he came in here now and told you he wanted you, cared for you, would you tell him to get fucked?”
I hesitate and it tells him everything he needs to
know. But it doesn’t change the fact that he still wants me to have his kid.
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t do what he wants, so it’s moot.”
“And that is…”
“Later,” I say with a knowing look.
He snorts. “Touché.”
“So, what was the plan? That you split up? Where were you supposed to meet up?”
“He can find us,” he comments and leaves it at that.
“Yeah, well, so can Slade and the cops, so I’m going to have to get going.” I slide out of the booth and stand up.
He follows me and grabs my hand. He pulls me closer to him and kisses me with a kiss so determined, my knees go weak. “You’re in a new body,” he murmurs to me.
I grin wickedly, forgetting for a moment about my plight. “Oh, yes,” I whisper and take his hand, dragging him to the ladies room to finally get a bit of action.
~ CHAPTER THREE ~
Dashel
I stand in front of the Almighty, head bowed, my fist clenched at my side.
“You are sure she left him?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, hoping that he can’t see the taint on my soul. I clench my fist even tighter. “I heard her confirm it to the Reaper.”
I dislike this omission. It eats away at me and makes me want to blurt out everything to my creator, but I can’t. It would be a betrayal to Axelle and for reasons I cannot fathom, that is something that I just cannot do.
“We have no need to pursue her and destroy her now,” I add quietly. “She will fail the trials if she is away from him.”
“Hmm,” the Almighty murmurs. “She still needs to be destroyed. She is pure evil, and we cannot allow her to breed. Just because she left, doesn’t mean she won’t go back. Stick within the rules, but the second she breaks them, take her out.”