by Cari Z
“There is no way you could go with me,” Rio told him. “No offense, but I expect this is going to get very ugly, very fast. Besides, you’re still technically on Lynlis’s clock.”
“Don’t have to head back until the job’s done or she summons me, whichever happens first.”
“Your part of the job is done. But I need one more thing from you,” Rio said before Steven could protest again. “I need you to get Maggie to Devon’s folks. I can’t take her with me and I don’t want to leave her with Maria.” Maria, who will probably never speak to me again. It hurt to end things like this, but Rio had no choice. He looked over at Porter Grey and decided to leave him alive instead of silently cutting his throat on the way out. If Grey lived, Maria could interrogate him to her heart’s desire. Maybe that would distract her from hunting Rio down.
“You’re putting me on muppet-sitting duty?” Steven protested.
Clearly telling this kid what to do wasn’t going to cut it. “Please,” Rio said, letting his worry and exhaustion show through for a moment. “I have to go and I don’t want to risk anything happening to her. Please help me with this.”
Steven frowned hard at him, then wilted a little. “Fine. Christ, I need a cig, but this little adventure’s wiped that tat right out.” He glared at his distorted arm.
“Thank you.” Rio picked Maggie up off the chair and held her against his chest for a moment. He hated leaving her in someone else’s hands, but there was no choice. She craned her neck back and licked him on the underside of his chin, finally wagging her tail again. Rio kissed the top of her head, then unfastened her collar and let it fall on the floor. He stroked her soft, fluffy back a few more times before he handed her over to Steven. “There’s a tracking device in her tags, so leave those here.”
“Leave the tags, call the ‘rents and deliver the muppet.” Steven glanced down at the bed. “And what do we do about these two?”
“We call the cops,” Rio said, shouldering his bag. “And then we run like hell.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Cressidus lounged on top of the cages, her bare feet dangling over the edge and swaying back and forth in front of the grate. The demon had abandoned Cassandra’s tall black high heels, and from this angle Devon could see that her toenails were painted a pale, luminous pink. The skin on the bottoms of her feet was ripped up here and there, evidence of a fairly difficult walk, but none of the wounds bled. Of course not. Demons didn’t bleed. Especially not demons riding around in corpses.
Cressidus didn’t say anything, just sat and waited in silence, but the tension in the air was still oppressive. Devon could hear Mei quivering in the cage next to him, and knew Cressidus could hear it too and didn’t care. The demon didn’t care that one of its children was dead, it didn’t care that another was distressed, and it didn’t seem to care who would be the next to die. Demons were capricious, for all that they occasionally took the long view, and Devon wasn’t surprised to find that he was just as disposable as anyone else. He couldn’t trust anything Cressidus told him. He couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t kill Rio as soon as he arrived here—and he was coming, damn it, of course he was coming. He’d be here, he’d save Devon…Devon just wished it wasn’t necessary. He wished he didn’t keep falling into the damsel in distress role when it came to their rescues. Just once, he’d like to be the one to rescue Rio instead.
Focus. Devon needed to prepare himself; he knew he was going to be fighting soon. Hand to hand combat wasn’t his greatest skill, not by a long shot, but a fight between cambions was more about whose allure could get the upper hand. Devon had been forced to do it a few times when he was younger, and he’d only improved his abilities since then. He was confident he could handle whatever Shan threw his way.
Sure about that? Mei came close to kicking your ass. So powerful…but Devon had been exploiting other people’s power for a long, long time. He wasn’t about to forget how.
Devon heard a distant door open and shut. Footsteps grew louder and louder as the new arrival came closer, stopping on the other side of the cages. Devon glanced down through the grate at his feet, but he was in a poor position to see anything.
Cressidus spoke to Shan, in Mandarin of course. Devon didn’t know exactly what she was saying, but the tone indicated impatience.
Shan replied respectfully, and Cressidus laughed before saying, in English, “Indeed. It’s a job that I think you will enjoy." Cressidus bent over so that she could look through the grate. “At least one of you will enjoy it, in the end.” She sat up straight again, out of Devon’s line of sight. “Go and get the keystone, Shan. I think it’s time to get things started.” A moment later the grate at the base of the cage fell open. “Come on out of there, Devon! No use hiding anymore.”
Devon gritted his teeth and edged back out of the cage, moving slowly so that the blade in his pocket stayed hidden. Mei hadn’t spoken up about him having it, which made Devon think that she wasn’t supposed to have it either. It would be a useful thing to have in the fight if things started going badly for him.
Devon stood up and rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the feeling of pins and needles. Now that he was upright, he could see the full expanse of the room. It was elegant but old, the Victorian-style molding at the edges of the ceiling cracked in places. The large windows at the far side of the room looked dirty, and the silver design in the center of the floor, which Devon could now see was a large Seal of Solomon, had been chipped in by an amateur long after the marble had been installed. There was an empty space in the middle of the Seal, a small square about six inches to a side.
“Not bad for temporary work,” Cressidus said. Devon had been doing his best not to look at her where she sat, still rocking her feet back and forth like she really was the young, smiling woman she inhabited. “It was my kitten’s last great effort for me before I sent him to the Pearly Gates. Porter was a great mind in some ways, instrumental in discovering exactly how to modify a Seal to contain a cambion without exhausting the caster with the effort.” Her voice was full of admiration as she reminisced. “He charged the central tile with the spell that closes the Seal; it took him over a month. When that tile is missing, the whole thing is inert. Brilliant.”
The demon shook her head. “But Porter was too sure of his own importance, in the end. He overestimated his worth to me, just like you.” She smiled. “I assume you’ll put up more of a fight than he did, though.”
He didn’t get a chance to fight, Devon thought to himself. You shot him in the gut and left him behind, like he was nothing. Like he’d never meant anything to you. Which probably he hadn’t. Demons weren’t creatures that let their softer emotions run away with them. They could be fickle, vicious and grotesquely inventive, but they weren’t sentimental. Devon didn’t have the slightest care for Porter Grey’s well-being, but that didn’t mean he liked what Cressidus had done to him.
“I can sense your disapproval, my son,” Cressidus said. “If it makes you feel any better, do keep in mind that Porter’s plans for you included having your siblings sodomize you with quite the variety of tools. He took a profound dislike to you after your nephilim broke the Pearly Gates.” Cressidus turned to look at the man entering the room now. “Shan. At last.”
“Forgive me for the delay, Father,” the man murmured, bowing slightly. He was older than Devon and a little shorter, with the sinuous, sensual build of a dancer and long black hair pulled into an elaborate knot on top of his head. He wore clothes similar to Mei’s, a simple white tunic and pants, but the way he wore them suggested that they might as well be cloth of gold, because the feeling Devon got when their eyes met was one of pure and utter self-confidence, underscored by a hauteur that informed the mere mortals around him that they were, all of them, much lesser by comparison. This was a creature that existed with every expectation of worship, and for a second Devon felt his allure crumple into something submissive and shy.
Then he remembered himself and straightened his bac
k. So what if he was still wore the bloody overalls he’d been kidnapped in, so what if he’d just crawled backwards out of a cage at the behest of a monster? He was Devon fucking Harper, he had held out against a demon. He certainly wasn’t going to kowtow to one of her lackeys.
“You have some spine,” Shan remarked calmly. “We will see how much when I tear it out.” He gingerly held the missing tile in his hands, the marble blank but still emanating power. It felt dangerous, even from this far away; Devon wasn’t entirely sure how Shan was still holding onto it.
“Into the seal with you both,” Cressidus said. Shan entered without hesitation, striding to the center of the floor and readying the tile. Devon glanced at Cressidus; she looked back with an eager smile on her face. “Don’t try to run,” she murmured. “I would only be forced to drag you back, and that would waste some of your precious energy. I hope you’ve got enough saved up.”
Devon hoped so too. It helped that the last person he’d been with had been Steven, not Rio, so Devon had actually gotten quite a lot of energy out of the sex. And how many people could this guy be fucking out here in the wilderness? Devon took a deep breath, then stepped over the edge of the Seal’s silver boundary. Shan crouched down to lay the tile in place, and the wall of painful energy that suddenly surrounded them pushed Devon even further into the circle. He’d never been Sealed before, and God, it felt awful. For a moment he couldn’t even breathe, his lungs were squeezing so tightly against his ribs.
Shan had clearly had the experience before, or at least was better prepared, because as soon as he stood up he attacked Devon with his allure. Lust, hard and abrupt and commanding, slammed into Devon so fast that the sensation made him nauseous. Devon bent abruptly at the waist and heaved dryly; there was nothing to come up, but at least the feeling of sickness helped dissipate the effect of Shan’s allure. Powerful, orderly, smug-bastard allure. Devon could handle that.
He forced the sense of nausea aside and focused for a moment on understanding the desires coming at him. Each cambion’s allure was different; it was a power that reflected the mentality of the person wielding it, and those who had better control over their ability could wield it like a weapon, drawing on the parts of themselves that were the most dissimilar to what they faced and using it to pick the other cambion’s attack apart. Which Devon did, sacrificing order for chaos and sending his allure prickling all over Shan’s body, touching and arousing every part of him, not just his genitalia.
Shan frowned. He focused and redoubled his effort, and Devon went lightheaded from the blood rushing to the center of his body. He needed to come, fuck, he needed to come so badly, he was almost vibrating with need. Devon hadn’t been this turned on since Rio had fucked him, right after he’d gotten his sense of touch back. In fact, this seemed to happen almost every time he and Rio got together. And Shan thought he was good enough to elicit the same reaction?
No.
It was nice for Devon that Shan had chosen to focus all his allure in one place, actually. It made it simpler to tap into that power and redirect it. Not that Devon could use it against Shan, exactly, not when it was his own allure, but Devon could make it easier to endure and harder for Shan to use against him. He sent a tendril of his own allure spiraling into the blazing, oppressive heat of Shan’s and spun it around, gathering it up like a centrifuge before sending it down through Devon’s feet and into the floor. There. So much better.
“An inspired defensive solution,” Cressidus commented from the sidelines, still lounging on top of the cages. “I think you may actually be teaching my Shan something new, Devon.”
“No,” Shan snapped. He went brittle just at the hint of criticism, brittle with envy and diminished self-worth. Devon felt it all, and wondered for a moment what sorts of things Cressidus had said to Shan that had made him so fragile. Then he took advantage of the moment and refocused his own allure, not on Shan’s groin but on his heart, and not lust, but…longing. That sick sense of longing someone felt when they were separated from the one they loved, or when they had disappointed the one person that they’d hoped never to disappoint. It was the feeling of a heart breaking, being torn out of their chest and leaving them bleeding and helpless.
Shan went pale and stumbled forward, barely staying on his feet. He clutched at his chest with one hand, bowed his head and let out a cry, one that Mei echoed from her cage. Devon risked a glance at her; she looked absolutely devastated. Cressidus didn’t seem moved one way or the other. “An interesting play,” she murmured. “So effective, even after I went to such trouble to eliminate weaknesses like that in these two. The undaunted stain of humanity, I suppose. Disgusting.”
Shan lifted his head and screamed in defiance. He got to his feet and lunged at Devon. Devon was caught off guard by the physical attack. He dodged to the side but got too close to the edge of the Seal, which pulsed agony at him until he stumbled away from its effects. By the time his head had cleared, Shan was there, and he tackled Devon hard to the ground. He mounted Devon high up on his chest, too far up to buck off, and began to rain down punches that sent a fresh pulse of furious allure into Devon with every blow.
Oh, so much anger…rage wasn’t an emotion that Devon was comfortable with, one he’d stayed away from even when it might have soothed him as a child. It thudded through his face with every punch, and Devon covered his head with his arms and tried desperately to catch a breath, his feet scrambling without effect on the slick surface of the marble floor. The lust was gone; only the anger remained.
There was no help for it, Devon would have to tap into Shan’s allure again. He took a deep breath, opened his mind—
Fury. Fury. How could anger like this be contained? It couldn’t, Devon wanted to claw at everything, wanted to scream and yell and hate everyone who had ever touched him, everything that had happened to bring him to this point today. He had never given into anger, and now he knew why: it was too seductive. Anger was even more compelling than lust at a time like this. Devon took that anger and made it his own, let it overtake the heartache he was projecting and sharpen it like a knife, driving straight up into Shan’s brain. The cambion reeled back, momentarily stunned, and Devon reached a shaking hand down to his pocket and grabbed the scissor blade.
“No!” he heard Mei scream, but he didn’t care. He drove the sharpened point of the metal straight down into Shan’s thigh.
It didn’t get very deep; Devon didn’t have a good enough angle for that. It did make Shan scream, and that was so satisfying, the only thing that satisfied the rage. Devon jerked the blade out and raised it again, but Shan was fighting him for it now. Devon held on as tight as he could, but the metal was slippery with blood, and after a few seconds of grappling back and forth, Shan wrested it from him. Using both hands, he lifted the weapon high into the air.
Devon covered his face, but it wasn’t his head that Shan went after. Instead the cambion drove the steel into Devon’s chest, just to the right of his sternum. It made a popping sound as it burst through the skin and muscle, and Shan leaned down into it, trying to drive it deeper.
There was pain, Devon knew there was, but he was too furious to feel it. He pushed against Shan but felt himself growing weaker, felt the other cambion’s rage become infused with familiar smugness again, so close to winning this battle that he could afford the distraction. Devon wanted to yell, to roar with protest, but his lungs wouldn’t work. He scrabbled his hands around for something, anything he could use to his advantage—
The floor under his head was buzzing. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but as the anger began to fade so did his bloody single-minded focus. Right underneath Devon’s head was the tile that powered this Seal. And unlike the rest of the floor, it wasn’t fixed down.
Devon lifted his head, the compression making his chest burn, and the scissor slipped down further between his ribs. Shan grinned manically, still pressing down, but Devon had enough space now to get his fingers on the edges of the tile. He pried it up, ignoring the wa
y it made his hands vibrate down to the bone, brought it up in an arc and slammed one sharp, pointed edge of it into Shan’s temple.
The other cambion let go of the blade immediately, reeling back with one hand clutched to his head. Devon followed, sluggish but determined, and hit him again with the tile, square in the face. Shan fell to his side, and Devon crawled next to him and hit him again and again, over and over until the tile splintered in his hands, shards cutting into his skin.
Shan’s allure faded abruptly and Devon was suddenly back to himself again, lying on a blood-spattered floor next to a dead body, next to a man that he had just killed. Pain followed the loss of all that heady rage, and blood poured from Devon’s mouth as he curled into a fetal position around the metal sticking out of his chest, oh god, he felt like he was dying…
Come now…I need you now, Rio, where are you? I need you, you said you’d come, now, now, please.
Someone was crying, awful hiccupping sobs that echoed in the room. Devon thought it might be himself for a moment, but no…he had to be able to breathe to cry, and he hurt too badly for that, every muscle in his body tight like a red hot wire, searing his bones. Vaguely he knew the Seal was broken, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t even whimper.
Cold hands pulled Devon flat onto his back. Every nerve in his body screamed in protest, but all Devon could do was go with it, too weak to fight back now. He looked up into bright green eyes, and his frightened heart beat faster.
No.
“Well done, my son,” Cressidus congratulated him, brushing sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead. “Very well done. Improvised weapons, sacrifice in the name of victory…together you and I will make an unstoppable new creation, Devon, beyond the grip of Heaven and Hell and the greed of humanity. Once we get rid of your friend, that is.” She set her hands on the side of his face. “You should have given yourself to me earlier, kitten.”