“You’ll kill me…” …anyway, she tried to say, but the darkness around her was seeping into her mind, through her sluggish blood and breath.
“I don’t even have to test you,” her captor snarled, spit flecking against the back of her neck. “I know already that the water would reject you. I know what you are. I’ve watched you! Satan’s whore, queen of harlots, a Jezebel and a Lilith. You fell so long ago, and as soon as I laid eyes on you I knew you for what you were. Confess it, and save your soul.”
“Sam, please…don’t,” she gasped, and it was her last breath. The noose cut off her air and the world around her spun with shadows and spirals of light. She struggled, fought, tried to claw her way free, but nothing worked. Nothing. She felt her eyes close and something inside her gave way to despair. “Help me, Micah, Sam, make it stop.”
Even with that final thought, everything slid away from her like molasses on glass.
Chapter Fifteen
Micah raced down the stairs, heedless of anyone in his way. He pushed past two of Lily’s neighbours without so much as a word, their startled voices trailing after him. The basement door was swinging as he reached it and flung it open. In the narrow passage below, Sam sprawled on the floor, nursing his head as he struggled to get up. When he pulled his hand away from his hair, it was glossy with blood.
“What happened?” Micah yelled. “Where is she?”
Sam jerked up. “Someone hit me from behind.” He reeled as he tried to stand, lurching towards the door. Micah pushed him back and bent his will to the locked door. A moment passed, two.
The lock clicked open and he pushed the door. Something was blocking it. He shoved harder and the same something, a dead weight, scraped across the floor to allow him access.
It was Lily.
For a moment it felt like the ground had fallen away from beneath his feet, like his whole body had frozen, hanging there between moments. Then her chest stirred, so weakly, her heartbeat giving a flurry like a dying bird.
Micah dropped to his knees and pulled her into his arms. A red line stood out on her neck, but there was no sign of whatever her assailant had used.
“Lily? Wake up. Talk to me. Lily!”
“Here, let me,” Sam said, trying to push past him. Micah held firm. “Let me help!”
Sam’s hands were aglow with demon-fire. He needed to vent it somewhere. Better he used it for good than for ill. All these thoughts ran through Micah’s head but it still took a moment before he could persuade himself to stand, turn around and let Sam touch Lily.
The air sizzled, crackling with electricity, and in his arms Lily gave a huge gasp, gathered in lungfuls of air and jerked convulsively. Staggering back, Micah almost fell himself, but he kept his ground, standing with Lily in his arms in the deep darkness of the storage room, illuminated by the spark and crackle of demon fire.
Lily opened her eyes and looked up at Micah, only at Micah. “He was in here. I think it—I think it was Sam.”
Strange, thought Micah, how easy it was to see someone else’s heart break. Sam’s face turned to stone, to carved ice. His eyes glittered with disbelief and the blood drained away from his skin, leaving him a pale comparison of himself, a hollowed-out shell.
Micah let loose the light within himself, let it flow over her and soothe her to sleep. It took an instant and then Lily wilted in his arms again, into a dreamless slumber that would help her recover and heal. He lifted his eyes to look at the demon again.
Sam took a step back, his back coming up against the far wall.
“No,” he whispered. There was no rage. Not as Micah would have predicted. He’d expected the wrath of a thwarted demon but Sam’s expression just held heartbreak. Just emptiness. Pure pain. “Micah, please, tell her no.”
To an angel, the pain of another was like his own pain. Even the pain of an enemy, of a demon. And Sam’s pain shattered him.
“She can’t hear you,” he managed eventually. “Let’s get her back to her apartment. We’ll talk there.”
“Talk?” The word burst out of his mouth and the fury Micah had expected arrived in a deluge. “She was on the other side of the door. Dying! I could hear her, Micah. I could hear her being killed.”
Ignoring him, Micah started up the stairs. Lily was no weight in his arms, no weight at all.
Reid was waiting at the open door of the apartment, already calling in a report on her radio. When she saw them her face brightened with relief then chilled with alarm.
“What happened?”
“He was in here,” Micah barked, pushing past her. “In the basement. He nearly killed her.”
“I-I’ll call it in, get some EMTs in.”
“She’s okay,” Sam said, though he lingered in the doorway, leaning on the frame. “Isn’t she? She’s okay.”
Micah laid her down on the sofa, brushed his hand over her smooth skin and sighed. That fear again, that terror of losing her. It stole his strength, snatched away his self-control.
“She’s okay,” he said, more for Sam’s benefit than anyone else’s. “Aren’t you, Lily?”
He glanced up over his shoulder. Reid was gabbling into that damned radio again, and in seconds her cohorts were scouring the door and the hallway, gathering evidence. But Sam hardly moved. He stepped inside, but not by much.
“Lily?” Micah called her back reluctantly, drew her from the sleep that would help and heal her. Her dove grey eyes opened and she stared into his face as if she hardly recognised him. Still dazed from his spell, still in shock from the attack. “Lily, D.I. Reid is here to talk to you about the poppet. Remember the poppet?”
She uncurled her hands around the book and sat up. As her eyes snagged on Sam, she hastily dropped her gaze. “Tell him I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice only he could hear. “Tell him.” Micah nodded discreetly and drew back, letting Reid in to talk to her.
Sam waited by the door, trying to stay out of the way and out of sight, trying—in a way a man such as Sam could never do—to fade into the background. Micah took his place by the demon’s side and watched the women talk, Reid leaning in close, radiating comfort and safety, Lily responding with the few details she could recall.
“She knows it wasn’t you,” he said softly, and Sam’s dark brows drew together in a confused frown.
“That wasn’t what she said. Anyway, I thought it would suit you if she believed it was. Neat way to get rid of me, isn’t it?”
Micah grinned humourlessly. “Maybe. But I doubt even you could knock yourself out from behind.” Sam was right of course. If Lily really did believe he had attacked her down in the basement, it would make Micah’s defence of her soul far easier. But it would be based on a misunderstanding, if not a lie. Micah knew that. And he couldn’t do it.
Reid’s sergeant bustled in, getting a glare for interrupting her which he promptly ignored. So Reid listened to what he had to say and, as he finished, her eyes flicked up to meet Sam’s. Her stare held suspicion and a shade of angry betrayal.
“Okay, Lily,” she said in her calmest, most professional voice. “I’m going to have Dr. Graham check you out, and then I’ll be back. Okay?”
Her voice was too bright, too brittle. Something inside Micah recoiled. Something was wrong.
She crossed to them and when she spoke it wasn’t with the carefree tone. Her voice was heavy with suspicion. “So the storage area next to Lily’s has a hole in the panelling, easily large enough for someone to get through at speed. And who owns that storage space, Mr. Mayell?”
“The building?”
Micah winced at Sam’s insolent demeanour, but said nothing to interrupt. What could he say? He could guess what was coming.
“It’s your name on the lease. Your storage area.”
“One for which I never received a key. Ask Cassini.”
“Oh, I will,” she said. “Rest assured. Given Lily’s initial belief that you attacked her, and your statement that you were locked outside, it seems strange, knowing that t
here was an easy way in and out the whole time. Doesn’t it?”
Sam’s upper lip curled in distaste, but this time at least, he held his tongue.
“And what about my statement, D.I. Reid?” Micah asked. “I found Sam almost unconscious with a head wound.”
Reid cast a scathing gaze over him. It felt like sandpaper on his skin. “Well, that cleared up nicely. How convenient.” She turned to go, but Sam caught her arm.
Reid snapped around to face him and at least three of her officers did the same, ready for an assault. But Sam just turned his hand around and spread his palm out before her. It was caked with his blood, most of it dried. Some still fresh.
“Is that convenient enough for you?” he asked. “Head wounds bleed a lot, D.I. Even a small one. Ask your pet quack. And I heal quickly.”
Reid just stared at him. “I trusted you,” she said at last.
“And you still can. I would never do anything to harm Lily. I can’t.”
And that at least, Micah thought grimly, was true.
It seemed to take hours. Lily sat on the far side of the room, surrounded by EMTs and cops. People scoured the hall outside and more of them swarmed over the basement. Micah and Sam sat at the kitchen table, watching it from a distance, lost in their own thoughts about humankind. Sam looked shattered. Every few minutes his hands would start shaking again. He curled them into fists and then stretched out the fingers, as if trying to make it go away. Micah just watched him in silence.
For all his charm and the bonds upon him, Sam was still a demon, and if he did lose control here— He might not be able to hurt Lily, but there were a lot of other people in the vicinity.
“What’s wrong?” Micah asked.
Sam looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “What’s wrong?” He let out a long hiss of breath. “If you tell me to calm down and offer me a coffee, Micah…”
Micah smiled. “She’s okay.”
“Thanks to you. I couldn’t save her. And some—some mortal overpowered me, left me helpless.”
Sammael, the Angel of Death, the Seducer of Souls, an entity who had never been made subject to a being less than himself. Yes, it would hurt.
“She’s okay,” Micah repeated. “And she knows it wasn’t you. In her heart.”
Sam looked away, shook his head. “How could she ever forgive me?”
“You underestimate her.”
“Or perhaps—” Sam sighed, “—I overestimated myself. He knocked me out cold, Micah. I couldn’t open the door and then he came up behind me without me hearing a thing and knocked me out cold.”
“And it’s never happened before?”
“With a mortal? Are you kidding?” He caught the rise in his voice, Reid’s glare, Lily’s widening eyes. It took him a moment to swallow down his outrage. “No. It has never happened before. There are demons who can take me. Angels, sure. But no mortal.”
Micah hummed as a new suspicion rolled through his mind. “So what if it wasn’t a mortal?”
Sam groaned and buried his head in his hands.
The cops took their time about leaving, but eventually, with a great sense of relief, Micah closed the door on them. Which left him with the other two, each of them suffering, each of them in pain.
Words were going to avail them nothing, he knew that. Lily claimed she didn’t trust Sam anymore and that was destroying him. The problem was, for the first time since all this began, Micah did trust him. How could he fail to? Whether Sam realised it or not, his burst of demonic energy had saved her life, given her the energy she needed to recover from the attack. But Sam didn’t see it that way. All Sam saw was a failure to get through a locked door in corporeal form, a failure, in fact, to do the impossible. All Sam could hear was Lily dying.
There was nothing for it but to do the one thing he dreaded having to do.
“Come here,” Micah sent, and the demon looked up, his whole demeanour sharp and suspicious. Nestled in the sofa, Lily seemed to catch some hint of the contact as she too became still and alert, watchful. Micah hardened himself, closed off his feelings. What he was about to do was an act worthy of a bastard like Sam. He knew he had changed. It was inevitable when you strayed down forbidden pathways. His eyes lingered on Lily as the thought came to him. Even when those pathways were so beguiling.
Sam rose from his chair and crossed the room, his head held high, like a prisoner walking to the executioner’s block.
“Sammael,” said Micah. “You aren’t welcome here anymore. The wards placed on this home constrain you, the bonds placed on your behaviour compel you. By the power of the Lord I name you a demon, Sammael, and I cast you out by the Word of the Creator.” Sam took a step back and his face paled. Shock and betrayal etched lines on his face as the power of the angel entangled him, so much stronger than he’d ever given Sam to imagine. Now he understood though, what he had been playing with. Now he realised who he had truly underestimated.
“Micah, no.” Sam dropped to his knees, gasping for air, trying to cling to the world while Micah’s power forced him back into the shadows. “Please, no!”
The pain of it hit him and Sam screamed. There had to be pain for a banished demon. It was not the nature of banishment to be without suffering. Micah knew that. Although never formally banished from the Holy Court, all down the long years of exile on this earth, he himself had suffered, until they had assigned him to Lily. Besides, a demon was a demon, and destined to suffer for the crime of forsaking their holy birthright. The angel in him accepted this, rejoiced in it. Something else wept.
Sam’s back arched as the gateway to Hell which he carried within him flexed and began to open. His head rolled back, his mouth opening wide, gaping with agony.
Micah stood before him, a rock without pity or mercy. He could show no mercy now. Not to a demon. Everything in his soul yearned to despatch Sam quickly and bind him in the inferno. “I send you back to the pit from which you—”
“Stop it!” Lily screamed. She ran to Sam’s side and grabbed his arm, hot wind tearing at her hair and clothes. “Micah, no! You can’t do that.”
And there was the answer. In her face, in the love welling from her eyes. Micah lowered his gaze, releasing Sam with the merest thought. The tumult all around them fell still.
“You love him, Lily. As much as you love me.” Perhaps more. Yes, that was his greatest fear, though he couldn’t voice it.
She sobbed at the words, but didn’t release Sam. Slowly, as if unable to believe what he was hearing, or that he was actually free, Sam turned towards her and wrapped his arms around her. Kneeling, he came up to her waist, and he pressed his face to her stomach. Tears streamed down her cheeks, silvering them.
“Don’t make me choose between you, Micah.” Her voice came out trembling like a reed. “I can’t. I’m not strong enough.” Her hands reached for him and he went, no longer caring about Heaven or Hell. She was all that mattered. Lily. And by extension, Sam. Because she loved him, and to lose him would hurt her. As he hugged her to his body, Micah reached down and tangled his fingers in the dark curls of Sam’s hair.
Because she wasn’t the only one.
He breathed the two of them in, their scents, their emotions, their love. “I think—” It almost didn’t bear saying. But how could he leave it unsaid? “I think we’ve doomed ourselves to be together. What other way is there?”
“Love isn’t a sentence, Micah,” said Lily. “But how can this be? Isn’t it wrong?”
“It isn’t,” Sam said. “You’ve changed us, Lily. I don’t know how, or why. And I don’t know what the outcome will be, what judgement they will hand down on us for it.” He looked up, his chocolate brown eyes reflecting back their own images to them. “And part of me doesn’t care.”
Yes, Micah thought. How could anyone care about the future standing here, wrapped in the two of them, feeling emotions riot inside. Because in all of Heaven or Hell, or the earth between, there was nothing that felt like this.
“Come,” he
said, and dipped his head to Lily’s mouth, capturing her sweet lips so he could kiss her and drive all concerns from her mind. Pleasure had its purpose and sometimes that purpose was comfort.
She groaned into his mouth, her body heating against his. Sam’s hold on her tightened, his fingers stroking her skin where her shirt had pulled out of her jeans.
Sometimes that purpose was to assuage the growing hunger to join, to be one. Sometimes that was the only thing one could do.
Lily’s hands pressed against his chest, exploring the planes of his flesh through his shirt. His tongue danced around hers, penetrating deep into her mouth, while his hands slid up her back beneath the blouse. His fingers brushed her skin and then encountered Sam’s doing some exploring of their own. Micah’s heart thudded, very loud, a crazy rhythm as he struggled to maintain some last vestige of control.
“I want you.” Lily’s lips fumbled against his, her hips arching towards Sam. She looked at Micah with eyes that had gone beyond desire into some ancient and limitless place of pleasure, of need. “I want you both.” Her face flushed with shame, but she didn’t look away.
“It isn’t wrong, Lily,” Micah said. “Love is all. That’s what He always says. So this can’t be wrong.”
Micah moaned as his mouth took hers again and that control he thought he could cling to slipped out of reach.
Lily wasn’t sure how she moved. It felt like floating, buoyed up between the two of them, set aglow from within by need and desire. Micah guided her backwards, through the bedroom door, but Sam eased her down onto the edge of the bed. Micah was still kissing her, his mouth moving in perfect time with hers, his hands resting now on her shoulders.
Sam knelt in front of her and slid his hands between her knees, pushing them inexorably apart. His fingers moved up her thighs, stopping as he reached the crease where her legs and body met. Micah released her, moving behind to massage her shoulders before bending to kiss her neck. Sam bowed his head towards her mons and inhaled deeply. His nostrils flared as he did so and he shuddered from head to foot.
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