Key of Solomon: Relic Defender, Book 1

by Cassiel Knight

  Deep inside, she felt a twitch. At the same time, she arched her hips closer, her release matching his, liquid heat pooling from between her legs, spreading into her abdomen and chest. The sweet agony of her orgasm wiped out the real world, just leaving her and Mikos. At the last moment, his gaze slammed into hers again, pulling into the silver depths as her world shattered about her.

  His body quivering from the Heaven-reaching height of ecstasy he’d found with Lexi, Mikos stared down at her. At her passion flushed cheeks, her dilated pupils, and the hint of moisture at her temples. She hadn’t come back yet. Her expression said she still floated in the clouds. Where Mikos longed to be with her right now.

  What had he done?

  His shoulder blades twitched with anticipation as he half expected a lightning bolt to shoot from Heaven striking him for his transgression. Nothing. No earth-shattering consequences.

  No smiting.

  Just him and Lexi.

  Peace. Comfort. A sense of home.

  Mikos rolled to the side, but pulled her with him holding her cupped in his arms. Her head sank into his chest, the top curling under his chin. Inhaling, he took in her exotic scent, body heat mixed with a spicy aftertaste that left him wanting more.

  How should he feel? After all, he’d just forfeited his right to return to Heaven by sleeping with a mortal. Despite what he felt, however undefined, for this particular mortal, the interaction was forbidden. He didn’t have the luxury of not knowing the consequences. There was nothing left for him. No return home. After all these years, he’d just given up his goal.

  Yet, as he held her in his embrace, he didn’t feel loss. He should be reeling with pain, shouldn’t he? But he didn’t. He felt whole. Complete. Something he hadn’t felt before he Fell and not after he Fell when he had his choice of women. One he couldn’t imagine ever feeling in Heaven or suspected ever would.

  All because of the woman who was stirring in his arms. Lexi pulled her head back. Dreamy eyes met his. He could easily drown in the liquid amber. Offering her a smile, he smoothed back an errant wisp of hair from her damp cheek. Once she came back to herself, how would she react?

  With her, her reaction could range from acceptance to rage. Not much in the way of a middle ground with this exasperating human.

  “Well, that was…uh…unexpected.”

  The comment was made in such a dry, matter-of-fact tone, Mikos couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Or thinking. Unexpected indeed.

  “Do I apologize?” He tried to keep his tone as cool and noncommittal as she did. How successful he was remained to be seen.

  “Only if you want to make me mad,” she retorted, a wry grin twisting her still swollen lips.

  This time she pulled back and away from him. Mikos suddenly felt cold, as if she’d taken all her warmth, and his, with her. He curled his into the pillow as he fought the urge to reach up and pull her back. To feel her warmth again. To feel the peace she gave him.

  “No,” he finally shook his head. “I’m well acquainted with you when you are angry.”

  “Well, then, don’t say a word. What happened, happened.” She shrugged, her slender shoulders rising above the edge of the sheet.

  Mikos raised an eyebrow. “Yes, it did.”

  He said nothing more. What could he tell her about what had happened? For her, it had obviously just been a pleasant interlude. For him, it had been a revelation. A revelation he wasn’t sure how he felt about.

  He gave her another smile as he left her side completely, swinging his legs over the bed’s edge and standing. Space. That’s what he needed. Space to consider the ramifications both of his lovemaking with Lexi and his reaction to it.

  “I know where the Key is.”

  In the process of zipping his pants, Mikos froze, his fingers poised over the zipper. His shocked gaze met hers.

  Lexi curled her fingers into the sheets, bunching the Egyptian cotton under her hands. She fought with the urge to go to him and drag him back to the bed.

  To feel the heat emanating from his body, chasing away the loneliness she hadn’t realized she felt so deeply. It wasn’t so much the lovemaking, okay, not just the lovemaking.

  It was the bottomless peace and satisfaction. The feeling as if she’d never be alone again. Never have to worry about an empty apartment, an empty life.

  For once, she hadn’t even thought about her foster father from all those years ago. Just like her loneliness, Mikos had banished that ghost as well.

  “Lexi?”

  “Huh?” Until he said her name she hadn’t heard him speak. She took a deep breath, forcing back the emotions that felt so raw right now.

  “Did your memories return?” he asked.

  “No, no, they didn’t.” She tripped over the admission.

  It was true, she didn’t remember. The fact she didn’t seemed to bother her now more than it ever had. Was it because of being intimate? Or something else? She didn’t like the uncertainty.

  “You see, after we got back I, uh…” Lexi darted a quick glance at the shards of glass and wood still lying on the floor below the wall she’d thrown the picture. She didn’t want to admit her anger had gotten the best of her.

  But on the flip side… “I threw my parents’ picture against the wall.” She saw his head bob once as if he’d known about her fit of temper. Ignoring the possibility, she walked over to the small side table and picked up the crumbled bit of paper and continued, “I found this with the photograph.”

  “What is it?”

  Lexi sighed. “A letter from my father.” Even now, she had a hard time saying the words. A letter. From her dead father. Spouting odd information that she would have chalked up to the ramblings of a crazy man if she hadn’t already experienced so much weirdness the last several weeks.

  “What did he say?”

  Mikos’s question didn’t feel like it took hold. “Huh, what?”

  “What did your father say?” Mikos dutifully repeated, not seeming to mind having to sound like a parrot. Much.

  “Oh, sorry.” For Pete’s sake, Lexi, get it together. “Beyond apologizing for not being with me, he told me how to get the Key.” She grabbed his gaze. “And to destroy it.”

  Why she said it in such a manner, as if she was accusing him of something when he’d been clear all along the Key needed to be destroyed was something she didn’t want to think about.

  Mikos nodded, his gray eyes alight with satisfaction and excitement. But with nefarious plans? She didn’t see that.

  “Good. Where is it?”

  “At the Church of St. Stanislaus Kostka. In some kind of safe with a combination.”

  Mikos nodded again, then yanked up the zipper of his jeans and tugged on a black T-shirt, covering all his glorious male skin and rippling muscles. Damn.

  “Get dressed. We need to leave immediately. There isn’t much time left.” He paused and tilted his head. “I’m assuming your father gave you the combination as well.”

  Lexi nodded. “Yes, it was on the photograph. I’d never seen it before.” She shrugged. “Or, if I had, it was just a unimportant series of numbers.”

  Mikos grinned, the dimples in his cheeks, oh boy, deepening. “May I see it?”

  “No.”

  At first, it appeared her response didn’t register. Then as his grin slowly faded, confusion replaced excitement. “No?”

  “I don’t have it any more. I destroyed the picture.” A lump the size of Texas felt as if it had just formed in her throat as she replied. Crap, she really had destroyed the last evidence of her parents, hadn’t she?

  Not exactly a smart thing, not really. In the concept of protecting the information, a good idea. In the concept of remembering her parents, not such a good idea.

  “Lexi, tell me you memorized the combination?”

  She scowled at Mikos. “Of course I did, you idiot. I’m not stupid,” she said ignoring the fact she’d just slept with an angel. And that maybe that hadn’t been the smartest idea she’
d ever had.

  Relief flooded his expression. “Come on, get dressed.”

  Lexi lifted her chin. “Not until you leave.” Even though she had just let Mikos explore her body from the tips of her toes to the top of her head and beyond, she wasn’t ready to stand in all her nakedness in front of him. How ridiculous was that?

  Maybe it was because as earth-shattering as the experience had been for her, other than the tender way he’d held her in his arms in the aftermath, he’d done nothing else to indicate it had been more than just a release of tension and frustration. For her, damn it, it had been so much more. That realization left her feeling vulnerable. Uncertain.

  Mikos’s eyebrows shot up, nearly disappearing into his hairline. Lexi simply tugged the sheets up tighter under her chin and met his confused gaze with a defiant one of her own.

  “You want me to leave?”

  “Score one for the angel.” A little heavy on the sarcasm, much? She took a deep breath. “Mikos, please?”

  There, she’d done it. She’d begged. When was the last time she’d said please? Try never. But with Mikos, it felt okay to use the word.

  Understanding entered his gaze and he nodded. “I’ll see you downstairs. Don’t be long.” He turned and walked to the bedroom door.

  When the door closed behind him, Lexi shoved herself from the bed and padded over to the dresser. As she slipped into a pair of dark jeans, brown cowboy boots and deep navy long sleeved T-shirt, she kept up a constant litany of the combination from her parent’s photograph.

  She headed for the door and took a final glance at her bed where she’d just spent a mind-blowing time with Mikos. Her attention was caught by something else that made her forget Mikos for an instant. The letter from her father lay on the nightstand.

  Walking over to the stand, she picked up the letter and held it gingerly. Fragile in the way old paper can be, she thought about destroying it along with the photograph. Scanning through the words again, she saw nothing that would give any secret away. And, with the picture destroyed, this small square of paper was truly the last thing she possessed of her history.

  At her dresser, she opened the drawer and slid the letter underneath her socks. There. She’d still have something. It would have to be enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.” Eleanor Roosevelt

  After keying in the combination she’d memorized, Lexi stared at the safe. The dull quiet in the church surrounded her, not so much leaving her with a feeling of solitude but more as if the world held its breath. Waiting for what rested in the safe. Waiting to see what she’d do with it.

  While Mikos had chatted with the rector to gain them access to the safe—she didn’t want to know what he did to show they were legit—she’d stared at the metal box.

  Mindful of Mikos’s alert attention behind her, she grabbed the handle and turned. Not even a click or squeak of metal on metal disturbed the silence.

  She slipped her hand into the safe and her fingers touched upon a silky material. She held her breath as she pulled out the Key. Her first sight of the relic that had caused so much suffering was unlike anything she had anticipated. That’s if she had actually anticipated something. She hadn’t really known or thought about what the book would look like. Just a book.

  Loosely wrapped in some kind of animal hide stretched as fine as thin silk and just as soft, the book seemed incongruously light for all its supposed power. As if something that held so much power should be too heavy to lift.

  Her fingers gently separated the edges of the silken substance, revealing the Clavicula Salomonis, the Key of Solomon, the book with spells and incantations to control seventy-two spirits. Demons.

  Lexi brushed a finger over the ancient tome’s surface, tracing the symbols etched onto the leather binding. Inside, the pages were of an unrecognizable material. Something this old should have been made of papyrus but it wasn’t. She couldn’t tell what it was.

  Whispers of sound seemed to dance up and down her spine leaving behind echoes of ancient promises. While she didn’t actually feel herself do it, she felt the press of the book against her chest as she clutched the priceless object to her.

  So this was it then. This was the reason her life had changed. This was the reason her parents had died. Why Devyn had died. Why she no longer had a life to go back to.

  As she stood there clutching the book, her mind searched her emotions. How did she feel? A sense of relief, maybe that it was over with? A hint of anger that such a small thing had caused so much pain? Maybe even sadness that something she had shared with her parents would soon be gone. Like the picture.

  “Lexi, we must go.”

  Mikos’s calm words, spoken in a hush to match the quiet of the church, washed over her in a soothing touch of empathy. Of understanding. Yet, behind that gentle touch, she also heard the slight edge of urgency as if Beliel could any moment appear.

  Folding the hide back over the book, Lexi tucked the precious object into her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. The rector was nowhere to be found. It was just her and Mikos in the darkened church.

  “Now what, Mikos?” She kept her own voice hushed, not wanting the soothing quiet of the church to be broken. She didn’t turn to face him. Didn’t want him to see the longing in her for what the whispers under the cover promised. Had her ancestors felt the same pull?

  “You destroy it.” His reply, also pitched low was exactly what she knew he’d say.

  Even without turning around, she could feel him close the distance until he was right at her back. Two hands came down gently on her shoulders. Heat seared her skin, the heat of his flesh, a remembrance of her being with him in what felt like a very short time ago. Every atom screamed at her to lean backward into his embrace. To let him take away the temptations. But she didn’t. That would have been too easy and she never took the easy path.

  “Lexi, let’s go. We are running out of time.”

  She nodded. Yes, they were. Only six hours until midnight. All Hallows Eve, Halloween, or Samhain. Didn’t matter what it was called. It was the night spirits walked. If she didn’t destroy the Key, it would also be the night demons were set free.

  Making sure the backpack fit snugly on her back, Lexi followed after Mikos.

  The trip back to Mikos’s mansion had seemed a bit surreal. The anxiety over what she carried mixed with the excitement of the evening.

  Halloween.

  The streets were mobbed with pirates, princesses, witches, monsters and the occasional space alien. Predominant theme this year? Harry Potter of course. Between the fictional wizard and his friends, she also saw a couple of Dementors, Voldemort and even a toddler dressed as Hedwig, Harry’s owl.

  So she liked Harry Potter. In this case, she definitely went with the masses.

  For all of the children, their parents in tow, this was just another Halloween. A night for fun, jokes and eating too much candy. A night where, for just this one time, you could be anyone, or anything, you wanted. The masks and make-up shielded the wearer from truth. Much like the mask which Lexi wore every day of her life.

  The one she could feel cracking and peeling away bit by bit. And now, she stood in front of Mikos’s fireplace, the Key of Solomon held tightly in her hands feeling as if her very identity lay between the pages.

  This book was very different from the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, the one she’d seen knock-offs of on bookshelves innocently hiding among harmless ghost hunting and tarot reading books.

  The Key didn’t identify the spirits, it told the conjurer how to invoke and control spirits. And how to punish them when they disobeyed. King Solomon, of the Bible King Solomon, had used the book she held in her hands to summon the demons. To make them work for him.

  Who knows how long he would have let the spirits free if people hadn’t started dying? Despite the power of the Key and its invocations, many of the demons had proven powerful enough
to shake off their bonds at times. When one of Solomon’s closest friends was killed by a demon, he’d made the decision to imprison the spirits.

  Now it was up to her to destroy the Key so that neither Beliel nor any other demon, could use the spells to free the spirits.

  Mikos, Mari and Rocky stood behind her in some kind of weird ceremony while they waited for her to toss the Key into the fire. Seemed odd that such a powerful book could be destroyed in such a simple manner. By fire.

  She stretched out the Key to the fireplace. Her fingers wouldn’t let go. The whispers she’d heard when she first took the Key came back, louder and louder until that’s all she could hear. So many temptations were offered. It was as if the Key had looked deep into her soul and plucked out all the things she wanted. Those she admitted. And those she didn’t.

  To get them, all she had to do was use the Key. To free the bound spirits. Was she tempted? Hell, yes.

  “Alexandria.”

  Like nothing else would, Mikos speaking her full name tore Lexi’s attention away from the temptations the spirits represented. She scowled over her shoulder at the unrepentant angel. He met her glare with a blank expression. No disapproval, anger or fear. As if he knew she’d make the right decision.

  He was right.

  Lexi moved closer to the fire, stretching her hand out over the flames. The heat licked at the top of her hand, not uncomfortable yet.

  “I’m thinking you don’t want to do that, missy.” The masculine drawl startled her. Her fingers convulsively clutched the book, halting her from releasing the Key into the fire. At the same time, a few other things happened.

  Mikos swore, a pretty strong swear word considering he was supposed to be an angel. A loud hiss sounded from his other side as Mari joined him. From Rocky—was that stone against stone grinding a growl?

  Lexi spun around. Jackson McKay, the man from the bar who seemed to have control over her boss, Howard, leaned nonchalantly against the doorjamb. His crooked grin didn’t mask the tension showing in the lines at the corner of his eyes.