Devil Without a Cause

by Terri Garey

  She took his hardness in her hand, stroking and squeezing, much as she’d done to the muscles of his thigh. Up and down she stroked, rasping and gliding her palm gently along the column of flesh, still lapping at his balls, in no hurry to leave them. His cock jerked and strained as she stroked and squeezed, the sensitive ridge near the tip becoming ever more sensitive. She knew the instant he could stand it no longer, and took him in her mouth, engulfing him in heated pleasure.

  Down, down he went, groaning aloud as she began to bob her head to the same rhythm her hand had already established. She sucked and pulled, her lips locked to his engorged member, every ounce of her concentration on him, where it belonged.

  The fire crackled, but it was nothing to the inferno that arose inside his mind, the one where no deep thoughts intruded and no decisions needed to be made, save when to release his barren, tainted seed.

  Amid the flames flickering against his closed lids, a remembered image appeared. A dark-haired young woman with pink streaks in her hair, regarding him solemnly on a quiet rooftop. She’d put out a hand to touch his bare chest, and in doing so, had seared her name upon his heart.

  His groan this time was of frustration, but it merely incited Persephone’s talented tongue to work harder. Lust rode him now, and he didn’t care if his hands gripped her head too tightly, or if he pushed himself too hard down her throat. She, like everyone else who entered his domain, was under his control, despite the liberties he granted them.

  And when he came, in great, spurting bursts of pleasure, he held her there until she’d swallowed every drop. Only then did he allow her to climb naked into his lap, where she curled up like a kitten, licking her lips as though she’d just enjoyed a dish of cream.

  “Thank you, my prince,” she murmured, tucking her head beneath his chin.

  “It was nothing,” he replied truthfully, for that’s all it was—nothing.

  They sat in silence for a while, the crackle of flames and the reddish light they cast providing a small island of peacefulness and comfort amid the surrounding shadows and darkness.

  “How’s the whelp doing?” Persephone asked idly, trailing a hand across his bare chest.

  Sammy stiffened. “The whelp?”

  Persephone, sensing his tension, raised her head to look him in the face. What she saw there seemed to puzzle her, for a frown marred her lovely brow. “Don’t tell me he’s been causing trouble here, too? That’s why I sent him to you, you know . . . so you could keep him in line. The child was forever starting fires in the forest and throwing stones at the birds; he’s become far too much of a handful for me.”

  Sammy rose, unceremoniously dumping Persephone from his lap. She hit the stone floor with an exclamation of pain, which he ignored.

  “What are you saying?” he asked, his voice low and tight. “What child, and why would you send him to me?”

  “Because you’re his father, of course,” Persephone replied, exasperated. She was rubbing her hip, and missed seeing the terrible look that came over her lover’s face. “One has only to look at him to know . . . that white-blond hair, those blue eyes . . .” Her voice trailed off as she raised her head again, regarding blue eyes far older, and far colder, than any child’s could ever be. “Oh dear,” she murmured, stricken.

  Sammy kept his anger under control with an effort. “Are you telling me that I—that we—”

  “Oh, the wretched little monster!” she interrupted, slapping her palm hard against the floor. “I told him specifically that he was not to explore the Underworld on his own, but was to come here, to you!”

  “Explore?” he asked, nearly strangling on his own fury. “Don’t you think you might have mentioned a word of this child’s existence before you turned him loose in Sheol?”

  She looked up at him, distracted, through a curtain of golden hair.

  “Did I forget to mention him? I’m quite fertile, you know, particularly in the spring and summer . . . there’ve been so many children through the years that sometimes I forget to inform their fathers—”

  Samael’s roar of rage brought the three-headed dog leaping to its feet, barking furiously. “You forget?”

  “I can’t help it!” she exclaimed defensively, rising to her feet. “I have a lot on my mind! Nature doesn’t run itself, you know! There are seasons to change and plantings to oversee and harvests to safeguard, not to mention dealing with natural disasters like hurricanes and mudslides and volcanic eruptions!”

  “You—I—we—”

  To her credit, Persephone didn’t cower in the face of Sammy’s rage, eons of volcanic eruptions perhaps having prepared her for his. “Yes!” she interrupted him, impatiently motioning the still barking hellhound to quiet. “You have a son, who I would’ve been quite content to raise on my own—as I have the children of so many others through the years. He could have lived happily as a forest sprite, or some other form of elemental, if he hadn’t been such a spoiled, headstrong hellion, just like his father!”

  In the silence that followed that pronouncement, Sammy found his knees curiously unwilling to hold his weight, and sank back into his chair.

  “This is not acceptable.” He stared into the red-gold heart of the fire, unwilling to believe what he was being told. “You speak of nature, but only an unnatural mother could be so careless with her offspring.” As he said the words, he was forced to acknowledge the well of bitterness from which they sprang. So, too, had he been cast off and ignored; it made him view Persephone through new eyes, and they were no longer eyes that admired.

  “You’ve always known what I am, darling.” She shrugged a naked shoulder. “My world is untroubled by conscience. The beauty of a sunrise, the touch of the wind against my skin . . . these are the things that move me. Motherhood is neither a gift nor a burden; it merely is.”

  “Where is he?”

  “How should I know?” Persephone asked, tucking wheat gold hair crossly behind her ears. “I saw him to the River Styx myself, and paid that bony excuse for a ferryman to bring him straight to you. I would’ve brought him in person, but he begged for a boat ride in the dreary old thing, and I was very busy ushering in spring at the time—the cherry blossoms were particularly lovely this year.”

  “Charon can never leave the river,” Sammy answered shortly, his mind working furiously. “The child never arrived.”

  Persephone looked more annoyed than concerned. “But it’s been weeks—months, even! Where could he possibly be?”

  “Someplace he shouldn’t,” Samael answered grimly, damning himself for a fool. He’d heard the rumors, and discounted them as more of Selene’s twisted machinations, designed to misdirect his subjects and weaken his authority.

  “The incorrigible little beast! I’ll take a willow switch to him, I swear it. Do you know where he is? Tell me.”

  He raked her naked form with a scornful gaze, unaccountably angry. “It’s a bit late to worry about discipline now, isn’t it? You abandoned the boy on the bank of the River of the Dead, and haven’t concerned yourself with his whereabouts since!”

  She shrugged. “He’s at least nine years old, and quite big for his age. Quite resourceful, too, I might add—crafty as a fox and quick as an eel. He’s hardly a babe in the woods.”

  “No,” Samael agreed grimly. “He’s a child, lost in the Canyons of Despair, and in all probability, he’s already dead.”

  He rose, snapping his fingers for the dog. Naked, gilded by the fire, he looked down on Persephone from his greater height.

  “Leave me,” he told her, touching the petal-soft skin of her cheek one final time. “And don’t bother coming back.”

  Then he strode away into the darkness, the hellhound at his heels.

  Less than ten minutes later, Samael stood upon the ancient barge which comprised the whole of Charon’s domain, receiving only the nod of a shroud-covered head when he asked about a certain blond-haired, blue-eyed child who’d been seen with Persephone. “So the boy was here, and you took him ac
ross, alone?”

  It was important to verify Persephone’s story. Between the imps and the ethereals, he couldn’t afford to be caught off guard again. There’d been enough rumors swirling around the Underworld, and now he needed the truth.

  “Has he been back since? Have you ferried anyone to the other shore, anyone at all?”

  Charon, mute and impassive as always, shook his shrouded head in the negative.

  Ignoring the moaning, weeping shades who cowered on the rotting, coin-covered deck, Sammy impatiently brushed away one who dared come too close. “Which way did he go when he left the barge?”

  Charon lifted a bony finger and pointed westward, toward the Forest of Forgetting.

  Swearing beneath his breath, Sammy leapt from the barge as soon as it reached the bank, snapping his fingers for the three-headed Ajax, whom he’d brought with him.

  “Search out his trail,” he ordered the hellhound. “See if you can find anything that smells like cherry blossoms.”

  All three canine heads cocked quizzically.

  “Flowers,” he said shortly, then amended it to “Something that smells like Persephone.”

  The beast was off in a flash, while Sammy followed at a more sedate pace, wending his way past the blackened stones that lined the River Styx, through the rocks and toward a gray-green forest of stunted, oddly contorted trees.

  When he heard a soft rustle of wings behind him, he was not surprised.

  “Master?”

  “What is it, Nyx?”

  “You are disturbed.”

  “No shit,” he answered grimly.

  “What’s happened?”

  Sammy whirled, bringing his second-in-command up short. “Why? Did you hear of something happening?”

  Nyx’s red eyes flickered in what—in mortal terms—would’ve passed for a blink. “No, Satanic Majesty. I merely feel your agitation. We have always been attuned . . . I was created from your essence, after all.”

  Samael the Fallen gave a short bark of laughter. “There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. My condolences.” He turned, and resumed walking.

  “I don’t understand,” murmured Nyx, falling in step at his back. “Humor has never been my strong point.”

  With a sigh, Sammy filled him in on the day’s developments, knowing that he would be unable to keep his trusted lieutenant in the dark for long anyway. “The rumors of a child of mine are true,” he told Nyx. “He was on his way to see me, when—I suspect—he fell into that she-wolf Selene’s clutches. She must’ve placed him with the imps and told them to keep him close, probably hoping to use him as a weapon against me at some point.”

  The baying of dogs rose in the distance, and Sammy picked up his pace, knowing Ajax had found the scent. “Clever, clever Selene . . . I’m afraid I may have underestimated her. By telling Thamuz’s people that I was the one who wished him kept a secret, she kept him a secret from me as well.” He shook his head, hearing the dog’s baying grow louder as they entered the Forest of Forgetting. Here a light wind whispered constantly through the misshapen trees, like a million voices in a conversation never meant to be heard. They spoke of dreams and nothingness, of flowing water and endless skies, oblivion and absolution; all lies, of course.

  “Forgive me, Master,” Nyx said, “but all these eons, all these women . . . there has been none to bear you a son.”

  “True enough,” Sammy returned, following Ajax’s excited yelps into a nearby thicket. “But Persephone is no ordinary woman, nor even an ordinary immortal. She is a goddess.” He stopped, surveying a clearing surrounded by spiderwebs, stretched between the trees like sticky traps for the unwary. “An amoral, conscienceless creature, much like myself.” There was an area where the spiderwebs were broken and torn, an area much the size a nine-year-old boy might have made if he’d stumbled into them.

  “I was right,” Sammy murmured, half to himself. “This is Selene’s handiwork, taught to her by the Weaver.” It would be useless to seek out Ariadne and demand an explanation; she would speak of patterns and circles, and leave him to wonder at nothing, as she always did.

  “Prepare yourself,” he told Nyx crisply. “For we go to the Canyons of Despair.”

  “Your Infernal Majesty,” Nyx replied, in a tone betraying his trepidation. “That is the realm of the Basilisk.”

  “Do you think I’m unaware of that?” Samael asked sharply, over his shoulder.

  “Of course not,” Nyx soothed, “but if the boy went there, he is already dead. Nothing made of flesh can withstand its gaze without being frozen into immobility, easy prey for a creature such as the Basilisk. It is a single-minded hunter, one who kills without hesitation.”

  “That’s all right,” Sammy replied, smiling a grim smile as he looked one last time at the broken cobwebs. “So am I.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Finn was going to seduce Faith, the way she’d seduced him. Not only was there a sort of poetic justice in it, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Faith was a beautiful woman, and that he still wanted her. Why should he deny it? He’d seen how she looked naked, and known every lying, luscious inch of her.

  He would again, before the night was over. The breeze, the beach, the moon . . . they were all going to help him get the ring back on his finger, where it belonged.

  Holding out a hand to her, he coaxed, “You have nothing to be afraid of. Come on, let’s walk on the beach.”

  He’d had a lot of time to think today, while she’d been napping on the couch and playing at the park. She’d been under surveillance almost every minute since he’d left her house, and he’d had Bert digging into her past with a fine-tooth comb before they’d even left the driveway. He knew everything there was to know about Faith McFarland, including the fact that she had no family besides her son, and extremely limited resources.

  “Let Nathan and me go home.” She rose from her chair, ignoring his proffered hand. “If you let us go now, I swear I won’t tell anyone what happened. If you don’t, sooner or later someone will find us, and when they do, I’ll tell them everything. Your career will be ruined.”

  He laughed at her valiant attempt to play her one remaining card. “I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but it’s going to be your word against mine. My people will back me up. You lied to your boss in order to spend last night with me, as several witnesses can verify. Your house is locked up tight, no signs of a robbery or break-in, and your luggage is here. If I claim you came willingly, at my invitation, no one’s going to believe otherwise.” He cocked his head. “And when you go back to Atlanta, if you make any wild accusations, I’ll simply explain to anyone who cares to hear it that we had a fight, and when I asked you to leave, things turned ugly. Do you think the cops are going to believe I’m so hard up for women that I have to kidnap them?”

  She pressed her lips together, and he knew, for the time being, that he’d won.

  “When we go back to Atlanta?” She eyed him suspiciously. “You’re going to let us go?”

  “Of course. You’ll be home by Tuesday.”

  “Why Tuesday?” A note of pleading entered her voice. “Why not now?”

  “Walk with me and find out.”

  “I don’t want to leave Nathan alone,” she demurred, glancing worriedly back toward the room.

  “He’s not alone,” Finn said, knowing that both John and his housekeeper, Trina, were hovering over the boy like mother hens, fully aware of what he was doing and completely disapproving of it. He didn’t tell Faith that, though, adding only, “He’s being monitored through a security camera.” Faith would meet Trina soon enough, and he didn’t want her knowing she had any allies this early in the game.

  The path was clearly marked with gravel and footlights, and he took it, knowing she’d follow. When the palms and plants surrounding him gave way to the wind and sea, gleaming with whitecaps in the moonlight, he stopped, and waited. The water was rough tonight, churning, matching his mood.

  She came up
to stand beside him, a few feet away, saying nothing.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The view was breathtaking during the day, sweepingly dramatic after the sun went down. He’d spent many dark nights walking this beach alone, writing lyrics and music in his head. “Look at the stars, how they go on forever.”

  He also wanted her to see their isolation—no lights, no bridges, no houses save his. He turned to see her reaction, but had to suppress his own at the sight of her; pale skin gleaming in the moonlight, the wind molding itself to her curves.

  She was staring at the sky, and as he watched, she took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp, clean scent of the sea. When she let it out, some of her tension seemed to go with it. “Tell me about your bargain,” she said, “and the ring. How did you end up with it?”

  He walked on, toward the water’s edge, and she followed, pacing him in the sand, a few feet apart.

  “I was sixteen,” he began, “and very stupid. I wanted to be a rock star, and was willing to do anything to make it happen.” He had nothing to lose by telling her the truth, or at least some of it. She was as steeped in darkness as he was, regardless of her motives. “I was obsessed with bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, filled with rebellion and aching for my shot at the big time.” Seashells crunched beneath his feet. “I thought I could find it between the pages of an old book I’d found in a thrift store.”

  He felt her curious gaze on him, but kept walking, into the wind. “Initially I just thought it was someone’s old sketch pad, filled with pencil drawings of demons and devils, and I had the vague idea that I could use some of the ideas for designing T-shirts.” He smiled at the memory of that long-ago boy, desperate to make money any way he could, particularly if it might help get him where he was going. “But it turned out to be a journal . . .” He hesitated. “A grimoire.”

  “A grimoire?” She’d obviously never heard the word.