by Anya Bast
“It’s just a game, Prof, just a game. Every player needs an opponent. Every hero needs a villain.”
The professor nodded. “Well, good luck on the design.”
“Thanks.”
They said their goodbyes and then got the hell out of there. They needed to find a way to hold the demon while they performed the ritual outlined in the text the professor had translated. Cole anticipated an attack by Ashmodai at any time and was suspicious at the reason why there hadn’t been one already. A quiet Ashmodai was a dangerous Ashmodai. He wasn’t going to waste time. This had to end before anyone else got hurt.
He squeezed Serena’s hand as they approached the car. He hadn’t forgotten Ashmodai’s threat against her. No way would he allow her to be harmed.
“Let’s head to Millicent’s,” said Serena when they climbed into the car. “She said she would research ways to improve the containment spell.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Cole headed the SUV toward Millicent’s house.
On the passenger side, Serena crossed her legs and drew his eye. Her movements made her short black skirt ride high on her tanned thighs. Fuck. He wished they had the whole day to themselves. He wished he could just pin her to the bed, take her over and over all damn day long until neither of them could walk straight. Just imagining a day spent like that made his cock get hard.
He put that on his list of things to do if they made it through this.
He slid a hand across the seat and rested it on her upper thigh. “When this is over, you’re mine for an entire day, Serena. No goddamn demons to fight. No telephones. Nothing but you, me, and the bed. We’ll order in food and just stay naked all day long.”
She groaned. “That sounds so incredibly good.” Serena shot him a sexy sidelong glance. “So…are you going to let me tie you up next time?”
He pushed his hand up on her thigh, until his fingers brushed her silky underwear. “If we get through this, you can do any damn thing you want to me, baby. I’ll be yours.” He rubbed her clit through the material of her panties and drew a low moan from her throat.
They reached Millicent’s and Cole parked the car. When Serena tried to get out he reached across her, pulled the door closed and kissed her. She gave a little sigh that made his cock even harder and wound her arms around his neck.
Just five minutes. He just wanted five little minutes with her. Was that so much to ask?
He slipped his hand between her thighs, pushed aside her panties and slid two fingers into her. “Cole!” she gasped softly against his lips.
He groaned at the feel of her pussy walls gripping his fingers, imagining it was his cock. She was slick, wet and ready for a good, hard fucking. One he so wanted to give her. “Damn, you feel so good, baby.” He thrust his fingers in and out of her and teased her clit with his thumb. She spread her legs to better accommodate his movements. The movement pushed her skirt up past her hips. He could see his fingers sliding in and out of her sweet pussy.
She tipped her head back and bit her lip. He seized the opportunity to bite the sensitive expansive of throat she’d presented and hold her gently with his teeth, lightly biting her.
“If you don’t stop,” she panted. “You’re going to make me come.”
He kissed the place just under her earlobe and smiled. “That’s the plan, beautiful. I want you to come for me. I want to hear you cry my name. I want to feel all those muscles way deep inside you convulse and contract. I want feel all your luscious cream spread over my fingers so I can lick it off.” He groaned at the thought. “Ah, baby, come for me.”
Her body shuddered and she let out a whimper. Sensing she was drawing very close, he bit the place where her neck and shoulder met and intensified his thrusting. Lightly, he teased her engorged clit through the slick material of her underwear. Her fingers bit into his upper arms as she lost herself to him.
“Oh, Cole,” she moaned softly as her muscles tensed.
“That’s it, baby, drench my hand.”
She climaxed and he kissed intense and deep as he greedily thrust into her, wanting her orgasm to be as powerful and as long as possible.
Finally she quieted and he withdrew from her body and licked his fingers. He wanted to spread her legs and lap at her right now, but he couldn’t. All he could do was enjoy the scent and taste of her and anticipate taking her later.
“Oh. My. God.” she breathed. “You’re going to kill me.”
He put her hand on his hard cock. “No, baby, I’m going to fuck you repeatedly. You’ve got me hotter than an adolescent boy in the middle of a girl’s locker room after gym class. Do you know that?”
She rubbed his shaft and he groaned and closed his eyes. “It’s Cernunnos,” she said. “It’s an effect of having Cernunnos inside you, is all. It’s not me.”
“No. It’s you, Serena.” He leaned over and kissed her. “It’s all you. Cernunnos might be affecting my libido. We know he is. But all my desire is for you…no other. Just you.”
Her eyes went shiny and she bit her lower lip. She pulled her hand away from his crotch with a look of regret. “You better cool down, Cole. You’ll scare Millicent going into her house with a raging hard-on like that.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “All the better to fuck you with, my dear.”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay, okay.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on mundane things like tuning his car up and cleaning out the closet. It was difficult with the lusty, musky scent of Serena’s sex still in the vehicle, but finally he was able to control his wild member. “Let’s go in.”
They got out and walked up the path to Millicent’s large stone house. Flowers bloomed in profusion everywhere in her yard and cats roamed in between the trees, stalking prey.
Millicent opened the door when she saw them walking toward the house. “Come in, come in,” she said, ushering them over the threshold. “I’ve been researching spells for you,” she said excitedly. “I think I found just the one.”
She led them further into her brightly decorated living room. It was filled to bursting with antiques and dark wood furniture. Pillows of every color lined her yellow, overstuffed coach. A clock on the wall audibly ticked off minutes.
Millicent opened a drawer of her coffee table and extracted a long, thin bottle. She handed it to Cole. It was a murky color, near black. A piece of paper, inscribed with a spell, was attached to the top with a thin red ribbon.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“It’s the combined essences of everything Ashmodai loves about being incarnate and in this dimension. If anything will keep him bound in one place, it will be his attachments. There’s some blood of a young female virgin, the adrenaline of a holy man, the pure tears of a child, plus a few other things. There’s a lot of ground up cold iron to help keep him in one place, too. That last isn’t an essence of any of the demon’s joys, of course.”
Grimacing at all of Ashmodai’s pleasures, Cole read all the ingredients on the vial’s label, and then looked up. “This must have been expensive to make.”
She nodded. “It was, but worth the money, I think. Just don’t let any of it get on you. Call the demon forth with the spell, and then throw the potion on him. It should trap him in one place and diminish his powers. You have to do it when he’s in his own form, though. Don’t do it if he’s in anyone else or the demon will be trapped in the one he has possessed and it will kill them. Hopefully it’ll buy you enough time to send him back to the dimension he came from. One more thing, do it at midnight tonight. In our dimension and in this time zone, that’s the witching hour. Witches have the most power in the half an hour before midnight and the half an hour after. At the apex, that’s the power peak. The spell has the best chance to work then.”
He palmed the vial. “Thanks, Millicent.”
“Anything to get scum like Ashmodai out of my reality.”
“The Ashmodai takes exception to that,” said Serena from behind them.
Cole s
wung around to face her, wondering about her comment and the strange tone of her voice.
Serena stood with a butcher’s knife to her own throat.
Millicent sucked in a surprised breath and Cole almost dropped the vial. Quickly, he pocketed it. “Serena?” he asked.
“Try again,” she snarled. “The Cernunnos is wrong. The Serena isn’t home right now.”
Cold fear rushed through him. “I thought he couldn’t possess the OtherKin,” he said to Millicent.
“If she has even a drop of fully human blood in her ancestry, he can. Of course, witches do since we’re interbred human and OtherKin.”
“Fuck.”
Serena/Ashmodai pressed the blade to her throat and drop of blood welled. Cole’s heart lodged somewhere near his Adam’s apple. “Give the Ashmodai the car keys or I’ll kill the Serena.”
Cole didn’t even think. He just tossed the keys.
Serena/Ashmodai dropped the knife and ran for the door. “The Cernunnos can’t catch the Ashmodai.” She laughed.
Double fuck. Ashmodai wanted to fucking play. He wanted to play some twisted goddamn game.
With his Serena as the prize.
“Millicent,” he said hoarsely.
She tossed him her car keys.
He raced out the door.
Chapter Eight
With tires squealing and about thirty traffic laws broken, Cole slammed Millicent’s sedan to a stop in front of an abandoned building outside Newville. Ashmodai occupying Serena’s body had led him on a merry fucking chase through town. Cole’s heart had been in his throat the whole time, worried that the demon would deliberately crash the car and Cole would have to extract Serena’s broken body from the wreck. He wouldn’t be able to take that. He’d die himself before that ever happened.
He didn’t bother to even close the car door as he ran toward the entrance of the building, hot on Serena/Ashmodai’s heels.
Rage, pure, sweet and intense had filled every part of his being. It overwhelmed his thought and brought Cernunnos bubbling to the surface, nearly overwhelming all that was left of Cole. He felt his body shift even as he stalked through the doorway, as it had when they’d called Ashmodai forth.
Even as Cernunnos filled him, the Cole part of himself fought the eclipse of his personality. The war raged within him, just as it had when this had happened the last time. Power battled will, shredding his mind at the edges. The Cole part of himself worried what would happen if he allowed Cernunnos complete and utter control.
Magic prickled and tickled over his skin. The intense buildup of energy almost hurt. He needed to release it.
He just needed a target.
Cole had every intention of getting Ashmodai out of Serena’s body. Exactly how he was going to do that remained elusive. A flash of black skirt drew his gaze as it disappeared around a corner. The building had been a factory at one time. The floor was concrete, and large rusted metal hunks of machinery stood around the huge room. Cole followed the flash of skirt and found a flight of metal stairs. He ascended, hearing the clank, clank of each step under his pounding feet.
At the top was a large, open room. The perimeter was lined with long worktables strewn with old clutter. Serena stood in the middle of the room. “The Cernunnos came to play.”
Cole took a step forward, rage bubbling through his body. “Let her go,” he said evenly. “Let her go before I—”
Serena/Ashmodai laughed. “The Cernunnos shouldn’t make threats he can’t back up. That is silly.”
Almost involuntarily, Cole’s hand shot out and a litany of foreign, ancient words that he didn’t know he knew poured from his mouth.
Serena screamed and Cole’s hand and words faltered and ceased. Was he hurting Serena, or was that Ashmodai’s shriek?
Serena/Ashmodai smiled coldly, then laughed.
It had been a trick.
Cole released the magick once more and the words of the ancient spell poured from his mouth again.
Serena/Ashmodai whirled and ran toward a huge window, where the glass had been completely shattered. Cole watched with growing dread as Serena/Ashmodai jumped out.
“No!” Cole yelled. He ran to the window and looked out, his heart thumping hard in his chest. The last thing in this world he wanted to see was Serena’s body crumbled and broken on the pavement below. Cold fear choked him.
But when Cole reached the window and curled his fingers around the sill, he saw nothing. Nothing. Relief surged through him, tempered by a question. Where had Cernunnos taken her?
The wind gusted, blowing his hair as Cole looked out into empty space. His eyes narrowed when the air below him seemed to shimmer. Perhaps the space wasn’t as empty as it seemed.
Jump.
The word entered his mind and Cole knew he hadn’t thought it. It was Cernunnos within him, trying desperately to take him over.
Jump.
The word came again, more insistently.
Jump!
Cole climbed onto the sill and jumped.
Chapter Nine
Awareness pulled Serena from the silky dark dreamspace she’d been cavorting in. She gasped as the shock of leaving that place grabbed her consciousness and shook it. The last thing she remembered was walking into Millicent’s house. What the hell was she doing sprawled face-first on a cold stone floor?
Her head pounded. Gingerly, she pushed up and looked around her. The walls here were white and they seemed to pulse as if breathing. They didn’t look solid. At the corners and edges, mist swirled in air currents she couldn’t feel against her skin.
She frowned. If it hadn’t been for her near migraine of a headache, she would’ve assumed she was having a lucid dream. Although, who was to say you couldn’t have a migraine headache in a lucid dream?
“The Serena is awake. The Ashmodai is pleased.”
Serena scrambled to sit up and turn to face the direction the voice had come from. Ashmodai stood a few feet from her. His feet and massive, unnaturally muscled chest was bare. He wore only a loose-fitting pair of pants.
Okaaaay, she definitely wasn’t dreaming.
The demon smiled, showing all those dagger-like teeth. Serena’s heart thumped in her chest. Inwardly, she groped to gather all her magickal reserve, knowing that whatever she came up with, it probably wouldn’t be enough.
Ashmodai took a step forward. The action sent Serena skittering backward on her hands and knees like a crab. She hit the wall behind her and heard a little sucking sound. Oh, shit. The damned wall had adhered itself to her back.
She was trapped like a fly on flypaper.
Ashmodai let out a booming laugh. “I have the Cernunnos’ beloved. She is a good plaything for me.”
Serena had the movement of her arms from the elbows down. She gathered her power, along with a specific intent, and held them together in her hand. The magick lay there, tickling the skin of her palm. “Yeah, well, Cernunnos’ beloved doesn’t want to be played with.” It looked damned hilarious, most likely, but she hardly cared. Leaning to the side, she flicked her wrist in Ashmodai’s direction, sending the ball of magick straight at him.
The demon roared and staggered back. A flash of bright light illuminated the room and the scent of burning demon flesh made Serena gag. Bile rose in her throat.
When the smoke cleared, Ashmodai stood looking down at his charred chest. He raised his gaze to hers and smiled. “Ah, the Serena is good at demon foreplay. She knows just how to excite the Ashmodai.”
What? “F-foreplay?” she stammered, her eyes widening. She dropped her gaze and saw that the demon’s pants were now tented by the erection of a huge, monstrous, way-too-big-to-fit-in-anything-but-a-horse demon cock.
Ashmodai waved a hand and his pants disappeared.
And it had little, tiny daggers up and down it that matched his teeth.
Serena opened her mouth and screamed.
Cole crash-landed in front of her. Seemingly, he’d come from the ceiling. He pushed up and went to her.
>
“Don’t get close to the wall!” she said. “It’s sticky and will trap you.”
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head and looked toward Ashmodai.
Cole’s gaze followed hers. “Oh, fuck,” he breathed.
“Yeah, that’s what he wants to do,” Serena said with wide eyes.
Green fire jumped through Cole’s eyes. She watched with fascination as his pupils seemed to explode and expand, swallowing the whites of his eyes. Emitting a little snarl, Cole stood. He was taller and bulkier again. His clothes showed the strain of the transformation.
Cernunnos was very much present.
“The Ashmodai played hide-and-seek, but the Cernunnos found the Ashmodai. Too soon for the Ashmodai to have extra playtime with the Cernunnos’ beloved, though. That is disappointing.”
Cole didn’t respond, he just thrust his hand forward, palm out. A stream of blinding golden light shot out and hit Ashmodai square in the face. The sticky, white wall behind her trembled. The stone floor beneath her moved.
Foreign words spoken in a deep, otherworldly voice poured from Cole’s mouth. The more he spoke, the more the walls and floor moved. It felt like an earthquake. Desperately, Serena tried to detach herself, but it was as though she were made of the wall behind her.
Ashmodai began to shriek and Cole’s chant grew louder and louder.
Finally, the walls and floor started to shake apart and everything went dark.
Ashmodai’s form flickered in the half-light. The demon wailed as if in pain. “The Cernunnos won this time, but not next time.” He vanished.
Serena suddenly found herself lying on the floor of what looked like a factory. She blinked, letting the world come into focus once more. A little ways from her, Cole lay on his back.
She forced herself up on her hands and knees and crawled over to him. His clothes were shredded in places. She touched his cheek. “Cole?”
* * * * *
Cole allowed Serena’s voice and touch to pull him back from the dark wasteland he’d fallen into. He opened his eyes and saw her concerned face. “Serena?”