by RS Black
“Take her away, Ash. Don’t bring her near me.”
There was a small girl in front of him. Maybe two years old. Her skin was dusky hued and her eyes slitted like a cat’s, but there was an innocence to her chubby cheeks that instantly drew me in.
Kneeling, Asher rubbed his palm up and down the little girl’s bicep. She’d dressed so beautifully, wearing a flowing gown of purest white that fell to her ankles. A plethora of colorful silken ribbons threaded through the tight locks of her hair. I couldn’t fail but note the powerful looking were-panther standing behind her.
Half his face was tattooed with African tribal markers, and he was glaring at me with one golden eye, his other eye covered by a patch. His lips were curled back, and his massive arms crossed, but I could still see the echo of the girl’s cherubic features. He was surely her father.
“You can do this, Pandora,” Asher whispered after a second.
I felt Death’s presence in the corner of the room. He gazed on us impassively, as if he couldn’t care less that my track record with anything resembling the girl was fairly disturbing at this point.
My mouth was dry when I shook my head.
“I can’t. I can’t do this.” I banged my skull into the cage because this wasn’t a doll. This wasn’t something without a heart and feelings that didn’t care if I crushed it. This girl lived and breathed, and she looked as terrified as I felt.
My heart broke at the sight of her shaking, clenched fists. What was wrong with this girl? Why wasn’t she running away? How could she be so brave in front of me? Couldn’t she tell what I was, the monster I’d become?
Asher reached for the lock on the cage, and I cried out, holding out my hand. “Please. Don’t do this. I don’t want to hurt her.”
His brown eyes were intense as they gazed at me, then he clenched them shut and sighed. “If you’re not ready, we don’t have to—”
I screamed at the same time the little girl did. Death had traced over to her and run a claw down the length of her smooth bicep, splitting it open. The tattooed giant’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
Wild with fury, I rushed to the cage door, ready to kill him, to kill them all. “Leave her alone!”
But now it was Asher trying to wrestle the little girl away from Death, telling him that I wasn’t ready.
“No. It’s now or never. A deal’s a deal, and I’ll keep my end of the bargain,” Death growled, and then with a firm yank, he snapped the lock off of the door and tossed the girl at me.
The baby was shaking and wild with fear—I smelled the stench of it leaking off her. But she was so stoic in the face of it that she turned neither left nor right, just continued to gaze at me with eyes wide open and her rosebud lips trembling.
The metallic waft of her blood tickled my nostrils. A haze descended over my vision. Images of violent deaths, of bodies bloated with disease. Pestilence had come alive inside me, and someone else too. Someone even more blood thirsty, even more malevolent. My mouth watered as the blood continued to tease me. My heart pumped harder.
I wondered what her blood would taste like, what it would feel like sliding down my...
Screaming, I jerked back to the present, to the reality that a little child was now crying, now sensing where my dark thoughts had taken me. I covered my eyes and turned my head, wanting to retch because I’d realized a horrible, insidious truth.
I’d been infected by Gluttony. How did Bubba fight this? How could he resist it? My throat burned, and I wrapped my arms around myself. For so long I’d despised Bubba for what he was, for who he was. I’d been disgusted with his appetites, never realizing how hard he fought every day to control his baser instincts.
Ice ran through my veins, and I felt the girl and I were no longer alone inside the cage. Then I heard a whimper and a roar as the cage slammed shut.
Asher screamed.
My eyes snapped open to stare at Death. His face was no longer so beautiful as I saw the truth behind the mask. His bones lifted into a macabre smile as he yanked the little girl against his body.
“Hold the girl, or I kill her.”
My gaze darted to the father. His hands clenched, and the agony burning in his eyes reflected back at me. But again, he did and said nothing.
I shook my head, covering my mouth with a fist. “Let her go,” I murmured through my fingers.
“In three...”
His arm tightened around the girl’s neck. Now she was sobbing, clutching at Death’s arm banded around her.
“Oh, baby,” I crooned. “Don’t cry. Don’t...shh. Shh.” I took a step closer.
“...two...”
“No. No. Nonononono.” I shook my head, fearing that either way this poor, beautiful child would never leave here alive, but knowing I couldn’t let it be by the cruel and merciless hands of Death.
I snatched her from his arms just as he whispered, “One.”
She was crying hard and trembling. Asher was kicking at the cage, damning Death to the fiery pits of Hell, and I was squeezing my eyes shut and praying to God that I wouldn’t hurt her.
“Momma,” the little girl whimpered into my chest, and though I knew it wasn’t me she addressed, it was enough to help me reclaim my sanity.
The madness dissipated, and this time when I sobbed, it was with joy. I wrapped my arms around her middle and hugged her tenderly, crooning as I rubbed her wounded arm and whispering that I would never, ever hurt her.
Finally her shaking eased, and she wrapped her chubby little arms around my neck. Her hot tears landed on my flesh, her scent of baby powder and lavender banished the call of blood, and I sighed into her body, rocking her gently back and forth.
“Welcome back, Pandora,” Death whispered. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
~*~
After that incident, everything moved in a blur. The girl was whisked from my arms by her father, who gave Death an evil, murderous stare before storming out. Asher rushed to me, and when he wrapped me in his arms, I didn’t want to hurt him. I accepted his touch and melted into it, resting my forehead heavily against his arms.
He didn’t kiss me, but his fingers strummed the side of my face and down my neck, as if he was trying to make sure I was okay.
I didn’t want to leave his arms ever again, but eventually I did. “I need a shower, and something to drink.”
He nodded and helped me to stand. My body was still running high on adrenaline. I felt jittery and unable to walk in a straight line. I didn’t question where he was leading me, I just followed him out of the back room and cringed as we headed straight into the bar.
There were so many eyes watching us, and I realized that had I done anything to that girl the odds of Asher and I walking out of there alive would have been slim to none.
I couldn’t find the child, and I could only hope that her father had taken her far, far away.
Hanging my head so that I didn’t have to meet anyone’s stare, I sighed when Ash took me into another back room and locked the door behind us.
Straight away I saw the shower and nodded when he pointed it out to me. “Shower’s there.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, because I was uncertain and shy. Nudity used to mean nothing to me, but I couldn’t do it now.
“I need clothes.” I looked down at the tattered dress that had once been as white as the one the little girl wore, but that was now grimy and black in places.
He tipped my chin up. “Don’t do that, little demon.”
Slowly, I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and gently extricated my face from his grasp. “You can’t stay here.”
“I’m not leaving you.” He stepped back, giving me some of the space I desperately needed.
Fidgeting with a particularly large hole across my thigh, I shook my head. “Just not in the bathroom with me. You... you’ve got to go.”
Instantly I scented the disappointment of my words moving through the room. Though a part of me still felt lost and confu
sed, another part, a part that grew fuller and deeper with each passing day, was so attuned to his thoughts and emotions that I felt them as if they were my own.
Tucking a dirty strand of hair behind my ear, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be back with some clothes,” Asher said in a monotone, and then he turned on his heel and walked away.
~*~
Asher
I was finally able to beg some clothes from one of the panthers’ old ladies. She was an older woman, frozen in her form in her mid-forties, but she and Pandora were about the same size.
I looked at the leathers and grimaced, sensing this would be the last thing Pandora would want to wear, but it wasn’t like we had many options. Not bothering to knock on the door, I entered and was just about to set the clothes down on the sink when a pale flash of white caught my eye.
Dora had the curtain closed, and she was sitting with her legs crossed in front of her, leaning her head on her knees. But I could see through the fluttering sliver of cloth and undulation of steam beneath her. From her neck all the way down to the backs of her thighs, she was covered in thick, puckered scars.
She looked like someone who’d been flogged and stitched back together, only to then have the process repeated ad nauseam. Bile flooded the back of my throat as anger beat a raw and furious rhythm inside me.
Her spine stiffened, and I knew she’d sensed me. I cloaked myself in shadow a split second before she turned. Her intelligent eyes seemed to target my position, but I knew she couldn’t see me.
After a minute, her shoulders relaxed and she turned back around. I couldn’t trace as she could. If I opened the door, she’d hear me for sure. So I took a seat on the bench outside and dropped my gaze to the floor.
Several minutes ticked by before she whispered, “I’m coming out now. If you care for me at all, you’ll look away.”
I opened my mouth, ready to defend myself but knowing I couldn’t. So I squeezed my eyes shut when she turned the water off, and even after she’d dried and dressed and left the room, I sat where I was, wondering what in the hell we should do now.
Pandora could think properly now, but she was still far from whole. It was the dead of night when I finally walked out of there, heading to my cot in the pantry.
She was back inside her cage, curled up in a ball, and the sight of that hurt worse than even when she’d tried to attack me. I didn’t stop to consider whether she’d want me to move her or not. I just rushed into that cage and scooped her up.
Her eyes opened instantly, and she gazed at me warily. “Where are you taking me?”
“To the bed,” I snapped.
She wet her lips but didn’t say anything for a while. There was only room enough for one on the cot, so I laid her down on it before stooping to take a seat on the floor beside her.
And I listened to her breathing and watched as the shadows slid along the walls from the rotation of the moon.
She finally spoke after nearly an hour of silence. “Ash?”
Just as Pandora was raw, so was I. I didn’t know how to act around her anymore, what to do to make her see I’d never hurt her. If I turned, I’d take her back in my arms, and I wasn’t sure whether she’d want me to or not.
“What?”
After taking several deep breaths, as though starting and then stopping herself from talking, she finally asked, “Where is Luc?”
My eyes slipped shut, and I hung my head. I didn’t know what to tell her. I knew what I wanted to say, that the bastard had abandoned her. That he’d stopped searching, stopped believing in her, but I knew those words would crush her.
“They got orders, little demon.”
“Okay.”
She jostled around on the cot for a minute, rustling the sheets, and just when I was sure she’d rolled over and gone to sleep, she spoke my name again.
I scrubbed my jaw and murmured, “Yes?”
“What do we do now?”
Not looking at her was like a slow torture. Damning my desire, I turned around only to find her eyes had been boring into the back of my skull.
They were no longer cool blue as they’d once been. Only when ridden by Lust had her eyes swirled the lovely lavender I remembered. An icy blue had been her natural color, but now they were darker, somewhere between black and gray, like a twilit sky.
“What do you think we should do?”
I asked her because I didn’t have a clue myself. What I wanted to do was rain death on Creatus, but I wasn’t sure that vengeance would serve us well. Even if I took down that hell hole, there were others. The problem wasn’t the prison, the problem was the prophecy and the Triad.
She didn’t answer the question. Instead she slowly reached out her hand to me, and I was afraid to even blink or move, terrified she would stop. When her delicate palm cupped my cheek, I couldn’t prevent the desperate moan that spilled from my throat.
“They lied, didn’t they?”
I knew immediately what she meant. “Pandora, you know me. I chose my side.”
If I closed my eyes now, I would still be able to recall her features—the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, how her bottom lip was just a tiny bit fuller than her top. Her heart-shaped face and the delicate structure of her jaw line and cheekbones. The way her eyes were spaced just a little bit wider than most, and how they would sparkle whenever I was around.
“They’ve changed me, Ash. Forever. I’m never going to be the same.”
I held her steady gaze. “Do you love me?”
She didn’t answer, and my soul was crushed by the weight of what they’d taken from me.
I was just about to turn my face aside when her lips found mine. I waited for the pain to come, but instead she ran her tongue along the seam of my mouth, and I opened up to her with a greedy growl.
Shuffling to my knees, I sat up and cupped the back of her neck in my palm. With one word, this demon could have slain me. She could have ruined me, destroyed me, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because she owned me. All of me.
Pandora was just as desperate in her touch as I was. Her nails clawed at the back of my skull as her tongue twined with my own. I licked and suckled the sweet honey off her lips, body shaking desperately with my need to do more.
My cock grew heavy and painful as my blood rushed violently south. I hadn’t held her in over a year, hadn’t touched her. Her scent had left our trailer, and apart from a few items that’d belonged to her, the memory of her had been nearly eradicated from my life.
I was like a dead man being reborn. This woman, this demon, who’d been crafted just for me, was knitting me back together again, making me whole. The depths of my need for her was almost frightening.
Reluctantly she pulled back, but her hands still framed my face. My body was in pain for want of her. I wanted to sink into her slick warmth and lose myself in her, but I knew she was not yet ready.
In fact, that she might never be.
She pressed her forehead to mine before shaking her head slowly. “Priest?” Her lips feathered across mine.
I rubbed her back with my thumb. “Demon?”
“I do love you.”
Chapter 10
Pandora
I hadn’t been able to sleep last night. I didn’t want to leave this oasis. True, Death wasn’t much of a roommate—some nights I could hear screams and shrills coming from the other rooms that didn’t sound at all like pleasure. But for Asher and me this place was safe in a way we hadn’t been for years.
After that kiss I hadn’t been able to sleep. And as much as my body yearned for his, the scars of what I’d suffered ran too deep for me to do more than we’d done. I still wasn’t sure I was one hundred percent okay to leave, but I also knew hiding wasn’t the answer.
So he’d lain down, and I’d crawled on top of him, and we’d held hands throughout the night, not talking much, both of us lost in our solitary thoughts.
“Asher, what did Death mean when he said he
kept his deals?”
Now that the adrenaline of the night had worn off, those words kept echoing through my skull. The violence Death had shown when he’d forced the poor girl to come to me had reeked of desperation, and it’d struck me as bizarre then and even more so now the longer I thought on it.
I knew I’d struck a nerve with Asher the moment I asked, because he turned away from me.
My entire body stilled. “Priest?” I rolled his face back to mine. “What did you do?”
Sighing, he gazed up at the ceiling. “You don’t want to know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He licked his front teeth. “You weren’t progressing as you should have, little demon.”
His fingers tickled my skin just where my back met my ass, and I became aware of the hard curves of his body. My skin tingled. Swatting his hand off me, I growled, “What did you do?”
This time when he looked at me, he didn’t fidget. “I needed a child. A living, breathing child. One that would force your instinct to break through what they’d done.”
“What. Did. You. Do?”
“I gave him my soul.”
I slapped him, slapped him so hard my wrist throbbed. The violence that seemed always to beat just below the surface came to life, and I shook my head. “Why?”
He grabbed my hands before I could slap him again, and his words shivered with anger as he glared at me. “Because I wasn’t going to let them have you. I won’t share you, Pandora. Ever. You’re mine. All mine.”
His declaration made me tremble even as my fury built. “But your soul is owned, he couldn’t—”
“Yes, he can.” He wrapped my arms behind my back, imprisoning me in his strong grip. “It’s done, it’s over, it can’t be undone. So we’re not talking about this anymore.”
“Like hell we aren’t.” I shoved my knee between his thighs, making him grunt and double over, but he still didn’t release me. “What is he going to do to you? That’s Death, Asher. Death!”
I couldn’t lose him, not now. Not ever. I’d just come back to myself, I’d just woken up from this nightmare, and now he’d told me this. My demons screamed inside me. Lust. Gluttony. Pestilence. And others.