Redemption (Covenant Book 3)

by John Everson

  The demon snorted. “Helone’s help? You’ll end up worse than your friend here.”

  “Can you take me to her?”

  “I don’t take people anywhere but the bloodmines,” the demon said. “But since you think you can invoke her name, I will ask her what she’d like me to do with you. I think that her response might be amusing. Come on, get out of the way.”

  As the demon pulled Joe away from the center of the room, two more people suddenly appeared in the empty space. Demons from the crowd seemed to debate over the bodies for a moment before two demons walked into the center and retrieved the people who were looking around in complete terror.

  They had only walked a few feet when Joe’s captor stopped and gave him a hard, surprised look.

  “Helone is coming to see you herself. Wait here.”

  He left them in a small empty room. Joe could hear the cheers of the demons in the adjoining room as more people fell through the door.

  “Hang on,” he whispered to Cheyenne’s slack face. Her lips looked blue, but somehow there was still a faint rise and fall to her chest. Darin’s men had wrapped a shirt around her shoulder, but the blood was still leaking out steadily.

  “You asked for me?”

  The voice was soft, sibilant. Joe looked up into the face of a beautiful demoness. Her eyes were electric, her cheekbones high. She wore a sash of some filmy red lace over her flawless dark skin, but it was an affectation only. It did nothing to cover the perfect lines of her belly or the dark knobs of her breasts.

  “Helone?” he asked.

  She nodded. Her look was stern, but curious.

  “They said you could help me,” Joe said.

  “I think she needs more help than you,” Helone said. She clapped her hands and two demons appeared instantly. “Take that creature and stop the bleeding. Put her arm back in place and let’s see if she can last until Redemption.”

  In a second, Cheyenne was lifted from Joe’s lap, and then she was gone. He felt as if they’d stolen her, but he realized that if there was any chance of saving her, every second was precious. He couldn’t believe she was still alive at all.

  “Now,” Helone said. “Your business with me?”

  “There was a woman who opened a door to come here recently,” he began. “She came here with another. A girl named Alex.”

  Joe didn’t miss the spark in Helone’s eye when he said Alex’s name. Did she know about her?”

  “I’ve been trying to find a way to contact her, to bring her home. A demon named Moloch said that you might be the only one who could help.”

  Helone closed her eyes and tilted her head back in a silent chuckle. “I should have known,” she said finally. Moloch is a fool. You must have had him cornered though, if he thought to invoke my name.”

  Joe nodded. “I did. Was he wrong?”

  “As it happens, yes. And no.” She walked across the room and watched the scene going on outside the doorway for a moment. “He couldn’t have known, but your Alex stayed with me briefly. Precocious thing. Headstrong.”

  Joe smiled at that.

  “But she’s gone now.”

  “Gone?” he said. A shard of ice pinned his heart. “Gone how?”

  “She left my house,” Helone said. “She spurned my hospitality.”

  “Would you help me find her?”

  “And why would I do that?”

  Joe opened his mouth but had no answer.

  Helone looked down her nose at him and nodded. “Nevermind. There is a thing or two I’d like to say to her. I haven’t felt as young as she made me feel in centuries.” The demon ran her hands down her sides and thighs. Whether she was appreciating the feeling, or trying to show off her body to him, he wasn’t sure.

  “So you will help me?” Joe asked.

  Helone looked at him with devil eyes.

  “I might.”

  Joe couldn’t help but grin.

  The demoness returned his smile and added, “but first you’ll have to pledge your skin to me.”

  CHAPTER 57

  “MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE,” Helone said, gesturing to a low couch. Joe sat, and watched as she moved across the room to a small bureau with glassware on it. They had just walked a couple blocks through a grey city to descend a set of garden apartment stairs to enter Helone’s home. Now they were in her sitting room; a fireplace flickered to life on the far side of the room, and candles seemed to light in small nooks of their own accord. Helone lifted a tall but narrow carafe and poured dark liquid into two short goblets. Joe assumed it was wine; when she handed one to him, it looked like a burgundy, thick and deep red.

  She slid onto the couch beside him, holding her own glass with three fingers. The demon took one slow sip and gave out a low sigh of pleasure. She never took her eyes off of him. It made him uneasy, and Joe broke her gaze to take a sip of his own drink. When the liquid touched his tongue, he almost dropped the glass.

  His tongue lit with heat, and his groin ached in a strange sympathetic response. The tips of his ears warmed, and for a second, he saw a swirl of color in place of the flickering shadows of the room. His hand was shaking.

  “Wha,” he mumbled. His lips felt thick.

  Helone laughed softly. “It is good, yes?”

  She reached out and took the glass from his fingers before he spilled it. Joe leaned his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes. As he did, a wave of pleasure rushed from his neck to the tip of his spine. He spread his legs slightly, as if to let the heat vent.

  Then he took a breath and reopened his eyes. Helone held the glass back out to him, and he took it, gingerly. “What is that?” he asked, looking hard at the goblet.

  “Do you like it?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, but instead retraced the strange sensation that had overtaken him from just one sip. He’d smoked a substance or two, and done more than his share of drinking. But nothing he’d ever touched had given him such a rush.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I do.”

  Her lips pursed faintly, and a smile creased them as her eyes flashed. “Good,” she said. “I want my guests to be comfortable, and enjoy what I have to give.”

  She ran three fingers across the bare skin of his arm. “Drink it slowly,” she advised. “It’s meant to savor.”

  “I don’t think I have a choice,” Joe said. “If I drank it fast, I think it would knock me out!”

  She nodded. “It’s our wine. Strong stuff. But full of feeling.”

  “That’s a good way to put it,” Joe said. He could still feel a faint tingling in his lower back. And that feeling only intensified when he looked at Helone. The faint gauze of red that she wore did nothing to conceal her body, and Joe was acutely conscious of being alone with her.

  “Tell me about you and Alex,” Helone said. “She must mean a lot for you to have dared to come here.”

  She lowered her chin and stared deep into his eyes. “You know most Curburide would eat you alive, don’t you?”

  Joe nodded. “But you won’t, right?” He suddenly felt a surge of panic but he couldn’t go back now.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said. “At the moment.”

  Helone’s smile widened and she stretched, lifting one arm high in the air. The red silk slid off her left breast. Joe had seen plenty of naked women in his life, but none with skin the color of onyx. She looked almost plastic, she was so smooth. And the curve of her was…

  He stopped in mid-thought as he realized that she was watching him watch her. Helone’s gaze was catlike.

  “I’m glad you are enjoying my hospitality,” she said, settling back on the couch.

  She was toying with him.

  He nodded, and took another sip of the goblet. He was going to need some strength to get through this audience. As the heat radiated from his thr
oat to his chest, and then migrated to the tender flesh of his thighs, he realized that this might not be the best drink to give him strength against a demoness. He could suddenly feel the pores on his balls, and the tip of his penis was… thirsty.

  “Ohhh,” he said, and took a breath.

  Helone slid an arm behind him and drew herself closer. “You know why the Curburide want to come to your world so badly?” she asked, as her fingers gently slid over his thighs to rest on his hipbone. She squeezed.

  “Because you want to torture us?” he asked.

  “Some. Guess again.”

  Helone clinked her glass against his, and lifted one eyebrow as she took a sip of her drink. She cocked her head, waiting for him to follow her example, he realized. He knew he shouldn’t.

  But he did. The world filled with orange light, and specks of snow and fire.

  “Because you can’t get good bourbon here?”

  She snickered, and lifted one bare leg to touch her toes to his knee… and then his thigh.

  “No,” she said. “Because you’re good in bed.”

  Joe swallowed.

  “Well, some of you are.” She tilted her head, and looked him up and down. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. “Maybe.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “What did Alex say?”

  “I never did that to Alex,” Joe snapped.

  “Oh no?” Helone said. The glass in her hand had vanished somehow, and now she closed in, tracing the side of his jaw with on finger, while her arm around his back held him tight to her. “Is that why you came looking for her?” she asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “You had unfinished business?”

  “No, it’s not like that,” Joe said.

  “You’re lying,” Helone said. Her mouth was just inches from his own. It felt as if her eyes were looking into his brain. “It is like that, and you’ve been lusting for that spunky little cunt since the day you picked her up in your car. It’s only because you’re such a coward that you didn’t bang her that very night.”

  Joe gasped. Could she see inside his memories?

  “Isn’t that right, Joe?”

  Helone’s arm slid out from behind him and suddenly she was kneeling over his lap, pressing him back against the cushions with her hands on his shoulders. “Tell me the truth, Joe,” she said. “Tell yourself the truth. You want the world to think you’re a nice guy, but what you really wanted was to take that little girl – that underage little teen – and spank her bare bottom, didn’t you? That night you shared a tent with her, you wanted to rip her panties off, pin her to the dirt and press yourself as far into her as you could go, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me, Joe.”

  Joe’s tongue wouldn’t move. Nothing would move. He felt paralyzed, caught in some strange vortex of power and truth and fear.

  She took the goblet from his trembling fingers, and held it to his lips. “Don’t waste it,” she said. “It’s precious.”

  Joe took a deeper sip than he’d intended, as she tilted the glass against his lips. The universe itself seemed to open as the liquid fired every nerve in his body.

  The red silk slid completely off of Helone’s smooth skin and she set the glass aside. Then she pressed herself closer, rubbing her chest against him as if she were a cat rubbing against his leg.

  “No,” he whispered.

  She covered his complaint with a nipple, and held his face with both of her hands, not letting him escape. Joe felt tears gathering at the sides of his eyes. He thought of Alex, beautiful, funny, crazy Alex. So full of energy. So spunky. So… so hot and tantalizingly forbidden and fuckable. Yes, of course he’d lusted for her. Of course he’d wanted to be between those young, muscular thighs…

  Helone’s nipple thickened between his lips. She rubbed the sides of his head and shifted in a slow, unmistakable rhythm on his lap. Joe suddenly felt as if he was burning up; her nipple pulsed with strange little needles of pain and pleasure between his lips, and his cock felt as if it might snap inside his pants. Against his will, he ached to be outside of his zipper, to meet the heat that was hovering just inches away, taunting him.

  Helone shifted, drawing him forward as she lay back on the couch. She never let his mouth separate from his suckle, but suddenly her hands were moving on his belly and thighs. The torturous zipper creaked and then his pants were shimmied down his calves. The world shifted as the air touched his skin, and then Helone’s silken body poured over his pores. He almost screamed from the pleasure as she wrapped her legs around him, pinning him on top of her.

  She teased his mouth free of her tit, and his lips felt thick, swollen. She drew them down to her lips for a soft, momentary kiss. And then she held his face up, so that he could do nothing but look into her eyes.

  “You came here because even though you knew it was wrong, you wanted to fuck Alex, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Joe said.

  Helone grinned.

  “And the girl you brought with you?” Helone said. “You wanted to seed her too, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Joe said. His voice was a mumble; his lips seemed almost swollen closed.

  “And the little college girl, Cindy,” she said. “What was it like to be inside her cunt? You were brave enough to go there, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Joe said.

  “I will make you forget all of them,” Helone promised, and raised him up with her hips, shifting his hard-on until there was only one place it could go. With one hand she reached down and guided him the last inch.

  Joe felt a softness at first, a velvet slick sensation that was softer, more tantalizing than silk. Helone wrapped her arms around him and drew him down, pressing his mouth to hers. Her eyes were passion jewels, glowing with lust, capturing his gaze with the light of constellations, and the savagery of animal instinct. Her tongue speared him at the same time as he slid all the way inside her hungry vaginal walls. He thrust in time with her tongue, unconsciously following her demand.

  She increased the pace, drawing him in and teasing him out. His mind was a blur of her skin and the still-mind-bending impact of the wine. The room spun and shifted, as if they were coupling in space, tilting and rolling and plugging in to the electric currents of primordial sexuality. He breathed her in, and closed his eyes. He had come here for Alex. He had come here for Cheyenne. He had not come here for this. For this… evil heaven.

  Something pricked his tongue, and he opened his eyes to see the fractured colors of Helone, now above him. Somehow his back was to the couch and she was riding his pelvis with growing demand. With each second she bounced up enough that he almost lost her, but then she slammed back, to recapture him.

  His mouth burned.

  He tried to open it, to break the kiss, but she didn’t let go. Her tongue was thick inside him; it felt as if pins were spiking his tongue.

  But that was nothing compared to the nails that suddenly grabbed his cock by its sensitive head. All of a sudden, Helone’s rocking did not make her crotch separate from his body, she lifted his cock and ass up from the couch and slammed him back down, as teeth chewed and held his manhood inside her.

  “Wha…” he gasped, trying to speak while she still held him in a demon kiss.

  She ignored him, and only pushed her tongue deeper into his throat, so that he could feel the barbs inside. She ripped the flesh of his mouth as something deep inside her mangled his cock. All the while, her breathing grew faster, and finally, when he had begun to scream inside her throat, she threw her head back, tearing out of his mouth with skin and blood dripping down her chin to bellow at the ceiling in pure, ecstatic orgasm.

  When her moans softened, and she opened her thighs to let him free, Helone laid back on the other side of the couch from him. A slick trail of blood crossed the black of her inner thigh, and Joe looked in horror at the ragged spear of shredded flesh th
at was what remained of his dick.

  Before he began to cry, Helone grinned, and ran a finger from the wetness of her crotch through the blood on her thigh.

  “I told you that I would make you remember me,” she said.

  CHAPTER 58

  FOR ALL ITS SIZE, the demon left the bed as if he’d never been lying in it. The mattress didn’t seem to move. But Alex felt him go. His scent, the strange mix of ambrosia and sage and sulphur suddenly grew thin. The feeling of energy, primal power, that had been radiating next to her shoulder now felt cold. And when she cracked open an eyelid to peer through the dark next to her, she saw the sleeping body of Ariana. The evil bitch looked almost innocent, the sheets drawn up around her bare shoulder, and one ringlet of hair fallen over her cheek. Her face looked serene.

  Alex grit her teeth. How dare that monster look happy after the hell she’d just been through? The things she’d implored the demon do to Alex; it made her sick to think of it, nevermind the fire of pain that still burned through her mouth and anus and, hell, probably all the way to her uterus. At the thought of that, she felt a sudden pang in her gut. Could a demon get her pregnant? Holy Jesus.

  “No Jesus here,” a faint voice came from deep in her skull.

  “Malachai,” she thought. “Take the pain away?”

  “You don’t think I already have been? Trust me, it’s much worse than you know.”

  Alex’s eyes widened in the dark, as the implication of that sunk in. “Will I be okay?”

  “They took your skin off yesterday,” the demon answered. “Do you think this is any worse?”

  She couldn’t argue with that. Instead, she laid there staring at the sleeping form of the woman who had made all of this happen. Her chest felt cold when she looked at Ariana’s pointy nose. That face had lured several men to their death just because they wanted to kiss it. Because she fooled them into thinking she was sweet and sexy.

  “Malachai, do I need to be in a particular place here to open a door?”

  “I am not sure,” the demon answered. “But there are specific places in Curburide where doors are known to open. The thin places between the worlds. You’d do best to try to do it there.”