by Sam Cheever
She pulled her hands off her ears and her scowl softened as she reached to push an errant strand of auburn hair off my cheek. “Besides, all I really want is for you to get a new line of work. All of this devil and demon shit is way not good for your health—mental or physical.”
I nodded agreeably. I mean, I’d have to be an idiot to disagree with her. What she said was true. But there was no way in Hades I was gonna do anything about it. Like Popeye of the ancient human cartoons, I yam who I yam.
I gave Darma a hug and left the Unplanned Care facility. Since the facility was built on a pedestal platform high in the Angel City sky, I climbed into the floating walkway tube and programmed the level and location of the hovering Viper into the tube’s directional panel. The tube pulled away from the facility on an accordion-like appendage and moved slowly through space toward where the Viper drifted in parking space. The mouth of the tube locked on above the Viper’s air hatch and I waited for it to suction onto the Viper’s exterior before ordering the hatch to open. As I dropped into the Viper’s cool, fragrant, leather interior, I sighed, laying my head back against the self molding seat as I fought the guilty feelings which always nudged my happiness aside after spending any time at all with my sister.
Darma means well and she really does love me. I have no doubt about that. However, her idea of real life and mine are vastly different, which makes her just so much kindling in the fire of my life. Like my human friends, I had to keep my seriously earth-bound sister away from my world as much as possible. It was for her own good.
Sighing again, I said, “Office. Accepted speed,” and the Viper spun a one-eighty-degree turn and nosed its way into the solid stream of traffic that flowed through the city’s upper level. I stared off into space dreamily, wishing that things could be simpler and wondering how I was going to untangle the sour knot my life had become. That was when one of the larger bumps in that knot decided to make an uninvited appearance.
Dialle shimmered into the seat next to me and set his smoldering gaze over my startled one. “Are you feeling better, lovely Astra?”
I glared at him, feeling my blood pressure rise to platinum level. “No thanks to you and your disgusting pet, Dialle.”
He tried to look shocked and innocent but, like me, he doesn’t do innocent well. “I had nothing to do with the Agar’s appearance in your home, Astra.”
Why did I hear a disclaimer in that response?
I turned in my seat and scowled more deeply at his wretched, but incredibly good-looking face. “Are you going to try to deny that the thing is tied to your court?” When he just continued to stare at me, with the ghost of a smile on his face I went on. “I sensed it that day you had me dragged in front of your court, Your Highness, I know its strings are attached to you.”
He sighed and for just the merest flicker of time, his midnight eyes shaded into something that looked like worry and regret. “I cannot deny my court has an Agar, both Devil Courts have them, but I was not responsible for sending it after you. Perhaps you ran up against one of Nerul’s Agars.”
My eyes widened a bit in surprise. “Are you telling me there’s more than one of those things?”
“Oh yes. There are several that I know of.”
“Shit.”
He cocked his gorgeous, dark head at me. A thick strand of wavy, black silk dropped over his shoulder to rest against his square, golden jaw. “You have such an eloquent way of expressing yourself lovely Astra.”
“Bite me. Anyway, from what I saw of that—thing—my choice of words was inadequate to describe the idea that several of them exist. To Hades with eloquence.”
Much to my surprise, Dialle nodded in agreement. “Yes, I can see where the Agar could be a bit shocking if you weren’t expecting it.”
I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh. “A bit shocking! I nearly peed my knickers.”
Dialle threw back that supernaturally gorgeous head and laughed too. And then, without my even realizing what had happened or seeing him even move so much as a little finger, I was suddenly sitting on his lap. I shrieked as his arms closed around me and tried to struggle away. He just laughed at me before lowering his mouth over mine. Then nothing else mattered as an incredible rush of pleasure swamped me and enticed my lips into softening and opening for his. His hot, musky scent caused my heart to skitter dangerously in my chest. But even beyond his scent, the essence that was Dialle flowed into me, not just through the joining of our lips, but from everywhere our bodies touched. Through our very skin.
It was as if I could smell him and taste him through every widening, aching pore on the surface of my body. My power surged as if a match had been struck to ignite it and it poured through me, mixing and mingling with his. Mating.
In my head his words came to me in the words of Hades, gentle and flaring with passion as they caressed the edges of my panic away and filled me with a strange and explosive desire, the likes of which I’d never felt before.
Our physical bodies were mashed together so tightly that I began to fear my flesh would peel off my body if we tried to separate. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally, we were one entity. One flaring passion built on the most basic animal need. One power, invigorating, intoxicating, and frightening in its intensity.
My lips were seared to his. Somehow my body got turned so that I straddled him, my thighs pinching us together like a vise. Our groins ground into each other, unable to get close enough. The heat that seared our flesh began at that most intimate juncture and pounded outward until I felt as if the ends of our hair would burn and fizzle like the sparklers of ancient human Independence Day celebrations.
And as the heat devoured our bodies, we devoured each other. The power continued to build until I couldn’t breathe through it. The very air around us had burst into flame. The Viper started to buck and roll in space, careening into the black, endless night to God knew where—driverless, unfocused and held in the grip of a monumental flare of power that completely overwhelmed all directional programs. And the Viper was having some problems too.
I didn’t have a moment to think about the fact that we were careening through space without a guiding hand. My body screamed with the pleasure of our physical mating, while my mind was being ripped apart between the terror of what was happening to me and the ecstasy of what I knew I was becoming.
Suddenly, when I thought the three of us—Dialle, me and the Viper—would just disappear in a puff of smoke and ash, Dialle spasmed against me and, throwing back his head, howled my name to the sky. I screamed then too, helpless against my boiling need and felt a nuclear-like bloom of heat and power erupt at the spot where our passion flared most brightly. Dialle’s body convulsed against mine. In a frenzy of uncontrolled lust he continued to grind himself painfully, wonderfully against me and I met him thrust for thrust feeling as if the cloth between our bodies had dropped away to leave us exposed, like two throbbing nerve ends, where our power and our pleasure joined and exploded into a bright light that, for just a flicker of time, illuminated everything for me and made me welcome my fate with open arms.
All thought of pain and fear and consequence flew away as we plunged together off the precipice of our passion, screaming in one voice as we exploded against it, pleasure streaming through us, eating our nerve endings, then bathing them in warm, soft waves as the pressure began to fade. We collapsed against each other, panting. The flame around us faded into popping sparks and began to cool.
My body felt like just so much melted rubber. If it weren’t for Dialle’s arms around me I would have fallen right on the floor between the two seats. I tried to raise my head to look at him but it kept falling back to rest against his chest. As my mind cleared and I started to think about what had just happened, I tried to push away, but he held on tightly.
“Not yet, my sweet Princess. There remains one last task to complete our Betrothal.”
My head flew up at that, “Our what!” I yelled.
He simply smiled and reached up to
rip the soft, black fabric of my sweater away from my neck, baring my shoulder. Then before I could stop him, he lowered his mouth over the tender, white skin where my shoulder meets my neck and bit down hard, piercing the skin cleanly and nearly painlessly with those dagger-like white teeth.
I started to scream in terror and disgust, but my scream quickly turned to a moan, as his mouth worked gently over that most tender of areas, sealing our combined fates and altering my wretched life forever.
Chapter Twenty-One
Back to Granny’s
The Devil’s Henchmen they did come, to drag our friend to Hell,
Alas our lady dared the scum, to make her quake and quell.
My neck throbbed where Dialle had bitten it, but the pain was nothing compared to the heat of it. I sat behind the control panel in the Viper once more and it was moving, but I wasn’t sure where we were going. I felt dazed. My mind was a foggy cloud. I knew there was something I should be really pissed about but for the life of me I couldn’t think what right at that moment. I supposed the numb feeling was understandable, considering I had just been mentally and spiritually raped and then chewed on for God’s sake!
There it was. A little jolt of anger managed to pierce the foggy armor around my brain and it felt good. I took a deep breath and went with it. But unfortunately it didn’t go far. I just couldn’t work up the energy for anything but a good night’s sleep.
The Viper dropped smoothly into place at home and shut down without being told to do so. The driver’s side door swung up and I just sat there, feeling like that Agar thing was back and had turned me into cement again. But the thought of that monstrous spiritual concoction did give me the energy to drag my poor, battered body out of the Viper and shuffle into my darkened living quarters.
“Lights on full.” Nothing. Shit. I’d forgotten I’d blown the power to kill the Agar. “Oh well, nothing to do but sleep then.”
I didn’t even make it into my bed. Somewhere along the way I decided it might be a good idea to rest for just a minute on the divan. I never got back up again.
My dreams roiled in my head. I was fighting a particularly revolting demon that exploded into my face. I was having sex with a vampire. I was about to be sucked into a bad-smelling hole and then a gargoyle came along and danced the jig to distract me from the foul-smelling hole and I was laughing, feeling pretty good except I couldn’t move my arms and legs, all I could do was laugh. That isn’t very useful when demons and vampires and stinkin’ holes and gargoyles are waiting to eat you.
The last thing I saw before I jolted out of the tortuous series of nightmares was Prince Nille, looking as scared as he’d been when I’d had the vision of him inside the cross prison. He kept muttering something to me about Dialle but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I shook my head in my dream and squinted at his sad, pleading face as if that would help me understand him better. It was no use though. I could hear the words but they just didn’t mean anything to me.
Then the gargoyles entered my dream, stage left and Nille was suddenly covered in blood. The ’goyles were devouring him, tearing his pale flesh into pieces while he stood there, his mouth moving and nothing coming out. I tried to get to him but my arms and legs still weren’t working. I just sat there, laughing helplessly as they ripped him to shreds.
And then, all that was left was his pretty face, floating and disembodied. The bloody lips continued to move with an otherworldly insistence. And those pale, blue eyes pierced me, begging me to save him.
Something about those eyes was bothering me. Had bothered me every time I’d seen them. It was probably just the pain I kept seeing there, but there was an innocence there too and innocence is not a trait I generally attribute to members of the dark world, especially of the Royal Court. I sighed in my dream, shaking my head at poor Prince Nille and shrugging. Whatever it was, like my arms and legs, my brain just wasn’t working in that dream state.
Finally, the frustration of the whole situation got to me and I woke up with a gasp. I bolted upright on the divan and fell off, banging my head hard on the table in front of it. Cursing, I dragged myself back onto the divan and sat there. I was sweaty and shaking and I realized with a start that the bite on my neck was throbbing again.
I stood up on rubbery legs and walked into the personal hygiene room. Pulling my torn sweater away from my neck I surveyed the wound and discovered, to my surprise, that the bite marks were gone. In their place was a pale, red bruise that almost looked like a teardrop. “Great, he gave me a daimon hickey. How juvenile.” My traitorous memory conjured up the word “betrothal” but I shook it away, refusing to acknowledge that, whatever Dialle had had in mind when he’d played vampire to my squealing victim, it hadn’t been a juvenile prank.
I let the disturbing thought float away and reached to smooth a fingertip across the bruise. It was still very warm to the touch but it wasn’t tender. The throbbing it was giving off seemed to come from the tissues beneath, the surface of the scar was smooth and almost numb.
With a sigh, I pulled off the ruined sweater and the rest of my clothes and stepped into the shower. “One hundred ten degrees, all jets on full.” Six jets of fiery hot water blasted out of the shower tube and pelted my achy skin like bullets. The heat of the water should have burned my skin but instead it felt wonderful.
After a few minutes of just standing there letting the hot, soapy water drill the aches out of my muscles, I shuffled reluctantly into the drying tube.
“Water off. Dryer on.” The bullets of water stopped and a blast of warm air took over. I stayed in the drying tube just long enough to dry my body and then I pulled a comb through my still damp hair and left the personal hygiene room. Moving into my bedroom, I grabbed the soft, fuzzy nightgown off of my unmade airbed and pulled it over my head. I crawled into bed and was asleep within seconds. The nightmares didn’t return that night.
Hours later, as the moon drifted down to join the horizon, I jolted upright out of a deep sleep. The air in the room was hot. Suffocatingly hot and thick with the smell of demon.
As my loggy brain registered this fact, I started to reach for the platinum dagger I kept under my pillow. Two massive black forms that had been shadows in the far corners of my room suddenly leapt on me. One of the musty-smelling things knocked the dagger out of my hand and bashed me upside the head.
Pain exploded like a laser blast into my brain and I hit the floor beside the bed with a dull thud. I fought to stay alert but the pain was rocketing around in my skull, bouncing off my bones and pinging into my tender gray cells with alarming intensity. Lights danced against my eyelids and I felt the demon shadows lean over me, speaking in razor-like demon tones over my poor, crumpled body. They seemed to be arguing about something. I wanted so badly to solve their dilemma for them, whatever it was, by getting up and kicking their asses. But alas, I was a limp smudge on the cold floor.
Finally, one of them picked me up and threw me over his reptilian shoulder like I was a sack of feathers. I grunted softly as my stomach hit the unyielding flesh and pain, bright and jagged, seared across my brain again.
As they carried me out of the room I could feel something warm and thick running from my nose to drip a trail across the floor. I could only hope it wasn’t my brains leaking out. “Here I come Granny,” I murmured from the depths of my stupor, “follow the trail…”
My world faded to black. I drifted through dense clouds of fog and finally emerged into a haze of pain. I tried to form my thoughts around an idea of where I was and how I got there but all I knew was that I was lying on my side and something long and soft was waving under my nose, tickling it. For a moment I thought I might be lying in a cornfield in Kansas. Auntie Em, I’m home.
Suddenly I sneezed and thought I was gonna die. My head felt like it had knives sticking out of it and something dry but gooey was crusted on my upper lip. Dang, another entry for the shitty day book. The thing must be approaching a thousand pages by now.
Befo
re I could pry my poor eyes open, a deep, cool voice assailed me from a few feet away. “Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.”
I rolled over onto my back so the tickly stuff couldn’t reach my nostrils and groaned as the contents of my head slammed against the back of my cranium. I could hear breathing from several places in the room and was suddenly struck with the desire to pull something over my face and play dead. Maybe the things in the room around me didn’t like their food if it was already dead.
With a heroic effort of will I managed to pry first one and then the other eye open and focus them in the direction of the voice. A blurry image of dark hair and golden skin danced among the pinpricks of colored light for a moment until my eyes managed to focus, finally, onto a very jaunty male package, dancing around behind and under a large slab of black marble.
Long, muscular legs were splayed carelessly to showcase the inviting package at their juncture. The legs and package were as nature had intended them. But not as I would have preferred them to be.
I forced myself into a sitting position so I could look at Nerul’s face instead of his naked package, not that I hadn’t enjoyed the view from the floor, but I try real hard not to be that kind of girl. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to dress for company, your Highness?”
He laughed, his black eyes twinkling enticingly. “I always choose my dress very carefully according to the company I’m receiving, lovely Tweener.”
“I was afraid of that.” I sat with my head drooping between my knees until the wave of dizziness and nausea passed. Sweat poured down my face and I found that I was gulping for air. With my head pointed toward the floor I suddenly realized what I was lying on.
With a gasp of disgust, I recognized the “carpet” beneath my butt. It was a multicolored patchwork of black, red, yellow and brown. Here and there a silver patch reflected the bright overhead lighting like fire. The patchwork was thick and soft and of varying lengths and textures. As I examined it in horror, it started to flutter as if it had been caught in a gentle breeze. I shrieked and leaped off the floor and it moved more determinedly, waving this way and that in a discordant dance that almost gave voice to the horrendous cruelty that had gone into making it.