She blinked up at him with wide-eyed innocence. “I’d rather stay here. I’d like to check on Nick when he wakes up.”
“Nick is probably still sleeping off his hangover from last night. He won’t be awake for hours. You’ll spend the day with me,” he said, leaving her standing in the living room with no opportunity to argue.
With a handful of days to go before the opening of Devil’s Ecstasy, the club was buzzing with painters, designers and delivery people. Julian settled Serena in a corner booth, resentfully reading a magazine. Then he took a walk around, watching as the workers hung curtains from the ceiling, put the final touches of paint on the trim, stocked the bars. Upstairs, a team of trainers from his other clubs instructed the new staff, teaching the bartenders how to juggle bottles, the shooter girls how to flirt outrageously, the bouncers how to control the opening-night frenzy.
Every time Julian asked whether anyone needed instruction, the answer was always the same: “No, Mr. Ascher, everything is under control.”
In short, everything was running smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that there was nothing for him to do.
In the past, opening a new club had been a real challenge. He’d enjoyed diving into his work, always ready to learn something new. But this time, there were no surprises, nothing new to learn. He’d done this dozens of times before in other cities across the country. Vegas was just another place on Julian’s long list of clubs.
He looked at Serena, sitting cross-legged in the booth, flipping idly through her magazine. Even with her hair in a makeshift bun, she drew interested glances from the male workers bustling around her. Serena was oblivious to their attention.
From across the room, Julian watched as one of the carpenters finally got up the nerve to approach her. She looked up, surprised, her face beaming with a platonic smile. Julian didn’t need to hear their conversation to know what was going on. The guy was hitting on her.
Julian crossed the room in long strides. “We’re leaving,” he said to Serena. He shot the carpenter a territorial look that all beta males understood. There was a moment of hesitation while the mortal deliberated whether he should stand his ground. Serena was worth fighting for, but the man took another look at Julian and scuttled off without a word.
“I thought you needed to be here to supervise,” she said, clearly unimpressed by his rudeness. He didn’t care. He just wanted to get her out of here, away from the prying eyes of others.
“Harry can supervise,” he said. His personal assistant could certainly be trusted to oversee the minutiae of the club.
The only thing Julian wanted right now was to be alone with Serena.
The only thing Serena wanted right now was to get away from Julian.
“I’d rather stay at the hotel,” she said as they walked through the hotel lobby toward the main entrance. “I can go back up to the suite if you have somewhere to go. I won’t try to escape, I promise. Get one of your Gatekeeper demons to guard my door if you don’t trust me.”
He leaned down, captured her chin lightly in his hand. “You have a choice,” he said, his voice low and silken. “Either we spend the afternoon as I had planned, or we can spend it tucked away in your bedroom. Which would you prefer?”
His face was poised inches from hers; she could feel his breath on her face, the caress of his strong fingers along her jawline. The thought of spending an afternoon in bed with Julian was so delicious her mouth started to water. But it would be wrong. So utterly wrong, she reminded herself.
“I’m not leaving Nick,” she said, standing her ground.
“By all means, let’s go check on him together,” Julian said with a little smile. “I can guarantee you he’s not awake yet.”
He was right. When they knocked on Nick’s door, there was no answer. She didn’t ask why Julian had a key to her Assignee’s room, but when they opened the door, Nick was tucked safely in bed, snoring loudly.
“See? There’s no use in you hanging around here while he sleeps,” Julian whispered with obvious satisfaction. “I’ll make sure my employees look after him.”
They stopped by the kitchen to pick up a picnic basket containing a lunch the hotel staff had packed. From there, Julian led her up to the roof. On the circular helipad, a helicopter waited, black-and-silver metal sparkling in the morning sun.
She hesitated, wondering where the pilot was and where they were going. He saw her face and grinned. “Don’t worry, angel. We’re just going for a little joyride. Today, I’m going to show you that demons can fly, too.”
Him. He was going to pilot this thing. She hung back, eyeing the helicopter with skepticism. He loaded the picnic basket into the back. He settled her into the jump seat, next to the pilot’s seat, buckling her in and putting a headset over her ears. He flicked on the flight controls, starting the engine and the rotation of the blades. The vibration of the helicopter sent a shiver down her back. He launched them from the pad with a sudden lift that left her body weightless for a moment. The shadow of the helicopter receded on the pavement beneath them. As they rose, she forgot that she had ever been afraid.
They flew high above Las Vegas, soaring over the Strip in the noonday sun. From above, she watched in wonder as the man-made volcano blew. The sun glinted off the gigantic hotels lining Las Vegas Boulevard: the pyramid of the Luxor, the enormous artificial lagoon of the Bellagio, the Eiffel Tower of Paris. Behind them, gigantic azure swimming pools were crowded with people lounging in the heat of this perfect July day.
Julian veered east, away from the Strip, as they flew over neat rows of suburban houses. Then they were out of the city, leaving it behind them, a man-made mirage shimmering in the desert. He narrated through the headset as he flew over hills of scrub-covered earth, pointing out the dark brown-and-black volcanic rock that lay in the folds of the valleys. Heading over the famous Hoover Dam, Serena marveled at the blue-green surface of Lake Mead, separated into two different levels by a miracle of engineering. Time seemed to collapse as she peered down at the wonders far below.
He flew as easily as he drove, holding the control stick steady between his knees with a light but expert touch. He was a man in command of his surroundings, manipulating the controls with the same deftness he’d used on her body last night. He concentrated on his task, calm but alert. A slight smile played on his lips as she considered his profile. His athletic body was relaxed—he obviously enjoyed flying.
Flight seemed to be, for Julian, an innocent pleasure, unconnected to any evil goals or motivations. She furrowed her brow, trying to reconcile this side of him with the demon who had threatened her loved ones. Even in bed last night, there had been a part of him that had seemed gentle, free of any demonic impulses. He had touched her with a tenderness that had almost seemed human.
But they were not human. He was not, and neither was she. She must never forget that.
She snapped her gaze back to the landscape below. They had been flying for about an hour when they flew over a mountainous rise, and on the other side of it, the land dropped away into the dramatic basin of the Grand Canyon. The layered rock walls rose in tiers around them. His voice came through the headset. “The canyon was formed by erosion, by water, ice and wind forcing the land apart over thousands of years. I’ve always thought she has a soul of her own.”
Julian guided the helicopter around the rim of the canyon, flying for another half hour as he pointed out the unusual land formations—pinnacles, mesas, buttes. “There are several peaks that are called temples here,” he noted. He pointed them out as the helicopter flew past—Shiva Temple, Buddha Temple, Zoroaster Temple, Brahma Temple. She gazed wide-eyed at the craggy rock formations that jutted skyward. How apt that they had been given spiritual names. The canyon was a place of profound tranquility, a place to meditate on the mystical. It was an odd place for a demon, though.
He landed on a plateau, a tabletop of bare rock thirty feet across, the sides of which sloped downward at a steep vertical drop. He switched off the
helicopter and let the blades stop their rotation, turned to her as he removed his headset.
“This is the reason I brought you here,” he said, pointing to the gorge below them. “Bright Angel Canyon. There’s a Dirty Devil River in Utah that was named by the same explorers in the mid-1800s. They said they wanted to honor the good spirits as well as the bad,” he said with a grin. “There’s a lookout point at the Bright Angel trailhead, but it’s often packed with tourists. We have a better view of the canyon from here.”
There wasn’t another soul in view. The trip had taken over two hours, but this canyon might have been a universe away from Vegas. They sat without speaking for a few moments, simply staring at the grandeur of nature around them. Her gaze traveled along the stratified gray rock, layered with red, and below, to the greenish-gray waters of the Colorado River. For the first time in two days, she felt at peace.
Hopping out of the helicopter, he laid out blankets on the ground, began unloading the picnic basket. She followed, drinking in the clean canyon air. Wandering over to the edge of the plateau, she looked down, suddenly vertiginous at the drop where the cliff dove straight into the canyon below. She shivered, although it was far from cold.
There was a shuffling of gravel beneath her, and then his strong hand closed around her upper arm. A few rocks came loose from the edge and tumbled two hundred feet to the bottom of the gorge below. As he stood behind her, she felt safe. Instinctively, she knew he would never hurt her, that he would keep her safe from harm.
“Come away from the edge,” he said, his voice low in her ear.
He tugged her backward, toward the picnic blanket. He began to unpack the items the hotel staff had packed: an assortment of cheese and crackers, delicate roast vegetable sandwiches, a large bottle of cold lemonade. He poured her a plastic cupful of the beverage and she sipped its sweetness, wrapped her hands around it, cooling them.
He had brought her here, to this place of penetrating beauty. Unable to find words adequate to express her awe and delight, she said the least she could say. “Thank you.”
“It gives me pleasure to see you happy,” he said quietly.
He paced around the edge of the plateau, peering down and covertly watching Serena finish her lunch. She made a pretty picture sitting in the center of the rock formation, surrounded by the rising strata around them, with her sun-gold hair whipping in the wind and her cheeks flushed pink from the summer heat.
He had meant what he’d said—it gave him immeasurable pleasure to see her so enchanted with her surroundings. But it was terrifying to hear those words coming out of his mouth—more terrifying than if he were hanging from the plateau’s edge, about to plunge into the canyon’s abyss. The safest way to deal with those uncomfortable emotions was to cut them off before they could blossom any further, to stifle the tenderness that was beginning to bloom in his heart. He needed to change the subject. So he began to talk.
“The Grand Canyon was one of the places I came when I first arrived in this country,” he said, coming to stand at a point on the lip of the plateau. “I came from England on a steamship, long before I developed the power to dematerialize. It was the middle of the nineteenth century. London was in the middle of a cholera epidemic, packed to the gills with disease and poverty.”
How odd. It was not the subject he had expected to arise. He had wanted something trivial, something light. Normally he didn’t disclose his personal history to women, but for some reason, he felt compelled to tell her. Here, in the midst of these craggy undulations, the landscape pulled at the emotions brewing within him. He wanted those enormous blue eyes of hers to shine with understanding, instead of the wary suspicion that he usually read in them. Instead of stifling his feelings for her, those emotions were intensifying. But he found it impossible to stop.
“England under Victoria was repressive, full of societal rules and sexual hang-ups. Of course, behind that prim and proper superficiality, the criminal underworld was as seedy as could be. But England reminded me too much of my lost family. Even my father had been dead for over half a century, and I needed a fresh start. America was wild back then. I thought New York City would be a good place for me to make a new life. But that city, too, already had established its ranks of demons. I wanted uncharted territory. So I came west with the Forty-Niners—the gold prospectors who were headed to Northern California in 1849. I saw a few men strike it rich, and a lot of men leave empty-handed. It wasn’t until twenty years later that the Powell Expedition began to explore the Grand Canyon.”
But it had still been unmapped land when he’d first set eyes on these cavernous depths. He told her of gingerly riding on horseback down the zigzag trail the Hopi Indians had carved in the slanting incline. He had come here looking for something—not gold, but meaning. Perhaps it seemed logical that this was where the opening to hell should have been, if such a place had been accessible on earth. After half a century of demonry, by the time he arrived at the Grand Canyon, he was sick of watching men fall, sick of being the one to tempt them into debauchery. He had stood at the bottom of the gorge in the rain, waiting for the devil to reclaim him. Waiting for a flash flood to sweep him back to hell, or a lightning bolt to strike. But none came.
“After the gold rush was over, I took the considerable profits I had made and headed south, to Los Angeles. In the early days, it was known as the roughest town in the country. There were territorial wars between the Mexicanborn and the Anglos. Lynch mobs ran all over town, and the murder rate was ten to twenty times higher than it was in New York City at the time. It was heaven on earth for a demon trying to make a name for himself. I opened a saloon, bided my time, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Serena blinked, the blue of her eyes brighter than the clear summer sky. They were so clear, he could see her thoughts passing through like clouds, her mind absorbing his words. They sat in silence awhile, digesting the meal and his story.
After a while, she spread her arms out to indicate the vastness of the canyon. “But it’s so beautiful. I don’t know how you can doubt the power of goodness when all this beauty exists.”
“Good and evil are equally balanced. Besides, you should know by now that what is beautiful isn’t necessarily good,” he said. “Despite what mankind may think, Keats was wrong when he wrote, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’ You can’t deny that I’m beautiful, but I’m fundamentally evil.”
“You’re wrong. The balance of good and evil is a fallacy. You’re not evil,” she said firmly. “You’re just…mistaken.” She turned her face toward Bright Angel Canyon, a worried little frown on her brow.
“This canyon is a place of beauty, but it is also a place of death. Nearly six hundred souls have found their final resting place here. Murder, suicide, plane crashes, hypothermia, dehydration, drowning, rock slides, falls. Every sort of ending imaginable has occurred here. And you don’t think the devil makes his presence known?”
She said quietly, “I think the devil is just another mistaken soul. He was a fallen angel. What’s to say he can’t go back? That you can’t go back?”
He laughed. “I’m sure he would think the same of you. You could fall,” he said. Her gaze darted to the plateau’s edge, and to the steep drop below. He opened his mouth to say that she could fall very easily, but stopped himself. He wanted to lull her into a false sense of security, not put her defenses up.
“Why did you choose darkness?” she protested. “What happened to you, Julian?”
Her blue eyes searched his face for an answer, but she didn’t want to know, not really. If he told her, she would feel sorry for him, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t need her pity. So he changed the subject yet again, rattling on about the details of that early trip, his returns to the canyon, his many explorations on foot and on horseback.
Reaching into the picnic basket, he took out the red velvet cake the staff had packed for dessert, handed her a piece. Continued to speak as she ate. A tiny movement along the edge of the plate
au caught his eye. The writhe of a familiar reptile, a thin whip of bright green, intense against the dusty canyon rock. A snake whose color hailed from the forests of sub-Saharan Africa, not native to the canyons of Arizona. A snake that had been brought here, not one that belonged here.
He opened his mouth to call her name. But he was too late.
It was the noise that caught Serena’s attention, the whisper of skin sliding on earth. When she looked down, she saw the green snake coiled there, its pop of color bright and deadly. Exactly like the one she’d seen slither from Luciana’s handbag last night.
How strange. For a moment, she wondered if the snake was real. Then it moved. In a quick slither of blurring colors, its shiny black head rose. Dartlike, it shot out and sank its fangs into her ankle. The pain was not intense, but startling.
Only a demon can kill an angel, she remembered.
Was Julian conspiring with Luciana, after all? Fleetingly, it struck Serena that she might be just one more prize in his quest for power, yet another victim whose destruction would increase Julian’s ranking in hell.
Her body began to numb.
Perhaps Julian was pure evil, after all.
Chapter Ten
Julian watched her fall. Heard the rustling of wings, not unfolding this time, but sinking to earth. Her body swayed, still graceful even in her fall. She crumpled, breaking the fall with arms already weak, and lay on the ground, breathing in shallow gasps. Around her, her golden hair fanned like a halo in the dirt. Her forehead contracted, and her gaze tracked him, full of alarm and hurt. Full of accusation.
He stood, rooted to the ground, mind scrambling to process the slick bands of color as the snake slid from her hand. For a sliver of time, his body froze from the shock of it. With her, he felt some part of himself falling, some part of him that was ripped away as he reached out, realizing that he was too late to catch her.
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