Where Demons Fear to Tread

by Stephanie Chong

  “Luciana had simply tired of having him as her husband, Harcourt said, and she wanted an excuse to get rid of him. It was that simple for her. She didn’t think twice about using me. Both of us died. Luciana lived another year, the time it took for Harcourt to claw his way out of hell and finish her off himself.

  “She caused me to fall. I have never forgiven her for that. Even though, over the years, I have sometimes faltered and succumbed to her charms. There are times when I’ve even believed she could love.”

  And times when she had behaved like a monster.

  But he had been equally as monstrous. He had ruined countless women, caused so many to fall. Willfully seeking out beauty, he had derived a great deal of pleasure in destroying it. It was an act of vengeance, not just against Luciana, but against God. The God who had allowed his mother to die. The God who had finally delivered him from the hell of his aunt’s upbringing, only to strip him down to misery again when his human life ended.

  “Whether Luciana had killed anyone before that, I doubt,” he said. “But afterward…”

  Afterward, he had witnessed her performing countless other acts of torture and murder. Luciana had a complex about aging, although she’d been only twenty-eight when she’d died, and the signs of age had not yet begun to erode her beauty. Once, he’d caught her bathing in a bathtub full of blood taken from virgins. It was an old European beauty trick, she’d claimed. He found out later that she’d heard tales of the seventeenth-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a woman who had committed many such heinous murders. Luciana’s crimes would have had Serena groveling on her knees for his protection if she knew about them. But Serena was blissfully ignorant, and Julian saw no reason to frighten her.

  “Back in England, the life I left behind crumbled into dust. Despite his poor health, my father survived me by thirty years. When the old duke finally died, his estates and all of his possessions ceded to a distant female cousin. There was no male heir, so the title became extinct. From afar, I watched our family legacy dissipate into nothingness.”

  Serena looked at him with compassion in her eyes. “The legacy you should have continued.”

  The legacy he didn’t deserve. Instead, he began to rebuild.

  “As a new demon, there were rules to learn. I had no property on earth, since everything I had owned reverted back to the estate when my human life ended. I needed to make a living, and I needed to blend in. So I started to work in a village pub, as a barkeep. I was a fast learner, and for the first time in my existence, I understood the value of hard work. The villagers were also easy to manipulate, and provided an amusing distraction from my misery.” Especially the village girls, he remembered. If he’d been popular with the ladies before his life had ended, as a demon, women had flocked to him.

  “From barkeep, I progressed to owning my own tavern. Over the years, I worked and saved, bought another. And another. Little by little, I arrived here in the twenty-first century, the owner of a chain of nightclubs, with a substantial amount of material wealth. Despite my relatively young age for an Archdemon, there were only a handful of others more successful than me. It was my goal to become the most powerful among them. By allying with Corbin, I believe I’ve surpassed all of them, except for him.”

  “And now?”

  “Now all I want is you. And that’s why I need you to save me.”

  “Save you.” She blinked, not knowing what to say. Was he being honest, or was this just part of his game? Why had he revealed himself to her tonight?

  “You believe in the healing power of love, don’t you?” For a moment, she thought he was joking. But she looked at his face and saw that he was serious.

  Is Arielle right? Is there some part of Julian that is still good? she thought wildly.

  She shifted, inching away from him on the sofa, where they had been sitting for hours as he spoke. Of course there was no love between them. Perhaps she felt a certain amount of love for him, in the vague, fuzzy sense in which she loved all living beings. Even demons. But love, in the most intimate sense of the word? The romantic sense? Last night, she’d been sure that she didn’t love him. Did she?

  Oh, Lord.

  Her hand shook. The remnants of their dinner lay on the cart, now cold. Her stomach growled, she wandered over to the cart, removed the cover from the vegetarian entrée she’d ordered. It was not appealing, so she dropped the plate. Tried to pretend that everything was normal. That nothing had changed between them.

  Everything had changed.

  Dropping back onto the sofa, she heard the little voice inside her whispering again. She wanted him, she realized. Wanted him to seduce her so she could protest, as she normally did. But he didn’t. He was looking at her, she realized, waiting for her to say something. Not knowing what to say, she covered her confusion with a smile.

  He wasn’t fooled. “Love never fails,” he said.

  Instantly, her smile dropped away. “How dare you use those words,” she said. “Don’t talk to me of love when you have dragged me here and kept me against my will.”

  “You could walk out at any time. There’s the door,” he said.

  “So you’d let Nick go, and leave my friends and family alone?” she challenged, meeting his gaze even though her cheeks burned.

  Something flickered in those jeweled depths, but whether it was humor or admiration, she didn’t know. “I’m not willing to go that far. I will promise you one thing. I won’t take advantage of you tonight. You’re a snakebite victim. You haven’t much strength. It’s been an emotional day.”

  She sighed, laid her head back into the soft cushions of the sofa and closed her eyes. “Every day with you is an emotional day.”

  “Poor, tired little angel.”

  She heard him move. Opened her eyes. He leaned over her so carefully she might have been made of delicate crystal. Brushed a kiss across her lips. Followed it with another, equally as soft.

  She felt safe with him. Her defenses were so weak right now that she would have succumbed without an argument. But he didn’t even try. Instead, he helped her off the sofa, and gave her a little push in the direction of her bedroom.

  “Serena, I am a changed man, I swear to you. We have five days left together. I will prove to you how much I’ve changed.”

  For a moment they stood, separated in distance by only a few steps. This time, when she looked in his eyes, what she read there was clear. Desire, yes. But also respect. And a touch of wonder. Her heart raced. She turned, walked calmly into her bedroom and shut the door, as though she hadn’t just been witness to something so remarkable, so miraculous that it was unthinkable. Could it be—dare she believe it—could a demon really fall in love?

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, they sat on the sweeping terrace of their suite, breakfasting beneath the cool shade of potted palms. Lounging in his white bathrobe, Julian leaned back in his chair and regarded her as he casually sipped his coffee.

  “Nick is going to spend the evenings with Harry while we’re here in Vegas,” he announced. “My assistant may not be able to handle even a neophyte angel, but he can babysit a human being.”

  “Nick is my responsibility,” Serena shot back. “It’s my duty to spend time with him, especially at night when he’s most vulnerable.”

  Over the rim of his cup, Julian’s blue-green eyes flickered. “Call it outsourcing. Nick will be safer with Harry than he would be with you, Serena. Unlike you, we demons have no qualms with using mind control on humans. It’s not my preferred method of operation, but it gets the job done. Would you rather be chasing Nick around Vegas at night, just like you were doing in L.A.?”

  “That’s my job,” she said stubbornly.

  “Remember, you came here with me. We have a deal.”

  On that point, Julian was immobile. He would not listen to another word of argument, blocking off all conversation with one of his urbane smiles. But beneath that smile, a deeper emotion lurked, and she knew better than to stir it up
. Julian could crush Nick if he wanted to. And if he were given the slightest reason to do it, he might.

  The next few days passed in a blur, as Julian lured her deeper into his world of exquisite debauchery. He took her to dine at top-rated restaurants, where he plied her with the most expensive wines. From box seats at a concert, they listened to a famous diva lull a packed auditorium with a love ballad. He brought her to see a magician walk through sheet metal and escape from a locked tank of water. At the Cirque du Soleil, she loved the colorful costumes and the gymnastic feats that seemed to hover on the edge of the mortal realm. Throughout all of it, each time Serena stole a glance at Julian, he was watching her more closely than he watched the performances.

  She told herself that his interest was as much an illusion as the magician’s tricks, or the exotic acrobat-animals dangling in contorted shapes from the ceiling. Reminded herself that at the end of the week, she would go home to Los Angeles and resume her everyday life. Without Julian.

  Sitting in darkened theatres with the weight of his hand on her thigh, or his fingers tracing circles on her palm, she knew that somehow, sometime in these past few days, she had fallen in love with him. She knew it in her gut, as surely as she knew she had never felt this way before. Despite his dark exterior, there was a human side to him. Why else would he have left her untouched these past few days?

  Nights were the hardest part. The first night, she’d lain awake for hours, waiting for Julian to come to her. When he didn’t, her imagination ran wild. She imagined him sleeping, imagined herself getting out of bed, going to him, pressing her body against his. Over and over, she steeled herself against it, knowing that to do so would be her ruin. Unable to focus her mind, her thoughts were repeatedly drawn back to the darkness of Julian’s bedroom and the pleasures that lay within it.

  Her cherished self-control was slipping. She was a fool for trusting him, and even more of a fool for wanting him. And she knew that. But strangely, rather than praying for their time together to end, she had begun to dread leaving.

  In this city of illusions, Serena was losing track of herself.

  And Julian was winning.

  Her self-control was not the only thing slipping. So was her influence on Nick. Nights were becoming Julian’s domain. But in the broad light of day, Serena decided to recover the parts of herself that she felt slipping away. She must get back to yoga, she realized, to guide both herself and her Assignee back to normality.

  “Every morning at ten o’clock,” she suggested to Nick, “let’s meet on the terrace of my suite and do yoga together.”

  Eager to spend time with her, he happily agreed. They rolled out their yoga mats on the smooth marble. As the desert heat warmed their bodies, she hoped her teaching would be enough to dissuade Nick from falling into the mounting distractions of Vegas. Feared it wouldn’t be enough.

  Nick was jealous.

  One morning after their yoga session, he and Serena soaked in the blazing rays of the sun beside the private pool reserved for the hotel’s most elite guests. She could feel Nick’s gaze even behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses, roaming over the stretch of flesh bared by her bikini. But she was comfortable with her own body, and she decided to simply ignore him, willing platonic thoughts into her Assignee’s head. However, the tension proved too much for him.

  “Are you sleeping with him?” Nick demanded flat out.

  She shifted in her deck chair, resisting the urge to wrap a towel around herself as he stared at her curves. “No.”

  “Has he tried?”

  “None of your business,” she answered curtly.

  “It is my business,” Nick insisted, leaning toward her with that earnestness that took her by surprise. He slid the sunglasses to the top of his head and gave her a long, searching look. “You met him through me, in a way. There’s more going on here than meets the eye. I think Julian might be…”

  Does he know? she wondered.

  “…Mafia,” Nick finished in a conspiratorial whisper.

  She resisted the urge to laugh. Oh, if it were only that simple. She supposed Julian was mafia—just not the human kind. Serena let out a long sigh. “Don’t worry, Nick. Julian and I are not together.”

  Still not entirely convinced, Nick relaxed a fraction nonetheless. “Good. You need to be careful around him. He’s very dangerous.”

  Nick was right. Julian was dangerous. He said he had changed—he vowed it on a daily basis. But he had voiced no plans to stop the opening of his nightclub, nor to halt the damage caused by the dozens of other clubs he owned. Next week, he would begin corrupting thousands more souls on a nightly basis. If anything, Julian was only going to get worse.

  Her Assignee settled back in his chair, content for the moment to lounge and allow the passersby to discreetly ogle his perfectly etched abs. She sighed, thinking about the divine mission the Archangel Gabriel had mentioned. Gabriel’s words seemed to indicate a responsibility that extended beyond lounging poolside with her Assignee. If she had been sent here to stop Julian’s corruption, she had no idea how she, a newly minted angel, was going to accomplish that. She had no weapons with which to fight him, and he was slowly wearing away at her defenses. She no longer trusted herself.

  When she looked over at Nick again, he was gazing at her with something like adoration. In a soft voice, he said, “He can never love you the way you deserve, you know.”

  Love. Nick was right about that, too. In fact, he was proving himself to be much less vacant than he’d originally seemed.

  “I’m not looking for love right now,” she said. Or ever. Serena closed her eyes and felt the sun’s rays soak into her face. Long ago, she had reconciled herself to the fact that she was never going to experience romantic love. It was simply not in the cards for her. And especially not with Julian.

  On Thursday night, Julian and Serena joined Corbin for dinner.

  When Corbin had extended the invitation, Julian knew he could not refuse. They were not friends, but nor were they enemies. To preserve the business relationship, Julian knew it was vital to keep his partner placated. Especially since Corbin had gotten rid of Luciana. Yet, Corbin was dangerous, and Julian knew he could pose a threat to Serena.

  Having drinks in the restaurant lounge, though, the three of them made an awkward trio. Without Luciana or Nick, there was nothing to divert the tensions that ran between them. Without Nick, there was no lightness to the conversation. And without Luciana, there was nothing to distract the hotelier’s gaze from Serena. The older Archdemon’s eyes missed nothing. Corbin watched Serena walk across the room after he’d sent her to request a song from the jazz ensemble playing there.

  “There’s a sparkle in your eye I’ve never seen before, my boy. Come up to my suite tonight,” Corbin insisted, his gaze still fixed on the girl. “I’m having company later. Bring your little angel or not, but if you do, be prepared to share her.”

  At that moment, Julian realized the impact of what he’d done. He’d jeopardized something he loved. Corbin’s interest had fixed on her, and he was ruthless in satiating his desires. Serena returned to the table and sat, oblivious to the danger she was in. The danger Julian had put her in. He would send her home first thing tomorrow morning. There was no way he was going to keep her any longer.

  If Corbin decided he wanted her, he would take her. There would be nothing playful or joyous in it. He would simply maul her physically and spiritually, leaving the empty husk of her violated body. Corbin had done this to countless mortal women. There was nothing stopping him from doing it to Serena.

  Tomorrow morning, Julian would locate Luciana—wherever she had gone after Corbin had kicked her out—and impress upon her the necessity of leaving Serena alone. And then he would release the angel. Tonight, he would find a woman and release the terrible urge that was building inside of him.

  Sex with a stranger would be good for him. He was a mess. He had endured five days of this peculiar and painful type of torture, and it could no
t go on. He would get rid of Serena, flush her out of his system.

  Having made his decision, he felt somewhat better. Serena was not for him. She was a pretty thing he could admire for the few remaining hours he would spend with her, and then she would become a memory, a bright reminder of true beauty in two and a half centuries of falseness and facades.

  After dinner, Julian and Serena returned to the suite. He poured himself a glass of whisky and paced around the living room like an animal pacing the limits of its cage.

  “You seem restless tonight,” she said, a touch of anxiousness clouding her sky-bright eyes as she watched him. “We could go out somewhere. Find a club if you’d like, or go play the tables.”

  She had never before offered to spend time with him. At every opportunity, she had fought him. Now, suddenly, after he’d made his decision, she looked at him with that sort of pleading in her eyes that he had seen in the eyes of countless women before her. But she was utterly unlike any woman he’d ever known. She was everything he had ever wanted, but could not have.

  “I’m not in the mood,” he said, looking her straight in the eye, unwavering in his dishonesty. He had lied like this so many times before that it came naturally, the words rolling easily off his tongue. Yet, lying had never before sparked in him this feeling of being slightly hot and uncomfortable. He shook it off and said, “Corbin is hosting a networking event. Strictly business, you understand.”

  There was nothing he wanted more than to pull her into his arms and make love to her. He needed to get out of here. His desires were building up fast, and if he stayed here alone with her any longer, he was going to crack. He smiled his urbane smile.

  She said nothing, but sank onto the sofa, draped there like some Grecian goddess in another sumptuous gown, this one of dove-gray silk. There was something in her eyes—something smoldering there. A wanting. She was calling to him. She traced her hand along the neckline of the dress. “We could stay in for the evening. Together.” Her voice was full of meaning.