Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3

by Denise Tompkins

  “You.” He pointed one taloned finger at me, his voice prehistoric, guttural. “Come.”

  Instead of answering, I raised my gun and shot him. In the eyes. Two out of three, at least.

  Then we ran like Hell was on our heels.

  And it was.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Darkness swallowed me. One second we were racing for the door and the light that poured through, the next there was nothing. Every sense I had was overridden by the cosmic void I’d been sucked into.

  A hiss sounded all around me.

  I raised my gun while reaching blindly for Bahlin.

  Nothing. It was like he’d disappeared with the rest of reality.

  I was too terrified to fire the weapon, unsure of myself, unsure what might be around me.

  The hiss sounded again, this time accompanied by the heavy, lumbering slither of a large body moving toward me.

  My inner voice was screaming while my vocal chords were paralyzed with fear. Lactic acid build-up meant I had to drop my arm.

  The thing must have been watching, waiting as it circled. It moved with deceptive silence, teeth closing around my neck just tight enough to split skin in a hundred places. A hot wash of drool slid down my back.

  My muscles twitched involuntarily, driving teeth deeper, and then I froze. There was no fight-or-flight response, simply survival. I’d been a fool to think Darius’s bite had hurt. This, this was pain.

  “Madeline Niteclif.”

  The seductive, unfamiliar voice wove its way through my brain, echoing, until I thought my head would explode. My sex tightened, throbbed, ached with emptiness, and I craved release like I’d been sexually stimulated for days. “Not. Real.” The words were gritted out through clenched teeth. My blind eyes sought out anything, anything that would confirm this wasn’t real. “Nightmare.”

  “Oh, I’m your worst nightmare. We just haven’t been formally introduced.”

  A form shimmered in my peripheral vision. The gun fell from numb fingers as he moved around me. “Beautiful.”

  A bright white grin answered my proclamation. “So I’ve been told.” He moved close to me, stroked the monster’s snout.

  It retreated. There was no need for it to restrain me now that he was here.

  His presence held me captive, left things so confused I couldn’t sort out the important facts. Yes, I’d lost my gun, but more importantly, I wanted to lose my clothes. My hands wouldn’t work right, wouldn’t undo my holster.

  Another memory pushed in from the side. It was a new memory, only hours old, when I’d tried to undo my holster for someone else. “Hellion,” I said softly.

  “Ah, Hellion. He’s tied up at the moment.”

  A brilliant window opened, my eyes watering in response. Through the glass I saw my lover engaged in a bitter fight with Agares and his fellow Dominae—a fight he was clearly losing.

  “No.” The cry was soft, pleading. I tried to raise a hand to help him, but it came up free of my gun. What had happened? I wouldn’t have let go of my gun.

  “But you did,” the man in front of me responded. “You don’t want to shoot me, Madeline. Quite the contrary, love.”

  Love. “Don’t call me that.”

  A beastly image, that of a demon with three heads, shimmered over the man like a mirage, there then gone so swiftly I didn’t know what I’d seen and what I’d imagined in this twilight of the mind.

  “You’ll take care, love, to not anger me. I’m all that stands between Agares and your beloved. You owe me your gratitude.” He turned, waist-length auburn hair swinging wide enough to slap against my thighs.

  I whimpered. My sex grew wet with need.

  He inhaled. “Lovely.” Moving in close, he traced a finger down my cheek, curled it under my chin and pressed his lips to mine. He moved over my mouth with languid strokes of his tongue that I met and matched.

  I wanted him, lust blurring every image but the silver eyes that stared into mine.

  The image of Hellion winked out.

  “No!” I wrenched my mouth away, the denial echoing through my head. I swear my skull fractured at the noise.

  Hands fondled my breasts, regained my attention, refocused my rejection. I shoved him, forcing him back a step. “Who the hell are you?”

  He ran a hand over the back of his mouth. “I forget we’ve yet to be formally introduced.”

  He stalked around me, hips rolling, his semi-erect phallus outlined in the tight, fawn-colored breeches. Doeskin leather moved in whispers over leanly muscled thighs. His shirt was open—had it always been?—over his chest. A faint line of hair disappeared below his bellybutton into the waistband of his pants. Platinum nipple rings winked in the spotlight that seemed fused to his every movement.

  “In the grand scheme, it seems so trivial, a name for a name.” Bending low, he purred, “I am Asmodeus.”

  Fear Asmodeus. Tyr had warned me last time I’d seen him. My knee raised in a sharp jerk and the resounding crack of Asmodeus’s nose met with my hearty approval.

  He backhanded me with stunning ferocity.

  I’d barely begun to lick the blood from my split lip when his nose stopped bleeding.

  “And these were my favorite breeks.” He stripped his shirt off, all the while talking. “Hellion doesn’t give you any type of challenge, does he. He’s a weak coven master who couldn’t hold his place against Connell Darach.”

  My brows drew together. “Connell?”

  “Hellion fell to him. You remember.”

  Another window opened before me, the light more blinding. I watched Hellion fall to Connell all over again. “No.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of the sticky web of lies Asmodeus wove.

  “Don’t struggle, love. It will go so much easier if you don’t.”

  “Go how?” My words were sluggish.

  “You’ve surely figured out what I want.”

  “Hellion.”

  Asmodeus chuckled, the sound tracing up the insides of my thighs, hot as breath. “Far from it. I couldn’t care less about your lover. No, my interest lies in replacing him as the one who finds release between your thighs.”

  “No.”

  “Surely you don’t think he loves you?” He waved a hand negligently at the darkness and another window was born, this one showing Hellion wrapped in a passionate embrace with Agares. The other Dominae cheered. Bodies littered the earth around them, the bloody ground cast a deeper and darker red in the setting sun. “He’s a man of opportunity, not morals.” Asmodeus tsked me. “Poor Maddy. Thrown over by the Fates once again.”

  “No.” The plea in my voice was undeniable. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Hellion.

  Asmodeus turned and watched the scene through the window, tapping his chin.

  “Let him go.”

  “Oh, I could. See, the agreement has always been that Agares deliver you to me. In return, I guaranteed to let him keep Hellion for eternity.” He shook his head in mock sympathy. “Shame there’s no suicide in Hell. No doubt Hellion will crave it before long.”

  “Let him go.” The plea was louder this time.

  “But then I’d break my word to Agares. I did promise him, after all.” Asmodeus turned and, tossing his shirt aside, moved closer. “Touch me.”

  My hands moved of their own volition, slowly tracing up his swimmer’s physique. Hard planes proved interesting grounds for exploration. My mouth followed my hands, lips anxious to keep pace.

  The ground shook beneath me.

  Something swiped at my foot and I kicked out, desperate not to lose this moment. I knew Asmodeus would grant me the physical release my body craved, would put an end to the carnal throbbing between my legs. Every nerve in my sex burned with need. When he touched my nipples, flicking thumbs over their hardened peaks, I cried out, biting down on one of his piercings.

  “That’s it, love.”

  Love. I pulled back slowly, eyes narrowing as I fought not to look at Hellion locked in the confusing embrace with A
gares. “You don’t love me.”

  “No, and you don’t love me.” He pinched my nipples and I groaned. “Seems fair, does it not?”

  My chest was heaving. Sweat made my shirt stick to my back. Salt stung my eyes. “No.”

  “But it is. You see, I need not love you to father your child, Niteclif. All I need is for you to spread your legs.” He reached forward and dragged a thumb across the span just above my hipbones.

  Pain lanced through me.

  “You’ve just ovulated for me.” At my confused look, his eyes flashed a deep, dark crimson. “Why, dearling, did no one tell you I’m the demon of lust? I’m one of the seven deadly sins brought to life.” He moved to tower over me. “And I revel in my role in debauching the most pious of you. I’ll have you several times to ensure my seed takes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he scoffed. “Because, Niteclif, if I can control the High Council, I can hold dominion over the spawn of the angels. What better way to see to the fall of mankind than to use the precious angels’ own legacy against the inferior, bendable, breakable flesh of man?”

  Micah’s story rushed back to me, how the angels had fathered the supernatural races and unleashed magic on the Earth. “You want to use me.”

  “No more than any of the men around you do. Bahlin? He’s anxious to ensure he’s not supplanted on the Council. Darius? He craves the opportunity to cling to his heartbeat, to live again through you and the child he might foist off on you and then many other women. Connell Darach? He seeks to defeat Hellion at every turn. If that means stealing your affections, he’ll come for you like a thief in the night.” He stepped in front of me, demanding my attention, filling up my vision. “And Hellion? He’s the worst of them all. He toys with you, playing with love when what he wants is to control the Council through you. Oh, he professes no desire to rule.” Asmodeus bent close. “He. Lies.”

  The ground shook under me again.

  “You’ll come to see I’m the only one who’s ever been honest with you.”

  “Liar.” The snarled word curled out of the depths of my belly. The crack of his backhand echoed a second time.

  “You’ve two choices. Let Hellion live, or let Hellion die.”

  My mouth bled, both for itself and my heart. “I can’t.”

  Asmodeus moved in close and ground his erection against my ass. “Shame, that.”

  I fought the urge to respond that coursed through me. You’re stronger than this. You’re stronger than this. You’re stronger than this. When the ground trembled harder than I did, I knew something outside Asmodeus’s control was going on beyond what had to be illusion.

  His fingers dug into my hips, flooding me with such a carnal craving that my knees buckled. I’d have fallen if he hadn’t been holding me so tightly.

  “You’ll choose now. Either let Agares have Hellion, or put a stop to this.”

  “Hellion can’t—” I gasped as the demon ran a hand over the plane of my stomach. Remember Hellion. Hold on to those memories.

  “Oh, love, that’s where you’re wrong. He can, and he will, unless you strike this bargain with me.”

  I considered stalling, letting the quake beneath me do its thing before deciding.

  “Don’t,” he advised, stroking my shoulders.

  “Stay out of my head.”

  The platform beneath our feet groaned.

  “Decide, and now!” he shouted, his fingers digging into the skin and muscle between neck and shoulder hard enough to bruise.

  “You let Hellion go. Not just now, but for good. No more Agares. And you’ll leave the two Nephilim in my care alone.” Bile rose up the back of my throat. “And once you’ve impregnated me, you’ll let me go. Forever. Swear it.”

  “I swear.”

  He leaned in and licked the shell of my ear, his tongue long and prehensile. I couldn’t control my shudder of repulsion, but that very thing helped further clear my mind. “I have to see Hellion first.”

  “Give me your word you’ll come with me, no pun intended, as soon as this is over. No hesitation, Niteclif. You’ll walk straight to me once you’re reassured Hellion is alive.”

  “I give you my word.” Choking out the promise was almost impossible. Keeping my mind clear of any and all thoughts even more so.

  He panted in my ear, his arousal kicking in his breeks. “I can make this the most orgasmic experience of your life.” When I started to shake my head in denial, he leaned in and ran his hands up my front to cup my breasts. “Or I can make it your singular worst nightmare. Break your vow and I’ll see to it you don’t walk away from this.”

  “Let me go.”

  A sliver of twilight pierced the darkness at the same time a huge hand grabbed my ankle. I screamed and kicked out as Asmodeus shoved me forward. Stumbling, I broke free and found my feet. Then I was running, arms pumping, lungs working like bellows. The smell of lemon wax and time overwhelmed me as my senses came online. The wounds on my neck mixed with sweat and stung like a bitch. Gravity pulled at my body as I hurdled three huge holes in the floor. The sound of my pounding feet thundered in my ears. That sliver of light was all I could focus on. My eyes watered so much it had to look like I was crying, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t. There was no room for tears.

  My gun was gone, so I paused long enough to grab a short sword off one of the displays in the hallway. Dirk unsheathed, sword in hand, I chanced a glance back. The hallway was empty. Walls still bled, the holes in the floor appearing like an oversized version of that whack-a-mole game. I wasn’t going to hang around long enough to find out what was popping out of there, though.

  The smells of fall whipped around me when I yanked the door open, dry leaves skittering and swirling around my feet in a wind-driven dance. Shouts and magic fouled the otherwise crisp air. Somewhere nearby, a gun discharged. The house had been soundproofed somehow. With the world tilting on its axis, I raced toward the sound, knowing both Bahlin and Hellion were armed.

  My shoulder plowed into a corner of the house as I rounded the path that led to the gardens…and came face to face with utter chaos.

  Dragons had shifted—some partially, others completely—and were fighting with single-minded fury. Tails whipped and some of our own people had to duck and dodge simply to survive. Magic was being used by every coven member, and I watched for the briefest second as one of the women took down some kind of two-headed dog with swift efficiency. I’d scream for girl power later. My immediate priority was finding Hellion, Bahlin and Father O’Cleary.

  I raced into the fray, swinging and stabbing with studied precision, managing to dispatch two demons via beheading before I caught sight of Hellion.

  He fought Agares one-on-one. Both bled freely. Hellion’s eyes were entirely black. His shoulders bulged with the effort of casting spell after spell.

  Agares’s eyes gleamed with delight. He was pushing Hellion, herding him toward the edge of the garden.

  I chanced a quick glance and stopped dead. The planes of existence had split, and someone had opened a doorway to Hell. Demons poured out. Dragons dispatched what they could. Amid the corpses and stains, a shifted dragon lay dead. And still, the demons came.

  A hard blow to the back convinced me I’d be pissing blood for a month as I spun and gutted the offender. Whirling back to Hellion, I fought my way to his side.

  He spared me the briefest glance. “Get out of here!”

  Instead of answering, I defended his back, searching in the brief lulls for the priest. I didn’t see him or either of the Nephilim anywhere. Anger burned in me, followed closely by near debilitating terror. I was going to fail. We couldn’t defend against unlimited forces. We couldn’t close the portal. We couldn’t exorcise the demon without the priest. And we sure as shit couldn’t take critical losses when the whole thing could be stopped.

  I took a large step away from Hellion and screamed, “Asmodeus!”

  Everything took on a dream-like quality. I turned to the portal and watched as the
demon, as beautiful as any angel, stepped through. He dragged with him a severely beaten man. It took a few ticks of the second hand for comprehension to dawn, brilliant as any sunrise.

  Bahlin.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I stepped toward them, but Asmodeus shook his head, smiling. With his guttural command, fighting stopped. It took the dragons a handful of kills to realize things were turning, and it wasn’t in their favor. They turned their giant heads toward us, and the intelligence in their eyes was ageless, understanding, fearless. Under any other circumstance, they’d continue to fight until the last of them fell or they were victorious. But with Bahlin in Asmodeus’s hands, they went to their bellies and waited, watched, tails twitching and swishing.

  Hellion stepped up to my side, though the set of his shoulders and the knot in his clenched jaw told me that Agares was behind us long before I registered his presence. It was a smothering sensation, a pressure at the back of the throat that made me want to gag.

  I didn’t flinch when he stroked a finger down my back and leaned in to whisper, “Seems you and Asmodeus struck an accord. He marked you hard.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Only if I get tired of my new pet.” He rested a hand on Hellion’s shoulder.

  That was my breaking point. I turned and swung up in a single, deft movement, divesting him of his forearm and hand. They fell to the ground, turning to ash where they hit.

  “You bitch!” He swung with his remaining hand.

  The blow to the jaw spun me round, Hollywood-style.

  Hellion was on him between heartbeats. He shoved his hand to the demon’s chest, just above his heart. Blackness poured out of his palm and wound around Agares’s chest.

  “Finally broke you.” Agares’s panted words were pained.

  “You touch her again, I’ll delve deeper without hesitation.” Hellion’s words resonated with raw, undiluted power.

  Dark magic. “Hellion, stop.” I laid a hand on his arm.

  “Back off, Maddy.” He shook free of me.

  Asmodeus stepped closer, Bahlin dogging his heels due to the grip the demon had on his hair. “Let’s stop this, shall we?” He shoved the dragon to the ground. Bahlin went down and stayed there. “Seems your pet didn’t care for Hell’s Pits.”