Whispering voices plucked me from my rapid descent into fear. A particular voice, to be exact. Whispers fluttered about my head. Were they real? I cocked my head to the side and listened.
“Muse, Charlie Henderson, friend: I invite you to share this place and time with me...” The voice quietened and almost disappeared completely, but I’d heard enough to recognize Ryder’s drawl. Only he could summon a demon and still make it sound as though he was reading from the back page of a newspaper.
I closed my eyes, reaching out with my senses.
“I summon Muse, Charlotte Henderson, friend... Damien’s chattel.”
That last inclusion sunk a hook into my gut and wrenched me from the netherworld, dragging me back through a blur and depositing my sense of self opposite Ryder. He glared back at me behind a dancing candle flame. The image sputtered. Colors snapped. I lifted my hand and realized, with an oddly detached thought, that I could see through my skin. I wasn’t really with Ryder. Physically, I sat huddled in front of the fire in Damien’s hut, hands tied behind my back, but the summoning had worked enough to tug my consciousness into Ryder’s time and place.
I smelled gun oil and blood, and breathed the scent of Ryder into me. I could almost taste him. All demon, I drank him in with all my senses. The man looking back at me had old eyes, an old soul. I heard his drumming heartbeat and measured breathing, but his exterior appeared gravely calm. It’s not every day you summon a friend and look her demon-self in the eyes.
It takes spilled blood and intent to summon a demon. The little flame held the key to anchoring me in the human realm, but the hold was fragile and could be snuffed out at any time.
Ryder leaned closer to the flame. “We’re doin’ everythin’ we can to get you, even some shit I never thought Adam would agree to. Hold on, Muse.”
My gaze darted around, expecting to see others. I couldn’t see beyond the confines of the candlelight. Darkness loomed, waiting to suck me back in. “Hurry,” I breathed. The candle puffed out. The summoning failed. The link broke, and I was slammed back into the netherworld with all the finesse of a sledgehammer.
I doubled over by the fire in the hut and tried to control my short, sharp breaths. My vision swam, and my head throbbed. Half-human, I wasn’t made for metaphysical mind-jumps into different realms.
The touch of his gaze crawled like spiders legs across my flesh.
Terror drained reason from my mind. Fire fizzled beneath my skin. Superheated dust shivered from my flesh. I pulled my torn wing against my back and folded it around my side as though it might protect me. I hunkered down and heard pitiful whimpers tumbling from my lips. The dreadful mewing wouldn’t stop. Sweat vaporized. Shame trembled through me. I had wronged him in the most terrible way possible, and I deserved to be punished. Sickened by my own disgusting behavior, I dug my claws into the palms of my hands, deliberately cutting myself. I deserved the pain. My head swirled with rage, fear, and shock. The surge of emotions poisoned all rational thought, turning my strengths against me, rendering me weak and pathetic.
At the sound of his rumbling laughter, salty tears boiled on my cheeks. I could only hope that he’d kill me now. A quick death would be a blessing. The invasive touch of his element slid over me. Fingers of air glided over my shoulders and down my back. I clamped my eyes shut and strained to control the trembling. He made a sound, like a dismissive snort. His element slid carefully, purposely, down my thigh, probing, reacquainting, and then wound around my one remaining wing, slipping beneath it to my chest. He stamped a foot, and a whimper slithered from my lips. Finally, after seconds-minutes-hours, he uncoiled his elemental tendrils from around me, so that I could at least breathe again.
“It has been too long.” His voice grated against my brittle state of mind as he injected the words into my thoughts. He had a gruff accent that I’d not noticed before. My time away from him, from everything, had afforded me the chance to forget. Now that luxury was over. This was a time for remembering who and what he was. I pressed myself against the ground, hoping the earth might open up and gulp me down.
When I finally found the courage to lift my eyes, I saw him standing tall, filling the space between floor and ceiling. His muscles quivered like the flanks of a horse. Every inch of him dripped demon masculinity, but he was more animal than man. Noticing my attention to his bunched, leathery wings, he flexed them a little, lifting a gust of wind that blasted through the hut and spluttered the fire in the grate. I was built for speed, but he was every inch a beast of strength. Bulging veins snaked down his taut arms. His shark-gray skin didn’t glisten as it should and after blinking to refocus, I could see why. His flesh was mottled, its once smooth surface dulled by scarring—the unmistakable curdling of healed burns.
My lips parted. I’d done that to him, and the scars weren’t minor. In the firelight, I noticed how they curled up one leg and around his waist. Although he hadn’t fully opened his wings, I saw the shadows dancing on their uneven surface. I tried to swallow, but my throat clamped closed.
He won’t let me live.
When I flicked my nervous glances over his face, his glowering expression slammed the realization home; I wasn’t getting out of this alive. Whatever Ryder had planned, he’d better do it fast.
Damien rushed me. He scooped a huge hand around my neck and thrust me back against the stone wall, pinning me there with a possessive roar. Jaw clamped closed, I turned my head away, not wanting to see the fury knotting his features.
“Thank you for your parting gift.” He licked the air with a forked tongue and then dragged its moist leathery touch up my cheek, lapping at the remnants of my tears.
“I didn’t...” I choked and wheezed, unable to draw enough breath to form words.
His nostrils flared. He breathed in my scent, lips quivering in snarl. “Humans die so easily. You, I can make last. I know you.” He slid his free hand around my waist and leaned his crushing weight against me. “I know how to break you.” His storm-grey eyes filled my vision. “And I know how to make it last an eternity.”
“I...” Hands clamped behind my back and wedged against the wall, I couldn’t pry his fingers from around my throat. If he wouldn’t let me speak, how could I even begin to reason with him?
My element rolled over my flesh and coiled around him. He’d feel the touch of it the way I’d felt his, as though a warm hand caressed his skin. My eyelids flickered closed, chest heaving, lungs ready to burst, but I eased the touch of my element further. Tendrils of power coiled around his legs, writhing up his thighs and over quivering muscles. I couldn’t call fire, but I could extend the essence of my power out to him.
He pressed his lips hard against my cheek and growled through his teeth. I coiled the energy around him, into him, seeking the source of his element. I couldn’t draw his power from him, not like I had Akil. Damien’s air element opposed mine, but I could distract him. I drove my ethereal touch deeper and discovered a seething well of darkness.
The grip around my throat eased enough for me to snatch a breath. He brushed a cool leathery cheek against mine in a curiously feline gesture. “I feel you inside me, my Muse.”
I fluttered my eyes open while sinking my element further inside him, circling the dark well of his soul, tentatively stalking around its edges. Damien was damaged in a way I had no hope of reaching. A substantial primal madness pulsated inside him. I’d known he was sick, but I hadn’t realized how deep the corruption went.
He released my throat and slid his hand over my shoulder to find my wing-stump.
Now I could breathe. I could speak. “I had no choice,” I wheezed. His cold hand slid over the healed bone where he’d sheared my wing from my body. I winced, the memory of the assault slicing through me. I spat out my lies. “Akil—Mammon—he forced me to hurt you.”
Damien’s hand withdrew from my stump and rested on my shoulder. He leaned back. Gray eyes searched mine. Hell-knows what he saw there, perhaps exactly what he wanted to see. He pulled back and
lowered me to my feet. I slumped against the wall and drew my wing back around me. I held his searching gaze, sensing I’d stumbled upon something I could use. “What could I have done? He wanted me for himself. I’m nothing. I could no more go against his wishes than I could yours. He’s a Prince of Hell... I had no choice.” He read the desperate tone of my voice as despair, which of course it was, but for entirely different reasons than the one I’d just manufactured.
“Mammon is Prince no more.” Damien spat on the ground.
I gritted my teeth, and my jaw muscles jumped. I refused to let his revealing words rattle me. Buy it Damien. Just hear what you want to, that your beloved pet, your work of art, your muse, didn’t turn on you.
“I was always yours,” I said. My legs gave out. I dropped to my knees. “Your muse.”
His jaw set. His lips turned down. His eyes pinched into narrow slits sharp enough to pierce through me and sink into my soul to discover the truth. “My muse...”
“Always.” Please, please let him believe me. I don’t want to die here…
He knelt before me and clasped my face in his cold hands, locking me in his unwavering stare. I saw hope in the briefest flicker of light in his eyes and the gentle parting of his lips. He wanted to believe me.
I flung the touch of my power inside of him and locked it around the throbbing darkness. Lashes of tainted energy spiraled around mine and tangled with my touch, pulling me further into him. I gasped and twitched. His dark dragged me down. What the hell was he doing?
“Are you lying to me?” His grip on my face tightened. He could crush me. He was capable both mentally and physically of grinding my skull to dust.
“No.” I squeezed the simple denial through my clenched teeth as he pulled me deeper in to the terrifying unknown.
“You are mine. You were always mine. You will always be mine.” Dry lips smothered mine. His forked tongue pried my mouth open. I clamped my eyes closed, still trying to tug my ethereal touch out of him, but he wouldn’t release me. Every time I plucked a piece of power free, an eel-like tendril reached out and snapped it right back down. Screams burst inside my head.
His hands rode over my shoulders and down my back. My skin prickled. His roaming left hand rode up my wing. His toxic touch ignited memories that burned against my flesh. I realized with dreadful certainty that I wasn’t escaping him. Nobody was coming to save me. I would have to endure the worst he could do all over again.
Ryder, someone, anyone... Don’t let his happen.
Chapter 16
Damien was right.
He knew how to break me.
The creature I had once been, the tiny insignificant half-blood, she’d never really left me. I’d told myself she’d died with my owner, but those lies returned to haunt me. I had despised her, the old Muse—the slave, the piece of meat—and shoved her down into the smallest corner of my mind, wrapped her in fifteen years’ worth of denial and left her there to rot. That would have been fine, except I hadn’t anticipated Damien’s return. Perhaps, had I known he still existed somewhere, I could have prepared myself. I had no defense. I’d spent over a decade painting over the emotional cracks, every time they showed through my carefully constructed veneer of reality. I’d focused on remaking myself into something new and clean, bright and fresh. A human woman. I had a job, friends, an apartment, a cat. I watched Lost and swore at the ending. I wasted time drinking lattes in Starbucks. I sang in the shower, painted my toenails bright red, and dyed my hair, only to regret it in the morning. I had good days, when the sun warmed my skin and I couldn’t hold back the laughter. I had bad days, when I struggled to make enough money to pay the rent on my workshop. It all came together and created something so acutely real that I’d forgotten the years of slavery at the many hands of many demons.
Damien hadn’t.
He unmade me. The woman I’d become—the happy, independent woman—she’d been a dream. I knew that now. Akil hadn’t saved the wretched little girl at all. He’d left her to wallow in her own filth and dream up fanciful images of a world that didn’t exist. What good was freedom if all it achieved was the agony of having it ripped away? If I’d never known what it meant to be free, Damien couldn’t have hurt me the way he did.
I felt the break of dawn snap through the morning air even though I couldn’t see it from inside the hut. I lay on my side and watched logs crumble to ash in the grate. I was alone except for the scurrying of sharp-eyed-needle-point-legged critters skittering across the floor.
The ghost of Damien’s touch bloomed in the bruises beneath my skin. My hands, still clasped behind my back, were numb. I wished the rest of me felt the same. My wrists throbbed where the skin had rubbed raw. An abrasive burning ache radiated through all of me, alternating between teeth-gritting agony and wretched, feverish trembling.
I couldn’t escape his ozone smell. The sickly sweet scents of vomit, perspiration, semen, and blood surrounded me. My gut churned. Had it just been my body he’d invaded, I might have been able to scrape myself off the floor and find it in me to rage at him—given time—but he’d pulled me inside his rotten, rancid core. His poisonous touch had sunk beneath my skin, unraveling as it went. He picked apart my hopes and dreams, and drowned them beneath his lust, greed and hunger. When he couldn’t take any more—when I’d fallen silent and retreated into a numb husk of myself—he’d thrust his element into me. He invaded all of me, poured himself into my open wounds and smothered my strength, my will, my soul. Not done with soiling my insides, he broke down my rapidly diminishing barriers by pounding into me. I did nothing as he ruined me inside and out. Satisfied and spent, he discarded what was left of his half-blood slave in a stinking puddle of muck.
Fifteen years to make Muse the woman. A few hours with Damien to unmake me.
When the woman in white walked into the hut, I didn’t care who or what she was. I wasn’t entirely sure she was real. I didn’t trust my senses and was afraid, if I moved, my body and mind might shatter.
She knelt before me. Her skin sparkled in the dawn light spilling through the open doorway. She wore a delicate, translucent gown, through which I watched the light play across her female physique. I felt her cool touch feather across my cheek. Her brilliant-blue eyes flicked over my used body.
A small dagger, its surface a brittle blue, glinted in her hand. A flicker of a thought briefly offered me some relief. Perhaps she will kill me now. But she reached behind me, and after a few stokes of the blade, tossed my shackles away.
“My sweet thing...” Her voice chimed with a delicate melody.
I reached out a trembling hand and touched her face. Ice spidered across her cheek. A bitter chill sprinkled down my fingers. I hissed and pulled back.
“Come, Little One.” She slipped her arms beneath me and lifted me as though I weighed nothing. “He will return soon enough, and it would be best if he did not find us here.” I buried my head against her cool shoulder. Closing my eyes while curled up in her arms, I could pretend I was safe.
* * *
Her heartbeat held the same lullaby quality as her voice. I listened to its gentle rhythm as she carried me away from the little hut on the hill and away from Damien’s reach. Time passes differently beyond the veil, measured by the weight and taste of the air. Dawn and dusk aren’t reliable and can be manipulated by the most powerful of demons, hence the body becomes attuned to what it can measure. As the air lifted and thinned, I suspected we’d been walking for roughly an hour.
She asked me if I could walk when I lifted my head to take a look at our surroundings. I nodded and let her lower me onto unreliable legs, then walked beside her. We’d arrived at the fringes of a lake. The azure waters matched the woman’s eyes. She was a demon, but she’d chosen to appear human to me. Either she didn’t think I could handle her true appearance, or she was hiding her true form for other reasons. Even human, she was a breathtaking figure of serene beauty. Snow white hair cascaded in gentle curls down her back. Her pale skin glowed and s
himmered beneath the morning light, as though she’d been sprinkled with sugar. Her oval face and delicate cat-like almond eyes exuded a warmth her cool touch couldn’t detract from. She didn’t watch as I waded into the water and washed the filth from my skin. She didn’t see my tears.
It would take more than water to cleanse his touch from me.
We walked for long enough that my body stumbled. My muscles seized up. My legs trembled. I wondered if I might just as well lie down and rest when we finally reached a pebble beach. A quilt of snow had settled over the edge of a forest. Light refracted through icicle-tipped tree branches. The temperature plummeted as we ventured toward the snow. My breath misted in front of me, and my skin glowed warm in response. I pushed ahead; the air rippled around me. The ice attempted to suck the warmth from my flesh. My element flared.
The white woman smiled over her shoulder at me. “It will not hurt you.”
That was easy for her to say. I hung back as she walked over the snow. Her light footfalls barely left a single imprint.
I retained a little of my element and kept it close against me. My heat-wrapped feet promptly melted holes in the snow, making my progress a little awkward. Before long, we reached a grove frozen in ice. The ambient light slithered across brittle surfaces and fractured into tiny rainbows which danced like sprites around us.
“Would you mind?” She gestured at a stack of kindling in the center of the grove.
I obliged with a flick of my hand and ignited enough of the wood to start a fire. I assumed it was for my benefit.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll return.”
Devil May Care: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 2) Page 10