“Shut the fuck up,” Asher and I yell at the same time.
Callan sighs. “Not the time for ass envy. Got it.”
Asher slides his eyes to Callan. “Is there truly ever a good time for ass envy?”
Locryn strolls back out wearing my jeans and a T-shirt, taking us in.
“London clan members. Keegan. Callan. Asher,” I introduce, pointing to each St. Michael brother. “This is Locryn. After he shifts, he tends to be . . . naked.”
The hellhound lifts his chin at the protectors before he frowns at me.
“Where in the castle is she?” I try not to rip his throat out.
“In the throne room. In front of the gates.”
I clench my jaw. “Why did Asmodeus take her there?”
“They’re removing the soul tie,” he replies.
A hiss escapes Asher’s lips and I try to control my rage. For the first time in my life, even after Camilla, I can’t calm the ire inside of me. It’s as if I’ve gone mad.
“They?” Keegan inquires.
“Asmodeus,” Locryn replies slowly. “And Mammon.”
“Mammon?” I repeat harshly.
“My second in command wouldn’t lie. He overheard them. There was discussion about a reversal spell. I guess Asmodeus made a deal; he can’t harm Nassa, or Gage.”
Asher leans toward me. “The deal he made with Eve.”
I refuse to look at him. “Jesus Christ! Mammon is his loophole.”
“Mammon is the one removing the soul tie,” Locryn blurts out.
My stomach clenches. “He wouldn’t.”
Locryn’s expression turns sad. “He already has.”
28
History Repeats
LOCRYN
Pacing by the gate, I watch the blood drip down her arm. My stomach roils at the gruesome sight of the gaping hole in the sorceress’s arm. Gage’s name falls from her lips like a quiet prayer. These two fuckers didn’t even have the decency to keep her sedated for all this shit. Like true immoral demon lords, they waited until she came to before they started torturing her. For sport. Her own father and uncle. It’s unreal.
I watch the whole scene play out, helplessly. Feeling like shit. It’s times like this being a hellhound sucks. When we protect the gates to Hell, in our shifted form, we have no free will. Shifted, I’m compelled by my demonic blood to submit and obey the two lords.
And yet, as they torment Nassa, and she takes their cruelty without showing distress, the need to save her in me grows. It burns in my veins, igniting a deep protectiveness in me. Nassa mutters Gage’s name over and over again under her breath, as if it’s somehow keeping her focused. I’ll give the sorceress credit, she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t fight, or scream. She doesn’t show fear. Only devotion and love.
With honor, she looks them in the eyes as they brutalize her body. All for love—a love for which she is sacrificing everything, surrendering, and showing unwavering loyalty in the face of torture. It’s unearthly.
I exhale slowly, reliving the crazed look in Gage’s wild eyes that was present when I arrived at his loft earlier tonight. When I told him what the hell was going on, the terror and panic in his expression was almost too much. Tortured memories from his past, mixed with his anger at what is happening now in the present, gave him a haunted, glazed look.
Still, I would do it again. Tell Gage. When my second in command told me what Mammon and Asmodeus were doing to Nassa—when he explained that he watched Asmodeus slap his niece, causing her to bleed—I had no choice but to go against my lineage. The only reason I haven’t stepped in is because I know they need her alive.
Mammon holds up the square piece of her skin. “Nail it to his door.”
One of his demon minions takes it and disappears, and I silently growl.
A maniacal laugh falls out of Nassa. “Gage will destroy you for this.”
Mammon rolls his eyes at her threat. “Let him try.”
I bite down on my tongue, tasting blood. I’ve known Gage for a long time. I knew him long before he met and fell in love with Camilla. This—what’s going on right now in this room—is going to wreck him when he finds out. More so than when Camilla was taken from him. The difference is, Camilla never would have faced the torture with her chin held high—defiantly. Tearless. Fearless. Not in the same way Nassa is accepting it.
Mammon stares down at his daughter. “Your ties to him, and the divine, end tonight.”
He places a fatherly kiss on the top of her head as she tries to hold on to consciousness.
Not backing down, she watches his every move with whatever strength she has left.
Mammon places his left palm gently on the top of her head, and with his right hand, he runs a sharp knife slowly across her neck. The demon lord didn’t even show her kindness by doing it swiftly. Inch by slow fucking inch, he drags it across her neck, smiling down at her as her blood—his blood—gushes out of her, down her neck, over her collarbone, and begins to soak the front of her tank top.
Unable to watch, I look away and grind my teeth.
“Locryn!” Asmodeus shouts.
The hellhound in me has no option but to obey. I pad over to him.
“Take her to Gage. Leave her at his door. Then report back.”
“Yes, my lord,” I reply in a strange voice.
When my eyes meet her half-lidded ones, I fight the urge to look away. Because Nassa has royal demon blood in her veins, I feel all the pain she feels, like it’s my own. Not without difficulty, I stalk closer to her with a steady gait, prepared to fulfill my purpose.
I have no choice but to comply with Asmodeus’s command, as his hellhound protector.
“You,” she gurgles.
Me. I push into her mind using telepathy.
Nassa’s head drops forward as she tries to keep her eyes open. I watch, powerless, as the life drains from her body. I ignore the invocation of Gage’s name falling from her lips.
In a short time, I will lay her lifeless body at Gage’s feet.
As Asmodeus requested.
As Gage knew he would.
Darkness surrounds us as I pace next to Nassa. As instructed, I’ve positioned her limp body against the door, watching as she bleeds out. Taken aback that she isn’t dead yet. Where the hell are they? I keep pacing, staring at her, as Asmodeus’s watchmen keep an eye on me, making sure I am following his instructions like good little demon hellhound.
After a few shaky breaths, and with a ridiculous amount of effort and energy, her eyes slowly flutter open. As she takes in her surroundings, understanding crosses Nassa’s expression, along with fear, as she realizes she is sitting in a pool of her own blood. An odd gurgling whimper falls out of her before she passes out. Goddamn it. Hurry the fuck up.
A second later, she manages to regain consciousness, though it’s weak. Her eyes fall onto the sealing stone cuffs preventing her from doing her magic or healing herself.
Hold on, sorceress. I say to myself. Branna will be here soon to get those off you.
Then, as if in slow motion, her gaze falls to her wrist.
At the sight, she pales even more and begins to thrash around, freaking out.
Unable to watch her suffer anymore, I approach her and curl up against her leg, trying to offer her some level of comfort. Fuck the demon watchmen. I need her to calm the hell down until the others get here. Using telepathy, I remind her of what happened with the mark and where the skin is now. Hearing my words, hard shivers wrack her body.
When her head falls forward, I can’t help but whine, suffering in pain along with her. Pleading with her not to die, I try to keep her warm. Ten seconds. They have ten fucking seconds before I do something to save her life. Regardless of whether Asmodeus’s minions are watching me or not. Nassa weakens further and loses consciousness again. Fuck it.
I don’t care if this wasn’t the plan. She’s dying. Moving closer, I lick her wrist and throat. My hellhound saliva won’t heal her, but the demonic organisms in it wi
ll mix with her demon blood and restore the torn skin, closing the wounds and preventing more blood from oozing out. Just as her skin closes, Gage finally opens the goddamn door.
When his eyes fall on her, I know she’s safe. Sniffing in the scent of the demons watching, I look up at Gage. He dips his chin in approval and I run after them, to kill them before they can report back to Asmodeus. I’ll tell him myself what occurred here.
That she bled out.
That she was found by Gage.
That history repeated itself.
29
Always
GAGE
I stand in the doorway, unable to move, hiding in the shadows. Something I’ve gotten good at doing over time. Sixteen hours. Sixteen hours of me cursing, pacing, and punishing myself for her disappearance.
When we had fallen asleep in each other’s arms that night, I thought my world was figured out. The darkness was defeated. I was wrong.
When Locryn showed up and told me what Mammon and Asmodeus were doing, all I wanted was to find and destroy them. With Locryn’s account of Nassa’s fierceness as they tortured her, it truly hit me . . . Nassa isn’t Camilla. She isn’t human. Or weak.
All along, she’d been telling me this.
I’d refused to listen.
But she was right. She doesn’t need my protection.
In order to save her, I had to let her go. Hardest fucking sixteen hours of my life. The moment I opened the door and saw her lying there, it all became clear. This was about her. Not me. It was being done for greed. Power. I knew she would survive; they wouldn’t risk killing her. In that knowledge, I allowed history to repeat itself. Because the darkness will always be there. Lurking. Threatening. If I live my life with her fearful of her death, then what’s the fucking point? This time, I looked the darkness in the face and decided there was no way it was going to drag me back into its dark hell.
Inhaling, I don’t take my eyes off her sleeping form. I lean against the doorway, needing it for support. Not wanting my knees to buckle under the weight of guilt and relief. With my arms crossed, I watch her rest in my stone state bed as Branna chants under her breath, her hands gliding above and over Nassa’s body, healing her with magic.
“You okay?” Asher steps to my side.
“No.”
“If you were mated, you’d be able to heal her in stone state.”
“We aren’t. I can’t—” I trail off.
He nods, looking at the bed, falling quiet, lost in his own grief-stricken thoughts.
I hang my head.
My heart and mind are waging war on each other.
One part of me wants to walk over to the bed, take her in my arms, and cherish her forever. The other part, the one that allowed history to repeat itself, is most likely going to get slapped and kicked to the curb when she wakes up and learns what I’ve done.
“She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up,” I exhale.
“Yup,” he agrees. “Bed new?”
“It is.”
“She does have a history. Given what she did in a fit of rage to my library, and your art studio, you might want to think about getting another bed,” he suggests. “Just in case.”
I shrug with one shoulder. “This one is too ostentatious anyway.”
“That’s a big word for you, Gallagher.”
“I bought a dictionary.”
“Excellent investment.”
We fall quiet, my eyes roaming over Nassa as I study every breath, every eyelash. “I thought I knew what love was.” I whisper the admission. “I didn’t. I thought I loved Camilla. But what if I just loved her because she needed me? Needed me to protect her?”
“I’ve been there. Standing right where you are. Thinking the way you are right now. Time and time again, I watched Eve suffer because of my world. Because of something I did. And each and every time it happened, I vowed to never touch her again. Ruin her life. Keep loving her.” He sighs. “I told myself that it wasn’t love, just the need to protect.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“How do you know the difference?”
“Every single bone in my body shudders with pure rage, with the need to destroy and rip something apart—someone, anyone—at the very idea of her death. My friends. My brothers. My clan. For her, I would bring war to our doorstep and take my last breath to make sure she took another. We are gargoyles. We protect.” He turns and faces me. “But we are also men, who love deeply. Protection is love in our world. It’s okay to have protected and loved both. Loving Nassa doesn’t mean you didn’t love Camilla. Yeah?”
“She’s in danger being in my life.”
“She’s in danger either way, given who her father is,” he counters.
“They’ll pay. For taking her. Hurting her. Spilling her blood.”
“No doubt,” Asher replies. “In time, we will end all this shit. I swear to you.”
“In the meantime, how the fuck am I supposed to love and protect her?”
“Welcome to my hell,” he chuckles. “Listen, she’s going to be okay. Nassa is a powerful, pissed-off sorceress. With the ability to wield both dark and white magic. She just had her throat slit and wrist mutilated, and still fought to get back to you without shedding a single tear. If anyone in this room is doing the protecting, it’s her, of you.”
“Says the gargoyle king whose half-human mate protects him.”
“She may be half-human, but she could kick your ass.”
“Doubtful. I’ve trained her, and seen her fight. She’s a hopeless cause.”
“That she is.” He smirks. “You’ve stood by us through a ton of shit.”
I shift away from him. “You aren’t going to hug me, are you?”
His annoyed eyes meet mine. “You protected and loved her, when I couldn’t.”
“Yeah. I’m a fucking hero,” I choke out.
Asher’s shoulders fall. “I get to love her, Gage, forever, because of you.” We lock gazes. “For that, I will be eternally in your debt. So let me start repaying you, yeah?”
My throat tightens, threatening to close up on me completely.
“Let me help you protect and love her now.” He motions to Nassa with his chin.
My gaze roams over her. The pink color is coming back to her cheeks and the wounds have all but healed. I can even see a hint of the soul tie mark on her wrist on the new skin.
“How the hell do you plan on doing that?”
“There is a way that Sora can bind your soul tie with divinity.”
Sora is an elder gargoyle, and the leader of the Spiritual Assembly of Protectors. She performs binding ceremonies and inducts protectors into the Spiritual Assembly.
“What will binding it do?” I ask.
“It will turn the soul tie mark into a mate mark. You and Nassa will have all the benefits of being mated, even if there is no soul connection. You’ll be able to heal her. Share mind connections. Have a link as if you were mated. And most of all, Asmodeus and Mammon would never be able to break it, like the soul tie. To force her to turn darker.”
My eyes slide back to Nassa. After losing Camilla, the first few days—hell, the first few months, years, centuries—after, all was exactly the same. The days and nights blended together. All I was trying to do was survive. To mend the pieces of my broken heart.
Until her . . .
“You’ve already made your choice,” Asher says quietly. “And she’s it.”
He’s right. With Nassa, I’ve found an existence where I am starting to feel again. Where my outside emotions have started matching how I feel inside. For years, I loved only Camilla. But now, our love feels more like a happy memory. A memory in the past.
Nassa is the present.
Nassa is my future.
And I fucking love her.
“I choose her,” I whisper.
Asher’s hand lands on my shoulder, squeezing. “Good choice, man.”
“I was mated once. How is this second binding
even possible?” I ask.
“In our world, anything and everything is possible if you know the right people.”
He winks.
The fucker actually winks at me.
Cocky jerk.
“Who the hell made you king?”
“The powers that be.” He grins widely.
“They need to have their heads checked.”
“Look at me. I mean, can you blame whoever she is?”
“She?”
“Clearly it’s a she,” he argues.
“Why is that?”
“Because whoever made me king is smart and obviously has the hots for me.”
“Both questionable,” I mumble. “Regardless, whoever she is, we need to have words.”
“Talk all you want. I came first. Therefore, I’m the perfect choice.”
I hiss in an annoyed breath. “Go get Sora. I’ll talk to Nassa.”
“Done.”
Appreciating his help, I dip my chin.
For a moment, he just stands there staring at me, before he pulls a knife out of his pocket and slits his palm, holding out the knife to me.
Asher’s expression turns serious as he grabs the back of my neck with his other hand, pulling me forward, pressing his forehead to mine. “From here on out Gage, you live,” he says with a strong voice. “For her. And you keep cheating death. For the rest of us.”
Without hesitation, I take the knife, making a small slice on my palm and slapping my hand over his. A promise. A blood oath between brothers. Between clans. Between friends.
To protect those we love.
To protect ourselves.
Always.
30
Sweet Revenge
GAGE
Like heroes in some action movie, the four of us turn the corner and saunter into the alleyway.
Asher, Callan, and Keegan are behind me in a V formation. The night air is chilly as the rain falls hard all around, soaking us as we approach the door with purpose. Without stopping, I lift an archaic gun and shoot Isaac between the eyes, hitting him with a sage smudge. He howls as it burns off his face. He collapses next to the door, crawling away with his face smoking.
Dark Paradise: A Revelation Series Novel (The Revelation Series Book 6) Page 21