Darkest Heart

by Juliette Cross

  The tempo of the drum beat faltered, then stopped altogether. Axel’s voice died away. The familiar sound of screams and snarls tore us apart.

  Anya leaped back, both of us peering below as demons on the perimeter raced toward an unseen enemy in the massive foyer below us.

  Without a word, I launched toward the stairwell, glancing back to find Anya leaping over the balcony railing, her wings beating the air as she lowered into the melee. Still, I beat her to the entrance, which was already a battleground, black blood of demons splattering the steel columns and concrete walls alongside the dark red of angels.

  “What the fuck?”

  Two demons I didn’t recognize dressed in the same black leather garb as their allies, stood at the door, helping angel warriors cross the threshold of the wards. In the parking lot beyond, steel clanged against steel and bullets flew, the air sparking with electricity. A black storm roared its arrival. The telltale sign of angels and demons in battle.

  Anya, with the collar still attached, the chain tucked into her belt, flew straight out the open double doors.

  “Shit!”

  Racing after her, I sped out into mayhem. A raging wind roared over the din of gunshot and sword fight. The black-winged warriors of Maximus’s army rained hell down on the demons with their claymore swords they wielded easily with one hand. The sorry bastards were fighting nobly, the old hand-to-hand combat still in play. But demons had found better, more lethal weapons—ether-laced bullets and blades.

  Lightning crackled a purple streak across the sky. Its mate, a crash of thunder, shook the stone buildings, amplifying the supernatural energy pulsing in the air.

  Cocytus, one of the five Soul Collectors of the underworld shrieked with a piercing cry like a banshee over the moor. Known as the River of Lamentation and Soul-eater of Woe, she cursed every soul she ate to experience unending grief in the bowels of her body, their souls descending into a dimension worse than hell. Hovering up and down in the air like a spider waiting to stick and devour its prey, her ghastly pale face and glittering black eyes moved this way and that. With an ear-splitting screech, she descended on a fallen demon, shoveling him up into her gaping maw with skeletal hands—flesh, guts, bones, and all.

  Scanning the bedlam, noting several black-winged angels among the band of heavenly warriors, I sought out the only one that mattered. The one with blue wings.

  Spotting Anya, my heart stopped. A bald-headed demon had a grip on the end of her chain—which only I could remove. He jerked it forward, pulling her to her knees. His fucking minions circled her just out of reach of the daggers she held in both hands.

  Rage, white-hot, burned through my blood. Cocytus would have more filth to feast upon. Stalking forward in long strides, my target in sight, my beast clawed his way to the top, bellowing one word from his cold black heart.

  Death.

  Chapter Ten

  Anya

  Five demons circled closer, their leader reeling in the chain, dragging me on my knees toward him. How the hell had I forgotten about the damn chain? My instincts always pushed me into battle without thinking. Now, I had to figure out how to do this with Dommiel’s chain tethering me to the red-eyed fiend dragging me closer.

  I honed in on his vitals, picturing where I’d cut him through. I glared up into his sneering face, then suddenly he was gone, and I was knocked sideways onto the pavement.

  Dommiel had my attacker on the ground. “Wrong angel, motherfucker.”

  In a too-swift move, he gripped under his chin with his metal hand and ripped the demon’s screaming head right off, black blood spraying the air. Dommiel lobbed the demon’s head like a ball across the parking lot where it landed and rolled to a bumpy stop near Cocytus. She shrieked and gobbled it in one bite. The soul-eaters wandered the battlefields, eating their fill, but I never got used to the sight. I swallowed the bile rising up my throat. The soul-eaters were entities unto themselves, governed by neither heaven or hell. And though their favorite meal seemed to be the damned, they horrified me. With her next shriek, a ripple of woe laced the air, followed by a resounding crack of lightning. Dommiel carried the headless demon’s decapitated body halfway to her, then returned.

  His pitiless gaze swiveled to the demons hovering around me, who’d frozen at his horrific display of lethal brutality and now began backing away. He shook his head from side to side.

  “Too late.”

  I couldn’t breathe, paralyzed by the sight of him. His lithe, deadly movements. Black-bladed dagger in hand, he didn’t sift but moved in supernatural speed. His fatal blows were efficient and without grandeur, a quick twist of the blade here, a swipe of another there, his body pivoting in a dance of death that was mesmerizing. Beautiful. With long strides, broad shoulders twisting, he dispatched one then another, expelling them back to hell in smoke and ashy cinders, their cries howling on the wind. But Dommiel showed no mercy, grim determination marking his face with a fierceness I’d not seen on any soldier before.

  Around us, angels and demons engaged in combat. One flapped his black wings, hovering above us before swinging his great broad sword in an arc to decapitate a snarling demon. Maximus, my former general. Setting his booted feet on the stone pavement, his piercing blue eyes captured mine right before he turned to face another demon who launched toward him.

  The spark of electric-green ether ammo zipped through the air, felling one angel, then another. Ether ammo could damage immensely, but a demon must have direct contact either through steel—a sword or dagger—or get his hands on the angel to send his soul to the netherworld. Across the lot, a gangly horned demon stood on an abandoned car and snatched the wing of an unsuspecting angel warrior, then impaled his blade in the angel’s back as he whispered the incantation seconds before the warrior exploded in luminescent blue light and sparks, his soul now damned to the tortures of hell.

  Then I was lifted onto my feet by strong arms.

  “Hold still,” whispered Dommiel, his shirt and jacket splattered with glistening black demon blood.

  I did as he commanded while he gently unclasped the chain from around my neck. His expression still savage and hard, I touched my fingers to his jaw to get his attention.

  “Thank you.”

  His dark scarlet eye found mine, but he said not a word. Lost for a moment, I could do nothing but stare up at him, the cries of battle and the flash of weapon fire filling the air. He cupped my face and brushed a thumb across my cheek in a heartrending tender caress. So unlike him. Or was it?

  He opened his mouth to say something, then suddenly bellowed in pain, arching his neck and back. Lightning fast, he spun to face his new attacker.

  Gasping at the sight of the sword swipe all the way through his leather jacket, shirt, and flesh, blood dripping from the wound, I drew my own daggers beside him in a defensive stance.

  Shock kept me immobile for a moment as I stared across at Maximus.

  “General,” I murmured.

  His muscles bunched at his exposed biceps beyond his armor when he swung his blade up high over one shoulder, readying for attack.

  “So this is what becomes of you, Anya. A sworn soldier abandons her post to consort with…this?”

  The raging wind whipped his black hair around his shoulders. He was the epitome of the stunning, fierce, and noble archangel, warrior till the end. And blind to what he didn’t understand. Something in his brutal gaze burning into Dommiel seemed odd, out of place. Maximus was a warrior who fought with cold precision. Though often ruthless, he’d never shown the searing hatred flaming in his blue-eyed gaze toward Dommiel.

  “You’re mistaken, Maximus. We are on a mission to find Uriel. Working together.”

  The stubborn archangel narrowed his gaze and sneered. “Uriel is in the underworld where no one will find him. If you truly are no traitor, then step away from this demon so I can cut him through.” With a brazen swing of his sword and beat of his gargantuan wings that lifted him above us, he targeted Dommiel for death.<
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  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Dommiel pushed me behind him with one hand, aimed a handgun with a large barrel directly at Maximus, then fired—the electric-green blast of an ether bullet exploding from the barrel and into the side of Maximus’s torso. The blast spun him through the air, his sword clanging to the ground before his own body hit the ground, wings crumbling beneath him.

  “Oh God! What did you do?”

  Before I could go to the general to see how bad the injury was, Dommiel wrapped me up into his arms. “No, baby,” he whispered close to my ear, his breathing unsteady. “We’re out of here.”

  Then we disappeared into the Void. My instinct was to fight him, to go back and see if I could help the general. He’d been my mentor for centuries, training me for the Great War. That is, before I’d become jaded with their single-minded agenda to destroy demonkind at all costs. Even at the cost of human lives. Of human extinction.

  “Easy,” Dommiel murmured.

  The sift was longer than normal, then we snapped out onto solid ground. A dark alley in a city, the damp cold heavy and ominous in the stillness.

  “You shot an archangel general!” I pushed out of his hold.

  Without a glance at me, fury vibrating from him, he stepped toward a steel-plated door. “I grazed him. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.” He snorted in disgust. “Your boyfriend will live.”

  “My boyfriend?”

  “Enough. Let’s get inside.” Placing his hand on the door, he whispered softly, “Patentibus.” A tendril of gray-black smoke wound into the keyhole before a jarring screech of metal echoed into the alley as a bolt slid open on the other side. Hauling the door open, he turned at the entrance and held his hand out to me.

  “You can’t cross the threshold without me. Take my hand.”

  Still rattled and angry that he shot Maximus, I took his hand anyway and let him lead me into the darkness beyond. The door clanged shut behind us, the bolt sliding home by Dommiel’s whispered command, the snapping of demon power electric in the air.

  “Stairs here,” he muttered.

  Following down a short stairwell, he let go of my hand, then flicked on a light switch. Taking in the room in one sweep—a bed draped in blue velvet, a fireplace along the exposed brick wall, another wall of shelves, an oversized mahogany desk covered in books and loose papers, a glass case of guns and blades, and an open door leading to a small bathroom—I pivoted to Dommiel.

  “This is your home.”

  He tossed his leather satchel on the desk, then unharnessed his gun belt. Wincing, he stripped off his shirt, soaked in his own dark red blood.

  “Yeah,” he huffed, his tone cynical. “Home, sweet home.” Anger still sizzled in the air around him, but I wasn’t quite sure why.

  He started unbuckling his belt as he toed off a boot. I swallowed hard on the sudden thickness in my throat. His mouth ticked up on one side in a feral grin.

  “Do me a favor. Take three drakuls and drop them in a glass of water.” He pointed toward the corner. “Water’s in the fridge.”

  When he turned toward the bathroom, I gasped at the deep slice down his back, severing an inked battle scene. I only got a glimpse before he disappeared into the bathroom. A faucet turned on, then a stream of water pattered on the tile.

  Shaking off the desire to peek in the open doorway, I walked to his small refrigerator, halted by my surroundings, the inner sanctum of such a man. Rows and rows of books, mostly worn and leather bound, lined the shelves. I trailed my fingers along the spines of a few—Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. They all appeared to be early or first editions. I pulled out the thin collection of Coleridge’s poetry. Indeed, it was the first edition with the author’s signature and a white satin bookmark set on one page. Flipping, I found the narrative poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” marked, seemingly read many, many times, the bend of the spine pronounced here. Skimming the poem, my pulse quickened, wondering at a demon who would collect rare books and read this poem so often.

  The old man told his cursed tale to another, as was his fate, how he’d gone to sea and made a fatal mistake, killing one of God’s creatures, damning his crew to wander the open seas, adrift and dying of thirst. Then one dark night, a ghost ship drifts close where Lady Spectre and her mate, Death, gamble for their souls on the deck in a game of dice. She wins, taking the lives of every crewman except the cursed narrator, leaving him to wander endlessly, tortured with an eerie corpse crew to man the ship, until he finally collapsed, close to death, upon the deck. A band of angels came down, showing pity upon him, dropping the living corpses upon the deck, and sending rescue to the mariner. Though on safe ground, Fate isn’t done with him, forcing him to tell his tale over and over as penance for his sins.

  I snapped the book shut, eyeing the open doorway of the bathroom, completely perplexed at the idea of Dommiel—a damned demon—finding this poem in particular so fascinating. Beyond the books and weaponry, there were other personal items that spoke more of a high demon lord.

  A gold chalice, hand hammered and inlaid with coin-sized rubies around the rim—the cup of a king—set upon a shelf. An antique Greek vase, which looked as if it had been kept well over time, bearing the scene of a woman copulating with a satyr. A well-endowed satyr. Upon a stand, an aged iron dagger with the pronounced design of the Romans—thick crossbar with a blade that curved inward and a slight bulging before coming to a fine point. An insignia was stamped into the crossbar in Roman letters, a name I didn’t recognize. Treasures he’d collected over the ages. Ones he deemed worthy of keeping in his exile.

  Glancing at a low table next to a chair near the bed was an ashtray made of a human skull—hollowed out and set on a marble stand upside down, the skeleton’s smile giving an eerie impression from its overturned position. The flake of ash told me this was no decoration. I shivered in wonder at whose skull Dommiel had kept to desecrate.

  What a paradox he was—a demon lord who surrounded himself with objects of power and death but who also read poetry of salvation and redemption. He was so much more than he let the world see. What was more shocking was my innate need to know more of him. To know all he would tell me and give me.

  Shaking off these perplexing thoughts, I walked to the refrigerator. It was stocked with bottled water and that was all. I found a glass in the cabinet above, emptied a bottle into it, then set it on his desk. Unzipping his satchel, I dug around the ammo till I found a jingling pouch. When I scooped out three pieces, the power they held vibrated in my palm and hummed along my skin. I felt a latent sting in my neck where the demon prince’s poison pooled. A finger of pain slid like a knife under my collarbone toward my heart, reminding me my time was running out. I resisted the dark essence weaving its way deeper inside me, but eventually it would encase my soul and take over my will. I would fight it off as long as I could, but a demon prince was too powerful for me to resist forever.

  With a sharp twist of my wrist, eager to let go of the power-infused drakuls, I watched as they wound in a perfect circle around the inner rim of the glass till they settled on the bottom. A green plume of liquid smoke swirled as the coins dissolved, the sinuous smoke rising out of the water, swaying like a cobra ready to strike, the echoing hiss very much like a serpent warning enemies to beware. A high-pressure pulse of white light blinked, blinding me for a split second. I leaped back, then all was still and quiet as before. Only the faint crackle of otherworldly power fizzled from the glass, the liquid glowing electric green.

  Dommiel let out a pained groan. Where I’d stepped back, I was in the perfect position to simply turn my head and peer inside the bathroom.

  I shouldn’t.

  Warring with temptation was quite new to me. I’d never had to battle my own desires. Not until I’d met this damn demon.

  A little peek wouldn’t hurt.

  So I did, angling in just enough to get a partial view of the backside of
his body.

  Oh, lovely.

  Apparently, I’d lost all sense, because that wasn’t enough. I edged farther into view, watching in awe as he braced both hands—flesh and metal—splayed wide against the white stone, letting the steamy water pour down his broad back covered in intricate tattoos, sliding over his muscular buttocks and down thick thighs. My mouth gone desert dry, I couldn’t move, drinking in the sight of him as he arched his neck back, the corded muscle straining as he dipped his head under the steaming water.

  His eyes still closed, his action-rough voice startled me from my shameful ogling. “You can join me if you like.”

  He didn’t even open his eyes and look my way. Still, I couldn’t move, riveted by the rugged, masculine beauty of him—scars, wounds, and all. What is wrong with me?

  “Your drakuls potion is ready.” Though I tried to hide the tremor in my voice, I failed. Miserably.

  Unhurried, he turned off the faucet and slid the glass shower door open, stepping onto a white mat. I couldn’t breathe properly, my chest rising and falling quickly, yet I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. Or perhaps I was getting too much.

  Frozen, I stared at his magnificent body, transfixed by the swirling and jagged ink rippling over his firm chest and well-muscled abdomen down to the perfect vee at his hips. The scene of two dragons mid-battle—one red and one black—draped the border of his torso. The red dragon clawed the black, while the black opened his jaws onto the red’s tail. Harmoniously detailed skulls and flowers were interwoven around and between them. But at the center of his torso were two constellations in myriad shades of blue. One was the seven sisters, the beautiful nymphs whose father was Atlas and held up the world. They were cavorting naked with slender limbs, the stars pinpointing their willowy outlines. Nearby was Orion the hunter, aiming his bow and arrow at the charging Taurus, all inked with such intricate detail it could’ve been a painting.

  My eyes drifted lower from the captivating artwork to something even more mesmerizing. His…manhood hung heavy and thick against his thigh in a semi-state of arousal. At half-mast, it was more than impressive. Far more than sculptures I’d seen in museums.