by RS Black
But in order to survive this, I needed Ya-El again.
And the scary part was, a side of me was beginning to like the killing. The mayhem. The destruction. The power.
So I repressed the conscience, but with it, I was repressing my humanity. And that thought horrified me. It would be nothing for me to become that person again and I knew if I did, I’d lose Asher’s respect forever.
The only hope I had was to shut off Ya-El when I wasn’t on missions. But being here, in a place where everyone wanted to either kill me or exploit me, it wasn’t easy hanging on to my humanity.
The only way I could do it was to remember that there were others out there who still believed in me. People who I hoped wouldn’t give up on me. And that if I could somehow manage to get my mark back, I could make everyone inside this place pay.
“Ah, Ya-El.” My spine stiffened at the sound of the doctor’s voice behind me.
I twirled in the whitewashed hall of my new home. A fortress of iron, steel, and endless corridors full of windowless rooms—if I hadn’t been crazy before I’d come here, I was sure as hell getting there now.
I walked the halls full of shifters and Triad humans, a free woman. But I wasn’t truly free, and the doctor knew it.
He stood with his feet spread wide, lovingly caressing the clear polymer resin shell that encased my mark. “We need a word, demon.”
A female wolverine shifter with a citrine-orange Mohawk and wearing a white lab coat glanced between the two of us as she walked past me toward one of the many testing laboratories.
The screams of human lab rats was a constant sonnet through the halls.
“In my office,” he said with a hint of a smirk, and turning on his heel he walked three rooms back.
Glaring at a shifter sergeant at arms, I twirled on my own black-leather-booted heel and marched back, slamming the door shut behind me with a powerful and jarring thud.
Doc never even reacted. He simply lifted a brow before gesturing with his arm toward a chair that I should sit.
Then, sitting behind his gleaming mahogany desk, he tapped his fingers repetitively on the computer mouse pad.
I’d learned months ago not to question his authority verbally. The man was a sadistic bastard. So long as he held my mark, I was helpless before him. Anything he asked me, I would eventually have to do.
Finally, after a minute’s dramatic pause, he sighed. “I’m unhappy with your performance this night, Dora.”
I stiffened. “I’m not Pandora. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”
“Oh yes.” He reclined on his ergo chair, crossing his fingers over his flat stomach. “So you say constantly. And yet, tonight Dean tells me otherwise.”
I clenched my molars, grinding them so hard my jaw began to ache. “What exactly does he think I did?”
“You know, you’re my creation. And a damn fine one. But perhaps I underestimated the Priest’s ability to keep you tethered to him.”
Don’t growl. Whatever you do. Don’t growl. Say nothing. Do nothing. Show no outward sign of anything.
I chanted the litany to myself over and over, gripping the armrests of that chair so tight that one of my fingernails snapped down to the quick. The pain helped center me.
My Priest. The desire of my black soul. The only good thing left to me in this life. The only being in the world that gave a damn about me. That wanted me for who I was. Or, who I’d been.
My heart ached to know what he must think of me now. The things I’d done. The things I would do.
“You told me they would remain safe. So long as I promise to abide by your rules, they are safe.”
He snorted, tapping his pointer finger on the third button of his navy blue dress shirt. “Yes, well, perhaps I’ve had cause to reconsider.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m a good soldier. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me. I’ve killed for you. I’ve—”
His lips thinned as he held up a hand to me. “Yes. Yes. And all that’s well and good. But you’re also tainted.”
“The hell I am!” I shot to my feet, quivering with rage, wishing I could snap his neck in half the way I did with the other doctor tonight. Just the thought of it made me want to smile.
Someday I would kill this small, puny man in front of me.
“Sit down!”
It was like being gripped by a fist of flame. Fire bolted through my bloodstream, making me groan as I quickly complied with his command. Sweat coated my body and I panted as though I’d run a thousand-mile marathon.
His fingers flexed on the pendant. “Why did you kill that man tonight?”
“Because his usefulness was at an end and he was a mole. I would have figured you’d be happy to rid yourself of that blight.”
His nostrils flared.
“So I suppose it had nothing to do with the fact that he was a child molester.”
I hissed, remembering my momentary lapse in judgment when I’d confessed the man’s crimes to Dean.
“No. I simply mentioned it as something noteworthy.”
His eyes danced with laughter. “Do you really think me a fool, Pandora? You see, that’s who you really are. When I had you in terra last year, I unlocked Ya-El. Unlocked that beautiful monster inside of you. She breathes and lives within you, Nephilim, she is you. You”—he flicked his fingers at me—“you are simply an illusion that has failed to comprehend your utter uselessness. I should have known that, of course, when you asked me to keep your ‘loved ones’”—he finger quoted—“out of harm’s way. But I was so excited to see my plan come to fruition, and well...”—he shrugged—“fact is, they’re a hindrance, and you, my precious beast, are going to kill them.”
Heart thundering in my chest, I choked on the scream that threatened to rip my throat in two.
The command to obey burned through me, made me want to whimper and cry out. But I fought it, even as I felt the darkness bleed through my eyes. “You make me do this, and you will get the monster.”
“My point exactly.” He chuckled.
Slamming my palms on the desk, I shoved my face to within a hair’s breadth of his and for the first time tasted a hint of fear wafting off him.
The doctor was no shrinking violet. He was a man used to playing with monsters. But he’d never played with one like me.
I was nearly as powerful as any High-Caste Demon Lord and he knew it.
“I don’t think you understand me, doc.” And then, opening my psyche, I gave him just a taste of the demon Gluttony. The killer who wanted it all. The blood. The viscera. The screams. The fear.
I licked my lips as the gluttonous beast pumped its want through his brain. Images of me tapping into his vein, tearing my claws through his gut as his intestines poured down around my feet, drove like a spear through his mind.
His pupils dilated. “You...you have to do as I say.”
It was my turn to grin. “You want Ya-El.” The seduction of Lust purred through my lips as I opened my mind to the darkness within me. Flicking out a finger, I traced the shell of my mark. I couldn’t take it from around his neck. He knew it. It was magically bound to him.
For now.
“You’re right, doc. You did unlock my darkness. The monster. And do you know what’s keeping you and the entire building alive?”
I rubbed my nose with his, breathing my lusty pheromones down his throat. One of the perks of being so powerful was that I no longer had to turn into the ultimate desire of others, because I now was all things to all people. Gay, straight, asexual...I owned everyone.
His body crawled with goose bumps even as the sharp curl of his terror settled on my tongue.
He shook his head.
I nodded. “You do know. What’s keeping you alive is merely one itty bitty piece of jewelry.” I flicked at the resin and curled my leg around me, my movements like a sensuous jungle cat. “Did you know that when a demon makes a promise, they keep it?”
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bo
bbing almost violently in his throat.
My lips feathered along his. “So here’s my promise to you.”
The fire of his command was still sharp on me, but my fury was cold and bitter and gave me the strength to keep on.
“You leave my family alone, and I might let you live when this is all said and done. But if you make me kill them, if you screw me over, I will drag you to Hell with me and there will be no end to your suffering.”
Then I shoved him back, wishing I could have at least ripped my claw down his cheek.
Trembling, he ran a shaky hand through his hair. But his voice was calm and powerful as he said, “You are magnificent. Truly, gloriously wicked. Fine.” He readjusted his tie, the picture of calm and collected once more. “Kill how you would. So long as I have your unremitting allegiance, I shall not require their deaths for now.”
I didn’t allow myself to show the sigh of relief I felt. But my knees definitely quivered with the adrenaline runoff. The fiery grip of his command also released me, giving me the ability to breathe easily once again.
“You may go, Ya-El. Find our Scotsman. Find our map. And do it quickly. We’re on a tight timetable, and there is no time to spare.”
Shooting to my feet, I made to rush out of the room, but his words stopped me.
“You should know, though, it’s not I but the Triad who runs this show, and should they feel your fidelity is ever in question, they will have your family executed and there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it then. So if I were you, I’d make very sure that they understand that. By any means necessary.”
Closing my eyes, I gritted my teeth.
I knew it was true.
Damn him to the pits of Hell, I knew it was true.
For my family to survive, Pandora would have to die.
I was halfway out the door when he said to my back, “Oh, and before you leave, don’t forget to drink your brew.”
Chapter 3
Asher
The memories of that night are a blur. When she left us. Being locked in that cell, coated in Angel’s blood. Luc almost dying. Realizing I might have lost Dora forever.
Truth.
It was the word she’d whispered at me right before she’d left. I’d heard Pandora’s fear, her rage, and her end in that one word. From one blink to the next she’d turned from the woman I’d known nearly all my life, to the demon I’d been sent to kill ages ago.
My head had been in a daze. Losing her. Dean’s betrayal. But then my survival instinct had kicked in and it’d been the only thing I’d focused on. While Vyxen and Keltse had tended to Luc, Bubba and I had used nothing more than brute strength to bend the bars open wide enough that we could step through. Both of us suffered agonizing burns that reached as deep as bone because of that Angel’s blood. Burns that would never heal. Forever a constant reminder of the war we’d tried so hard to prevent, the scars a testament to our failure.
I’d not had a moment to think on Pandora, to wonder where they’d taken her. What they were doing to her. If she even existed in any capacity anymore. Not that I hadn’t felt raw and fractured, but there’d been a numbness shunting off my emotions to the full extent of the horror. If I thought about it too hard, I’d probably collapse and be unable to move again. So I locked it up. Kept the pain of it at a distance, tossed it into a place where I wouldn’t be able to think on it. Buried myself in the task of trying to unravel the Triad’s endgame.
With blistered hands and blood coating the front of me, I’d reached for Luc, who still coughed and sputtered up blood, his hands gripping his intestines tight. Dora had done a number on him.
More powerful than I could have imagined, my lover. Her demon claws had ripped through him and there’d been a pulse of blue—she’d had his soul in her hand—there’d been such agony and hate burning through her eyes. I’d known she would do it. She would suck out his life force and grow even stronger.
But then that light of humanity, Pandora, had come out and for an impossibly wild second, I’d really believed she’d fought the Triad’s compulsion and won. But the second had vanished like fog over rolling waters. With determined intentions, she’d turned and left us, and there’d been nothing left for me to do but survive.
I sometimes wondered why she hadn’t just ended us all. Sometimes wondered if it was still possible to cling to hope that somewhere inside that beautiful body lived my little demon. That she’d turned and left us locked in there, not as torture, but to save us from a worse fate. It gave me reason to hope.
But I didn’t think I should.
Bubba had shoved the girls through first, barking at them to run. He’d never looked back at me. Never stopped to question that I was there to help them and not betray them.
My life, such as it was, had been irrevocably altered when Pandora took me into her arms. I was a betrayer to my people, to my covenant. But as I hefted Luc across my shoulders and raced after the band of demons fleeing for their lives, I couldn’t find even a measure of regret for it.
The bible spoke of Paul, a man once known as Saul. A Pharisee, and Christian killer. His life had existed for no other purpose than to decimate anybody who followed the teachings of Yeshua. Then one day on the road to Damascus he’d heard the call of the Lord and the scales had fallen off his eyes.
Where once he’d persecuted, now, he’d become the hunted, ultimately giving his life for the very people he’d oppressed.
As I ran through the forest with skeletal branches ripping at my cheeks, with the heavy weight of Luc bearing down on me, I knew the scales had fully come off my own eyes. And that maybe I too might be doomed to give my life for the very people I’d once sought to exterminate.
It’d been a closely guarded secret, one I shouldn’t know, that the Priests were essentially born of the same blood as the Nephilim. Once, I’d thought myself an emissary of the Angels, sent to eradicate the world of the monsters. But now I knew the truth—I’d been nothing more than a pawn in the High Lords’ war.
The Triad had rigged every event in my life to make me kill that which I would need most to feel whole.
I didn’t just hate the Triad for what they’d done to Pandora; I hated the Triad for what they’d done to all of us.
My eyes scanned the trees, following the fleeing shadows of the demon family I’d begun to adopt as my own, and though the numbness of the night remained even still, one truth grew inside me.
Pandora, Ya-El, whatever name she decided to go by now—I was going to get her back. And I’d do whatever I had to to make sure she never fell back into their hands again.
Even if that meant killing the one thing in life I loved most.
Months had passed since that night, and always, the Neph and I were one step behind. Getting close enough to her, only to find the bodies she’d left behind.
I stared down at the man in the white lab coat. Stared at the twisted, distorted angle of his head. The body still held a trace of warmth to it.
“She was here not even an hour past.” Bubba clapped my shoulder. But though his words were calm, I sensed the storm brewing inside him. Felt it in the tensile strength of his touch.
It’d been almost four months since we’d seen her last. To know we’d come so close...
I closed my eyes, flexing my fist.
“Dammit all to Hell!” Bubba roared, and in a fit of rage, he picked up the body of the dead Triad member and rammed him down over his knee, breaking his spine with a bone-chilling snap.
“Fuck!”
Bubba, who never lost his temper, was having a colossal meltdown. He waved the body of the doctor around like a rag doll.
Feeling no sympathy for the man, because I knew exactly who he was, who he’d been, I still didn’t feel right desecrating a corpse.
“Bubba, how about you set that thing down, and we search for clues.”
“Clues!” Bubba tossed the man away. He crumpled like sackcloth on the blacktop. “I’m tired of looking for clues. Tired of getting so
close, only to realize we’ll never get her back.”
The red-eyed giant forked his fingers through his hair, looking as though he might lose his mind like one of the Pride demons would. His already big body was literally hulking up before my eyes.
I didn’t need this right now. My nerves were stretched tighter than a rope about to snap; one wrong move and I’d break, unleash a fury into this world the likes of which had never been seen before. I was barely keeping my head above water.
But I knew I couldn’t do this myself. If there was any hope of succeeding, any chance of getting her back, then I needed her core group of trusted allies behind me.
I’d never been very good with others, with anyone really. The only person I’d ever tried with had been Pandora. The loss of her, it grew daily inside me. Twisting and morphing like a soul-sucking parasite that grew deeper and stronger with each passing day. So I approached him the way I would her.
With nothing but the truth.
“Because if we stop, she’s lost to us forever. So we don’t stop, Bubba. We never stop looking. We never stop searching. We will find her.”
Afraid for a moment that the big guy might actually cry when he tipped his head into his large hands, I shoved my hands into my pockets and glanced off to the side. What more could I do?
There was a feeling inside me like they were all looking to me to make this right, to fix it, but I’d tried my damnedest to fix it once before and look where it had gotten me, gotten us. Nowhere. I’d tricked myself into believing it’d worked, only to discover in the end, the Triad had played us all for fools.
Luc was lost to us for now. His wounds had been more grave than we could have anticipated the night she’d staked him. Just the touch of her power—it’d done something to him. His body was healed, but his mind was... wrong.
Our only choice had been to make Keltse keep him in a coma-like state. The Sloth demon was doing all she could to bring him back to what he’d once been, but none of us were holding out much hope anymore.
The Triad were, one piece at a time, dismantling everything she’d ever loved. The worst of it was, I was beginning to lose hope that it even mattered to her anymore.