by RS Black
“Inside there?” I snapped. “Is that what you call inside there? What I saw was a woman pumped so full of demons that she can barely hang on to her sanity. What more do you guys want from her? What is genesis?”
“Finally!” He flicked his wrist. “Finally, the pupil asks the right question. What is genesis?”
I suddenly recalled Pandora’s impatience every time she dealt with Dean and his countless riddles.
Realizing—though grudgingly—that Dean was right and I was allowing my emotions to lead me, I rubbed the bridge of my nose and tried to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
“The beginning.”
“I could kiss you right now.”
I glared at him. “Don’t.”
“Just an expression. Might want to consider removing that stick from your—”
“The beginning, Death, you were saying?” Knowing that if I let him go off on another tangent it’d take several more minutes before we got back to actually finding out anything worth knowing, I held up my hand.
“No.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t saying. You were saying. So if genesis is the beginning, then it’s the beginning of what?”
Taking a wild shot in the dark, I said, “Armageddon.”
Moving his hands in the fashion of a proud Italian, he grinned. “And what can start Armageddon, my good Death Priest?”
“Hell, I don’t know. A murder?”
“Guess again?” He waggled his brows.
Genesis was the start of creation. Except in this case, maybe genesis was the start of the end. Human wars were usually fought over silly, foolish things. Money. Oil. Hubris. Pride.
But the war between Heaven and Hell, it was so much more than that. It was a war of right versus wrong. Light versus darkness. The holy versus the unholy.
In the bible there was a prophecy of a Scarlet Woman. A being full of such foul perversion and astonishing beauty that the entire world would stop to worship her, and then mourn her eventual death.
I turned my eyes to Dean as my skin crawled with the dawning horror.
“You’re turning her into the Scarlet woman.”
His lips thinned, and suddenly all humor fled him. “Not I, friend.”
“You are no friend of mine,” I spat.
“I’m not your enemy, either. I spoke true to you then, and I speak true to you now. My reasons are my own, as ever they will be. Ya’s rise is the genesis. The monster she’s becoming, the evil growing daily within her—she is the key. And once she has been made anew, she will open the Gates and the world will be bathed in blood.”
I shook my head. “Grace told me that the genesis is tangible, is evident. Her accounts of the genesis were written decades ago.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Exactly.”
Frustrated, I began to pace back and forth. “How? How is any of this possible? How could accounts of this have been written so long ago? I know that this ‘prophecy’”—I finger quoted—“was entirely concocted by the Triad millennia ago. How could the genesis have been—”
“I don’t know who wrote that account, Priest. All I can say is that once Ya has gone through each of her, let us call them trials, she will be as you saw. The Scarlet Woman of legend and infamy. She will be the physical embodiment of the key.”
“And you win.”
“Of course not. Then I lose. I’ve not switched sides. Only if those Gates open, can I.”
“But I thought—”
“Because you believe what you see. But it is not what is seen but what is unseen that shows the way. You, a Priest, surely you must know this.”
“Then why did you help Dick that night?”
Dean was silent for such a long moment I thought he wouldn’t answer me, but eventually he sighed. “Because should Ya succeed, should she break the final seal, then I will do as I was sent to do. I will reap her, and I will reap you.”
More confused than I thought could be possible, I shoved my fingers through my hair. “I don’t believe this.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe. I’m not here to soothe your soul. I’m here to observe and to act, if necessary.”
“But Ya—”
“Is merely a mirage. She is a persona Pandora concocted to epitomize the evil inside her. So which side will win? That’s the question you should be asking. Dick might be holding her mark, but the battle is really inside Pandora herself. Is she strong enough to resist the demons inside her? Is she strong enough to walk away from absolute power? Pandora is not a fool. She knows what I’ll do to her if she chooses the wrong path.”
“Then help me save her.”
He gave me a what-do-you-think-I’m-doing look. “You want to find her, find the keys. There’re three.” He held up three fingers. “Port Richmond. Staten Island. Look for a guy named Ivan. He’s the first keeper.”
I still wasn’t sure I could trust him. But I literally had nothing else to fall back on. I wanted to ask him again why he was doing this, but knew it was as useless as telling the sun to stop burning.
So I asked a question I knew Pandora would have.
“What happened to your country accent?”
He chuckled. “I am many things to many people, my friend.” Dean shoved off the tree and eyed the ground in front of my feet. “And next time, just an FYI, don’t summon me with blood. I’m not a filthy demon.” He spat at my offering.
Then he was gone and all I was left with was a million more questions.
Chapter 7
Luc
Darkness.
It’s all around me. But it’s also inside me too. I floated in a world crafted of nothing but blackness. An endless sea of void. I could hear no sounds. See no lights. Smell no smells.
I was alone.
And yet...I wasn’t.
I felt her.
Pandora.
Ya-El.
I felt the pulse of her heart echoing through my own. In a world of nothingness, she was my one constant. The string I clung to for sanity.
She was so far away from me now.
Pandora didn’t used to be.
Once, I owned her. Her soul was mine. Her lips mine. Her body, her sex, her. All mine.
But now, it was Ya-El who cried loudest to me. She needed me in a way my one-time lover did not. When I felt her, it wasn’t hate I felt. Nor was it love or violence; it was more a yearning. A need for a friend that knew who she was. What she was.
Pandora was the one who’d made me as I was now. Stripped me of who I had been.
But I couldn’t hate her.
I didn’t hate her.
I never had.
I only hated myself.
Hated the man I could never be for her. Sometimes I wondered if maybe I was now. I’d believed once that strength came from the suppression of emotion. The suppression of any true connection or need.
Demons didn’t need it. We didn’t crave it. We didn’t.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
I felt the Sloth’s magic binding me. Trying to heal the fractured pieces of me. But maybe I wasn’t fractured; maybe Pandora knew what she’d been doing when she’d pricked my soul.
Maybe I was nothing but a vapor now, so that I could finally pause and listen. What she and I had, it wasn’t romantic love.
I knew this.
I’d known this for an eternity.
But I couldn’t say that it wasn’t more either.
It was essential. Crucial. A critical piece of me.
I was a puzzle, and at the beating epicenter of my core rested a piece that was not made of me. But of darkness, of wonder, of kindness. The compass of my life. The spiritual beat of my soul.
It was her. Pandora. Not Ya-El. I cared nothing for the violence of Ya. My need was for Pandora alone.
When Pandora sank her claws inside me, when she held the weight of my being within the palm of her hand, I knew she’d felt it. That she’d been carved into my soul. No matter my words, no matter th
e distance, there was nothing of more worth to me in this life than her.
The moment she felt that truth was the moment she’d pulled away. I carried a piece of her within me.
Pandora left me a semi-sentient, semi-mad, I didn’t know...maybe fully mad, something. Floating particles of myself.
I hovered upon this sea of black as the images of my life unwound before me. Everything I’d ever done. Everything I ever thought I was. Who I was now, and who I’d been then. I saw it all and I pondered.
I thought.
I wrestled with right and wrong.
I saw the countless bodies of lovers, felt the sensual glide of their caress, but the only eyes I’d ever seen were hers.
The only soul I’d ever truly known, it was hers.
There was madness here. And woe. Despair. Anger. But I couldn’t let go.
Maybe I should just drift away. Allow myself the absolution of release.
But the guiding compass I’d always known, it was there, and it was unhinged. Pandora wasn’t well. How could I leave her that way? She reached out to me even now. Her song was a constant and woeful lament in the transience of my fissured mind.
So long I had failed Pandora. It was all I knew how to do. The only way I knew to be.
She’d told me once that we could be more than we’d been born to be. That I was not defined by Lust, but by me.
I wondered.
What was me?
Who was I really?
A beast?
A friend?
A monster?
A mentor?
A betrayer?
Perhaps I was all those things.
Perhaps I was more.
In the gloom I heard the song again. It was soft and steady. A quiet chanting sound.
Luc. My Luc. That was Ya’s voice. She was strongest. But below that sound, I heard Dora’s gentle hum.
We were friends once. Weren’t we, Luc?
Yes, I wanted to say. I know what you have done to me, Pandora. I know what you want of me. But I don’t think I am strong enough. Not anymore.
The words did not leave me. They remain trapped within this space, this...nothingness.
But she must have heard me anyway.
Luc. My Luc. This time it was Dora who spoke to me. Her song beat at me, day and night, night and day.
I would awaken again.
I would stir.
I am coming, my darkness. Only give me some time. Wait on me.
I heard her smile, and it gave me hope.
Chapter 8
Pandora
“Why are you looking at me that way?” Dean asked, giving me one of his typical slanted brows.
The night was humid. Muggy. It was causing my silky hair to curl unattractively around my face, which really pissed me off. I swiped at the flyaways and growled.
“Because you’re hiding something.”
His smile was broad, full of teeth, and mysteries. Hinting at things hidden. I thinned my eyes.
We sat on a stack of metal crates stamped Rulsaka, waiting for this mysterious Ivan to show up.
“Why do you always think I’m up to something, Pan-Ya?” Humor tinged his words.
I hissed. “You’re a fool if you think I’ve been alive this long and don’t recognize deceit when I see it.”
The soft yellow glow of street lights cast long, malevolent shadows on the hollows of his face, making him appear far more sinister than the convivial “Dean” would normally look.
Dean was your all-American, corn-fed-looking, brunet Southerner. You’d never think he was anything special, if it weren’t for the eyes.
“My, dear, sweet Dorrie, when will you ever trust me? Have I not proven myself time and time again your ally?”
“You fucking prick. You would say that to me? Especially after you told Dr. Dick about that child molester?” I glowered at him, still reeling from that “talk.”
His eyes narrowed, then he chuckled. “Well, he is our master, is he not?”
“Speak for yourself.”
“No.” He snarled, getting to within an inch of my face. “You know the game we play, the rules we live by now, Pandora. Don’t mistake my laughter for antipathy, and do not question what I do. The game is in play, and everything,” he stressed, “matters.”
His black Armani silk shirt rustled in the sudden breeze full of salt and sea spray.
“A snake will shed its skin many times in its life, but at the end of the day, Death, it is as it always was, just a snake in the grass.”
He held my gaze for several silent, tense seconds before moving back. I took three steady gulps of breath; the bastard had a way of getting under my skin. “Heard a rumor that the Priest recently suffered a bit of wing damage. Then that night I go to look for you, demon girl, and you’re gone. Now why could that possibly be?” His deep voice moved through me like a slow, sensual undulation.
I shivered. He might not be infected by Lust the way I was, but the man owned charisma.
Looking elsewhere for a moment, I studied the docks below me, needing a breather from the intensity that was Dean unfiltered.
Massive oil tankers and cargo ships gradually floated into port, no doubt full of questionable goods. Beneath us, men and women ran around like ants marching out of a hill, barking out orders as heavy machinery moved stacks of crates off the ships’ sterns.
“Nowhere,” I finally said.
“Oh, really?” His teasing lilt was really starting to irritate me. “So you mean to say that when I went to go check on you—”
“While I’m in bed,” I mock gasped, “I should cut your tongue off for that.” I quickly diverted his thoughts away from Asher by mock flirting, when what I really wanted to do was shove a stake through his cold, black heart.
His eerily hypnotic tricolored eyes glittered like sparks of electrical currents ran through it.
“So, you finally ready to admit you’ve got a thing for me yet, or what?” My voice grew thick and husky as Lust undulated through my bones.
“Don’t you wish, demon. Don’t you wish.” Snorting, he turned back to study the dock.
I shivered. Did he know where I’d been? Doc had told me to warn my family off, and I had. But that didn’t mean I wanted Dean nosing around in my business, and especially not when it came to Ash.
At least my tactics had worked; Dean wasn’t asking any more stupid questions. He was studying the docks again, looking for our mysterious Ivan.
The only intel we’d been given about the man was that he had unnatural teal eyes for a mortal and a jagged scar across his forehead that caused the flesh to appear mottled and burned.
Pop his eyes out. Eat. Eat. Eat.
I almost laughed to hear the words come, not from Wrath—the demon most known for his penchant for violence—but the lover of the group, Lust.
She’d been cranky a lot lately. But most especially since seeing Asher again.
She bristled at the thought of him.
Lust was going through a serious drought.
Good thing I no longer depended solely on her to feed me; otherwise I might have been in a world of hurt.
Most days, I could ignore her petulance. Though I couldn’t forget the sudden inferno I’d felt last night in the Priest’s arms. She’d lit up like a firecracker on speed. And then I’d had to go all batshit crazy in that bar.
I still didn’t even really remember what’d happened, other than I’d gone there to speak to a contact. I’d met up with...something. Or someone—the memories of that part were a little hazy And the next thing I knew I was waking up drenched in blood and gagging on the floor.
Dean swore up and down I had nothing to do with it, but, call me crazy, I really didn’t trust much that Death said. All I knew was that I was walking around with a giant gaping hole in my memory banks from last night. The only real thing I could remember was Ash and what I’d been forced to do to him.
I clenched my jaw. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The moment Asher had
found me, the moment he’d saved me from the Triad’s brainwashing, that our dreams would be realized. That finally the nightmare was over.
God, just thinking about that hopeful Pandora, that naïve Pandora, made me want to cry. Because I’d been the biggest fool of them all.
I wasn’t really sure what was going on in this head of mine. Maybe it was all the demons living inside me. Or maybe it was something else. All I knew was, lately it was getting harder and harder to remember who Pandora even was anymore.
I glanced at Dean from the corner of my eye. He stood stock-still on the edge of the crate, eyes scanning the milieu. If there was something more bizarre-looking than a drop-dead gorgeous man dressed in Italian loafers and dress clothes, sitting like some jungle cat on top of this metal monstrosity, I didn’t know it.
As if noticing that I stared, he turned to me.
“Good try, by the way,” he said.
“What?”
His smile was pure smolder. “Pretending to flirt with me. Trying to throw me off the scent, but unlike that pathetic Dick doctor, I’m not so easily swayed, Lust. You were with the Priest last night.”
Just hearing that name thrown out to the wind, knowing the monsters who lived and dwelled among us, I snapped to a standing position and yanked on the collar of his shirt, dragging his face to mine.
“You mention that name again and I’ll cut your tongue out. Don’t dare me, Dean. Don’t push me. And it’s not like it’s a giant secret, anyway; you know why I went to him.”
Not at all offended by the manner with which I treated him, he gently disengaged my hand from his shirt.
I might be strong, all-powerful, even (in a paranormal sense), but Dean was still a horseman, and still very immortal. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to him that he didn’t let me do, and we both knew it.
Dropping my hand to my side, I glared at him. But he refused to cow before me. He stood in my personal bubble, still wearing that insufferable smile.
“So what did you tell him about the genesis? Because up until late last night you didn’t know yourself.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, suffering the childish urge to clap my hands over my ears and scream until I drowned his voice out. “How in the hell would you know that anyway?”