The Holy Dark

by Kyoko M

  “Through someone else’s memories. Are you telling me you wouldn’t care if I stripped down in front of you right now?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t we give it a shot and see what happens?”

  That almost made me laugh. Dammit. I forgot he could do that. “Tempting, but no thanks.”

  He let out a melodramatic sigh. “Such a pity.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You have no idea. It’s a shame. If you weren’t so attached to the archangel, you and I could have an absolutely spectacular, life-changing, world-shattering hate fuck. I would say that you don’t know what it’s like to despise someone so much that all you want to do is screw them within an inch of their lives, but that wouldn’t be true, would it?”

  I licked my bottom lip. He glanced at it for a second. Ha. My plan was working. “Look, I haven’t got all night. If you agree to help us, I might be inspired to give you what you really want other than a roll in the hay.”

  “And that would be…?”

  I leaned in, laying my lips against his ear. “You want me to admit how I feel about you. That’s what you tried to get me to do before Moloch showed up. You don’t care about body language or subconscious thoughts in my dreams. You want to hear me say it out loud. Mostly because it means that you’ve finally conquered me.”

  His breathing hitched for a second or two. “What makes you think my desires are so petty?”

  “I know who you really are underneath.”

  I dropped my hands to his legs, dragging my fingernails down his thighs. He jerked against me, exhaling quickly. “You’re a demon of indulgence. You’re smart, handsome, rich, and you’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted your entire life…except for me. It drives you insane that some human girl is the only failure on your flawless record of conquests. I bet it keeps you up at night. I bet you dream about me. I bet you dream about how satisfying it would be to have me in your bed.”

  I lifted up and stared straight into his eyes so I could see the fury and the lust battling inside them.

  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  He swallowed, his voice thick and strained. “I could, but I doubt you’d believe me.”

  I wiggled my hips and he shut his eyes, hissing. I grinned. “Can’t imagine why.”

  He took a deep breath and met my gaze. “Maybe I know something. And maybe I’d be inspired to share it with you, but not just because of your offer. Moloch is a fool. He wants to declare war on Heaven. As of now, it is a war I believe we would lose. No sense in plunging the world into desolation at this time. It will come soon enough. If I give you the information, it is to serve my purpose, not yours.”

  “Understood.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes.”

  I paused. “Guess we can’t shake on it with you being handcuffed.”

  Too late, I recognized the dangerous glint in his eyes. “Who said anything about shaking hands?”

  He darted forward and stole a kiss, recklessly slipping his tongue inside my mouth before I could react. I dug my nails into his shoulders, trying to shove him back against the chair, but it just made him groan with pleasure. Part of me shuddered. The sound was more than a little arousing. It also didn’t help that he bucked his hips upward into mine, driving a surprised, muffled squeak from my throat. He sucked on my bottom lip, biting the upper one, and then let me go. It took me a second to realize I’d closed my eyes, or that he had just effectively turned the tables. I was supposed to be the seducer and yet he was the one who had just kissed the living daylights out of me.

  Belial grinned at the stunned expression I knew was on my face. “You still have much to learn, my pet. If you’re a good girl, perhaps someday I’ll teach you.”

  A wave of heat rushed over my cheeks. I blushed. For shit’s sake. How had I lost all that ground with one stupid kiss?

  “Don’t get cute,” I said, hiding my embarrassment in a harsh tone. “You’re still our prisoner. Anymore funny business and I’ll leave you down here for Moloch to find.”

  “You’d go back on your word? How unbecoming. Besides, I want my reward.”

  “You’re not getting anything until Moloch is in our custody.”

  “Rest assured, I’ll hold up my end of the bargain. However, until then you can answer one question for me.”

  I eyed him. “What?”

  His conceited expression softened into something resembling actual curiosity. “A year ago, when we were at the hotel in bed…if Mulciber hadn’t shown up to kidnap Juliana, would you have given yourself to me?”

  All the oxygen in the room vanished. I stared at him, completely blindsided by the question. The words “hell no” were creeping up my throat, but somehow they weren’t coming out. I felt naked. Raw. Afraid. It should have been easy. The son of a bitch stabbed me in the stomach several hours ago. What the hell was wrong with me?

  The door behind us made a terrible wrenching noise. I knew without turning around who it would be.

  “Is this you playing good cop?” Michael asked. There was no short amount of sarcasm and disdain in his voice.

  I stood up, avoiding the gazes of both men. “He agreed to tell us about Moloch.”

  “At what cost?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  I swept past him, heading upstairs for a break. I needed to feel sane again somehow.

  Fat chance.

  Myra stood just outside the basement door. She nodded towards the stairwell without saying anything and then walked up. Myra was the garrulous sort. If she didn’t say anything, something was wrong. The look on her face told me enough. I was definitely in for it.

  I followed her to the guest room and shut the door. “What is it, Myra?”

  She sat on the bed next to Ace, whose ears flicked upward when she spoke. “I’m gonna be honest with you for a minute. This conversation doesn’t need to leave the room.”

  I crossed my arms, preparing for the worst. “Okay.”

  “I know we haven’t known each other super long, so some of this might seem out of left field. I remember what you told me about Michael back when you guys were separated. You never opened up completely, but you told me enough that I got the general idea about you two. I know you love him. But the way you made things sound, I was starting to think maybe the guy didn’t love you as much as you thought he did.”

  She folded her hands, leaning forward on her knees. “Until we found you tied to that chair in the basement half-dead. Michael seems to be a soldier on the outside—all cold hard steel and strictly business—but when he saw you like that, I knew I was wrong. He fell apart. He was like a man lost at sea. I see now that you’re his anchor. He probably doesn’t even realize it, but I did. I’ve seen a man’s eyes like that before. My husband looked like that when I left him.”

  Myra lowered her gaze to the carpet. “I think about it all the time. Whether I did the right thing leaving him and my son in Houston. It took me a long time to make peace with it because I didn’t know if they were better or worse off without me. There is always a chance that one of these demons will get lucky and bump me off. I couldn’t bring that down on their heads, not when I love ‘em so much. It’s funny how love and distance are so intertwined when you live this kind of life. You know about most of the stuff I’ve done, Jordan. The Army, being an EMT, all of it. You’ve seen the guys and the gals I bring home. Up until recently, I’ve been pretty content with the way things have worked out with us. For a while, we even seemed happy.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if you’re planning to get back with Michael or not. That’s none of my business, really. I’m just your roommate. But I also know what I saw in that basement just now. And I don’t think you told me everything about Belial that you should have.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but she held up her hand. “Jordan, stop. You are ignoring the fact that you might have the key to preventing a disaster in the palm of your hand. Belial could have killed you a
million times over. I have never heard of that man hesitating to kill anyone except for you. And you just blind yourself to that fact, telling yourself that you keep getting lucky, that he’s just playing you. Part of that is true. He is manipulating you. But you have to stop lying to yourself and pretending like you don’t have some kind of feelings for him. I only care because if you’re going to play ball, you need to accept the fact that there is some part of you that has connected with him. You can’t keep running away from it. We don’t get second chances in this business. If you’ve got an edge, use it. Don’t half-ass it so that Belial gets smart and walks away from the only thing that’s keeping all of us alive.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked. “Do you know what it would do to Michael? He’s already got one foot out the door. He doesn’t need another excuse to leave again.”

  “That’s my point, Jor. You have to make a choice. It’s not gonna be easy and it’s not gonna be fair, but you have to do it. Either give Belial whatever he wants to close the deal or find another way to stop Moloch. You owe it to Michael.”

  “What do you want me to do? Sleep with Belial so he’ll give us what we want?”

  “Of course not. But you have to be honest with yourself, and Belial, and Michael about what you want. Otherwise, we might all end up dead. You need to ask yourself if you truly love Michael and what that means.”

  “What that means?” I said with a snort, sifting my fingers through my hair. “Do you want me to count the ways? I love that he sings Elvis tunes in the shower. I love that he goes off on these ten minute rants about the state of taxes in the United States. I love that he’s genuinely confused by softcore porn. I love that he can behead a demon with a single blow and yet he’s creeped out by cockroaches. I love that he can speak every language known to man, but he has a terrible French accent. I love the calluses on his fingers. I love that little ticklish spot above his collarbone. I love that he used to come up with all kinds of adorable romantic shit just because he enjoyed doing it. I love that stupid grin he gets when he wins an argument. I love the fact that he’s seen every shade of sin that exists and yet he still fights for our side because he believes mankind is worth protecting. What more can I say?”

  “Nothing,” she said, a bit gentler this time. “But you should be saying it to him, not to me and the mutt.”

  Myra stood. She started for the door, but then stopped with her hand on the knob. “One other thing. You remember the night we met?”

  “Of course,” I said, not looking at her because her words made guilt flood my system.

  “It wasn’t just the mutt’s sense of smell. We were a mile out from where you were, lost as hell in the woods, and then I got a phone call. Private number. Someone told me the address where they were holding you. It was hard to make out, but it was definitely a male voice. I never heard it again…until that night in Connecticut when Belial jumped me.”

  I went still, staring at her. She clenched her jaw and kept going. “I couldn’t figure out when to tell you, but I guess now’s as good a time as any. Think it over. Don’t take long.”

  She left. I sunk onto the mattress, replaying her words in my mind. Ace nudged my hand. I lifted it and rubbed the top of his wooly head absently. This wasn’t the first time I had been responsible for other people’s lives, unfortunately. Last year, it had been a thousand people I didn’t know. Now it was a small group of people I cared deeply about. If I lost any one of them, I wouldn’t be able to make it.

  I brushed my fingertips across my bottom lip, still tasting the remnants of Belial’s fiery kiss. He’d called Myra to come rescue me. Without the both of them, I most certainly would have died that night. He…actually cared about me, in his own twisted sort of way. Worse still, I cared about him too. Tremors vibrated through my arms, down to my fingers, and a sharp pain dug into my ribs.

  “What should I do?” I asked no one. I sounded lost and I knew it. Maybe I was.

  Ace made a keening sound, laying one gigantic paw on my leg as if trying to comfort me. I let out a small laugh. It was the first cute thing I’d ever seen a hellhound do. My life was definitely a mess.

  Somehow, I knew Ace could tell his new method wasn’t working. The hound stood up beside me, which almost knocked me off the bed due to the massive weight change, and then jumped onto the floor. Confused, I watched as he sniffed around my suitcase. A moment later, he pulled Andrew’s journal from one of the outer pockets and then hopped back on the bed. Like I said, smart dog.

  “Thanks, boy,” I said, taking it from him. I thumbed through the pages, not sure what I was looking for. I’d know when I found it. Andrew’s advice and life story had always been like that—never what I expected, but always what I needed.

  There are only a few things in this life that I won’t use to help others. I’m the stubborn sort. But this is a cautionary tale I’m unfortunately gonna have to tell.

  A few years back, there was this small pack of Seers in Argentina. They were all not much more than a couple years into The Business. Like all Seers, Gabriel met them and explained the nature of their abilities and their life’s calling. Well, these folks didn’t take it all too well. They learned about the lifespan of the average Seer—no more than fifty, and that’s if you’re extremely lucky—and decided they wanted to get an edge over the demons to elongate their lives.

  There is a lot of lore and mythos in different cultures about demon blood. After all, they look human and they act human, but that’s all. Their bodies cannot transform into their true forms unless they have a massive source of unholy power. However, they still get all the basics from before they fell from Heaven—inhuman strength, the ability to heal anything less than a fatal wound from an angel’s blade, heightened senses, ability to sense other demons and angels’ locations, the works. These Seers caught on to this idea and decided the best way to fight back was to trap a demon and drink his blood to make them stronger.

  If you have any sense in your head, you know how this story ends.

  The blood made them strong. Ridiculously strong. Lifting cars and tossing tugboats kind of strong. They made the headlines, got folks down there talking about superheroes and demigods and all that nonsense. Naturally, the demons got suspicious. The archdemon Mulciber had been working that circuit at the time, so she put her ear to the ground and found out they had one of her men held captive and was using him for the blood.

  Well, she didn’t much care for that.

  She sent forty hellhounds after them—just opened the doors to a kennel and corrupted every last single dog into rabid carnivorous beasts. I had caught wind of this too little too late. I arrived after the authorities busted down the doors. There weren’t enough remains to even determine the men from the women.

  I don’t care if they find my mother and hold her hostage and tell me to drink demon blood to save her life. After that carnage, I can tell you with perfect honesty that if you ever meet a soul who offers you a taste, you don’t just say no—you punch that motherfucker in his man-cherries and walk away.

  Something caught my eye. Ability to sense the location of other demons and angels. I could do that now, but how accurate was it? After all, Belial implied that archdemons could hide their auras, but only to a certain extent. The only reason we’d caught Mulciber in the middle of kidnapping Juliana last year was because she was in the parking lot. Proximity. Maybe we’d been looking at it the wrong way.

  Faust, Avriel, and Myra were gathered by the doorway to the basement when I returned, falling silent when I reappeared.

  “What’s up?” Myra asked.

  “Follow me.” They filed in after me.

  Michael stood not far away from the archdemon, apparently still contemplating his castration threat. Belial wore his rather effective poker face as we formed a semi-circle around him. His expression only shifted slightly when Ace sat next to Myra and pushed his large head under her hand so she’d pet him.

  “Traitor,” Belial muttered.

 
Ace growled. The demon grinned. “Yes, I suppose that is the pot calling the kettle black.”

  He addressed me. “Now then, my pet, what can I do for you?”

  “You can sense any archdemon within a certain proximity, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Michael theorized that Moloch’s going to melt down the coins into a weapon. Does that sound familiar to you?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “How would he do that? We’ve tried everything and we can’t even bend the suckers.”

  Belial fixed me with an even stare. “Hellfire.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Come again?”

  “He would return to the Demon’s Door and enter the first circle of Hell. All he would need is a handful, really. Nothing mortal can alter the Judas coins—only something from Hell.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you read, my dear? Judas is at the center of Hell itself. Everything in existence is about balance. Judas created them and only Judas can unmake them, in a manner of speaking.”

  “So you’re saying hellfire can melt them. Can it destroy them?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps, in theory.”

  “Does the hellfire require something to get it started?”

  “Yes. Hellfire needs to be fed with holy objects. Specifically, the bones of a righteous man of the same century as Judas, the feather of an archangel, the wool of a sacrificial lamb, and a page from Revelation of the Holy Bible.”

  “That’s oddly specific.”

  “Well, hellfire is not of this realm. It is an extension of Hell, and thus requires equal tribute in order to work.”

  “Then theoretically if we intercepted Moloch while he was gathering these materials, we might be able to stop him from fashioning the coins into a weapon?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why? How long would it take?”

  “He has a head start of a few hours on you. He’s most likely already gathered the materials. Hellfire needs kindling like an earthly fire. However, it would take several hours before it would be hot enough to melt the coins. It would be likely that you can relieve him of the weapon before the metal cools.”