"David-" she protested.
"You don't have a say in this," he said quietly. "Be still."
Jonah studied him. She suspected, in the arrogant way of overly protective men, they were saying something to each other without her being able to hear it. She quelled an urge to zap both of them.
David could tell it was irritating her. It was oddly reassuring, just like the glint of understanding humor in Jonah's eye, followed by a more serious look.
You have my word.
And you have my gratitude. As Marcellus returned, David acknowledged him with a nod of his own, then turned and extended a hand to his prickly witch. "Let's go."
She took it. As they turned toward the defile that would lead to the portal, the darkness that had so repelled him when he'd first touched the Dark One skin holding the blood now had an enticing moan to it. He surged forward.
"Fight it," Mina snapped. Her fingers dug into his arm, slowing him down. Mild irritation became a flash of anger shooting through him, and he'd clamped down on her hand before he thought. Emitted a low growl that startled him but she'd apparently expected, for she didn't back away or try to remove her hand from his grip.
"That's the direction we're going," he grated.
She nodded. "But make it your choice, not your desire. Your desires and intuition are no good to you now. Use only your mind. The decision you feel most strongly about in this state is likely the wrong one."
"South is north," he muttered. Slowly, he loosened his grip. As they passed into the narrow tunnel, her cavern disappearing behind him, he felt the portal's approach and forced himself to slow down, just as she'd advised. It was like digging in his heels against the force of a gale shoving behind him. Jonah and Marcellus seemed leagues away now, instead of just a few feet.
"I liked the house, in the Schism," she said abruptly.
Through the odd buzzing in his head, the waves of red heat that waxed and waned inside his system, he felt the incursion of a different kind of warmth that helped steady him. He looked toward her. Her profile was the unscarred side, and when she glanced at him, the blue eye was momentarily unguarded.
She would have learned to love him. He was sure of it.
He forced himself to extend a hand again, opening up his fingers, surprised how difficult that open-palmed gesture was. A simple act of affection, and it weighted down his arm, making it hard to lift. If nothing else, this blood was helping him understand more and more why Mina had put so many physical obstacles in her life. Anything that would give herself something to hold out against it. And he knew if she did ever decide she loved him, he wouldn't deserve her. No man could.
"So you would have liked staying there, with me," he said.
She sniffed. "I didn't say that. But I might have let you come around, now and again."
He fought for the smile, won it and knew it was worth the effort when her gaze riveted on his mouth, lifted to his face. "Mina, it wasn't... when we... it didn't feel like this with me, did it?" Please Goddess, I hope every moment of pleasure wasn't stolen from a moment of darkness.
"Yes and no." As she turned her head, her blue eye and crimson one met his fully. "Always a balance. A perfect one, I think."
Then she looked back at the portal where they now stood. She spoke in a language he didn't know, telling him the blood was interfering with his automatic translation abilities. His heart began to race as Dark One energy gathered and the door misted, became a vortex of black smoke that drifted out toward them with eager fingers.
Lacing her fingers with his, she looked up into his face once more. "The best moments of my life were spent with you," she said.
They stepped forward together.
Twenty-two
IT reminded David of the sci-fi movies he'd watched as a boy, the nauseating spinning and tumbling through a wormhole, where gravity and speed pulled cells apart like gum, leaving the body a distorted, stretched mess on the other side.
Which was why it was surprising, after what had seemed like an endless passage, to find himself standing next to Mina on a landscape that was the Hell of evangelical imaginings.
Far worse than that, really, for it wasn't Hell. Lucifer ruled over an ordered Hades, structured for justice and redemption, followed by eventual rebirth. This was a place without meaning or purpose. But the images of fire and ice, monstrous shadows wheeling in the sky, creatures dragging themselves through the mud with red staring eyes, were only a flash of impressions before pure chaos and disorder struck his mind, driving him to his knees.
As he fell, his hands hit the frozen ground, while his knees landed in what felt like a bed of embers. He rolled to his side, found himself in sucking mud. Images drilled into his brain. Horrifying vignettes, as if he'd fallen into a theater of endless stages, a parade through every nightmare that had inflicted itself on a dreaming mind.
Torture, murder, screams of pain that couldn't stop echoing before another set began. Creatures in that sucking mud, trying to burrow into his skin. Falling, a sense of falling, the ground rushing up, the wind shrieking in maniacal triumph.
And of course, with all those millions of nightmares, he would fall right into his own. A man with his hands on a child's throat, raping, as a mother did the same to a son, the gun there. Always there.
I'll have you again. You'll never escape. This is where you'll always be.
David, find your memory. Me, eating the orange. The chocolates. Her voice was in his head, small hands on his crawling, shuddering flesh.
Mina. Taking the orange from his fingers. Giving him that wary glance that said there was a desire to trust, a challenge he wanted to win...
When he pried open his eyes and looked down, he scrabbled backward before he remembered the illusion spell she'd placed on him. His hands were skeletal. His teeth cut his lip where the fangs curved on the outside and under his chin. At least he had wings, though they were thin, leathery things with far less maneuverability, as if his shoulder muscles were tied in permanent taut knots.
A lower-echelon Dark One, he reminded himself, the kind he regularly destroyed in the sky as an angel. Here he was in their world, writhing on spiky, frozen, burning ground, while above, a sky of searing red flame reminded him of an ocean of fire. Like the aftermath of a wartime bomb raid.
Trees. How odd it was, that there were trees. Thousands of them, naked, black branches stark against the sky whose billowing flame created canopies, the tongues of fire flickering, giving the illusion of leaves.
The sucking mud, crawling with things that tried to burrow into his skin, had been real. As something slithered over his fingers, he let out an oath and used the wings awkwardly to tear himself free, find himself on land again.
But it wasn't stable. Nothing was. It was as if he were hanging on to the handle of a spinning top, uncertain what was up or down, or how to get it to stop. He staggered and went down again, and snarled as the nightmares surged up once more, trying to curtain his vision, his awareness of anything but them.
Focus. David, let the blood protect you. Work with the blood, use its purpose as your own, yet never let it lead, like a monster you have to trick into thinking he's doing what he wants, when you're really controlling him. Remember.
He couldn't. Everything he was, had made himself, was being torn away by that Dark Blood, and his angel self instinctively fought, even knowing it had already lost.
Damn it.
Of a sudden, she was pressed against him. He still bore his daggers, for she'd drawn one. Instinct had him gripping her wrist in defense, but then she changed her angle, turned the blade so it was against the bare flesh exposed by her cloak, above her breast. If he'd been in his right mind, he would have been furious with her, for in his current state, he might have driven the blade all the way through her.
Remember the way it felt. To take command of me, mark me as your own with such control. Give me pain now. Take control of me.
Pain and pleasure at once. The gritty edge of sex, so passiona
te it could straddle the line between love and violence, exist in Hell and Heaven at once, in both light and darkness.
Bearing down, he heard her catch her breath at the erratic cut, and when he bent to clamp his mouth over it, taste that blood and flesh, her fingers tangled in his hair, sending a rush of response to his cock at the willingness of her body to comply.
Control. Of her. Of himself. To protect her, first and foremost. To get her to the Trumpet.
She'd turned the tables on him. In his world, he'd used dominance to help teach her trust, give her an anchor. Here she was using that learned submission to teach him the same, steady him.
Orange and chocolates. The smile, that very first smile. Gods, he wanted the chance to spend time with her, get her to smile, over and over. Hear her first laugh.
It fought inside of him, that image, the mission, with the darkness of the blood that demanded he think of other things. Like the fragility of her throat, how easy it would be to snap it. What it would be like to turn her over, seize her hips, force himself into her while she screamed and struggled, exciting him more.
Like his father raping his sister, the sick pleasure in her struggles.
"No. No." He released her as if his hands had been burned and backed away, shaking his head. "No. Jesus."
"David." She was trying to catch hold of him, following him, but he fended her off, tripping, falling against ice. He had his hands up to his face, digging. He'd rip his mind out of his fucking skull before he had another thought like that.
"No." He jerked away from her. "Don't touch me."
"David." She said it sharply enough, but it was the face punch that got his attention, her swing much stronger than he would have expected. The angel who might have understood such a steadying gesture was overwhelmed by the bloodlust that it provoked. When he glared, a hiss coming to his lips, she thrust herself even closer, dropping to her knees to grip him aggressively with knowledgeable fingers, closing over his shamefully hard length like a steel vise, her nails digging into his testicles.
"Bitch," he swore at the pain, but a movement only tightened her hold. Regardless, he caught her by the shoulders, lifted her off her feet and slammed her to the ground, pinning her beneath his body.
She had no fear, though, her wholly red gaze glittering at him. Her lip curled back, showing far sharper canines than typically possessed by human or merperson. "I want you."
And she opened her legs to him, surrendering, not fighting as the blood demanded, but that wasn't going to slow him down. When he drove into her tight channel, only the ready slickness kept him from tearing tender flesh. She groaned at his size, but kept her body open to him, to his demands and unnatural hungers. She was his. His in all ways, and he needed her to know that, in the deepest part of her mind, in every part of her. For every time she'd irritated him, drove him to distraction, tried to defy him or turn her back on him. When things couldn't be controlled, that's when they couldn't be protected. Not even from himself.
He stopped. She quivered beneath him, but he forced himself to clear the shadows and blood from his gaze and see his hands. They were braced on the ground on either side of her head. She had one arm up, her hand curled over the top of his fingers, her thumb stroking. Soothing. The witch who was never nurturing, never kind.
Oh, Goddess. What am I doing?
"No," she said. "Don't pull away. Take control of it. Don't let it control you, David. Don't let it make you doubt and hate yourself just because it had a scant second of victory."
He forced himself to concentrate. Gazed down at her where she lay, curiously docile. Her cloak had fallen off one bare shoulder, her smooth shoulder.
"You're not... disguised."
"Not to you. Come to me. Please."
Now he bent, laid his lips on her skin, felt the rush of blood beneath. He had the desire to set his teeth there, so he did that as well. She trembled beneath him, in desire.
Physical intimacy was capable of becoming magic, but now he knew why people in dire circumstances, deep in dungeons or prisons, could turn to this. They were surrounded by all the vestiges of evil and Hell. Nothing living, not in the manner he understood as an angel, with that moaning roar on the wind at all times, the occasional patter of raindrops and hail that fell like acid. Changing from oppressive heat to frigid cold with each step, so the body could never adjust or brace itself. Desolation and tedium, sick apprehension and dread weighing over the shoulders like Atlas's burden, in a cross carved for no purpose.
He'd asked his mother, when he was ten, when she was oblivious to the tragedy happening in their own home, "What if Jesus carried the cross for no purpose, no reason?"
If there is no good to seek in the world, then living and dying mean nothing. It is all nothing. Jonah had helped him find that answer, much, much later.
She lifted her hands, reaching for him. David settled back on her body, feeling the odd terrain of scars and curves beneath the skeletal illusion of Dark One, but mainly he felt her. As he slid back into her, her legs rose to clasp his hips, welcoming him. In pain or pleasure, she welcomed him into her.
Warmth, wetness. The softness of a woman's thighs. Her body rising to the stroking of his. The grasp of her fingers, desperate and savage, as he built her toward a climax. She reared up, wrapped her arms around his neck, held him close, and her fingers punctuated the illusion so he felt them bury in the feathers that lay beneath the enchantment and hold on. Her skin, her breast, were pressed against his upper body, her hips seeking, pumping higher, taking him deeper, stroking the length of his cock with sure muscles that had so quickly learned what could drag him to the edge. He had to fight his base urges not to give in, and his base urges clamored much more stridently in this place.
The connection he had with her was now more than just the initial blood link they shared. It was the link of the Dark One blood, that red tinting to his eyes that reflected in the pure crimson fire of hers. It was a terrible thing, but he didn't mind having one more bond with her. He wanted to bond with her in every way. As soon as he had the thought, he knew in a heartbeat that was where he needed to take this. His ultimate defiance against the hold of such a place.
"Mina." He said her name, held on to it through the pounding in his head, the agonizing beat of the blood rushing through his veins.
As she lifted a hand again, he held it by the wrist, letting her fingers brush against his face. Mina spread her other hand on his abdomen, drifted down to scrape the sensitive pubic region, then traveled around to ride the rhythmic clutch of his buttocks, digging her fingers in. Arching up at the burst of searing sweetness that rocketed through them both.
"This is true. No matter what." He said it with his mind linked with hers like their hands. "No regrets."
"It's all regret," she whispered.
"Just promise me not to regret what we've had. Not a moment."
She nodded, and then he pushed her over the edge, but Mina apparently didn't want to go alone. She held him inside her, stroking in a rhythm that had his hold going erratic. He exploded on a growl, the Dark One blood augmenting his ferocity as a male warrior as he surged into her hard, offered her seed. Offered himself in a way that he knew she wouldn't expect.
As they at last came down, David drew deep breaths. Steadying breaths. He could feel the Dark One blood, but he could feel his own as well, a tense stalemate that created an irritating, low-level hum throughout his senses, which oddly matched the outside roar of this world, as if a weaker frequency. But they'd done it. Mina had known what he needed to weather the worst initial moments. Clever, sweet witch.
He'd reclaimed what had been knocked out of his mental grasp upon entry into this place. The energy angels used, from grounding in meditation, or a woman's body, to find the still center of the soul, and hold it inviolate against anything. A balance. Similar to the type of balance Mina had practiced all her life.
He'd typically have cleansed his soul at this point to strengthen it, but he knew that center also ha
d to have the fouling presence of the Dark One blood, so that he could maintain his focus in this wretched world. He would endure its roaring insistence, use it as she'd said, while refusing to give it what it wanted. He might not make it out of here, but if it was in his power, she would.
"WHAT have you done?" Mina struggled up on her elbows, and then to her feet. His gaze was reassuringly aware, despite the red flickers, and he helped her up with a powerful arm around her shoulders. Despite the harrowing first few moments when she was sure she'd made a terrible mistake, when she told Jonah that David could do this, she could tell that incredible focus angels possessed had taken the upper hand.
It didn't mean she wasn't going to skewer him with one of those blades in the next two seconds. She was a witch. She knew the feel of life and death. Releasing fertile seed was a choice for angels. A choice he'd just made in her body. "What did you do?" she repeated.
"Gave you something to live for, if you make it out of here."
She stared at him, sure he'd gone mad. "David, I can't have a baby. I can't. I'll kill it. I can't love it."
"No, you won't, and yes, you can." He reached out toward her hand and she batted it away. He returned, caught it anyway, squeezed in reproof. "There has to be a seawitch for the next daughter of Arianne. Your Fates are entwined, remember? If you're worried, Anna and Jonah will raise the child. But you'll take care of her, Mina. I know you will."
He let her go, checked the sheathing on his blades. "Which way do we go?" he asked, that startling hiss emitting from his normally velvet-toned voice.
"If I thought we'd live through this, I'd promise to kill you later. If we're caught, I'm going to tell them to torture you first."
"Understood." He nodded placidly. "So?"
She nodded toward the west, where a spear of irregular rock thrust into the sky. The tower she'd known would be there.
If his seed found a fertile egg, she knew she'd feel it. Could kill it with barely a thought of her mind. She wasn't feeling cruel enough to say that, though, which suggested that he'd mellowed her in two days far more than she'd anticipated. Another reason it was a good thing they weren't going to survive this.
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