“Enough!” I yelled. “Just leave me alone!”
I slammed my hand against his chest, right below his neck, on the circle of flesh left bare from the tank top. I expected his skin to burn, to blacken, like it had when I stabbed him with Gabriel’s feather over a year ago.
Nothing happened.
The blood rushed out of my face as I stared in horror at my hand on his skin, chocolate on ivory, and he didn’t burn. I dropped it and then stared at my palm, swallowing hard to speak around the lump in my throat.
“I don’t understand.”
Belial leaned towards me and I flinched, terrified by the placidness in his expression. “Don’t understand what, my pet?”
“M-Michael said after we got married, demons wouldn’t be able to touch me. He said it would burn your skin.”
He gave me a slight nod. “True. Other demons will be burned if they touch you.”
Belial took hold of my chin, forcing me to meet his harrowing gaze. He leaned in even closer, allowing his hot breath to roll over my cheeks as he spoke.
“Do you remember when I kissed you?”
“Like you’d let me forget.”
He smirked. “True. It was genuine, of course. I really did want you to become my servant and I had hoped you would give in, but you didn’t. So I implemented a contingency plan. I put a mark on you that negates the contract you made with Michael upon marrying him.”
“How?”
“When I kissed you, you ingested my blood and I ingested yours. That is the first part of the process. If I were to…” He licked his bottom lip, dropping his eyes to my neck and lower.
“…take you, that would be the second step. After you verbally pledged yourself to me, you would be my servant. After you didn’t give in, I simply let you believe I couldn’t touch you in order to lure you into a false sense of security. I knew I wouldn’t be able to steal you from Michael, but I figured I could at least level the playing field.”
My wrath came rushing back. “Playing field? This is a game to you? My life, my marriage, is a game?”
His smirk widened. “The best kind.”
I punched him in the face. He reeled, touching his chin in surprise, but I wasn’t done. Blind rage enveloped my entire body and I kept hitting him, bruising my knuckles as they collided with his chest and abdomen. He toppled over backwards onto the bed and I kept coming for him, aiming for that smug mouth of his. I hit him twice more before he caught my arms.
“Let go of me, you bastard! Let go so I can kill you and end this!” I snarled, thrashing in his iron grip to no avail.
He arched an eyebrow. “Kill me? Aren’t we presumptuous?”
“Shut up! I hate you! God, I hate you so much.” I heard my voice crack on the last word and knew he had finally gotten to me.
Something flickered through his eyes then. “Would you really do it, Jordan? Could you kill me in cold blood?”
“In a heartbeat,” I said, hating the hot tears making tracks down my cheeks.
Belial shuddered underneath me and then the world flipped. He pinned me below him, bending down to whisper in that chilling voice of his. “How would you do it? A gun? A knife? Another worthless holy feather? How much would you enjoy seeing the life drain out of my body?”
“It would be the happiest moment of my life,” I spat, struggling beneath his large hands.
“How would you feel after you murdered me? Would you mourn me? Would you regret my death?”
“Not even for a second.”
He let out a long breath. “Perfect.”
His lips covered mine in a searing hot kiss and his knee slid between my thighs, adding sweet pressure along the front of my body. His energy surged around me and flared goosebumps across my skin like wildfire. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t focus on anything other than how much I hated him in that one moment. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I fought I couldn’t beat him. I just couldn’t.
Then something else happened. The longer he held me there, the more I could feel the hatred melding into a solid heat between us. A feverish sensation flooded through my senses and I stopped trying to move my face so that he couldn’t kiss me anymore. My limbs relaxed one by one until I felt completely detached, as if he had siphoned the life out of me.
As soon as he felt me go limp, Belial used his knees to nudge my legs apart and stretched out on top of me. I shivered as he slid his tongue inside my mouth and rocked his hips into mine. He wanted me so bad. I knew it deep down inside, in my bones somewhere. He wasn’t like Michael, who had respected and treasured me as his wife. Belial wanted to consume me, to swallow every inch of me and leave nothing but an empty husk; to break me into tiny fragments and hold me in the palm of his hand. He wanted to own me.
A corner of my mind returned as he broke from my lips and kissed my throat, sliding his hot tongue over my pulse as if he were thinking about eating me.
I fought the drunken lethargy in my veins, shaking my head. “No…get off of me…I won’t betray my husband…”
“You’re wrong,” he murmured in my ear. “It’s not betrayal. You are giving in to your true nature. I did more than place a mark on you when I first kissed you. I planted a seed of doubt that grew into what is between us now. Deep down in your heart, you are afraid you will do something so terrible that the good angel will leave you. If you give in to me, you will have nothing left to fear. Face it, Jordan. You think you don’t deserve Michael. That is why your energy has blended with mine so willingly. That is why your body aches for my touch. We are sin and darkness. One and the same. Accept it.”
In that moment, I realized Belial had been telling the truth. Part of me—a selfish, cowardly, reckless part—really did want him. He offered the basest of human instincts—to indulge in something wicked because it felt good and was easier than doing the right thing. How else had we reached this point? I had been in denial for so long, but now I could see it. God help me.
He watched my expression switch from anger to horrified acceptance and whispered my name, inching towards my lips again.
He stopped less than a millimeter away from kissing me and then lifted his head. His brow bunched deeply in a frown. “Do you feel that?”
“What?”
“Where are Juliana and Avriel?”
“In their room down the hall. Why?”
“I feel the presence of hellhounds…and an archdemon.”
“Oh, God, no.”
Chapter 30
Jordan
HE SCRAMBLED OFF me and we raced out of the hotel room. I fumbled for my hotel key, but Belial just kicked the door in as if it was made of balsa wood. Neither of them were in the room. The window was smashed and glass littered the floor. The mattress was nothing more than ripped-up chunks of foam and cloth. The sheets lay beside it, shredded with claw marks.
“Come on!” Belial shouted, climbing through the window. “They’re in the parking lot!”
I followed him. On the sidewalk, I nearly tripped over the body of a dead hellhound, its head lying at a weird angle as its neck had been broken. There was a faint trail of blood leading away from the dead beast towards the RV. I could tell Avriel hadn’t the time to call for help. He had tried to get Juliana to somewhere more secure.
There were few cars in the parking lot when we arrived, but witnesses were the least of our worries. Eight hellhounds had backed Avriel up against the side of the RV. I couldn’t see Juliana yet and the knowledge that she might be hurt or dead made me want to scream.
“Avriel!” I yelled over the fearsome growls of the hellhounds. “Where’s Juliana?”
He grabbed one enormous beast by the throat and threw it against another that had been trying to bite his left heel. “Here, behind me. She’s okay.”
After I spoke, three of the hellhounds turned their heads and snarled at Belial and me, their ears flattening against their skulls as they crawled towards us. I readied my energy shards, preparing to throw them, but Belial p
ushed me behind him.
“You dare turn your fangs on me?” he said in a deadly whisper. The growling died down. A cautious look entered their red eyes, as if they understood him.
“What is the meaning of this?”
The hellhound up front barked at the others—a loud, spine-tingling sound—then they leapt for him.
Belial shoved me out of the way and the four of them rolled backwards on the pavement in a heap. He ripped out the throat of the closest one and flung its body across the lot. The other two grabbed an arm and a leg in their jaws and worried them, trying to rip his limbs out of their sockets.
“Strike!” I sent a shard through the spine of the one closest to me. It shrieked and let go of the demon as blood spurted from the wound, turning on me instead. It pounced. I threw myself to the side. It smashed into an SUV behind me, scattering glass. It shook its head, standing on shaky paws, and I launched three more energy shards at it. They plunged through its matted black fur and it collapsed, dead.
I turned to Belial, who was still fighting off another one. “Forget about me. Help Avriel!”
I ran towards the mob of creatures, throwing up my forearms. “In the name of the Father, I reject!”
My shield rose and I shoved my way through the beasts until I reached Avriel. Juliana had curled up underneath the RV by a tire, safely out of reach from the hounds, but she wouldn’t stay that way for long. Avriel, Belial, and I killed the remaining four but as soon as we did, several bloodcurdling howls cut through the night. Dark, hunched shapes crept around the cars in the lot, pouring out of the shadows like a wave of inky death. There were at least two-dozen of them now. Shit.
Belial swept his gaze over the approaching monstrosities. “You need to get out of here. Even I can’t kill all of them at once. Get the child. The angel and I can give you a head start.”
I knelt and stuck my head under the RV. “Juliana?”
“Lose something?”
My blood ran cold as a pompous female voice spoke from above me. I stood up to find a dark-haired woman on top of the RV with Juliana in her arms. Her brown eyes had pupils just like Belial’s—thin slits instead of round ones.
“Mulciber.”
The demon smiled and spoke through a thick Welsh accent. “Nice to see you again, Jordan.”
“Yes, it is. Why don’t you come down here so I can give you a hug before I rip your arms off and beat you to death with them?”
She clucked her tongue. “Now, now, don’t be rude. I am holding all the cards at the moment, so you’d better curb that sharp tongue of yours.”
“Mulciber,” Belial said, his energy flaring around him like invisible flames. “Since when have you had the balls to attack me?”
Her sickening smile stretched. “Sorry, Beli. I’m a bit tired of being Number Two. Besides, the Master has grown impatient with your plan of attack. He told me that if I pull this off, I’m back in his good graces, so to speak. You shouldn’t have let the human turn you soft. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
He balled his hands into fists. “You think a few measly hellhounds will keep you safe from me? If you don’t put my daughter down and leave, there will be nowhere on this planet that you can hide from me.”
“Oh, I have no intention of hiding, darling. I’m here to make a deal.”
I spoke up this time. “What deal?”
“Go to the Garden and get the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Bring it to the Leviathan’s sleeping place and awaken it. Then and only then will I give you back your trinket,” she said, squeezing Juliana, who let out a tiny squeak of pain.
I launched myself forward, trying to climb the side of the RV, but Belial held me back. “Let go of her, you psychotic piece of shit! Take me instead. You don’t need her.”
“Oh, but I do. See, nothing motivates you more than threatening someone you care about. If I took you, I could spend all day torturing you and you’d never break because you don’t care about your own safety. It’s only those you love. After all, human sentiment is one of the most powerful weapons in the universe.”
Tears burned in my eyes as the truth of her words hit me. The fear on Juliana’s face made my heart ache, made me feel as if the demon were holding it in her hand and digging her claws in until it was nothing but a clump of wet red ribbons. Belial’s arm tightened around my front, holding me against him because he knew that if he let go, I’d climb up there and eviscerate her with my bare hands.
“So this is where we say our goodbyes. Belial will know how to contact me once you’ve gotten the fruit. I’ll meet you with this little bundle of joy in tow. Fair enough?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Avriel beat me to the punch. “I am afraid not.”
He crouched for a split second and then leapt into the air, landing on top of the RV right in front of Mulciber. He landed one magnificent punch to the side of her face. She dropped Juliana, reeling backward. He grabbed her head between his hands, preparing to break her neck, when the blade of a machete ran through his chest.
“Avriel!” I screamed.
He fell to his knees in front of her, his breath stilted and shallow.
Mulciber wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth and glared at him. “Insolent whelp.”
She kicked him off the RV and he fell, hitting the pavement beside us. Mulciber grabbed Juliana before she could jump off and snapped her fingers at the hounds surrounding us. “Keep them busy!”
Belial let me go to scoop up the machete that had fallen along with Avriel and whirled on our attackers. The hounds threw themselves at us from all sides. My shield barely held, but I fought back, slashing at them with shard after shard. Before long, it faltered, and then disappeared entirely.
The beasts slashed at me with their razor sharp claws, covering my arms and legs in scratches and blood, both mine and theirs. We managed to kill nearly the entire horde before the last few stragglers gave up and slunk off into the night. Their job was done. Mulciber was gone and so was Juliana.
I dropped to my knees beside Avriel, pulling his head into my lap. I patted his cheek, trying to rouse him. “Avriel, open your eyes. Come on, damn you!”
His eyelids flickered and then slid back. Blood trickled from his mouth and down his chin. His skin was deathly pale and the few freckles dotted along his nose stood out like ink blots. I ripped open the tear in his shirt, unable to suppress a small sob at the sight of the huge gash Mulciber’s machete had left. She’d pierced a lung and possibly severed his spine.
“Stay with me, okay?” I whispered, holding my hand over the wound and concentrating my energy on the spot. “I can heal this, I know I can.”
He gave me a grim smile. “Her…weapon is born of Hell. You cannot heal a mortal wound inflicted by a demon’s blade.”
“Don’t say that. You’re supposed to help me stop the Leviathan. You can’t die. It’s not your time.”
“No one has a time, Jordan. All the world’s a stage…and all the men and women merely players…”
He closed his eyes, struggling to finish the line, so I did it for him. “They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”
“Smart man, that Shakespeare,” Avriel murmured. “I thought my part was to save the world, but instead, it was to believe in something greater than myself.”
“What?”
He met my gaze. “You.”
His eyes closed. They didn’t open a third time. Belial’s hand touched my shoulder. My legs numbly pushed me upward from the ground. As we drove off into the night, I knew that part of me would forever remain in that lot.
Even though it felt wrong, we had no choice but to leave Avriel’s body at the scene of the murder. The hounds’ corpses evaporated into ash that the wind would eventually blow away, but the ruckus we’d made hadn’t gone unnoticed. We had to ditch town.
Our driver was nowhere to be found. Not surprising. Belial suspected he was the one who had revealed our whereabouts t
o Mulciber, which meant the guy would definitely have a target painted on the back of his head now. Hell would be nothing compared to what Belial would do to him for selling us out.
We couldn’t track Juliana or Mulciber because Juliana’s energy was undetectable and Mulciber was shielding herself. Belial had gotten lucky when he sensed her proximity. If he’d talked me into sleeping with him, we wouldn’t have found out about the hounds until it was far too late. It was the only consolation prize I could grasp in my mind.
Six hours later, I was sitting on the edge of a tub in yet another rundown hotel in the middle of nowhere. My energy was all but spent, so my arms and legs were heavily bandaged. A dull pain had settled beneath my skin. I barely felt the scratches and the scabs. I was just tired. So damned tired. Tired of fighting, tired of losing, and tired of whatever side I considered myself to be on at the moment.
I heard a knock at the door, but didn’t answer. The knob turned. Belial walked in. He didn’t speak, just knelt in front of me and peeled off the bandages adorning my right forearm. After he rested his hand over the cuts, a cool tingling sensation crept through the limb. The dried blood disappeared first and then the skin healed, becoming smooth once more.
Once he finished there, he moved on to my bicep and continued the process on the other parts of my body.
“I suppose this is the part where I tell you Avriel’s death was not your fault,” the demon said in a detached sort of tone.
“Don’t. I mean it. Just don’t.”
He let the silence stretch on for a bit. “Do you think yourself to be strong when you bottle up your emotions?”
I glared at him. “I don’t know—do you?”
He snorted. “That’s different. I’m a demon. I don’t have emotions. You’re human. It’s perfectly natural to feel a sense of loss when you can’t save someone you like.”
“He was a murderer. He tried to kill me twice.”
“And you still liked him anyway. You can’t lie to me, Jordan. It’s not a crime to realize that the world isn’t as black and white as you think.”
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