Winter Wishes

by Vivian Arend, Vivi Andrews

  Until he started wigging out about meeting her parents.

  At first she thought he was intimidated by her celebrity family, but he’d never seemed to care about the fame game before. The more he had evaded, the more she had begun to wonder about the secrets he kept, the distance that was always between them. Dating the alter ego was only fun when she was in on his secret identity.

  Jay could play the role of devoted boyfriend beautifully, but when real commitment was involved the character fell away. What she’d thought was their relationship developing was just him playing house. This was why she didn’t date actors. They only wanted to perform their connections, not live them.

  But Jay was different. Or she’d thought he was. Now she didn’t know what to think.

  He was just a guy trapped in Hell. A mission to complete.

  He couldn’t be more to her. Not right now. She couldn’t worry about him. She needed to focus.

  Sasha stopped beside a beige wall, flooded by the sense Jay was behind it, but there were no doors in either direction for a hundred feet. Holding the Desert Eagle against her thigh, she put her free hand flat against the plaster, then jerked it back when the wall began to move beneath her fingers, rippling across her palm. “Jesus.”

  A low laugh reverberated at the end of the hallway, accompanied by skittering sounds. Sasha spun toward the noise, taking aim, but only caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her vision. The hall stretched away from her, empty as far as she could see.

  “Note to self—Hell is creepy and you’re being watched by invisible hyenas.” Suck it up, Sasha. She turned back to the wall hiding Jay. “Things aren’t always as they seem,” she muttered to herself, drawing comfort from the familiarity of her own voice.

  She lifted one hand to the wall again, shuddering when it came alive under her fingers. It felt like wet stone—and as soon as she thought the word stone, the plaster and drywall flickered like a mirage and vanished, leaving the section of the wall directly in front of her a damp stone-and-mortar construction. This was her access point to Jay.

  The stone didn’t look very stable, so Sasha gave an experimental shove. Rumbling like an avalanche, the rocks tumbled away—but rather than down, they fell sideways, rippling away from her touch until a portal opened, wide enough for her to step through.

  “Jay?” She wrapped both hands around the Desert Eagle.

  There was nothing but shadows on the other side of the wall.

  And the sound of rattling chains. “Sasha?”

  Her breathing snagged at the sound of his voice. “Jay.” Sasha forgot about being watched, forgot about the quest, the creepy moving walls and Gerry’s ominous warnings. She rushed toward the sound of Jay’s voice, not realizing until she heard him speak, heard that he was still able to speak, how frightened she had been for him. Relieved tears pricked in her eyes, but she ignored them. There’s no crying in Hell.

  The avalanche reversed, sealing her in darkness, but Sasha didn’t look back. She groped forward through the pitch, toward where she thought she’d heard Jay. “Are you all right?”

  “Over here,” Jay called and Sasha whipped around.

  How could she have gotten so disoriented? She thought that was where the entrance was, but now her dark-adjusted eyes made out a flicker of candlelight on metal and flesh. What had they done to him?

  Sasha hurried toward him, knocking her shin hard on something solid, but not even looking down to see what it was. She couldn’t take her eyes away from Jay—filthy, bare-chested, nothing-had-ever-looked-better-to-her-in-her-entire-life Jay.

  “Oh God, is that blood?”

  She fell to her knees at his side, wanting to throw herself into his arms, just to feel his skin against hers and know he was all right, but not wanting to hurt him if there were injuries beneath the dirt and dried blood.

  “It’s nothing.” He cupped her face, searching her eyes for something, then bared his teeth in an unfamiliar, fierce smile, holding up his shackled wrists. “Take the light. See if you can find something to open these.”

  A bud of unease sprouted in her chest—her Jay was never so commanding. He wasn’t the take-charge type. He didn’t have that edge. Could Hell have changed him in a matter of hours?

  Ignoring the sense of disquiet, she holstered her gun, grabbed a candle and began searching for keys, tools, anything that could be used on his bindings.

  Seeing the room for the first time, Sasha shuddered. Is that an iron maiden? “What is this place?”

  “Whatever its owner needs it to be. Hell isn’t static like earth.”

  How did he know that? Had his captors told him? Sasha found a fireplace poker she somehow doubted had been used only for stoking fires, given the bits of charred stuff stuck to the end. She refused to wonder what that stuff was, or who it came from. She held it up.

  Jay nodded sharply. “Good girl. That’s perfect. Bring it here.”

  He extended one leg, bracing the shackle at his ankle against a stone and wincing at the change in position.

  “Are you hurt? Can you walk?” What had they done to him? And how could she get him out if she couldn’t move him? Was that what Gerry had meant with his vague warnings?

  “Don’t worry,” Jay said without looking up, his focus on positioning the shackle to his satisfaction. “Demons heal quickly.”

  Sasha froze a step away from him, raising the poker defensively. “What did you say?” she whispered.

  Jay looked up and she watched the expression drain from his face until it was completely neutral, guarded. “I can explain,” he said carefully—and those words were all the confirmation she needed.

  A demon. I’m dating a demon.

  Chapter Seven

  So You’re Dating a Demon

  Oh shit. Jay had been so stupidly certain the angels would have told her everything. When she’d rushed to his side and seemed so grateful to see him, he’d assumed she must have forgiven his deception, understood his true feelings for her, and come to redeem him so they could stay together.

  The sight of her, his very own avenging angel, gun in hand, hair streaming behind her, had knocked the breath right out of him.

  But the angelic bastards hadn’t told her shit, and now she was winding up like a major league hitter with that fireplace poker, ready to swing it at his head. He raised a hand, ready to catch the poker if she tried to club him. “Sasha, baby, listen to me.”

  Her eyes narrowed and the poker wagged threateningly. “Don’t call me baby, demon.”

  “Sasha, you know me.” Jay gathered his feet under him. Could he disarm her without hurting her? Or taking a fireplace poker to the cranium? “I haven’t changed. I’m just not one hundred percent human. I thought the angels told you.”

  “So you only confessed to being a demon because you thought someone else had already told me?”

  Jay winced. “I know it looks that way, but I was trying to tell you—”

  “When you were conveniently sucked into a demonic vortex? I have to say, Jay, it would have eased my mind at that point to know you belong in Hell.”

  “I meant to tell you sooner.”

  “I’m supposed to believe a demon?” She huffed out an angry breath. “It makes sense, in a way. Demons are known for lying and that’s definitely your strong suit, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t mean to deceive you. At first I thought you knew what I was.”

  “Do I look like I have some kind of demon radar?”

  Jay figured it was best not to answer that question. Apparently his demonic nature wasn’t the only secret the angels were still keeping from Sasha. “Can I have the poker? We don’t have much time.” And he’d really rather have this conversation when she wasn’t threatening him with a sharp object.

  He barely caught the poker she flung at him before it could smack him in the face.

  In the same move, she drew a gleaming silver gun and pointed it straight at his chest. “Better?”

  Out of the frying
pan. The poker would have hurt like the devil, but he could have shaken it off. He could have asked her to shoot the manacles off before—he knew she was a crack shot—but he hadn’t wanted that gun pointed anywhere near him.

  A bullet from a human gun was unlikely to kill him, but the swirling etched into the barrel meant she was holding an angel’s sword. She could do some serious damage even if she just tried to wing him. Angel swords—whatever form they chose to take—were created to destroy demons.

  Did she know that? Did she know if she squeezed the trigger she could end him? Just what mission had the angels assigned her that she needed a Demon Killer?

  “Sasha…” he began cautiously, but couldn’t find the words to continue. Getting her to trust him again seemed too big a task for a collection of verbs and nouns.

  Her expression was fierce. “You said you could explain. Start talking.”

  It wasn’t the threat of the gun that spurred his tongue, so much as the wounded flicker in her eyes. The betrayed ache he was solely responsible for putting there.

  “I’m only half demon. My father was human. An anthropologist working at USC. My mother…” There really was no way of painting his mother in a positive light without outright lying and he refused to lie to Sasha any more. “My mother is an ambitious demoness who thought having a hybrid child would enhance her standing in the demonic court.” And she hadn’t been wrong. “But I never wanted to spend my life as a pawn in an endless string of intrigues. I didn’t know what I wanted…”

  “You better not say until you met me. My bullshit tolerance is low right now, Jay.”

  At least she was calling him Jay again. It was a definite improvement over the way she’d spat demon at him like an epithet. “I went to the mortal realm looking for…I don’t know. Guidance. Answers. Some kind of direction. I thought if I could find my father’s family, find where the human half of me came from, I would understand why I never felt complete in Hell.”

  “I will shoot you if you say ‘you complete me.’”

  Jay suppressed a smile. The demonic part of his nature was unspeakably turned on by her rage. She had no idea how enthralling she was right now. “I found out my father was an orphan with no known relatives, but by then I already knew I wanted to stay on the mortal plane. Everything was so alive. Humans seemed to feel things so much more strongly because their lives were so much shorter they had to pack their experiences in tightly. I couldn’t go back to the chess game of the demon realm, where manipulations and intrigues can take a thousand years to develop. Not after I experienced the rush of human existence. I knew I had to find a way to stay…and that’s when I met you.”

  The gun’s muzzle lowered a few inches. Sasha’s eyes were still wary, but there was a hopeful crack in her angry mask that hadn’t been there moments ago.

  “I thought you could help me be less demonic. I wanted to be good. For you. You made me feel like I was human and normal, sometimes too normal for you, but I couldn’t tell you the truth and have you look at me like—like you’re looking at me now.”

  “How am I looking at you?” she asked softly.

  “Like you’ll never trust me again.” Jay thought he saw a shadow shift out of the corner of his eye. A soft skittering sound rustled through the darkness. Minions. “And I’ve run out of time to convince you to.”

  * * *

  He moved quickly—almost faster than she could see—and in a blink his hand was on the gun, shoving the barrel away. She tried to jerk it up and out of his grasp, but her arm tangled in the chain linking his wrists as he locked one arm around her waist. He spun her in his arms so her back was pressed to his front and both of his hands covered hers on the gun, pointing the muzzle toward the ground. Sasha writhed in his hold, struggling against his superior strength. She locked her grip on the gun in case he tried to pry it from her fingers and snapped her head back sharply, but Jay got his chin out of the way in time.

  “Sasha.” Her boot heel slammed down on his bare instep and he grunted. “Sasha. Dammit, I’m not going to hurt you, but we don’t have time for this. Look at the shadows, the way they move. Do you see them?”

  She went still in his arms, her eyes scanning the shadows. “Them?”

  “Minions. Lesser demons, vicious and mindless, easily controlled.”

  And then she saw them, oddly shaped silhouettes scuttling just out of the light, visible only when they moved—their black eyes blinking in the darkness.

  “Damn parasites. My mother will have sent them here to stop us.”

  “Why?” Someone declare that demoness Mother of the Year. “Why are you chained?”

  “My mother recently married, but I refused her summons to come home and do tricks for her new husband. She doesn’t take rejection well.”

  Sasha groaned. “Tell me you aren’t actually Satan’s stepson.”

  “He prefers to be called Lucifer. And really he isn’t that bad.”

  Of course he isn’t. “I’m sure the Prince of Darkness has lots of finer qualities,” Sasha said. “But why do the angels care about you? Why would they want me to bring a demon out of Hell by dawn Christmas morning?”

  Jay went unnaturally still behind her. “Is that what they want?” His voice sounded odd. Choked.

  “What does that mean? Jay?” She tried to twist in his grip, needing to see his face. “You can let me go. I’m not going to shoot you right now.” Though she still didn’t know if she could trust him. Or if a lying, son-of-a-demon boyfriend was even worth rescuing from the bowels of Hell.

  His hold loosened, but he didn’t release her entirely until she tucked the Desert Eagle back into its holster. Not that she could blame him. Holding a gun on her significant other wasn’t exactly good relationship etiquette.

  She turned to face him as he bent to apply the poker to his ankle cuffs like a crowbar. “Is it some kind of angel code? The dawn thing?”

  Jay looked up, but didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Dawn Christmas morning…could mean a lot of things.”

  Sasha’s jaw locked. “Jay. When I’m pissed off and armed is not the time to be keeping things from me.”

  His lips twitched. Who was this guy who grinned when she threatened him? He certainly wasn’t the Jay she knew. And why did she like him this way? He was a demon. She was supposed to revile his very existence. Instead she felt a delicious little thrill that she was finally seeing behind the veil to the other Jay.

  “It could mean redemption,” he said. “Christmas morning is a traditional celebration of cleansing and spiritual rebirth.”

  “But?” There was more to it than that and they both knew it. He didn’t sound like he really believed the angels wanted to redeem him and from what Sasha had seen of the angels in the last few hours, she didn’t blame him.

  He grunted, biceps bulging impressively as he applied leverage to the poker. The first manacle broke open and he smiled, the same fierce baring of teeth she had never seen on his face before tonight.

  “Jay?”

  “Redemption isn’t offered lightly,” he admitted, going to work on the second shackle. “It’s more likely…”

  The ringtone version of “Jingle Bells” blared cheerily from her pocket. Sasha grabbed her cell phone, staring at it like it was possessed. Four bars. She had better cell reception in Hell than in most of Malibu.

  She checked the caller ID. Joan Crawford, herself. “It’s my mother. She’s probably still freaked you aren’t coming for Christmas. Maybe I should tell her you’re a demon.”

  “Half demon,” he corrected.

  “Devilspawn.”

  “Can’t argue with that one.”

  Voicemail caught the call and the phone went silent. Only to instantly start ringing again.

  “She’s just going to keep calling until I answer it.” The woman might look like a goddess, but she had the persistence of a terrier. “I’ll turn it off.”

  “Take it.”

  Sasha gaped at him. “I’m not going to take a call from my
mother in Hell.”

  “She’ll worry all night if you ignore it. Tell her you can’t talk now and you’ll call her back.”

  An evil demon considering her mother’s feelings—there was something off about that. Especially since she hadn’t considered them for a second. She was a worse daughter than a demon. It was a humbling thought. She hit Send.

  “Hey, Mom. I can’t really talk right now.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so glad I caught you and if you can’t talk that’s perfectly okay. You just listen.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant—”

  The second shackle broke with a grinding metal crack.

  “I need to apologize for pushing you about Jay. Your father says I was acting like his mother about this and God forbid anyone have grounds to compare me to that woman. I take back all of my bullying. It has never been in the spirit of Christmas in this household to emotionally blackmail your children and I’m so sorry if it has been causing strain on your relationship. I never meant to pressure—”

  The first wrist shackle popped open with a muted clink and the minions scuttled closer, something black and scaled teasing into the radius of light cast by the candles.

  “Mom, this really isn’t a good time.”

  “Is he there now?” her mother stage-whispered into the phone. “Can I speak with him? I really ought to apologize to both of you.” Her voice had risen about two octaves on the last sentence, which she always thought made her sound more trustworthy, but only made it obvious she was trying to get away with something.

  “I’m not putting him on the phone with you so you can try to badger him into coming again, Mother.”

  “I won’t!” her mother protested, all innocence. “Just let me apologize directly. It means so much more coming personally, don’t you think?”

  The minions rustling in the shadows grew louder. “We’re in the middle of a fight, Mom.” Or we’re about to be.

  “Oh, I knew it! It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry, baby. Just don’t go to bed angry. And use your womanly wiles. Men will forgive anything if you wile them enough.”