by Misty Dietz
She tried the door handle, turning back to him with disconsolate eyes when she found it locked. “Just let me go.”
Never. His fingers curled around her arm. “You think I’m lying.”
“You’ve said many times that you do what you have to do to get your way. You lie as easily as you speak the truth. Maybe easier.”
He released her arm, his heart ready to pound out of its rib cavity. “I’m not lying. Surely you can feel the difference. If you don’t, I don’t know what else I can do.”
She gave him an if-only-I-could-believe-you look. “How convenient.”
“What do I need to do to make you believe me?”
“Find my grandparents. Unharmed.”
She met his fierceness with a silent dignity that made his ignoble instincts—subdue, command, protect!—begin to calm. Finally, he nodded. “I already told you I would. After that, I’ll find a way to send Asmodeus back to Hell.”
“And then?” she whispered.
He released her, his pulse jack-hammering in his neck as he stared at her.
Then he’d have to let her go. It was the only way to keep her safe. Even now he should send her to Katherine’s club in Hawaii. Or maybe even Zian’s club in Shanghai. Surely she could hide amid thirty million people.
He closed his eyes, unwilling to say the words to send her away. Something inside him shifted vaguely like he’d chosen the wrong fork in the road. He could not bloody think about this right now or he’d Go. Fucking. Mad.
He threw open the truck door. “Let’s move.”
She grabbed his shoulder before he could exit the vehicle. “Whatever is between us is impossible, isn’t it? I’m going to die, and you’re going to live forever.”
No! “I won’t let you die, Jessica.” Even if he couldn’t have her, he would let no harm befall her.
Sadness filled her eyes, though her soft lips curled. “There’s no changing mortality.”
Chapter 31
Jessie startled awake. She scampered out of bed and planted her feet in the center of the darkened room, swiveling her body to orient herself to time and place. Bed, table, wall panel…
Nate’s ‘hunting’ boots.
Her shoulders sagged, the surge of adrenaline now spent. She left the room, glancing at her watch as she descended the stairs. 3:25 pm. Heavens, she’d slept for nearly two hours, which was embarrassing because even though he wouldn’t say I-told-you-so, Nate had obviously been right about her needing some rest. Again.
He was always right, it seemed. She was tired of being coddled, but unfortunately she now realized exactly what they were up against with these demons. And she might not have a choice in whether or not she needed Nate’s protection.
Over the last couple of days, he’d followed through on his promise to help her search for Scourge and her grandparents and to teach her how to fight. He’d not only taken her hunting for Asmodeus—which so far had turned up no clues on the whereabouts of her grandparents or her dog—but he’d also taught her more than she ever wanted to know about guns, knives, holy water, crucifixes, iron chains, chrism oil, demon-warding herbs, and salt. She even learned how to create a Devil’s Trap using paint or even salt to sketch out the circular symbol with a star inside that would detain demons. For hours, they rehearsed scenarios in which she might come face to face with demons. Muscles she didn’t even know she had, ached. He was a tireless, brutal instructor, giving no quarter if she so much as flinched from what he expected her to do.
And at the end of the day, a passionate, demanding lover.
She slept hard and dreamt harder. It only got worse the longer she went with no news of Gramma and Grandpa or Scourge and nary a sign of Asmodeus.
To make matters worse, they’d found Mason yesterday—his dead body draped over a light post, eyes gouged and an upside down cross carved on his chest and abdomen. Jessie hadn’t even cried as Nate and Dorian took his body down and brought it back to the club so they could prepare him for burial.
There’d be time for grieving later. Hopefully.
She rubbed her eyes as she came around the corner that led to the dance floor. Nate glanced over from the bar and smiled. She quickly looked away before those curving lips drew her like a chocolate milkshake to a pre-menstrual, test-cramming law student. He was standing next to Katherine, Spencer, and a priest with steel gray hair, wearing the typical short-sleeved clerical shirt and collar, but with pumpkin-orange-colored denim jeans. This had to be Father Angus O’Flannery, whom Nate had spoken of yesterday. He’d said Angus wasn’t your run-of-the-mill priest, but hadn’t mentioned the colorful tattoo sleeves on the priest’s arms. Wow. He didn’t look like any priest she’d ever seen. And she’d seen more than her fair share of them after her post-rehab mother had found Jesus.
Jessie prematurely ended her yawn when she caught Nate’s raised eyebrow. Hell’s bells. She didn’t want him to know how bone-weary she was. That arching, sexy black eyebrow meant he was going to try to hyper-supervise her again.
Screw that. She needed five minutes of autonomy.
Just five minutes.
She made a bee-line to the dozens of cots where injured humans of all ages rested in TERRA’s makeshift field hospital on the dance floor. The Guardians had begun dialing down the intensity of their city-wide lockdown during daylight hours to preserve their strength. The citizens who ventured out of their homes to assess the ‘earthquake’ damage to their city were calm. Watching them interact on the streets, joking and unruffled amid so much destruction, Jessie had accused Nate of pushing out a Xanax-like compulsion. Remember who started this, Jessie, he’d answered.
Yeah, demons that Uncle Mason had released. Like she could forget.
There was still no power and no cell service, though, so without technology, there could be no organized recovery efforts or wide-spread communications. And Asmodeus’s force field was still at full capacity, keeping citizens in and, according to Katherine and Spencer who’d managed to slip past the force field by streaming directly into the sanctorum, keeping government and military rescue groups out. Apparently the country was in a state of widespread panic over what was happening in the Minneapolis metro. The complete opposite of the serenity under the dome.
Jessie bent down to feel the forehead of a gray-faced, middle aged woman when Jaws burst through the front doors carrying a dark-haired girl. “Katherine, hurry!”
Jessie ran to where Stark spread a blanket on the floor so Jaws could lay the child upon it. It was hard to tell how old she was with her long, coltish legs and knobby knees peeking from torn, purple leggings, but Jessie would guess around nine or ten. She was crying blood, which ran from the insides and corners of her eyes. “I found her seizing by the baker’s shop down the block. She was alone,” Jaws explained.
Katherine sank to her knees beside the girl, her expression grave when the child gnashed her teeth at her, then began to thrash.
“Give me the relic!” The deep, rasping voice was anything but childlike, raising the flesh on the back of Jessie’s neck. The bitter and sweet scent characteristic of the possessed wafted from the girl’s waxen skin. Nate and Dorian held her down while the orange-clad, tattooed priest withdrew a crucifix from his shirt pocket and placed it under one of his hands against the child’s torso. She roared in a terrifying bass that rattled the club chandeliers Dorian had restored. Katherine added her hands to the girl’s trunk while the priest started praying in Latin. Jessie could feel the power of the old words as his voice swelled.
Katherine’s face grayed, her shoulders bowing under the weight of the battle for the child’s soul. “J-Jane. Her name…it’s Jane. Pray for her, this demon is particularly…robust,” she gasped. Jessie had watched Katherine wage this war for souls dozens of times since Halloween night, helpless to do anything but hope that the Guardian would be able to withstand the physical and mental cost.
The girl bucked and screamed and gnashed her teeth. Jaws and Stark joined Nate and Dorian in restraining her
. Jessie knelt behind Nate, unable to tear her gaze from the hatred pouring out of the girl’s eyes, spittle dotting her flawless skin, her face contorted with rage. Jessie leaned forward to whisper. “What can I do?”
Nate turned his face to the side, his profile hard. “Fetch the chrism oil.”
Jessie’s stomach churned as she skirted the cots and ran behind the bar. The bottles sitting on the re-hung shelves had changed from liquor containers to vessels of holy water and anointing oils that they’d amassed after raiding the Basilica two days ago. Consecrated by the bishop on Holy Thursday, chrism oil burned and weakened demons even more substantially than holy water. And if thrown on a demon’s shadow form as it exited its human vessel, chrism oil would exterminate the demon forever. Powerful stuff, but it had to be done just right.
Jessie’s hand closed around one of the pewter bottles inscribed OI—oleum infirmorum, oil of the sick—and hurried back, amid a growing wind that picked up loose papers and swirled her hair about her head. The child’s back bowed up as though rammed with enormous force from below, each arm and leg restrained by an adult, her hands and feet quaking, her head thrashing from side to side uncontrollably.
Katherine and the priest’s lips moved with the exorcism incantation, the ancient language filling the room, drawing more and ever-louder groans and hisses from the child interspersed with words from a tongue Jessie had never heard, but filled her with dread.
Suddenly the walls of the nightclub trembled as though assaulted from an enemy outside. “Nate!”
He looked at her, unruffled. “Stay calm, Angel. The wards will be renewed if you can run a thin line of that chrism oil in front of all the doors. But don’t use it all. We’ll need some for this bastard.”
Drizzle the oil. That she could do. She ran from door to door, leaving a fine stream of the chrism oil that smelled like fresh balsam. Nate took both of the girl’s legs when Jaws ran ahead of Jessie, pulling the iron grills across the doors as an extra precaution from whatever was trying to get in.
“I’m slipping!” Stark’s face reddened with the effort to hold down one of the girl’s arms. Nate tried to help, but if he let go of the child’s legs someone would surely get killed. A steel beam was bending slowly down a post, but Nate was obviously having trouble focusing his energy on two things at once. A primal alarm fired in Jessie’s brain. Sweet Jesus, she didn’t want to touch the girl in the state she was in, but she lunged toward Stark anyway to add her weight onto the child’s wildly jerking arm.
The girl started screaming, her voice morphing from child-like to diabolical and back again as the demon struggled to maintain possession of its vessel. It was awful—so terribly, terribly wrong—Jessie couldn’t halt the tears that flooded her eyes and fell upon the child. What was the demon doing to her mind? To her soul? Would she even be okay if they managed to release her?
What if she were my daughter?
Fire slid sideways through her. Filling her heart. Spilling into her eyes. Pouring liquid heat into her hands.
Too much to hold back.
Too much.
She leaned down, quivering with rage, to glare into the girl’s eyes which flickered black to baby blue to black. “Get out of her, you damned, hateful son of a bitch!”
“Jessie, no!”
She heard Nate’s rebuke in spite of the inhuman shriek that surged through the club like a shock wave. She twisted instinctively to shield her nearest ear, her hand slipping off Jane’s arm. The child’s fingernails gouged a streak across Jessie’s wrist, spurting blood. The girl laughed and snapped her jaws near Jessie’s torn flesh.
Jessie tumbled back on her butt, scooting away, her anger dying, leaving her spent and shaken as Katherine and the priest’s exorcism rite continued. Feeling Nate’s gaze from his position at Jane’s legs, Jessie forced herself to meet it, steeling herself for his fury.
His eyes were piercing, but free of rancor. “To demons, human anger is like mainlining heroin. It feeds their trip and powers them up. Jane needs calm and every other warm, positive feeling you can rally.”
She nodded, scrambling on all fours to Stark’s side. Katherine’s neck arched back, teeth gritted, her form glowing and then fading. Jessie could feel the damage to the Guardian’s psyche, like lashes from a flogger’s whip, reaching far into the shadows where the proud, private woman buried her pain. It was written on her face. Nate must have seen it, too.
“That’s enough, Katherine.”
“No! We almost…have him!” she gasped.
“The chrism oil!” The priest lifted one hand off the child’s torso to point behind Jessie before his voice continued the incantation.
“Get ready, Jess.”
She locked eyes with Nate, the pewter bottle cool in her hands, and her heart tilted. Devastation and horror all around, but he was her rock. Steady as the land he could marshal. As full of stories and knowledge and treasure as any piece of earth that could be mined by the discerning human spirit.
She loved him.
This man who was putting everything into this fight for a child’s soul. Vignettes of the last two months—warm, erotic, sweet, humorous, tender, explosive—flashed before her, a shuffling deck of images in the hands of a master dealer.
I love you, she mouthed, staring into his beautiful eyes, enunciating each word so there’d be no misunderstanding.
He understood.
His eyes fired, lit with passion and something more. Something enduring. And her future was forged.
Whatever that looked like.
Chapter 32
Nate had never, in all his years as a human or a Guardian, felt a look as potent—as profound—as the one Jessie had just given him.
He was using all his strength to bear down on a fragile human child, who bucked and screeched beneath him, but all he wanted to do was take Jessie in his arms and bind her to him in the ritual that would make them one for all eternity.
Her lips had formed words of love. Unashamed. Unafraid. Unequivocal.
He’d never been more elated, nor more terrified, than this moment.
The demon inside the child—Asmodeus, he was certain—had witnessed it.
Alexios had told him just this morning that even though archdemons didn’t require human hosts—because they had their own physical forms—they could leave it and possess a human if they so desired.
The results of which were always unspeakably vile.
Indeed.
Asmodeus roared inside the child, the power of his evil so mighty he was able to slam furniture, including the cots of the injured, into walls. Nate’s muscles strained against the now bleeding flesh of the girl. He couldn’t think of the damage he was inflicting on the child. Little Jane wouldn’t survive much longer as the Hell Prince’s vessel. He looked at Katherine and Father Angus. “Hurry!”
Jessie stood, the chrism oil bottle steady in her hand.
A terrible feeling rushed through him.
“…qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem!” The priest shouted the final words of the exorcism rite. The child opened her mouth in a bone-chilling scream. Her body convulsed, spewing Asmodeus’s blood-red colloidal form out of her mouth, nose, and ears. The archdemon launched from Jane’s body, swirling like boiling, molecularlized smoke two stories above the dance floor before shooting straight down again.
“Jessie!” Nate lunged, then swiveled as he fell, shifting Jessie on top of him, absorbing the crush of the hardwood floor. The red substance zinged past them, leaving the thick odor of black licorice. “Rosaries repel possession, get yours out, then get to the injured!”
They ran in a crouch to the bar where the extra bottles of holy water and chrism oil lined up like IEDs. He grabbed three off the self, tossed one to Jessie, then hustled to the pileup of cots and bodies against the west wall. Jessie pulled her rosary necklace out from under her t-shirt while she ran. Her eyes were fearful, but controlled. “It’s him, isn’t it? Asmodeus?”
Na
te nodded, calling upon the floor to slide three more of the injured to where he and Jessie stood shoulder to shoulder.
“I thought you said he took his own form instead of having to possess a human.”
“He can do either.” He met her shell-shocked expression with what he hoped was a confidence-boosting smile, then turned to the priest. “Father Angus!”
The priest caught the bottle of chrism oil, removed the stopper, and flung it at Asmodeus’s smoke when it shot straight for him. The anointed emulsion punched the colloidal substance like a frozen turkey hitting a pot of boiling oil. Tongues of flame leapt from the red smoke, a bray so high-pitched it shattered the high-tech windows of Nate’s loft, but not the wall panel. Asmodeus was trapped since the club had no external windows besides the front door.
Another plus to operating a bar, Nate thought darkly.
Jaws pulled Jane’s limp body to the east side of the building where Dorian guarded another injured group of humans. When the red smoke shrieked again, Jessie paled and clutched her ears. Her gaze followed the red smoke’s increasingly erratic path as it was repeatedly repelled by rosaries. “Where’s your rosary?” she asked, lowering her hands from her ears.
“Guardians are incapable of being possessed.” As far as he knew, anyway.
“Well, can’t he just reform as himself?”
“He left his corporeal form somewhere when he decided to take Jane’s body. He can’t just reshape organically from nothing but his smoke. He either needs to find a human vessel, or his own form.”
The smoke twisted into a tall, tight funnel, creating a moving wind tunnel, decimating the salt lines, leaving the exits vulnerable. Blast!
I’ll reform the salt lines when the smoke moves on, Dorian said. Nate nodded from his position.
Jessie grasped Nate’s hand. “Can we lead it to a Devil’s Trap?”
