by Cheever, Sam
I headed to the Red Knight and climbed inside, programming Darma’s address into the machine’s flight computer.
As I flew toward my sister’s home I looked around at the city below the Knight. It still showed the scars from recent riots, brought on by the Serpent’s attempt to take over the human world by dropping a poisonous magic veil over everything. The veil had made magic users crazy and humans even crazier, creating violence and destruction on an epic scale.
I still shuddered when I thought of it.
Dialle, Darma and I had barely managed to beat Satan back before he’d finished his work and brought the veil completely down, locking it over the Earth for all time. It would have meant the end of humans and a permanent turn toward the dark side for the magical world.
With my Settling bearing down on me, I’d almost forgotten how bad the dark side of my magics could be. I’d embraced the darkness, in fact, for whole moments at a time. Or rather, embraced the sheer pleasure that darkness could bring me. Before it burned away all light from my soul and turned me into a soulless monster like the Serpent.
The scarred earth and torn buildings far below were a stark and welcome reminder of why I had to fight my dark side with everything I had.
My destiny was in the light.
I was surer of that now than ever before.
But that didn’t make it any easier to resist the siren song of dark magics. Unrestrained power can be intoxicating.
I stopped the Knight if front of Darma’s house and sent it skyward with a command, engaging the locks as it hovered above the neighborhood.
Turning to Darma’s home, I took note of the open door with the splintered frame. A horrible sense of déjà vu slid its cold fingers down my back. The last time I’d found Darma’s door ajar like that, it had taken a whole contingent of angels to pull my sister back from the brink of death.
Pulling my knives from their hidden sheaths in my boots, I pulled my power forward and kept it shimmering just below the surface, to be pulled free if I needed it. I didn’t know what I was facing yet.
If it was a human foe or a lesser demon or devil, my knives would suffice. If my foe had more magical tricks beneath his or her sleeve, I’d need every bit of power I owned to get the upper hand.
The problem with playing for the light side is that you kind of had to play fair or you quickly found yourself toe to tippy toe with oily darkness. Then you weren’t playing for the light side anymore.
The other side isn’t constrained by silly things like rules and scruples.
Darma’s place was trashed. Furniture was smashed and walls had holes surrounded by scorch marks, telling me that somebody had laid out some serious power arrows in the small space.
But even more worrisome to me was the blood spattering the walls, from the entranceway all the way into her main living area.
Written on one large wall, in the main area of Darma’s house, were the words, Gone to Hell, not coming back, written in blood and signed with my sister’s name.
My pulse picked up and my knees went weak. She’d asked for my help and I’d blown her off to help Glynus.
Now she might be dead—or worse, she might be alive and in Hell.
I was a terrible sister.
Grabbing the cross around my neck I closed my eyes and sent out a plea to my father. After a moment he shimmered into view, but he wasn’t really there. His tall, leanly handsome form wavered softly on the air in front of me, ethereal and insubstantial. A thick lock of blond hair fell across his forehead, making him look uncharacteristically disheveled.
It was his soul form.
He frowned as he glanced around the room. “Astra, your sister asked you for help. Why has she been taken from her home by force?”
Oh-oh, he’d used his father voice instead of his benevolent angel voice.
I forced my shoulders not to lift in a dismissive shrug. Something in his sparkling blue eyes warned me he wasn’t in his happy place. “She contacted me and I came looking for her. This is what I found. I was hoping you knew something.”
Nice how I left out the middle part of the contacting and coming part, eh?
His frown deepened and his angelic complexion turned red. A rumbling sound filled the space between us. Apparently he could read between the lines of my life and see the missing parts.
Was he growling?
“Father?”
He looked heavenward, trying for calm. “I’m teaching this damn seminar on angelic ethics in the world of carnal temptation.” He lowered his bright blue gaze on me. It was filled with self-loathing. “You can imagine the ribbing I’m taking.”
I grimaced. My father, Archangel James Phelps, had been God’s right-hand man before he fell into carnal temptation with a Royal Devil Princess and begot two Tweener daughters. Yours truly and the missing Darma.
Probably not a good choice to lecture others on the subject.
Or the perfect choice, depending on your perspective.
“Ouch. Whose idea was that?”
He sighed. “I told Him it wasn’t a good idea but He insisted.”
Shaking my head I gave him my best look of pity. It didn’t seem to make him feel better.
Imagine that.
His form started to shimmer on the air. “I have to get back. I’ll send your Aunt down to help you.”
Oh god no! Not my cranky Aunt Myra. I reached for him, realizing too late that there was nothing to grab. “Wait! Just like that? You’re leaving Darma to her fate? Father!”
He shimmered back, looking only slightly ashamed. “She’s not dead or even nearly dead. I would have been told. But you need to find her and get her out of the plane she’s on.”
He started to shimmer away again. “Wait!” He frowned at me but didn’t shimmer away. “The plane she’s on? Where the Hel—um—heck is she?”
Lifting a golden eyebrow, he glanced toward the wall bearing the words written in blood. “You were right the first time, Astra. She’s been dragged to Hell. But she’s currently in an outer circle. If you can reach her quickly you can get her out before things get really ugly. If you don’t get her out let me know right away and I’ll have to intervene. I’d rather not do it at this point. I think you and Myra can get to her and I don’t need any accusations of favoritism right now.”
Horror washed over me. “But what about my Settl—”
He shimmered away and disappeared completely with a small pop on the air.
I stomped out of Darma’s home, called the Knight back and slid into a cool black leather seat. Programming the office into the directional computer, I sat back and pouted.
Just frunkin’ great! I was standing on the wobbly razor edge of my Settling and I was going to immerse myself in the dark world even more deeply. I was doomed, screwed without the fun, completely forked.
I was goin’ down.
Literally and figuratively.
* * * * *
I tried calling Emo on the Knight’s televisual with no luck. He was either avoiding my calls or too busy slaying something to talk to me. I was more disappointed by this than I should have been. My reasonable side told me he was busy doing the job I’d hired him to do. My sentimental, girly side told me he was really mad at me.
I hated my damn girly side.
When I got to the office I found it empty. No Emo.
I took a moment to skim through the reports Emo had left me and discovered that he was probably fighting off a pair of snake demons at that moment.
I itched to join him.
But before I could even entertain the idea, the air in my office changed and the scowling form of my Aunt Myra was standing there. She was wearing the full-on regalia of a guardian angel. Shimmering white robes with silver belt and slippers. Her wings were folded against her back.
“Hey, Auntie.”
The scowl deepened. “Show some respect to your elders, Astra.” When I didn’t fall to my knees in abject apology she went on. “Are you ready?”
I s
hrugged. “I’m not sure what to pack, how to dress.”
“Dress for trouble and pack weapons.”
I looked down at myself and shrugged. I was dressed as I usually dressed, formfitting clothes that limited my foes’ ability to grab and hold on. My clothes were pretty much all black, so the blood and guts didn’t show as much.
I checked my boots and found that my knives were still tucked safely within them. Reaching a hand to the small of my back I felt the longer, swordlike weapon nestled safely there and I wore my belt of platinum crosses.
I was armed pretty much as usual.
“You look fine.” She reached out and grabbed my wrist before I could wrench it away. I tried to yank away from her before she got hold of me but she was way too fast.
In the blink of an eye, I found myself standing on a grassy hill, surrounded by trees and large rocks. In the distance the ground rose to sharp peaks, the grass giving way to hard scrabble earth and rocks.
Other than a slight smoky tang to the air it looked just like Earth. Frowning, I turned to her. “I thought we were going to an outer circle of Hell.”
“That’s where we are. You didn’t think the seventh circle would look like the first one, did you?”
“Well no…but I figured I’d be able to tell I was in Hell.”
A power arrow zinged past my head and splintered the wide trunk of a nearby tree. “Happy?” My aunt asked me as she turned to address the creature who’d attacked us. He was tall, leanly muscled and painfully handsome, with shoulder-length black hair and wide black eyes.
A royal devil.
When he lifted his hand to send another arrow our way, Myra raised her hands and held them in front of her, palms out. The power pinged harmlessly off her outstretched hands and shot back toward him.
He dived sideways to avoid being skewered by his own arrow, and I sent a fiery jolt of my own in his direction. He took the shot in the side and cried out, rolling behind a large boulder before I could follow it up with a killing shot.
I pulled my power forward and used it to mask my visual presence, a power I’d been working on recently, mostly to distract myself from the constant need to hump like a bunny, courtesy of my Settling.
As the world around me fell behind a shimmering yellow curtain of power, I walked toward the boulder. I was only a couple of feet away from it when my opponent’s head slid out from behind the boulder. He looked right through me, frowning at the slight waviness of the air in front of him.
Before he could figure out what the waviness meant, I grabbed him around the throat and flung him to the ground, pulling his arms around to his back and sitting on his legs.
Myra popped into view in front of him, glaring down at us. “Where is she, devil?”
He was so busy trying to see what was holding him down that he ignored her question at first. I let the obscuring veil slide away and he gasped.
I grinned. “Yup, snagged by a girl. Loser.”
One of Myra’s pretty silver slippers snaked out and connected with his jaw. I grimaced at the harsh crunching sound it made. Peering at the dainty-looking things again I wondered if she had the toes packed with lead.
“Damn, Auntie, I need a pair of those slippers.”
She just glared at me. Both of us knew I was deliberately trying to goad her. To what purpose, even I didn’t know. It just felt right.
“Where is Darma, vile son of the serpent?”
The unapologetic devil beneath me lifted his head and smiled at her. Blood ran in a thin ribbon down his handsome golden brow to drip on the ground beneath. A large bump had risen to mar the perfection of his royal features.
I really needed some of those slippers.
He lifted his head and sniffed, turning to me with wide eyes.
Oh-oh. He’d smelled my Settling on me.
Twisting his arms painfully behind him, I leaned closer. “Don’t even think about it.”
Royal Devils gained power as well as pleasure from sex. Their entire hierarchy was built on a sexual base of power, fed by sex, strengthened by it and destroyed by the lack of it.
As a creature of part Royal Devil descent, I’d always felt strongly the pull of my sexual side. But until my Settling I’d been able to control it.
Now I mostly just anticipated humping anything that moved, twitched or vibrated.
It was humiliating.
I was even starting to notice the way the scum of the underworld beneath my buttocks felt against my hungry skin.
So I smacked him. Hard. And then smacked him again.
Unfortunately it only made him hornier.
I smelled it on him.
And I realized as my panties dampened that I’d kind of liked it too. Shit!
Another gift of my Settling.
“I want to know where my sister is, you black-hearted underbottom dweller, or I’ll vaporize you on the spot.”
He turned his head completely around on his neck and grinned up at me.
“Eww!” I said. I had to keep remembering I was in an upper circle of Hell. The rules were different there.
“She’s with my master. You won’t get her free. He wants her for himself. But you and I could have some fun before I kill you.”
“Har! Have you noticed who has who…er…whom here?”
Just like that, the arms I was holding behind his back thinned, elongated and skimmed free from my hands. I jerked and tried to space shift but quickly discovered that he had one iron-fingered hand wrapped around my wrist and had flung a chain toward my Aunt Myra’s ankle with the other hand before either of us had time to squeak in alarm.
When he released me I realized he’d clamped an angel’s chain around my wrist. Both chains were attached to a wide belt made of gold he wore around his waist.
He immediately tugged on my chain, which had created a strange weakness in my limbs as soon as it had been clamped on, and I fell against a chest that I hadn’t noticed was so broad and hard before. His black eyes swirled with power as he tipped my chin, forcing me to meet his power-saturated gaze.
The immediate result was more weakness, less ability to resist.
“You were foreseen, lovely Tweener. My master will be pleased that you have come so quickly and were so easily captured.” He leaned down and caught my bottom lip between strong, white teeth, biting down hard enough to draw blood. His tongue swirled out and swept the blood away and he moaned softly, closing his eyes as if savoring the taste. “Delectable.”
My body softened under a wave of pure lust and my knees buckled. He caught me around the waist with a husky chuckle, pulling me upright again. “Patience, my sweet. We’ll have time when I get you to the castle. I’m sure he’ll let me keep you to myself for a while as a reward for capturing you.”
My stomach roiled with disgust. Beneath my body’s weakness, my mind still clung to a thin stream of reason, which allowed me to overcome his magics and my own damned Settling and recognize the danger Myra and I were in.
I glanced at her. What I saw made my blood run cold.
In general, chained angels didn’t fare well at the hands of their devil captors. The chains that connected them to their hosts were built of black magics, which was the antithesis of the light magics that created an angel.
Black magics were like acid to the celestial army. It ate away their strength, their will, their ability to function and fight their fate.
And an angel of Myra’s power would suffer doubly, even fourfold from its effects. Already I saw its poison in the gray pallor of her skin and the shakiness of her hands. She leaned heavily against a large rock and seemed to be panting with the effort to breathe.
In desperation I reached out to her with my mind. Angel? I was relieved to find I could still communicate telepathically with her.
She shook her head slightly, glancing toward our host. Later, Astra!
She turned away as the Royal slid a large hand down my throat and cupped one of my breasts, the nipple peaking hungrily into his palm. Pain
slid across her pretty blue eyes before she could hide it from me. I knew her well enough to know it was pain for me, not herself.
I thanked the Big Guy she’d turned away when the Royal’s hand continued over the soft roundness of my belly and into the moist vee between my thighs. My body swayed toward him even as my mind screamed in rebellion of this treatment.
That was when I decided that, no matter what happened to me, I would kill the bottom dweller who was currently pawing me. And his master too.
Nobody touched Astra Q. Phelps without permission from the Astra Q. Phelps dating committee of one. That’s me.
And despite what my body was telling him, my mind hadn’t—and would never have—given him permission to touch.
I’d kill him happily for that alone.
* * * * *
The castle our captor referred to was a dark blotch in the side of a black mountain that looked as if it had been burned into cinder and hardened into coal.
The black walls lifted high into a yellow, sulfurous sky, its jagged roofline peppered with the thick, deadly-looking bodies of hundreds of watchers, whose job it was to watch the skies and ground for angelic forays into Hell. The angels occasionally came down looking for the un-damned, whom the devils had dragged down for sport or to use as slaves.
I counted the watchers and took note of their attitudes as our host, whose name we’d learned was Mordat, hauled us toward the huge black doors at the front. An enormous pair of dragons guarded the doors, an enormous red and a slightly smaller black. Their midnight eyes sparked with speculation as they landed on me.
I held the black one’s eye for a moment longer than strictly wise, trying to assess its vulnerability. Black dragons tended to be slightly more aggressive than their red counterparts, and more opinionated.
Reds prided themselves on being moderate creatures. Since they had no strong personality traits or convictions, they were fairly easy to sway, making them easy marks to be lured by evil.
I figured, of the two, the black would give me the most trouble, despite his slightly smaller size. Myra caught my eye and gave me a small nod.
