devil 04 - the devil you know

by Cheever, Sam

  I saw the thing’s blazing red eyes widen slightly as it considered coming for me. I watched its massive muscles bunch, its claws dig into the stone of the castle floor, its body tilt toward me as it dug in and took off. I waited as its steps moved inexorably toward me. And I stepped to the side, reaching out a power-infused arm to smash against its head as it flew past.

  The Dis stumbled forward, black blood running from its nose and mouth, and stopped, turning toward me. With an effort, I kept my enhanced vision so that I could see when the monster dug in for a second run at me.

  I waited until it was almost on me and then kicked out hard, my bony knee smashing brutally into the juncture of the thing’s hairy thighs.

  The Dis didn’t react the way I’d expected from having its balls crushed. Rather than bending around itself in pain, the demon struck out immediately, before my foot had a chance to return to the ground.

  Its deadly, burning claws raked down my face, tore through my throat and ripped three jagged holes in my chest.

  As I flew backward, my pain-racked body cringing in on itself in an instinctual effort to protect and avoid, something inside me snapped. A switch inside my mind flipped, and my devil came out in a big way.

  The widening of the demon’s red eyes as it recognized my monster would have been comical if I’d been in my right mind.

  In my present state it was simply a beacon to follow toward the destruction of my enemy.

  I flipped back to my feet and lifted both hands toward the demon, watching as its small, vibrantly red eyes widened in reasonable fear.

  I was no longer the light warrior the thing had started the battle with. Dark energy boiled beneath my skin and no doubt shone from my gaze.

  The power that shot from my hands was deadliest I had. It was the power to rend, to tear, to slice, to kill. It was the power I’d been reluctant to tap for fear of what it would do to me.

  To my soul.

  But I eagerly embraced it now.

  I watched with my enhanced vision as the power arrow I’d unleashed ripped through the demon’s rocklike exterior, spewing black blood into the air in wide sprays that splattered the walls and ran down the demon’s pretty white fur to the floor, puddling beneath its writhing body.

  I saw the small, tooth-filled maw open in unimaginable pain as I twisted the power in its gut and swung my hands wide, ripping the demon into two grisly chunks of monster that flew across the room in separate directions.

  The Dis demon was dead.

  I stood in that castle room in Hell with power filling every cell of my body. My skin crawled with it. It throbbed in my fingertips.

  I had no enemy to face. Nothing to kill.

  I was a killing machine without a target.

  The power raged through my veins. The need to tear and maim throbbing through me in the wake of the power, and my fingers itched to rip and savage.

  Black blood, like acid, burned smoking holes in my clothes and scorched my skin, but I didn’t feel the pain. I was a walking, pulsing power cocktail set on destroy.

  In the distance, I could hear someone calling my name. But the voice came to me as if from a long, wide tunnel. Disembodied and weak.

  Easy to ignore.

  On some level I knew I was a beat of my heart away from succumbing forever to my devil, losing the light in my soul and joining the ravening monsters in the dark world.

  Closing my eyes, I pulled air into my lungs and tried to tamp down the power, rein it back in. I fought to push the power back to its core, where I could manage it. The battle drove me to my knees and made me scream with frustration.

  Only a small part of my mind recognized the need to stop the power. My body craved the throbbing energy, embraced it. And it would have been so easy to succumb. To let it take me over.

  The voice in my mind grew steadily louder, calling me back from the brink. I tried to focus on the beacon it provided, embracing its siren call.

  Gradually the power receded, trickling back to its core. At some point the numbness I’d wrapped myself in left me and I felt the heated embrace of two strong arms, the firm warmth of a broad chest at my back.

  The voice that had called me back was deep and husky, filled with both love and fear, and the scent that enveloped me as the power receded was like a soothing drug to my ravaged senses.

  Dialle.

  “Welcome back, my love.”

  I sighed, allowing my body to collapse against his. “That was close.”

  He reached beneath me and lifted, one arm behind my knees and one beneath my back. “It was, yes. I thought for a moment I’d lost you to your devil.”

  I frowned, closing my eyes and enjoying the soothing rumble of his voice against my skin. “I’d think you’d welcome that.”

  A gentle kiss against my forehead made my body clench with lazy need. “Nay, your light feeds mine. Without it, I fear we’d both be lost.”

  I nodded, the edges of my mind growing charcoal gray with weariness. “Makes sense.” My words tumbled clumsily from my lips. The gray slid inexorably forward.

  “Sleep and heal, Astra. We have more ass to kick when you awake.”

  After infusing myself with all that power, I could already feel my battle wounds beginning to knit and heal. My lips curved upward, the light dwindling to nothing in my mind. Although my lips moved, I wasn’t sure I actually spoke the word. “Crashin’!”

  His warm chuckle carried me under. As the charcoal turned to black and my mind slid into grateful rest.

  * * * * *

  I was in the heated pool in Slayer’s cave again. He was seated on the side of the pool with my foot in his hand, sucking gently on my big toe. I felt each gentle tug of his mouth in my sexual core, as if a line ran directly from my feet to my pussy and he was tugging on it.

  I watched him as he licked a heated path from my toe to my calf, nibbling gently as his hands caressed their way up the inside of my thigh.

  Toward the mother lode.

  He settled my foot back to his lap, resting it against his long, thick cock, which was rigid with need. I pressed my heel against the unyielding length of his shaft, running it down to the heavy sac below and pressing there too.

  He growled low in his throat and pulled my other foot toward his mouth.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the pool, giving myself up to the sensual delight he was creating with those hard, competent hands and talented lips.

  “If you love Dialle, why are you here with me?”

  My eyes shot open. It was no longer Slayer in the pool with me, but Emo. His black eyes swirled with angry color, at odds with the tender stroking of his hands down my thighs. “I’m not.”

  His smile was hostile. “You’re not what?”

  “I’m not in the heated pool with you.”

  He held my gaze, a familiar smile tugging at his scrumptious lips. “And yet I’m here and so are you.”

  Shrugging, I tried to make the ridiculous seem right. “But I’m not here with you. I’m just here…and you showed up.”

  Our eyes held. I visually consumed him like he was a Vegas smorgasbord and I was a broke and hungry gambler.

  I licked my lips as my gaze slid over his broad shoulders, held my breath over his smooth, golden chest, and my pussy clenched as my vision slid downward, over his flat, ripped belly to his…oh my!

  “Take a picture, Astra. It will last longer.”

  “Good Lord!” My gaze jerked upward, to Nerul’s hated face. “Get the hell out of my dream, evil turd!”

  Nerul laughed. “You brought me here. Apparently you have some…issues.”

  I shook my head and pinched my eyes closed, tempted to stick my fingers in my ears to close out his hated voice.

  Something nudged against my calf and I opened my eyes to find Dialle climbing to his feet.

  Unfortunately for me it was the wrong Dialle.

  “First! Get back to Hades where you belong!”

  He stood over me, his enormous
, rock-hard dick waving happily in my face.

  Despite myself I was mesmerized by it. I just barely stopped myself from licking my lips at the sight. I blinked. “No! Damn you!” I surged to my feet and swung a fist toward his gorgeous—hated—gorgeous face.

  A large hand caught my fist and yanked me close. I looked up into my Dialle’s beautiful eyes. They were blue. Startling blue. Like they turned when he became the great unifier of prophecy.

  “Lovely Astra.” He lowered his perfectly sculpted lips to mine.

  I sighed against his mouth, feeling as if I’d found my way home at last. “I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I?”

  Dialle licked the seam of my mouth. “No.” His hot tongue laved my cheek and continued on, to the uber-sensitive spot behind my ear. “But I do have some flying monkeys you can borrow.”

  Lust jolted through me and sparks flew. His lips had found the daemon hickey. My trembling thighs tightened under the flow of warm moisture. “Did you know you’re speaking nonsense?”

  He sucked gently at the teardrop-shaped mark, making me groan as frissons of pleasure tore through me. “It’s your dream, Astra. You’re writing the script.”

  I gasped as hard, gentle fingers slid inside me. “I am?”

  “Mmm. You’re so wet for me, lovely Astra. Shall I plunder you with my love monkey?”

  “Good god!” I murmured. “I need to get a new scriptwriter.”

  Dialle lifted one of my knees, pulled me close and settled himself at my entrance, teasing me with the fat head of his cock. “Just don’t let them write this part out, love.” He plunged deep, drawing a scream from my throat as his thickness stretched me tight and fired every pleasure cell in my throbbing pussy.

  He pounded into me with unusual fervor, driving deep, fast and hard as if trying to imprint himself on my body. I held on, enjoying the ride, my body joining his in a frenzy of desire. As his shaft pounded into me, his mouth traveled from one hypersensitive spot to another on my upper body. At last he settled over a nipple, pulling the hard, pebbled flesh into his hot mouth and drawing on it to match the pounding rhythm of his thrusts.

  The rhythm quickened, intensified, drawing us both inexorably toward release. Dialle’s body tensed. He lifted his head, capturing me with his gaze, and held me there until he started to come. Then he lowered his head to my throat and bit down hard.

  My screams shook the walls of my dream cavern. My body fell over into endless waves of sensation that weakened my muscles and clouded my mind. With my inner muscles pulling on him, milking his still-hard shaft, Dialle threw back his head and growled my name, blood dripping down his chin. My muscles clenched hard at the sight, tightened one last time and then softened as the waves of orgasm turned to ripples and then gentle tremors that made me shudder with delight.

  “It’s always me you come back to, Astra. Always me…”

  Dialle faded away suddenly and I was standing alone, on the border between Heaven and Hell. Celestial Choir on one side and eternal fires on the other.

  Only I could decide which way I would go.

  Just me. And not a flying monkey in sight.

  * * * * *

  I surged back to consciousness with my emotions in a jumble and my body singing as if the dream sex had been real. The Settling apparently didn’t recognize the difference between dream sex and real sex.

  Fascinating as that discovery was, and knowing that I would definitely explore it further at a later date, I had bigger issues to address right at that moment.

  For starters, I knew where Darma was.

  Don’t ask me how I knew…or exactly what part of the strange dream I’d just had told me where she was…but I knew.

  “What is it, Astra?” Dialle reached over to push a tangled strand of hair out of my face. I shoved at his hand, suddenly anxious to finish things and get back to my normal life. Climbing to my feet, I looked down at Dialle, who was draped across the bed, reading something that scrolled across the air in front of him. It looked like some kind of report or something.

  Devil King reports. Funny.

  “Is Nerul trapped here?”

  Dialle flipped a hand and the words hanging in midair disappeared. “Here?”

  “In Hell?”

  He frowned, thinking. “I believed that he was. But I guess I don’t know for sure.”

  I reached for the cross I wore around my neck and said my father’s name three times in my head. Seconds later, the air in the room changed and my father’s soul form shimmered into view several feet away. “Astra, have you found Darma?”

  “I’m getting close. What do you know of King Nerul’s Punishment Bond? Is he trapped here?”

  My father glanced at Dialle and nodded. “As far as I know.”

  “What class is he?” Dialle was no longer draped across the bed. He now stood next to me.

  The light of understanding filled my father’s eyes. “He’s a three.”

  “So he could leave as long as he’s accompanied by someone of the light?” Now we were getting somewhere.

  James Phelps, Seraphim and the Big Guy’s right-hand man, sighed. “I’m afraid that’s true. You think he’s been using Darma to leave Hades?”

  I glanced at Dialle. “I do now. Thanks, Father. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Take care, Astra. Go in his name.” My father disappeared quickly, as though he couldn’t wait to pop out of Hell.

  Go figure.

  Dialle turned to me. “You think you know where they are?”

  “They?”

  “I believe Torre followed her when she left this place.”

  I nodded. “She’s on Olympus. While I was there, helping Glynus find her parents, strange things kept happening to me. We were attacked more than once by the dragons. I think Nerul has set up his new kingdom there and is using the dragons for his own purposes.”

  “Queen Zerphor would never allow it.”

  I glanced around, searching for my weapons, which Dialle must have removed from me while I was unconscious. “Which is probably why she was taken prisoner in the first place.” Finding the pile of knives and sundry on a nearby table, I started sliding them back into their hiding places on my person.

  “But why wouldn’t Nerul have just killed them. He could have had control over most of Olympus with Zerphor and her mate gone.”

  “That’s true. But with her alive and under his control he’d have power over much more than that. The blacks would never succumb to him if he killed their queen. Glynus would lead them in battle. Nerul would have lost his knickers in that battle. The reds and the blacks would have joined forces against him.”

  Dialle frowned. “Knickers?”

  “Never mind. You coming?”

  He grabbed my arm. “What of your aunt and your other…friends?”

  I expelled a frustrated breath. “I guess we should take them too, huh?” When Dialle nodded I gave him my hand. “Okay, you drive. Take me to them. The sooner we gather them up the sooner we can get the hell out of here.”

  He frowned again. “You want to take Hell with us?”

  I laughed. Maybe after a few more decades with me, Dialle would figure out how to talk like a normal person. “Yes. And I plan to rain it down over Nerul’s fat head. I owe him for many things.” Not the least of which was the fact that he’d used my Settling against me. I shuddered when I thought about how close I’d come to having sex with that pig of pigs.

  I hoped Darma was holding him off okay. Then I smiled. What was I thinking? Nerul didn’t have a chance.

  * * * * *

  It was handy that we had Glynus and the other blacks to carry us back to Olympus. Zerphor would be pleased to learn that I hadn’t lost a single one of her warriors to the fires of Hell.

  She’d be less pleased to learn I was bringing Hell to her.

  Beneath my thighs, Glynus shifted gently to adjust for a slight change in airflow and Dialle’s arm tightened at my waist. “Are we there yet?”

  I turned to glare at him
. “Do you need to pee or something?”

  He looked at me like I had two heads. “Royals don’t pee, Astra.”

  “Then what’s your deal? You’ve asked me that question five times since we left.”

  “It’s taking too long. I could have popped us into Olympus in seconds if you’d let me.”

  “Yes. But then our arrival wouldn’t have had the proper effect. Trust me on this, Dialle. When we show up in Olympus riding the next queen of the blacks and her finest warriors, notice will be taken.”

  Glynus’ head lifted and I felt a shimmer of excitement roll through her. We arrive, mother Tweener.

  I looked down and saw the gentle green peaks of Zerphor’s queendom below us. The blacks’ nest was a soft, green bowl, surrounded by low, rounded peaks. In the center was a vast meadow. After a few moments, the peaks below us gave way to a flatter area and Glynus started her descent.

  Filled with wildflowers, the meadows rolled with waves of bright color. As we approached, a small herd of deer lifted their heads and observed us with bright black eyes for a long moment before picking up delicate hooves and white-tailing it out of there as fast as they could.

  Natural food for the carnivorous dragons, I was surprised the deer were out in the open like that. In fact, looking around, I realized the place was unnaturally quiet and suspiciously absent of dragons. Glynus, something’s not right.

  I was thinking the same thing, mother Tweener.

  Don’t land here, take us to the Queen’s chambers. It was accepted practice that visitors land in the meadow and wait to be greeted by the queen or her representatives. Anything more direct was considered rude or worse, a sign of aggression. But if my suspicions were correct about Nerul, Zerphor and her nest were probably fighting for their lives and queendom. Which meant the usual rules didn’t apply.

  Glynus lifted her wings and headed toward a thunderous waterfall pounding down the side of the mountain. Behind that fall were Zerphor’s chambers.

  As we flew I became aware of a new vibration in the air and a heavy drone that seemed to be moving inexorably closer. “What is that?” I asked Dialle.

  “Sounds like…”