by Marata Eros
Heather's eyes narrowed and Ruby stood underneath that scrutiny. It was an unbearable moment or two, then Heather smiled and it warmed Ruby to her toes. “You are pure here,” Heather spoke softly, one hand to her heart, her eyes giving Ruby a loving caress.
“Thank you,” Ruby said, then licked her lips again. She was thirsty. So thirsty. And scared.
Heather looked at Lucas. “Sit down over there,” she instructed and the demon scowled at her, his tail flicking behind his body in agitation and Ruby took a step backward.
“Don't fear him...”
“Ruby,” she introduced herself.
“Heather,” she answered then looked at her friend. “This is Trisha.”
They looked at Trisha, who was empty. That was the only way to describe her. It made Ruby sad. It also somehow reminded her of Irene from Shimmies.Those vacant eyes were unforgettable.
“What's wrong with her?” Ruby asked, forcing herself not to go and fold the lost girl in her arms.
Heather hated Trisha had been a casualty of this event. “This one,” she jerked a thumb at Lucas, “Lucas of Hades, thought to take us both in his hunger and lust, without heeding the signs of protection that mark me.”
“What mark of protection?” Ruby asked, her suspicions begging for confirmation. Heather glanced at Lucas, leaning and sullen against the tree and rolled the top of her yoga pants down to her hips and turning, bared the small of her back to Ruby.
There, in the same spot as Ruby's were angel's wings. But the similarity ended there. Heather's were huge and rainbow in their color scheme, the tattoo (if that was what it was) was like a contained prism.
Ruby reached out to touch it and her flesh met the wings, a spiral of vision touching off that threw her into another plane. She saw angels, their black wings folded over infants, each angel bore one infant as their precious cargo. They flew to every country, every city. And there, they deposited their perfect payload at various doorsteps and buildings.
Equal distribution.
Heather looked at her then. “For you to have angel's blood, your parent would be one of the babes of heaven- Angel kissed. A Walker.”
Ruby's lip trembled. She thought of her mother, so good, so perfect. Always taking the beatings meant for Ruby, sheltering her from Damon, her father who was part-demon.
She shoved the horror of the memories away for now. “What's your purpose?” Ruby finally asked.
“We walk. We walk this earth, divesting purity on all we meet, until the one angel warrior that was meant for us, returns to mate with us.”
“How long...”
Heather smiled, her perfect white teeth glowing in the hesitant light that was moving toward day. “I am already over one hundred years old. Now that the demon has defiled my pupil, and myself, my mate will be drawn to protect me and slay the demon.”
Ruby's head drew back in confusion. “How can you? Could you stop it?”
Heather hung her head and shook it to the negative. “Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do. I am tasked to walk this life until one such as this dark lord crosses my path.” She smiled with such sincere happiness Ruby's frown deepened. “I don't understand. He hurt you! Why is this good.?
Heather sighed. “Because it means that my mate will find me, that I have fulfilled my purpose in this realm and this one will turn to the light- enslaved. There is no better sanctification than that which turns one of the unholy to the holy.”
“Ha!” Ruby said, pacing in front of her new, though strange, ally. “That! No...” Ruby shook her head, her pale hair swinging all around her like the halo she denied. “How can, what is he?”
“Second in command to the devil himself,” Heather admitted with a small shiver.
“Huh,” Ruby tapped her lip with a fingernail. “How can he be turned?” Then Ruby looked at the demon, his defiance slipping away as she looked, his skin, paling from the rich red she remembered in the dark smoldering walls she used to escape through. His eyes, a glacial-white turning to silver at the edges. Her eyes went to the tips of ivory colored horns that were now only nubs of bone at the crown of his head.
“Do not look at me thus, breeder,” Lucas said in despair. Paramour of the Walker, debased of his calling... morphing into angel scum. He was less than dead; he was nothing.
“Come, Lucas...” Heather said. “Crawl to Ruby and beg her forgiveness.
Gawd. “No, that's okay,” Ruby said, backing away from the entire weirdness. The road was at her back and the three that faced her were safely in the edge of the forest. No cars or anything on the road would catch site of them. Distance was good, Ruby thought.
Heather swung the backpack off and began to rifle inside it. She tossed a pair of yoga pants and an extra shirt Ruby's way. She barely caught it, her eyes all for Lucas, the demon who was becoming something else.
His head hung low while he crawled. Ruby watched his muscular shoulders bunch and clench as he made his slow way to her. She undressed behind the tree, throwing the borrowed clothing on as she peeked around the trunk at the demon as he made his way toward her on his hands and knees. Ruby was immeasurably grateful for the costume from the club to retire itself to the forest floor and she stepped around to the front of the tree, putting herself slightly deeper into the forest.
She yelped in surprise as a forehead touched her feet.
It was the demon lord, his skin still hot enough to burn her feet. She scooted back and Heather said, “Stay. He will pay penance.”
Ruby's face whipped to Heather's, a triumphant smile plastered on it.
“How?” Ruby asked, confused.
“He will pleasure you.”
Lucas groaned at her feet and Ruby almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Lie down, Ruby,” Heather's voice coaxed her. Sure... irresistible.
Ruby got scared and began to back away. She wasn't sure about all this. Her eyes took in the creepy blank friend, Trisha. The almost pure zealotry of Heather and the huge demon at her feet, his body a study of elegant scalding violence.
Then she thought of Brolach and that clenched it. She began to make a quick exit.
Before she could make a decent retreat, Lucas grabbed her shins and tore her feet from underneath her. Ruby fell but before she slammed into the ground, Lucas had wrapped his arms behind her and laid her gently onto the ground.
His eyes were filled with loathing, glowing with it. Almost all that icy fire was gone, only silver edged those bleached irises. Ruby blinked and the color was gone, only a shiny gaze, like captured aluminum, stared down at her.
“Kiss her from below, my demon slave.”
“No!” Ruby screamed, thinking of Brolach, thinking that this demon hated her with every fiber of his being. He'd get down there and hurt her. The very spot that had made her practically burst with ecstasy when Brolach had lavished her.
“You'll see... he has existed only to pleasure himself. Now he will be forced to give all that he has taken. Let him,” Heather entreated and Ruby felt that angelic command sink into her and she lay in his arms, helpless.
Lucas screamed into the still air, tearing the newly donned pants down to the knees of the breeder he had earlier hoped to fuck into the ground, tearing her virginity from her and giving her to every demon who would have her.
Instead, he spread her knees, pants at her ankles while he began to carefully and thoroughly eat at her like an exotic banquet set out just for his enjoyment.
Lucas suckled and licked, using his forked tongue to deeply gouge her wetness, in and out he pushed the strength of that forked pleasure into her wetness. She was utterly unwilling but he could not enjoy it, for that part of his nature was blocked. Nor could he stop giving this virgin all that his mouth possessed, Ruby moved her hips and he grabbed the globes of her ass with his huge hands, the flesh filling his palms and jerked her against his face as he bathed in her hot flesh, lapping at her like a dog dying of thirst. Ruby couldn't help herself against the onslaught, he
r hips bucked and fought the pleasure, his fingers digging into her butt cheeks as she felt the first wave of heat wash over her. She screamed into the still night, the orgasm from his lashing probing tongue bringing her in a sweeping painful surge of breath-stopping climax. Lucas teased the tip of that talented tongue over her barrier, prodding at it then sliding in and out, batting at it playfully as she shuddered beneath his hands.
A tear in the very air brought a stillness to the scene as the air shimmered, Ruby's flushed face rolling to the side of the cool forest floor as the demon lay buried between her quivering thighs.
She had never felt so vulnerable.
Nor so alive.
The demon that sought to make her a prostitute of Hades was now a pleasure slave to the Walkers. And apparently, under the right commander, her as well.
When Brolach and the two angels appeared, Ruby was too in the throes of post climax to hear anything but the shuddering pants that erupted out of her body. Her pleasure forced out of her despite her lack of consent.
There was a swollen moment of utter silence as Lucas lifted his head, his chin glistening with her arousal and then the night was shattered, the sun coming up at the same time as a brilliant light washed away everything with it: their consciousness slipping away on the tide of an unexplainable event.
The last thing Ruby remembered before a different kind of darkness took her, was Heather's eyes.
They shone like the sun themselves, her face at once surprised as it was beautiful, the twin orbs reflecting a brilliance only she could see.
Ruby let go of her struggle to remain aware; naked and uncertain.
Sometimes humans protect themselves when they can. In this case, Ruby's mind sheltered her from a taking too supernatural for her to bear witness to.
Blackness was safer.
And complete.
7
Alpha, Omega
Heather saw nothing.
Was nothing.
She thought the moments and heartbeats of her life were quantifiable before this moment.
Then the angel appeared and the heat from his presence seared the pathway of wings that folded over the back of her hip, the fluttering of them... felt like they'd escape from her body, tearing out of flesh that had been plundered against her will.
Now her will was turned to that gaze of prisms.
The diamonds of his eyes sought and bore through the forest in which they stood, seeking like a lighthouse seeks a boat lost.
Then they lighted upon her.
*
Brolach's eyes made a smooth pass over the angel blood female who stood, locked in a rapturous gaze with Braedan, dismissing them both.
Instead he searched for that one piece of his soul that was missing.
And there he saw his precious Ruby.
A demon planted between her legs, its forked tongue coming away from her wet perfection and Brolach couldn't think, a red veil of anger descended over his vision like a curtain of opaque rage.
Brolach moved forward and recognized Lucas even as he came for him. He no longer looked like the demon lord of the underworld, but a demon who was becoming something else. It was not enough to cause Brolach's step to falter.
Lucas saw his first coming and his immediate response was to halt that hard arrogance that he saw aimed at him and wipe his ass with it. However, he was in no position to do so. The breeder who lay exposed and fragile before him was unconscious and Lucas stuffed the surge of boiling protection that rose inside him with a savage beat down. What was happening to him?
Ebony wings like spilled ink flowed out in the black water of a sky gone soft with the breaking light of the day. A dark ring of fire appeared above his head, horns anchoring the disc above his skull as the black tips seemed to point the sunset fire that pulsed through it.
As he drew nearer, razor-like barbs sprung around the perimeter of the halo and Brolach snatched it from on top of his head and reared up to throw it like a deadly frisbee.
“It will be true death for you this day, Lucas,” Brolach said.
“Kill me. It is a mercy as I become from above,” Lucas answered and his pale eyes, now clear silver lit by white fire, pulsed against Brolach's dark eyes.
“What did you say?” Brolach faltered, his eyes flicking to where Ruby lay sprawled, her beautiful pink flesh exposed to the world, the residual heat of Lucas' demon tongue giving the skin a flushed look.
A place that Brolach had tasted of and found perfect.
Found to be his.
It would be again.
“The Walker has stolen my demonic essence.” Lucas took a swaying step to his feet and Brolach recoiled from what he saw there. Lucas' entire body had paled, save the instrument of his usual device of torture.
His cock and phallus-tipped tail remained a true scarlet, though they were beginning to bleed to white.
“A Walker?” Brolach asked in a voice that growled. But he backed up, keeping the two angel warriors in sight while the apparent Walker gazed at the angelic leader and Nolen, the second to his first, kept an eye on Lucas and him. There was a female that looked like a walking corpse, her face devoid of the animation that marked her as human.
His gaze swung back to Lucas, who was obviously going through some transition. “Step away from Ruby. I don't give a smolder in Hades what happens to you in the hands of the demons, just move away from the breeder and we will let the challenge between us go.”
Lucas shook his head. “No, you see what I'm becoming,” his hand moved from the top of his head to his feet. “She is the coin of trade amongst the angels, Brolach. You?” he shrugged his question at Brolach. “You have a hoof in one realm and a halo in the other.” Lucas' eyes moved to the glittering halo, sunset colors alternating and burning with their independent fire in the fist that held them.
“They'll kill you,” Brolach said, stepping nearer to Lucas, the barbs from the halo pressing all around his hand but not biting. Wanting to toss it into Lucas deeply for having tasted of Ruby.
“No, they will torture me with this new cloak of goodness the Walker has began.”
It was a stalemate.
Brolach turned his attention to the angels just as Braedan and the Walker came together and the splash of light from their touch washed over the forest like the backdraft from a fire- the forest, creatures and atmosphere holding its breath. Then, the icy light fell like a curtain around them, blanketing the group and Brolach was driven to his knees for the second time that night.
Lucas slumped into a heap at Ruby's feet. Brolach was angel enough to withstand the first wave of purist power that roared through the forest in a searing path of delivered contact. He crawled with the last of what he was, his halo dragging itself along in his hand as he moved in beside Ruby, her flesh glowing in response to the call of heaven. He spooned her against himself, her nakedness coming against him as his body coiled around her in protection. Something tight and awful loosened inside him, quieting the thing that had been clawing to get out until he had Ruby beside him.
The last thing Brolach remembered was tucking her head underneath his chin as he wrapped himself tightly around her chilled body.
There was a painful shimmer of agony that tore through Brolach like an abusive breath of air, his eyes flicking to Lucas, who gasped for air against an atmosphere gone heavy with weighted purity, the vestiges of their demon essence struggling against it.
And losing.
One minute they were in the human realm, inside a deep forest on the outskirts of the sea.
The next they were in a realm that was poison to their kind.
Lost.
And found by the enemy.
8
Above
Ruby was drowsy and so thirsty it was painful to be awake for it.
There was a moment or two of numbing disorientation and then her last few moments of true memory came crashing on top of her.
She sat straight up in a bed that was the softest she'd ever known. The borrow
ed shirt bunched up as she moved and Ruby unconsciously pushed it down, touching bare skin and felt her yoga pants were approximately where they should be. But put on like the person that did it had no knowledge of her body.
Heat rushed up into her face, lighting Ruby's scalp on fire. She was so embarrassed she could hardly breathe. The memories slid through her mind: the demon who she'd escaped from in Hades, had been eating her out.
Ruby loved that part best. She was like a walking smorgasbord for devils. First Brolach then the other one.
Wonderful and ick. Of course, what made it worse was how they'd both made her come until her brains felt like they were slipping out of her ears.
Especially Brolach.
She felt her body had portrayed her. That the Walker chick had taken out her need for revenge one the demon by using Ruby as the vessel for his punishment. Ruby's eyes snapped open and she groaned at a sight that was as strange as it was awful.
An unconscious Brolach was strung up in front of her- naked, his beautiful face touching his chest as he hung. As was the demon that had lapped at her until she screamed into that empty wood on earth.
Because Ruby knew, that no matter where they were right now, they were definitely not in Kansas anymore. In fact, she doubted they were even on earth.
Ruby understood she'd been in hell before. Just as she knew she was in heaven now.
Her bed was a cloud, her hands sinking into a moist cool surface that gave resistance at just the right depth, that warmed under her flesh to just the right temperature.
Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it was not too hard, nor too soft.
Just riiighht.
To Brolach's left was the other demon who had... yeah. Better not to think about it. He had been scary before, all bad ass blood-red, dick-on-a-stick snapping tail. Now, he was ice and light, his pale skin with the rippling undercurrent of glacier blue. Beautiful. The tail remained but the tip had changed shape.
