Into the Abyss
Page 6
• • •
Magnus
When Amalia found a side tunnel etched into the rocks surrounding us, I followed her into it.
“I need a break,” she murmured.
Her shoulders were hunched up, and whereas the dress flowed about her before, it now hung limply against her slender frame as she walked. She couldn’t fake this dejected air, could she?
“I hate this place.”
I didn’t think she’d meant for me to hear those words, but I did. Or maybe she had meant for me to hear them and they were part of the game she played. This wanting to trust her but unable to aspect of Amalia frustrated me.
“How do you know you can take a break here?” I asked.
“I don’t. But I think it will be safer to relax off the main path than on it, don’t you?”
When she glanced at me over her shoulder, her eyes were that sad, ochre color. Her colorful hair was a beacon of warmth in the gloom of this place that my fingers itched to run through.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, I think it—”
Her voice broke off, and she halted abruptly as, before her, the path opened to reveal a lake of water the same bleak color as the rocks surrounding it. Then, she was moving forward with a nimble grace not entirely unlike the jinn, but that somehow struck me as different. When she fell beside the lake, it must have been painful for her knees to hit the rocks, but she didn’t acknowledge it.
Leaning over, she gazed at her reflection before stretching her fingers toward the water. She snatched her hand back before she touched the lake and lifted her head to stare at me.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure, but there’s power here.”
Leaning back, she rested her hands on her knees and looked at the monolith in the distance. From here, only the top quarter of the structure was visible above the walls. When a new bolt crashed into the top of it before splintering off, Amalia hunched in on herself as she had before.
My head snapped around when voices pierced the quiet following the bolt. Are the jinn coming? Did she set me up?
Grinding my teeth together, I stalked to Amalia’s side, grabbed her arm, and helped her rise. The movement caused strands of her hair to billow out and tickle my cheek. The scent and silken feel of it shoved my apprehension aside as I found myself momentarily enthralled by her.
Then the approaching voices and loud laughter pulled my attention away from her. Get it together, you moron. She’s no different than any of the numerous women you’ve seen and bedded over the years.
But she wasn’t like any other. There was something more to this woman, and that something more might get me killed if I didn’t watch out. I was above lusting after a woman like this, and I was certainly above falling for one.
Falling for one? I didn’t have time to ponder where that thought had come from.
Amalia looked frantically around before pointing toward a rocky outcropping. “There.”
For all I knew, it could be where she planned to spring her trap on me, but I had no other choice. We were out in the open here. If she tried to take me down, she’d be in for a surprise as I had more than a few tricks up my sleeve when it came to my illusions.
I led her around the lake and toward the rocks. Slipping around the corner of one, I drew her into the alcove. I tugged her down beside me when I knelt and kept her against my side so I could see everything she did.
CHAPTER 9
Amalia
The wall of the alcove pressed against my side as I craned my head to look out for the approaching voices. My heart hammered while I waited to see who was coming, and I bit my lip while I resisted tapping my foot.
I had no idea what I would do if we were discovered. I’d have to get Magnus out of here as fast as possible, but if the jinn learned I’d brought him here, what would they do?
Bringing someone into the Abyss wasn’t forbidden, or at least I didn’t think it was, but what did I know? I’d been told what this place was, but not much more about it, and everything with the jinn was so different since we fled Hell.
The warmth of Magnus’s body against mine pulled my attention away from whoever was approaching as I focused on the feel of him against me. Closing my eyes, I inhaled the fiery scent of Hell on his flesh. Beneath the fire, I detected the more pleasing, earthy aromas of pine and leaves.
I’d only been on Earth for a short time, but it was already more of a home to me than Hell ever was, and I liked the fact Magnus’s scent had mingled with the humans’ woods. No, I more than liked it, I realized as I inhaled deeply.
During my time on Earth, I’d grown fascinated by the colorful, vibrant plane and tried to learn as much about the human world as I could. It was a difficult undertaking as I’d avoided humans once the jinn realized they could manipulate them into the Abyss like they did demons. So I absorbed as much knowledge as I could on my own and peppered the jinn who moved more freely amid humans and demons with endless questions.
When Magnus’s scent lulled me closer, I lifted my hands and rested them on his arm without pausing to consider the action.
What is wrong with me?
I didn’t know if my strong attraction to him was from my pending immortality, and therefore increasing libido, or if it was the man himself, but I couldn’t get enough of him. Leaning closer to him, one of my breasts brushed his arm. I didn’t realize I’d turned my mouth into his neck until his head turned toward me and his lips caressed my temple.
Startled by the contact, my mind yelled at me to move away, but my body stubbornly remained where it was. Demons didn’t deny themselves the pleasures they sought, but this was not the time or place for such things.
Still, I found myself unable to pull away from him. And then, my tongue flicked out, and I tasted his flesh. The saltiness of his skin on my tongue caused my eyes to roll back.
When his hands fell on my waist, I thought he was going to push me away, but he drew me closer until I was flush against the lean length of him. Out of control, I licked him again before nipping his flesh. The swelling evidence of his arousal against my belly caused my heart to beat faster.
Shifting, I partially rose, and my dress fell back when I slipped my legs around his waist while he remained crouched on the ground. The new position caused his cock to nestle in the junction between my thighs.
Demons took what they wanted, when they wanted it, and I wanted him.
My body thrummed with excitement as I ground against the rigid length of his erection. His fingers gripped my waist, and a shudder went through him when I rotated my hips and thrust against him.
Tugging at his shirt, I pulled buttons free until I exposed enough of his skin to rest my hands against his chest. The heat of his flesh seared into my fingertips and branded the feel of him onto me until I became more out of control than I’d ever been in my life.
I would have him. Pulling slightly back, my hands fell to his brown pants, and I was starting to undo them when girlish laughter sounded from only a few feet away from us.
Capturing my hands, Magnus halted my tugging on his button. My breath came in rapid pants against his neck as I resisted licking him again.
What was I thinking?
I’d completely forgotten the approaching voices and the danger we were in with my eagerness to have this demon inside me.
I didn’t have to feel Magnus’s self-recrimination; I could see it in his eyes. And then, anger wafted off him. I held his gaze, refusing to be embarrassed or apologetic about what happened. It was the completely wrong time and place, but we’d both wanted it. He probably believed I’d done it to try to trap him or kill him or something, yet he was still alive.
For now. I had no idea what was on the other side of those rocks.
Untangling myself from him, I kept my chin raised as I straightened my dress before crouching beside him once more. For the first time, I became aware of an unfamiliar tingling sensation in my gums. When I prodded at
my teeth, the tingling stopped, but I had no idea what caused it.
While struggling to catch my breath, I leaned away from Magnus and turned to look as a man and woman ran around the water. The woman’s laughter trailed behind her as the man chased her.
I’d never seen either of them before, but they were human. The woman squealed when the man caught her and swept her into his arms.
“I know her,” Magnus murmured.
“I don’t,” I said.
He glanced at me before moving closer to the end of the crevice. “She’s one of the humans from camp, but I don’t know the man.”
The man lowered the woman, and they kissed each other with an obvious love that made my heart ache. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have someone love me like that. My parents loved me; even if we were completely different, they still loved me. And I loved them though I loathed their cruel streak and that they’d aligned themselves with the craetons.
However, I doubted I’d ever have someone be in love with me as this couple so obviously was with each other. The sexual parties of the jinn fascinated me behind the seals, but it was my parents’ love for each other, and the times when they sat in a corner speaking with their heads bent close together, that I truly longed for one day.
Even trapped within the seal, my parents were happy in a way none of the others were because they had each other. And though I’d seen all the other jinn rut more times than I could count, I’d never seen my parents. I was sure there were times they were together, I wouldn’t be here otherwise, but they somehow did it without me knowing, and I suspected the other jinn were shut out from it too.
Their time together was private and unique, and they didn’t share it with anyone else.
The woman laughed again as the man lifted her and spun her around. While they twirled, the world around them started to shift. At first, it was so subtle I didn’t notice it, but slowly I noted the green grass sprouting forth to replace the gray, rocky ground. The woman, probably in her early to mid-thirties, started to age backward as if the hands of a clock were rewinding her through the years.
Her brown hair lengthened until it cascaded to her ass. Her hollow cheeks plumped out and took on a rosy hue while a sparkle lit her brown eyes. The man, perhaps in his early twenties, remained the same while the woman looked eighteen again.
Then the man was taking her down into the grass next to a lake that was now a deep blue. They tugged at their clothes until they were both naked from the waist up.
“What is going on here?” Magnus asked; his gaze was distrustful when it came back to me.
“I don’t know, but this is something private. We should leave them be.”
We’d have to step out into the open to leave here, but the couple was too far gone in each other to notice us. Magnus seized my hand when I stepped forward. He drew me back as a hideous, lower-level demon appeared near a rocky outcropping on the other side of the lake.
My breath sucked in; I was about to shout a warning to the couple when Magnus clamped his hand over my mouth. I struggled against his hold, unwilling to not at least try to help them, but his grip was as solid as the walls of the seal.
Had I really desired this asshole? I’d castrate him for this!
“The demon materialized from out of nowhere,” he hissed in my ear. “Something’s not right here. Let it play out.”
My resistance weakened against him until I slouched in his arms. He didn’t remove his hand from my mouth as the demon closed in on the couple. He was right about that, but still, I couldn’t stop myself from crying out. Muffled by his hand, the sound didn’t reach beyond us.
The man was tugging the woman’s pants down her thighs when the demon rushed forward, cinched his arm around the man’s throat, and lifted him off the woman. Screaming, the woman used her elbows and feet to propel herself back across the ground as the man released a choked cry.
Turning over, the woman leapt to her feet, but her movements were awkward due to the jeans hugging her lower thighs. She nearly went down before catching herself and tugging her jeans up. The demon broke the man’s neck and let his body fall limply to the ground.
When the demon turned toward the woman, its snout pulled back in a leering grin as its foot-long penis rose to jut out from its yellow-tinted body. Screaming, the woman pulled a gun from her back pocket and opened fire on the demon. She shot off its manhood before turning her attention to its eyes.
The demon roared and charged at her, but three of her shots hit it dead center in the right eye, and the fourth hit it in the forehead. The final bullet, in its left eye, knocked it off its feet. It landed on its back, and its feet kicked limply against the ground. Yanking a knife from the holster at her side, the woman rushed forward and fell beside the demon. She didn’t hesitate before sawing its head off.
Tossing the knife away, she raced to the man’s side. Tears spilled down her face as choked sobs shook her slender frame. Drawing his head into her lap, she cradled it there. The low wail issuing from her tore at my heart and wrenched tears from me. She leaned over the man and rocked him as she begged him to come back to her.
Releasing me, Magnus rose and stepped away from the crevice. I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep my sobs muffled while I crept out behind him. As I walked, I became aware of the grass fading away and everything returning to what it was before the couple arrived.
“Mara,” Magnus said as he stopped beside the woman who was gradually aging again. “Mara.”
When he rested his hand on her shoulder, she lifted her tear-streaked face to meet his gaze. “Bring him back,” she implored and held the dead man toward Magnus.
“I can’t,” Magnus said.
“Why?” the woman choked out as snot streaked from her nose. “My life… it’s all… it’s been nothing since I lost Ricky!”
“Mara, listen to me, whatever is going on here, it’s not real. Let him go and step away from him.”
“He’s real!” she wailed and held the man closer. “He’s real!”
I could barely breathe as the woman’s suffering battered me until I felt it as acutely as if it were my own. Weaving its way into me, her sorrow rattled my bones and caused my legs to wobble.
Then, the man’s body faded to reveal the rocks beneath him before he disappeared.
“NO! RICKY!” Mara screamed so loud her voice echoed off the rocks around us. “NO!”
Kneeling beside her, Magnus tried to draw her to him. She smacked his hands away as she kicked her feet.
Magnus sat back on his heels and held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Easy, Mara, I won’t hurt you.”
“Bring him back!” she screeched.
She tore at her hair until handfuls of it spilled from her fisted hands. Unable to handle anymore, I backed away as blood trickled from her scalp.
Then, Mara vanished too.
CHAPTER 10
Magnus
I gawked in disbelief at where Mara had been in my hands before turning toward Amalia. I opened my mouth to demand answers from her, but my words froze when I saw her face. Huddled in on herself, tears streaked her cheeks as she sobbed soundlessly.
I didn’t think anyone could fake the melancholy radiating from her. Her eyes, which turned a vermillion color when she was impassioned earlier, weren’t just the color of ochre but they also held a gray hue I’d never seen in them before. It was as if the gray existed when she was so sad the ochre hue alone wasn’t enough to convey this.
She was a jinni, they were as trustworthy as the horsemen, but I found myself rising and going to her. Enveloping her in my arms, I held her while her tears wet my shirt. When my hand slid up to grip the back of her head, the silken strands of her hair slipped through my fingers. She clutched my back, drawing me closer until her tears subsided.
Jinn were the most manipulative creatures ever to exist, but this was no act.
She is different from the others. But how is that possible? Why is she different?
“I’m okay,” Amalia said after a couple of minutes, but she didn’t release me, and though her tremors eased, her tears still fell.
“Can you handle this place?”
Silence met my question, and then she inhaled a jerky breath. “Yes. I wasn’t expecting that. If something like it happens again, I’ll be better prepared.”
“I think it’s going to happen often in here,” I warned her.
“Yes. Yes.” She pulled out of my arms and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You’re probably right, but I’m fine.”
She was trying to convince herself more than me. She could say she’d handle this, she could dry her tears and lift her chin, but the melancholy color of her eyes belied her words.
A memory niggled at the recesses of my mind as her amazing eyes gradually shifted toward a more ochre color. There was something about those eyes and their shifting colors that I’d seen… or heard… or maybe read before?
Read, I read it somewhere!
When the war with Lucifer was still waging in Hell, I’d retreated from Kobal’s forces to work on strengthening my ability to conjure illusions. Over time, I became so adept at creating illusions that I built them into realities. During that period, I’d also spent a lot of time pouring over the scrolls documenting the history of demons and fallen angel children who roamed the Earth.
Something about those demon scrolls beckoned me to remember it as I gazed into her eyes, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. There was something there about changing eyes, something….
Laughter floated to me again; I turned as it drew closer. “Mara,” I whispered as a couple appeared and grass sprouted beneath my feet once more.
The couple ran around the lake, laughing as they toppled to the ground. From the shadows, the lower-level demon emerged. Releasing Amalia, I stepped forward to intercept the demon before it could attack the couple. Like a ghost gliding through walls, it went straight through me and lifted Ricky.