by Jory Strong
“Let’s find a more defensible room,” he said, touching her lips lightly with his before taking her hand and leading her deeper into the building, to a windowless area with only a solitary door to guard.
Aisling dressed then settled into a corner, knees hugged to her chest. For a while she was content to puzzle on the question of Zurael, the change that had taken place between them. So many other times he’d turned away from her when she’d thought to touch her mouth to his.
She wet her lips, relived the fire of his kiss, those moments when the only breath he’d allowed her was his own, as if her very life belonged to him. Her nipples and clit pulsed with renewed need, ached for his mouth and hands.
He stiffened in the doorway. His nostrils flared as if he could scent her arousal. Tiny nipples grew tight and the serpent he wore on his forearms rippled.
Their eyes met and held.
Feminine satisfaction curled in her belly and breasts. The fast, rough coupling had left him craving more. It was there in his taut muscles, the tightness of his features, the cock once again pressed huge and hard against the front of his pants.
She wanted to stand and go to him, to lose herself in the pleasure, the safety and peace she found in his arms. She wanted to keep the angel’s judgment-the word abomination-from her mind and avoid the truth of her own demon origins, the worry about her soul that she’d never struggled with until Zurael and then the angel appeared.
But a cougar’s nearby cry urged caution. The sounds of rustling, of movement in other parts of the building, kept her in place. The drone of a helicopter in another part of The Barrens reminded her of the danger if they had to give up this hiding place.
She pulled her attention away from Zurael. The sun-shaped amulet pressed against her palm. She’d thought at first it was meant to protect her against Zurael, then later, when it became obvious the guardsmen were hunting her, she’d wondered if Tamara’s family had sent her into a trap. Now she didn’t believe either was true.
Aisling flexed her wrist, exposed the golden charm. “Would this work on you?”
“No. It’s meant for the heavenly host.”
She trembled at the fury and hatred in his voice. But she didn’t back away from her train of thought. “Levanna knew I might need this. The Wainwright matriarch wouldn’t have given me such a powerful charm if she didn’t want me to find the Fellowship of the Sign and return with Anya. I think she guessed what you are and knew I’d be safe in The Barrens from anything but an angel.”
Zurael nodded. “I thought it was a trap also. Now I think otherwise. The guardsmen wouldn’t need the hounds, not if they knew the trail we were following.”
An icy chill swept into Aisling’s chest. It settled around her heart like a frigid fist as she remembered the guardsmen calling for a scent article.
Fear for Aziel froze the breath in her throat. In her mind’s eye she saw the guardsmen storming into her house so they could get something of hers to present to the bloodhounds, their heavy boots and guns deadly to the ferret trapped inside with them.
She shivered and once again hugged her knees to her chest. She told herself Aziel was clever. He’d find a hiding place.
For long moments the worry and fear crowded in. They only lessened when she accepted that she couldn’t change what had happened, acknowledged that it wouldn’t have been better to bring Aziel into The Barrens.
If he was a lesser demon, as she suspected, then he would have become a target for the angel’s attack. And unlike Zurael, he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself. Aziel was trapped in whatever body he wore.
Aisling turned to the question of the guardsmen and who might have sent them. She and Zurael had witnessed Cassandra going into the building housing the police station and guardsmen shortly after they’d left the library after searching the Internet for information about Ghost and the Fellowship of the Sign.
Twice police cars had pulled alongside the bus, and once she’d seen a guardsman’s jeep. If they’d been after her, watching her, determined to prevent her from entering The Barrens, then wouldn’t they have stopped her sooner? And if they were selling protection, or involved in distributing Ghost-then wouldn’t they know where to find the Fellowship’s compound?
Aisling’s eyebrows drew together. She felt like one of the farm dogs chasing shadows and rustling leaves-until she thought about Father Ursu and Bishop Routledge. The magnetic strip on the back of the transit bus pass would reveal she’d gone to the stop closest to The Barrens for a second time, traveled again with a second person, only this time hadn’t returned home.
She’d slept at the church. Her scent would be on the towel she’d used after her shower, on the sheets and pillow. Annalise Wainwright’s vision had confirmed Father Ursu and Bishop Routledge’s desire to find the Ghost source.
“The Church might have sent the guardsmen, hoping we’d lead them to whoever is responsible for Ghost,” Aisling said, tensing with her next thought. What if the guardsmen had been ordered to bring her back alive? What if it was the helicopter’s crash that changed the nature of their hunt?
A knot formed in her stomach with the added deaths laid at her feet, the ever darkening stain on her soul. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against her knees.
Almost instantly Zurael was there, his fingers tracing the vertebrae of her spine, already knowing her so well he could guess at her thoughts. His breath was hot against her ear, his lips soft. “The hunted always have a right to defend themselves.”
A soft whimper escaped when his tongue caressed her earlobe. A second followed when it circled the shell of her ear then slipped inside.
His hand pushed between her chest and knees, possessively stroked her breasts, her nipples, forced her to open from her defensive posture. “You need to sleep,” he whispered, palm gliding downward. “We lost ground coming here to escape the guardsmen and reduce the risk of encountering another angel. We’ll have to make it up on foot tomorrow.”
Her cunt lips grew flushed and slick, parted with the same ease as her thighs when Zurael’s hand slipped beneath the waistband of her work pants and her panties. On a moan, she tilted her head backward, welcomed the way he covered her mouth with his and demanded entry with the dominant thrust of his tongue.
The fingers tracing her spine went to her hair, speared through it, making it impossible to escape even if she’d wanted to. His palm burned where it cupped her mound possessively. His fingers slid inside her, and she lifted her hips so he could thrust deeper.
Zurael’s groan fed her desire, her confidence. She wasn’t alone when it came to the shattering intensity of the hunger that flared to life when they touched.
His grip on her hair tightened. His tongue probed, thrust in the same rhythm as his fingers forged in and out of her channel and his palm glided over her hardened clit.
When she would have sought breath, he allowed her to take only his. When she would have let ecstasy consume her, he forced her to wait.
He was relentless, unyielding. He demanded everything from her.
And she yielded.
He became her world. The only reality until sweet oblivion claimed her at his command.
CHAPTER 15
THE smell of meat cooking on an open fire made Aisling’s stomach clench painfully. It came on a pine-scented breeze along with the sound of music intermixed with human voices.
She touched the knife strapped to her thigh with strips of burlap. The food she’d packed for their trip into The Barrens had been eaten hours, and miles upon miles, earlier, before the first rays of light streaked across the sky.
They’d made up much of the distance they’d lost, by risking the darkness. The sun was rising when they left the ruin of civilization and slipped into thick forest.
At random intervals they continued to find the ancient believer’s symbol carved into a tree or scratched on a cluster of rocks. Narrow deer trails led them deeper into a place where only a little bit of sunlight filtered in, w
here Nature had reclaimed what had once been ravaged by man. Twice they’d startled foxes from hiding, once they’d found the prints of a large cat-a cougar maybe, or jaguar. Aisling couldn’t tell whether they were pure animals or Were animals.
Zurael stopped her with a hand to her elbow, urged her from the trail and behind a tree so wide she couldn’t have gotten her arms around it if she’d tried. “Stay here,” he whispered, becoming part of the breeze before she could speak.
Aisling slipped the long-bladed kitchen knife from its crude sheath of burlap and waited. Her stomach growled. Her mouth watered as the smell of baking bread joined the cooking meat. Calls of “Amen!” accompanied stomping and clapping, a tambourine and cymbals-the sounds of worship arriving with the tantalizing smell of food.
The hard knot of hunger in Aisling’s stomach became an icy dread. Hot acid rose in her throat.
The promise she’d made in the ghostlands weighed heavily on her: to find whoever was creating Ghost and kill them-or see them dead.
What if it wasn’t a single person but an entire congregation? What if every member of the Fellowship of the Sign could be judged guilty, save the children?
She shuddered. Understood as she hadn’t before, that when Aziel offered Zurael’s name, he’d given her the weapon to use for this task.
The soft swirl of leaves at her feet warned her of Zurael’s return. She didn’t flinch when he solidified next to her, his fingers locked around her wrist to keep her from accidentally using the knife on him. “They worship without having guards posted,” he said. “It’s safe to get closer.”
Aisling sheathed the knife. The voices and music got louder as they moved forward. Her curiosity and trepidation mounted with each step, until once again Zurael pulled her from the path, this time guiding her deeper into the forest until they reached a high spot where the undergrowth provided cover and yet allowed them to look down and witness the gathered church members.
The service was being held in a small clearing. Aisling scanned the gathering for Anya, her tension mounting until she realized she didn’t see any children younger than six or seven.
She looked at the men’s faces and felt relief when she didn’t find the face of the Ghost seller who’d been at Sinners the night she and Zurael went there.
Wooden picnic tables were set up in rows on the opposite side of the clearing. In front of them were several fire circles, each with a spit being turned by a teenage girl dressed in dark, somber clothing, her attention split between the meat she was tending and the preacher who stood behind a wide stone altar.
Two small boys managed fires on either side of the altar, prodding them, raking coal or wood into piles to keep them burning red. And on the altar itself, Aisling counted fifteen rectangular boxes, set haphazardly, as if they’d been placed there in offering.
She wondered what they held, until the rattling began. It came fast and furious. Soft, like the rustle of leaves. The bursts of sound long and short, each different, all distinctive. Especially to one who’d grown up on a farm in the country. Rattlesnakes.
The preacher walked around to stand in front of the altar. His voice carried, deep and rich and persuasive. “Brothers and sisters. You’re here because God led you here. You’re here, part of this community or getting ready to join it, at his will. You already know his words, the words Mark tells us about in chapter sixteen, starting with verse fifteen, but I’m going to tell you again!”
A chorus of “Amen!” met his words
He lifted his arms and pointed toward Oakland. “And He said, ‘Go into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Those who believe and are baptized will be saved. Those that don’t believe will be damned. And these signs will follow them that believe.
“ ‘In My name they will cast out devils.
“ ‘They will speak with new tongues.
“ ‘They will take up serpents-’ ”
The preacher opened the closest box and reached in without looking. He pulled out a heavy-bodied rattlesnake.
“ ‘And if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.
“ ‘They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.’ ”
The preacher reached into a second box, pulled out another rattlesnake, this one green and gray, long and thin.
He raised his arms, holding both of the snakes so the rattles ended up next to his face like beaded hair. “And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the Word with signs following. Amen!”
“Amen!” the congregation shouted, and a woman started playing a drum, its beat commanding, pulsing through air and earth alike, demanding movement.
Men and women danced, some in place, some toward the altar and the fires the two small boys were tending next to it. An older man reached the preacher and was handed a snake. He draped it around his neck, then opened a box and pulled out another one, holding it to his chest before offering it to a girl who looked sixteen.
The smell of burning flesh reached Aisling. She looked in horror at a teen standing next to a fire, his face a mask of spiritual ecstasy as he held a branding iron against his chest. When he lifted it, he wore the sign of the cross.
Others, some with brands, some without, joined him. And as Aisling’s attention shifted between the two fires, the small boys reheated the irons then offered them to any who came. And lost in faith, or held by it, no one screamed as their flesh burned.
When she finally turned away from the sight, Aisling saw all the boxes open. Men and women both, old and young alike, passed snakes around, handled them. And the rattle of the snakes blended in perfect harmony with the throb of the drum.
A woman in the congregation stood and began prophesying. An older man fell to the ground, writhed, then began speaking in tongues.
Aisling shivered, unable to turn away from the scene. It was equally fascinating and repelling, horrifying and amazing. And for the first time she fully understood how mighty civilizations and the world as it once was had come to be destroyed because of religion.
Slowly the energy and ecstasy of the worship service faded, controlled by the slowing, softening beat of the drum. The snakes were returned to their boxes, and the peopled gathered close, surrounded the preacher for a final prayer, one said in low, murmured tones that didn’t reach beyond the circle of church members.
When it ended, the women and girls went directly to the picnic tables-all except for the drummer. She moved to the preacher’s side.
Wicker picnic baskets were pulled from underneath the tables. Plates and silverware, tablecloths and finally dishes of food were laid out.
Movement at the end of the clearing drew Aisling’s eye. Zurael murmured, “There’s the child.”
The little girl was subdued where the children not being carried by young teens were already tumbling toward the adults and the food like eager puppies. And as if the children’s appearance was the sign to begin the meal, the men still at the altar picked up the snake boxes and went to the picnic tables.
The boxes were set on the ground, on benches, on the tables, as if they were hymn books set aside after the worship service. The rattle of the snakes slowly faded, giving way to the sound of conversation and laughter as people took their seats and began to eat.
Aisling’s stomach clenched painfully. Her mouth watered.
She turned to look at Zurael, her eyes catching on the serpent tattoo coiling around his forearm before lifting to meet his eyes. Hunger or insightful observation, the words came from nowhere. “If I go alone, with you in a snake’s form, they might welcome us with less suspicion and talk more freely in front of us.”
Denial flashed in Zurael’s eyes. His features tightened.
Aisling touched her fingertips to his lips with a confidence that once would have been foreign to her. “Don’t say no. This is the best way. Let them think I’m one of them, someone whose faith is marked by a sign they believe in.”
His hand lifted to become a fie
ry shackle around her wrist. A violent storm raged in his eyes, only yielding to the calm of deadly promise. He pulled her fingers from where they touched his mouth. “We’ll approach the gathering as you suggest. My ability to protect you is limited by the serpent’s form. Be warned, Aisling. Anyone who threatens you will be dead before they strike the ground. I won’t risk your being harmed.”
The fingers around her wrist tightened, then disappeared as he pulled away and became the serpent he’d been the day Elena visited, the day he and Aisling were taken unwilling into the spiritlands by a Ghost touch. She picked him up and draped him over her neck as she’d seen the worshippers do, as she’d once done with Aziel when he wore the body of a king snake.
Worry for Aziel distracted her. She stumbled, sending a covey of quail flying from cover with the noise she made.
Aisling forced herself to concentrate on the moment, on the task at hand. It was easy enough to rejoin the trail. Far harder to leave the shelter and protection of the forest.
Her heart raced in her chest. She knew that in the serpent’s form, Zurael would taste her fear.
Whether it was the eruption of the quail or simply a testament to how alert they were to their surroundings, despite the ease in which they were gathered around the picnic tables, all eyes seemed to be on her the moment she stepped into the clearing.
The preacher rose from the table, as did the woman drummer. Both came forward to greet her with smooth confidence, the force of their personalities reaching her before they did.
“Welcome. I’m Brother Edom and this is my wife, Sister Elisheba.”
The preacher’s voice was the warmth of home, the promise of family and safety. His eyes were a father’s, a brother’s, seeing past the sin to the good that lay beneath and offering forgiveness, understanding.
“Come, join us for the meal,” his wife said in lyrical tones, her eyes soft, offering a mother’s love, a sister’s friendship. “What should we call you?”
Their charisma was nearly overwhelming. It pressed against Aisling’s psyche as if seeking hollow places to fill and gain anchorage in.
