by Cassie Ryan
All the fight and anger drained out of her, leaving only sadness and resignation. She loosened her grip and paced away from him. “What do you want?”
He stayed leaning against the tree, looking like he’d chosen to lean against it rather than being slammed back against it. “Your help.”
The laugh bubbled up before she could stop it, the ironic amusement spreading through her body in a cool wash. “My help?” She shook her head as she faced him. “Why would you think I would help you in any way?”
His knowing smile and confident gaze sent dread curling inside her stomach. “Because it’s in your nature, Gabriel. You believe good will triumph over evil, you still have a conscience, you’re still naïve. That is why I know you will help me.”
She frowned as she tried to puzzle together what Semiazas referred to before he could twist things around to suit himself—something he’d always been a master at, even before Lucifer’s fall from grace. Gabriel ensured her face remained a placid mask as she returned his stare. “Sorry. Can’t think of a single reason in the universe why I would help you.” She turned away and started walking, ignoring the sensation of his blue gaze burning into her back.
“What if it would save Raphael?”
Shock froze Gabriel midstep even though a tiny voice inside her warned her not to listen. “What have you seen?”
He chuckled.
Gabriel clenched her jaw as she forced herself to turn back toward Semiazas. He may be untrustworthy and a traitor, but his visions were always accurate. “Tell me what you saw.”
The demon’s sensuous lips curved at the edges, and he studied her as if she were his next meal. He pushed away from the tree and stalked forward, beauty and grace in motion until he stood so close Gabriel could smell the subtle spicy scent of bergamot and coriander that she remembered so well from their time together. He slowly leaned forward, his eyes darkening just like they used to before he kissed her.
“Look into my eyes and tell me what you saw.” She tried to stare inside his soul, but there was too much inky blackness to give her much clarity.
Her strident words stopped his forward motion and his dark brows furrowed before he straightened. “I saw Raphael on his knees near death, the sword of Michael skewered through his back and protruding from his chest. A succubus stood just behind him with her hands on the hilt. She was one of the four who conspired to cage me.”
Fear licked its way through Gabriel, leaving behind an icy cold that made her bones ache. Losing one of the other Archangels was one of the worst things she could imagine. And Michael’s sword one of the only ways to kill them. But that didn’t mean she trusted Semiazas. That was a mistake she planned on never making again.
“All I ask is for you to help me find one of the four succubi. I don’t even care which one. After all, what’s one little demon to you?”
“You know very well succubi aren’t demons.”
“Semantics?” Semiazas’s sarcastic tone and condescending smile grated against Gabriel’s nerves.
“Demons had a choice. They chose to rebel against God.” She glared at him pointedly as an example. “Those who serve Lilith have made no choices other than to exist.”
The demon shook his head. “I disagree. Those four little succubi sisters chose to betray me to Lucifer. That was their choice, Gabriel. And for that, they will pay, with or without your help. I just thought you might like a chance to save Raphael in the process.”
Gabriel sighed, suddenly weary. “Your visions are always accurate, so me helping you find the succubi doesn’t help me prevent the outcome.”
“No, but it will help you avenge his demise,” Semiazas growled. “For once, Gabriel, our aims are the same.”
She shook her head, realizing that she’d held out hope that someday Semiazas would change, would return to her as he had been. But that last hope had finally been shattered. “If that’s what you truly think, then you never knew me at all.”
The last thing Gabriel saw as she dematerialized was his beautiful face contorting with rage.
5
Noah took a deep breath in an attempt to calm the hot arousal that still pumped through his veins as he stared down at the woman in front of him.
Even though she looked totally different from just a few minutes ago, he knew this had to be Jezebeth. But something about this form she’d taken sucker punched him in the gut. She was pretty in a girl-next-door way with large, milk chocolate brown eyes framed with impossibly long lashes. Her long chestnut hair was pulled back into a ponytail leaving some wispy bangs in front to frame her face.
In place of the ridiculous caricature body he’d first met her in was an athletic frame of about five-seven with subtle curves that made Noah’s cock harden further inside his jeans and his mouth go bone-dry.
Jezebeth looked down at herself and blushed. “Damn, I didn’t realize I’d shifted.” She seemed more annoyed with herself than him as she glared up at him. “You scared him away, you know.”
Noah frowned as he tried to keep up with the quick subject change. “Who?”
“The trucker who was more than willing to offer me his energy.” Her words sounded unsure and she didn’t meet his gaze. “I know how you feel about . . . who I am and how I survive. You didn’t have to . . . offer your own energy. I’m perfectly capable of finding my own in the future.”
Noah’s system was still humming from the aftereffects of kissing Jezebeth, and he was surprised his brain could even make sense of words, let alone form them himself. But at the same time, he found himself drawn to her like a magnet to metal, which disconcerted him. “I didn’t ‘offer,’ I gave. I’m here to get you safely back to Lilith, and I can’t do that if you’re starving to death or injured.”
She raised her chin as she stared at him. “Fine. We’ll chalk this up to a learning experience, but just remember next time that I’m perfectly capable of taking care of my own needs.”
His body tightened at her defiant expression. Not only was she lovely, her chocolate brown eyes expressive, but he still remembered how her soft curves felt pressed against him while she met his kiss with a hunger of her own.
Her lips lifted in the corners as if she knew his reaction, the smile lighting up her entire face and making a dimple flash in her left cheek.
Noah swallowed hard, realizing from his reaction that he was in deep trouble.
“Are you ready?” Her voice was pleasant, the timbre of it vibrating through him like a resonant string had been plucked inside his body.
When she raised her brows a few very long moments later, he finally managed to croak out, “Yeah. Let’s go.” He turned away, heading back toward his truck, taking the time to try to collect himself and pull himself back from the brink of idiocy.
“How about I drive? You’re still bleeding.”
Noah stopped and glanced down at his right side, surprised to find his shirt soaked with blood, sticking to his body from the still-embedded glass shards. He suddenly felt the cold night air licking at the wet cloth, chilling his body, as if the discomfort had waited for him to notice to spring to life. He fished inside the front pocket of his jeans to grab his keys before he tossed them to Jezebeth.
A second after they left his fingers, he winced, wondering if she could catch. Keeping her safe included him not breaking her nose with a handful of jagged metal.
Jez plucked the flying keys out of the air easily before she clicked off the alarm and slid inside the driver’s door of the truck, leaving him standing outside the passenger’s door staring after her.
“That’ll teach me to underestimate her,” he muttered under his breath as he slid inside and buckled his seat belt.
She started the truck, adjusted the mirrors to her liking, and then pulled out of the parking lot. When she glanced over at him, a questioning expression on her face, he realized he’d been staring.
She returned her attention to the road and guided them back onto the darkened freeway. “Don’t like this form? I c
an change it.” She shrugged, her posture stiff, closed, and defensive. “This is the form I’m most comfortable in when I’m not . . .” She trailed off and silence fell between them as if she were searching for the right words. “Well, when I’m not hunting.”
“Hunting?” Noah resisted the urge to laugh as he glanced over at the harmless-looking woman beside him. “Other than the need to siphon off sexual energy from willing men, am I missing some piece of understanding about what a succubus does?” The long string of words seemed to aggravate his injuries, the pain in his side blending together to become a constant throbbing ache.
“Unless you count tempting people into sin, then no. Although I have learned some basic self-defense through the centuries purely for self-preservation.”
At the word “tempting,” Noah glanced down at the sterling silver ring he wore. “Temptation,” he said under his breath as he traced the ancient Hebrew characters that spelled out the word on the wide face of the ring.
“Yes, temptation,” she said with an air of impatience. “We can’t gather sustenance or quotas from unwilling humans. But our job is to tempt them using pleasures of the flesh. As they make decisions using their free will, their soul gains experience and knowledge.” Her tone lost some of the defensive edge as she continued. “When under a tight deadline, we can combine and double up temptation to reach our quotas, but that usually requires up-front research and setup, but not always.”
Noah’s mind reeled as he tried to understand what she described. “Double up?”
“Yeah, you know. A guy who has anonymous sex is committing fornication, and depending on his lexicon of belief, that will decide how much experience his soul takes on from that act. But someone who is married and knowingly cheats on his wife isn’t only committing adultery. He’s also breaking a promise to his wife from their marriage vows, lying, risking her health and well-being since he doesn’t know succubi can’t carry or pass disease, and he’s also lying to whomever he is having sex with since he most likely doesn’t admit he’s married.”
Noah frowned and shook his head. He’d wrongly assumed this was a much more straightforward process. “Wait, you mentioned that all of this was dependent on the person’s lexicon of belief, right?” When she nodded, he continued. “So, if they don’t believe that cheating is wrong, there’s no sin attached to it?”
“It’s not as simple as that. That might work for fornication, but if he’s married and cheating, he’s affecting others, and those effects will also have consequences. We are all interconnected, and our choices therefore affect the whole. Succubi aren’t out to damn anyone; we have to have energy to survive. But temptation is the best way to get humans to use their free will, to make decisions and gain experiences that will refine their soul.”
Noah’s thoughts chased around in circles exploring what she’d told him and trying to make sense of it from every angle.
They passed under a lit highway sign and the silver ring he wore flashed. “What about the ring made you realize I was telling the truth?” He glanced down, turning the ring around and around on his pinkie finger as he waited for her to answer.
“When I touched it, it was imbued with Lilith’s essence.”
Noah’s head snapped up and he stared at her. “What?”
She sighed as if impatient with his lack of understanding. “Lilith has four pieces of jewelry that were given to her by Adam before he was expelled from the Garden of Eden. He’d made the pieces himself and embossed each one with his pet name for her—nassah, which means temptation in Hebrew. After so long a time of Lilith wearing them, her energy has imbued them. When I touched the ring, I could literally taste Lilith’s energy signature inside it.”
Noah’s writer nature perked up as story ideas swam inside his mind and excitement curled inside his gut. “So Lilith and Adam in the Garden of Eden . . . that all really happened?”
“Of course.” She changed lanes to avoid a slow-moving camper. “I’m surprised you even recognized that form of the story. The commonly accepted events as depicted in the Bible have been gender biased toward males. Lilith has been sanitized out of them, placing all the blame on Eve. When in fact, it was Lilith who refused to share Adam with Eve—Eve was perfectly content with the threesome arrangement.”
“What?” Noah stiffened in his chair and then groaned when pain lanced through his right side from the movement. “A Garden of Eden threesome?”
“Sex was very open back in the beginning, as it was meant to be. There was no ownership of each other and no puritan barriers. God created sex as a pleasure to be enjoyed by His creations. When He created Adam and Eve, He also created Lilith. They lived happily as a trio for a millennia, but then tensions began to mount and in the end it was Lilith who demanded Adam give up Eve, not Eve who tempted him into sin like the stories say. That’s when God kicked all three out of the Garden of Eden. He’d made it as a paradise, but with all the discord, that sacred place was beginning to wither and die. At the same time, tensions were heating up in Heaven. Lucifer and his followers went before God and demanded He choose them over the humans. In the end, Lucifer and his followers were cast out of Heaven and Adam, Eve, and Lilith were tossed out of the Garden of Eden and told never to return.”
“Why isn’t any of this in the Bible or other documents?”
Jezebeth shrugged. “The church had its own political agendas and made sure their documentation reflected what was best for them, including making women subservient to men, even though God had created both sexes as equals.”
“Wow.” Noah was sure if he weren’t so tired and leaking blood like a cracked garden hose he would have a thousand more questions. But instead, he just relaxed back against the seat, letting these new facts percolate through his mind as they shifted the reality he’d always known—or thought he knew. He’d gone to Sunday school as a child and later in college he’d studied more in-depth in his literary classes.
As a writer, he’d even used stories from several different religions for his own purposes within his work, but Jezebeth’s few sentences had totally thrown off his equilibrium.
“Are you a demon hunter? Is that why Lilith picked you for this job?” He could tell from the way she rushed the words together she’d wanted to ask him for a while and had finally worked up the nerve.
A laugh escaped before Noah could stop it. “No. I’m a horror writer.”
Jezebeth’s gaze snapped to his and the truck swerved slightly before she corrected the movement and they were safely moving down the highway once more. “A horror writer?” The implied what the fuck? communicated clearly through her tone.
“Yeah, you know, novels that after you read them make you want to hide under the bed with every light in the house on? The scarier the better.” Noah grinned. He was used to the surprise and even the disbelief when he told people what he did. But unfortunately, he had a feeling Jezebeth’s reaction was more about her lack of faith that he could keep her safe. Too bad that made two of them.
“A horror writer,” she repeated softly as if pure repetition would make it more palatable. “But you probably have experience fighting demons, right?”
He didn’t miss the hopeful note in her tone. “Only in my stories. Mr. Pestilence bounty demon back there was my very first.”
She glared at his backpack. “Then what about all the hardware? The holy water, the kosher salt, and the bag full of other toys? I mean those darts—”
“I’m a writer.” He cut her off midrant. “I’m good at research. The darts had a combination of holy water, peroxide, and pesticides. I had to experiment until I found a combination that didn’t degrade or react badly with each other, but figured that would damage the pestilence demon and it did.”
“So in other words, you know only enough about demons to be dangerous?” Her knuckles were white where they gripped the steering wheel. “How the hell did you get roped into this?”
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache pierced behind
his eyes like a persistent ice pick. “I was researching ancient demons for my next book when I found an incantation that supposedly summoned Lilith the succubus queen.” He sighed as the memories swam back fresh and bright. “I dictate as I write and then transcribe later, so when I said the words aloud, all hell broke loose. When things died down, Lilith was standing in front of me.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face as he remembered his shock and disbelief when the most darkly delicious woman he’d ever laid eyes on had materialized in front of him. His cock had hardened so quickly he was surprised he hadn’t come inside his pants just from the friction of his skin against his jeans. But his logic told him his physical reaction was off and nagged at him until his cock had softened, his intense craving for sex draining away until it was a mere background hum.
Dazed, curiosity had taken over, but changed quickly when Lilith told him to take his due—as in sex . . . with her.
“You said you were doing this so you didn’t have to take Lilith.” Jezebeth’s words were a whisper as she glanced over at him, this time keeping the truck moving smoothly forward before she turned back toward the road. “Wait. Which incantation did you use?”
He grimaced as he remembered. “The one that traded a night with Lilith for an eternity of damnation and torture.”
Jezebeth whistled long and low, the sound slicing through the truck like a sharp knife through butter. “And she let you turn her down? You’re lucky to be alive, human.”
“Noah,” he snapped. “My name is Noah. Not human. Okay? And I didn’t think it would really work. I thought it was fiction.”
“Yeah, sure. Don’t get testy. I was just surprised, that’s all.” She cocked her head to one side and mouthed the word “wow” silently.
“I saw that.”
She shrugged. “Well, Noah. Even succubi have pride, and Lilith’s is legendary. She never does anything without a reason.”
