by Deanna Chase
I rolled, slamming my weight down on the demon attached to my neck. There was a muffled crunching sound and the mouth released me. I gasped, covering my neck as hot blood spurted with the rhythm of my beating pulse.
Then someone head butted me. Lights danced inside my vision. I grabbed a neck. More hands began to claw at my body. I choke slammed the one I held and shoved the others off me.
Something pricked me from behind. I jumped to my feet, turning in time to see another LCD with a needle in one hand and vial of my blood in the other. He grinned.
And in that instant it takes you to blink I remembered the vamp in the field also trying to take a vial of my blood. But where he’d been unsuccessful the LCD had triumphed. But I didn’t have time to think on it more.
I reached for him. But another tiny body slammed against mine with the force of a freight train. It knocked the air out of me and flung me back to the ground.
I couldn’t stop this. I’d get one away from me only to have another take its place.
“No.” A man’s roar filled my head, I turned to look and spotted him out of the corner of my eye. It was Billy and he was shoving bodies away as he raced toward me.
Hands on my leg. Shoving my pant legs up, reaching for my ankles. Teeth cutting into my thighs. Tongues licking my face.
One of them squealed when my birthmark was revealed. He traced the flesh with the tip of his sharp nail, drawing blood. I kicked his teeth in and was able to shake him.
I slapped at them, tried to move. But I was pinned down. My efforts were growing weaker and more useless by the second. The strength of the LCD’s overwhelmed me. Even in child form, it was more than I could handle alone.
I was bleeding everywhere. It filled my nose. My eyes. My mouth.
I continued to punch, but muscles were starting to tremble with fatigue.
A large body slammed against mine. Covering me. Crushing me.
I saw silver hair and a dagger swing toward me. I was not going to die this way. I elbowed Billy and connected with his nose. The bone jarring impact freed my hand just enough so that I could reach down the front of my shirt.
“Pandora!” I barely heard Luc yell.
“Do it now,” Chaos ordered. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to and frankly right now I didn’t care. All I knew was that somehow I had to shake Billy off me.
“I will not let you kill me, Priest.” I snatched the ring and slammed it against the side of his neck, reciting: dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
“Don’t do it,” he snarled, slapping my hand hard enough that the ring fell to the ground.
But it was too late. Red and pink flames shot out of the ring, a thin line at first. But it became larger, wider and thicker as it grew. It threaded between us, like a snake curling around prey and squeezing tight in an ever-contracting circle.
It licked at my body, singed the hairs on my head. My skin blistered. The LCD on me howled as the inferno devoured them.
Chaos sang with laughter as she shed her skin, revealing her true form.
“Pandora,” Luc yelled, but it was a whisper inside the netting Chaos had cast. Like the memories of a dream, it echoed faintly.
Shredded wings pulled from Chaos’ back. She grew ten feet tall, covered in green scales of iridescent brilliance. Her face a frightful distortion of beauty; the snout long and her breaths sounding like the squeal of a dying pig. Tusks curled from the bottom of her jaw. Red eyes glowed with satisfaction. She curled her black taloned hands around her mouth and yelled, “Father, take us home.”
Luc was so close, screaming my name. Billy jumped to his feet, drew his knife up.
The clap of thunder roared around me. Darkness rolled in, grabbed me with cold fingers and sucked me down into a hole that had suddenly opened up in the earth.
Terror clamped my throat shut. My skin was on fire. I burned and tried to scream, but nothing came out. I lifted a hand, but saw only white bone. I looked at the rest of me and I was nothing but skeleton, then flesh reformed and the fire ate it again. It happened over and over.
I flapped my arms, trying to grab hold of something. But it was a seemingly empty tunnel of black. I could see nothing beyond myself.
Then hands tore at me. Moans shrieked in my ears. “No,” they wailed. “Please, we’ll be good.” The ghostly whisperings made me shiver.
Then I saw light. Blinding orange light. And I could see the end of the tunnel. See the rocky ground that loomed larger and larger as my speed continued to pick up.
Hands still grabbed at me. “Please, take us out of here. We’ll never do it again...” Unknown and haunting voices that I knew I’d always remember in my worst nightmares.
I couldn’t save myself, much less anybody else. Terror wedged tight in my throat, so that I couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.
Molten lava bubbled in shallow pools filled with writhing, bodiless souls.
I was in hell.
Literally.
I had barely enough time to cover my face with my hands before I slammed into the ground. I landed on spires of razor sharp rock. I was flesh again and it pierced me. It cut through organs. Muscle. Tissue.
I screamed as my skin began to melt from the heat. I was bone again and free of the rock.
I trembled and tried to stand, but then fell to my knees and clutched my ribs that were flesh and then bone, flesh and then bone. Every time the skin melted it was a brand new agony, growing worse and worse each cycle.
The clang of metal drew my attention. Billy and Chaos and the other LCD that had attacked me were to my far left. They were swarming him. Stabbing him. He was a blur of moving shadow as he fought back.
An LCD hopped toward me, leering with a face half eaten by maggots.
“Leave her, she belongs to the Master.” Chaos pointed to the tiny furry demon.
“Ya-el.” The booming voice cut through the madness of voices and battle and made my heart stutter. It was the monster of night, death and vengeance. It was the demon Wrath.
I grabbed my head. His presence sank in like black mold taking over my body.
I was bone, but now there was a heart beating inside my ribs.
“Ya-el,” he whispered again, “at last you are mine.”
Evil. Dark. Pure. That voice shivered down my spine with its soul sucking cold.
I gasped, clutching my chest as my heart went into cardiac arrest. Finally Lust seemed to snap out of her catatonic state. She curled her soul around mine, sinking her claws into my already frayed and battered consciousness. For the first time I not only welcomed her, I sobbed with joy to feel her return. Like it or not, she was a part of me. A part more vital than I’d ever believed was possible.
The feel of her was like a warm blanket on a cold night. I drew off that warmth and wrapped myself in it. I winced, fighting Wrath’s voice in my head. Fighting his insistence that I get up and follow him.
But it was a physical rending to do it. I hadn’t even realized I was still moving forward, but now I could make out the vague outline of his body. He was large, masculine, completely alluring.
And that voice... “Ya-el.” I shivered. How could I continue to fight this when every instinct inside me wanted to obey?
“Come to me beloved, Ya-el. My favorite. You were always my favorite.” That voice intoxicated me, like heroin—it shot through my veins in a glorious rush of pure white ecstasy.
I curled my bony fingers into the ground, battling every instinct to get up and throw myself at him.
“Ya-el, do you not desire me?” His words were soft, tender. So very gentle. I bit my lip and whimpered.
Ya-el, my true name. There was power in a name. I remembered that. The last bit of sanity left in me whispered this was wrong. I tried to understand why, but he called me again and that voice fell silent.
As if there were a thread connected from his body to mine, he dragged me closer and closer toward him. I groaned, writhing with the beginnings of desire.
“Ya-el,” he shoved
more of his power into his voice, wielding my name like a sword and cutting me in two. Like a thin sheet of ice, the last of my frail resistance snapped.
Oh yes, pleasure coursed through me. Lust flared to life, filled me with longing so profound it was like a little death. “Anything,” I whispered.
“Come,” he said with the seductive burr of a lover.
I stepped toward him and heard the heavy clink of chains. Adrenaline rushed through me. I could no longer remember why I’d ever thought to resist him. He was glorious. Beautiful. Suddenly all I wanted was to please him. Feel him wrap me in his large arms and take me. Even knowing that taking would kill me, it no longer mattered. It was him and me. There was nothing else.
He laughed and repeated my name, each time I stepped one foot closer.
He was so beautiful.
I moaned. Lust sighed.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said, curling his full firm lips. His long black hair fell in waves down his nude back, gleaming differing shades of twilight in the hazy orange light. An overwhelming desire to run my fingers through it and wrap it around my body crowded my thoughts. My fingers curled. His green eyes flamed and in them I saw the beginning of time. The stars, the heavens, all creation.
“Come to me.”
I smiled. I wasn’t hurting anymore. It was okay. This was good. This was right.
He was so beautiful. Too perfect, it was an almost physical pain to gaze upon him and yet I couldn’t look away. Because to do so would only make it hurt worse.
The roped muscles of his body flexed as he leaned toward me. Thick steel chains bound him to the rock wall. I frowned, wanting to take the chains off. Free him, hold him and worship all that masculine splendor.
“A kiss,” he said, lips curving.
“Yes.” I tried to think, to work up some emotion outside of this moment. But it was as if I’d never existed before this. My life was a blank. I should have been terrified. But I wasn’t. There was nothing but a hard certainty that I belonged here with Wrath. I lived for him. And I’d die for him.
“No!”
I stopped, my left foot suspended mid-step.
“She’s mine.”
The voice was so familiar. It tugged at me. At some hidden thought buried deep in the central core of my very soul. It pulled me back. Made me pause.
“Come to me,” Wrath roared. I blinked, frowned. An internal battle waged inside me, the obsessive need to obey and the tiny fluttering memory trying desperately to make itself known. I edged my foot forward.
I was grabbed from behind and flung to the ground. The jarring impact snapped me violently back into the present. I screamed, writhing and bucking and able to turn my head to the side long enough for me to see who held me down with such force. Billy sat on my back with his hand pinned between my shoulder blades.
“Get off,” I grunted.
“Shut up,” he growled through clenched teeth.
“Get him,” Wrath commanded.
Then bodies were on top of us, dragging Billy off me. I jumped up only to have the furry, maggot faced LCD of earlier fling himself at me.
He wrapped his claws around my neck, blood lust dripping from his eyes. But I was bone now, not flesh. I shoved my arms between us, broke his hold and slammed him to the ground. I punched through his chest. My fist sank through muscle, gristle and between the ribs as if he’d been made of sand. I grabbed his heart and ripped it out, throwing it away.
He snapped at me. His fangs gnawing at my arm. I seized his head and twisted it off.
Killing him in the style of a neph. But he wasn’t neph and I was unprepared for what happened next.
“Pandora, no!” I barely heard Billy’s anguished cry. But it was already too late.
The furry body exploded in a shower of blood and bits of gore. A black oily substance floated out and then slammed into me.
I screamed, curled into a tight ball as dark madness consumed me. Hair tore through my skull. Muscle formed to bone. Veins ran with blood. Flesh knit itself to me.
My brain ran with memories of something dark, something evil. A new presence lurked inside my mind. A canvas of bitter hate dwelt in a dark corner, infecting me with its poison. Memories, not my own, ran in a constant blur of motion.
Distorted limbs and bloated bodies. Blood everywhere. Disease. Waste. Famine.
In that moment, realization dawned. The LCD I’d just killed was Pestilence and it was his tainted soul consuming me.
I was dying. Lust screeched, battling for dominion against the foreign body invading us.
I fell to my face. Tiny pebbles gouged my cheek and cut me open. Sweat bathed my body. I curled into the fetal position. The pain, like a living entity, ripped me apart from the inside out. I couldn’t think to move. To do anything other than moan.
The cries and grunts of fighting went on around me. Why was I here? How had I gotten here? I needed to get away, but my body wouldn’t obey my command to move.
“Ya-el.” Wrath again.
I moaned, cupped my ears and rocked back and forth. “No,” I croaked with a voice I hardly recognized.
The world tilted. My stomach heaved.
“Ya-el...Come to me.”
“Nugh,” I muttered nonsense, resistance slipped as the new monster inside demanded I obey the Master.
Pestilence took hold of my limbs, Lust was losing ground. I hadn’t fed her in days and she was growing weak. Something wet leaked down my nose.
I started moving. Pestilence exerted his will, forcing me to use limbs unable to sustain my weight. I dragged myself, inch by bloody inch, my fingers split open and a bloody mess as I continued to scrape them along the rock.
I bit my bottom lip. “God please,” my voice broke.
“He won’t hear you down here,” Wrath mocked, derision filled laughter echoing around us. The screams of the tortured rose in crescendo at the sound of his voice.
“He doesn’t respond to dogs,” he spat. “You want me, Ya-el, inside of you. Admit it.”
“No.” But even as I denied it my broken body responded to the black death of seduction in his voice. I whimpered, and turned my face away. He was too beautiful to gaze upon. Too perfect. My breasts were heavy, my thighs wet and even though every inch of me screamed in agony I knew if he touched me I’d let him take me and gladly die in his arms.
Dancing fire caught my eye. Not the liquid heat of lava, but pure white light.
It was Billy, wielding a sword of flame. He parried, thrusted, felling many demons. Then he twirled, brown eyes glittering with rage as he advanced on me.
I urged my body to move but all I could manage was the slow crawl of death.
Everything happened so fast. Billy was upon me; face a cold mask of hatred. Sword lifted.
“Mine,” I heard Chaos screech.
“Billy,” I croaked with a voice grown hoarse. Now I knew Luc had been right, Billy had meant to kill me all along. In that moment I knew how Kemen must have felt. I was too tired to fight, too tired to care. A small smile tipped the corner of my mouth as I waited for the blow that would finally end my wretched life.
The cold fingers of death shivered through the air. I felt its presence like an electric current slide against my flesh. But it wasn’t my body death pricked.
A flash of silver sliced through Billy’s chest. His eyes grew wide, as if shocked. He stared at the spike jutting from his stomach as a bloom of crimson began to spread against the white of his shirt.
Those big brown eyes of his I’d always found so mesmerizing looked at me with an inexpressible depth of sorrow. He mouthed something I couldn’t understand and then dropped to his knees.
“Billy.”
Then he disappeared in an explosion of color.
Fingers of light—pearl and gold—stretched the length of the room and snatched the darkness out.
There were groans and howls of pain all around.
“No,” Wrath roared. “Not possible. He can’t...”
I j
erked as the light touched me. The demons inside me shrieked, shrinking back. But the light sank in deep, stripped away the darkness and quieted their voices.
I gasped; the pain in my body choked me. Was I dying?
I could no longer hear Lust or Pestilence. For the first time it was totally quiet inside my head. I wanted to cry, but I laughed instead, swallowed in the warmth of that light.
Peace.
Beautiful peace.
I smiled, even as the agony of my wounds slowly leeched the life from me. My heart thumped slowly.
This was what Kemen had sought. Kemen, my beloved friend. “I’m...sorry.”
Everything started to turn fuzzy.
Thump.
Tired. So tired.
Thump.
“Hang on.” Strong arms scooped me up.
My lashes fluttered and for a second I saw gray. “Gray...Ma...?”
He touched my forehead and whispered words I could not understand. When he moved his hand the pain was gone. I was whole but now the pain was replaced by lethargy so deep I couldn’t resist its pull. I passed out.
Something shoved hard against my shoulder. I cracked open an eye unsure how long I’d been out but had to squeeze it shut immediately as an overwhelming sensation of vertigo rushed through me. Was I floating?
I groaned. So tired. Air rushed past me in an ear splitting whistle. Everything was still black and empty, but I was warm, cradled in strong arms.
Who was holding me? I couldn’t remember.
Sleep dragged me under again. Kemen’s smiling face danced behind my closed eyes. “Sandman.” I gave a happy sigh. “Is that you?”
He touched my cheek.
“They weren’t children. LCD.”
“I know.” The deep voice dragged me under, made it hard to think. But I had to tell him. He had to know.”
“Thought...killed you. So sorry. So, so sorry.”
“Sleep, my beauty.”
I snuggled in his arms. Eyelids weighted down. It’d been a dream. A bad dream. “Love you, Sloth.”
“I…do too.”
I smiled at the love trembling in those words, he hadn’t said, but I’d heard it all the same. I would be all right now, because Kemen was holding me. All was right with the world, it’d been a dream. Just a very bad dream.
