by RS Black
I stopped walking. “What’s the problem here? I didn’t go anywhere, okay?”
“So you’re telling me that you didn’t purposefully trace to over a hundred places just to throw me off your scent?” Dean snarled.
“A hundred, really?” I whistled. “I seriously thought I hadn’t done more than fifty. And so what if I wanted my privacy? Dick didn’t call me back. If you had”—I whirled on the good doctor—“I would have come running back to you like the good little bitch in heat I am.” I gave him a smarmy smirk.
Dick looked none too happy with my choice of nicknames. But, yanno, when your boss is the spawn of Lucifer you’re not exactly gonna give him a nice one.
Clearing his throat, he shoved his glasses up his nose. The moment he did so, every door in the hall opened, and it wasn’t lab rats or evil doctors that stepped out, but big strapping shifters, glaring hostilely at me with their evil red burning eyes.
Yes, I was being rather melodramatic tonight, but seriously, what was the deal here? Confused, I rubbed my head.
“Please tell me the goons aren’t all for me?” I jerked a thumb at the goon nearest me.
The red-haired genetic freak growled, the sound a lot like a mix between a wolf and a hyena. Yeah, I know, that sounds ridiculous. Well, it was. Shifters come in more sizes than just wolf.
In fact, I saw a were-badger on the premises a few weeks ago. I’d come this close to “accidentally” stepping on it.
“Dean and I have been having a rather long chat about your progress, Pandora.”
“You don’t say.” I glared at Dean, who glared right back. “Well, I hope he told you I kicked ass tonight. I sucked up that soul. I got you the map and—”
“How many times have you gone to visit the Priest?” Dick cut me off.
The question made me take an involuntary step back, holding my hands up. “Whoa. What?” I shot a quick glance toward Dean, who now wore the look of a man holding all the cards. “Once.”
“No. I’m afraid not. Dean told me that the Priest showed up at the dock tonight. Thankfully he was outmatched, but clearly the—”
“You liar!” I cut Dick off and shoved a finger into Dean’s chest. “You tell him the truth, right now. I did not—”
Dean swatted my finger off his chest. “Dick knows the truth, Dorrie.” He said my name with a thick drawl, the kind he used to use back when I’d first met him. “But where were you after the fight, hm? What plans are you concocting in that pretty little head of yours?”
A strange sound rumbled from my throat. I’m not even really sure what it was. A laugh. A sob. Maybe both.
“You can’t be serious. You saw what I did to him. And you”—I twirled on Dick—“you told me to do whatever necessary to get him off my scent. It’s why I went to him in the first place, but I’ve made no contact since.”
“Did you or did you not hold his hand tonight, Pandora?” The doctor’s tone was high-handed and full of hubris.
The man acted as if he’d just laid down a trump card.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, please,” Dean rolled his eyes, “how about when he groped your face and you leaned into it.”
My jaw dropped. Hung open like I was catching flies. There wasn’t an iota of common sense happening in any of this. I could hardly fathom what I was hearing. And I hated the feeling bubbling up inside of me.
I’d told myself I didn’t care about him. Hated him. And yet somewhere deep down inside, so deep in fact that I’d not even been aware of it, I must have hoped that Dean did actually have my six. Even in some small way.
The feeling gnawing away at me now was pure, unadulterated betrayal. Hadn’t it been Dean just hours ago that’d told me I hadn’t needed to stay away from Ash? And even so I hadn’t gone to him. But this...this was utterly stupid.
What was Dean doing? Why was he doing this? There was a reason. He always told me to look at the bigger picture, to see the truth. But right now all I was seeing was perfidy.
“We cannot shut your feelings off, demon.” Dick interrupted my silent eye conversation with Dean that promised pain and retribution for what he was doing.
“But it was foolish of me to give you such a long leash.”
I laughed at that. “Are you serious? Long leash? All you needed to do was call me back and I would have had no choice but to come. What is this, really?” I clenched my fists by my side, burning with a desire to rip into Dick’s throat and feast on him till I sucked out the last drop of blood.
“It was a test, Pandora. And you failed.”
“Shut your mouth, Dean!” I held a finger in his face. “Last time I checked, you weren’t the boss here. What have you done to him? Mind-melded him somehow? You’ve done something, admit it!”
Dick jerked his chin at the dogs behind me.
Suddenly five pair of hands were on me, hanging on tight and digging their fingers into my arms and shoulders.
“Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. But we will do this.” Dick lifted a brow.
“Do what!” I jerked out of their hands and smashed my fist into the face of the shifter nearest me. A satisfying crunch of bone sounded, followed by a howl of pain and the stench of blood as the shifter stumbled back with his hands to his nose staunching the bleeding as best he could.
Dick held up my mark. “Stop!”
The one-word command doubled me over, and I gasped as fire burned up my insides, dropping immediately to my knees and breaking out in a wash of sweat.
The hands returned. This time they weren’t nearly as gentle as before. Instead of merely bruising me, they took my arms in their hands and, with a flick, snapped the bones.
I howled, bending backward in agony.
“Take her to room two oh five,” Dick said in an even voice, without inflection or emotion.
I screamed as they led me away. Screamed when they shoved my ass into the chair, and screamed when they inserted a long steel rod into the base of my skull.
It could have been minutes or hours later when I finally woke back up to note Dick’s blue eyes staring into my own.
“We’ve inserted a monitoring device into your brain, demon. Now anything you hear, we do too. There will be no more midnight rendezvous or plans being made. You are my weapon, and you will do as I say.”
Then, snapping off his gloves, he tossed them into the garbage and walked out the door.
It was only when I managed to drag my body back to my room that I noticed I was covered in my own blood.
Too tired to care about anything other than the mind-numbing agony of a skull that throbbed and burned, I collapsed onto the edge of my bed, and thought maybe they must have broken my neck at some point too, because I could barely move it. I sank into oblivion after that.
Chapter 10
Asher
I banged on Vyxen’s door as the sun was just beginning to crest over the horizon. Which meant most of Diabolique would be in bed.
Everyone, to include myself, was on a high state of alert. Bubba had decided last night that it was time to let everyone know about the Triad, about Pandora, and about what it meant to choose sides.
Having a bunch of anxious demons running loose wasn’t a great thing, so it’d been up to Keltse to keep them all calm. A tall order, even for a Sloth demon of her caliber, but a necessary one.
The only ones currently unaffected by her sleep magic were Bubba, Cash, Vyx, and myself. I grimaced when I rotated my neck from side to side. Though I couldn’t say that I didn’t envy the others right now; I needed sleep desperately.
Vyxen opened the door a minute later. There were heavy circles under her eyes, and her skin had lost some of its usual luminescence. In short, she looked like a human who’d just gotten home from an all-night bender.
Green eyes raked me. “I take it from your glum expression that you lost her. Again.”
Sighing heavily, I shoved my fingers through my hair and stepped into her trailer. She closed and locked it beh
ind me.
Bubba was sprawled out barefoot on the couch, his hands crossed on his stomach, peeking at me with one eye open. His normally brilliant ruby eye was now a dull shade of red.
He said nothing as I shambled over to the coffee pot and poured myself a cup. Cash, who’d just walked out of the back bedroom looking disheveled and tucking in his shirt, took a seat at the large table.
“Plan B. As we knew it would be from the beginning,” he groused.
Vyxen, dressed in nothing but a sheer pink babydoll nightie, walked up behind him and patted his golden red hair back into place.
I was beyond the point of caring what any of these demons did in their spare time.
“Yeah, well, can’t blame a man for trying, can we, C?” Vyxyen mumbled with a soft sigh before giving his head one final pat and taking a seat beside him.
It was like someone had taken a needle to a balloon. After four months of this, I wasn’t sure any of us knew what the right answers were anymore.
Vyxen kept up a steady tapping with her long, painted fingernails, staring off into space.
Meanwhile I sipped on my coffee, running through the last few hours in my head.
“Well, damn.” Bubba finally kicked his feet to the floor and sat up. “Any of us plan to say anything anytime soon, or what? I’ve got a raging headache and I need to feed. So let’s do something or I’m leaving.”
“Do what?” Vyx snapped, her green eyes glowing with alternating jeweled bands of jade and emerald. She spread her arm. “You tell me exactly what we haven’t tried to do for her, huh? ’Cause I’m all ears. At this point I say we put a cap in her ass—”
Cash frowned. “Bullets do nothing to us, Vyx.”
“God.” She rolled her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Even her normally bright-toned bubblegum hair now seemed less pink and more brown. She was letting herself go. But in fairness, so were the rest of us. I hadn’t shaved in days.
And the noxious stench coming off Bubba told me he’d probably not bathed in at least a week.
“It’s just an expression, Cash. Seriously, though, when is enough enough? When do we agree to stop trying to ‘save her’”—she finger quoted—“and understand that there is nothing left to save?”
All eyes turned to me.
She hadn’t said that for the benefit of anyone other than myself. I think they’d reached a general consensus to take Pandora out at least a month ago.
I clenched my jaw.
“Tell me, Priest, honestly, did going out to her seem to make any kind of a difference?” Bubba’s deep voice made me look up.
Slouching in my seat, I shook my head slowly. I could lie. Could keep up appearances. I could do it and they would know what I was doing, but they would follow me. None of us really wanted to be the one to pull the trigger. Not with her. Anyone else, and I don’t think we would have grappled so hard with our conscience about it. Even their beloved leader, Luc, didn’t inspire this kind of faith and loyalty.
Pandora had been the only one to earn it. Not just from me, but from all of them as well.
Saying now that it was time to hunt her like a dog was also saying it was time to let her go completely.
I licked my front teeth and glared at a cross hanging on her wall. The thing had been blown from glass and sparkled with many different shades of blue. It was beautiful and fragile. Just like my little demon’s sanity.
Bubba’s big body blocked my field of vision. I’d not even heard him walk over to me—that’s how distracted I’d been.
“It’s time, Priest. None of us want this. But it’s time.”
The other two nodded slowly.
I scrubbed a fist over my jaw. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to the Zombie Queen.” This was said by Cash.
Vyxen grabbed my hand, the one I was still absentmindedly rubbing my chin with.
“You’re going to strip your skin off soon, Priest.” She gave me a small smile and scooted her chair closer to mine. “You know how we feel about her. How we all feel about her.”
“But what if we’re wrong, Vyxen, huh?” I gave her fingers a final squeeze before letting go. Hers wasn’t the comforting touch I craved. I might work hand in hand with the Neph now, and might even care for a few of them, but none of them could ever take my little demon’s place. “I have followed Pandora through lifetimes. I know her. And I know she’s scared. And I know that right now she doesn’t feel like she has any choice. But my gut tells me she’s not totally lost.”
“Listen to yourself,” Vyxen huffed. “Just listen to yourself. Every time I think we’re finally at a place that you can admit to yourself what we already have, you backpedal. You can’t make a square peg fit into a round hole. She’s lost.”
I clenched my jaw. “I don’t accept that. You didn’t see what I saw tonight.”
“So Death’s intel was good, then?” Cash was quick to jump in, leaning forward, Pride more than eager to get back in the game.
“It was. There was a keeper just as he said. But it wasn’t a vamp, or Neph, or shifter guarding the first key—it’d been LCD. The second it touched me, I collapsed. I don’t know how Pandora handled him, but she did. She took him down.”
Bubba grimaced. “Surger. Damn, those things suck.”
“Literally.” Vyxen giggled.
“She’s taking down real monsters,” I said.
“And in the process becoming an even bigger one herself.” Bubba gave me a ‘don’t go there’ look.
I knew this. I really did. Everyone might think I had blinders on. I didn’t. But the bond between me and Pandora was strong enough that I knew if she was slipping into the darkness, I’d know. I’d feel it. Somehow. Someway. I’d sense it.
Wouldn’t I?
It was that small grain of doubt that worried me. What if they were right? What if I was so desperate to not believe what I was seeing that I was trying to jam a square peg into a round hole?
“I’ll go with you to the Queen’s,” Vyxen offered. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“But what you’re telling me is I have to do this, right?”
Bubba spread his hands. Cash, however, shook his head.
“Ugh,” Vyx growled. “Cash, what the hell, man?”
Holding up a finger, he gave her a wide-eyed look. “Listen, what if we can do both?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What if”—he stood up and began to pace in front of us, scratching his jaw in what we’d all come to know as his thinker’s pose—“we do go find the Queen. But we don’t act now.”
“You mean, let her go through with this? Absorb all those souls? Open the Gates?” Even I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with that.
He wagged his hand. “Sort of. What if we just let her lead us there? Right now, we don’t know where the Gates are. Pandora is our best chance at finding them. She leads us there, and we’ll be waiting, with our undead Army. Our berserker alliance. And we make sure those Gates never get found again. We can do this.” His eyes glowed a brilliant gold.
“No.” I stood up. “I don’t like that at all. We let Pandora suck up all those souls, there will be no stopping her. As it is, I’m not sure we could do it now.”
“There are ways to kill even the strongest amongst us. The problem is, Priest”—Bubba leaned against the edge of the table—“you don’t really want to accept that that is our only choice. What Cash says has merit.”
Vyxen was nodding her assent.
“No. No.” I stood, tipping over my coffee mug so that the contents partially spilled onto my now empty seat. “Who’s to say that there aren’t other Easter egg hunts out there just like this one? I sincerely doubt Wrath has laid out all his cards on this. I spoke with Dean once several months ago and one thing he always stressed was that there were many different pathways this could take. Letting Pandora suck up these souls—it’s like giving a zealot a live grenade and hoping he won’t pull the pin.�
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I tapped my chest, pleading with them to understand what it was they were doing. Why would Pride even believe this was a good idea?
But the moment I asked it, I knew why. Pride was desperate. At every turn he’d failed. For four months we’d been following Pandora. She was stronger now than she’d been at the start. An ego the size of Mt. Fuji was bruised and now wanted to right the wrong with an even grander spectacle.
This, though... this wasn’t the answer. Surely they could see that.
Several loud, silent minutes passed so that the only things I could hear were the beating of my heart in my ears, the metrical ticking of a mantel clock, and their heavy breathing, before Bubba finally said, “We put this to a vote, then. All in favor of letting this thing play itself out and killing Pandora and eradicating all traces of the Gates, say aye.”
“Aye. Aye.” Both Vyxen and Cash said loudly.
“No!” I roared. “No. Our only chance of stopping this is getting the Queen’s Army to help us get to Pandora’s mark. It’s the only way.”
“The ayes have it.” Bubba shook his head. “And, Asher, I respect you. But you know as well as I do that we’d never make it out of that Triad compound alive. Retrieving her mark is a suicide mission.”
I gave a laugh of disbelief. “And letting her become even more polluted isn’t?”
“Yeah, but”—Cash clapped a steady hand to my shoulder—“at least this way we have a twenty to thirty percent chance at success versus the zero we have doing it your way.”
That just wasn’t true. How could none of the others understand that? The suicide mission was thinking we stood a chance in hell of stopping Armageddon.
But without the support of the three, I’d lose the tenuous Nephilim allies I’d secured. The rest of the family might tolerate me, possibly even like me, but they’d never blindly follow me.
And neither would the Zombie Queen.
“Dammit!” I roared. I gathered my shadows to me, blanketing myself in darkness, and walking over to Vyxen’s front door, I kicked it open so that it slammed against the side of her trailer with a crack.
