A moment later, with her hands bound behind her back, Alex and Andrew marched Stella out of the room. She looked just like she always did, pretty and well put together. She looked rested, even, and when she saw Ben, her face softened.
“Please, tell them to let me go,” she begged.
Ben let out a sharp laugh and his eyes were narrow. “Do you know I was with?”
She shook her head, her eyes dropping to the floor. “No.”
“I found Asclepius,” Ben said, and she looked up sharply, now visibly frightened. “He was trapped in the portal room in Greg’s office. He’d had a visitor, too.” Ben’s voice was rising, and he was having trouble controlling himself. To distract his anger, he went to the window, threw it open and grabbed a cigarette. “He, uh, he received some interesting information from this visitor,” Ben said as he blew out a large plume of smoke. As much as he hated it, the cigarette distracted and calmed him.
“Look, I—” she said, but Ben cut her off immediately.
“Hades said you’d been feeding information to Nike this entire time,” Ben said tensely, though he was more under control now.
“You don’t understand!” she cried, trying to pull away from Alex, but the god had her in a tight grip. “Ben, she was going to kill you! She was going to murder you and it was the only way to save you!”
“No,” Ben said with a harsh laugh, “it wasn’t, and you know it. You could have come to anyone. Anyone in this room, even, and they could have protected me. They could have protected me without even letting on that they were gods,” Ben said, and wiped his brow. He was sweating profusely and he shrugged off his jacket, throwing it on the edge of the sofa near Jude’s feet. “Instead, you chose to lie, to manipulate the situation, and look at us all now. Is this what you wanted?”
She was crying openly now, but in a quiet way, the tears streaming silently down her face. “She said that Abby’s death would be painless. She never said what she planned to do.”
At the sound of Abby’s name, Ben’s head spun and he had to grip the back of the chair to keep from lunging at her. She was responsible for his sister’s pain and torture. She was responsible for all of this. “Don’t say her name. Just…don’t.”
“When was the last time you contacted Nike?” Alex cut in, seeing that Ben needed a moment. When Persephone took too long to answer, he gave her a violent shake.
Gasping, Persephone finally muttered out, “Just after we got here.”
“How? How the hell are you talking to her?” Ben cut in. “You’ve been in our sights the entire time. Nike can’t shield her presence from these guys, so how the hell are you doing it?”
She swallowed thickly and took a deep breath. “Look, I’ll tell you everything, okay? I swear, every detail. Just…just don’t…”
“What? Hurt you? Torture you like Nike tortured Mark and Jude because you gave them up? Like she’s been torturing Abby from the moment she stole her body? Don’t kill you? Like I’m going to have to kill my own sister because it’s the only way to stop this psychopath?” Ben let out a harsh, hysterical laugh and shook his head. “You’re not really in any place to be making deals.”
He expected her to argue back, to plead for her life and safety, but instead, she gave a slow nod and Alex let her take a seat in the chair. Ben backed away, unable to be anywhere near her. He shifted Jude’s legs slightly, eliciting a soft groan from the unconscious man, but it gave himself enough room to sit and listen to what the woman who had betrayed them all had to say.
Chapter Nineteen
He stood at the door, his hand pressed against the cold wood, and he waited. He was cloaked so they would have no idea he was standing there, and he was tired. His insides ached, the pull to reach out to Persephone, to be near her, like a demon inside of him, clawing and tearing.
He was just so tired. He’d been with her for longer than he could possibly remember, every step agony because he could never really touch her. The bodies she used weren’t enough. They weren’t her, they were just solid, like kissing someone with a glass barrier between them, and the human fingers caressing him were torture.
Too often he killed the human, his desires to touch her causing him to tear into their flesh without him realizing it, ripping them apart, covered in their blood in an attempt to feel her, but it was never any use, and now he walked the earth with so much death on his hands. It wasn’t fair, and he needed to be rid of her. Whether it was Nike letting the beings beyond devour them all, or the surly detective taking all of them out and shoving them into the void, it would end.
He meant to keep his word to the human, too. So heartbroken, so shredded over her betrayal, but it was nothing close to the pain Hades felt every moment of every day. He could sleep, but his dreams were always of her. Every step was either walking to her, or desperately trying to walk away, and there was no escape. He wanted to hate her, so much he wanted to hate her, but her powers of love consumed him.
Hades realized he was weeping and he swiped his hand across his cheeks. How human, he thought with a smile. How utterly human, and perhaps he was meant to be so. He, and the others who still walked the earth like him, had never shifted, never evolved into the next state. They bled, they existed, aching and living, just like the humans.
He could feel his wings heavy against his back and he shifted them slightly, trying to alleviate the pressure. He wasn’t sure he could take another step. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to walk into the apartment, to smell the detective all around him, knowing the human was with Persephone, and that he was going to betray her. He wasn’t sure he would be able to go through with it in the end. He could never take that step. So many times they’d stood at the edge of the abyss, peering into the nothingness of the void, of an existence even they couldn’t comprehend, another universe, consciousness, something so far removed from where they had ended up, and he could have just pushed her. Just given her that little shove, and she would have been taken in.
But he could never do it.
With a heavy sigh, he raised his hand and knocked. He winced at the sound, the loud pounding into the hallway. He could hear voices beyond, he could feel the fear of the human girl trapped inside of there, her head twisting and spinning, a desire to create, to shift and change something being repressed because it wasn’t time for her.
Footsteps, heavy, those of Apollo, he could tell. The door opened and there stood his kin, tall, broad, winged and scowling. More dangerous than Hades could ever be, yet just as weak when it came to matters of love, because Apollo, who possessed this disastrous gift of love, had become smitten with the psychotic Greek goddess who was within.
Hades grinned and tipped his old enemy a wink. “No hug for your old friend?”
“Friend?” Apollo sneered, still not stepping aside.
Hades chuckled a little and shrugged. “Yeah, okay, friend is a bit of a stretch. If you don’t mind…” he said, and pushed Apollo aside with his arm. Hades knew that only he could budge the burly winged Angel, despite him often playing weak and pathetic. He strolled into the living room and he could actually smell Persephone in the home. She’d been here more than once, and he hated her and Ben both for it. “So…”
“You’d better have a damn good reason for being here,” Apollo growled as he slammed the door.
“Oh, I do, I do,” Hades said with a grin, rolling up onto the balls of his feet and back down to his heels as he looked around. It was a modest place, nice enough for a human, and it was obvious Ben didn’t spend much time in the apartment.
On the sofa was the girl, the pretty little human girl humming with power. Her eyes were glowing, a soft radiating light, filled with what humans so often called the Holy Spirit. The fanatics possessed by some whirlwind power of obsession, and she was loaded with it. Mark’s doing, most likely, and Hades wasn’t sure she was ever going to recover from it. She struggled against her bonds, her hands behind her back, mouth sealed with a silver piece of tape. She pled with him, wide gl
owing eyes begging him to free her, but he had no intention of doing that. She was a casualty, and Hades had killed enough to dim his sympathies for the human race. At least they got to shed their lives and start over again. He didn’t have that luxury.
Even on the carpet, Nike’s impossibly tall heels managed to thump loudly as she strolled into the living room. She was wearing a black and white polka-dotted dress, flared at the waist, plunging neckline showing off her ample bosom. She was directly in the middle of primping, he noticed, by half of her hair still pinned up in curlers.
“You’re late,” she snapped at him as she strolled to the small kitchen table to pick up a glass of half-drunk wine. “What took you so long?” Nike just then seemed to notice that he was alone, and her eyes went wide and furious. “Where the hell is she?”
“I’m afraid they wouldn’t turn her over,” he said with a shrug, knowing full well his casual attitude was going to infuriate her. That was exactly what he wanted, however. “Not much I could do about that.”
“Not much you could do?” she all-but screeched, setting down the glass so hard it nearly cracked. “What the hell do you mean not much you could do? You could go in there, tear them to shreds and take her back, you idiot!”
Hades threw his head back and laughed. “Oh? I could, could I? It would be that simple against Thor and Heimdall? Are you implying that I could do what you could not?”
Nike’s face went red and Hades saw an immediate resemblance in the human girl’s face to Ben. He felt a slight pang of regret, but it was quickly washed away as she said, “You know those idiots did something to me. I can’t…I’m not…”
Hades held up his hands in surrender. “I know, and I’m sorry. It’s not going to last forever, I swear it.”
“What do you know?” Apollo growled suddenly, coming up beside Nike.
“I know more than you do,” Hades said with a wicked grin, baiting him. “I know that you’re just a pathetic weak Greek god bound by your vessel, and I know that Thor could blink and have you lying on the ground begging for mercy.” Hades knew perfectly well that Apollo had been lying to Nike about his form, and he was hoping perhaps his challenge would cause Apollo to out himself.
The winged Angel, however, turned on his heel and took the whimpering human girl out of the room. Hades let out a sigh and shrugged. “So hard to find good help these days.”
“Tell me about it. That idiot’s been following me around since the dawn of time,” she grumbled. Picking up her wine again, she sauntered over to Hades and fixed him with a smoldering look. As revolting as it was, this was exactly the reaction he wanted out of her. “Help me out of my curlers?”
Hades smiled down softly and began to unpin her hair gently, letting the waves fall against her back. With his fingers, he brushed through them, gently rubbing against her scalp as she moaned and pushed back against him. “Mmm, thank you,” she whispered.
He leaned forward, pressing his nose into the crook of her neck and breathed in. “Any time.”
Moving away, Nike walked to the table, glancing back at him with a small smile as she refilled her glass. “Alright, so you didn’t get Persephone. That’s fine. Tell me you at least got some information.”
“Not precisely,” he said, and when she scowled, he smiled wider, “but I was able to strike a deal with that idiotic detective.”
Nike perked up almost instantly and crossed the room back over to Hades. “Oh? What sort of deal?”
“He’ll give us Persephone for the human,” Hades said, the lie coming easily and swiftly, and from the look on Nike’s face, she bought it.
“You do realize we can’t follow through with that,” she said.
“Of course I do,” Hades said patiently. He reached out and gently stroked his hand over her shoulder and down her arm, making her shiver slightly. “I plan to entice him to the portal. Persephone will give the location, and we will meet them there. We’ll lie and say the human is safe, far away from the portal, and when they arrive, we’ll use her power to open it and no matter what they do, they won’t be able to stop what’s coming through.”
Nike looked down at his fingers on her arm and then looked back up, her eyes filled with desire. She shifted into his touch slightly and reached a finger out, drawing it across his bottom lip. “I like the way you think.”
Hades smiled and gave a small shrug. “I’m not the Devil for nothing, you know. That title was bestowed upon me for good reason.”
Nike chuckled and ran her hand across his jaw line and into the collar of his shirt. “Prince of Lies,” she purred.
He moved slightly closer to her. “So they say,” he murmured.
She turned her face up to him, circling her arm around his waist and hummed with pleasure as his body pressed into hers. “Will you lie to me now, and tell me you want me?”
“No,” he whispered, smiling at the irony of it all. “Because that wouldn’t be a lie.”
Nike’s eyes softened as she pushed him gently backward until the back of his legs hit the sofa. She pushed a little harder, but for the moment, he didn’t let her budge him. “So you want me?”
“My poor goddess,” he said in a low voice. His hand trailed down her shoulder to hers and he plucked the wine glass from it. Raising it to his lips, he drank the rich, almost peppery liquid and then set the glass down on the side table. Her grip around his waist tightened as he brought his hand to her face and let his thumb caress her cheek. “How long has it been since you’ve been touched by someone you’ve wanted? How long since you were able to let go and let someone…” he bent his head down into the crook of her neck and spoke against the skin just below her ear, “…own you. Just for the moment?”
She gave a little gasp and arched into his arms slightly as he carefully pressed his knee between her legs. Her entire body was burning hot, her arms trembling as she pressed against him, desperate for his touch, for the friction. “Please,” she moaned.
He was not like Apollo, he didn’t have that pull over them, that obsession, but he had something else. He was the Devil. He was not Lucifer from the archaic book the humans so often died for, but he was the man with the serpent’s tongue. The man who could make them beg and plead for his love. He’d learned over the years, over his never ending, never sated desire for Persephone, he’d learned how to make them want him as he had wanted her.
Without effort, he lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist, and he kissed her. She moaned loudly, pressing herself against him, and he only needed to picture Persephone’s body, her face, remember her corporeal touch to lose himself in the moment.
In the distance, he heard Apollo come out of the room and cry out, but neither Nike nor Hades cared. Carrying her as though she weighed nothing, he pushed past the burly Angel and into the back bedroom. It smelled of Persephone in there, she’d been in there, with Ben. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark, and he lost himself in the image of her as Nike writhed against him.
She panted and begged, “God yes, please, more, harder,” and he did not disappoint. He made every inch of her sing with pleasure, arching into him, twisting, her back arching up as he pushed into her over and over. She cried out, again and again until her body was so spent that she could not take the feeling of him inside of her.
He carefully rolled to the side as she lay there gasping, her hand pressed over the center of her chest. The room was pungent, thick and heavy with the smell of her human fluids, and he didn’t hate it. He’d had countless days and nights like this with Persephone, making love over and over until her human vessel threatened to give out. He would lay there, surrounded by the smell of her, her god form mingled with the human, and though neither one of them were sated, it was the most he would ever get from her.
“How have we never done that before?” Nike finally asked, her voice still shaking slightly. She gave a little laugh as she sat up on her elbow. She was naked in the bed, her hair falling over her breasts, and Hades rather liked her human form.
“I’d be angry with you for holding back all these years if I had the strength for an actual emotion.”
Hades grinned and rose from the bed, naked himself, but he didn’t bother with clothes right away. He stretched languidly and sauntered to the small sink in the corner of the room to clean himself off. He’d never been fond of the smell of human all over him, and Nike didn’t seem to care.
“Promise we’ll do that again.”
Hades chuckled and turned to wink at her. “You could have had me any time you wanted, darling. You never asked.”
“You were always following that useless bitch around like a lost puppy,” Nike said, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout. She flopped back down onto the pillows and drew her hand back through her hair. “What was I to do?”
“Ah, well I’m afraid my bond with 'that useless bitch,' as you call her, is a difficult sort of bond, but hopefully once we’re finished with all of this messy human world, we can be rid of her.” He walked back to the bed and knelt beside her. Reaching out, he cupped his hand over her naked breast and gently toyed with it until she moaned and he felt her skin grow hot again. He leaned down and kissed her gently. “Just think of how it will feel when you’re in your true form, my goddess. Think of the pleasure I could bring you.”
Her eyes, half-lidded, fixed on his face and he could see the desperation behind them. The ache for her old form, her old life and glory. She was too easy, too easy to manipulate, to take what he wanted. She pulled him down and kissed him hard and fierce, her hands tangling into his hair. “Take me now, show me again.”
He could feel Apollo’s rage behind the door as Hades took what his kin had always wanted, but could never have. The power he had now gave him strength, and as he had her screaming and shuddering beneath him, he knew that in the end, he would be the one to cry, “Nike!”
Cry, Nike! (The Judas Curse) Page 16
