Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane

by Paige Cuccaro

  The woman was probably ten years older than I was, with jet black hair pulled into a high ponytail. She was thin, probably from chasing after her son, who was pulling her arm again, tugging her in the direction he’d been fighting against not two seconds before.

  Wait. Was that Italian? “Are you speaking Italian?”

  “Si. Sicuramente. Che vuoi?” she said, but my brain heard, “Yes. Of course. What do you want?”

  Cool.

  “Sto cercando di andare a Capri ed ai giardini di Augusto,” I said. But what I’d thought in my head was, “I’m trying to get to Capri and Augusto’s gardens.”

  The woman huffed, her gaze darting to the shops and signs around us. Her dark brows rose, and she pointed across the wide street to a tourist office.

  “Li, domanda a loro,” she said and my brain translated to, “There, ask them.”

  “Grazie.” I hardly got the thank you out before she turned on her heel and marched away, her son dragging his feet behind her once again. Ahh, kids.

  The traffic between me and the other side of the street was like floodwater, swift and unending—too easy to get swept away. Or run over. Eli was waiting in the gardens, wherever they were, and despite my being able to move faster than light, time was ticking away.

  The desire to be across the street swelled an instant before my will moved me. The next moment, I landed directly in front of the office. The picture window was filled with advertisements for touring destinations all over Italy. I spotted a poster-size ad up in the left-hand corner with the word “Capri” three inches tall across it.

  Capri’s an island. Who knew?

  Centering my attention on the poster, I scanned the smaller, inlaid pictures, the marina, the cable car, the piazza, and there in the lower corner was a shot of the Gardens of Augustus. “Perfect.”

  With my next heartbeat I stood at the edge of the same wide terrace I’d seen in the picture. The ground was paved in terracotta tiles and I leaned against the railing like so many tourists around me, gazing down hundreds of feet to the ocean below. The water was so blue, so clear, that I could see the rocks beneath the surface.

  “Well done, Emma Jane.”

  I spun around. “Eli.”

  His smile plumped his cheeks and creased the corners of his eyes. He held his hands clasped in front of him, just as he had less than five minutes ago, standing on the head of the Great Sphinx in Egypt.

  A warm Mediterranean breeze swirled up the side of the cliff, fluttering the edges of his jacket, shifting through the luminous black strands of his hair. He looked so damned pleased with himself.

  “Y’think? You know, I’ve never been here before. I didn’t even know Capri was an island. I almost didn’t make it.”

  He dipped his chin. “That was the point. To force you to think on your feet, to use your instincts, your innate abilities to track and hunt.”

  “Yeah? Well, here’s some news. Apparently I speak Italian now,” I said.

  “You are able to understand all languages,” he said. “Some are more difficult to speak. It’s a simple matter of training the tongue.”

  “Nifty,” I said. “So, where to next?”

  He held out his hand, and this time I didn’t hesitate. The moment my palm settled into the soft heat of his, the scene around us changed. My feet wobbled on the new surface, the lava stone path not as even and smooth as the terracotta terrace had been.

  There was a small fountain in front of us now, and the path we stood on traced in a circle around it. We’d moved deeper into the garden. Trees and flowerbeds filled the rolling landscape, the grass meticulously cut and lusciously green, the air fragrant and sweet on my tongue.

  Without warning, the skin on my wrist flared hot. I flinched, jerking my hand from Eli’s. My wrist was on fire. Or at least it felt like it.

  I turned my hand, staring down at the mark Tommy’s sword had tattooed onto my inner wrist. It looked the same. The skin wasn’t even red. I rubbed at it, but the mark still flamed, sending jolts of heat up my arm.

  Concern darkened Eli’s face. He turned, scanning the gardens and the winding paths. “Stay here.” He took a step, and before the next one, he was gone.

  I scanned the garden pathways, focusing on a line of people ten feet away just as Eli reappeared at the end.

  The group leisurely walked the flower-lined path toward a small curve where the gardens edged the cliffside. At the front of the crowd the female tour guide led the way, holding a canvas sign at the end of a tall pole that read, “Bedford Corp.”

  The moment Eli materialized next to the group, a tall man in the center stopped and turned. He looked to be in his early- to mid-thirties, athletic, with corn-silk blond hair, cut short and feathered to the side. A professional, responsible-looking man, he wore a short-sleeved blue shirt untucked from his beige cargo shorts.

  The handsome man’s bright blue eyes turned cold, narrowing on Eli. The tourists parted around him, continuing on their way with only one or two looking back at Eli. After a flick of the other man’s hand, they kept moving.

  I was close enough, but I couldn’t hear a word they were saying. Eli crossed his arms across his chest; the other man folded his hands behind his back. The conversation was boring for its lack of gestures or outward enthusiasm. They could be discussing tax laws for all the energy they were putting into it.

  Then suddenly, the other man’s eyes shifted. He looked past Eli’s shoulder, directly at me. Despite the warm Mediterranean weather, a shiver trembled over my skin, turning to solid ice in my gut.

  Eli vanished, then reappeared next to me a moment later. “We have to go,” he said.

  “Why? Who is that?” My gaze flicked back to the handsome businessman on vacation just as he vanished.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Exactly,” Eli said. He took my hand.

  “No. Wait. That was a Fallen,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know him,” I said, sure of it. “Who is he?”

  “The Duke of Bedford.”

  “The Fallen who killed Jeannette?”

  “Yes.”

  My eyes went to the Bedford Corp. group. The happy, leisurely tourists were suddenly headed my way. All of them—except the lady with the sign—and they didn’t look happy or leisurely anymore.

  “You must let me take you from this place.”

  “Those are demons, aren’t they?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re interfering?”

  “No. I’m simply ending our training session and returning you to your home,” he said.

  The horde of people was twenty feet back, but picking up the pace. They came toward us, shoulder to shoulder, eight bodies wide, men and women, snarling, backs hunching. Their hands melted and reshaped as they moved, forming into long, sharp talons.

  A stink cloud of brimstone rolled like an invisible wave before them, washing over me so I couldn’t breathe without taking it into my lungs. Bile rocketed up my throat, and I swallowed on reflex.

  “You’re asking me to run from a fight?” I asked.

  Eli glanced behind him, then back to me. He sighed. “Yes.”

  “Well…just this once…I’m okay with that.”

  The next instant, the snarling, seething horde of demons vanished.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was noon when I opened my eyes and heard someone in my room…eating. Fear snaked through me. The last thing I remembered was being charged by a bunch of stinky, drooling, pissed-off demons.

  The green digital display on my alarm clock flashed 12:01. Five and a half hours of sleep does not make for a happy Emma. From behind me, jaws snapped and crunched and mashed: crackle—snap—crunch—chomp-chomp-chomp. It sounded like the Rice Krispies guys with a case of ’roid rage.

  “Ahh, Mary Kate, Ashley, you were such cute kids. What happened?”

  Hey. I know that voice.

  “I think Michelle could really use a hug from her uncle Jesse.” Bob Saget?
I rolled over.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” I asked Tommy. He sat next to the bed at my vanity, which was really just a cheapo desk with a lighted, trifold mirror on top and all the makeup brushes, foundations, eye shadows, and blush I hardly ever used scattered around it.

  Tommy lounged with his dirty Converse sneakers propped on the edge of my bed. The jeans looked the same as the last time I’d seen him on Mount Washington: faded, raggedy, with a hole in one knee. His blue, snug-fitting I’m with Stupid T-shirt was speckled with red Doritos dust.

  “Hey. Are those my chips?”

  He twisted the bag, then glanced at me. “Yeah. They’re a little stale, though. You should get one of those bag clips.”

  Afternoon sun streamed through my bedroom window, adding a gleam to Tommy’s pale blue eyes, making the dark circle around the iris all the more intense. Soft, sandy-blond curls brushed over his forehead and neck, his cheeks flushed with health and youthful vitality. He winked at me.

  Crap. The man was too cute for his own good, and he knew it. That’s just irritating. I tugged the covers up to my neck. “I’ll try again. How. The hell. Did you get in here?”

  He laughed. “How do you think? We can go anywhere, Em.”

  I shoved my foot into his and knocked his grimy sneaker-feet off my bed. They hit the floor with a loud clomp and knocked him off balance on his chair. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself. This is my bed…and I’m in it.”

  His gaze moved to the comforter I clutched as though it were the key to my chastity. “What’s the big deal? You’ve got clothes on under there.” His brows bobbed and his smile turned lecherous. “I checked.”

  I peeked under the covers. Pink tank top over white, and tan shorts—I was still wearing the clothes from my trip around the world with Eli. I didn’t even remember getting home this morning, let alone crawling fully dressed into bed.

  “By the way, you’ve got some”—Tommy motioned to the corner of his mouth with his pinky—“I think it’s dried spit.”

  I scrubbed the back of my hand across my mouth. Crap. “Get out, Tommy.”

  “Nope. Can’t.” Tommy straightened, crumpling the empty chips bag, then reached to trade it for the remote sitting on my vanity and turned off the TV. “We need to talk.”

  He brushed the chip dust from his hands and shirt, then swiveled in the chair toward my bed. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What happened with you and Eli before he brought you home this morning?”

  “I don’t know.” I was still battling a serious case of sleep-fog. “Last thing I remember, we were standing in the gardens on Capri. Eli says, the lesson endeth here, and we split. Next thing I know, I’m waking up to the sound of you munchin’ down on my food while you’re reliving your childhood with the poster twins for eating disorders. I have no idea how I got here or when.”

  I left out the part about Eli’s chat with the Fallen angel and the fact he’d just let him go. Tattletale isn’t my color. Besides, I owed Eli for snatching me out of the path of an oncoming horde of snarling demons in tacky leisure shirts.

  Tommy shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “Eli probably pushed you to sleep. He’s done that for me sometimes when I’ve had a particularly scary-ass day and I can’t put it out of my head long enough to fall asleep.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s disturbing.” I didn’t like having blank spots in my memory. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t binge drink. That and the wicked hangovers…and the whole killing brain cells thing. That’s bad, too.

  “Forget it,” he said. “You’ll be grateful for it the first time he doesn’t do it and you wake up in a cold sweat from a dream of some red-face bastard about to slice off your head.”

  “I bet. Yet another perk of being the consequence of my mother’s one-night stand with a fallen angel.”

  “That’s not what I meant, but…never mind,” he said. “What did you do to Eli after I left?”

  “What do you mean, to him?” I shoved the covers back and swung my feet to the floor. “I didn’t do anything to him except chase him around the world. Why?”

  I went to my chest of drawers and rummaged for clean underwear.

  “So you didn’t…” Tommy hedged. “I mean, you guys didn’t…?”

  Hand to my hip, I turned to glower at him. “Finish the sentence. We didn’t what?”

  Tommy rubbed his palms against his thighs, pressing back in the chair. He sighed. “C’mon, Emma. You’re not a virgin. You know what I mean. Did you two…do it?”

  “Do it? What are you, thirteen?” Honestly, did he think I was stupid or just a slut…or both? Never mind that jumping Eli’s sexy angel bod was the first thing I thought of every time he popped in beside me.

  “Just answer the question,” Tommy said.

  I turned back to my open panty drawer. “None of your business,” I said, just as I found my midnight blue, boy-cut undies and the soft-wire blue bra to match.

  “It’s totally my business,” Tommy said as I crossed the room to my closet. “If you seduce him and he falls, it’ll be up to me to kill him. I don’t want to have to kill my magister, Emma.”

  I snagged my striped Dodger-blue buttoned blouse with the half sleeves and French cuffs. I liked the style, with the darts and running seams down the front from under the breasts. It made me look hour-glassy. A few hangers down, I grabbed my dark chocolate, wide-leg crop pants. They hit me a half inch below my knee, and the wide leg gave the illusion of being a skirt without the inconvenience of forced, ladylike modesty.

  I turned to catch Tommy eyeing the panties in my hand. Guys. Sheesh. “Eli and I are just getting to know each other. He’s teaching me how to use our advantages just like he did for you. We’re no different than the two of you.”

  “Like hell.” He snorted. “I’m not the cause of an angelic war.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Your gender is.” He knotted his arms across his chest and slouched in the chair. “Women are like angel crack, and all angels are addicts. You keep waving yourself under his nose, he’s bound to take a snort.”

  I made a disgusted tsk. “Graphic much? I’m not waving myself under his nose. If you remember correctly, none of this was my idea. Anyway, Eli said you’re just as much of a temptation as I am. Not everything has to do with sex, Thomas. Sheesh.”

  He stiffened. “Don’t call me Thomas.”

  “Get over yourself.” I shook my head. “I have a client in less than an hour. I need a shower, coffee, and food. You don’t qualify as any of those things so…shoo.”

  I started for the door, deciding not to wait for him to leave. He’d found his way in, he could find his way back out.

  “Do you seriously believe that garbage?”

  I shuffled to a stop. “What garbage?”

  “That men affect them the same as women,” he said. “I mean, are you seriously that naive?”

  “You’re saying he lied?” I almost laughed. “Angels lie?”

  Tommy didn’t even crack a smile. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. They’re angels, Emma, not God. He didn’t make them perfect. They just look that way.”

  “Angels lie,” I said, still trying to wrap my brain around it.

  “Listen, I’m sure Eli wants to believe what he told you is true,” Tommy said. “Hell, maybe he does believe it. But that doesn’t change the facts. It doesn’t change history.”

  Two more steps, and I was able to lean a shoulder against the doorframe. Tommy had swiveled all the way around in the chair to face me, his back to my bed.

  “Eli told me that my being an illorum is just as seductive to him as being female,” I said. “And that he’s learned to control his passions.”

  Tommy shrugged. “Let’s hope so. Maybe it’s true in a way. Heck, I’ll admit to a little man-crush on Joe Doerksen—”

  I shook my head. “Who?”

  “El Dirte,” he said, with a big smile and heavy Spanish accent. It didn’t help.
>
  I shrugged, and Tommy waved my confusion away. “He’s a fighter. Anyway, as much as I admire the guy, I don’t want him to have my babies, you know? No matter how much Eli admires us, me, for what we are and what we have to do, when he looks at you he sees something different, something…more.”

  Just thinking about the handsome angel sent a warm rush through my body, but I shut it down, guilty, hoping Tommy wouldn’t read my thoughts at that moment.

  “Eli’s been at this a long time,” Tommy said. “There’s only so much a guy can take. You think it’s a coincidence you’re the first female illorum he’s had to train in five hundred years?”

  “What, you think he planned it?”

  Tommy shrugged. “Maybe. He’s an angel, Emma. Nothing’s impossible.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re the one who stumbled his way onto my doorstep with a demon hot on his heels. Not Eli. It was your neck I saved when I picked up your stupid sword and got this friggin’ scar on my wrist. Thanks for that, by the way. The way I see it, this is all your doing. Not Eli’s.”

  “You’ve been around Eli enough now,” he said. “You really think I was alone when I ran down your street that day?”

  I blinked at that. Had Eli told him to come to my house because he wanted me to be marked? I couldn’t believe that. I didn’t want to think about it. “Why didn’t you just teleport away from the demon? Why lead him anywhere?”

  “I’d already been hit,” Tommy said. “The brimstone was in my bloodstream. That stuff screws with our abilities. It’s kind of what holds angels in the abyss. When the Fallen call the captured angels out as demons, their systems are saturated with it. I think that’s part of what makes them nuts. I know it’s what makes them slower than us.”

  “But if Eli was with you, why didn’t he get you out of there? Why didn’t he help you with your wound?” The image of Tommy bleeding on my foyer floor flashed through my brain and made my stomach pitch. “You could’ve died.”

  “He couldn’t take me out of a fight. He’s not allowed,” Tommy said. “Besides, I always got the feeling seeing us sliced up by demons is kind of a turn-on for angels. And after what he told you, I bet I’m right.”