Demons of Divinity

by Luke R. Mitchell

  The vid ended with the appearance of Frosty and her blazing red eyes.

  “Not happy at all,” Johnny was murmuring on the wall display, still shaking his head. “And they missed the best part.” He slid a hand through the air as if revealing a dazzling headline. “Ruggedly daring legionnaire saves High General from raknoth-propelled dagger.” He craned his neck to shoot a mournful look at the opening said dagger had rent in the armor on the back of his shoulder. “Sacrifices were made.”

  I might have smiled if I wasn’t busy drowning under the sea of how gropped I felt. Glenbark was going to be furious. And probably for good reason. Everything we’d just gone through to placate the High Cleric about my position at Haven, and now this happened.

  I almost could have laughed. Almost.

  I swear, I could practically see whatever edgy coordinator had chosen that headline leaning back in their chair with a proud smile, telling themselves that they’d done a brave thing, taken a stand, made a difference.

  I wasn’t sure if it would even occur to them that they may well have just signed my execution orders.

  Because, as furious as Glenbark would be at whoever had salvaged that footage and put it out there, I couldn’t imagine the High Cleric wasn’t going just as red at that pristine cream collar of his right then. The vid alone was bad enough. The headline, though, couldn’t have been more inflammatory if they’d come straight out and said High Cleric of the Sanctum, big stupid villain who condemns Enochian hero moments before he saves the day?

  I could only imagine His Holiness was currently bumping my status back onto his To be killed, IMMEDIATELY list, regardless of whatever deal he’d struck with Glenbark. And with three Seekers on base, potentially looking to renew favor with their holy master…

  “I’m coming back,” Elise said, as if reading my mind. “Right now.”

  “Lise, it’s—”

  “We need to tell Glenbark to send more guards to the apartment,” she said to Johnny, ignoring me.

  “I’m fine, Lise,” I said, more insistently this time. “I’ve already got an entire squad posted around this place. Any more men and they’re just gonna be running into one another.”

  We all fell into a short staring contest.

  “Are you having any luck with the drives?” I asked, desperate to get them to stop looking at me like I might spontaneously sprout a slug hole in my forehead.

  Elise frowned at the deflection but said nothing.

  “No significant breakthrough yet,” Franco said, “but we’re circling the fringes of a pattern,” Franco added. “It’s just a matter of time before we have our first location.” He cocked his head. “Assuming our criteria are actually any good.”

  “Right,” Johnny said, busy on his palmlight. “Well, thrilling as that sounds, I think that’s my cue.” He winced at something on his device. “Nope, that’s the one. Time to run damage control.” He glanced back my way. “And I’m requisitioning reinforcements for your apartment, per Glenbark’s approval. No buts.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Great. I feel safer already.”

  He thudded his chest in salute. “Just get back to work, flyboy.”

  Try as I might to do as Johnny said, getting back to work proved challenging even after I’d managed to say my goodbyes and talk Elise and the others into carrying on over at Therese’s lab. For a while, I sat on the couch, scrolling through the reels as the duplicates of my story began to proliferate, some focusing more on the High Cleric’s announcement, others on the canyon ambush.

  None of them were good news for me. But it certainly put things in perspective when I saw that there’d also been two more hybrid attacks earlier that day. Both against smaller settlements. Both ending with several hundred more civilian abductions.

  It was getting to be almost every day with the attacks now.

  If not for that thought, I might have gone on lamenting my cursed existence for the remainder of the afternoon. But cursed or not, there was still one thing I could do to actually help Enochia.

  I got back to it.

  Deep focus took a while to find, amped as I was by the slim-but-existent possibility that the High Cleric could’ve seen that vid, thrown demons to the wind, and told his three Seekers to screw the treaty and bring him my head, immediately. Eventually, though, I settled back into the task of trying to link one rune to another.

  It was actually going pretty well. I couldn’t say for certain how I knew, but I swore I could feel the breakthrough lingering there at the edge of my awareness, closer and closer with each try. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but I wasn’t going to complain. I kept my head buried in the work, where I couldn’t spare the attention to worry that each and every moment could be the one when someone would knock down my door and come get me, or the one when my palmlight would buzz with a message from Glenbark or the High Cleric himself, ushering in some fresh addition to my growing collection of shackles. Nothing would come of the worrying. So I did as I’d promised Glenbark, and I focused on what I could control.

  At least until I heard the sound from my bedroom.

  31

  Rough

  Someone was there.

  My hand flashed to my pendant and dialed the cloak in close before I even had time to register anything else. The guard detail, my adrenaline-buzzed brain insisted. It had to be one of the legionnaires.

  Inside the apartment?

  It made no sense—even before my racing brain honed in on the sound that’d startled me and realized that my mysterious someone was running the shower.

  I was already on my feet, frozen between storming the bedroom and running for the hallway door, crying for the guards and not stopping until I was comfortably surrounded by a dozen friendly gun hands. I teetered, mind screaming with a hundred questions of who and how, and raknoth and Seekers, and the fact that whatever was in my bathroom had already surpassed my guards, and that I had to stop it before it could finish whatever it was up to and slip back out.

  I found myself prowling forward almost before I knew it, dialing the cloak out a little as I went. Defenses raised. Boots silent on the carpet—more silent than my thundering heart, at least. I forced myself to breathe, trying to separate the useless jitters of fear from the healthy respect of the potential danger waiting ahead.

  I drew my sidearm. Respectfully. I was glad I’d been paranoid enough to climb back into my armor skin after my shower earlier.

  The trickling patter of the shower doubled in volume as I pushed the bedroom door open. Empty. To the left, one wide window stood clear open. I didn’t bother gesturing to close it, or looking around for any more evidence than the steam wafting gently from the privy entryway on the right.

  I didn’t tease out with my senses to feel for the enemy presence. I cast my mind out like a battering ram, fully expecting it to be there. And it was.

  It tensed at my sudden attack, recoiling in on itself. I was already charging around the corner into the privy before the intruder had time to recover, gun raised, telekinetic fury crackling at my fingertips.

  But there was nothing. Nothing but my own clouded reflection staring me back in the steam-fogged mirror.

  Then something moved in the thick steam ahead. An incorporeal spirit, ghosting for cover. I grabbed the wispy wraith with telekinesis, preparing to slam it into the poly-tiled wall, and—

  And at once nearly lost control of my telekinesis, my weapon, and my voice as Siren materialized out of the steamy air, wearing a blue shower robe. My shower robe. And nothing else.

  “Alpha be sweet, will you relax?” she snapped.

  The exasperation on her face only made me gape that much harder.

  “Siren? How… What…” On a sudden impulse, I swept the bedroom behind me. No knives plunging for my kidneys. Just Siren watching me flounder with a decidedly amused expression.

  “What the scud are you doing here?” I growled.

  “Using your shower,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing on the
planet. She looked down at her state of ruffled near-undress, rectified it only marginally, and met my eyes again. “I hope you don’t mind. Alpha, did you think assassins were waiting in your bathroom?”

  “I…” I fumbled for coherent words, half-raising and half-lowering my gun until I gave up and shoved it back in the holster with a mental curse. “The thought crossed my mind, yeah. Now what the scud are you doing here?”

  She adopted a confused expression, looking to the shower and back to me. “Did I not just…?” Delicately, she touched the back of her head, the movement causing her robe to shift dangerously. “Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.”

  “Yeah, hilarious. Now, if you’ll kindly get dressed…” I reached out and telekinetically turned the shower off.

  “Hey!” Siren looked from the shower to me with an indignant pout. “Some host you are.”

  “I didn’t invite you.”

  She arched an eyebrow, her robe—my robe—somehow shifting open to reveal more cleavage even though I could’ve sworn she hadn’t moved. “You can join, if you’d like.”

  I pointedly turned and walked out of the steamy room, keeping my extended senses alert just in case. “What I’d like is for you to tell me what you want and to get the scud out of here. And not necessarily in that order.”

  There was a loud, exasperated sigh, then she padded after me into the bedroom, still wearing my damned shower robe.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you, you big stubborn”—she shook her hands, searching for the right word—“demon… Alpha, what tingler crawled up your tunic?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the mountain of people trying to kill me on a daily basis. Maybe it’s that I’m not used to finding strange women hiding in my shower robe with a…”

  The words died in my throat as my thinking brain finally caught up and realized she wasn’t wearing an optical shroud at all. Which meant…

  She was watching me with a sultry smile, clearly enjoying watching me fumble through the logic. “Well, I’m not sure I can do much about the first bit, but…” She reached down and began undoing the robe’s cinch with slow, confident movements, her eyes locked on mine the entire time. “… if you want your robe back…”

  “Stop,” I said.

  Or meant to say, at least. But something was stirring in me—a slow, tingling wave, tickling my pounding heart with electric trills of excitement, pulsing down through my anatomy with a delicious warmth. It tied my tongue, telling me to let her keep going. Insisting that I help her. That I throw her down on the bed and have her. She would let me. She wanted it. Was silently begging for it.

  The cinch came undone.

  She took one sinuous step forward. Her hands tracing slowly up her navel, to her chest, teasing the robe apart to reveal another inch of soft, voluptuous cleavage. Another. Her eyes burning into mine.

  Forget about the Sanctum. Forget about…

  Elise.

  The thought was like a small prayer—an emergency signal to my aching fingers. They found my pendant before my curve-drunk brain could tell them.

  As soon as I was alone in my cloak, it was like a spell had been broken. My head took a sharp shake by its own accord, and the bedroom settled back around me, once again in control.

  Siren’s face was scant inches from me—when had she gotten so close?—her body pressed to mine, her eyes studying me now like she thought I might’ve just suffered some critical system failure. My hands were on her arms, I realized, having darted there to stop her from finishing her grand unveiling.

  “Did you…” I started before realizing there was no tactful way to end the question. “What did you just do to me?”

  The confusion on her face was genuine this time. She searched my eyes like she thought I was gropping with her, then dropped her gaze pointedly down at my groin. “I think the real question is what you’re planning on doing to me.”

  She shifted her hips then, and I became painfully aware of how extensively my anatomy had already responded, and just how close her body was pressed to mine. I stumbled back a step, but she moved with me, sliding a hand up my chest, around the back of my neck. Her lips nearly found mine before I jerked my head to the side. She didn’t miss a beat—just ran her fingers possessively through my hair, nuzzling her way to my ear instead.

  I tried to back up, but my body wouldn’t listen. The skin contact, some dim corner of my mind noted. Skin on skin. That was a problem, but I couldn’t seem to remember why past the maddening sensation of her hot mouth on my ear, and the thoughts and images pouring into my mind. The two of us wrapped together on the floor, right on the very spot where we stood. Every inch of her warm flesh pressed to me. Every inch of me inside of her. The sure, passionate rhythm of her body, her hips grinding against mine. Her back arching. Her head tilting back to cry my name.

  All I had to do was let it happen.

  My hands were on her hips, trembling, squeezing hungrily, refusing to let go. Her free hand was sliding down the front of my armor skin. Not stopping. She grabbed me like I belonged to her, her other hand pulling my lips toward hers, demanding I give in.

  I was falling. Falling straight toward her, watching everything else in my life fly past. And there was Elise, watching me fall by, the hurt and betrayal in her eyes like a churning sickness in my gut.

  I latched onto that sickness—used it like a weapon to pry myself from the electric tingles of anticipation rippling from her flesh to mine. Hurled it at the dull stupor clogging my brain. I pushed myself back with every tenuous fiber of willpower I had.

  Something rushed through my body. The air split with a low thunderclap, and next I knew, I was standing in the middle of a half-wrecked bedroom, trembling, and Siren was sprawled across the bed, disheveled and gaping at me like I’d gone insane. Her robe had fallen open in the blast. I started to look away—suddenly feeling no desire to see the flesh my blood itself had been screaming for not five seconds ago—but she tugged the robe closed before I had to. She looked almost embarrassed by the concession, like somehow she felt more vulnerable with her clothes fully on. And for a second, that’s exactly how she looked. Vulnerable. Hurt.

  I half-wanted to apologize. Half-wanted to yell at her to get the scud out. Couldn’t seem to say anything at all. Then the second passed, and the surprise died on her face, replaced with a startlingly sudden snarl.

  “So you like it rough?”

  She spun to her knees in a fluid movement, putting her back to me, shot me a feral grin over her shoulder, and dropped the robe to her waist. My breath caught.

  Scars.

  Dozens of them. Hundreds. Her entire back a dense web of pale lines.

  “Do you like what you see, Demon?” She dropped the robe the rest of the way and bent over on the bed, turning back to me with a wicked grin, hatred burning in her eyes. “Is this how you want me? You wanna add your own mark?”

  I averted my eyes, choking on a dry swallow. “Who did that to you?”

  There was an irritated sigh and the sound of shifting on the bed. “Like you give a scud,” she muttered. Then there was a flicker of motion, and something soft struck my chest. I jerked back, but it was only my robe.

  When I looked back up, Siren was gone.

  No, not gone. Just not visible. I saw the telltale shimmer in the air as she slid off the bed and padded back into the bathroom. I said nothing. Didn’t know what to say. I dialed my cloak out a little, just enough to give me fair warning if she tried anything, then glanced around the corner in time to see clothes I hadn’t noticed on the drying rack earlier tugged off and disappear into thin air, consumed by her shroud effect.

  I stood there listening to her hop back into her clothes, her feet smacking lightly on the polymer floor tiles, three million questions rolling through my head and zero desire to break the silence with any one of them. I couldn’t even wrap my head around what I was feeling, aside from that it involved a vague sense of nausea.

  “What th
e scud just happened?” I finally managed to ask.

  A bitter laugh trickled out on the lingering tendrils of steam. “I’m just trying to decide in here if Ponytail is the luckiest girl on Enochia, or just the most sexually frustrated.”

  I wasn’t really sure what to make of that, so I stuck to the basics.

  “Were you ordered to kill me?”

  Silence.

  It stretched long enough that I was pretty sure she didn’t plan on answering. When I felt her start to leave the privy, I moved to block the way.

  To my surprise, she didn’t look angry when she materialized in front of me, fully dressed. Just uncharacteristically somber.

  “You know I was.”

  “I meant again. A second time. Today.”

  She studied me with those alluring brown eyes. “Alpha, what is it with you? You’re just…” She waved a helpless hand, shaking her head. “I don’t know what you are.”

  She glanced at the open window behind me.

  “Does the High Cleric want me dead right now or not?”

  The first touch of her humor returned. “Oh, I’m sure he does.” I opened my mouth, but she rolled her eyes and pushed on before I could speak. “But he didn’t order any of us to do it, as far as I know. Not yet, at least.” Her lips quirked. “He’s probably a bit busy wondering where Four and Eight wondered off to right just now.”

  “Right…” I frowned. “So why did you… What were you actually looking for here?”

  It was brief, but I swore I saw her gaze flick toward my pendant before she smirked and dropped her stare pointedly to my groin, arching her brow in a most suggestive way.

  “You wanted to steal a cloak,” I said, thankful my voice came out steady.

  “I wanted to know your secrets,” she said, frowning and eyeing the window impatiently now.

  “So you tried to… to…” Alpha be damned, I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the words, seduce me, any more than I could keep the heat from spreading through my cheeks.