by Amy Sumida
“There are noble people,” he agreed. “But few who are pure, like you. You were just brought to Hell and healed with a power you can't comprehend, but you stopped yourself from yelling at me because you knew you owed me your gratitude for saving your life.” He chuckled. “You aren't just pure, you're unlike anyone I've ever met.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, still not understanding the pure/noble thing. But there were more important questions I needed answered. “Now, please, tell me what you did to me.”
When Astar met my stare, his expression was grim. But before he could say anything, a chiming came from the side pocket of my pants.
“Holy shit,” I whispered as I yanked my scry phone out of my pants' pocket. “I can get a scry in Hell.”
Astar laid a hand over mine before I answered. “Tell them that I will return you to Drostan's home shortly. They are not to worry; you are safe with me.”
“Okay.” I was relieved he wasn't trying to stop me from answering.
I opened the leather case, swiped the crystal, and waited as it filled with mist and then the face of an anxious Dragon-Djinn.
“Sweet Danu!” Raza exclaimed. “Seren, where the hell are you?”
I couldn't stop a bubble of hysterical laughter from making it past my lips. Astar only winced as if hearing the name of his homeworld used as a curse annoyed him.
“What the fuck?!” Raza roared.
“Sorry, babe, but you got in one.”
“What?” Raza scowled.
“Listen to me,” I said gently. “Astar just saved my life. I'm okay and I'm safe. He's going to bring me back to Drostan's house soon. I just need to have a talk with him first.”
Raza processed this, his expression going through several emotions before settling on relief. “Okay. Hurry, mo shíorghrá. We will meet you there.”
“I will. I love you, Dragon.”
“We love you too, babe,” Killian called over Raza's shoulder. “Are you on a spaceship?”
I giggled at how similar our thinking was. “No, even better. I'll tell you when I see you.”
“And we'll see you soon,” Raza said, his fingers trailing over the crystal. “Tell Astar that I'd like to thank him in person.”
“Okay. Bye, baby.” I closed the case before Raza could draw out the conversation, then slipped it back in my pocket. Then I looked up at Astar, who had a strange expression on his face. “You were saying?”
“I was about to tell you what I did.” Astar waved a hand toward my chest. “The dagger Varcan used on you holds a deadly curse that kills all but the strongest Demons—the Lords of Hell. I was able to draw the curse out, but I wasn't fast enough to stop it from damaging you. So, I had to give you some of myself so you could heal. I had to, in essence, trick your body into believing it was a Demon Lord.”
“You gave me some of yourself?” I asked. “Some of your what exactly?”
“Some of my power, Seren.” His jaw hardened and lifted. “It's why Antaura tried to stop me. I've weakened myself by saving you. I've given you a piece of me—a piece you could use against me. But I'm confident you won't. You are the Twilight Star after all. A pure soul.”
“I won't, of course not. But it's not because I'm pure,” I grumbled. “It would simply be bad form to hurt someone after they saved my life. Rude. And I try not to be rude.”
Astar chuckled again; it sounded almost villainous and raised the hair on my arms. Fucking-A. Demons.
“This is going to sound insulting, and I don't mean it to be,” I said hesitantly.
“You want to know if I'm evil,” he said simply.
I blinked at him.
“While giving you a piece of my power, we were intimately connected,” Astar explained. “We had a brief but intense glimpse of each other's true selves. Now, we are feeling the echoes of that connection. I can read the curiosity on your face as if you had spoken your question aloud. And no, I'm not evil. You should be able to feel that for yourself.” He cocked his head pensively to add, “Although, I will say that there are those of us who are evil, just as there are good and bad fairies or humans. Demons are a tricky race. Complicated. We were made to tempt humans, as a way to keep the balance. We can inspire evil, and most of us enjoy doing it, but that enjoyment is natural—wired into us so that we do it. Similar to how sex is enjoyable to ensure the continuation of a species.”
“So tempting humans to be evil is like sex for you?” I teased.
“Not for me, no,” he said seriously, despite my teasing tone. “I am a Lord of Hell. My purpose is to keep my people in line. I don't feel the urge to inspire evil.”
“Inspire evil,” I murmured pensively. “Is that what Varcan did to the Gancanagh men? They said they heard whispers in their minds urging them to do bad things.”
“Yes, that sounds like a Demon temptation.” He sighed. “I've gotten ahead of myself. Let me back up. We are children of Anu, just like you.”
“What?” I gaped at him.
“Did you think Danu was the only god who made magical beings?” Astar's lips twisted wryly.
“Uh, yes, I did, actually,” I huffed. “So, you're telling me that Anu made humans and Demons, but no one knows about you guys?”
“Everyone knows about us.” He spread his hands out as if it were a fact. “Say the word 'demon' and it instantly brings images to mind.”
“Yeah, and none of those images look like you.”
“This is the form I was born with.” Star waved a hand down his body. “But Demons can take any shape we wish. Humans have come to expect a certain body type of us, and my people use it because it's instantly recognizable and instills fear. It's not a glamour, though, it's shapeshifting. We transform, similar to how your Dragon-Djinn husband changes his shape.”
“What about that golden breath that put me to sleep? I have something called dream-dusting, but I have to blow the magic off my palm.”
“You mean brimstone breath,” he said. “It's a way for us to protect ourselves without hurting humans.”
“Brimstone?” I harrumphed. “That's what Varcan meant when he told his men to stone me.”
“Yes, that's a common slang for it.”
“Hold on. Isn't brimstone just another name for sulfur?”
Star's lips twitched. “Yes.”
“And sulfur smells like rotten eggs.”
“It can, yes.” His eyes started to gleam with amusement.
“So, this brimstone breath is basically a case of really bad halitosis,” I concluded.
Star chuckled. “So bad it can knock you right out.”
I grinned, but I couldn't spare more than a moment for humor; I was too full of questions. “What about when you travel? We call it twilighting, but we can only do it at dusk and dawn.”
“We call it lalek—the walk. We are not limited by time of day, only power. That is the way it is with Demons. Magic is power, and power is everything.”
“Sounds bleak,” I murmured.
“It is. It can be a very bleak existence. Which is why Demons try to escape it. Demons like Varcan.”
“He escaped Hell?”
“He escaped his duties,” Astar clarified. “There is no escaping Hell. If you're strong enough, you can lalek and leave the planet anytime you wish. But Hell goes with you. All Demons are bound by our laws—laws created by Anu himself.”
“Laws?”
“We are made to tempt, as I said earlier. But we are meant to gently influence humans, not force them. What Varcan has been doing is a crime. He has exposed us to your kind, something most of us are against, and he's manipulated humans and fairies. We are not to manipulate humans, but that goes double for the Fey. Fairies are the Children of Danu and therefore, off-limits. We were made to only interact with humans.”
“So, Varcan broke your laws, and you had to go after him? A Lord of Hell chasing a criminal?”
“You are the Queen of Seelie and Unseelie, yet you chase criminals,” he shot back.
“T
ouché,” I conceded, but I saw a twitch around his eyes. “There's more.” I leaned forward to watch him closer. “What aren't you telling me?”
Astar's expression shut down.
“Demon poker face, eh?” I chuckled. “Too late, buddy; I know you're holding back. Just tell me.”
Astar let out an annoyed huff. “I suppose if I can trust you with a piece of my power, I can trust you with this. But you must promise me that you will tell no one else, not even your husbands.”
I went still. I didn't like the idea of keeping something from my husbands, but I liked being kept in the dark even less. “All right. I promise not to tell anyone.”
“Normally, I send my sayadi out to hunt lawbreakers from my territory, but Varcan is a special case. He stole the Sakeen—the very dagger he hurt you with. I must recover that dagger and keep the news of its theft from spreading.”
“Why is it so important?” I cocked my head at him. “I mean, beyond having the capability to kill everyone but Lords of Hell.”
“The Sakeen has another name,” Astar said grimly. “It is the Devil's Dagger. Varcan was a favorite of our King once. He stole the dagger from Lucifer himself.”
“Lucifer,” I whispered. “The Devil is real?”
Astar gave me the look that my statement deserved.
“Sorry. Yes, right. Demons. Hell. Of course, the Devil is real.” I rolled my eyes. “So, you can't let it get out that someone stole from Satan?”
“Precisely. It would undermine his power. My King has commanded me to bring Varcan and the Sakeen home to Hell.”
“I kind of had my heart set on killing him.” I smirked. “Varcan, not the Devil.”
Astar lifted his chin as his gaze roamed my face; it should have looked imperious, but that twitch around his lips and the one near his left eye softened his expression into something more affectionate. Still, his voice was crisp when he said, “I'm inclined to grant your request.”
I took a deep breath and sat back. This was getting weird. Oh, who am I kidding? I was in Hell—excuse me, on Hell—it had started weird.
“It was more of a head's up than a request,” I said.
“Ah, I see.” Astar looked me over again.
Star had this way of flicking his eyes that looked more like an inspection than appreciation. If I hadn't been able to catch those little movements—the press of his lips or flare of his nostrils—or simply sense that he was as nervous as I was and trying to hide it, he would have rubbed me the wrong way. I would have seen him as arrogant, standoffish, and perhaps even elitist. Instead, I saw a man who had just given up a piece of his power to save someone simply because he thought she was noble. And I saw nobility in him as well.
“It makes sense—Anu creating Demons,” I finally broke the tense silence. “Anu likes to be more subtle than Danu. I could see him wanting to maintain a balance without actually interfering. But if you're tempting humans to do evil . . .” I trailed off as he grimaced. “Hold on, are there Angels too?”
Astar sighed and leaned forward onto his knees. “In the beginning, there was only darkness. Then the Divine Twins were born in an explosion of light.”
I sat back and listened like a child at bedtime, watching the firelight play across Astar's elegant features. This man was a Demon? I would have believed Angel sooner. Then again, there was a wicked glint in his eyes, a hardness in the angle of his jaw, and an air of something sinister around him. But he made it all look beautiful.
“Anu left his sister on the planet of Fairy and traveled to Earth,” Astar went on. “There, he made humans and set them loose to live their brief but glorious lives upon his world. And he was content, but the humans were not.”
“The humans weren't happy?”
“Life requires balance, and magic requires the elements. Anu had created life on a world that held all the elements but no magic, and life but no balance. The humans could not value what they had when it came so easily to them.”
“So he made the bad to help them value the good?”
“It was more complicated than that.” He stood up and went to a bookshelf built into the wall.
Astar's elegant fingers plucked a thick tome free from the others and brought it back to me. He flipped through the pages until he came to the one he wanted, then set the book on my lap. I couldn't read the words, but the drawing—one that looked ancient—depicted the Earth and two other worlds in a vertical line, Earth in the center. The planet above Earth had stylized wind drawn around it while the one below was wreathed in flames.
“Danu set magic into the land and sea on Earth, giving the elements of Earth and Water dominance.” Astar tapped the picture of the Earth. “The magic was set deep, and many centuries passed before it seeped into humans. Into your ancestors, Seren.”
“That's why psychic abilities are different from fairy magic,” I murmured.
“Yes. Different but similar.” He tapped the top world. “Once Earth was finished, Anu made a world ruled by the element of Air and filled it with magical beings whose purpose was to guide and guard humans—to lead them toward goodness and greatness. If humans heed the call of the Angels, their souls go to the Angels' realm upon death.”
“Heaven.” I shivered, my body sensing the truth of his words. “Heaven is a planet.”
Astar nodded. “To balance the good, Anu made Hell, a planet ruled by the element of Fire, and peopled it with us, his Demons. Anu charged us with the mission of leading humans into temptation. To show them wickedness and wanting. To give them excitement and passion. To encourage them in other ways than those that are strictly good. But we were also charged with inciting them to evil—inspiring pain, war, and hatred. As I said, it's complicated. Far more complex than what the Angels deal with. If humans succumb to the worst we inspire, they come to us upon death.”
“To be tortured?”
“To pay for their crimes,” he amended. “To receive the justice that will put their souls back in balance. Souls find rewards in Heaven and punishment in Hell. Once they are balanced, they are released.”
“To go where?”
“Back to Earth to be reborn.” Astar shrugged. “Every soul is immortal, it is only our bodies that differ from the humans. Even if you kill Varcan, Lucifer will have him. His soul will go to Hell for punishment.”
“Varcan is a Demon,” I whispered. “A Demon criminal.”
“Yes.”
“Then you are like me; you hunt criminals.”
“Yes.” Astar grinned. “Two stars in the night, shining for justice.”
I leaned forward to ask, “Then what do you say we team up, my fellow Star?”
“I say, what took you so long to ask?”
Chapter Forty-One
Astaroth offered to bring his team of Demon-hunters, called the Sayadi, back with us to meet my people. But first, I had a few more questions.
“You said that Varcan's soul would return to you for punishment. Do all Demon souls go to Hell and Angels to Heaven?” I asked.
Astar grinned mischievously. “No. It is the same for our souls as it is for humans, with the exception that we are not held accountable for doing what we were born to do. If we hold to the laws, we go to Heaven. Conversely, if Angels break their laws, they will come to Hell. That is, if they are unfortunate enough to die.”
“To be rewarded or punished and then set free?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be reborn as a Demon?”
“That, I do not know.” He shifted his exotic stare to the fire. “Though, I have wondered.”
“Have Demons ever taken their own lives to find out?”
“Ah, but there's the rub,” Astar whispered, keeping his gaze on the flames. “To commit suicide would break Anu's law, and we would be sent here. Demons know Hell better than anyone, and none of us wish to experience it from a soul's perspective.” He turned to look at me, his expression a step away from hopeless. “We cannot escape who we are born to be, can we, Twilight Star?”
Honestly, I'd never liked that title, but when Astar said it, it felt different. Almost reverent.
“Where will I go?” I whispered.
“If you die?” Astar lifted a brow. When I nodded, he mused, “Perhaps to your Goddess, perhaps to Heaven and our God. I don't know. Maybe it depends on where you die. I do know that they would fight over you. A pure soul like yours is a treasure to the Gods.”
I shook my head. “I still don't understand this pure soul thing.”
