by Kailin Gow
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Lux said.
The guys looked at her, and Lucas smiled as she essentially yanked the reins from his hands.
“We’ll move forward, hurry in for a quick sweep, call out clear, head out for a few seconds then rush back in to catch the entities as they come out of hiding.”
“What about the rooms we already did?”
“When we’ve finished the rooms, we’ll come back and do them again. The demons won’t be expecting us to come back.”
“Let’s do it.”
Then entered the next room, a large room with a side alcove and what was once a lavish bathroom. Sully swept the closet, Lucas the alcove, Asher the main room and Lux the busted-up bathroom.
“Clear!” she called out.
They headed out, waited three seconds and rushed unexpectedly back into the room, surprising a handful of demons. Within seconds they were all slayed.
“Really clear,” Lux said.
They moved on to do another half dozen rooms before returning to the rooms they’d first done. They sprang inside, surprising dozens of demons in every room.
“We’ll never get them all if they keep coming out of the portal,” Lux said. “We’ll be here all night and still not see the end of it.”
“This is what it was like last night,” Lucas said.
“There has to be a portal in here somewhere. There’s too many demons within these walls.”
“Is there a basement to this house?”
“I don’t know.” Lucas said. “If there is, we didn’t find the way down.”
Lux led the way to the kitchen and opened a door to find a huge pantry, then opened another door. “Bingo!”
“You found it?” Sully said.
“There are steps heading down. This must be it.”
“Damn,” Lucas said looking down the stairs, it’s darker than dark down there.”
Lux scanned the steps with her small flashlight, but it barely lit them up enough to see. “It’s as if the darkness is swallowing up the light. Even with these things, we’ll barely see where we’re going. Stay close, guys.”
“Do you smell that?” Asher said.
“Dark and damp,” Lux said. “Just the way I like my basements. Come on. Let’s find this damn portal and seal it.”
She carefully went down the shaky old steps. “It doesn’t only smell damp down here,” she whispered. “It reeks of a strong presence.”
Lucas, right behind her, sniffed the air. “You’re right. It’s extremely faint, but it’s there. I can’t believe you picked up on it.”
Lux set her foot down on the crumbling concrete floor and the dankness enveloped her. “Oh, my God,” she muttered as a pungent odor assailed her nostrils. “This is more than just a presence.”
“We’ll need back up,” Sully said.
“In the meantime,” Lux interjected, “we just might have to abort.”
As she turned to head back up the stairs, a shrill and hysterical scream filled the dark basement.
Chapter 13
“What the hell was that?” Asher called out.
“It sounded like Professor Angelo,” Lux said as she tried to peer into the darkness.
“It came from way back deep in there,” Sully said.
“We have to help her,” Lux said, turning to head into the depths of the darkness.
“Hang on, Lux,” Lucas said, taking a firm hold of her arm and holding her back.
“Lucas, what are you doing? Let me go,” Lux argued. She tried to pull her arm free. “It’s Professor Angelo. We can’t just leave her down here.”
“How can you be sure it’s really her?”
Lux hesitated. “It sounded like her. I’ve been listening to her talk every day in class and I know her voice.”
“Hang on a second.” Sully pulled his walkie talkie off his belt. “Anyone from your team just scream?”
“No.”
“Who’s this?”
“Ms. Angelo. What’s going on?”
“We’re in the basement and we just heard something that sounded like you scream.”
“I’m right above you, but I didn’t scream. Good catch.”
“Yeah. It’s Lucas who suspected it wasn’t really you.”
“Be careful down there.”
“Will do.” Sully put the walkie talkie back on his belt.
“So, they’ve taken to imitating us,” Lucas said. “Just another reason we need to stick close together.”
“If the portal really is down here,” Lux said, “they’ll have their strongest demons protecting it.”
The guys nodded.
“I feel it even stronger than before.” Lux sniffed the air as she took another step into the basement.
“I feel it too,” Sully said.
“Same here,” Lucas said.
“We’ve got to beat this,” Asher said.
They heard the bone chilling scream again.
“Come on,” Lux said. “Follow that scream.” She led them deeper into the basement. “Watch your heads,” she called back. “The ceiling drops here.” She ducked into a small door and pushed the old rotting wood back.
“This must have been their storage room,” Lucas said as he pointed his flashlight to the damp earth.
Lux walked off the concrete floor and onto the sand. “Great,” she said dryly. “We’re directly on the sand.”
“Nice spot for a portal,” Sully added.
“Exactly.”
Lux scanned the small sandy room with her flashlight and saw nothing but old shelving and a few rusted tin cans. But as she made her way around the far corner, and aimed her flashlight at the space, she gasped.
“What is it?” Lucas said as he came up beside her. “Holy shit.”
Sully and Asher joined them. “What the hell…?”
In the center of the small sandy space stood Romeo surrounded by Lux, Lucas, Asher and Sully.
Lux stared at Romeo, a chill running down her back. Her lookalike was making out with Romeo and clearly enjoying it. He, too, was enjoying the imposter’s kiss.
“Oh,” Romeo said, pulling away from the passionate kiss. “Look what you made me do, Lux. I missed you so much, I had to create my own Lux. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Lux simply groaned as she looked disbelievingly at herself. It was an eerie feeling to see herself holding onto Romeo, and a strange and inexplicable part of her resented the imposter. Oh, for crying out loud, she scolded herself. You can’t be jealous of a demon imposter.
“And this one does whatever I want her to do,” Romeo said. To prove his point, he shoved his hand into the collar of her shirt, pushed aside the fabric and cupped her breast.
Swallowing a ball of discomfort, Lux stared at them, shocked by Romeo’s crude actions. And yet, that little green monster boiled up inside her, despite all her efforts to quiet it.
“You would never let me do this,” Romeo said.
“You mean degrade myself for your enjoyment,” she spat back.
He grinned but seemed displeased by her comment.
“You’ll be bored of her soon enough,” Lux called out to him. “You don’t really want an empty doll who simply does everything you want. You want someone who challenges you. Someone who excites you.”
“Like you, Lux?”
She broke away from her team and went to him.
“Lux!” Asher called out as he reached out for her, but he was too late. “It’s a trap, Lux.”
Lux heard him and appreciated his concern, but as she reached Romeo, she looked at her demonic imposter, quickly pulled out her crucifix and pressed it to her forehead. With a gruesome growl, the creature crumbled to dust and Lux turned her attention to Asher’s imposter to quickly slay him. Before she could take care of the Sully and Lucas imposters, the real Good brothers took care of their dopelgangers.
In the silence that followed, all eyes turned to Romeo who had pulled Lux to his side. His firm grip held her close as his br
eath brushed her cheek.
“You can’t slay me, can you, Lux?”
She looked at him with doubt for the briefest moment, but then held her crucifix up to his face.
“Really, Lux?” he said. “Even after I slipped into your dreams to tell you how to find your lover boys? What were their names again? Max and Boore?”
“Brax and Moore,” she spat back at him. It couldn’t be, she thought as she looked into his eyes. How could he have come into her dream?
“I was there with you last night, Lux,” he went on. “Remember? I’m sure you do.”
“Where are they, then?” she said, holding her crucifix just inches from his face.
He glanced at the crucifix and back at her. “I can take you to them.” He looked at her team. “But not them. Only you.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Asher said. “You’ve tricked her before. Why should she believe you?”
“Don’t believe him, Lux,” Lucas added. “Nothing that comes out of his mouth is the truth.”
“I’ve met your Brax and Moore, Lux,” Romeo said. “They’ve been waiting for you to come save them.”
“One of us has to go with her,” Lucas insisted.
Romeo looked at Lux. “That’s the deal, Lux. Come alone and find your boys, or don’t come at all.”
“Don’t, Lux,” Asher said.
“Lux,” Sully said. “Wake up, damn it. It’s a trap.”
Once again, Lux looked into Romeo’s eyes. A part of her knew better than to believe him, yet, the fact that he’d appeared in her dream, and something in his eyes… something made her believe he was telling the truth.
She had to take the chance.
Chapter 14
Romeo made her mind up for her. Before she could accept his conditions, he took her by the hand, and they were suddenly floating through a dark tunnel with only the occasional dim red light to show the gloomy way.
After a long while, she fell onto the searing hot sands of an arid desert.
“Is this it?” Lux said, looking around at the endless mounds of red sand and rocks. “Is this where they are?”
“Patience, Lux,” Romeo said. “After all, they’ve been waiting for a long time. A few more minutes won’t change anything.”
“Do they know what happened to me when they fell into the portal?”
Romeo shrugged.
“Because, if they knew, they wouldn’t have been waiting for me this whole time.”
Holding her hand, Romeo looked at her. “Look, they didn’t explain to me what happened exactly. From what I could tell, they seemed to believe very strongly in you. They seemed to expect you to come for them, like you’d given your word to them or something.”
He looked lovingly at her, his eyes softening with emotion that Lux had never seen before.
“You gave them hope, Lux. I think that’s part of the reason why I wasn’t able to drain you when I should have. I had so many chances to completely drain you, Lux. So many chances. And yet, I didn’t.”
Biting her lip, Lux closed her eyes and remembered all the times she’d been so excited at the thought of being with him, all the times she’d anticipated seeing him again. Every single day, she had craved his touch, and had needed to see him. Thinking of the last time she kissed him, she licked her lips and longed to feel the warmth of his.
“We were good together, weren’t we, Lux? So damn good together,” Romeo said. “I knew it then… how good I had it with you, but I really know it now that I’ve lost you. I realize now how much I need you, how much I want you. But most of all, I’ve come to realize that I’ve fallen in love with you. Somewhere along the way, somehow, despite my not wanting to, I fell for you, and I fell hard.”
“A part of me would like to believe you, Romeo, but I can’t,” Lux said. “Maybe you think that what you feel for me is love, but I don’t think you really know what love is. Your idea of love kept me away from my purpose. You prevented me from learning what I needed in order to better protect myself and my loved ones. All that time with you, I learned virtually nothing.”
“That was not my intention,” he said. “I wanted to be with you. It’s as simple as that.” He gripped her by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “You love those guys… Brax and Moore, despite the fact that they’re succubus, right?”
Lux inhaled deeply and nodded. “Yes,” she said flatly. “I love them despite that.”
“Then why couldn’t you love me the way you love them? You know, I was human, too, once, just like them. If you can accept what happened to them and still love them, why not accept me? Why not love me?”
She didn’t know what to tell him and looked away.
“I didn’t choose to become a beautiful being, Lux. I didn’t choose any of this. And for the longest time, I didn’t think I could be saved. I thought I was doomed to live as a succubus for all eternity. But the thought that you could save them… Well, it made me think you could maybe save me, too. You gave me hope.”
“That’s impossible,” Lux said. “You’re hopeless.”
“That’s not true. Lux, you can save me. You can stop me from doing what I do. Stop me, Lux. Stop me by saving me, by turning me back. You have what I need. You have the Book of Angels and you have angel blood.”
“Let me make this clear, Romeo. If you don’t show me where Brax and Moore are, there’s no way I’ll ever believe you.” She looked defiantly at him. “And furthermore, if….”
He pulled her close and stifled her words with a kiss, instantly bringing her back to the hours spent in his arms, to the erotic pleasures of his touch. All the emotions, all the good times spent together came rushing back to her.
“You loved me, Lux,” he muttered between kisses. “I know you loved me. I felt it. You cared enough for me to forsake others. Tell me you felt it, Lux. Tell me you felt your heart swell with love every time we were together. Tell me that you ached for me every time we were apart.”
He pulled back to look into her eyes. “I didn’t put a spell on you, Lux. What we had was true love. What we could still have, if you’ll allow yourself to feel it, is true love. The reason you didn’t concentrate on your lessons… it’s not because I kept you from your classes. It’s because you felt it was more important to be with me than to be in your classes.”
She looked up at him, wanting to argue his point. Was he right? Had she made the decision to put him before her studies?
“You’ve grown up a lot lately, Lux. You’ve grown up since arriving at the academy. You need the love of a man, a real man. You need to put those little boys behind you. The days of puppy love are over, Lux.”
“Oh, really?” an angry voice called out from behind Lux.
A strong hand pulled her back and out of Romeo’s arms
“Lux!” the strong male voice called to her.
She turned to look into the beautiful eyes of Moore.
Chapter 15
Lux stared at Moore for the longest time. Was it really him? Had they finally found each other?
“Moore,” she whispered lovingly. She brought her hand to his cheek, feeling his warmth. “Is it really you? Oh, my God, is it really you?”
He put his hand over hers, affectionately pressing her hand to his skin. “And you. Is it really you? Lux. My beautiful, passionate Lux. Could it really be you?”
Taken aback, she cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “Why would you ask that? Can’t you tell?”
“Everything is so fucked up down here,” he said. “Since entering the portal, I’ve been haunted by images of you, ghosts of you. There are days when I don’t know what’s real anymore. I look at you now and want to believe it’s really you.” He cupped her cheeks with his hands. “I feel you, and you feel so damned real. But I saw you die, Lux. You took your last breath right there in front of me. After that, I must have died a thousand deaths. Images of you lifeless haunted me. There wasn’t a day or night that I didn’t see you. Forgive me for having a hard time believ
ing that I’ve finally found you. You’re not a dream. This isn’t a haunting. It’s really you. You’re living and breathing. But how can that be?”
Her heart pounded. His touch was real, his warmth, his loving eyes. “What if I told you that I did die, but I came back to life again? What if I told you that I was given a second chance at life, that an angel came to me and told me that it wasn’t my time? Would you believe me, Moore?”
He grinned. “With you, anything is possible. And I have no trouble believing that it wasn’t your time. You have so much to do on earth. You are far too valuable there. Was it your guardian who brought you back? What was his name again? Leo? Lothario?”
“Moore,” she whispered, leaning into him. “What if I told you that I came back here to save you? How does that make you feel? What do you have to say about that?”
“I’m thrilled to know that I mean that much to you. I love you and want to be with you so much.”
Lux looked into his eyes, reading his every facial feature.
“But it’s so dangerous down here and getting back out through the portal is virtually impossible,” Moore said. “While I’m so happy to see you, I’m also worried about you and wish you hadn’t come. Seeing you die once was bad enough. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“But I’m here now and I want to help you.”
“Yes, you are.” He took her hands, clasped them together and brought them over his heart. “Like I said, I’m happy to see you and I’m touched that you would want to come down here to save me. But it’s not going to be easy, and you have to promise me that if things get rough, if you have the chance to break out of here and you can’t save me, save yourself, Lux. Promise me that you’ll save yourself. Knowing that you’re alive and living up there, happy and healthy like any human being will be enough to make eternity down here tolerable.”
“But I want to get you out, Moore.”
“Promise me, Lux. Please, promise you’ll get out of here.”
Tears welled up in his eyes and she was stunned by how emotional he was.
“It really is you,” she whispered. “I feel you. I can smell your warm breath.” She ran her hand through his blond curls. “Your hair; so soft.”
