Back From Hell (17 page)

A frown crossed his face.

Cold? How…odd.

Did he get cold? No. People like him rarely felt the cold. Stephanie had walked in the balmy temperature of thirty degrees wearing just a skimpy shirt and pants.

Stephanie.

Her
face he could see. Shit. The image of her eyes reminded him of another face. A face the fog in his mind wished to hide from him.

But those eyes.

Jenai.
Thinking of her name, the fog in his mind slowly retreated and he could see once more, think once more. Those silvery eyes set in a face as pale as cream, silvery-blonde hair and that long, elegant body.
His mate. His.

Slowly, he turned, holding Jenai’s face in his mind.

“No. You are not what I came for.”

She hissed at him, startled by his rejection. Staring at her, he knew now what she was, and the fury in her eyes made his blood run cold.

When she lunged for him, Ronan swore heatedly, ducking under the fist that flew toward his face with lightning speed. The PSA hadn’t ever touched on the proper way to physically fight a succubus. Probably because they couldn’t enter the mortal realm outside of dreams.

Nor had they mentioned that the creatures were psychic. But as the thing laughed at him and crooned, “Fight me? Silly boy, you can’t
fight
me,” Ronan figured the administration had a serious gap in their information on succubi.

The air around her was colored by emotion—terror, want, need, hunger, fear—but they weren’t his emotions. They weren’t hers, either. She was trying to use the emotions on him, trying to make him feel them.

Fortunately, that was one thing he had learned in his years with the administration. His emotions were his own. Unless he let her in, she couldn’t really affect his mind or his heart.

Forcing a deep, steadying breath into his lungs, he bolstered his mental shields and watched as her eyes clouded a little. “That won’t save you,” she crooned. “Just makes you look more appetizing. You aren’t mortal.”

A slow smile crooked his mouth. “No. No, I’m not,” he murmured.

The succubus laughed. “Lovely. And you’re so stubborn. I like that.”

He just stared at her with marked disinterest. When her eyes narrowed, her mouth drawing tight, he felt the heavy wave of emotions rolling from her falter, just a little. Her lips peeled back, revealing a line of sharp, pointed teeth, more like those of a cat than a person.

She rushed him again, but she seemed slower. “You can’t fight as well when you can’t feed off my emotions, can you?” he murmured as he evaded her easily. He wasn’t going to win in a punching match with her. He was strong, but she was demon. However, there were other ways to win and when she wailed at him in fury, he realized the path to beating her lay in convincing her that she had no power over him.

“Foolish man!” she screeched as she stumbled to the ground. “Don’t you know what I am?”

Ronan grinned arrogantly as she leaped back to her feet as through she had springs in her legs. “A succubus that can’t stay on her feet?” he offered helpfully.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. The look of sheer shock on her face was almost laughable. “You
mock
me?” she demanded, her arms hanging limply at her sides.

“Seems like.”

Unbelievably, her face crumpled. “But I am Boriga. I am the creature that men sigh over as they sleep. I am the thing they long for, but you
mock
me.”

Ronan leaped aside as she lunged for him. “There’s a first time for everything.”

But she didn’t try for him again—instead, she continued to run, moving so fast that she became a blur on the landscape, disappearing from his vision within moments. The wind started to howl eerily around him and as the adrenaline rush faded, Ronan sank to his knees.

“Shit.”

* * * * *

Azar felt it as Boriga threw herself screaming into the dream world.

She was full of rage. Full of despair…hunger. Those were emotions she usually created in men—not emotions she felt herself.

A slow smile curved his mouth as he moved through his chambers. Quietly, he murmured, “Conchez, that didn’t work, did it?”

Although the demon wasn’t there, Azar knew he’d been heard.

The blast of rage he felt coming from the other demon had him chuckling. But the amusement died as Conchez hissed, “I’ll just take care of him myself.”

The lesser demons weren’t going to be a match for a mortal with faith, a mortal with purpose. Even Boriga, a powerful demoness, couldn’t hold against him, for she showed her strengths too easily. She fed from emotion. Lack of emotion, or worse—derision—physically weakened her.

But Conchez wouldn’t show his weakness as easily.

He touched his mind to Jenai’s and found she was sleeping again. Her mind was doing it to protect her, he knew. The more time she spent in slumber, the less time he could try to forge a hold on her.

He worried though. She was weakening. He didn’t mind the fight he knew would come, so long as he knew she’d live through this.

But if he was going to break all unspoken laws of the demon realm, then he wanted to know that it would be worth it. That she would live and return to her life.

Azar withdrew from his lair with just a whisper of thought. One of the more powerful demons in the realm, he could journey from one location to another with just a flexing of his mind. He could breach the barrier that separated his world from the mortal realm with just a little more effort and his women didn’t have to be sleeping for him to merge his mind with theirs.

If he was drawn to them through something other than grief and loneliness, perhaps his existence wouldn’t be such a dark one. But he was only drawn to the dark ones, the tortured ones, the hopeless. Women who felt his power and gave in to it, almost welcoming the oblivion he offered them.

Not Jenai though. She resisted with a silent strength that he found remarkable. Perhaps, if he was a proper demon, it would only increase his urge to break her.

But Azar hadn’t ever been a proper demon.

He was more interested in seeing her return to the light than in watching her fade, her mortality washing away as she became little more than a shade in his world, obedient to his every whim.

No. He’d had enough women fade away around him, enough souls to keep him company.

Or he would have, if he hadn’t let them slip away from him, to find the eternal peace of the afterlife. Yet another of his many flaws. Conchez had so many shades that they thickened the very air around the demon. The demon realm considered shades a mark of prowess, of great strength.

But Azar didn’t understand the keeping of the shades. They provided no power, just a presence throughout the night. And Azar had memories of his own to keep him company—he didn’t need the sad presence of women he’d seduced, women who had faded away from life at his touch.

He alit just as Conchez burst through the fabric of the dimension that the mortal was walking through. This was a desert, barren and cold, desolate and empty.

Or it had been until two demons arrived to battle over the life of a woman. Not such an uncommon thing. She was a woman of power—many would risk all to have her as their plaything, as their lifesource for as long as she survived. But it was uncommon that Azar planned to protect her, until the mortal could reach her, until she could be returned to the mortal realm.

The mortal man froze as he saw Azar’s face, and for one second, there was a flicker of fear, of recognition. And then the man’s face went smooth and blank, empty.

“You’re wasting your time,” he said flatly.

Azar just chuckled. “Keep walking, mortal. Your woman lies not far from here.”

The man’s eyes narrowed in confusion, but then he grew aware of the odd tension in the air, the way the wind suddenly turned ice cold, how the very atmosphere seemed to press down on him.

“You interfere with what is mine, Azar,” a low, angry voice rasped as the plume of smoke started to rise from the ground. It thickened, darkened to black as it grew, and slowly starting to solidify. Two gleaming eyes formed in the head shape near the top and a circle formed, moving as it said, “Go. He is not for you.”

Azar laughed. “We are closer to my lair than yours. If he is up for the taking, then he is mine by rights.”

Conchez shifted and the smoke fell apart, revealing the demon’s long, ebony body, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a furious snarl. “If you planned to do as you should with him, I might not argue. But I suspect you are here to give him safe passage. We are demonkind. Nothing is safe from us, especially not here in our own world.”

A cool smile curved Azar’s lips. “Knowing that it would piss you off is just that much more enticement.”

Conchez snarled. “Have you forgotten what you are? What we are? We are
demon
. We feed from the mortals, we don’t care for them.”

Azar just shrugged. “Perhaps I want a change in my diet. After a while, human souls become tiresome.” His eyes narrowed and he purred softly, “Perhaps I need a change of diet.”

Conchez, the stupid fuck, didn’t even recognize the threat until Azar was already on him, knocking him to the ground, one golden hand closed around the black demon’s throat, his nails tearing through flesh, sinew and muscle as he tore out the demon’s throat.

Still alive, Conchez lay there, flailing weakly as his blood pumped from the hole in his throat. Azar smiled.

All around them, the air was thick with shades, their soft, sobbing sighs echoing in Azar’s ears as he ran one bloody finger down Conchez’ chest. “Your shades are lonely. They need completion. Let’s let them have it.
You
guide them.”

Conchez died as Azar punched a hole through his chest, calling fire and burning the demon’s black heart to a cinder. The shades wailed and then all was silent.

In the distance, he could feel the mortal. With a slow smile, he murmured, “Safe passage.”

Yes, it was unheard of.

But Azar hadn’t been lying when he’d said he was tired of human souls. Tired of human suffering—tired of being the cause.

Turning his back on the dead demon, he started toward his lair.

Chapter Twelve

She was close.

Ronan’s heart started to slam against his rib cage with fear, with hope, with need. She was
close
. Like a missing piece of himself suddenly offered back to him.

Life, death, even the loss of his very soul—Ronan knew that whatever it cost him, he would save her.

The sands of the desert had changed over the past hours, going from sandy wastelands to thick, heavy forest. He had to fight his way to move through it, jerking at vines that tried to wrap around him, punching through hedges that seemed to grow in front of him.

He couldn’t actually see which way he was going—he only knew that the more he walked, the closer she felt.

Close…

He paused for a minute after he’d torn yet another of the clinging vines from his body, leaning back against a tree and sucking air into his burning lungs. His mouth was dry and hunger was burning a hole in his gut. Every muscle in his body ached with fatigue.

Ronan was braced for yet another insidious attack. With his body all but trembling with exhaustion and the need to sleep heavy on his mind, he knew he was weak. Yet doubt did not come to whisper in his mind. No cool wind of fear rose to beat at him.

After his breathing calmed, he pushed away from the tree and forged onward.

She was close…

* * * * *

She was slipping.

Azar stood in the shadows, watching as her breathing slowly grew shallower.

“Not now,” he murmured, feeling the heaviness of guilt and anger as it weighed on his shoulders. “He’s moving closer.”

While she had yet to give in to him, there was always another way she could go.

Death. To simply give up.

Mortals could indeed will themselves to death—it took great weariness, great pain, but it could happen. And in the demon realm, where there were so many things that were only nightmares in the human world, it was easier.

Her lover was even now pushing his way toward Azar’s lair…and she was letting go.

Snarling, Azar started to pace. This, he couldn’t interfere with. He had no power when it came to her soul since she had never given in to him. He couldn’t command her to hold on, and he couldn’t coax her into it either. She cared little what he wanted of her.

The only one who could possibly lure her back now was her lover.

And if he didn’t get here soon—

Even as the thought crossed his mind, he heard the faintest of ragged breaths, felt it as someone set foot on his land. Fury, need, hope colored the air, drifting through the emptiness of Azar’s realm, reaching out to touch him before withdrawing. A mortal’s fury would pale before his, and need and hope were things he’d long ago given up on.

With a simple flex of his mind, the maze of halls that filled his lair straightened and merged into one. One long hallway that would lead to the doorway of this room.

Come and get her, mortal
, he whispered silently, the power of his thoughts reaching out to touch the mind of the man who’d invaded his home.

The man flinched as Azar whispered to him. Then he straightened, his steps stilling as he tensed his body for battle. It was in that moment that Azar felt what lay inside him.

This was no mortal. A smile curled his lips. Now, why hadn’t he already realized that? A mortal’s faith could get him far, but faith didn’t give a mortal the strength needed to battle demons. Only somebody who was more than human could have that sort of power.

He’d make it. He was strong enough.

Whispering to him one last time, Azar murmured, “Come on, man. She’s waiting for you.”

* * * * *

She was so cold.

And tired. Jenai knew she hadn’t ever felt this weak, this battered before.

For a while now, she’d been lost. Away from the golden-skinned creature who tormented her body even as he pleasured it, away from the hunger and the pain. Lost in a fog of darkness.