bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled (35 page)

Before I realized what she was doing, she moved her hand from my cheek and laid it gently over my nose. Intense heat permeated my sinuses, followed by a slithering motion in my nostril. The sub-demon I’d inherited from old Wormhead lay squirming in a slimy pool in her hand.  With a small pop the thing disintegrated, leaving behind a brown smear that Myra wiped carelessly on her beautiful robe. 

I widened my eyes meaningfully at my sneaky angel and she grinned. Damn her. 

Fortunately for me Dialle and his band of merry men had bigger things on their minds and weren’t paying attention to my little “worm in nose” event. Thank the Big Guy. They were huddled together across the room, plotting or something. By the time Dialle turned to Myra, I’d gathered together my small portion of remaining dignity.

“Are the armies assembled?” Dialle asked my angel.

She nodded. “We have troops in place at each portal. Abrine’s men have been...taken care of.”

I felt my eyes widen. Never have I viewed the celestial army as being an army in the truest sense. Imagine my surprise to learn that God had real troops that “took care” of things.

“Has word come back to Nille?”

Myra shook her golden head. “Abrine’s men were dispatched quietly. We allowed a few to escape and report back. Of course they reported what we wanted them to report.”

Dialle nodded. “Then let us join our friends in the tower room. We have much to ‘discuss’ with them.”

Like fireflies on a hot, August night, the angels disappeared from view in a single blink. Dialle reached out a hand and I laid mine over it. For once I was glad to have him doing the driving. My steering sucked.

When the world became noise, color and motion again we were standing just inside the door to the tower room. I felt, rather than heard, Dialle’s men joining us as the air shifted behind us.

I could clearly see the surprise and anger in Nille’s pale, golden face and wished I could be amused by it. But my blood turned to ice under his glowing, blue gaze. “I see Abrine has let me down again.”

Beside him, the demon king stiffened and turned his featureless face toward Nille. But he said nothing. It’s a little hard to argue that you haven’t failed when abundant evidence of your failure was standing across the room from you.

Still stinging from my last attempt at taking Nille on in that very room, I stood silently beside Dialle and let him take the lead. I know it was cowardly, but I doubted Nille and his men would have vibrated about the knees if I’d threatened them anyway. Not after the Wormhead incident.

Dialle’s voice came to me simultaneously as he spoke to Nille. It was like having two holographic films running at the same time in the same room. I found it incredibly disconcerting and I also wondered that he was able to manage it.
Remember, Astra, show no weakness
.

Too late.

To Nille he said, “The minds of Abrine’s men are simple and easily controlled and their king is too ambitious for his own good. He assumes too much, attends too little and his loyalties are easily swayed.” As if to prove the point, Dialle turned his vibrant, blue gaze on the demon king and locked it there. After only a few seconds, Abrine’s head drooped forward and he fell to one knee. Spreading his arms wide, palms up, Abrine’s frosty countenance lifted again to gaze upon Dialle. “My Prince. I beg your forgiveness for my opportunistic behavior.”

Nille’s beautiful features twisted and, for so brief a time that I almost thought I’d imagined it, his form shivered and faded as if he would shimmer away. But almost as quickly as he’d waned, he became solid again. He moved one finger of the hand closest to Abrine and the demon king flew sideways, skittering across the stone floor with an outraged cry. Abrine’s body smacked against the stone wall with a sickening crunch. He crumpled to the floor in a boneless pile, looking for all the world like a puddle of melted vanilla ice cream.

Dialle didn’t wait to see if Abrine had survived, he raised both hands toward Nille, palm outward and an opaque cylinder of power shot from the outstretched palms and slammed into the devil prince.

Nille stumbled back slightly but quickly recovered and lifted his arms to retaliate, shooting his own power in a pulsing, red blast toward Dialle.

At first the two devils appeared calm. But as the moments wore on I could see signs of their strength draining away from them. Sweat the color of human blood began to bead upon their smooth, golden brows and run into their identically glowing blue eyes. After another moment, Dialle’s body began to tremble slightly, and then more desperately and I knew with a sudden, horrible clarity that Dialle was going to lose the battle.

Dialle’s power began to retreat under the force of Nille’s pulsing, red energy and he seemed to almost shrink into himself. It was like watching a holograph of Dialle’s life which had been locked into hyper forward and then accelerated even more to the speed of light. Before my eyes, his skin began to grow thin and fold in upon itself, while it gained a grayish tint that looked like death. Fear ate at me as his body bend forward until he had the stooped posture of a very elderly man. It all happened in just seconds, much too quickly for me to react and way too fast for me to even weigh my options.

Suddenly, the mark on my neck gave a single, painful throb and I knew what I had to do. I ran to him and ducked under his arms so that my back was pressed into his chest. Forcing myself to ignore the husklike feel of his body against mine, I placed my hands over his. The once beautiful hands were like bone-filled parchment paper. I feared they would crumble under my touch.

I grabbed at my power and focused it toward Nille, sending it piggyback along with Dialle’s energy. My added power created a slight wave in the connection between them but didn’t do much more than cause Nille to jump a bit.

I could still feel Dialle drying up behind me. That was when I started to panic in earnest. What was I doing wrong? Why wasn’t our power merging? I wondered if, as I’d done in Nerul’s office against Rayanne, I had to refocus the power to make it more effective. Figuring it was worth a try, I gathered the energy back and shot it into Dialle’s hands.

Almost immediately I felt Dialle stiffen and straighten behind me. Nille’s expression changed from smug to “oh shit” in the space of a heartbeat and I almost laughed in relief. Slowly at first and then more aggressively, the combined power we shot at Nille started to drive him back.

Nille’s face grew pale and his tall form hunched with the effort of pushing our combined power back. I knew we had him on the ropes. That was good, but I could already feel myself drooping and I wondered if the power would hold.

A moment later my worst fears were realized as Nille seemed to strengthen, his energy once again, shoving us back. Wondering where the power was coming from, I took my eyes off Nille just long enough to throw a quick glance around the room. What I saw in that brief glimpse made my skin bubble with a grave-like cold.

All of Abrine’s men were dead on the floor. Their bodies looked like someone had put them into a drying machine and sucked all of the moisture out of them. My mind flashed me a picture of the thousands of crumpled, dried up bodies I had waded through on the floor of Nerul’s cavern chamber and I realized that, as he had done to Abrine’s men, Nille must have fed on their power until he’d drained and killed them all. He’d grown strong as they had died.

Then it occurred to me that Gerch and his men hadn’t moved to stand at our backs as they should have. I feared that we no longer had an army at our backs and I was pretty sure I knew why. Nille had drained them all dry.

But was it possible? And if so, wouldn’t he eventually run out of power to drain? The answer was yes, but the real question was...would we survive until he did?

My vision was starting to waver and fade and I could hear a deafening roar in my ears. My knees felt like rubber and I was having trouble holding my arms up, even with Dialle’s hands under them. I suddenly realized that it was happening to me. Nille was draining me too.

Dialle whispered my name and I knew he’d realized the same thing. We sagged to the ground together, hitting the stone floor with our knees, probably shattering our knee bones with the impact. We were too numb to feel it.

Our power cylinder was beginning to sputter and weaken and I knew we wouldn’t be able to hold Nille off much longer. I faced death for the second time in just minutes and it really pissed me off. There had to be something we could do to stop him from killing us. The angels wouldn’t have sent us there just to die.

Then it hit me. I thought of Rayanne and our magical tug of war in Nerul’s office. I fought through the weariness that was clogging my brain and overruled the thunder in my ears. I had to get Dialle to understand. We had maybe three seconds before we were toast.

Dialle, reverse the power. Draw him in. Remember what you told me? The power of the shadows runs counter to mine. We can’t feed him our power, we have to use the power of the shadows against him.

For a minute I didn’t think he’d heard me. Or hadn’t understood. But finally he inclined his chin in agreement.

Together we reversed our power and Nille, not expecting the reversal, shot toward us. As his full, healthy body slammed into ours I thought he would crush us, but almost instinctively we grabbed for him. Dialle grabbed his left hand and I his right. The power of the shadows used the channel we’d created and flowed through us, into us, around us.

Dialle and I flew off our knees and shot skyward, taking a screaming Nille with us. The power preceded us and carved a hole into the top of the stone room. We shot through the circle, out of the shadows and into a bright, clear sky, where shadows had no chance of surviving.

Almost immediately the celestial army surrounded us. Power infused heat vibrated against our skin and I absorbed it gratefully. Our bodies quickly regenerated, growing strong under the healing waves of power.

Nille’s screams pierced the air as the white power ran through his black soul. He writhed in agony while the goodness burned and tore at his flesh. He tried to pull away but the three of us were forged together by the power. Locked into the channel between the shadows and Heaven, where the very air burns the flesh of evil like acid. Even if we’d wanted to let him go we couldn’t have. Nille’s screams ended abruptly. He dissolved into sparks and shot away from us toward the heavens. Where I had no doubt he’d be made most unwelcome.

With a joy I thought I’d never feel again I threw back my head and screamed, “To Hades with you fool, for God hath tired of you!”

Then I suddenly found myself wrapped in the strong arms of the long awaited devil Prince, whose existence had been prophesied by both the dark and the light worlds for two thousand years and more and whose blazing blue eyes presently consumed mine with greedy heat as he pulled my body hard against his and pressed his delectable lips against mine. All thoughts of Nille vanished just as he had vanished, into a meaningless puff of smoke, which was quickly consumed and obliterated by the fire Dialle and I began to forge between us.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

To Live to Live

When all is said and all is done, our lady still doth live,

And in her arms a fiery embrace, her newfound love doth give.

All I wanted was to go home, turn on all of the lights and take a three hour shower before dropping into bed to sleep for at least a decade. Alas, it was not to be. I needed to check on Emo before I could rest. Something told me there wasn’t much time.

Leaving Dialle to do whatever long-awaited devil princes do, I followed the faithful Gerch, who had somehow managed to escape Nille’s power sucking act, to the room where I’d left my dying partner. At the door Gerch threw me a glance filled with something that looked like pity and stepped to the side, leaving me to face the horror of what lay beyond that door all by myself.

As I entered the room my worst fears were realized. Knowing that our kind, rapture-like, reverted to soul state and went immediately toward those pearly gates when we died, my stomach landed in the soles of my feet when I looked at the empty bed. I moved quickly toward the bed and, kneeling beside it, laid my cheek against the indentation Emo’s body had left behind.

The fabric covering the bed was still warm. And smelled of him. I thought I would die from the pain. My traitorous mind replayed our years together in fast forward, showing me only the good times in that horrible way the mind does when it suffers an enormous loss. I thought of my angel and the loss of her friend, Prevara and allowed my soul to take on her burden as well. Somehow everything seemed to be my fault. Somehow I should have been able to stop their deaths. Somehow. But I hadn’t. Prevara and Emo had both died trying to save me. It was an awful burden to lay on myself, but I did it anyway. I couldn’t help myself any more than I’d been able to help them.

My self-pity and despair were all too soon interrupted.

A warm, heavy weight landed on my shoulder. I turned my bleary gaze to find a strong, golden hand lying there. Swiping angrily at the wetness on my face, I looked up, expecting to see Dialle standing over me. Instead, the heavens opened up and a celestial light filled my soul. Emo stood there, smiling down at me through his extremely handsome, royal face.

“Hey boss.”

Choking back a less than manly scream of joy, I surged to my feet and launched myself at him. My smile and his met across a space of just a few inches and, before I knew what had happened, Emo’s beautiful lips were on mine, his arms were around me and my world was spinning on a golden web of surprise, confusion, and terrified delight.

I pushed away quickly and covered my confusion with questions. “What happened while I was gone? How did you heal so fast? I thought you were dead, Dialle said...” My words trailed off as Emo’s smile faltered and fell away.

As he twisted away from me I fought the urge to pull him back. He turned toward the door and frowned. I was sure he was going to say something that would rock my world, but then the door swung open, slamming (of course) back against the rock wall and Dialle strode in, followed by Gerch.