Bound in Black (17 page)

“Why? Is he your keeper?”

“Hardly. He just hates missing any action. So why am I here? And why are you not with Jude?”

“Mira. Go back home. Watch over Jude.”

With a click of her beak, telling me in her own way she thought I was being a bitch, she sifted away.

“Dommiel needs me. And something is definitely wrong.”

Crowds strolled the well-lit strip of Bourbon Street a block down the road, but here, all was dark and empty. It was as if even the tourists detected something not quite right in this direction. Kat and I stared down the corridor, where nothing and no one moved.

“Well, it’s certainly odd not to hear their screeching nails-on-chalkboard music,” Kat said, whipping out a thin twelve-inch rapier. “Let’s go.”

I led the way, following the blood-bond beacon flashing its SOS like a potion of dread pouring through my veins. Our boots echoed in the narrow corridor. When we stepped through the wide entrance beyond the courtyard, a wave of sulfur smashed into us, the residual burn-off when demons were expelled back to hell.

“Damn,” whispered Kat. “Some serious demon activity.”

I hardly noticed the smell anymore when dealing with a demon or two, but this had been more than one. Seeing as none of Dommiel’s faithful red-eyed followers greeted us, I could guess who’d been cast out. But by whom? And why?

Two dead bodies lay on the floor, either human hosts who’d been carrying lower demons or humans serving Dommiel. A girl sniveled in wide-eyed terror under a bar-top table. Kat and I stood perfectly still, listening with weapons in hand. My VS hummed, casting the dark room with a luminescent glow. Just as I took one step toward a stairwell, an ear-splitting bellow penetrated the walls.

Kat and I instantly looked at each other.

“His office,” I said.

We raced through the club and leapt an overturned table to the hallway toward Dommiel’s office. The door hung off its hinges, two dead demon hosts on the floor at the entrance. Pale light fell into the corridor, a supernatural aura reeking with malevolent power. Whoever or whatever was in there was no lower demon. He was of the highest order. A prince, I was sure of it. All my instincts coalesced into this one thought, my VS rippling through my frame like an electric waterfall, preparing me for battle.

I glanced at Kat—her face contorting with flashes of fear—before I nudged her with my sword arm. “Now.”

“No, Gen!”

I was already hurdling over the thugs in the doorway, unable to process why she might want me to stop as I launched into the room. A tall, skinny, red-eyed demon met me with a punch to the chest. I knew him, the one who’d gotten away that day we chased Bleed and his gangly ugly-ass crony. I sensed Kat at my back grappling with another demon. With two swings of my blade, I impaled the skinny one, his face registering he was a goner a split second before I incinerated him into ash.

Spinning, I found myself facing two situations that jarred me into frozen shock. One was Kat on her knees, facing me, with Bleed’s hand fisted in her hair and his blade at her throat, a maniacal grin creasing his face. I’d never seen Kat bested by anyone. Ever. The second was the gruesome scene of Dommiel staked to his office wall behind the desk, crucifixion style, pinned through his wrists and ankles. One of his eye sockets was empty, dark blood dripping down his face. His call for help still resonated in my veins, a plea to save him, free him. But the most puzzling and horrifying thing of all that had me motionless and silent was the man who stood in front of Dommiel—a dagger poised in his hand to cut out the demon’s second eye.

Only now did his signature reach my senses above the miasma of sulfur and black blood scenting the air—white winter and deep woods. His mask of serenity and compassion had fallen away, revealing his angelic perfection in an uglier, ruddier light.

“Thomas?”

Kat groaned—a deep, heartrending sound—before she choked and coughed.

“What’s happening to her!”

I lurched toward Kat—bewildered and terrified. None of this made sense. Bleed pressed his blade just under her chin. A droplet of red slid down the column of her white throat.

“Drop your weapon, Vessel,” demanded Bleed.

“Thomas, what’s going on? That’s Kat, my friend. Tell him to let her go.”

“Drop the sword, Genevieve,” he said, his own blade still fisted in his white-knuckled grip.

“You’re working for the demons?” I asked, unable to comprehend how far his betrayal had gone, how far he’d fallen.

Bleed cackled and shook his head as if chastising a child, his purple hair sliding over his shoulders like silk.

Thomas smiled, his signature filling the room with cold dominance. “No, sweetheart. I’m not working for the demons.”

The condescending blade of his voice cut me. Horrorstruck and hyperventilating, Kat riveted her attention on Thomas. Something was so terribly off.

“Kat—” I started forward but Bleed stopped me again by tightening his grip on my friend.

“Drop your sword,” said Thomas, his words rolling deep and guttural, like chains on rock.

I dropped it to the floor, my VS burning through my body. A warning, fire bright.

“What have you done to her?” I trembled with the knowledge that I’d been missing a key element all along. Even as I watched Thomas round the desk with sensual grace, I knew, deep down, I’d been terribly wrong all along…about him.

He stepped up to Kat and gently cupped her chin in his hands, lifting her gaze to his. Tears streamed down her cheeks, fear choking her silent.

“Hello, my darling Katherine.” He brushed the pad of his thumb along her quivering lower lip. “I’ve missed you so.”

“What the fuck are you doing!” I reached out to snatch Thomas away from her, only to have him shoot out his arm and grab me, viper swift.

With a jarring snap, I stood in the cold rain, watching the entrance of Jude’s home in the French Quarter. I saw the memory through Thomas’s eyes. Someone walked up the pavement—Danté, gold locks slick against his head. He shook himself as he strode toward the alcove, transforming into the likeness of Jude. It was the day he’d bitten and marked me. Why hadn’t Thomas saved me that day? His memory drained away into another…

I was at the masquerade, watching the masked dancers twirl across the ballroom floor, that asshole Nathaniel leading Mindy in a waltz, her pretty head tossed back in laughter. Through his eyes, I saw myself weaving toward the far side of the ballroom. A tall figure wearing a black mask slipped his arm around my waist from behind and pulled me into a private chamber behind a red velvet curtain…

His next memory…standing in the shadow of woods, I saw a giant beast of a dragon blowing streams of fire at George. Glastonbury Abbey. The clanging of swords sounded behind him where Jude and Bellock were engaged in a heated battle. My true self was flattened to the wall of the abbey’s cathedral, where lower demons crept closer. Thomas was there and hadn’t come to my aid then either…

Gone again into another memory. I strode into the dark corridor of the opera house—the Phantom and Christine screaming their love for each other in song. I saw my true self meet him there. The urgent yearning to take what was his drove him mad with violent need until his lips were on mine. These were all the thoughts of Thomas…or so I believed, until the last memory filtered in from so very long ago…

I stood in a room of stone and walked past a canopied bed to meet the beautiful, naked woman chained to my wall.
My
wall. The woman lifted her head with imploring eyes.

“Please,” she begged. Despair marked every line of her face, yet lust still burned in her eyes.

“You are so fond of that word, my lovely slave.” I lifted her by the thighs, her wrist chains rattling. “One more time, then.” She moaned as I shoved inside her slick body with a powerful thrust…

“No!” I jerked so violently from the memory I stumbled back against the office wall. The truth slapped me so hard, I couldn’t breathe.

Thomas stared in serene calm, knowing the truth had finally dawned. “No…not Thomas,” I whispered.

“No,” he said with a dip of the chin.

“Damas.” I exhaled his name on a hiss.

“Yes, Genevieve.” He spread his arms. “I am Damas.”

“But—how… I don’t understand… Thomas—”

“You did have a guardian angel named Thomas. Once upon a time.”

Yes, Jude had discovered he’d stopped reporting to his superiors about ten years ago. Ten years ago, when my mother died. My mother who had been a Vessel.

“You killed my real guardian angel,” I said in disbelief.

“He’s not truly dead. I don’t have the gift of destruction as you do. But he is still somewhere in the bowels of Acheron.”

“You fed my guardian angel to a soul eater?”

How? How had I been lured in by this heinous creature with a face of marble and a heart of stone?

“He wouldn’t have protected you from the likes of my brothers. Bamal was lurking around your mother, but I knew”—he stepped forward with, heaven forbid, adoration in his glass-green eyes—“I knew you were special. I didn’t lie, Genevieve. I’ve watched you all your life, kept vigil when others might’ve let you come to harm. But then that damned friend of yours had to take you to Tartarus for your twentieth birthday. Of all places and of all birthdays. It was as if—”

He bit off whatever he was going to say, so I finished the thought for him.

“It was as if fate wanted me there.”

His mask hardened, washed with a grim light.

I smiled. “That’s because it was fate. The Flamma of Light wanted me to meet Jude. Fate guided me to where a true guardian would find me. Where I’d meet a man who would become more than my protector.”

He tapped his fingers in an agitated fashion against his pants leg, smeared with black blood from Dommiel, who still hung on the wall in utter silence.

“I can’t believe you jeopardized yourself to save that filthy beast from the underworld.”

“Of course you can’t, Thomas…” I smiled bitterly at my slip of the tongue. “I mean, Damas. You couldn’t fathom sacrificing yourself, possibly even your own life, for the one you loved.”

“I would do it for you, Genevieve.”

“Cut the shit, Damas. King of Deception. Master of Lies. I’ve been hearing about you from the start of all this, and never had I imagined that I’d fall prey to you. That I’d already fallen prey to you.” I laughed at myself. “I thought I was too smart, too strong.”

He stepped forward, closing the distance between us. I didn’t care. The closer he came, the more easily I could kill him.

“But you weren’t. And you know why? Because we were meant to be, as I’ve always told you. I’ve protected you, because I knew one day you’d become this remarkable woman that you are. You were the partner I was meant to have—an equal in power and beauty. I do love you.”

“And I thought your brother, Danté, was delusional.”

“My brother,” he said with a derogatory sneer. “He knew nothing of love. Only selfish gain and violent lust.”

“Yes. And you never prevented him from taking me. Yet you say you love me.”

“The hunter had already inserted himself in your life,” he said with a shrug, as if that answered everything.

“You’re afraid of him.”

“Afraid? No, dear heart.”

He spoke with conviction but there was an edge of doubt I didn’t miss. He moved within a foot of me, lifting his hand and brushing the backs of his knuckles along my cheek. His signature slammed against mine—chilling cold, dark night. Though once his touch held some allure, now I felt only disgust, shame and hatred. His otherworldly eyes traced the lines of my face, falling to my lips as always. He was mad if he thought to kiss me.

Another realization hit me like a bomb. The opal pendant. I remembered him looking at me just that way the night Kat and I went to that bar in the bayou to find Bleed. He’d held my opal in his hand and had admired it. But that wasn’t what he was doing at all.

“You injected your essence into my necklace, the one I lost that night.” No need to elaborate on which night. The one where I’d woken up from a dream and realized I was making a terrible mistake. “Oh my God. It was the essence all along. My necklace. I wore it everywhere. And you were in my head.”

He’d also filled my nights, my dreams, seducing me there. Even while I loved only Jude during the daytime, Damas haunted me by night. His spawn had been infecting me. I wore it that night of the play. The violent need to let him kiss me, and more, had beaten within my breast so fiercely, there was nothing I wouldn’t have done that night.

My VS had slapped me awake, and I’d taken us through the Void. My necklace had broken free, then we landed in the park… “I couldn’t understand how I’d let myself go so far. When the truth is…you were controlling me all along.”

His fingertips slid into my hair as he cupped my cheek. “You wanted me, sweetheart. You always wanted me. The essence simply tipped the scales so that you didn’t have to feel damned human guilt over letting go. I can give you that freedom again. I can make all your fantasies come true.” He drew closer, his body brushing against mine.