Devil Without a Cause (14 page)

Chapter Seventeen

B
one of my bone, flesh of my flesh.

Sammy held his hands toward the fire, looking closely at his fingers, the beautifully fashioned, perfect fingers of an angel, created in the image of the One.

He’d just come from the Hall of Mirrors, where he kept track of those who’d been foolish enough to bargain with him. There he’d seen—and reluctantly admired—Finn’s latest move, that of using Faith’s child to win back the Ring of Chaos. After all these eons, he still found it a bit puzzling, the drastic lengths humans would go to in order to protect their young.

Everything he’d once known of parenthood had been stripped away in an instant, so long ago that many of the details had grown blurry in his mind. He’d been so sure as a young fledgling, offered the universe, that his Creator would keep him safe, and yet it was the One who’d punished him to eternal damnation.

One hand giveth, and the other taketh away.
He flexed both of his carefully, then laid them on the arms of his chair.

His thoughtful sigh drew the attention of his companion, a night black hellhound who lounged at ease on the carpet before the fire. It cocked one of its three heads at him, ears sharply pricked, while the second head yawned, and the third closed its eyes. “It’s just you and me tonight, Ajax,” he told the hound. “Perhaps we’ll go hunting tomorrow, eh, boy? The imp population definitely needs thinning.”

The hound opened its jaw in a pleased pant, revealing razor-sharp teeth. Its yellow eyes remained fixed on its master.

“Good boy,” Sammy told the dog idly, and took a sip of his wine.

“Do you think it’s wise to go after the imps?” A woman’s soft voice made him pause, cup halfway to his mouth. “It’s not their fault they’re easily bored and prone to mischief.” She stepped into the firelight, nudging the hellhound aside as she slipped to her knees before him.

“Persephone,” he murmured. “My darling bride.” They both smiled at the inside joke, for though legend claimed the supposed Goddess of Spring to be his bride, she’d never been more than his lover, nor had she ever wanted to be. A true child of nature, she was fey, elusive, and delightfully amoral. “How’ve you been, my sweet?” He reached out to stroke her hair, a warm and vibrant shade of gold, and touched the petal-soft, peach-tinted skin of her cheek. She was naked, as she always was when she came to him, her body lush and full, generous in its curves.

“I am well, beloved prince.” She took his hand and buried a kiss in it. “Would that you were, too.”

“Beloved, or well?” he murmured sardonically, taking another sip of wine. He wasn’t surprised to see her, for despite the ancient myth, Persephone was free to come and go in the Underworld as she pleased, regardless of the season.

“Both,” she answered softly, transferring her kisses to his bare knee. He was, after all, in his private chamber, where he preferred being naked to being clothed. “You are lonely.” A second kiss, this time on the other knee. “You are sad.”

Her hands, small and soft, caressed his ankles and massaged his calves, stroking, easing.

“I don’t deny it,” he replied, knowing it would be useless to do so. One of Persephone’s greatest gifts was that of empathy; she was attuned to nuances, and always eager to please. In all the time they’d known each other, she’d never been wrong about his moods, and adapted to them easily: a rough coupling here, a gentler one there, with no aim other than mutual pleasure.

Today she seemed determined to go slowly, stroking her clever little hands up and down his legs, squeezing and rubbing the tension from the long muscles of his thigh. “My poor darling,” she breathed, pomegranate-stained lips following her hands, trailing their way upward. “Let me make it better.”

And so he did, leaning his head back against his wooden chair and closing his eyes. Her kisses were hot against his skin, her tongue tracing delicate trails all leading to one destination, and by the time she reached it he was hard, and growing harder. She didn’t rush, however, nuzzling and licking at the sac that held his balls, breathing deeply of his scent before taking them one at a time into her mouth, rolling them gently upon her tongue as though they were fruit, bursting with juices.

He made a purely male noise of contentment, happy to let his body overrule his brain, and happy to let her take the lead in telling it what to do, at least for the moment.

She took his hardness in her hand, stroking and squeezing, much as she’d done to the muscles of his thigh. Up and down she stroked, rasping and gliding her palm gently along the column of flesh, still lapping at his balls, in no hurry to leave them. His cock jerked and strained as she stroked and squeezed, the sensitive ridge near the tip becoming ever more sensitive. She knew the instant he could stand it no longer, and took him in her mouth, engulfing him in heated pleasure.

Down, down he went, groaning aloud as she began to bob her head to the same rhythm her hand had already established. She sucked and pulled, her lips locked to his engorged member, every ounce of her concentration on him, where it belonged.

The fire crackled, but it was nothing to the inferno that arose inside his mind, the one where no deep thoughts intruded and no decisions needed to be made, save when to release his barren, tainted seed.

Amid the flames flickering against his closed lids, a remembered image appeared. A dark-haired young woman with pink streaks in her hair, regarding him solemnly on a quiet rooftop. She’d put out a hand to touch his bare chest, and in doing so, had seared her name upon his heart.

His groan this time was of frustration, but it merely incited Persephone’s talented tongue to work harder. Lust rode him now, and he didn’t care if his hands gripped her head too tightly, or if he pushed himself too hard down her throat. She, like everyone else who entered his domain, was under his control, despite the liberties he granted them.

And when he came, in great, spurting bursts of pleasure, he held her there until she’d swallowed every drop. Only then did he allow her to climb naked into his lap, where she curled up like a kitten, licking her lips as though she’d just enjoyed a dish of cream.

“Thank you, my prince,” she murmured, tucking her head beneath his chin.

“It was nothing,” he replied truthfully, for that’s all it was—nothing.

They sat in silence for a while, the crackle of flames and the reddish light they cast providing a small island of peacefulness and comfort amid the surrounding shadows and darkness.

“How’s the whelp doing?” Persephone asked idly, trailing a hand across his bare chest.

Sammy stiffened. “The whelp?”

Persephone, sensing his tension, raised her head to look him in the face. What she saw there seemed to puzzle her, for a frown marred her lovely brow. “Don’t tell me he’s been causing trouble here, too? That’s why I sent him to you, you know . . . so you could keep him in line. The child was forever starting fires in the forest and throwing stones at the birds; he’s become far too much of a handful for me.”

Sammy rose, unceremoniously dumping Persephone from his lap. She hit the stone floor with an exclamation of pain, which he ignored.

“What are you saying?” he asked, his voice low and tight. “What child, and why would you send him to
me
?”

“Because you’re his father, of course,” Persephone replied, exasperated. She was rubbing her hip, and missed seeing the terrible look that came over her lover’s face. “One has only to look at him to know . . . that white-blond hair, those blue eyes . . .” Her voice trailed off as she raised her head again, regarding blue eyes far older, and far colder, than any child’s could ever be. “Oh dear,” she murmured, stricken.

Sammy kept his anger under control with an effort. “Are you telling me that I—that we—”

“Oh, the wretched little monster!” she interrupted, slapping her palm hard against the floor. “I told him specifically that he was not to explore the Underworld on his own, but was to come here, to you!”

“
Explore?
” he asked, nearly strangling on his own fury. “Don’t you think you might have mentioned a word of this child’s existence before you turned him loose in Sheol?”

She looked up at him, distracted, through a curtain of golden hair.

“Did I forget to mention him? I’m quite fertile, you know, particularly in the spring and summer . . . there’ve been so many children through the years that sometimes I forget to inform their fathers—”

Samael’s roar of rage brought the three-headed dog leaping to its feet, barking furiously. “You
forget
?”

“I can’t help it!” she exclaimed defensively, rising to her feet. “I have a lot on my mind! Nature doesn’t run itself, you know! There are seasons to change and plantings to oversee and harvests to safeguard, not to mention dealing with natural disasters like hurricanes and mudslides and volcanic eruptions!”

“You—I—we—”

To her credit, Persephone didn’t cower in the face of Sammy’s rage, eons of volcanic eruptions perhaps having prepared her for his. “Yes!” she interrupted him, impatiently motioning the still barking hellhound to quiet. “You have a son, who I would’ve been quite content to raise on my own—as I have the children of so many others through the years. He could have lived happily as a forest sprite, or some other form of elemental, if he hadn’t been such a spoiled, headstrong hellion, just like his father!”

In the silence that followed that pronouncement, Sammy found his knees curiously unwilling to hold his weight, and sank back into his chair.

“This is not acceptable.” He stared into the red-gold heart of the fire, unwilling to believe what he was being told. “You speak of nature, but only an unnatural mother could be so careless with her offspring.” As he said the words, he was forced to acknowledge the well of bitterness from which they sprang. So, too, had he been cast off and ignored; it made him view Persephone through new eyes, and they were no longer eyes that admired.

“You’ve always known what I am, darling.” She shrugged a naked shoulder. “My world is untroubled by conscience. The beauty of a sunrise, the touch of the wind against my skin . . . these are the things that move me. Motherhood is neither a gift nor a burden; it merely
is
.”

“Where is he?”

“How should I know?” Persephone asked, tucking wheat gold hair crossly behind her ears. “I saw him to the River Styx myself, and paid that bony excuse for a ferryman to bring him straight to you. I would’ve brought him in person, but he begged for a boat ride in the dreary old thing, and I was very busy ushering in spring at the time—the cherry blossoms were particularly lovely this year.”

“Charon can never leave the river,” Sammy answered shortly, his mind working furiously. “The child never arrived.”

Persephone looked more annoyed than concerned. “But it’s been weeks—months, even! Where could he possibly be?”

“Someplace he shouldn’t,” Samael answered grimly, damning himself for a fool. He’d heard the rumors, and discounted them as more of Selene’s twisted machinations, designed to misdirect his subjects and weaken his authority.

“The incorrigible little beast! I’ll take a willow switch to him, I swear it. Do you know where he is? Tell me.”

He raked her naked form with a scornful gaze, unaccountably angry. “It’s a bit late to worry about discipline now, isn’t it? You abandoned the boy on the bank of the River of the Dead, and haven’t concerned yourself with his whereabouts since!”

She shrugged. “He’s at least nine years old, and quite big for his age. Quite resourceful, too, I might add—crafty as a fox and quick as an eel. He’s hardly a babe in the woods.”

“No,” Samael agreed grimly. “He’s a child, lost in the Canyons of Despair, and in all probability, he’s already dead.”

He rose, snapping his fingers for the dog. Naked, gilded by the fire, he looked down on Persephone from his greater height.

“Leave me,” he told her, touching the petal-soft skin of her cheek one final time. “And don’t bother coming back.”

Then he strode away into the darkness, the hellhound at his heels.

L
ess than ten minutes later, Samael stood upon the ancient barge which comprised the whole of Charon’s domain, receiving only the nod of a shroud-covered head when he asked about a certain blond-haired, blue-eyed child who’d been seen with Persephone. “So the boy was here, and you took him across, alone?”

It was important to verify Persephone’s story. Between the imps and the ethereals, he couldn’t afford to be caught off guard again. There’d been enough rumors swirling around the Underworld, and now he needed the truth.

“Has he been back since? Have you ferried anyone to the other shore, anyone at all?”

Charon, mute and impassive as always, shook his shrouded head in the negative.

Ignoring the moaning, weeping shades who cowered on the rotting, coin-covered deck, Sammy impatiently brushed away one who dared come too close. “Which way did he go when he left the barge?”

Charon lifted a bony finger and pointed westward, toward the Forest of Forgetting.

Swearing beneath his breath, Sammy leapt from the barge as soon as it reached the bank, snapping his fingers for the three-headed Ajax, whom he’d brought with him.

“Search out his trail,” he ordered the hellhound. “See if you can find anything that smells like cherry blossoms.”

All three canine heads cocked quizzically.

“Flowers,” he said shortly, then amended it to “Something that smells like Persephone.”

The beast was off in a flash, while Sammy followed at a more sedate pace, wending his way past the blackened stones that lined the River Styx, through the rocks and toward a gray-green forest of stunted, oddly contorted trees.

When he heard a soft rustle of wings behind him, he was not surprised.

“Master?”

“What is it, Nyx?”

“You are disturbed.”

“No shit,” he answered grimly.

“What’s happened?”

Sammy whirled, bringing his second-in-command up short. “Why? Did you hear of something happening?”

Nyx’s red eyes flickered in what—in mortal terms—would’ve passed for a blink. “No, Satanic Majesty. I merely feel your agitation. We have always been attuned . . . I was created from your essence, after all.”