Enemy Mine (30 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

F
or all that was dear to her, Selena maintained her composure. She cocked her head, forced a small smile, and looked questioningly at Balderama. “A new ring?”

His malicious smile broadened. “As you know, not just
any
ring.”

She held it up in the dim lighting. Dried blood distorted the design and engraving, but she knew without a doubt it was Joran’s. She had never seen him without it. Guilt riddled her composure. He was dead because of her.

“It’s beautiful. It should clean up nicely.” She lowered the ring and slipped it on her right thumb. “Thank you.” She had never been this close to her father, never wanted to destroy him more. It took every ounce of self-control Selena possessed to appear calm, indifferent, and focused. She wanted to sink her daggers into his chest and cut his black heart out. She wanted him to pay for her mother’s death, for what he’d forced Selena to do, how he forced her live. But Selena remained outwardly calm. Their showdown was inevitable; it would be here, tonight, and she would triumph.

Frustrated rage flashed across Balderama’s face. Quickly he concealed it. “I’m glad you like it. I have something else for you, but you will have to wait until after the auction for that surprise.” He extended his arm. “Shall we?”

Selena summoned a smile. He was the one in for the bigger surprise. Forcing herself, she took his arm and walked to the back elevator. Instead of selecting the button for the second floor, where she had taken all of the others, Selena hit the third-floor button. As the elevator doors opened to her kill room, she turned to Balderama and asked, “You are familiar with this room?”

His eyes sparkled with excitement. “Intimately.”

Selena stepped onto the smooth gray marble. In her mind, she could see Balderama’s blood pooling around him after she slit his throat, and her father’s vacant daemon body beside him, a gaping hole in his chest where his heart used to be.

“We’ve got a problem down here,” Cross said in her earpiece.

“Go ahead,” Mr. Black answered.

“We’ve just been surrounded by a bunch of daemons.”

“You’re going to have to handle that, Cross,” Nikko said. “I’m on my way up to Selena.”

Selena kept her cool.

Balderama’s eyes gleamed preternaturally.

He knew. The devil inside him knew.

Selena did not waste a heartbeat. She struck. Grabbing her daggers from their sheaths at her waist, she scissor-slit Balderama’s throat from his Adam’s apple out. Warm blood spurted in a high arch across the room, splattering her chest and arms. Blood filled Balderama’s mouth, stifling his screams. Grasping his filleted neck, he dropped to his knees, his eyes wide in shock. She planted her right foot on his chest and kicked him to the floor. He landed on his back, gasping for air, groping his jugular. “Selena—” he gurgled. “Help, me—”

Selena reached behind her and grabbed her swords from their sheath on the wall. She pointed them at Balderama’s heart, digging the tips into skin and muscle. “You lied to me,” Selena hissed. “You lied to the cause! I killed innocent people for you! Your death will serve me twice. Once for your terrible crimes.” She shoved the swords into his heart. “And twice to draw my dear old dad out!” She shoved the blades deeper until they struck the marble floor beneath him.

His body contorted once before it went still. His eyes glazed, his mouth gaped. His final breath was at hand.

Withdrawing the swords, Selena crouched beside Balderama’s dying body and leaned toward his ear. “Come out, Daddy dearest, come out so I can cut your black heart out.”

Two daemon hands reached out from Balderama’s gaping mouth and grabbed Selena. She blocked her descent into Balderama by crossing her swords, but Paymon was stronger.

“Selena!” Nikko shouted from behind her. He grasped her around the waist and pulled. Selena shoved her swords into Balderama for leverage, then kicked away from him and broke free. As she moved backward, she sliced Paymon’s outstretched hands from his arms. A furious roar erupted from Balderama’s body. His chest and torso wildly undulated as if his body were snake infested. His eyes bulged out of his head, and a thin orange vapor trail hissed from his mouth and nostrils. The shuddering stopped, and then, like a scene from the movie
Alien,
Balderama’s chest and gut split open. Paymon emerged in all his raging daemon glory.

Nikko clasped her hand, uniting their strengths.

“You defy Hell, you will burn in it!” Paymon roared in his daemon form, which was disturbingly humanlike. Paymon was handsome, glaringly so. Like Michelangelo’s
David,
his dark, beautiful features were finely sculpted by an expert hand. Selena remembered the first time she had seen him as a young girl and thought he was an angel sent from heaven. Her mother had schooled her well to avoid him.

Selena raised her swords, then pointed them at his heart. “If I go down in flames, you’re going with me!”

Paymon slapped the swords away as easily as if they were gnats. He pointed his bloody stump arms toward his hands on the floor. They lifted and reattached themselves.

Paymon smiled grotesquely at her. “I am impressed by your power and cunning, Daughter. When will you realize your place is beside me in Hell?”

“You raped my mother, then drove her to suicide. You tried to harm my daughter while she was in my womb! You tried to kill the man I loved! How can my place be beside you?”

“I loved your mother!” he roared. He pointed a daemon finger at Balderama’s dead body. “
He
pushed her from that window!
He
drove her mad with his lies and deceit!”

No!
Señor would never—Selena’s face blanched white in shock. Señor—would.

“You are shocked?” Paymon laughed. “You are as blind as your mother was. Your precious Señor used her to get close to me! He wanted to control the power of Hell through her devotion to him! I would never permit that!” Paymon held out his hands to Selena. “Come with me now, Daughter. With the necklace and the cask, our power will be untold.”

Selena shook her head. It changed nothing! He was crazy to think she would go with him, under any circumstances!

“Only I can protect you and your daughter from the wrath of the Order! Without me, you will die by their hand!”

Selena shook her head. “You are wrong on both counts, Father.” She raised her swords and brought them together as one, pointing at his heart. “After all of the heartache you have caused me and the people I love, how could you think I would ever go with you!”

Paymon’s body flared furiously. “You choose the human over eternal life with your father?”

“I made that choice long ago,” Selena defiantly said.

“Then you leave me no choice.” In a move so fast it was only a blip of a blur, Paymon plucked Nikko from where he stood behind Selena and slammed him against the wall. His body hit with a sickening thud. Twirling her swords out of the way, Selena shoved the air in front of her, and slammed her father against the wall he had just thrown Nikko into. She held him there as she moved toward her beloved. As she approached, she heard the dull thud of Nikko’s heartbeat.

Selena looked into her father’s furious yellow eyes. “You’re not messing with a scared girl anymore.” The stones flared powerfully around her neck. She shoved hard, forcing his body into the wall. “Not only do I possess the power of the stones”—she turned her hands clockwise; his body turned with them—“but my own heart beats with the strength of my father and the love of my mother!” She shoved him so hard he pushed three feet into the solid concrete wall.

Paymon roared, his stench unbearable, his power a chaotic swirl of disturbance around her.

“You are so not worthy of my time,” Selena said, going for the kill. Swords at the ready, she approached the hole in the wall. She thrust a sword tip into his calf. He kicked her in the chest with his other foot, knocking her to the ground.

She leapt up, but he was all around her, his velocity tearing at her hair, her clothing, her swords. Selena stood her ground, and battled back, her swords a furious flurry of destruction. She hacked his limbs from his body, went for his head.

Limbless and raging, Paymon’s torso slammed toward her. She leapt high into the air and, somersaulting as she came down, like a picador to a raging bull, she drove one of her swords through his chest. That
really
pissed him off. He screamed furiously, turned, and, with his long daemon teeth, pulled the sword through his chest. Selena thrust her dagger into his head from behind. The tip of the blade protruded on the other side out of his right eye. Raging, Paymon twisted his limbless body and head-butt her, flinging her off him. She slowed her velocity and like a funnel cloud whirled high into the air. The red-hot glow of the stones filled the anteroom.

Paymon grabbed Nikko with his teeth. Crashing through the door, he flew with him down the stairway and out onto the catwalk circling the second floor. Selena flew after him but abruptly halted in midair.

A grotesque specter floated in the air before her, Nikko’s limp body dangling from Paymon’s regenerated hand in the middle of the club two stories high. In Paymon’s other hand, a fiery sword.

“Your lover for the stones,” Paymon taunted, pointing the tip of his devil sword at her neck.

The stones flared white-hot. Though the heart stones had once belonged to Hellkeepers, they recognized Selena as their mistress now. They were in tune with her thoughts, knowing her next move before she did. She launched at the daemon prince. Paymon laughed and flung Nikko across the room.

Selena dove after him. But amazingly, Nikko halted his descent with his own power, halfway down. Their gazes raked each other for damage.
Nikko?

I’m okay,
he said, shaking his head. He looked up at Paymon, who hovered above them. Selena followed his glare.

I’ll take him from behind, you go for his chest,
Selena said as she shot up into the air behind Paymon. Selena banked away as Paymon twisted around going after her. Anticipating his move, she stopped short, then drove her sword into his back, slicing him wide open.

Paymon screeched hideously, hovering between the first and second floors. His yellow eyes burned molten red now. His teeth had elongated, saliva dripping onto his chest. Selena shuddered to think such a disgusting creature was her father. But father he was, and there was at least one part of him she was grateful for.

“You forget my power, Paymon!” Selena said, perched atop the large chandelier that hung from the three-story-high ceiling. “My heart may be half-human, but the daemon half holds the power of a dark prince!” She dove again and skewered him in the gut. Yellow blood oozed from him.

Selena corkscrewed in the air away from him; Nikko launched up and stabbed him with Selena’s dagger. Paymon roared, spewing yellow fluid from his mouth.

Nikko stabbed him again. Paymon flung him away, but Nikko slowed himself before hitting any walls. Her focus on Nikko, Selena moved around Paymon for a better vantage point. Nikko turned and slammed into the daemon, pushing him toward the railing, but Paymon was too quick. He whirled and slammed Selena into the second-floor railing instead. The velocity of the hit loosening the sword from her hand.

The instant she hit, Selena felt it: the harsh burn of the metal spindle through her heart. The stones around her neck flared in protest, infusing her with power. Yet she dared not move, afraid she would sever her damaged heart in half, and with that, she would die. Her world went dark for a moment before it was light again. She dropped her swords.

Nikko. Help me.

Selena!

Paymon’s demonic laughter reverberated around her. “The princess warrior is not immortal after all!”

Paymon rose above her, holding Nikko by the neck. Nikko’s eyes widened when he saw how she lay still and broken on the metal spindle where Paymon had flung her.

“The necklace, Daughter! Give it to me!” Paymon raged.

Nikko,
she gasped spitting up blood.
My heart, it’s broken.

Selena—
He reached out to her face.

“The necklace for your lover!” Paymon roared.

“Go back to Hell, you motherfucker!” Nikko shouted, and sank his fangs into Paymon’s forearm. The daemon screeched and furiously shook him.

“Come to me, Father,” Selena called in a weak voice, “and I will give you the necklace.”

“No!” Nikko shouted.

Let him come to me, Nikko.

Subduing Nikko with the fiery sword to his neck, Paymon came to her.

“Closer,” Selena enticed, stroking the white-hot stones.

Paymon’s red eyes glowed as he approached. When he stopped, Selena swallowed hard. She needed him closer.

“They call for you, Father. They recognize their place is with you, a true prince, not me, a half-breed.”

Paymon reached a hand out for the necklace. “Give it to me.”

Selena made a show of trying to move her hands, pretending she had no strength left. “My hands are numbing. I cannot unclasp the hook, help me,” she hoarsely said.