The Devil You Need (5 page)

“I know, right? And to all appearances even enjoying it.”

“What about Slayer?”

“Oh.” Heat flushed my face. “You heard about that, huh?”

“I’ve been following you through Flick.”

“Flick?”

“He came to see me almost every day. He really helped.” Emo
cocked his head, a silky black wave falling across his flawless, golden
forehead. “You didn’t know he was one of my sponsors?”

Frowning, I shook my head. The little twerp had never even
hinted that he was involved. I was surprised he had the insight and compassion
to help a struggling Tweener through his Settling. He’d certainly never shown
me any compassion.

“I’m not surprised. They’re not supposed to tell anybody.”

“Yeah. Well, he didn’t.” I grinned, reaching out to clasp
Emo’s hand. It felt large and warm and real. At last. “I can’t believe you’re
here.” And that he’d beaten back the dark. Though I’d never tell him that. He’d
been so close to giving in to the evil riding his soul. It was a testament to
the Angels’ powers that they’d managed to pull him through. Then it occurred to
me that he’d come to my father’s house first rather than coming to see me.

Suddenly I was slightly miffed.

“You came to my father first…why?”

“He’s my other sponsor, Astra. He’s also my guide during the
re-acclimation phase.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize you had to get re-acclimated to Earth.
But I guess it makes sense.”

“Yeah, about that phase…”

Movement near the door pulled my attention from Emo. My
father stood on the other side of the kitchen, his handsome face pleasantly
blank, his blue eyes intense. Fear washed through me. I had a sudden
premonition that he had bad news for me…about Dialle.

“What’s wrong?”

James Phelps, Seraphim and right-hand angel for the Big Guy,
slid a glance toward Emo. “Can you excuse us for a minute, son?”

Emo nodded but I bristled. “I don’t have any secrets from
Emo, Father. He can stay.”

My father didn’t respond, he simply held Emo’s gaze until my
friend touched my arm and gave me a sad smile. “I’ll see you later, Astra.” I
watched him walk out of the room, past my father, and realized his dismissal
made me mad. I glared at my father. “Don’t treat him like an invalid.”

My father wiggled his fingers and the door closed behind
Emo, ensuring that Emo wouldn’t hear whatever we were about to discuss. “He
is
an invalid, daughter. Whatever you might want, he’s still in a delicate
condition. He must be eased back into life on Earth.”

“He seems fine.”

I got stern face for my comment. “He’s not.”

I’ll admit it. I still backed down when confronted with my
father’s stern face. “But I need him in the office. How soon until he can come
back to work?”

“Not for a while. Maybe never.”

I swallowed hard, feeling the blood rush from my face. My
hand reached out and touched the firm surface of the long, wooden table that
dominated the center of the massive, brick-floored kitchen. “He’s still sick?”

My father took pity on me. “Not really sick. Just delicate.
He’s worked very hard to win the battle against the dark influences vying for
his soul. He won, he’s on the mend, but he can still revert and regress. We
need to keep him as far away from stress as possible until he regains his
confidence.”

I nodded, feeling a little better. “Which means he can’t
help me with Dialle.”

“Not even a little.”

I thought about this for a minute and nodded, feeling no
resistance to the idea. I loved Emo. We’d been friends since we were kids and
partners for several years. I didn’t want to do anything that would endanger
him. “Okay. I’ll stay away as much as possible.”

“No. That’s not what I’m asking of you, daughter. Myra
brought you here for a reason. He needs you now more than ever.”

I leveled a look on my father. “Have you met me? My life is
stress on steroids. Just standing next to me constitutes a walk on the wild
side. How am I going to spend time with Emo without passing some of that stress
onto him?”

“I’m not saying it will be easy. But you made a great start
today. You’ll figure it out.”

Sighing, I shook my head. “My entire life is impossible, why
should my relationship with my best friend be any different.”

“Whining doesn’t become you, Astra.”

I stuck my tongue out at my father and he laughed. “There
you are. I was afraid Myra had left your backbone behind when she shifted you
here.”

“Har. Now tell me about Dialle. What in Hades is going on
with him?”

“You probably have already guessed. When prophecy foretold a
great unifier, we didn’t realize that his power to walk the line between dark
and light had a caveat, if you will. That caveat is you, Astra. Without you
Dialle is no longer grounded in the light.”

“Shit.”

“Crude but accurate. Your connection with Dialle was what
allowed him to become the unifier. Without you…” My father shook his head.

“He’s being seduced by the dark.”

“Yes. That’s bad on many levels. It’s bad for the Royal
Devil Court on Earth, because as long as you and Dialle are tied to the court
it will continue to crumble and degrade, until Dialle begins to heal, or…” He
shook his head and went on. “The disintegration of the court is really bad for
humans and, by extension, the Celestial Realm. Without the good in Dialle to
restrain their baser instincts, the royals and lesser members of the court will
explode into violence. Humans will be slaughtered and debased by the
thousands—maybe even millions—depending on how quickly we can get the situation
under control.”

“And how will you get it under control?”

He just looked at me, pain shining brightly in his clear,
blue gaze.

“You’ll have to kill them all.”

“Yes.”

“Frunk me to Hades.”

“Exactly. And it gets worse.”

I snorted, figuring he was joking. But when I looked into
his eyes I knew he was about as far from jokes as he could get. “What? Give it
all to me so I know how much shit I’m gonna need to wade through to fix this.”

James Phelps, Seraphim of the Celestial Realm, shook his
gorgeous blond head. “You had to acquire your mother’s language gene didn’t
you?”

I didn’t think that needed a response. There was absolutely
nothing frunkin’ wrong with my language.

“The royals of the court won’t go down without a fight. Even
now they plot to disconnect Dialle and you from the court to save themselves.”

I frowned. “Disconnect?” He lifted an eyebrow and I sighed.
“I’m about to become the catch of the day again aren’t I?”

“You are. But don’t expect them to release you once you’re
caught. The only way to save the court from its current, rapid rate of decline
is to kill both you and Dialle and install a new king and queen as quickly as
possible.”

“Well just shit. That’s frunkin’ wonderful.”

“Offensive, but succinct. And true.”

* * * * *

Moments later, I shifted into Dialle’s quarters, hoping to
find him there and avoid the other members of the court. The room was empty and
looked as if a war had been fought between its walls.

The stench of dark magic stained the air and scorch marks slashed
across the draperies lining the walls, the thick velvet hanging in tatters
along the floor. The bed where Dialle and I had made love just days earlier
looked as if it had been sliced with a sword. The contents of the mattress
bulged outward from the jagged rift in its center and trailed down the sides to
the floor. Puffs of stuffing littered the ground and skittered past on a brisk
draft.

I shivered and my gaze slid to the long wall of windows. Two
of the massive panes of glass were broken, and debris blew into the room
through the shattered surface. My horrified gaze quickly scanned the room,
moving to the closet and the single door leading into Dialle’s personal hygiene
room. I splashed through a puddle as I pushed the door open, a power ball sizzling
on my palm. The hygiene room was in even worse shape than his bedchamber was.
The shower tube had been ripped from the wall and soapy water poured from the
hole in a steady stream, creating a growing puddle that spread across the floor
and out the door to saturate the once-beautiful carpets. The mirror over the
sink was cracked, its surface used to send a horrible message, written in
blood. The words scrawled across the reflective glass made me shudder.
Dark.
Cold. Evil.

It was the message of a fractured mind. I only hoped it
hadn’t been Dialle who’d written it.

I hurried back out into the bedchamber, heading for the
door. I would find Gerch or Brina and find out what was going on. As soon as I
opened the door, though, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

The halls were thick with devils, demons and gargoyles. The
combined stench of sulfur and blood made me gag and cover my mouth. Metal
clanged against metal as the dark worlders of the court fought a brutal battle,
fed by a depth of bloodlust I hadn’t seen in a long time, not since the Devil
had cast a magic veil over the Earth, infusing everyone with a lethal kind of
anger.

I watched the chaos beyond the door for a long moment,
trying to figure out how best to move through it without being immediately skewered.
But before I could talk myself into stepping into the melee, a sword blade
appeared from nowhere and slashed toward my face.

Into the Devil’s Backyard

Alas our hero’s in a spot, his predicament so dire,

But our young miss will fail him not, she’ll yank him
from the fire.

Without even thinking, I lifted my hand and sprayed power
into my attacker’s face. He flew backward with a grunt, smacking into the wall
on the opposite side of the wide hallway. A large hand grasped my forearm and
yanked me out from behind the door, flinging me into the center of the roiling
mess of savage dark worlders.

I stumbled backward, ducking just as a wide, heavy blade
whizzed toward my head, and spun. A lower devil dipped its head and charged,
the sharp points of his curved, black horns heading right for my midsection. I
spun again and had the satisfaction of watching the horns skewer the royal
behind me.

Pain blossomed in my back as the handle of a sword
bludgeoned me and my breath momentarily left my lungs. I dropped to one knee,
struggling to breathe and just missed being impaled as a knife flew overhead.

A roar to one side had me lifting my hands in a defensive
maneuver that, infused with a jolt of my borrowed power, allowed me to use my
attacker’s momentum against him. I shoved hard on the demon’s wide chest as he
flung himself at me, and sent him flying over my head. He hit the wall behind
me with a wet thump. I jumped to my feet and started running.

I didn’t get far.

At the first turn in the hallway a large, scaly red arm
reached out and hooked me around the waist, dragging me into a covered alcove.
I pulled power into my fingertips and then stopped as a massive paw wrapped
itself over my fingers.

I looked up into Gerch’s worried, red face. One side of his
face was covered in blood and the eye on that side was swollen shut. He held a
thick finger in front of his craggy lips and pushed me deeper into the alcove,
pulling the heavy wall hanging over the opening.

“What the hell’s going on, Gerch?” I whispered.

He just shook his head and peered down the hall through a
crack between the wall and the hanging. After a moment he turned to me. “You
need to get out of here. If one of the council sees you you’ll be dead before
you can blink.”

“Not until I find Dialle.”

He grabbed my arms and looked down at me, his uninjured
black eye swirling with irritated color. I’d never seen Gerch’s eyes swirl
before and was surprised by it. Though I knew he was just about one of the
highest level non-royal devils I knew. “I can’t protect you both, Astra.” It
was a measure of his distress that he called me by my name instead of his
usual, snark-infused address of “my queen”.

“Where is he, Gerch? Is he safe?”

He swore, looking past the hanging again. “No one is safe in
the court anymore,
my queen
.” And he was back. “But you and the king are
especially vulnerable given the current situation.”

“What exactly is the current situation?”

“I don’t have time to talk about this now. You need to shift
out of here and I’ll bring the king to you as soon as I can.”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving without him so you might
as well take me to him, Gerch.”

He swore again but crossed his massive arms stubbornly over
his broad chest.

We indulged in dueling gazes for several beats and then I
sighed in defeat. “All right, you’re not giving me much choice.”

The muscles in his jaw relaxed and his shoulders came just a
fraction of an inch off square. “That is the point, my queen.”

I nodded. “Fine.” He turned away to look back out at the
action and I lifted my hands, grabbing the heavy wall hanging in both hands and
jerking it loose from the wall. As it dropped I ran forward, shoving the dense
hanging before me like a shield. The hanging gathered dark worlders as I ran
and I used my power to smack them hard into the wall.

I spun, swinging the heavy material around me like a
bludgeon. The power-infused swing took the legs out from under two demons and a
royal who were coming at me with blade and claw. As they hit the ground I shot
them in the chest with a jolt of magic, killing them. “To Hades with you fool,
for God hath tired of you.”

I ran toward the end of the hall. If Dialle wasn’t in his
rooms he’d be in his throne room.

I wasn’t sure how I heard him coming over the rest of the
noise, but my senses seemed especially alert since the adrenalin had kicked in.
I spun just as a tall, skeletal royal lunged. If I hadn’t turned he’d have
buried his blade in my heart and I’d have died before I even knew he was there.

I shoved the hanging in front of the blood-covered blade as
it swung back, and arched away as it sliced clean through. Fire seared my ribs
where the blade grazed me. I yanked the hanging sideways, pulling the sword
from the royal’s long fingers, and flung it against the wall. With a scream of
pure rage, I flung myself at him, smacking him hard on the forehead and sending
energy in a thin stream of bright light into his brain.

He was still twitching on the floor as I leapt back to my
feet and took off running.

The battle thinned as I neared the throne room and I had
high hopes that Dialle was safe there, locked behind the double doors made of
gold. When I spotted Gerch’s guards standing in front of the doors, swords
drawn and already covered in blood, I felt even better. Several bodies littered
the floor before them, evidence of their work.

I ran toward the guards. “Let me in!”

The soldier in charge stepped forward, his sword lifting. “I
cannot open these doors. The king is in danger.”

“Open the doors you steaming pile of gargoyle shit, or I’ll
blast you and open them myself!”

The man started to shake his head and I lost all patience.
But instead of striking out at one of the apparent few who were willing to
protect Dialle, I finally took Gerch’s advice. I pictured the space on the
other side of the golden doors and shifted.

The world dropped away and fell silent. A moment later I
felt it slide over me again like a shroud, my feet hitting the firm stone of
the floor. The room was dark, so silent that I thought for a moment I was still
in my space-shift. But the area smelled gamey, like…

A low growl throbbed through the silence, not more than five
feet away from where I stood. Two sets of red eyes glared at me through the
deep black and I squinted to see movement in the dark.

“Ah, shit.”

Two low-slung, densely muscled forms started toward me,
their growls turning to saliva-drenched snarls as they opened enormous jaws
filled with impossibly white teeth.

“Frunk me,” I murmured. “This is definitely going into the
shitty
day
book.”

I pulled power into my palms and held it, spitting and
ready. I knew from experience that Hell hounds could move with impossible
speed. They could be on me in the time it took me to blink.

My only hope was to send power directly into their chests as
they slammed into me. Because if I missed I’d be torn into tiny little pieces
before I could try again.

The energy spitting in my palms illuminated a circle about
four feet around where I stood. I waited for the hounds to step into the light,
knowing it wouldn’t make my job easier if I could see them, but finding comfort
in the thought nonetheless.

But the hounds stopped just outside the circle and waited,
temper throbbing in their thick throats in a constant drone. When I realized
they didn’t intend to come closer, I risked speaking. “Dialle?”

A soft footfall made my gaze shift in the direction of
Dialle’s throne. “Are you all right?”

A gentle wash of breath, like a sigh, filtered toward me.
“Dialle, talk to me.”

Light blossomed like the sun, filling the room with
eye-straining illumination. I blinked, stared at the two massive black canines
sitting calmly just a few feet away, their wide, snubbed snouts wet with
slobber and their terrifying gazes locked on my face.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I cast my gaze toward
Dialle’s throne. What I saw there was more terrifying than the two Hell hounds
could ever be.

Dialle sat slumped in his throne, his head dropped to his
chest, his limbs sprawled loosely as if he were unconscious. I softly repeated
his name, barely more than a whisper, and his head slowly lifted. His beautiful
face was a portrait in despair, the sexy black eyes completely devoid of color
or passion. He looked like a man just a heartbeat from death. But he had not a
single wound or injury that I could see.

His wounds were all internal.

“Oh good Him, Dialle. What have I done to you?”

He just stared at me, the black gaze dancing icy fingers
down my spine. His once-beautiful hair hung limp and dull around his face and
the clothes he wore draped loosely, like cast-off clothes on a farmer’s scarecrow.

How far he’d fallen in the few days since I’d left.

I took a step closer and the Hell hounds snapped, sending
spittle in a wide arc around their massive heads. I jerked to a halt. “Call
them off, Dialle.”

His cold gaze slid slowly toward the hounds and then back to
me. “Go away, Astra. Leave me alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you. Come with me, Dialle.
Let’s get away from this place and I can make it better. I promise.”

His black eyes suddenly spiraled with icy, hostile silver.
“You’ll make it better? How? I nurture a cold, dead mating mark in my breast.
No light infuses the mark. Only the oily black of Hell. My court rots around
me, like my cursed soul. The very air I breathe is like poison. I no longer
belong here. There is no making it better, Astra. Unless you’ve come to tell me
you’ve regained your power.”

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly that, despite the fact
it wasn’t strictly true. In that moment, I realized I’d do anything to save
him. But the doors behind me slammed back against the wall and, startled into
action, the hounds attacked.

I’d started to turn to see who was coming at me from behind
when the first massive hound hit me, throwing me to the ground and sending me
skidding across the floor. I rammed up against something that felt like rock
and looked up to see Gerch peering down at me. Burning spittle dripped onto my
cheek. Standing on my chest snarling, the hound’s sulfurous breath painted my
face. My hands pressed against its chest, holding the snapping teeth away from
my throat.

Just barely.

Gerch stared at me for a moment, his craggy face dark with
anger.

“A little help here?” I gasped as those impossibly white
teeth made headway toward my cringing flesh.

He reached down and grabbed the hellhound by the scruff of
the neck, flinging it away. The thing landed with a yelp and the two hounds
skulked away, tails tucked.

“How strange to see you here, my queen, since I told you to
leave.”

I climbed to my feet and brushed rock dust off my ass. “And
I told you I wasn’t leaving without Dialle.”

Gerch frowned, his small, black eyes nearly disappearing
beneath a wide, red brow. “Well, since you’re here we might as well escort the
king from this place together.”

I nodded and we turned. Horror knifed through me and I had
to reach out and grab Gerch’s arm as dizziness made the world spin.

“Where is he, Astra?” Gerch spoke the question in a soft
voice, his eyes sliding to mine.

“I…” The throne was empty. As was the throne room. Oh Good
Him. Dialle had left without us.

* * * * *

With the last of my quickly faltering power, I shifted Gerch
to the office. We spent the next hour contacting everyone we could trust,
asking them to come to my office for a confab on what to do next.

The office was empty when we got there. Apparently Bob and
Ralph were out on a job.

Gerch and I settled into my office to wait for my friends
and family to arrive. While waiting, I tried to fill Gerch in on what had
happened before he arrived in the throne room. “I’m afraid Dialle’s going to
hurt himself. You should have heard him.”

“What makes you think I haven’t?” He fixed me with an
accusing look that made me bristle. But knowing the loyal Captain of Dialle’s
guards had done his best in a terrible situation, and he’d remained loyal when
everyone else had turned against us, I bit back my angry retort and said
nothing.

Again with the maturity. Impressive, yes?

The air in front of my desk shimmered and Brina appeared,
looking slightly the worse for wear. The skin under one of her eyes was puffy
and bleeding, she had a long, healing wound down one slim arm, and blood caked
her usually silky black hair. The feisty royal still held a bloody sword in one
hand. “I tried to trace the king’s magic signature but lost it at the
dimensional split. He’s definitely left this dimension.”

“The Shadows?” Gerch ventured.

The royal shook her head. “I can’t know for sure but I don’t
think so.”

Slayer shimmered into the room and picked up the
conversational thread. “Could he have gone to Olympus?”

We all looked at each other but Brina finally said, “It’s
possible.”

My sister shimmered in next. She and Slayer shared a look
that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

I inclined my head in her direction by way of a greeting and
told my gathered friends what I knew. “He’s very depressed. I’d even say suicidal.
He told me that he no longer belonged here.”

Slayer frowned. “If he doesn’t feel he belongs
here
he probably wouldn’t go to Olympus either.”

“Or any of the light dimensions,” Brina agreed.

“He could have gone to Hell.”

We all looked at Gerch. He met my gaze and I realized he’d
been nursing that thought for a while but hadn’t wanted to voice it. “He’d feel
more comfortable there,” I whispered.

Myra and my father shimmered into the room. When I looked at
them I had to blink tears away. “What are the chances Dialle’s soul will
survive a prolonged visit to Hades right now?”