Touch of the Angel (Demons of Infernum, #3) (4 page)

A low buzz reverberated throughout the space surrounding them. Keegan’s expression grew hopeful as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “It’s from the Council.”

Taeg reached inside the inner pocket of his leather jacket. “I got buzzed, too.”

“Me too,” Dagan said.

Yeah, so had Ronin. After giving Dagan one last glare, he dug out his cell phone and stared at the screen. As he’d expected, it contained preliminary information on a new assignment. And if they were all alerted about it at the same time, it could only mean one thing.

Their new fugitive was a real badass.

For the first time in months, he got a feeling of lightness in his gut—anticipation. A new bad guy to track down. Something else to focus on besides deceitful succubi, lost powers, and the possibility of being forced to leave this dimension.

“About damn time.”

§

He was going to kill her. Not literally, of course. She was too useful for that. But he would be furious. And when he was furious...

Bad things happened.

From her seat in the back of the cab, Amara stifled a shiver that had nothing to do with the frigid March temperature buffeting her barely-clad flesh. No, it had everything to do with how Asmodeus would react when she told him she’d failed. He’d gotten worse over the past month, more crazed in his insistence that she complete his assignments. While he’d appointed several of the other succubi to a small group of men he appeared to be especially interested in, he’d had her scouting out gifted emissaries from the Otherworlds. Tonight’s job had been one of those, and her defeat would enrage him beyond belief, especially if the other succubi had once again failed to lure in any of the men they’d been ordered to capture.

Though he referred to himself as her boss, Asmodeus wasn’t truly her employer. No, the gold band clamped around her wrist pointed to a far more sinister arrangement.

He owned her.

And when she didn’t obey his commands, whether willingly or not, there was always a price to pay.

You chose this path
, she reminded herself. Yes, she’d had a choice; she could have declined to bind herself to the sadistic demon. But the consequences of her refusal would have been far too dire.

“Here you are.” The sleepy cabdriver drove up to the address she’d given him.

Steeling herself, Amara pulled a wad of hundreds out of the front of her slinky black minidress. She tossed one of the bills to the driver and climbed out of the backseat. The elegant Queen Anne townhome loomed above her, sinister in its appearance even though the terra-cotta finish lent an air of lightness to the midnight sky. Maybe it only appeared so frightening because of what waited for her inside.

She barely noted the squeal of tires as the taxi sped away. If she could have, she would have run away, too. But she didn’t have that option. No, for better or worse—and it was always worse—this was her home.

He would already know she was here. Somehow. No use delaying the inevitable. Taking a deep breath, she started forward. She stifled a curse when her knees threatened to buckle. Need consumed her, making her weak and shaky. She wouldn’t be able to hold out too much longer. It had taken all she had to keep from feeding on the clueless cabdriver. Nearly three days had passed since she had last fed. One more week without sustenance and she’d be dead.

Amara stiffened her spine and walked up the stone steps to the ornate, wrought-iron front door. As expected, she didn’t even reach the top of the stairs before it swung open.

Gofrey, Asmodeus’s second-in-command and all-around lackey, stood on the other side, grinning at her like the sick loon he was. Gofrey was only a few years older than her—and certainly attractive—with dark, silky hair and smoldering brown eyes. But his beauty was only skin-deep. The man was a monster.

Even though Gofrey was nowhere near as frightening as his master, he was still dangerous enough to raise her hackles every time she saw him. Especially since he’d decided he wanted her. So far the only thing that had saved her from his amorous pursuit was Asmodeus.

But then, the master was probably a million times worse than his goon.

“He’s waiting for you in his chamber,” Gofrey said.

Big surprise.
She bit back the sarcastic comment that longed to escape, walking past him and heading toward the curved staircase. The heat of his eyes was on her back the entire way up. If only she could stop on the second floor and escape to the room Asmodeus had forced to her to take in this townhouse when he’d first bound her to him. Fleeing was pointless, however. Asmodeus would only follow, and he wouldn’t be happy.

After pausing only the slightest fraction of a second on the second-floor landing, she continued up to the third floor. The entire level served as Asmodeus’s quarters. It was massive, since he’d purchased all three of the units comprising the building and knocked the walls down to make one supersized residence. The second floor housed his servants, goons, bodyguards, and, of course, his succubi.

Dread coated her throat as she headed toward the double doors leading into Asmodeus’s meeting chamber. Her footsteps barely sounded on the thick padding of the handwoven Persian carpet, but to her they were loud as drums, echoing the pounding of her heart. The ultra-dim sconces along the textured walls made for the ultimate mood lighting. Like one of those actresses in a horror movie, she walked toward her own destruction. Worse, she knew it and still kept going. But it wasn’t as if she had a choice. Not anymore.

She knocked once on the heavy wooden door before slipping it open and stepping inside, as he would expect her to do. An ornate, dark wood table occupied a good portion of the large room, with a throne-like chair on one side of it. Asmodeus’s work space. Ceremonial daggers hung on the terra-cotta-textured walls. Other than that, the room was empty. Nowhere for visitors to sit.

No one got to sit in his presence.

Karen, another one of his succubi, stood next to Asmodeus by the table. They’d clearly just finished their business. He buttoned his black shirt while Karen drew her clothes back into place, keeping her eyes averted.

As an incubus, Asmodeus radiated a level of sex appeal that most women couldn’t resist. Even though he was twice her age, he looked no more than thirty. That was the benefit of being a sex demon: a youthful appearance right until the very end.

Topped off with his dark hair and eyes, playboy charm, and lean, sculpted physique, Asmodeus had the makings of every woman’s dream hero. But in his case, describing him as a lady-killer would be a hundred percent accurate. Now that Amara knew who he really was, all she noticed was his cruelty and deception. He was evil.

“That’s enough, Karen. You may retire for the evening.”

Karen gave Asmodeus a tight nod and headed for the exit. The revulsion in her eyes, mixed with the pitying glance she tossed to Amara, said it all.

My turn.
Except she hadn’t come back with what he’d sent her for. Oh, she was in big, big trouble.

“You encountered no difficulty, I presume?” When she hesitated, trying to figure out the best way to confess her failure, Asmodeus turned to her with a glower. “The dark elf I sent you for?”

Her stomach was heavy as lead. The urge to run almost overwhelmed her. But she couldn’t. He would only chase her down. “He...he got away.”

“He
got
away
?” The steely menace in his voice made her edge back. “Tell me, Amara, how is that possible?”

Her current assignment was a powerful dark elf named Lucio. He was in this dimension for a few days to conduct business. When she’d approached him tonight, he’d looked her up and down before dismissing her with a bored, “Sorry, darling, but I’m here on business, not pleasure. Now be a good girl and fuck off.”

Not even the copious amounts of allure she’d emitted were enough to sway him, though his three personal bodyguards had eyed her with interest. One of them had even cornered her by the bar before she’d squirmed out of his grasp and managed to escape.

“I...he wouldn’t cooperate. Didn’t seem interested. I couldn’t get him to go with me.”

Asmodeus’s eyes narrowed and he stalked toward her. She barely had time to blink before he curled his hand into a fist and struck her, hard, on the left side of her face.

Amara flew several feet before hitting the floor with enough force to disorient her. The rough wool of the Persian carpet scratched the bare skin of her back. Familiar.

She’d been here many times before.

When her stomach rolled, she turned to her side and fought the desire to vomit. Asmodeus would be twice as pissed if she puked on his priceless carpet. The urge passed, and she swallowed back the bitter tang of blood in her mouth before trying to stand. Her body wouldn’t cooperate.

Asmodeus’s bare feet stopped right in front of her.
Shit.

Casually, he bent down, closing his hand around her throat and forcing her into a seated position. He squeezed hard, cutting off her air supply.

“How difficult can it be, Amara? You fuck him and take his life essence. Even a brain-dead succubus could manage to pull that off.”

She tried to pry his hand away from her throat, glaring at him the whole while. Wishing for once she could fight back. Rake his flesh, gouge his eyes out, grab one of the daggers he hung on his wall and gut him with it. She’d never allowed any man to abuse her. Never been one to put up with that crap.

But then she remembered...Solara. The reason she was here to begin with.

The reason she now belonged to Asmodeus.

She uncurled her fingers from his hand, forcing herself to relax. Apparently mollified by her reaction, he lessened the grip on her throat enough for her to choke out a reply. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right,” he said through gritted teeth. “It won’t. That would make me quite angry.”

Oh yes, she knew what happened when he grew angry. She carried mental scars from it that would never fade.

“I’ll try again tomorrow. I won’t take no for an answer.”

“That’s good.” He released her throat with a beleaguered sigh, sliding his hand down her chest. “I don’t understand you, Amara. You are beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful of my succubi. You
must
not fail me.”

He cupped her breast, and against her will, her body responded, seeking the sustenance only a man could provide. Her stupid body didn’t care how depraved he was, or the things he’d done. It sought only sex, and the life essence it could provide, uncaring who her victim was. She hated this about herself more than anything.

Amara bit her lip hard, reveling in the pain. Whatever it took to keep herself from involuntarily arching into his touch. But he knew what she was going through, the hunger that ravaged her. The bastard. After all, he was a sex demon, too. That was what made his power over her so absolute.

His laugh was soft and silky. “You poor thing. How long has it been since you last fed?”

The asshole knew full well how long it’d been. It was his fault she was starving. “Three days.”

“Such a long time.” His free hand slipped under her short dress and between her legs. This time she couldn’t stop herself from undulating against his touch, drinking in the small bit of nourishment it provided her. It wasn’t good enough.

Sex was what she needed to survive. It was the only thing that would replenish her depleting life essence. But the chemicals her body produced during sex were toxic to everyone but other sex demons. As an incubus, Asmodeus was one of the few men who could feed her without dying in the process. Ironic, since she would choose death over having to endure being touched by him again.

How unlucky for her.

While there weren’t a great many succubi, especially living in this dimension, they far outnumbered incubi. Succubi could breed with any species, even though their mates usually died, but incubi could only breed with other succubi. The whole death-by-sex thing tended to preclude non-succubi from carrying an incubus child to term.

The disparity in the incubi-to-succubi ratio was one of the reasons Asmodeus had been able to amass his unwilling harem so easily. They’d all been fooled by him, and once he’d collected them, he’d treated them as his possessions. To be used however he desired.

Asmodeus’s words when she’d first bound herself to him crept into her mind:
A whore. You’re nothing more than a whore, Amara. That’s all a succubus really is.

He’s right
. In the end, she was nothing more than that.

Asmodeus drew his fingers away, and a pained moan escaped her. So hungry. Her stomach twisted into knots and the spot between her thighs burned, aching to be filled. This was the worst sort of hell. She couldn’t even control her own body.

When he grinned, her flesh crawled. Bad things generally followed when he wore an expression like that.

“Tell you what,” he said, giving her a sweet smile. “I’ll send you to Gofrey. He’ll make sure you’re well fed in no time.”

Amara drew back at the horror his words elicited. This wasn’t the first time he’d threatened her with that, but she feared one day he would follow through. Having to endure Asmodeus’s touch was more than enough. She didn’t want to be forced to accommodate his lackey, too.

“No.” She cursed the tremor in her voice. “I’ll complete my assignment tomorrow. I promise.”

“Good,” he said with marked satisfaction, “because if you fail me again, you won’t like the consequences.”

He rose to his feet and turned his back on her in a gesture of clear dismissal.

Amara rose and concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other. She closed her hand over the antique crystal knob.

“Oh, Amara.”

She stilled, her hand tightening around the knob. “Yes?”

“You know, you should be happy you’ve found a home here with me. Who else would welcome a succubus like you?”

Unbidden, the memory of turquoise eyes flashed into her mind. Of an intriguing demon with olive-toned flesh, a strong, chiseled face, and shaggy hair that fell close to jaw-length. The eyes were obviously glamoured, but she’d instinctively known that the rest of him was just as handsome. The way he’d regarded her that night—like she might be his salvation. He was the only man who’d ever managed to touch her heart, however brief their acquaintance.