Awakened by a Demoness (13 page)

She pointedly looked at their audience.

Rey looked there too and realised that she was right. He didn’t want the gathered fae, immortals and witches overhearing anything he and Asteria said, let alone whatever the half-breed had to tell him.

If the half-breed had to tell him anything.

He had the feeling that it was a trap, a lie constructed by Asteria to lure him to somewhere quiet and then kill him, but he nodded anyway, part of him curious about her intentions since he couldn’t read them. Had she really found the half-breed?

If she had, why would she bring him to the female when she knew he was also on a mission to secure her?

Unless she had already lured the half-breed over to the demon side.

Asteria walked ahead of him, her black wings shrinking into her back with each bouncing step. They disappeared and her armour followed them, replaced by her standard black mini corset and a black-and-purple striped pleated skirt, fishnet stockings and metal-spike-heeled black leather boots.

When she looked back over her shoulder at him, he issued her a look that said he wasn’t going to follow suit and put his armour away. Until he knew what awaited him, it was staying in place.

She shrugged and turned away, took an alley on the right in the middle of the witches’ district and led him deeper into it, down a network of narrow streets.

“You don’t want to talk about what happened?” she said and flicked a glance over her shoulder at him.

“No.” He tried to put as much venom and emphasis into that single word as possible, so she would drop the subject.

She shrugged again and muttered something in the demon language, and he flinched as the words hurt his ears, each stabbing his mind like a hot poker.

“Demon,” he snapped in warning.

She tossed a remorseless look over her shoulder and mocked him. “Angel.”

He ground to a halt when she stopped dead and whirled to face him.

“You’re just pissy because angels don’t have a language that can hurt us.”

He smiled slowly. “We don’t?”

Her cheeks paled and the triumph and amusement fled her face. When she spoke, she no longer sounded sure of herself. “You don’t.”

His smile widened and he opened his mouth.

She had her hand clamped over it before he could utter a word, wide fearful eyes darting between his and her body pressed so close to his that he burned despite the hard plates of armour that separated them. The pressure of her hand against his face weakened as he stared into her eyes, breathing hard through his nose as the fire she had ignited inside him grew hotter, blazed like an inferno. The fear in her eyes melted away under the heat of desire that began to shine in them.

Damn.

He wanted her.

She wanted him too.

His senses stretched around them and when he realised there wasn’t a soul in the alleys near them, the urge to turn with her and pin her to the white wall of the square building to his left almost overwhelmed him.

“W-we should keep moving,” she whispered, but she didn’t sound as if she wanted that at all.

She wanted to be here, with him, pressed close together like this. His hands itched, twitching at his sides with a need to touch her, to take hold of her waist and guide her against the wall, and show her all over again just how good they could be together.

She stepped back, her hand falling from his mouth, and busied herself with checking the waist of her skirt, even though there was nothing wrong with it.

The spell she had cast on him with just a touch shattered bringing him crashing back to Earth.

Spell.

He ground his teeth and shoved his right hand through the unruly lengths of his blond hair, preening it back.

It was just a spell.

He kept telling himself that as she led him deeper into the witches’ district, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. The electric spark that leaped between them whenever they were together had been there from the moment he had met her, long before the half-breed had hit him with the potion.

He lost track of his surroundings, his focus elsewhere. It was only when Asteria stopped again that he found the strength to stop mulling over everything that had happened since meeting her and took in where they were.

A small single storey square white building with a large window on the left of the façade and a jewel violet arched door on the right.

Asteria knocked, rapping her knuckles against the painted wood.

Rey waited for a horde of demons to burst out of the door and attack him.

It opened slowly to reveal the half-breed.

Her chocolate eyes darted both ways along the street and then she beckoned them inside. He used his gift to read her, found no ill intention, and followed Asteria into the cramped building. He had to squeeze to his left to allow the half-breed to close the door, bumping into a frayed red armchair that was far too large for such a small space, and knocking over a stack of books with his wings, sending them scattering across the stone floor.

The half-breed huffed and picked up the books, restacking them on the desk against the right wall.

Asteria made herself comfortable in the armchair opposite the one he had wedged himself behind, and the nerves he sensed flowing from her, the way her blue eyes kept darting to him and filling with remorse or something akin to it whenever they landed on him, set him on edge.

“What do you want with me?” he said, perhaps a little more brusquely than called for, but he didn’t like how alarm bells were ringing in his head and telling him to get away before something bad happened.

The half-breed gestured to the worn armchair. “It might be better if you sit… if what Asteria has told me about you is true… I don’t think you’re going to take this very well.”

Well, that sounded ominous.

He looked to Asteria, wasn’t sure why he did it, and when she nodded, her blue eyes pleading him to do as the half-breed had said, that feeling in the pit of his stomach grew worse.

He edged around the armchair, focused and sent his wings away, and slowly seated himself in it.

The half-breed paced, her nerves only adding to his.

She was quiet so long that he couldn’t hold his tongue.

“I should drag you to Heaven for launching that spell at me.”

She paled and fidgeted with her drab black dress. “I’m sorry. I had to get away and I figured that I’d have a chance if I stripped you both of your inhibitions… I thought it would make you fight since you’re an angel and she’s a demon.” She looked him over and then Asteria, a frown marring her brow. “You don’t look hurt though… didn’t it work?”

Rey refused to answer that. Asteria stayed mercifully silent too.

It had been a spell to strip inhibitions?

He really did desire her. The hunger and need he felt for her was real.

He looked across at Asteria, and the hint of colour on her cheeks made him burn with a need to touch them and feel their heat against his fingers.

“You’ve been played,” the half-breed said, pulling his attention away from Asteria. He stared at her, trying to make sense of what she had said, but she didn’t give him a chance to catch up. “I’m Julianna by the way. I’m not sure you know my name… and I thought I should probably introduce myself. I know I’m a half-breed… honestly… the powers I have are hardly something one could mistake for magic… and I suck at spellcasting so it was always rather obvious I wasn’t a witch. Besides, my mother never told me I was one. I really don’t know where you got that information from… either of you… but I suspect it was all part of the plan.”

“Your mother?” Rey frowned at her, struggling to keep up as she talked at such speed he could barely make out the words. “Plan? What plan?”

He looked to Asteria. She sighed, that remorseful edge back in her eyes, and looked away from him.

“What the merry hell is going on here?” he barked and Julianna tensed.

“Every five centuries the Devil and Heaven do this to create a power torn between realms… a person they fight to control… and whoever wins raises that person until they are ready to be dispatched to find a half-breed to claim for their realm.” Julianna fell silent, fear flowing from her as she looked between him and Asteria.

Rey’s stomach dropped into an icy chasm somewhere in the region of Hell.

He swallowed hard and looked to Asteria, sure he would find her smiling and laughing at him because he had fallen for her trick.

Her solemn gaze was locked on her knees.

Damn.

His ears rang, mind spinning as he tried to comprehend what Julianna had just dropped on him, a bombshell of apocalyptic proportions.

He and Asteria were both a product of such a union between an angel and demon. They had been like Julianna once, a half-breed hiding out in the mortal realm, unaware that one day Heaven and Hell would dispatch someone to claim them.

He leaned forwards, placed his head between his knees and fought for air.

It explained so much that he knew it was true.

The way Asteria felt different to other demons made a sudden sickening sort of sense. She had a flicker of light from her dormant angelic powers. The reason he hadn’t gained a black feather from his sin of making love with her made dreadful sense too. It was because he had a shadow of darkness from his demonic heritage, so making love with her hadn’t been a sin at all.

“But.” He lifted his head, cursed mentally when he caught Asteria’s soft look, one that made him feel she wanted to hold him and needed to be comforted too as everything sank in. “But… I don’t remember being a half-breed.”

Julianna drew the wooden chair away from the desk, turned it around and sat down on it with a sigh. “When my mother discovered she was pregnant with me and fled Heaven, she ran to my father first. He had been back to Hell, and in that time, he had uncovered a truth that shook them both. He had found the demon who had been sent to claim him, and that demon had broken with the Devil and told my father that they had erased his memories after he had pledged allegiance to the Devil.”

Rey stared at her, feeling nothing as he absorbed that fact. He couldn’t remember his parents, or being young, but every angel he had met had told him of his family and they had all told him that most angels forgot their childhood as they grew, the lifespan of an angel so long that it was impossible to remember that far back.

He felt Asteria’s eyes on him, sensed her need for comfort and reassurance, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from Julianna as everything crashed over him.

More than just the fact that he had once been a half-breed. Julianna’s words rang in his head, and from them he could only draw one outcome, one thing she hadn’t yet mentioned outright.

Asteria’s voice shook as she said the exact words he was thinking, “Why send the previous half-breeds?”

She already knew the answer to that question, as did he.

Julianna looked back at her knees. “My parents believed it was to breed an even stronger demon or angel depending on what side the offspring chose when approached… that was what happened with them. Heaven dispatched an angel as the vanguard, sent to locate the half-breed. Through my mother’s reports, they were able to know exactly when to send my father to cross paths with her.”

That dreadful sickness returned and Rey had to swallow hard to keep it down as he croaked, “How?”

Julianna turned soft brown eyes on him, filled with pity and remorse. “My mother and father believe the report was filtered down to the Devil.”

“Fucking hell,” Asteria muttered and stood sharply. “Seriously?”

It made too much sense to Rey to be anything other than the truth. He had reported to Heaven that he had a strong lead, his best yet, and that had been filtered to the Devil so he could send Asteria to the same location, causing their paths to cross.

Asteria turned on him. “Did you tell anyone you had found Julianna?”

He wanted to lie to her, to spare her the pain, but he slowly nodded. “I told my superiors about her possible location… two days before you showed up in that exact location looking for her.”

“Devil be damned,” she bit out and began pacing across the cramped room, tunnelling her fingers through her onyx hair before fisting it hard. “I knew the bastard’s offer was too suspicious… redemption.” She barked out a mirthless laugh. “Like that son of a bitch does redemption. He should have killed me for failing him, not offered a chance to redeem myself. God-fucking-dammit. I should have listened to my instincts. He set me up. That bastard.”

Her eyes blackened and her pupils glowed gold and stretched into thin vertical slits. Her horns flared forwards and a snarl escaped her red lips, erupting from between her fangs.

He was angry too, but losing his temper wasn’t going to solve anything.

His anger mingled with disbelief and manifested itself in a strange sort of numbness that left him cold as he sat staring at Asteria, disconnected from the world.

“Look… I told you this because I want to be left alone. I have a family I love… one who raised me and means the world to me… and I want you all to just leave us alone,” Julianna said, her soft voice cutting through the ringing in his ears. He shifted his gaze to her, stared blankly at her, struggling to make himself feel something as she announced his mission was going to end in failure. “I’m out of here. I want no part of this. I just want to be left alone… please… for all of our sakes.”

For all of their sakes.

He felt nothing as he took that in, banded it around in his head, went over the implications of what she was asking. She wanted to remain a half-breed, torn between realms but belonging to neither.

He had chosen to become an angel. Asteria had chosen to become a demon.

Julianna was choosing to become neither.

He had chosen to become an angel.

He lowered his gaze to the stone floor, stared at it as that rang in his mind and he tried to remember what had come before his life as one of the Echelon.

His eyes slowly widened.

Dear God, was that how the Echelon were created?

They were the elite of the angels and able to easily sense demons. Was it because of their partly demonic blood that they were able to do such a thing?