bedeviled & beyond 06 - bedeviled & befouled (11 page)

Unfortunately she noticed. “Is our king not keeping you happy, my queen?” She lifted her head and looked around, her disturbing gaze taking in the dilapidated state of Dialle’s rooms. “I guess I already know the answer to that...” Her gaze returned to me, filled with angry color. “Don’t I?”

I pulled power forward and held it close. I wasn’t sure what I was going to be able to do with it but I could almost smell danger in the air around the beautiful Royal and I felt just vulnerable enough, lying chained and naked before her, to overreact.

She sat next to me on the bed, dropping a hand on either side of my waist, and lowered her face close to mine. “Don’t think to use your puny powers on me, halfling. You haven’t enough in you to do me any real harm. And since your bond with our king is broken, there’s really no reason not to squash you like the brimstone sucking cockroach you are.”

“Technically, I don’t suck brimstone. That would be your drug of choice, apparently.”

She bit my bottom lip, hard. Her brutally sharp teeth tore into my skin and pain sluiced through me. I cried out as she jerked her head and ripped a deep rift in my skin.

As she lifted her head, warm blood ran down my chin.

She licked her lips, closing her eyes with pleasure as she tasted my blood. “It would appear your mouth is the only large thing on you, halfling.”

I forced my mind away from the pain in my lip. Her proximity had given me an idea. “I don’t know about that. My ass is pretty big too.”

She stared at me for a long moment, apparently trying to decide if she was going to chew on my nose too, but she finally laughed, shaking her head with wonder. “I can’t figure out if you’re very brave, or just extremely stupid.”

When I grinned, a jolt of pain from my torn lip reminded me it wasn’t a good idea. “Take your pick. I’ve heard both all my life. I prefer to believe that I’m just that good, of course. But you might disagree.”

She slipped her finger over my breast, circling a rigid nipple. I let my body react this time, allowing the scent of my arousal to saturate the air between us. “I’m also very much in my Settling right now, devil. So if you aren’t planning on doing something about that I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tease me.”

“Then it seems it will be easier to torture you than I’d assumed.”

I shrugged and closed my eyes, letting her delicate touch stir the lust Dialle had fired to life again. I jerked when moist heat encompassed my nipple and my eyes shot open. She had her lips around the rigid peak and, as I looked into her eyes, she sucked hard on the hungry flesh.

I didn’t have to fake the moan that emerged from my throat. My hips arched upward of their own accord. My Settling might be greatly diminished without my magics, but the little store of power within me was apparently enough to keep it alive.

She licked her way down my body and stopped, her hot breath bathing my mons. I held my breath, suddenly afraid of what she’d do. She laughed as if she could sense my fear and opened her lips wide, showing me her elongated canines. “Scream pretty for me, ugly halfling.”

I told myself I wouldn’t scream. I wouldn’t give her the pleasure. But then she plunged those massive teeth into my mons and all bets were off. I screamed long and hard, my hands straining the magic chains as blood ran down my thigh. She sucked the wounds she’d made and pleasure melded with the pain, bringing me closer to orgasm than I would have thought possible.

My gaze locked on the bright ribbon of rich, red blood running over my pale skin and I suddenly wondered what it would taste like.

She closed her eyes and moaned as she suckled blood through the holes she’d made in my flesh. Too bad her fun was about to end.

“What’s your name?” I asked her in a husky voice.

Her eyes opened and glanced upward. She lifted her head and shimmied up my body, pressing her soft warmth against my throbbing mons as she put her lips close to my ear. “I am Kiri. And I am the last thing you will see or feel in this world, Astra Q Phelps.”

I sucked in a breath as her teeth found my throat. My hips arched upward and I ground myself against her soft belly, the picture of helpless need.

As her teeth closed down on my throat I smiled. “That might be true, Kiri.” I yanked my power forward and let it wash out of me unfettered and wild. It blasted away from me with an audible whoosh and wrapped itself around the devil riding my body, hitting her with the force of a laser train. “But I’m thinking not.”

She screamed as the angelic energy slammed into her and her head fell back, her black eyes swirling red with pain and rage.

For a moment I was worried she wasn’t going to fight back. But then she stiffened her spine and, with an angry roar, slammed a fist against my chest and sent magic, black and oily with evil, surging into me.

The pain blossomed outward in a knife-like flash, making it impossible even to breathe. A horrible sense of déjà vu swamped me. Tears slipped from my eyes as I screamed under the onslaught of her horrific power and my skin felt as if it was being ripped from my body.

Just like that I was back in that underground cavern, strung between two huge devil guards with Crisanne standing over me. Once more I was being raped of my magic, beaten into nothingness beneath a stronger creature’s massive power. Again, I was being reduced to helplessness.

I whimpered as the royal riding my body laughed, her terrifying black gaze widening with pleasure as my body shriveled beneath hers. Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to fold myself into the fetal position. But I couldn’t move my arms and legs. I was trapped. Helpless. Terrified.

Again.

Then I remembered why I was there. Somehow, through the choking fog of heart-stopping pain, my mind formed around a single, inescapable word.
Dialle
. It was the only thing that could make me fight back, when all I wanted after months of pain and despair was to give up, curl into a tight little ball, and let my life wash quietly away.

But his name was a lock against those thoughts. It forced me to remember something very important. I still had work to do.

I opened my eyes and looked into Kiri’s smug black gaze. Blood ran from my ears and nose and my vision was hazy, but I wasn’t going to let the devil win again.

As Gus had taught me to do, I fought my natural instinct to repel external magic and concentrated hard on turning myself into a receiving device. We hadn’t practiced pulling dark magic into my core, but I figured the principal should be the same. It wasn’t quite, though. Because dark and light magic don’t easily fill the same space. Like oil and water they don’t like to mix.

At first the magic refused to be drawn in. It continued to scour my flesh like acid, repelling the bright energy filling my core. I fought on, feeling my energy and magic sliding away from me even as my heart stuttered in my chest. I closed my eyes and tried to push the pain away. It was a nearly impossible task.

Kiri’s power sliced into me, ripping across my flesh like knives, while clutching my insides in an unrelenting grip that turned them to mush. But I focused harder, challenging my will to win, testing myself against a grueling and seemingly impossible task.

Slowly, ever so slowly I sensed the dark magic giving way. I knew the moment the first small strand of her dark power fused with mine. My eyes shot open and my chest swelled under the pulse of power growing there.

A moment later, Kiri felt it too. Her perfect, pink lips opened as she sucked a surprised breath of air. I increased my efforts, giving a final, brutal pull on her power to drag it, harsh and clawing, from her breast.

Kiri threw back her head and screamed, the sound throbbing across the dense waves of power filling the room and beating against my eardrums like distant thunder. Finally, she collapsed on top of me and, gritting my teeth, I tried to disengage from her power before I killed her. The connection between us held firm. I tried again, using everything I had to cut the bond. It thinned and rolled away, evading my mental grasp.

The Royal on my chest stopped twitching and her eyes rolled back in her head. I could no longer see her chest rising in breath. I panicked. With a cry of desperation, I bore down on the stream of black power pouring into my core and sliced it clean off, sagging back to the bed with relief.

I lay there, my head spinning, as her ugly magic rolled around under my skin. Nausea boiled in my belly and for a moment I thought I would be sick. I had felt the same way during the veil-locking ceremony, when Dialle fed me black energy in an effort to defeat Satan and keep the veil from locking down over the Earth. It had nearly killed me then. And I don’t think I’d consumed nearly as much of it.

When I thought I could keep the contents of my stomach in place, I looked up at the shimmering chains locking me to the bed and, with a thought, sliced cleanly through the cuffs. I looked at the cuffs around my ankles and did the same.

Shoving Kiri to the side, I slid out from under her and felt her heart. It was barely beating. I needed to heal her or she would die.

But before I did that...

I reached for the discarded chains and clapped them over her wrists, sealing them with a jolt of magic. Then I sent healing magics into her chest and, after a moment her eyes fluttered weakly open.

I climbed off the bed, dressing myself with a thought before I even realized I’d done it. Damn. I grinned. That power would come in handy for sure.

I thought about my knives and a sword and they appeared. As I shoved the blades into the sheathes in my boots power fizzled over my fingertips. When I straightened back up my head swam so badly I had to grab the edge of the bed to steady myself.

“You bitch!” Kiri’s voice was rusty and weak. “What have you done to me?”

I spared her a glance, feeling more powerful than I ever had. “I took your magic away from you.”

She stared at me with horror clearly written across her pretty features. “You’re a monster.”

And that’s when it hit me. I was Crisanne.

Holy frunkin’ shit. I’d become my worst enemy.

~SC~

I opened the door and looked both ways down the hall. It was unnaturally quiet. Nothing was ever really quiet in Hell. And if it seemed that way that meant trouble was happening nearby. Somewhere in Dialle’s castle all hell was breaking loose—probably literally—and I needed to tread carefully or I’d step right into the middle of it.

I slipped out the door and closed it as Kiri started to scream. The door snicked shut, cutting off her screams like a blade slicing through newly sprung grass. I smiled. Nobody understood sound proofing like a royal. They were always doing something they didn’t want anybody else to know about.

I hurried down the hall, not sure where I was going, except that I knew I needed to find Dialle. I figured the first place I should look would be his throne room. I remembered from the last time I’d been there that the castle in Hell was laid out a lot like the Royal Court in Angel City. It wasn’t a mirror image. The court was built inside a huge warehouse in the outskirts of the city and only had three levels. By contrast, the castle in Hell had four large levels and a tower that I thought went up six floors. At the top of that tower was the dragon roost. Glynus had spent many a fun afternoon up there playing “incinerate the Christmas tree” with the young green dragons when she and I were there last.

I smiled at the memory.

My mental drawers shifted and Darma was suddenly in my mind.
Astra? Where the hell are you?

In Dialle’s castle.

I can’t believe you just ran off on us. We’re under attack out here.

I know, I was there, remember?

No. I mean we’re under renewed attack. A whole new crop of soldiers just showed up.

I sighed. Dialle hadn’t wasted any time.
I’m guessing those are Dialle’s private soldiers.

Dialle? Why would he send his soldiers after us?

I have no idea. But he’s not himself. I’m really worried. He actually chained me to the bed.

Silence throbbed for a beat and then my sister’s voice drawled through my mind, filled with disgust. TMI, Astra.

Don’t be stupid, Darma. It wasn’t in a fun way... Well...it was fun for a while...

Astra!

Sorry. Anyway, all I meant was that this is going to be harder than we thought. We’re going to have to actually kidnap him to get him out of here.

Frunkin’ wonderful. How do you propose to do that?

We’ll have to get an angel chain on him.

We’d need both dark and light magic for that, Astra.

I am aware, Darma.

So I repeat, how do you propose to do that?

You let me worry about that. Leave the angels and soldiers there to fight and you, Slayer, and Emo slip away. Come to the castle. And bring Glynus.

I broke the mental connection before Darma could launch into her usual diatribe about how selfish and undependable I was. Aside from just pissing me off, there wasn’t really any new information there. No sense wasting time going over all my shortcomings again.

I heard voices and ducked into an alcove as two soldiers came around the corner speaking the guttural language of Hades. My ancient Hades was rusty at best but I heard Dialle’s name, so I followed them at a careful distance and tried to hear what they were saying.

Several minutes and a butt-load of twists and turns later, they stopped in front of a set of golden doors and I knew they’d taken me where I needed to go. The soldiers stood in front of the throne room arguing in the harsh language my aunt Deidre had tried to teach me when I was young. Suffice it to say, at the time I was less interested than I should have been.

Darma, of course, could speak it like a pro. Though she’d rejected all things magical until recently, she just didn’t have it in her not to excel at everything she tried.

That moment was one of those very rare occasions when I wished my sister was there. I really wanted to know what had those soldiers so riled up. I could only hope it was the arrival of my small band of merry men and women. Hopefully we were putting a dent in their ranks.