Asmodeus paused to master himself and closed his eyes at the
terrible memories.
“It was my brother Ashtoreth who suffered the most from
those torments and he bears the scars of it still. But I saw the horrific
tools, the dreadful machines they used to make those marks on Ash’s skin.”
He shuddered reflexively, remembering the horror of it,
remembering what they had found that terrible day.
He’d had more than a taste of the torment. He took a deep
breath, the muscles of his back stretching against his own scars and the
remembered pain.
Yet Ash had suffered far worse.
How did he bear it for so long?
Asmodeus wondered,
How
long can I?
Gabriel laid a hand on his chest, sympathy in her eyes.
With a nod, Asmodeus welcomed the comfort she offered and
placed his hand over hers where it lay over his heart, squeezing it lightly in
gratitude and continued.
“One of ours managed to escape, taking the
Book of Demons
with him. He did not return to us.” Old grief moved through him. “Zaebos was
his name. We thought the
Book
lost. Prayed it was. We were wrong. Using
the
Book
, this mortal found a way to summon me from the other plane where
we—my kind—had escaped those who persecuted us. He drew me back to this one.
One moment I was in my chambers on the other plane, and the next, here.”
“For what purpose?” Gabriel asked, frowning slightly.
“For what purpose is it that most mortals seek to summon one
such as me? Money, power, domination.”
“How?”
“Through magic. This mortal wanted me to undermine or defeat
his enemies. And as long as he has the
Book
and I wear these, I have no
choice but to obey him.”
He rattled the iron bracelets on his wrists and the shackle
around his ankle. “Iron binds me and all my kind. We were content to stay out
of this plane of existence once we were driven out, although it is an emptier
life.”
“So why am I here?” she asked.
His heart clenched.
“My magic was weak, too weak to do what he demanded. To do
such requires power. On the other plane we have no need of that much power but
we use little magic there. Here? Under these demands?” He shrugged
uncomfortably. “I needed sustenance.”
Sustenance.
It pained him to think of her as such.
Her hand rose to her throat, a shadow moving in her eyes.
Closing his eyes briefly as his jaw tightened, Asmodeus
nodded, held her closer, took a breath and said, “That is only part of it, my
angel. It was all sustenance until the moment I touched you but without you I
would starve to death. And was. We can eat food but it does little but sustain
us. Barely.”
“So they brought me to you.”
He looked into her eyes. “Any woman would have done, would
have given me strength enough but there are a rare few who are more. You are
one of those. I would not have used you so by my choice, my angel, but they
used me until they starved me. They studied us and somehow divined my needs,
though I did not tell them.”
Would not tell them. That there was more to the tale he did
not say. Now was not the time.
“Magic,” Gabriel said. That was a concept that would clearly
take some getting used to.
“As you see.” Asmodeus nodded and gestured to the firepots.
“Remember that the stories of the past are frequently grounded in truth. Once
your kind possessed magic even as we do. It took the place of the technologies
you have now developed and depend on but then there were only a few who could
use it in quantity, few who could wield it, and so those few were revered and frequently
honored. The magic of the Oracles at Delphi were real, as was the magic of the
Druids and all the others whom your histories paint as having such.”
He sighed. “As with all things of power though, there are
always those who would control it, chain it. Some who did not have it so feared
those who did. Thus the Greeks gave birth to the notion of controlling those
with magic, binding the Oracles at Delphi and keeping them drugged with the
mists, imprisoned, separate, isolated. It was the Romans who, in their desire
for conquest, refined it by wiping out the Druids—people of magic often being
those in positions of power.
“The church turned it into an art and the name of my people
into the description of how it would be done. They wanted to be certain the
only magic used was theirs and so it began. They took the name of the wise
ones—Wiccans—and changed it to witches, and used it as an excuse to slaughter
thousands of innocent women and men. They demonized us until we fled to another
plane of existence or risked being eradicated. So it was with my people, the
Daemonae,” he said, tasting bitterness. “But it was easier with us.”
Asmodeus gestured to his body.
“You are a little hard to miss,” she said.
He smiled a little and his hand tightened over hers.
“As you say. We can take human form,” he continued, “as part
of our camouflage. Our nature, though, betrayed us. For our race to continue,
we must have interaction with your kind.”
He looked at her. Hesitated as though considering his next
words. She had a bad vibe about this.
“The Daemonae are universally male. We must seek among your
kind for procreation, to continue our race. Without humans for that and for
nourishment on this plane, we would cease to exist. Just so, as a survival
mechanism, most humans are, um, attracted to us—strongly.”
Asmodeus took a breath and said, “There is that about my
kind that…draws…those of yours.”
Looking up into the preternatural beauty of his face, into
the nearly hypnotic, whirling, molten gold of his eyes as his tail caressed her
leg, Gabriel couldn’t deny the attraction. Already she wanted him to take her
again. She was far too aware of how white her skin looked in contrast to the
deep red of his, of the silken feel of his hair against her.
Running her hand over the strong muscles of his arm, Gabriel
said, “I can see why.”
“It is more than that,
mishea
.” He smiled at her
evident appreciation of his physical form. “It is a magical attraction, as much
a part of our essence as our being, a thing of our eyes, of our motion.”
Gabriel studied him. There was something in his voice.
Mishea
was clearly an endearment by the way he said
it. Gabriel tried to ignore the part of her that was touched by it, that warmed
to it.
Still. A magical attraction?
It hurt.
“And now?”
She didn’t like the idea of being manipulated but she had to
know.
Seeing the look in her eyes, Asmodeus said gently but
firmly, “Your mind is your own, my angel, always. It is an attraction only, the
effect momentary, to help you past the strangeness of us, to see us for ourselves.
What you feel is your own. The attraction does not compel. You could have
resisted me from the very beginning had you wished to, if you had been repelled
by me, but you did not.”
For Asmodeus it went far beyond attraction, but again, he
could not tell her that. Not yet. It was too soon, too quick on the heels of
what he had just said. She would come to it in her own time of her own will…or
not. His heart twisted at the thought.
Gabriel looked into his brilliant, long-lashed, ruby eyes
and could almost feel him willing her to believe him.
She believed him.
Remembering her initial reaction to him, she couldn’t deny
she had wanted him intensely from the first moment she saw him but she thought
she could have resisted had she chosen to do so. Some part of her, though, had
responded to him almost instantly. Had responded to more than what was in his
eyes, his body. Had responded instead to his spirit, had wanted him—Asmodeus.
She still did, with a craving so intense that it washed through every inch of her
and made her body tighten. Just the thought of fucking him again had her hot
and wet.
Her desire stirred again, the sweet scent of it ripe in the
air and Asmodeus closed his eyes as relief poured through him.
It pleased him greatly to know it, to share it, as he
desired her just as greatly.
While he could feed from any woman, it would never be as
fulfilling as it was with her, nor would it ever be as good with another again.
There would never be another for him but her.
“The church did name me the demon of lust,” he said, smiling
in response to that desire, and slid his already thickening cock between her
smooth, white thighs. He wanted her again. Her body was a delight to him and
pleasuring her even more so.
“Did they?” Gabriel said and her voice sounded strangely
strangled. “And you’re only telling me this now?”
His cock brushed against her slit teasingly and already he
ached to drive into her depths. “There was no time before,” Asmodeus pointed
out.
With a grin, Gabriel said, “True.”
Asmodeus smiled and then pain hit him so suddenly that his
back bowed. He tumbled to the floor, helpless, his every muscle locked, his
teeth gritted against the agony that ripped through him. He braced himself on
the floor against the pain.
In an instant, Gabriel was on her knees beside him.
“Asmodeus!”
A voice boomed furiously from nowhere and everywhere, the
tone demanding.
“Asmodeus, answer me.”
His jaw clenched against the demand. Asmodeus clothed
Gabriel and banished the smoke.
Chapter Three
Gabriel stiffened. She knew that voice. Knew it well.
The man who stood on the other side of the smoke and the
concentric rings of magic was all too well known to her. S
He was slightly over six feet tall, with a thick head of
graying hair touched by two deep widow’s peaks and his deep-set black eyes in
his unnaturally youthful face glittered with barely concealed rage. He wore a
designer suit as if he were at home in it, as if it were casual wear. Gordon
Templeton was a handsome, distinguished-looking man and not one to be trifled
with. CEO of one of the last surviving independent investment firms, he was
worth millions, perhaps billions.
An imposing man, he was also a man accustomed to command and
to being obeyed. Instantly.
He was one of the few men who…disturbed her, for want of
another word.
There were and had always been rumors about him, not least
of which was that he dabbled in the occult.
On Wall Street they called him The Wizard, and not without
reason. But Wall Street hadn’t coined the term. He had.
It was for Gordon Templeton that Gabriel had studied
esoterica and the occult. There were rumors that he experimented with dark
magic. Once she knew what to look for it was everywhere around him—like looking
at an optical illusion of two faces looking at each other, then realizing that,
if you looked at it differently, it became a vase.
Gabriel had always seen both images in those pictures, but
until she had studied the occult, she hadn’t really studied his corporate seal.
Once she did though, the reversed pentagram had been unmistakable,
along with the all-seeing eye and several other esoteric and magical symbols.
The watermarks of all his corporate documents were littered with images of
knots to bind those who signed them.
It was said he cast spells against those who opposed him.
Whether it was the spells themselves or his belief in them, he carried himself
with an undeniable arrogance, the kind of confidence only success could bring.
There were some who said the title of wizard wasn’t so far
off, that he practiced magic of the darkest kind, that he was a magus—a dark
magician. That he summoned spirits. And demons.
Though she had researched and studied, she hadn’t really
believed it, had chalked the stories up to Templeton’s enormous ego. It had
seemed too unreal, hard to believe. But looking at Asmodeus, there was no doubt
now the stories were real.
There was an awful satisfaction in Gordon Templeton’s dark
eyes. Gabriel should have known Templeton was behind this.
A chill went through her just at that look but she didn’t
dare let him see it.
This was as bad as it could get. Maybe worse.
She kept her eyes level and her mouth tight.
A beam of light speared through the darkness, off to the
right, beyond the rings. One of Templeton’s minions stood at a podium and
chanted from a book as Asmodeus writhed in agony beside her on the floor.
The
Book of Demons
. The one that had summoned
Asmodeus and now tortured him.
With a gesture like limning a door, Templeton stepped
through the circles with careless disregard for the danger of them.
Slowly, Gabriel got to her feet to put herself between him
and Asmodeus—as useless a gesture as that was.
“Hello, Gordon,” she said quietly.
As an agent with the FBI, Gabriel had investigated Gordon
Templeton for years but he had lots of money to cover his tracks. His business
practices had always been shady but in all those years she had never been able
to prove anything against him. Until recently. She had been close to having a
solid case against him, finally.
His business partners and competitors frequently suffered
astonishing bad luck, horrific accidents, fires, arson—nothing she could prove
or trace back to Templeton—while Templeton consistently made a profit. In the
last few months that bad luck had expanded to include anyone who had ever
crossed Templeton.
Some of those who had crossed him had disappeared.
Including her too, it seemed. Apparently, she had been
getting too close.
She didn’t waste her time pointing out to him the penalties
for what he had done. Despite the stiff punishments for assaulting and
kidnapping a federal agent, given the circumstances, she didn’t think it likely
that anyone would ever know what became of her. She would simply disappear like
all the others. Escape seemed unlikely.