I itched to join him.
But before I could even entertain the idea, the air in my office changed and the scowling form of my Aunt Myra was standing there. She was wearing the full-on regalia of a guardian angel. Shimmering white robes with silver belt and slippers. Her wings were folded against her back.
“Hey, Auntie.”
The scowl deepened. “Show some respect to your elders, Astra.” When I didn’t fall to my knees in abject apology she went on. “Are you ready?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure what to pack, how to dress.”
“Dress for trouble and pack weapons.”
I looked down at myself and shrugged. I was dressed as I usually dressed, formfitting clothes that limited my foes’ ability to grab and hold on. My clothes were pretty much all black, so the blood and guts didn’t show as much.
I checked my boots and found that my knives were still tucked safely within them. Reaching a hand to the small of my back I felt the longer, swordlike weapon nestled safely there and I wore my belt of platinum crosses.
I was armed pretty much as usual.
“You look fine.” She reached out and grabbed my wrist before I could wrench it away. I tried to yank away from her before she got hold of me but she was way too fast.
In the blink of an eye, I found myself standing on a grassy hill, surrounded by trees and large rocks. In the distance the ground rose to sharp peaks, the grass giving way to hard scrabble earth and rocks.
Other than a slight smoky tang to the air it looked just like Earth. Frowning, I turned to her. “I thought we were going to an outer circle of Hell.”
“That’s where we are. You didn’t think the seventh circle would look like the first one, did you?”
“Well no…but I figured I’d be able to tell I was in Hell.”
A power arrow zinged past my head and splintered the wide trunk of a nearby tree. “Happy?” My aunt asked me as she turned to address the creature who’d attacked us. He was tall, leanly muscled and painfully handsome, with shoulder-length black hair and wide black eyes.
A royal devil.
When he lifted his hand to send another arrow our way, Myra raised her hands and held them in front of her, palms out. The power pinged harmlessly off her outstretched hands and shot back toward him.
He dived sideways to avoid being skewered by his own arrow, and I sent a fiery jolt of my own in his direction. He took the shot in the side and cried out, rolling behind a large boulder before I could follow it up with a killing shot.
I pulled my power forward and used it to mask my visual presence, a power I’d been working on recently, mostly to distract myself from the constant need to hump like a bunny, courtesy of my Settling.
As the world around me fell behind a shimmering yellow curtain of power, I walked toward the boulder. I was only a couple of feet away from it when my opponent’s head slid out from behind the boulder. He looked right through me, frowning at the slight waviness of the air in front of him.
Before he could figure out what the waviness meant, I grabbed him around the throat and flung him to the ground, pulling his arms around to his back and sitting on his legs.
Myra popped into view in front of him, glaring down at us. “Where is she, devil?”
He was so busy trying to see what was holding him down that he ignored her question at first. I let the obscuring veil slide away and he gasped.
I grinned. “Yup, snagged by a girl. Loser.”
One of Myra’s pretty silver slippers snaked out and connected with his jaw. I grimaced at the harsh crunching sound it made. Peering at the dainty-looking things again I wondered if she had the toes packed with lead.
“Damn, Auntie, I need a pair of those slippers.”
She just glared at me. Both of us knew I was deliberately trying to goad her. To what purpose, even I didn’t know. It just felt right.
“Where is Darma, vile son of the serpent?”
The unapologetic devil beneath me lifted his head and smiled at her. Blood ran in a thin ribbon down his handsome golden brow to drip on the ground beneath. A large bump had risen to mar the perfection of his royal features.
I really needed some of those slippers.
He lifted his head and sniffed, turning to me with wide eyes.
Oh-oh. He’d smelled my Settling on me.
Twisting his arms painfully behind him, I leaned closer. “Don’t even think about it.”
Royal Devils gained power as well as pleasure from sex. Their entire hierarchy was built on a sexual base of power, fed by sex, strengthened by it and destroyed by the lack of it.
As a creature of part Royal Devil descent, I’d always felt strongly the pull of my sexual side. But until my Settling I’d been able to control it.
Now I mostly just anticipated humping anything that moved, twitched or vibrated.
It was humiliating.
I was even starting to notice the way the scum of the underworld beneath my buttocks felt against my hungry skin.
So I smacked him. Hard. And then smacked him again.
Unfortunately it only made him hornier.
I smelled it on him.
And I realized as my panties dampened that I’d kind of liked it too.
Shit
!
Another gift of my Settling.
“I want to know where my sister is, you black-hearted underbottom dweller, or I’ll vaporize you on the spot.”
He turned his head completely around on his neck and grinned up at me.
“Eww!” I said. I had to keep remembering I was in an upper circle of Hell. The rules were different there.
“She’s with my master. You won’t get her free. He wants her for himself. But you and I could have some fun before I kill you.”
“Har! Have you noticed who has who…er…whom here?”
Just like that, the arms I was holding behind his back thinned, elongated and skimmed free from my hands. I jerked and tried to space shift but quickly discovered that he had one iron-fingered hand wrapped around my wrist and had flung a chain toward my Aunt Myra’s ankle with the other hand before either of us had time to squeak in alarm.
When he released me I realized he’d clamped an angel’s chain around my wrist. Both chains were attached to a wide belt made of gold he wore around his waist.
He immediately tugged on my chain, which had created a strange weakness in my limbs as soon as it had been clamped on, and I fell against a chest that I hadn’t noticed was so broad and hard before. His black eyes swirled with power as he tipped my chin, forcing me to meet his power-saturated gaze.
The immediate result was more weakness, less ability to resist.
“You were foreseen, lovely Tweener. My master will be pleased that you have come so quickly and were so easily captured.” He leaned down and caught my bottom lip between strong, white teeth, biting down hard enough to draw blood. His tongue swirled out and swept the blood away and he moaned softly, closing his eyes as if savoring the taste. “Delectable.”
My body softened under a wave of pure lust and my knees buckled. He caught me around the waist with a husky chuckle, pulling me upright again. “Patience, my sweet. We’ll have time when I get you to the castle. I’m sure he’ll let me keep you to myself for a while as a reward for capturing you.”
My stomach roiled with disgust. Beneath my body’s weakness, my mind still clung to a thin stream of reason, which allowed me to overcome his magics and my own damned Settling and recognize the danger Myra and I were in.
I glanced at her. What I saw made my blood run cold.
In general, chained angels didn’t fare well at the hands of their devil captors. The chains that connected them to their hosts were built of black magics, which was the antithesis of the light magics that created an angel.
Black magics were like acid to the celestial army. It ate away their strength, their will, their ability to function and fight their fate.
And an angel of Myra’s power would suffer doubly, even fourfold from its effects. Already I saw its poison in the gray pallor of her skin and the shakiness of her hands. She leaned heavily against a large rock and seemed to be panting with the effort to breathe.
In desperation I reached out to her with my mind.
Angel?
I was relieved to find I could still communicate telepathically with her.
She shook her head slightly, glancing toward our host.
Later, Astra!
She turned away as the Royal slid a large hand down my throat and cupped one of my breasts, the nipple peaking hungrily into his palm. Pain slid across her pretty blue eyes before she could hide it from me. I knew her well enough to know it was pain for me, not herself.
I thanked the Big Guy she’d turned away when the Royal’s hand continued over the soft roundness of my belly and into the moist vee between my thighs. My body swayed toward him even as my mind screamed in rebellion of this treatment.
That was when I decided that, no matter what happened to me, I would kill the bottom dweller who was currently pawing me. And his master too.
Nobody touched Astra Q. Phelps without permission from the Astra Q. Phelps dating committee of one. That’s me.
And despite what my body was telling him, my mind hadn’t—and would never have—given him permission to touch.
I’d kill him happily for that alone.
* * * * *
The castle our captor referred to was a dark blotch in the side of a black mountain that looked as if it had been burned into cinder and hardened into coal.
The black walls lifted high into a yellow, sulfurous sky, its jagged roofline peppered with the thick, deadly-looking bodies of hundreds of watchers, whose job it was to watch the skies and ground for angelic forays into Hell. The angels occasionally came down looking for the un-damned, whom the devils had dragged down for sport or to use as slaves.
I counted the watchers and took note of their attitudes as our host, whose name we’d learned was Mordat, hauled us toward the huge black doors at the front. An enormous pair of dragons guarded the doors, an enormous red and a slightly smaller black. Their midnight eyes sparked with speculation as they landed on me.
I held the black one’s eye for a moment longer than strictly wise, trying to assess its vulnerability. Black dragons tended to be slightly more aggressive than their red counterparts, and more opinionated.
Reds prided themselves on being moderate creatures. Since they had no strong personality traits or convictions, they were fairly easy to sway, making them easy marks to be lured by evil.
I figured, of the two, the black would give me the most trouble, despite his slightly smaller size. Myra caught my eye and gave me a small nod.
She agreed with my assessment.
Once we were through the doors of the castle, I started trying to figure out where they might be keeping Darma. On one side of the large, stone-floored foyer, a wide staircase led downward. The stench and cold, musty air coming from the stairwell told me it probably led to the dungeons.
Normally I would assume that was where they’d keep her. But since Mordat had so helpfully informed us that the Master fancied my acid-tongued sibling, I had to assume she was locked in an upper room somewhere. Easy to reach and pleasantly coiffed and perfumed for maximum enjoyment.
The poor slob didn’t know what was headin’ his way when he tried to savor that little morsel.
Hopefully he had scales for skin.
I had hoped our host would take us directly to his Master, but he was apparently one of those kids who didn’t like to share his toys. He handed Myra’s chain to a lower-form devil and gave it instructions to take her to the dungeons.
My aunt and I shared a look.
I’ll find you later,
I told her.
She nodded and let the devil drag her toward the musky stairwell. I watched her go with a heavy heart. Her gown was already turning brown and her wings hung tattered at an odd angle. Her tiny slippers skimmed wearily along the ground.
I needed to get her out of there fast. Just being in an outer circle of Hell was draining to a member of the Celestial Army. Having the chain around her ankle only exacerbated the destruction.
The chain around my wrist tightened as Mordat pulled. “Come, lovely slave. I feel the need to taste your treasures before presenting you to the Master.” His perfect lips tipped upward in an evil smile. “I may keep you to myself for a few days before telling the Master I’ve found you.” He yanked hard on the chain and I fell against his broad chest. His nostrils flared. “You smell edible.” His lips touched mine and a frisson of heat ripped through me. I fought against a brain meltdown as his hands slid over my buttocks and his heated tongue swept out to encircle my chin, trailing upward, over the tip of my nose, where he bit gently. “Every inch of you is yummy. I’m going to have so much fun.” His breath was like heated musk on my face, filled with the threat of sexual events to come.
My body warmed to the threat, opening for it, panting for it. I reached deep into my psyche, searching for the light side I knew was buried in there. No luck. I’d done too good a job burying it.
Failing that, I told myself I wasn’t looking forward to being plundered. As warm cream ran from between my thighs I knew it was going to be a hard sell.
We hurried down marble-walled hallways and up several sets of stairs lit only by smoky, oily lamps hanging from the walls.
As we climbed high into the castle I cast out with my mind, searching for Darma. I kept my mental forays short, in case Mordat could catch them through the chain joining us. Although I felt a few ripples in my communications channel, Darma didn’t respond.
I wasn’t discouraged though. In fact, the more deeply Mordat took me into the mountain, the more certain I was that my sister was tucked away somewhere in that very mountain with me.
All I had to do was find her.
We’d arrived in front of a heavy wooden door and, with a flip of his hand the door flew open before us. Mordat pulled me through and slammed it shut behind us with another wave of his hand.
He dragged me through lushly decorated rooms, filled with silks and gilded furniture, and flung me toward an enormous bed, landing on top of me almost before I’d finished bouncing twice.