RiskingEternity (10 page)

His body, oh what a body, rippled with muscle and gleamed with
a sheen
of gold. The sheer masculine beauty of him left her stunned and staring. If she’d seen him like this before, pure glistening perfection, she would have known he was an angel, even without the wings.

“I promise to return to you.” He cupped her jaw and brushed a gentle kiss across her lips. Then, he was simply gone.

Chapter Nine

Lightning split a tree in half and a scaled demon the size of a house cat scurried away from the charred trunk. It turned its glowing red eyes on her, fluttered its wings,
then
vanished into a crack in the earth. Maggie shivered and took a step back from the window. They all looked at her before they disappeared. The demons knew she was there, knew she could see them and they all made it a point to look at her before they crawled back to Hell.

According to the clock, it was mid-morning, but her sense of time had stalled when Dom left. The darkness outside was oppressive, stretching the past forty hours into a terrifying endless night. The unusual storm had been the leading story on the news, baffled weathermen searched for answers from satellite images while religious extremists preached the end of the world.

The psychos on the street corners didn’t look so crazy anymore.

Something hit the window and she jumped back with a startled scream. A demon pressed its face against the glass and watched her, its evil grin revealing a line of wickedly sharp teeth. Larger than the creatures she’d seen scrambling to the safety of underground, this one was as big as a person and more human in form. The nude creature was obviously female. Its scaled breasts were tipped with blood-red nipples that tapped against the glass like pebbles.

Its claws dragged over the glass and the screeching made Maggie’s insides quiver with dread. It called her by name, taunted her. They all had.
Renatus
hadn’t lied. The demons wanted her.

But
Dominicus
had been right, too. They hadn’t been able get to her while she was inside. She jerked the window blinds shut and the thing outside screamed in frustration and anger.

There was a loud thump at the door and a canine yelp of pain and fear.
The puppy.
The poor little thing was out there with those horrible creatures. She’d seen two of them with a cat the day before, tearing the poor helpless creature to shreds. The idea of them getting that poor puppy was too much for her to bear. She peeked though the blind and made sure the demon was gone before hurrying to the door and opening it a crack.

“Puppy?
Are you there?” She didn’t see any demons, so she opened the door wider and found the puppy pressed against the wall. It was shaking violently with fear and when it saw her it began to whimper and cry.

“Oh, you poor baby.”
She opened the door and called it. “Come here, pup,
come
in here. Good puppy, come in here and I’ll keep you safe from those scary monsters.” It moved slowly, looking around it in fear and slinking along the ground so low its belly rubbed the ground. She crooned some more, soothing it, urging the poor baby along until it wriggled through her barely open doorway and into her home, where it sat, wet and shivering, dripping on her carpet.

“Okay, pup, stay there. Just stay where you are and I’ll get some towels and warm you up.” Maggie ran to the bathroom and grabbed a stack of clean towels from her linen closet, then to the kitchen where she tossed half of them in the dryer to warm them up. The rest she took back to where the puppy sat, huddled by the door in a quivering, whining heap.

“There you go, pup,” she crooned, wrapping it up in terrycloth. “We’ll get you warm and dry in no time. The dog’s whimpering eased a little, but it was still cold. It gave a happy sigh when Maggie retrieved the warmed towels and wrapped them around it. It cuddled into them and its eyes soon began to drift closed.

By the time the pup fell asleep, Maggie was exhausted. She curled up on the couch. As she was dozing off her tired brain played tricks on her, darkening the room’s shadows to an inky black and stretching them across the walls.

The puppy rose and smiled at her, its eyes glowing red.

“Hello, Maggie.”

Maggie’s heart stuttered and she screamed.

* * * * *

Dominicus
chased the retreating demon through the once-manicured courtyard. Only two days of battling the creatures and they were beginning to retreat, a short battle for creatures of the realms.
Hardly surprising given the lack of arch demons in the battle.
As fallen angels, the highest of the demon classes had the ability to regenerate power. The small creature scurrying away from him now did not have that ability. Once struck, it would need to feed off the power from another being or return to Hell to consume power from a damned human soul. The lack of arch demons suggested this was not a true battle, but instead a small skirmish.

He shot a weak bolt at the
demon’s
back as it slipped into a gash in the carefully
sodded
lawn. The lightning strike missed the
Hellspawn
, instead taking out a nearby crepe myrtle.

Movement to one side caught his attention and he spun in time to see a shadowy shape slinking up a set of stairs. He realized with a start that he was in the courtyard of Maggie’s apartment complex and the demon was headed toward her door.

“No.” It was a breath of a prayer. He’d warned her to keep the door closed, to not let anyone in. She should be safe. But the doorway was open, with golden flickers of firelight breaking the darkness within.

The creature slipped into the dark doorway and Dom moved. With a thought, he was in the apartment. The lights were off and the small coffee table had been pushed against one wall. It was covered in candles and token offerings to Hell.

His stomach clenched in anger and revulsion. The fiends had made an altar to Lucifer in Maggie’s home.

A small noise pulled his attention away from the desecrate altar. Bile rose in his throat at the sight of Maggie lying bound and gagged in the center of floor. She was dazed and stared at him with confused fear in her eyes. Stripped of her clothing, smears of blood stood out against her pale skin. The demons had clawed at her, leaving venom-filled cuts in her delicate human skin and bite marks marred her inner thighs.

“Hello, lover.
I see our little distraction couldn’t keep you away for long. No matter. You were gone long enough for us to gain entrance. We now have the prize we were promised.”

Meela
sat on the couch surrounded by sexless lesser ghouls. Her legs were spread wide. Juices smeared her thighs like blood and some of the evil creatures licked at them while she worked one clawed hand in her crotch.

“I knew you would come to check on your pet sooner or later,” she purred. She pulled her fingers from her cunt and licked them clean with her serpentine tongue. “Don’t
worry,
I took good care of her for you.”

A blast of Hellfire knocked him to the floor. His sword spun away from him to be snatched up by one of the smaller ghouls. There was an entire clutch of demons in the apartment, and he’d stupidly put himself right in the middle of them.

He’d been apart from Heaven’s power far too long to be able to battle them all, and though he’d reassured Maggie he couldn’t be killed, an angel dragged unwillingly into Hell faced an eternity of having his soul and power consumed. Respite was only available when they paused to allow their victim to recover enough power to feed their unending hunger once more.

He sent a reflexive plea for help to
Renatus
, his friend, his
battlemate
, as another demon launched a ball of flames at him.

“Stupid Dom.”
Meela
gave a patronizing laugh as the unholy heat washed over him. “Do you really think
Ren
will come to help you now, after you chose a puny human over him?”

She shoved the creatures from between her thighs and moved to crouch over Maggie.

“No!” Dom lunged forward, only to be knocked back by more flames. Two lesser demons pounced on him. One bit his shoulder while another tore at his arm. Their
batlike
wings fluttered with excitement as they feasted on the power in his blood. He knocked them away, only to have more
replace
them. Demon after demon bit at him, nibbling away at him and draining his strength.

Through their frenzied assault, he could see Maggie, her eyes begging him for help as that
Hellbitch
,
Meela
, straddled her. Dragging one of her thick claws over thin human skin, the
demoness
drew blood. It welled in the long scratch that stretched from collarbone to navel.

With a roar of rage,
Dominicus
tossed the smaller creatures off and surged to his feet, but before he could take a step in her direction,
Meela
threw up a hand. With the power only a high level minion held, she pinned him against the wall. He hung there, too weakened to fight his way free, too drained to call to the angels again.

“Poor Dom,” she said with a taunting smile. “Too weak to fight and you wasted your one call for help on the angel least likely to show up. Do you really think
Renatus
will help save her? He knows she’s the key to stopping this little battle, and it’s no sacrifice for him to have her out of the way either, is it, lover?”

Dom struggled to move but quickly realized he’d lost too much of his strength. Sagging, he hung limp and tried to figure out what to do next. As soon as he stopped fighting, he felt a subtle surge. The power
Meela
was throwing at him seeped into his veins, replacing what the minor demons had taken. Dark and dirty, it flowed through him in an oily sludge, but it was still power. If he didn’t fight too much, he might be able to gather enough to break free.

“You know,”
Meela
went on, apparently unaware he was leeching strength,
“
Ren
was finally seduced. He was ready to take you as a lover, to go down on those perfect golden knees and take your cock in his mouth. Think of it. He was there, ready for you, ready to give up everything he’d ever thought about himself as a seraph and take a male lover. And what did you do? You threw him over for a human woman.”

Ah,
Ren
.

Demons had a talent for exploiting one’s weak point, and his former lover could see into his soul like no other.

“
Ren
knows I care for him,” he protested.

“
Ren
knows you used him. He was the only being you had contact with and you toyed with him, didn’t you? You took out your frustration on him, forced your body on his when you needed relief, forced your anger on him when he endured sanction for his efforts to care for you. You took everything he gave without any regard for the sacrifices he made.”

A wave of guilt washed over him. Even knowing it came from
Meela
, knowing she twisted facts, he couldn’t fight the pain her words caused, because there was a kernel of truth.
Ren
was biased against the love between men, feared the censure such a pairing would draw in the Heavens.
Dominicus
knew this and yet, in his loneliness, he pushed his friend for a physical relationship. His hunger for affection had driven a wedge between them.

“
Ren
even warned you about this luscious little morsel and you ignored him, didn’t you?”
Meela
looked back down at Maggie and dragged another sharp claw over her skin, flicking it over her sensitive pink nipple and drawing blood while Maggie whimpered in pain. “I can see why she has so attracted you, though. She has a delicious soul.”

Meela
bent forward, her mouth hovering over Maggie’s bleeding nipple and rage whipped through him. He drew on the power holding him in place and it wavered. The
demoness
froze. He’d taken too much. Struggling slightly against her, he tried to mask the pull and she increased the stream to compensate. Oh yes, perfect.

The jump in power meant he could take more, not just replace what the demons stole. He pushed against her again and felt a surge as his strength was replenished. He had to keep it flowing, had to regain his strength and get to Maggie. He pushed again and soaked in the energy the
demoness
unwittingly provided.

Apparently satisfied he was still safely contained,
Meela
dipped her head again and lapped at the blood now dripping down the full curve of Maggie’s breast, laughing as her victim tried to wiggle free. The fear and struggle forced more of her delicate human power into her veins, turning her blood into a feast for
Meela
.

“Yes, human. Keep fighting me. Let your blood flow so I may feed.” She bit down with her row of razor-like teeth and Maggie cried out through the gag.

“It’s a lovely sound, is it not, Dom? All of her little whimpers make such sweet music. Just think. You could have had
Ren
like this. Under you, crying out as you took him. What a beautiful sight it would have been.”

He caught a glimpse of a golden shimmer in one corner of the room. Without hesitation, he took hold of the stream of energy from
Meela
and pulled. Absorbing a glut of power, he broke free, rushing at
Meela
just as
Renatus
appeared, sword in hand. Lesser demons pounced, covering
Dominicus
’ body, slowing him down, but he shook them off, focusing on the one being in the room
who
mattered.
The one who held his heart.

Maggie.

Renatus
reached her a split second ahead of him. Swinging his blade, he drove it through
Meela’s
side, knocking her away from Maggie and driving her to the ground. With the
demoness
out of the way,
Dominicus
plucked Maggie from the floor without hesitation. It only took him a moment to release her bonds and tuck her behind him, under the shelter of his wing. Something dark flew toward his face and he swung, knocking the ghoul from the air barehanded.