“You don’t have a heart,” Arien said.
“You’re mean, Arien. I feel. And,” he said, his smile revealing small, pointed teeth, “I can offer you a solution.”
“What kind of solution?” Arien asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Take her soul. The boss, he’d like that, yes he would. Don’t get many innocent souls nowadays. All would be forgotten and you could go on about your business as usual. And you could be together. Kind of. She’d be trapped in the nether regions, forever damned, but you could visit her. Sometimes. Maybe. Think of the possibilities! A good deal. The best ever.”
“All right,” Lila said, stepping forward.
“No!” Arien roared. He took her roughly into his arms. “Not another word. You have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Face it, Arien, you don’t have a lot of options,” Iim said rocking himself back and forth. “Save yourself, take her soul and live happily ever after or don’t and go back to hell to face your punishment.”
Lila reached up and touched his cheek. “I don’t want you punished because of me.”
Arien took her hand, kissed her palm and then placed it back by her side. “This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I won’t let you sacrifice yourself out some misplaced sense of guilt.”
“Guilt?” she asked, anger making her blood boil. “Is that what you think? How can you be so dense?” She scrubbed her hands through her hair. “This has nothing to do with guilt. This is about…” About what? She didn’t know, wasn’t sure. All she knew was that this feeling inside her was beyond huge. She didn’t have the words, the knowledge, the experience to put a name to it, but she did know that it was wonderful. Incredibly, utterly wonderful. If only she could think, come up with a logical, reasonable definition for what she was feeling. But this was no time for quiet contemplation. She had to do something. She couldn’t let him suffer. And she most certainly did not want him to leave. “Let me help you.”
“No,” he said, taking her face into his hands. “I can’t.” He swallowed hard, touched his forehead to hers and squeezed his eyes shut. “Take me back to hell, Iim. Alone.”
“No!” she shouted, clutching his biceps.
“Okay, choice is made, deal is sealed, bargain complete! Kiss, kiss. Hug, hug. Gotta go. Bye-bye!”
Arien pressed a kiss to her forehead and then lifted her chin to meet her eyes. “Lila, I—”
Iim raised his hand over his head, snapped his fingers, and Arien was gone.
“No!” Lila screamed again, her body racked with despair as she dissolved into a heap on the floor. “Bring him back!”
“No can do, sexy lady. But if you’re ever in the mood for a
real
demon, give me a ring!” And with that, he too was gone.
* * * * *
“Love you,” Arien finished.
“You do?” said a familiar male voice rich with laughter. “Why, Arien, I never knew!”
Arien looked up into the face of the Prince of the Darkness as he lounged on his throne in hell. Sighing, Arien closed his eyes and bowed his head. It seemed his nightmare was about to begin.
Chapter Ten
Her show at the Detour was a smashing success. Lila wandered through the gallery, champagne in hand, accepting all the praise with a plastic smile. None of it mattered. She wished that it did, wished that she could bask in the adulation, but all she felt was hollow. Alone.
She stopped before
The Garden
and wished for the millionth time that Arien could be there next to her, as he had been not so long ago, filling the empty space at her side. She looked over the piece and sighed. That sculpture had taken a year of her life. A year of devotion, of single-minded focus, of solitude. A year to create an emotion she had never experienced herself yet longed for to the very core of her being.
She saw it with new eyes now, could easily envision herself and Arien twined that way, lost in one another, and a deep, piercing sorrow jabbed her in the gut. God, how she missed him. Missed that infuriating grin of his, his easy laughter, his hands on her body. Her life was quiet now, just as it had been before he appeared, but now the quiet was suffocating, overpowering, the absence of him a tremendous, sucking void. She’d never realized just how lonely she was until he wasn’t there anymore.
“You should be mingling,” Angie said, emerging from the crowd to stand beside Lila.
“Yeah,” Lila said distractedly, the full meaning of her own creation finally dawning on her. The essence of what she had been trying to capture. A life well lived was not a life lived alone, but rather one shared with others. Especially that one special other.
And then it hit her. It was all so suddenly clear she almost laughed. Or maybe cried. Either way, she had to get out of there. Now. She grabbed Angie’s arm. “Angie,” Lila said urgently. “Cover for me. I have to go.”
“Go where?” Angie asked, but Lila was already heading for the door.
She ran all the way home, forsaking her car in the jammed parking lot by the gallery. She ran through the no man’s land separating the Cultural District from the Strip, and then up through the Strip, forcing her way through the shoppers and gawkers, the endless traffic, ignoring the assaulting array of smells and sounds and low-grade sports gear as she navigated the narrow, crowded streets. Her heel broke and she stumbled, but she didn’t care, didn’t even pause to try to fix it. She just tossed it aside and carried on. She had to get home. She’d finally figured out what she needed to do and nothing was going to stop her.
She couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. He had given her the answer. The way to have him back. Intent. That’s what separated black magic from white. If she wanted to summon a demon, then she had cast a black magic spell. All she had to do was perform a sufficiently greedy, lustful, self-serving spell and he would come. He would answer her call and everything would be all right. At least, she hoped so.
She flung her loft door open, tossed her keys aside and rummaged through the trash, desperately searching for the candles she’d used the other night. She let out a low growl of triumph when she found them and then grabbed the leftover red wine from her refrigerator. She carried the whole mess over to her workspace.
After Arien had disappeared, the statue he had occupied returned to the pedestal just as it had been, as though nothing ever happened, but she found she couldn’t stand the sight of it. It tore her heart apart to know that it was empty now. That he was no longer there. She’d hung a sheet over it, unable to look at it but equally unable to part with it. She ripped the sheet off now and threw it aside. Maybe it could serve its purpose once again. Maybe it could help her one more time.
She grabbed some sandpaper and started scraping dust into the leftover wine. This had to work. It just had to.
She made enough red chalklike stuff to paint a huge heart all around the statue. Taking a deep breath, she stripped naked and walked into the confines of the heart. She sat down before the statue, took hold of the candles and held them both up over her head. “I want Arien back,” she said. “Only him. I want him here and I want him to love me and I want him now.”
She lit the candles, placed them on either side of the statue and sat back on her heels. That seemed like it might be personal gainish enough, but it wasn’t quite right. It felt as if she should be doing something more.
“What else did I do?” she said, drumming her fingers against her lips. She snapped her fingers. “That feeling-it stuff.”
She squared her shoulders and concentrated her energy at the base of her spine. Squeezing her eyes shut, she envisioned a ball of light rising up out of her, carrying her intentions, her desires, her longings out into the universe. Everything she felt for him welled within her, a glowing, bursting ball of energy in her mind’s eye and that strange emotion she’d felt just before he’d been sent away returned with such a force it almost physically knocked her back.
“Oh Arien,” she whispered, burying her face in her hands as the understanding finally sunk in. Love. She was in love. There was simply no other way to describe the magnitude of feelings that surged through her at the thought of him. How had she not known? Every time she looked at him her heart had beat a little bit faster, the sound of his voice was enough to send shivers all through her and his presence alone made her practically explode with joy. It was everything wonderful and good and painful and profound and…beyond words. It simply was.
“Well, damn,” she said, laughing. “I’m in love.” She looked up at the statue. “Okay, this has to work. You gotta come back to me. I need you.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying with all her might to channel her energy or whatever it was that she had done when she’d said the spell the first time.
Something was still not right. She gripped fistfuls of her hair in frustration. “Words,” she decided, and she spread her arms, palms up, and recited a modified version of the spell.
“Hear me, true love of mine,
“I cast this spell at this time,
“By my will, I demand,
“With greed, desire and lust I command,
“For my Arien, the one I want to see,
“To feel uncontrolled lust and passion for only me.”
That seemed about right and she repeated the spell over and over again, concentrating all her lustful, greedy energy on him and having him back again.
After a while, she began to find it difficult to say the spell without yawning. She wrapped her arms around the statue’s waist and pressed her cheek against the cool, unyielding stone. “I love you, Arien,” she whispered as her eyes drifted shut. “Please come back to me.”
* * * * *
Arien sat at the bar in hell, staring blankly into his drink. As part of his punishment, his crime had been announced to all of hell before he was publicly flogged, and the demons whispered about him as they passed, laughing mostly, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t do much about it anyway. He’d been demoted as well, forced to forfeit his titles and position, and now he was just another demon in a sea of many, no better than even the lowest fragment of negative energy. Not that he cared about that either. Because, really, nothing Lucifer had done to him could compare to the emptiness he felt over the loss of her. It was a torture and punishment all its own, far surpassing the petty penalties of hell. It was almost like the longing he felt for Paradise, but sharper, more direct. Maybe it was because it new. Maybe it was because she was the only thing he would actually be willing to beg for.
At least he still had all his powers and strengths. Lucifer couldn’t have taken those away even if he wanted to. The only one who could was far, far away. His gifts, his magic came from when he was an angel and not something he received from being a demon. Therefore until
He
decided to relieve Arien of them, they would remain. He supposed that was some kind of comfort.
He only wished he could have told her how he felt before he had been banished back to hell. Told her that he loved her. Maybe that would have made some kind of difference. Eased some of the terrible ache.
He was shocked that he could even feel such an emotion, but it didn’t change the fact it was true. He didn’t know how that could be, but being a creature mostly controlled by his own insatiable id, he chose to just accept it rather than waste his time pondering it. Not that he had much else to do with his time. But still. Pondering was never his forte.
“You are tasty treat today, Arien,” Hordas said from behind the bar.
Arien rolled his eyes toward the bartender and then away again. “Go away.”
“But your misery is so juicy,” he said, and licked his lips. “I can’t seem to get enough.”
Arien tried to ignore him, but Hordas remained where he was, studying Arien intently. “What?”
Hordas shrugged. “Just gloating. You know, the usual misery-demon shtick.”
Arien rested his elbows on the bar and put his head in his hands. This was his life now. This was what he had to deal with for the rest of eternity.
A sudden, all too familiar shiver ran down his spine and Arien bolted upright on the barstool.
“No,” he breathed, unaware that he had gotten to his feet. “It can’t be.”
“Arien? What’s going on?” Hordas asked.
Her voice. Her voice singing in hell once more. She was calling him. Calling
him
. His lovely Lila. He never even considered that she’d actually resort to black magic. He should have known better. His woman was wise and innovative and extremely powerful.
“I have to go,” he said. Laughter inspired by the purest, most sublime happiness bubbled up from deep within him. “It seems I have a date.” He took one last look around and left the bar in hell behind.
* * * * *
She must have fallen asleep because it was dark in the loft and her neck ached from resting at an awkward angle for too long. She inhaled deeply, brushed the side of her face over the contoured plains of the statue and then suddenly stopped. Warm. Whatever was beneath her cheek was warm. Soft. Silky. Her head jerked up and she let out a ragged gasp. His wings were gone, but he was every bit as beautiful as he was the last time she saw him. “You’re back.”
“Yes,” Arien said. He hunkered down beside her and ran his fingers through her hair.