A Devil Named Desire (9 page)

Chapter Eight

G
abriel sat in Mr. Qualey’s rooftop garden, alone in the dark, watching Hope through the window of her apartment. The police and the ambulance had come and gone hours ago, and all was quiet.

The night wind set the plants rustling, and lifted his hair. Gabe stayed in the shadows, wondering about the woman who thought him a murderer, and what had happened to make her so quick to see evil where there was only good.

He was drawn to her, perhaps more than he should be. Her boyish blond hair and her air of tragic fragility should’ve inspired nothing more than protectiveness, but Gabriel the Archangel, Servant of Truth, never lied to himself, and knew that despite the hurt and anger that had almost driven him away, what he felt for Hope was something more than mere protectiveness. He’d aided many beautiful women through the centuries, yet not once had he pictured them the way he’d pictured her in his mind’s eye, those few moments after the old man’s death. Women were mortal, and he was not. Women were human, and he was not. Why, then, had he imagined her smiling up at him over a bridal bouquet, lying in his arms, perhaps even holding his child?

Troubled, he chose to put his momentary lapse aside and concentrate instead on keeping her safe, even if he had to do it from a distance. He’d watched her for hours after the police left: first as she’d moved around her apartment, occasionally weeping, then as she sat at her computer, her face illuminated by whatever she was looking at on her screen. He’d seen the cat leap into her lap, observed how—as it grew dark—she’d gone through the apartment room by room, turning on all the lights. She was still afraid of whatever had driven her into his company today; he could see tension in the set of her shoulders, wariness in her eyes. Strangely, she hadn’t closed her drapes, almost as though she were afraid to hide herself away from the world, perhaps for fear something else might creep in.

“I see I’m not the only one with a weakness for gardens,” came a familiar voice, and his old friend Sammy stepped from the shadows. “Or is it a weakness for something else?”

Unfazed by his old friend’s appearance, Gabe regarded him silently before he spoke. Samael looked every inch the Prince of Darkness this evening, clad in a crisply tailored black suit, eyes hooded. The only light thing about him was his hair, cropped short and carelessly mussed, and the glint of silver from an earring in one ear.

“Why are you sneaking around in the dark, Samael? Haven’t you tired of it yet?”

Sammy didn’t answer, and it was this that told Gabe his barb had struck home, so he pressed a bit further. “You look as though you have a party to go to . . . Black Mass at Dante’s Inferno, perhaps? Virgin sacrifice at dawn, champagne to follow?”

“I came to check on my newest recruit,” Sammy said smoothly. “How’s our darling Hope this evening?”

The hair on the back of Gabriel’s neck rose, for he knew a challenge when he heard one.

“You can’t have her,” Gabe said flatly. “I’m going to drive the Darkness away from this one.”

“You’re too late,” Sammy answered, with a smile. “She’s already mine.”

The surge of anger Gabriel felt surprised him. He rose from the chair, willing his warrior side to calm. “I beg to differ,” he said to Sammy politely, though tension coiled itself inside him like a spring.

Sammy sighed, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Oh, Gabriel, you know as well as I that the rules of the universe cannot be broken. Hope Henderson called out to me, and I came. We’ve already made a bargain, she and I.”

“No.” Gabriel’s warrior side surged again. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie about something like that, Gabriel?”

Gabe stepped closer, the better to see his onetime brother’s face. “To provoke me,” he said, keeping his voice low, “and to make me go away and leave her to the Darkness.”

Sammy met his eyes, and the gleam of malice in them told Gabriel that his suspicions were true; whatever danger Hope was in, Sammy was clearly at the heart of it.

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, old friend”—though His Infernal Majesty was obviously not sorry at all—“but the girl has chosen to put her feet upon the path that leads to Sheol. She isn’t the innocent you believe her to be.”

“Her soul is pure,” Gabriel said, between his teeth. “I’ve seen it.”

“Your eyes deceive you,” Sammy stated.

At a stalemate, as usual, the two stared at each other across a chasm of bitterness and regret, a chasm growing ever wider by the moment.

“Not all humans choose lives of quiet desperation, you know.” Sammy’s teeth gleamed white in the moonlight; Gabe knew that particular smile, and disliked it intensely. “Some people seek the power they weren’t given as mortals, and they come to me to get it. It’s quite simple, really . . . they do something for me, I do something for them.”

“You provide a service for the underprivileged, is that it?” Gabe didn’t try to keep the sarcasm from his tone.

“Exactly.”

“How noble of you.”

“Come, come, Gabriel . . . you can’t win them all, now can you? A soul for you, a soul for me . . .” Sammy trailed off with a shrug. “It all works out in the end.” He moved casually toward a hanging plant, lifting a bloom to his nose. “If only you’d been minding your own business instead of enjoying that coffee in Little Five Points this morning, you wouldn’t be sitting here in the dark, pining for something you can never have.”

“Ah.” Gabe began to see Samael’s twisted game more clearly. “You put her in my path deliberately, didn’t you?”

“Oh, Gabriel.” Sammy let the flower drop. “Why would I do that?”

“Because I can speak to Nicki Styx without seeing fear in her eyes, and you can’t.”

The look he received in return for that statement would’ve reduced a human to ash.

“You knew I would see how Hope’s soul was beset by darkness,” Gabe went on. “
You’re
the ‘he’ she kept referring to—you’re the one she thought sent me to watch over her.” He eyed the Father of Lies narrowly.

“She mentioned me?” Sammy said lightly, as though anger were the furthest thought from his mind. “I’m touched.”

“You’ll regret this, Samael,” Gabe told his onetime brother coldly. The warrior within him raged, seeking to be released. It was all he could do to keep his wings furled, and his face impassive. “Now that I know how you’ve used this poor woman to your own ends, there’s no power on Earth that will stop me from saving her.”

“Give it your best shot, Sir Galahad,” Sammy said, with the careless wave of a hand. “Risk your life to save the pretty blond princess in the tower.” He turned away, giving Gabriel his back as he strolled into the shadows. “But you might want to check your facts first. Not everyone
wants
to be saved, and
she
came to
me
.”

A
nd between the first and second Circle, which thou shalt thyself have drawn with the Instrument of Magical Art, thou shalt make four hexagonal pentacles, and between these thou shalt write the four terrible and tremendous Names of God.

Holy crap
, thought Hope,
this is unbelievable
.

Rubbing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the sofa, wishing the nightmare would just go away. All those B horror movies about pentacles and candles and calling up demons had some kind of basis in reality after all, if the Key of Solomon, the
Ars Goetia,
were to be believed.

She’d always hated B horror movies, and she’d never had any desire to call up demons. Now it looked like she was going to be the one who told the world how to do it.

Exhausted and drained, she sighed and stared at the ceiling, wondering if she really had it in her to transcribe the instructions outlined in Solomon’s Key.

Could demons really be called forth and controlled?

It was mind-boggling, fantastic.

She looked at the book again.
Come ye, come ye, Angels of Darkness; come hither before this Circle without fear, terror, or deformity, to execute our commands, and be ye ready both to achieve and to complete all that we shall command ye.

Just reading the words on the page brought chills to her spine.

And then, perhaps because she was exhausted and drained and completely, utterly tired of being a pawn in someone else’s game, another mind-boggling, fantastic thought occurred to her: if demons, like the one she’d seen at Satan’s shoulder, really could be controlled, maybe
she
needed to be the one calling the shots.

Steeling her resolve, Hope stood up. There was a lot of information here about the stars and the planets and the best times to cast which spells, but she needed to cut to the chase. The Key emphasized the need for bravery and confidence first and foremost when dealing with the spirit world. Since she was feeling the absolute opposite of brave and confident, she decided a little bit of practice couldn’t hurt; she wasn’t anywhere near ready to call up any demons yet, hadn’t drawn anything or lit any candles, but she could work on her attitude. She needed to be tough, not a wimp.

Standing in the middle of her living room, Hope practiced reading the passage aloud. “Come ye, come ye, Angels of Darkness; come hither before this Circle without fear, terror, or deformity, to execute our commands, and be ye ready both to achieve and to complete all that we shall command ye.”

Definitely bad B movie script material.

Clearing her throat, Hope made sure she stood up as tall as she could (which wasn’t very), and made her voice more forceful as she read aloud the next paragraph.

“I conjure ye, and I command ye absolutely, O Demons, in whatsoever part of the universe ye may be, by virtue of—”

A loud hiss startled her. It was Sherlock, who wasn’t looking at her, but staring fixedly at a point somewhere behind her. She twisted, and there, outside her window, was a sight that turned her veins to ice: two glowing red eyes, surrounded by a darkness so black it blocked the lights of the city from her view. Blackness in the shape of wings, gently flapping as they held the demon aloft, holding him in place as he stared at her from the other side of the glass.

With a shriek, Hope forgot all about spells and incantations and words of power. She threw the book down and took off running, fear having taken her in a mindless grip. Behind her, glass shattered, and she shrieked even louder as she pounded down the short hallway that led to her room. Dashing inside, she slammed the bedroom door behind her without daring to look back, and immediately realized the futility of her actions, for she had nowhere to go.

The sounds of all Hell breaking loose came from her living room; an earsplitting tinkle of glass, then another, thumps and bumps and crashes, each more frightening than the last. Terrified, Hope dived for the room’s only hiding place, a tiny closet barely big enough to hold her own meager wardrobe. There she cowered, panting with fear, as the noises in her living room seemed to go on and on.

The demon was on a rampage, and it was only a matter of time before it found her.

Please, God, don’t let me die.
Hope barely knew where the thought came from, because she’d long ago stopped praying to a God who didn’t care. If He cared, he wouldn’t have let her parents die in the fire that had taken everything they owned. If He cared, He’d wouldn’t have let her and Charity go into foster care, wouldn’t have let them be separated for even a day, much less seven years. If He cared, He would’ve shown her how to be a better big sister to the wild child Charity had been when she’d finally regained custody. If God had cared, He would’ve helped her be a better role model to a vivacious, precocious, beautiful young woman in her teens and twenties, and maybe both of their lives would’ve turned out differently.

The events of the last ten years flashing through her head was further proof to Hope that she was about to die.

And then, suddenly, unbelievably, all noise in the apartment stopped. Her own breath, harsh in her ears, was all she heard.

With a gulp, not daring to move, Hope did her best to get her breathing under control. After all the crashing and breaking, the sound of silence was deafening. She waited, straining her ear for some sound, no matter how faint, but heard nothing. Her heart was pounding, palms clammy with fear.

And then, finally, came the sound she’d been dreading: footsteps, coming down the hallway from her living room. The handle to her bedroom door turned—she hadn’t bothered to lock it in her terror—and there was a familiar creak as it opened. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, no longer daring to breathe, Hope crouched in the darkness of her closet.

Chapter Nine

W
hen Gabriel saw the demon hovering outside Hope’s window, he didn’t hesitate, and launched himself from the wall of the rooftop garden. Wings unfurled, he was right behind the creature as it smashed through the glass in pursuit of Hope, who was screaming in mindless panic as she bolted from the room. He had the element of surprise on his side, and hit the sulphurous, blackened beast with his full body weight, pinning it against a far wall before it knew what hit it.

The demon fought him, throwing itself backward, thrashing, flapping its wings, and raking viciously at him with blackened claws. It made no sound, but was no less dangerous for its silence; it was a Dronai, a soldier, and having no will of its own, needed no voice. Gabriel held tight as it writhed and thrashed, whipping its serpentine tail in every direction. A nearby lamp was knocked to the floor, as were several tables and the chair beside the couch. The cheerful, sunny living room Gabe had enjoyed earlier in the day became a battleground in the war between good and evil, its cozy furnishings the first casualties in a war Gabe had no intention of losing.

He held on, countering the creature’s every move, letting the abomination know his strength as they grappled. It was a minor demon only, and no match for an archangel. He could’ve killed it easily, letting the Light within him burn it to a crisp, but contented himself with proving his mastery, trapping its night black wings against its body as it weakened. Finally the creature stilled, quivering with unholy rage, powerless in his grip.

“You will go back to the Darkness from whence you came,” Gabe ground out, in what passed for the demon’s ear, “and you will tell your master that the Archangel Gabriel has laid claim to this house. Should any more of your filthy, corrupt brethren attempt to enter, they shall meet the point of my sword.” And with that, he shoved the creature away. It twisted, turning on him like an adder, and earned a powerful blow to the face for its trouble. Stumbling back, it hit the far wall, where it slumped, glaring at him balefully. Gabriel brought his sword forth from nothingness, where it was always close at hand, and wielded it so that light gleamed along its razor-sharp edge.

The demon cowered, shading its red eyes against the light, and seconds later it was gone, out the broken window, wings flapping soundlessly as it disappeared into the night.

Gabe stepped to the window and watched it go, letting any of its brethren who might be hiding in the shadows see him, his snow white wings unfurled, the gleaming Sword of Righteousness in his hand. Both physically and symbolically, he staked his claim, and took Hope’s life—as well as her soul—into his hands.

Murmuring the words of power that would set an invisible barrier over the window, Gabe used two fingers to inscribe it with his mark. Turning, he cast his hand over the entire apartment, using a soft gleam of light to claim every inch under his protection. The magical barrier he’d set in place wouldn’t stop a determined demon who wanted to get in, but it would definitely slow it down.

Then he looked around at the destruction the demon had caused, his eyes narrowing at the sight of an open book, lying on the floor. Sheathing his sword back into nothingness, he bent, and picked it up.

Scanning the pages, his heart sank.

The
Ars Goetia
, the Howling Art, the secrets of which he himself had given to Solomon in those long-ago times when the war between Darkness and Light had been newly won; a way to prove the One’s mastery over the Dominion of Darkness, any time the King of the Jews chose to do so. Those pages, marked with names and symbols he couldn’t help but recognize, contained knowledge of the Black Arts not meant to be shared, and could prove disastrous in the wrong hands.

Samael, Father of Lies, had told him the truth about Hope, for her possession of the book proved she’d already opened her heart to the Darkness.

Surprised to find his disappointment so keen, Gabriel squared his shoulders yet again, for he was still resolved to save her, even if he had to save her from herself.

“I
t’s all right, Hope. You can come out now.”

A perfectly normal male voice, muffled but familiar, reached Hope’s ears as she lay huddled in the closet.

Unsure, still terrified, she stayed quiet.

The door to her closet opened, revealing her hiding place.

“Gabriel?”

He was surrounded by light. After her time in the dark closet she had to squint; the glow around his head and shoulders was blinding. “Are those . . . are those
wings
?”

He reached down, offering both hands to help her to her feet. She gripped his fingers tightly, terrified, disbelieving, and he pulled her up easily.

“Are you all right?” He looked rather fierce, different somehow, but she was in such shock that she hardly knew how to answer him.

“Here, sit down.” He urged her gently toward the bed. She was trembling like a leaf, knees weak, so she did as he said.

She was seeing things . . . she had to be seeing things . . .

Covering her face with her hands, she took a deep breath. When she lowered them again, the glow she’d mistaken for wings was gone.

“It’s all right,” Gabriel said. “You’re safe now.”

She wanted to believe him so badly it hurt.

“You don’t understand,” she told him, shooting looks toward the door. “There was a
thing
. . . it was a
thing
. . .” She couldn’t quite bring herself to use the word “demon.” “It came in through the window—”

“A Dronai,” Gabriel said, “one of the lowest order of demons in Satan’s army. Soldier imps, little more than lizards with wings.”

Stunned, she stared at him blankly.
The bad B horror movie had just turned into an episode of
The Twilight Zone. “What?” she asked faintly.

“You invited it in when you read aloud from the Key,” Gabe told her grimly. “That was very foolish of you.”

Her jaw sagged. He was right, of course he was right, but how did he
know
?

“We have to get out of here.” Panic fluttered in her chest. She’d find out later how he knew so much; right now she just wanted to go someplace safe.

Gabriel shook his head, clearly taking charge. “We’re safest here.”

A quizzical meow announced Sherlock’s arrival on the scene. The cat leapt up on the bed, sniffed her briefly, then went straight to Gabriel, shamelessly seeking his attention.

Gabriel stroked him, and he immediately began to purr. “You see?” Sherlock’s purr grew louder. “Your cat knows the creature’s gone,” he told her. “Listen to him.”

She stared at him, willing her mind to go faster and her heart to slow down. A silence grew between them, growing increasingly more awkward.

“How—” She blew out a breath, letting some of her tension go with it. “How do you know about the Key, about the d—” She still couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“I know many things,” he said to her gently, “and I am not your enemy.”

A stab of shame pierced her. Everything she’d accused him of earlier in the day was wrong. He really
had
come to look after her, even if she didn’t know why.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” she told him, not quite able to look him in the eye. “I didn’t know what would happen.”

“Which time?” he asked. “In the living room, when you called up the demon, or when you made your original deal with the Devil?”

Her eyes flew to his.

His gaze was direct and matter-of-fact.
He knew everything.

She looked away, ashamed of herself.

“You’ve made some bad choices, Hope.” Gabriel stood straighter, squaring his shoulders. “You’ve put your soul in peril,” he said, “and I’ve sworn myself your protector.”

“You can’t protect me,” she whispered, shaking her head. Sherlock was in her lap now, and she scooped him up, needing the comfort of his warm, furry body. “Nobody can protect me.” She looked up at him from her seat on the bed, filled with a sense of the surreal. “Who
are
you, anyway?”

“Listen to me,” Gabe murmured. He took a seat next to her, and reached out a hand, cupping her face.

It was a big hand, warm and strong. Hope wanted to lean into it, and never move.

“I’m the Archangel Gabriel,” he told her, “and I will protect you from the Darkness.”

Deep inside, Hope trembled. Was it possible? If demons existed—and she now knew they did—so too, then, must angels. The conclusion wasn’t all that far-fetched.

And if anyone looked like a modern-day angel, Gabriel did. In some indefinable way, he radiated confidence and power.

She stared into his eyes. Brown eyes, shot with gold. The kindness, the gentleness she’d sensed in him earlier were both still there, but so was a steeliness, a ruthlessness that she hadn’t detected earlier.

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier, when I . . . when I was being so mean to you?”

“Would you have believed me?”

Deep inside, she was forced to admit that the answer was no. She wouldn’t have believed him.

Gabriel shrugged. “We take human form often, coming and going as we please, rarely revealing our presence. We mingle, we watch, we do our best to inspire the good in people.”

“
We?
”

“The Darkness has its army, and so does the Light.”

The Darkness had its army, all right—both the demons she’d seen, and the unseen ones, like the depression she’d fallen into after Charity’s disappearance. She should’ve gotten help for herself while she’d had the chance.

“It’s too late,” she whispered, knowing in her heart that it was true. She was too far gone, too frightened of Sammy and what lay in store for her if she didn’t do as he asked.

Despite Gabriel’s claim he would protect her—even if he
were
an angel—Hope had no faith in angels anymore, and could see no other solution.