Back From Hell (13 page)

Beau just shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Ronan’s lids drooped as he tried to take stock of his own mind. And to his disbelief, he could feel Jenai—a warm distant presence, full of pain and fear. Before he could even brace himself, his mind linked with hers, and he was trapped inside the hell that held her captive.

* * * * *

Jenai shuddered, drawing back from the creature in front of her.

She wished she was back in that damn darkness. Frightening as it had been, it was easier to deal with than this.

He wasn’t ugly. He should have been. She felt the darkness that saturated his soul and colored the very air around him. But he wasn’t ugly. And it wasn’t some demon-borne illusion.

His hair was thick and red, falling in loose waves all the way down to his well-formed feet. His skin was the color of caramel, and she knew it would feel quite smooth and warm beneath her hands.

He had no body hair and looked hard and as perfect as though God Himself had carved him from the finest of materials.

If she could have avoided looking into his eyes, she just might have been okay with how he looked.

But she couldn’t resist. His eyes were black. Completely black, no pupil, no iris, no white to relieve that unrelenting black. And it was a life-draining black, something that sucked at her very being whenever she looked at him.

Azar was a demon in the purest sense, and he fed off of fear, off of hate, off of lust, off of pain. She could have tolerated letting him feed off of her anger, and even lust, because some dark part of her responded every time he touched those perfect hands to her naked, battered body.

But he wanted her fear.

A voice whispered inside her mind, one that had whispered to her for what seemed like an eternity—ever since she had come to be trapped in this awful place.
Don’t give in to him…be strong. Hold on…he’s coming…

Before she could even try to understand, the voice was gone, and she was left alone with the demon again. But just a little more determined to hold on.

He wanted to feel her fear, see her cower before him and still want him. While she had absolutely no problem admitting she was afraid, she wasn’t about to let him feed off her fear while he hurt her, while he fucked her, pulling her under his spell, making her beg for more.

If she begged, he’d have her. Completely and for all eternity.

No. She wouldn’t give in to that fear. Curling away from him, she focused on the smooth black rock that made up the walls of her prison.

“Why do you resist, pretty mortal?” he purred against her ear, cuddling up against her naked back. She was so cold, and teasingly, he let her feel the heat of his body. She could be warm—so long as she let him touch her. “It’s inevitable. None can resist me indefinitely—I am Incubus, the darkling creature that feeds off, and feeds into, human lust, human needs. I am their pain, I feed them their pain. I am their lust, and I feed their lust. You cannot fight me forever.”

Jenai just lay there, shaking. She didn’t pull away. That would only make him hurt her, or worse, stroke her body until she damn near went crazy, trying to fight the urge to give in.
I’m not human
, she told herself.
I don’t have the same weaknesses and needs as humans. I can resist him.

But then he started to touch her again, sliding one hand around her torso to cup one breast. He didn’t squeeze—already Azar had learned that pain was the sure way to cool her lust and he wanted her mindless with it. Instead, he tenderly rolled the nipple between his fingers, which had cooled to a temperature near to ice. In response, both nipples tightened hungrily even as she tried to tear at her arms with her nails, to bite her cheek, anything to ground herself once more.

But Azar knew her tricks.

Her hands were drawn away from her body even as she struggled not to let him splay her out. Thick leather gloves appeared on her hands, gloves that kept her from tearing at her skin. Thick chains appeared, looping around her wrists and binding her to the ground.

Azar laughed softly. “You struggle so hard. Just let it go. Feel the pleasure and the pain I can bring you.”

Jenai spat out, “Go back to hell.”

He laughed, the sound low and rough, like whiskey, and it warmed her through, even as she fought against it. “But it’s so much more pleasant here…with you.” One hand trailed down her back and as she tried to buck his body away from hers, he started to fuck her ass with his fingers, the passage slicked and wet as though just his will made it happen.

“Give in…” he crooned as she tried to pull away from his touch. “Give in…let me show you the pleasure…”

“No!” she screamed as he pulled the first orgasm from her body.

Jenai almost cried out in despair as he rolled her onto her stomach and lifted her to her knees. The chains shifted, loosening as though by magick, moving with her as he moved her body and then tightening again.

“You will give in, sooner or later. You will beg me to hurt you. Beg me to feed you, feed off of you, and then you will be mine.”

With that, he plunged his cock into her pussy and Jenai screamed out in rage and in need as he used the skill of his body to make her climax yet again, even though she hated herself for it.

* * * * *

Ronan heard her scream.

He felt the despair, the anger and the desperation in it. His own rage boiled out of control and in self-defense, he found the strength to tear himself away from her before the rage consumed him.

Bending back over the toilet, he vomited again, over and over, until he had nothing left, and still, he dry heaved.

In the distance he heard Stephanie’s frightened voice demanding to know what was going on. Beau’s quiet voice, trying to calm her down. Falling onto his ass by the tub, he kicked out weakly and managed to shut the door before she could come in.

Finally the high, strident tones of her voice quieted and then the door slowly creaked back open. Beau slid inside, closing the door behind him. With the two men inside the small closet of a bathroom, the air was too damn tight, too close.

“Don’t tell her,” Ronan rasped, his voice half mad with panic. “Don’t ever tell her. Stephanie doesn’t need to know that.”

Guilt was already eating her alive and they couldn’t add to it.

Beau met Ronan’s gaze levelly as he replied, “Don’t worry. I won’t.” He studied the other man for a long moment before he asked, “You going to be okay? Can you deal?”

“What fucking choice do I have?” Ronan muttered, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back.

“Good point.” Beau rose from his crouch on the floor and slid silently out of the bathroom, leaving Ronan alone to deal with the chaos of his thoughts.

Long moments passed before Ronan could rise from the cold tile floor. He moved to the sink, turning on the faucet and plunging his hands under the slow trickle of cold water. Splashing it on his face, he sucked air and tried to clear those images from his mind.

An incubus had taken her.

Taken her hard, and fast, and good. If she bent to his will, she’d become one of his minions, and they’d never get her to leave him. And if that happened, and they tried to force her, she’d waste away, pine away, and in death, possibly become one of his offspring—a succubus. Jenai would rather die, Ronan suspected.

Bad enough that when her rage took her over, she fed in blood. But to have to feed from the pain and glory that came with the right kind of sex…

Lifting his head, he stared at his reflection.

His eyes looked too dark, too large for his face, gleaming with rage. Something hot moved through him, that fury that belonged to the were creature that lived inside his soul, if not his flesh.

He followed the source of that rage and found that he could feel Jenai, not just the warmth of her life, not just her fear, but
her
. A path to follow.

Part of him had doubted… Closing his eyes, he fought a small, ugly urge to just hide from this.

She was his mate.

Whatever happened, whether she survived this sane or whether she died, it would affect him. He’d feel her death, and if she became succubus, he’d feel the eternal torment that haunted her soul.

And Ronan wasn’t sure he was ready to risk that.

Then he heard another distant moan from her, one of despair, and he knew whatever had been happening earlier was done and she was once more alone.

Alone and hating herself.

Slowly, he turned, closing his hand over the doorknob. Stepping out of the small, hot bathroom, he faced Beau. “I can feel her.”

Beau nodded slowly. “I suspected you would. Are you ready?”

Chapter Nine

Stephanie had never felt so left out, so helpless, in all of her life.

Following Beau and Ronan into the gloomy, blood-heavy atmosphere of The Dark, she fumed and worried and raged. And once she’d finished that cycle, she started it all over again.

Ronan had seen something.

And Beau had glimpsed part of it.

Neither of the bastards would tell her.

The look on his face as he had slipped from the bathroom haunted her. Terror. Abject terror. And
hunger
, like the hunger that slept inside of her, rousing from time to time to taunt her and tease her, the kind that only rage could rouse.

What could make such bizarre emotions mix? Stephanie didn’t want to know. Yet she did. She had to know.

But they weren’t talking. Stephanie wasn’t psychic. She had a bond with her sister, and they could often reach out and touch the other’s thoughts, but that was an unearthly talent known to some of the Night Stalker line.

It worked on nobody else. If it did, she would have delved into Ronan’s mind and discovered what had made his eyes so dark and desolate.

There wasn’t time to argue. Even though it had just been a matter of hours since Jenai had disappeared, they were already running out of time. She could feel it, sense it in the air. She suspected if they didn’t get to her soon, they might never get her back.

So here she was, in a bar that stank of blood and violence and magick. And death. There had been people killed here. The stink of evil turned her stomach and she fought to keep her face impassive.

It was hard.

The terror she smelled in here roused the creature that lurked inside her skin—many weres were drawn to such emotions, but Stephanie wasn’t wholly were. Yes, those emotions pulled her.

But she wanted to hunt the people who had caused it and hurt them.

Something was wrong here.

It wasn’t the way she watched one man lead a slender young woman across the floor, holding a leash. She had a collar around her neck, a collar that had chains running down that attached to small rings that pierced her nipples, and then those two chains ran down over her torso to disappear between her thighs.

She’d seen the darker side of lust before, had even played at bondage games. That’s all they were to her though. She knew that it ran deeper, much deeper to the people involved in that lifestyle.

But this was about power. The kind of power some evil beings often drank from. And fed back.

Feeding into this power made them long to feed again, and to feed from it. Many of the men in here drew off the power of fear and lust. They fed it when they caused pain, when they orgasmed. And it flowed back into people who served them, a never-ending circle of fear, lust and pain that gave off great energy.

Worse, Stephanie sensed something dark lingered in the air—feeding off that power.

Shivering, Stephanie found herself drawing just a little closer to Beau’s back as some of the men turned their eyes on her. The warmth of his body leaped out to her and she cuddled closer.

When he pulled her against him, placing her body between his and Ronan’s, she fought the urge to whimper with relief. Damn it, this place scared her. What had brought Jenai here?

Then a woman screamed, and Stephanie imagined she knew. Turning her head, she stared at the woman kneeling on the stage in front of them. She hadn’t seen the stage before, too caught up in her own nerves and fear to notice. But now, the woman was kneeling on all fours and there was a man under her, fucking her pussy. A man behind her, fucking her ass. A man standing in front of her, legs spread wide to bring his dick low enough so that he could fuck her mouth. At the side, another man stood, plying a whip to her back, a barbed one that drew blood.

The Night Stalker in Stephanie always recognized a victim, somebody in need. And all of them were being used. Drained. She could almost see a little more life force seep from each of them with each thrust of their cocks.

Possession…

But then she knew.

It wasn’t possession. It was worship.

They were doing this, offering up the blood and the lust and the pain to some unseen being and it was feeding from it. From them.

If it didn’t stop soon, they’d all die.

And if it did stop, they’d look for it for the rest of their lives.

These people were beyond her help. The only way to save them was to end it. Destroy the being they worshipped.

She was turning back to huddle against Beau when she saw him.

Her blood froze in her veins, and she realized she’d been wrong. It hadn’t been the pain in the air that drew Jenai, or at least, not just the pain.

At her first glance, she hadn’t recognized him—his crouched-over position obscured his face enough that she hadn’t really taken notice. But now, as he rose from his kneeling position behind the woman, flinging his hair back with a toss of his head, she saw him.

He was tall, ridiculously slender for a man. He should have looked gawky with those long arms and legs. But as he moved away from the woman, his cock gleaming with blood and lubricant, he walked with a sinuous grace that Stephanie recognized all too well.

Jenai moved like that, like some giant cat on two feet.

He looked nothing like her sister, and Stephanie imagined she thanked God every day for that.

But she knew who he was. She’d seen the picture enough times.