devil 04 - the devil you know (24 page)

My Settling gave me a quick jolt of sheer lust that curled my toes and then tucked itself back behind my aggressive side, allowing me to stay mostly focused on the battle at hand.

Slayer winked at me and lunged, taking out another of Nerul’s guards.

I realized that he’d probably found me by using the Slayer hickey on my hand. Although I was happy to see him, having another devastatingly handsome male type able to track and find me at all times was discomfiting to say the least.

However, I didn’t have time to worry about it right at that moment.

The doorway darkened with something huge and hairy in basic colors. Very basic.

Shit!
Dialle! This might be a good time for you to tell me how you defeated that Dis Demon.

I’m a little busy right now, Astra.

I turned to Dialle and found him fighting four of Nerul’s soldiers at once. I sent a jolt of power into one of them and it went right through him to maim a second guard. Dialle finished the wounded one with his sword and cocked an eyebrow at me.
I had it under control.

I don’t doubt that for a minute.
I told him.
But we have a visitor.

His beautiful black gaze slid to the door, where the biggest Dis Demon I’d ever seen was standing, nearly folded in half because he didn’t fit through the doorway, which was over eight feet tall and five feet wide.

My guess was he was ten feet tall if he was an inch.

Dialle finished off two more guards with very little effort, spearing one on the end of his sword and sending a power arrow into the head of the other, exploding it like a melon.
Would you like me to take care of it?

I frowned. I didn’t like other people having to clean up my messes for me.
No. Just tell me how you did it.

The demon stepped into the room and, surprise surprise, the doorway wasn’t empty. Another Dis, at least as big as the first one, ducked through after him.

Looks like we both get one.
Dialle said with a grin.

I’ll take the one on the left,
I told him, turning to the demon on the right. It was a ploy Emo and I used frequently to throw off our opponents. Like sleight of hand using our line of vision and body direction to confuse them. I forgot for a moment that my battle partner had changed and a wave of sadness slipped over me. My life was changing in ways I wasn’t comfortable with.

Part of me wanted to go back to the time before the Settling, when Emo and I were still friends and partners. Part of me realized the Settling only enhanced the flaws and strengths we already had and that we needed to work through our issues before we could be whole again.

Then a Dis demon swiped a massive paw in my direction and a third part of me, the survival part, realized I needed to stop dithering like an idiot and kick some demon ass.

I leapt into the air as the demon moved with preternatural speed toward me. I wasn’t used to a Dis that wasn’t protecting something. These demons were in attack mode.

They weren’t going to stand there and wait for me to go after them. “Dialle! How do I kill this thing?” Three enormous claws swiped across my back as I landed, tearing through my clothing like it was made of paper and ripping my skin.

The claw marks burned like acid, making me scream in pain.

“Dialle!”

Use your inner sight, Astra. Slow it down with your vision.

Oh shit! This is no time to go all zen on me.
The ground shook and I spun as the demon swiped again. This time claws scored three long, bloody gouges in my arm.

Screaming in pain and anger, I lifted my arm and blasted the thing between the eyes.

The power arrow tore through the wall behind where the demon had been.

It was gone.

Two massive hands closed over my arms and lifted me high into the air. I kicked out, connecting with the thing’s face, but it merely grunted before throwing me across the room, toward a stone wall. Closing my eyes, I prepared for impact.

I knew it was gonna hurt like Hell. And believe me, I knew how much Hell hurt.

I never hit that wall. Something soft and warm stepped in the way, stopping me before impact. The air before me shimmered and I was looking into Auntie Myra’s beautiful, cranky face. We floated back to the ground. “I see you’re doing your usual bang-up job in battle, Astra.”

I kissed her on a peach-tinted cheek. “
Bang up
being the operative words, of course. Thanks, Auntie.”

She scowled at me as I turned back to the demon.

Stop screwing around, Astra. Slow it down with your vision.

Sighing, I decided to try it his way, since my way pretty much sucked so far. I pulled my power forward and infused my vision with it, settling my gaze on the Dis demon and concentrating hard on seeing it with my enhanced vision.

I saw the thing’s blazing red eyes widen slightly as it considered coming for me. I watched its massive muscles bunch, its claws dig into the stone of the castle floor, its body tilt toward me as it dug in and took off. I waited as its steps moved inexorably toward me. And I stepped to the side, reaching out a power-infused arm to smash against its head as it flew past.

The Dis stumbled forward, black blood running from its nose and mouth, and stopped, turning toward me. With an effort, I kept my enhanced vision so that I could see when the monster dug in for a second run at me.

I waited until it was almost on me and then kicked out hard, my bony knee smashing brutally into the juncture of the thing’s hairy thighs.

The Dis didn’t react the way I’d expected from having its balls crushed. Rather than bending around itself in pain, the demon struck out immediately, before my foot had a chance to return to the ground.

Its deadly, burning claws raked down my face, tore through my throat and ripped three jagged holes in my chest.

As I flew backward, my pain-racked body cringing in on itself in an instinctual effort to protect and avoid, something inside me snapped. A switch inside my mind flipped, and my devil came out in a big way.

The widening of the demon’s red eyes as it recognized my monster would have been comical if I’d been in my right mind.

In my present state it was simply a beacon to follow toward the destruction of my enemy.

I flipped back to my feet and lifted both hands toward the demon, watching as its small, vibrantly red eyes widened in reasonable fear.

I was no longer the light warrior the thing had started the battle with. Dark energy boiled beneath my skin and no doubt shone from my gaze.

The power that shot from my hands was deadliest I had. It was the power to rend, to tear, to slice, to kill. It was the power I’d been reluctant to tap for fear of what it would do to me.

To my soul.

But I eagerly embraced it now.

I watched with my enhanced vision as the power arrow I’d unleashed ripped through the demon’s rocklike exterior, spewing black blood into the air in wide sprays that splattered the walls and ran down the demon’s pretty white fur to the floor, puddling beneath its writhing body.

I saw the small, tooth-filled maw open in unimaginable pain as I twisted the power in its gut and swung my hands wide, ripping the demon into two grisly chunks of monster that flew across the room in separate directions.

The Dis demon was dead.

I stood in that castle room in Hell with power filling every cell of my body. My skin crawled with it. It throbbed in my fingertips.

I had no enemy to face. Nothing to kill.

I was a killing machine without a target.

The power raged through my veins. The need to tear and maim throbbing through me in the wake of the power, and my fingers itched to rip and savage.

Black blood, like acid, burned smoking holes in my clothes and scorched my skin, but I didn’t feel the pain. I was a walking, pulsing power cocktail set on destroy.

In the distance, I could hear someone calling my name. But the voice came to me as if from a long, wide tunnel. Disembodied and weak.

Easy to ignore.

On some level I knew I was a beat of my heart away from succumbing forever to my devil, losing the light in my soul and joining the ravening monsters in the dark world.

Closing my eyes, I pulled air into my lungs and tried to tamp down the power, rein it back in. I fought to push the power back to its core, where I could manage it. The battle drove me to my knees and made me scream with frustration.

Only a small part of my mind recognized the need to stop the power. My body craved the throbbing energy, embraced it. And it would have been so easy to succumb. To let it take me over.

The voice in my mind grew steadily louder, calling me back from the brink. I tried to focus on the beacon it provided, embracing its siren call.

Gradually the power receded, trickling back to its core. At some point the numbness I’d wrapped myself in left me and I felt the heated embrace of two strong arms, the firm warmth of a broad chest at my back.

The voice that had called me back was deep and husky, filled with both love and fear, and the scent that enveloped me as the power receded was like a soothing drug to my ravaged senses.

Dialle.

“Welcome back, my love.”

I sighed, allowing my body to collapse against his. “That was close.”

He reached beneath me and lifted, one arm behind my knees and one beneath my back. “It was, yes. I thought for a moment I’d lost you to your devil.”

I frowned, closing my eyes and enjoying the soothing rumble of his voice against my skin. “I’d think you’d welcome that.”

A gentle kiss against my forehead made my body clench with lazy need. “Nay, your light feeds mine. Without it, I fear we’d both be lost.”

I nodded, the edges of my mind growing charcoal gray with weariness. “Makes sense.” My words tumbled clumsily from my lips. The gray slid inexorably forward.

“Sleep and heal, Astra. We have more ass to kick when you awake.”

After infusing myself with all that power, I could already feel my battle wounds beginning to knit and heal. My lips curved upward, the light dwindling to nothing in my mind. Although my lips moved, I wasn’t sure I actually spoke the word. “Crashin’!”

His warm chuckle carried me under. As the charcoal turned to black and my mind slid into grateful rest.

* * * * *

I was in the heated pool in Slayer’s cave again. He was seated on the side of the pool with my foot in his hand, sucking gently on my big toe. I felt each gentle tug of his mouth in my sexual core, as if a line ran directly from my feet to my pussy and he was tugging on it.

I watched him as he licked a heated path from my toe to my calf, nibbling gently as his hands caressed their way up the inside of my thigh.

Toward the mother lode.

He settled my foot back to his lap, resting it against his long, thick cock, which was rigid with need. I pressed my heel against the unyielding length of his shaft, running it down to the heavy sac below and pressing there too.

He growled low in his throat and pulled my other foot toward his mouth.

I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the pool, giving myself up to the sensual delight he was creating with those hard, competent hands and talented lips.

“If you love Dialle, why are you here with me?”

My eyes shot open. It was no longer Slayer in the pool with me, but Emo. His black eyes swirled with angry color, at odds with the tender stroking of his hands down my thighs. “I’m not.”

His smile was hostile. “You’re not what?”

“I’m not in the heated pool with you.”

He held my gaze, a familiar smile tugging at his scrumptious lips. “And yet I’m here and so are you.”

Shrugging, I tried to make the ridiculous seem right. “But I’m not here with you. I’m just here…and you showed up.”

Our eyes held. I visually consumed him like he was a Vegas smorgasbord and I was a broke and hungry gambler.

I licked my lips as my gaze slid over his broad shoulders, held my breath over his smooth, golden chest, and my pussy clenched as my vision slid downward, over his flat, ripped belly to his…oh my!

“Take a picture, Astra. It will last longer.”

“Good Lord!” My gaze jerked upward, to Nerul’s hated face. “Get the hell out of my dream, evil turd!”

Nerul laughed. “You brought me here. Apparently you have some…issues.”

I shook my head and pinched my eyes closed, tempted to stick my fingers in my ears to close out his hated voice.

Something nudged against my calf and I opened my eyes to find Dialle climbing to his feet.

Unfortunately for me it was the wrong Dialle.

“First! Get back to Hades where you belong!”

He stood over me, his enormous, rock-hard dick waving happily in my face.

Despite myself I was mesmerized by it. I just barely stopped myself from licking my lips at the sight. I blinked. “No! Damn you!” I surged to my feet and swung a fist toward his gorgeous—hated—gorgeous face.

A large hand caught my fist and yanked me close. I looked up into my Dialle’s beautiful eyes. They were blue. Startling blue. Like they turned when he became the great unifier of prophecy.

“Lovely Astra.” He lowered his perfectly sculpted lips to mine.

I sighed against his mouth, feeling as if I’d found my way home at last. “I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I?”

Dialle licked the seam of my mouth. “No.” His hot tongue laved my cheek and continued on, to the uber-sensitive spot behind my ear. “But I do have some flying monkeys you can borrow.”

Lust jolted through me and sparks flew. His lips had found the daemon hickey. My trembling thighs tightened under the flow of warm moisture. “Did you know you’re speaking nonsense?”

He sucked gently at the teardrop-shaped mark, making me groan as frissons of pleasure tore through me. “It’s your dream, Astra. You’re writing the script.”

I gasped as hard, gentle fingers slid inside me. “I am?”

“Mmm. You’re so wet for me, lovely Astra. Shall I plunder you with my love monkey?”

“Good god!” I murmured. “I need to get a new scriptwriter.”