Good Side of Sin (37 page)

I told her everything and she listened without interrupting me, only nodding or sipping her tea every once in a while, to break up the monotony. She gave a huge sigh once I finished, and then leaned forward and took my hands as she looked into my eyes. Hers were pretty eyes. Very unusual colors shimmered—no, swam—around her irises, and I felt like I was being pulled into them, like a magnet or a sink hole.

I jerked back, tearing my hands from hers and, in the process, clearing the contents from the coffee table separating us. “What did you do to me?” I screamed as I jumped to my feet.

“Please—I was only watching the memory you have of the Council’s decision when you asked to come here. You begged them to let you try and save my brother.”

I stared at her, completely confused.

“I have the ability to see the past, present and future of a person, but only if I look though their eyes. I can tell you that your future doesn’t look good. Neither did Isaiah’s when I glanced through his eyes earlier, but I don’t see what the Council thinks I can do about it. I’m stuck here for eternity. I do not have the power to change your future or the course of Heaven’s destruction.”

“Lucifer can stop and reverse the damage, just—”

Melina busted up laughing. I thought, for sure she would stop after a few seconds, but I was wrong. I sat back down and watched as tears spilled from her eyes and she fought for breath in between fits of laughter.

This wasn’t good at all. She had gone completely mad.

Finally, she stopped, but she was still smiling, wiping at the moisture under her eyes and having trouble catching her breath. My last words had nearly sent her over the crazy hill, so I thought I had better let her speak first this time. I had some time. Not much, but some.

“Perhaps the Council has sent you to the wrong gates, Josselyn.” She lifted her arms and looked around the room. “I’m sorry to say that I am not hiding Lucifer in my closet, but you are free to check if that will make the Council feel better.”

I shook my head. “We know where he is, and no, they didn’t send me to the wrong gates. They want you to talk to him, convince him not to destroy Heaven.” An idea suddenly came to me and I shared it with her. “If you can see the future when you look in someone’s eyes, then you can tell Lucifer his plan won’t work. You may have to lie to him, but if you can get him to believe you, then that is all we may need.”

She honestly looked surprised. “They will give me back my freedom to do this?”

I took in a deep breath, and then let it out as painfully slow as I could, putting off the inevitable for just a few seconds more. “You only get one day.”

Melina made an abrupt sound and I jumped in surprise.
Did she really just snort?
She did it again and I covered my gaping mouth with my hand to keep from laughing or crying or…well, I wasn’t exactly sure what might come out, but I had it covered just in case it was something unpleasant—something more unpleasant than Melina snorting.

She was laughing again. The type of laughter where your face turns red and you can’t catch your breath—yeah, it was that kind of laughter, and it wasn’t a pretty image. I was beginning to worry about her, but then she finally managed to gather all her marbles.

She patted my knee with her hand and sighed as she picked up her tea cup from the floor where I had knocked it. “I wish they had sent you to see me centuries ago. I haven’t laughed so much in ages.” She placed the tea pot, cups, saucers and the empty basket back on the tray, and then stood with it in her hands. I watched her with wide eyes as she took it to a long bar. She didn’t turn to look at me as she spoke. “Do tell Isaiah that it was nice of him to visit, and that I hope to see him again someday. Have a safe journey back, angel.”

I jumped to my feet. “You are refusing to help us?”

She whirled around to confront me, her eyes red and glossy with livid anger. I didn’t flinch or move back, but I wanted to. “What would you do if you were offered only one more day with your soulmate in exchange to save something that isn’t even yours, that never will be yours? Choose your words wisely, angel.”

What was she talking about? This wasn’t about me. But even if it was, of course I would do what was necessary to save Heaven and Earth from Lucifer. That’s why I was here. “I would do whatever was necessary to stop Heaven and Earth from falling into the hands of Lucifer.”

“Even if that meant losing your Prince of Lust forever?”

I opened my mouth to tell her yes, but nothing came out. I couldn’t say it and make her believe it, because I didn’t believe it. If I lost Thoros forever there would be no reason for me to save anything. I wouldn’t care what happened to Heaven and Earth. I would follow him wherever he went, even to Hell.

“You couldn’t do it, could you?” Melina said, and I had to look away from her gloating smile. It made me want to throw up on her royal blue and silver stilettos. “Tell me what it would take for you to save Heaven and Earth if you were in my shoes. Anything less than that would be a waste of your breath.”

Again, I opened my mouth, but words failed me. I couldn’t think of anything to say except for Thoros and me to be together forever. It might have sounded selfish, but that would be the only way to get me to agree to a deal like I was offering her.

“I’ll tell you what… I will accept your deal if you accept mine. I actually have two options for you to consider. Neither are negotiable. I won’t take any less. It’s either one or the other. Do you understand?”

I looked up at her, hope filling my eyes once again. There were two options? I hadn’t even imagined there would have been
one
after she had yanked me up and shoved me into her shoes. Surely I could agree to at least one of them. She said she would help save Heaven and Earth if I could pick just one of them. I nodded that I understood her terms. I still couldn’t speak.

She clapped her hands together and squealed with delight. I still wanted to throw up on her.

“The first one is you and your friends stay here with me forever—”

“How will we stop Lucifer from taking control if we stay here and do nothing to stop him?”

She shook her head. “I thought you said you understood. I said I would accept your deal if you accept mine. But I am offering you another option: you can stay here with your friends and soulmate and let Lucifer have what he wants. Limbo will be unaffected. He still won’t be able to get in, nor can I get out. So, you and your soulmate are safe, and can be together… forever.” I could feel her eyes on me, and she knew I was seriously considering it. “You don’t have to listen to the Council, Josselyn. In fact, in a day or so there won’t even be a Council anymore. Nobody will blame you for wanting to save yourself and your soulmate. I wouldn’t, if I was up there waiting for you to save us.”

Troy… Marcus… Baddon… Fallis… Lameria… Phoebe… Paul… Damien… Abigail… Rhyan… so many more, millions more innocent, pure souls… They would all belong to Lucifer.
I looked up at her. “What’s the other option?”

She smiled. “I thought for sure you would agree to that one. Guess you’re not so much like me after all.”

“What is it?” I demanded.

“I think it’s only fair that if I only get to spend one more day with my soulmate, then you should only have one more day with yours. I’ll go to Hell and keep Lucifer distracted, lie to him or whatever, while the rest of you use the alflight to destroy the link he has between Heaven and Hell. And then, when my time is up with my soulmate, I will bring yours back here, to Limbo, with me… forever. I will only release him back to you if and when you find a way to release me from Limbo for good. I bet Thoros is a tiger in bed, isn’t he?”

There was no air in my lungs, and I couldn’t seem to draw in any oxygen through my nose or mouth. The room started to spin around me. I was about to pass out. This was wrong. I wouldn’t let her have Thoros. I couldn’t!

“Don’t answer her, Josselyn.”

“Thoros!” I cried, and then ran across the room and collapsed into his waiting arms. “I wasn’t going to let her have you. I can’t—”

I heard him talking, but it didn’t seem like he was talking to me. Was I in that much shock?

“I don’t want her to have to make this decision. She can hate me for eternity, but I won’t have her hating herself. If you help us, I will come back here with you, Melina.”

What?
“What?” I jerked my head up to look at his face. He couldn’t be serious, but it appeared he was. He was still looking at her, so I looked at her.

Melina held out her hand and a scroll appeared atop her palm. She rolled it out, and then produced a pen out of thin air. “It’s a done deal. All I need is your signature… in blood, please. Ink isn’t quite binding enough.”

“I won’t do it!” I screamed.

Melina rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t talking to you, brat!”

“Thoros? No.” I looked back to him and shook my head back and forth rapidly, refusing to believe what he was about to agree to was true. “No! NO! I won’t let you do this! Don’t you dare do this to me!” He tried to push me away from him, toward the door, but I gripped his arms tighter and raked my nails down his arms when he tried to pull away from me.

He grabbed my shoulders and brought my face up to his. I was sobbing. There was no stopping the tears. I felt like he was ripping my heart from my chest with his bare hands. “Stop this, Josselyn! This is the only way! Don’t fight me on this, please, baby. Heaven and Earth are depending on you—on us. We are the only chance they have left. Be angry with me. Hate me if you have to, but do your job. Do what you came here to do. Do it for love. Do it for all the people of the world that haven’t yet found what we have, so that maybe one day they can. Even if we were only allowed a brief moment together, my memories of you will last me an eternity. Nothing can take that from me.”

I shook my head and cried, “I can’t. I won’t let you! No—”

His lips were on mine, hard and urgent and full of passion, but then it was over too quickly, and I felt a jolt as I was thrown across the room and into Malcolm’s arms.

“You better take care of her or so help me God, Malcolm, Lucifer’s wrath will seem like a pleasant dream compared to the nightmare I will become if I have break out of here and come looking for you! Get her out of here!”

“No!” I wailed and reached for Thoros, but he had already turned his back on me and was walking toward Melina. Malcolm dragged me out of the room. I fought against his hold, kicking and biting and hitting him every chance I got, anything to get him to let me go.

He didn’t.

He shut the door and it vanished before our eyes into the concrete wall.

It was gone.

Melina was gone.

And so was Thoros.

I screamed, and my knees buckled, hitting the stone floor with a loud pop. Malcolm dropped with me and pulled me onto his lap, and then just held me as I fell apart.

Baddon flexed his wrists and winced when the silver cuffs bit into his flesh again. The blood from the burns was seeping freely from the wounds now, dripping from his fingers in a steady flow, and he realized that the metal must have cut through to the radial arteries already.

Just perfect,
he thought, and sighed in defeat.

He had been trying for hours to think of a way to escape, but the whole time he had been here, Chelsea hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Of course he knew by now that her name wasn’t really Chelsea, and admitting that to himself was a lot harder than he had imagined it could be. What he dreaded even more was admitting that he had been wrong to Fallis. The bastard would never let him live this one down.

“You do realize that even though you are immortal, it doesn’t mean you’re invincible, right? You can die. You’re bleeding to death right now. And when all of your blood is gone, where do you think you will go? You gotta have a whole soul to get into Heaven, big boy.”

Baddon turned his head slowly and looked at her from under flaming red eyelashes. “Go to Hell, bitch.”

She giggled in the exact same way that had caught Baddon’s attention the first time he had met her, but this time the sound didn’t make him want to fuck, it made him want to choke a bitch. She stood from her perch by the window and sauntered over to him.

“Oh, I’ll be going back, and when I do, I am taking all you half-souled pussies back with me, including the alflight. Lucifer has big plans for him. We are just waiting for them to arrive, and then I can get—”

Baddon and the demon both looked toward the ceiling after a loud thump rattled the lighting fixtures overhead.

She smiled. “Looks like your friends aren’t going to let me down after all.”

Baddon’s first thought was of Thoros, and then he dismissed it, knowing his friend was still in Limbo with Josselyn. Surely Fallis wouldn’t attempt to bust in here alone. And even if he did bring everyone in the house with him, they were still going to get their asses handed to them on a silver platter, and then the other half of their souls would be offered up to Lucifer by nightfall. This demon wasn’t anything to play with. Obviously, Lucifer knew that or he wouldn’t have sent her to take on so many of Heaven’s finest, alone. Or was she really by herself? No, he remembered the archangel saying there were several demons in the single host.

He decided to keep her talking. Distraction was the best technique he could think of. Well, other than shoving his boot up her ass, but he wasn’t able to do that just yet, as it was shackled to the chair he was sitting in. He prayed that, before the fight was over, he would get his chance. He smiled as the image of a team of doctors surgically removing his size seventeen boot from her anal cavity flashed through his mind. He would almost go back to Hell willingly if he could experience that daydream in reality. He
almost
would.

“He’s not going to get the kid.”

She raised her eyebrows in question, but turned away and started circling his chair to keep him from reading her expressions. “What makes you so sure?”

“Well, for one, the guy doesn’t have an evil bone in his body. You’d have to brainwash him to get him to hurt a puppy, much less condemn every soul in Heaven and on Earth to an eternity of torture. I’m guessing the whole freewill thing would set Lucifer back some on that. And two, unless you have a key to unlock the gates of Limbo, you aren’t going to find him anytime soon.” Baddon chuckled as a thought came to mind. “Even if Lucifer manages to bring Heaven and Earth to him, he won’t be able to rule over them because he will still be stuck in Hell. Just because he defeats them, doesn’t mean he will be released from the wrath God enforced on him. I’m right, aren’t I? An alflight is powerful enough to set him free. Without Ethan, Lucifer is doing all this for nothing—”