Hellsbane Hereafter (5 page)

“Huh?” Before I could think of anything more intelligent to say, a warm pressure squeezed through my brain, like a rude finger digging into my thoughts. I closed my mind, like clenching a mental fist, pushing back the angel’s power, closing him out. “Hey. If you’re going to violate me, you could at least buy me dinner first.”

His eyes narrowed, head tilted to the side, curious. “Interesting. What else? Heightened speed? Greater strength?”

“I—”

He swung his sword at my neck, too fast for me to block, so I ducked. His next swing was less than an instant later, but I managed to block it. The clash of his angelic blade against mine vibrated down my arm, and every bone in my body screamed with the jolt of pain. I moved, lightning fast, teleporting across the street only to find him there a heartbeat before me.

His blade flashed, slicing through the air, and I ducked, spun, then blocked the next strike. I teleported behind the black metal fence lining the parking lot, and the angel’s sword cut through it like it was made of foam.

I moved farther back while he pulled his sword free, and I fought to catch my breath. “You’re trying to kill me.”

The angel paused as though my stating the obvious had surprised him. “I am testing you.” He walked around the mangled fence at an easy human pace.

“Really? ’Cause it kind of felt like I was fighting for my life.” I shuffled back a step as he neared. “So…um, you’re done, right?”

He chuckled, but with his eggshell-white eyes, long purple hair, and pale skin, the humor came off as kind of psychotic. “Yes.”

I exhaled, smiling, trying to feel relieved. “Oh, good.” But there was something wrong, something about the way he kept moving toward me, the chill in those creepy eyes, the way his grip tightened on his sword.

“No more tests. You are quite remarkable. Just as Jukar said you would one day be.”

“You know Jukar?” I swallowed hard, shuffling back three more steps.

“I did. Long before you were born, shortly before his fall, in fact.”

“But you talked about me?” I asked. “He knew I’d be born?”

“We all did. Jukar knew he would father you. And I knew I would end you.” The tall angel moved so fast that even with my illorum-archangel speed, I couldn’t get out of his way. With his arm out, his big hand latched on my head, his palm just above my eyes, his long fingers clamping around my skull like an octopus.

His power gripped my heart, squeezed around my ribs, crushing me like a giant compactor. I couldn’t breathe, and my head throbbed. I dropped to my knees, gritting my teeth, fighting against the squeeze of his power.

And then it just stopped. He dropped his hand to his side, and I fell forward, catching myself, landing on my hands.

“Jukar’s blood has made you resistant to seraphim power.” He twirled his sword in a quick circle at his side then raised it, readying his next advance. “That is unfortunate for you. I had meant to be kind and give you a swift death.”

I pushed backward, scrambling to put space between us, crab-walking right into a car. I dropped to my butt and scanned the ground for my sword. I found it right where I’d dropped it at his feet.
Crap.

“Why do you have to kill me? You just said I was interesting.” I walked my hands up the side of the car behind me, pushing to my feet.

“You cannot be suffered to live,” he said, as though it should be obvious. “You are more of an affront to the Father than any before you. Your power can only corrupt and destroy. You are a harbinger of humanity’s doom. You must die, Emma Jane Hellsbane.”

My brain froze, his words icing through me. Fear of this possible truth had been haunting me for months. I’d denied it and pushed it from my mind, but time and again the fear returned that I was my father’s daughter, that I was, despite all my effort, a weapon of evil.

“Azazel.” Lee, owner of Belladonna, the handmade jewelry shop down the street, stood at the entrance to the bank parking lot a few feet behind the mighty angel.

I flicked my attention to the small Asian woman, my brain finally thawing.
Shit.
She’d get herself killed. “Lee, hi, listen, it’s okay. You don’t understand what’s going on. Go back to your shop. I’ve got this. Just a misunderstanding.”

“We understand better than you think,” Markus, her boyfriend, said from behind me.

I glanced back at him and saw the shiny black sword in his hand. “You’re gibborim?” Had he turned his back on his magister, his seraph teacher, to follow Jukar? Or had Jukar gotten to him as an ignorant nephilim, triggering his powers before the archangel Michael could claim him as illorum?

“Am now.” He twisted his wrist, flashing his illorum mark, the sword with the cross keys over the blade. But the blade was broken, cracked below the keys when he’d gone against God and killed one of his defenders. Now I knew. But who had he killed? Was it someone I knew?

I couldn’t think about it.

I didn’t know the couple well, but I’d been near them enough to know that I should’ve felt an intense version of the sickening roll in my stomach that always happened when I was near a half-angel. It should’ve been worse because he was gibborim. But thanks to Jukar disarming my sensitivity to his followers, I didn’t feel anything around gibborims.

“We’re here for your protection, Domina.” I heard Lee’s small feet shuffle her closer behind me.

I turned back to her and for the first time noticed her dark almond eyes were closer to purple than brown—a telltale sign of a demon who’d been freed from the abyss by a Fallen. “You’re a demon.”

Lee’s smile flashed for an instant before she shut it down. “At your service.”

Dammit, how had I missed it?
Had I gotten so used to being around demons, seeing them, talking to them, befriending them, that they’d slipped from my radar altogether?

“Jukar positioned you in my life to protect me?” I remembered how he’d used those words to describe the people he’d sent to protect my half brother.

“Only if the need arose. Gotta say, I didn’t really expect anyone to have the balls to come after the archangel’s daughter.” She shrugged. “Live and learn.”

“Or not.” Azazel spun, his angelic sword swinging out. He moved too fast, a blur of motion, his blade slicing a black line of ooze from Lee’s hip to her shoulder before anyone could think to stop him.

The small demon stumbled back, shock registering in her wide eyes. She dropped to her knees, her straight, chin-length hair curtaining forward, hiding her face. Azazel shot forward, sword thrusting for a kill strike only to clash with Markus’s black gibborim blade.

He didn’t give the seraph a chance to think, pushing the angelic blade away and swinging back to slice a thin line across the bigger man’s neck. Markus teleported behind him, not waiting for Azazel to react. He drove his blade through the angel’s back, the point jutting out above his stomach.

Azazel jerked forward, just as Markus withdrew his sword. He looked at me, then turned back to Markus. He flicked his hand against his wound, like brushing away a fly. “Are you certain you want to interfere, little bastard? I don’t kill children. For me this war is with my Fallen kin, not their mutant offspring. But this abomination cannot continue.” He stretched out his arm, pointing his sword at me. “She will bring the end of humanity. She will bring the end to everything. Do not place your soul between her and me, for I will take both.”

Markus shored his wide stance, double-gripping his sword. “You can try.”

The angel shook his head, his long, reddish-purple hair swaying past his shoulders. With a bothered sigh, he raised a hand toward Markus and swiped to the side. The gibborim sailed off his feet in sync with the gesture, and his body slammed into the hard metal posts, the loud rattle of impact echoing off the nearby buildings. He slumped to the ground stunned, grimacing in pain.

Azazel’s attention shifted to me. He raised his sword and teleported to within striking distance in the blink of an eye. I was out of options.

I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for him to strike. But nothing happened. I opened my eyes to see the angel furrowing his brows at me. He shook his head, a quick snap like scaring a bee from his ear, hearing something I couldn’t.

“Value? Her?” he asked no one I could see. He straightened, and his sword dropped to his side. His white eyes focused on me. “This is a mistake. Every moment you remain on this planet, Emma Jane Hellsbane, you risk the Father’s creation. You
will
corrupt. You
will
destroy. I would end you now and spare the world the Hell you will unleash, if the decision was mine. And one day it will be.”

He vanished.

“Emma?” Sadie called from the open door of our shop across the street. “You okay, honey? What happened?”

I stumbled backward, finally exhaling, my mind still reeling at being alive. I glanced from Markus, staggering to his feet, to Lee.

She’d lost a lot of blood, and black liquid still oozed from the long wound over her chest. I crossed the lot to her, knelt, and felt for a pulse at her neck. It was there…barely. She was a demon, but she’d risked her life for me. I had to do something.

“I don’t know how to save demons,” I whispered to myself, horrified by my helplessness.

Markus stepped up on the other side of the small woman, shoved the hilt of my sword at me, and knelt beside her. The blade dispersed with a simple release of my will, and I slipped the hilt into its sheath at the small of my back.

“She needs brimstone.” Markus gathered Lee around the shoulders, cradling her head into his lap. Tears welled in his eyes, but he stayed strong. “We’ve got it back at the shop. She’ll be okay.”

Brimstone. Right.
Demon’s bodies were full of brimstone from their time in the abyss. It’s why their bodily fluids were like acid to an illorum. A demon scratch could be deadly to us just from the brimstone under their nails. Made sense they’d need to replace any they lost from major wounds.

Markus scooped Lee into his arms as though her weight was nothing to him. Lee was only a little over four feet and barely a hundred pounds. Markus stood almost six feet with plenty of muscle for a man his size. They both looked to be in their late twenties, but when it came to demons and gibborim, that didn’t mean much. Neither aged.

Markus turned but then stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me. “You’re one of us now, Emma. Demons and Fallen are your allies. Don’t you think it’s time you learned how to keep them alive?”

I swallowed hard, guilt clogging at the back of my throat. I nodded. “I will. Yes. I’m sorry, Markus. I’m so sorry, Lee.”

He crossed the street, moving fast toward his shop. Lee’s body rested limp in his arms, her straight black hair swinging back and forth with his stride.

I just stood there, staring.

Learning how to field dress demonic wounds, figuring out what will keep Fallen and demons alive. How had this become my life?

How could this be my destiny?

Chapter Four

“What was his name?” It was a voice in the darkness a split second before I flicked on the living room light.

I made a stupid little yip of a scream before my brain processed that it’d been Eli’s voice. “Why are you sitting in the dark? Y’know that’s creepy, right?”

He sat on my grandmother’s old Victorian couch, knees wide, one elbow on the armrest and the other on the cushion next to him. I’d inherited the house, and pretty much everything inside, when Grammy passed away a few years back. Grammy had collected some seriously sweet furniture. Restoration had been one of her hobbies.

Eli looked amazing surrounded by floral, Victorian-era elegance, his blue-black hair waving down to the collar of his button shirt. He’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and opened the first two buttons at his neck, showing a smooth patch of male chest, with his tie in a loose knot. I liked the rumpled businessman look: five o’clock shadow, fitted dress slacks, a shine on his black, Italian shoes, and he knew it.

“Tell me his name.” Eli ignored my quip. “I’m not going to do anything. I just want to know who it was. Who attacked you?”

I wasn’t sure I believed him. Eli had been acting strange, getting angry, jealous even, like the way he was with Marax. Before his fall, Eli’s maintained an unflappable demeanor. Now, he behaved like a suspicious boyfriend more often than not and picked arguments that had more to do with pride than anything else. Eli never used to be prideful.
Crap.

How had he even found out? Then I remembered, despite my ability to close my mind to the Fallen/demon collective, everyone else loyal to Jukar was jacked in, like a twenty-four-seven mental Skype. Fallen could close themselves off, but demon and gibborim didn’t have that kind of power. Markus and Lee had ratted me out, not that they could help it.

I shrugged, trying to set his suspicion at ease, and dropped my purse on the eighteenth-century refurbished chair just inside the archway to the living room. “I don’t know. He didn’t leave a business card.”

Eli had been alive for…ever. Okay, probably not forever, but longer than I could wrap my brain around. He knew a lot of angels and had—or at least used to have—a lot of friends. And most of them blamed me for his fall. Rightfully so. It was my fault. Eli didn’t agree.

It drove him batshit crazy when anyone said otherwise. I knew it would crush him if he found out one of his friends had actually tried to kill me for it. So far that hadn’t happened. But whatever his reasons, I couldn’t risk that Azazel might have been one of Eli’s friends.

“Tell me his name.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“Answer me, woman.” His sharp tone made me flinch, and I watched him reel in his anger. He exhaled, then started again. “Do not force me to ask Markus or Lee.”

His mouth cut a flat line across his face, his pale blue eyes fixed on me. He was a fallen angel, but Eli still indulged in a tiny bit of denial, thinking that sharing his mind with demons was too distasteful. Gibborim weren’t as bad, and if I didn’t give him an answer, he’d probably find it in Markus’s thoughts rather than Lee’s.

I sighed. “I told you, it doesn’t matter who it was. It’s over. I’m alive. Besides, it didn’t have anything to do with you and me.”

The anger seething beneath his surface eased, lifting the tight lines of his face. He raised his chin. “Then what?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” I held my out arms in a grand gesture. “I’m the harbinger of humanity’s doom.”

Eli’s dark brows creased, and he looked away, unamused and unsurprised.
Shit.
He
had
heard. His jaw clenched, and I could see him fighting to leash another unwanted flash of anger.

I slumped into the chair, crunching whatever was in my purse. “
Oh God…
”

His gaze focused on me, softening by small measures. “I’m sorry for my temper. The gossip is meaningless. Idle speculation. To hell with all of them. You’re an anomaly. Something that has never existed before. It’s normal to fear the unknown, to predict peril or salvation to explain it.”

I knew on some level he was right, but I couldn’t get around the fact that twice in the same day I’d been told I was destined for something evil. “What if it’s true? What if I end up ruining everything somehow and hurting the people I love? What if I
am
evil?”

Eli suddenly stood in front of me, pulling me to my feet. “You are not evil, Emma Jane. You cannot be. Evil is not a thing, it’s intent, it’s action. You haven’t an ounce of wicked intent in your body, and your actions are always for the greater good of those involved.”

“Not always.” I met his beautiful, sin-darkened eyes. “I knew the cost of being with you, the price you’d pay, and I didn’t stop you.”

He tugged me closer, making my breath catch. “It wasn’t up to you to stop me. It was my choice, my price to pay.”

“But I’m the reason you even considered making that choice. I’m the reason you fell.”

He smiled, softening his stern expression. “Yes. You were.”

I tried to look away. He wouldn’t let me. “Emma Jane, you’re missing the point. Yes, I fell because of you—because I fell
in love
with you. Not because you were a wicked temptation, not because I was seduced by evil. I fell in love with you, because down to your soul, you are honorable, brave, and beautiful. I’ve lived for eons, but until I met you, I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know the man I wanted to be. You make me want to be more than I am.”

“You’re mistaking bravery with self-preservation. And I’m not as honorable as you think.” I’d made a deal with the devil to have the man I love in my bed. There was nothing honorable about it. Okay, so Jukar wasn’t exactly the devil, and technically, the deal was to keep Eli out of the abyss. Plus, I hadn’t actually agreed to anything. But the intent, like Eli said, had been there.
Shit.

“You’ll just have to trust me on this one.” Eli lifted my chin with the crook of his finger. He wrapped his arm around my waist, holding my body flush to his and keeping his voice low. “I know you better than anyone. You’re not evil, Emma Jane. You’re human. You’re a woman. And you are a remarkable credit to both.”

Desire, like blue fire, blazed in his eyes. His gaze dropped to my lips, and my stomach clenched. His sweet smile faltered in the heat of his thoughts as he leaned close and pressed his mouth to mine. His kiss warmed me like sweet brandy, blooming in my chest, heating my veins. The scent of fresh, sun-warmed air, country breezes, and wildflowers filled my lungs. I closed my eyes and let the fragrance of his skin soothe my nerves, let the solid press of his body smother my doubt, let his passion sweep me away.

If I was evil, in his arms, I didn’t care. He loved me and had given up so much to be with me, and I loved him for it. Like he’d let go of a long-held breath, he relaxed the tight hold he instinctively kept on his power. The tingling wash of angelic aura poured over me, sinking through my skin, stirring the most intimate parts of my body.

A soft moan escaped me, tension melting from my muscles. His hands gathered me closer, as though he couldn’t bear even a whisper of space between us. Before his fall, Eli had always been so careful—careful how he touched me, how his angelic power influenced me, careful not to let his desire show. Now there was no reason to hold back. Being in the uninhibited embrace of an angel was a dangerously addictive bliss that left me weak-willed and hungry for more.

“Tell me who attacked you,” he whispered and trailed soft kisses along my cheek and down my neck. His teeth nipped my skin, a soft nibble that sent a quick shiver down my spine. “It’s my right to defend your honor.”

My head lolled back, heart racing faster with each kiss he traced down my chest. His hand, big and hot, slipped under my blouse, smoothing up my side to my breast. I swallowed hard, trying to keep my brain focused.

“You’re not a knight in shining armor. And this damsel can defend her own honor. Thanks.” I barely got the words out before his hand slipped under my bra, found my pebbled nipple, and gave it a rough pinch. I gasped, arching into his touch as his thumb smoothed over the tender flesh and drew soft circles that stoked a growing heat between my thighs.

He straightened, bringing his attention back to my mouth and deepened each kiss, suckling my lips, tasting me. He stole my air for his own, making me light-headed, and filled my lungs with his angel breath. The sensation charged through me, like ingesting pleasure itself, and my muscles hummed with heightened desire, lust becoming a tightening knot at the core of my body.

The press of his tall, male form pushed me back, step by step, until the wall next to the antique chair stopped us. His power surged through me, warm and erotic like liquid silk slipping under my skin, caressing parts of me no mortal man could touch.

“Tell me his name.” He worked the buttons of my blouse, peeling the light cotton off my shoulders before dropping his hand to the fastener at the back of my skirt. “I just want to
talk
with him.”

“Eli…” My skirt slipped off my hips, brushing down my legs to pool around my feet on the floor. He didn’t wait half that long to gently press his fingers under the snug fit of my underwear, tracing the edge around to between my legs. His power thrummed over my skin, setting my mind spinning, igniting my body. I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus enough to keep the name from my lips.

He tried again. “What was his—”

I nearly blurted the name just to please him. But instead I opened my mind to him the way I might open my bedroom door and poured my thoughts, my fantasies, into him. I filled his mind with my desire so there was no mistaking what I wanted, what I ached for him to do to me.

He gasped, a soft intake of air, followed by the deep grumble of male satisfaction. “Mmm. Emma Jane, you don’t play fair.”

He’d shown me once what the feel of my thoughts inside his head was like, echoing it back to me. Something similar to the feel of his body inside of mine, I knew the sensation was nothing he’d ever experienced before me. No woman alive besides me had the power to push her thoughts into his. It weakened his knees and shredded his control.

I needed him to lose a little of his unearthly control. I needed him to stop asking about Azazel. And I seriously needed him to focus on taking me to bed.

“Are there rules? I don’t remember discussing rules.” I pushed up to my toes to nibble the lobe of his ear.

His body went stiff and hard in an instant. He rocked his hips, pressing the length and thickness of his excitement against my belly.

My body answered with a quick wash of liquid heat, flooding through me to pool slick and ready at my core. “Take me to bed,” I whispered.

“Yes.” He lifted me and my arms snaked around his neck, legs locking over his hips. His hands cupped my bottom, his hard sex nudging against me. He kissed me again, but this time he was rough and demanding, his lips bruising, teeth nipping, forcing my mind to let go of everything but him and the feel of his mouth on mine.

A gentle shifting of air moved through my hair, and I felt the wall behind me vanish. Time folded inside and all around me with a subtle tug on my senses. If I hadn’t experienced the sensations a thousand times before, I wouldn’t have noticed. But before he broke the kiss and my eyes opened, I knew we’d traveled at near-angelic speed, moving from the living room to my bedroom in the span of a single thought.

Before he could lay me on the bed, I dropped my legs and found my footing. “I want to undress you.”

Eli’s clothes weren’t really clothes in the normal sense. They were kind of a part of him, like our hair and fingernails, both existing as part of the whole and separately. They were created by his power, made of the same molecules he used to solidify his body. They could vanish and change with an easy thought. An awesome time-saver when we were in a hurry. But we weren’t tonight. Tonight I wanted to enjoy everything.

His dark brows pulled into a hard crease, confusion flashing in his lust-filled eyes. I ignored the expression and tugged his loose tie until the knot gave and the long strip of silk slipped from around his neck. A tentative smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. He watched my fingers work the first unopened button of his shirt. It gave way easily, and I pushed to my toes to press a kiss on the newly exposed angel-soft skin. His light brush of chest hair tickled my lips and then again with my next kiss after another button opened. His hands found my hips, resting there as I unfastened one button after the next, trailing kisses all the way down his chest, kneeling to kiss his belly button, which was like any other despite having never been needed, until I reached the top of his slacks.

I stopped there, gazing up at him, tugging the ends of his shirt free, his chest a broad expanse of hard, carved muscle above me. His expression was both sexy and adorable, a mix of male desire and boyish hope. Brows high, mouth tilted in a crooked smile, he watched me unfasten his belt and work the hook and zipper of his slacks. He’d lived for eons, but in this, I was the expert. I held the edge of experience.

My attention shifted to his stiff sex pressing eagerly against the dark cotton of his underwear. Then the underwear vanished. I glanced up at him.

He shrugged. “Just trying to help.”

“Thanks.” I had to smile as I pushed his dress slacks off his narrow hips and down the thick muscles of his thighs. Somewhere during the slow reveal, my smile melted. My hands caressed his hard shaft, marveling at the sight of him. He was so hard, so perfectly shaped, with velvet-soft skin.