Redemption (A NOVEL OF THE SEVEN SIGNS) (18 page)

“Caliban. It’s me. I’m in trouble. Some dirty angel, he grabbed me. I’ve got this stupid thing on my skin, it’s…”

The inspection slot snapped open. Smoke drifted out, harsh with drugged smoke. Gleaming yellow eyes inspected her. A low female voice lisped. “Rose Harley. You’re not welcome here.”

Not Caliban. Just another Chosen, a minion like her.

Rose lifted her chin, showing her bruises, the mark, her sallow starved skin. “The building’s on fire, okay? Open the door, Lily. If that angel finds me, I’m a dead woman. Let me in!” She hammered harder, hoping Lily would think her demented, driven insane by the angel’s mark.

Lily’s gaze darted left and right. Japheth’s glowing ass better be well hidden. “No one comes in. Least of all you.”

“Then send Caliban out. Jesus, Lily, I’m starving here. I’ll do whatever he wants this time. He can have me. I promise…”

Black smoke crawled from the slot. It surrounded her, coalescing. She choked, but couldn’t help inhaling, the sour taste of charcoal and meat. Her thoughts spaced out, bright and distinct, like she’d sucked on a crack pipe. An effortless rush soaked into her muscles, so good she gasped and melted to her knees, dizzy…and hard arms lifted her, laying her on her back on the sticky floor.

“Rose…” Caliban’s deep whisper echoed, stretching to eternity. Dreamy, she blinked.

A dark face, riddled with pin piercings, spikes and sharpened wire. Long dreadlocks, knotted with tiny bones. Black eyes, whirling with starlit crazy. He wore tight jeans and no shirt, his wiry muscles gleaming damp with fever. A steel razor wire collar circled his sinewy throat, the wicked barbs slicing through his fast-healing flesh. It was adorned with a gleaming black gemstone, wreathed in smoke and glowing like moonlit midnight.

Rose shuddered. People said Caliban was once a voodoo priest, raising dull-eyed zombies from the grave to do his bidding. Others said he was a fucked-up crack dealer from Queens. Either way, the dude was a total whackjob.

“My beauty.” His deep Haitian lilt stroked her lazy nerves. She struggled to stay alert. He was dangerous. He could turn to
smoke
. Only demons could do that, right? How had he learned that trick?

“Caliban,” she said, with what she hoped was a disarming sigh. She eyed the smoking black gemstone, and covered a shudder. It stank of Fluvium, rank and raw. “Some dirty heavenshit is coming for me. You have to help me…”

“What’s this?” Caliban touched one fingertip to her mark. His barbed-wire bracelet grazed her cheek. “Our lord won’t like this.”

She struggled not to recoil. Caliban’s sick rituals were legendary. The evil vampire thirst was a religion to him. He thought Fluvium was God, and drinking was worship. And he taught his eager disciples to be just like him.

“I told you. The asshole marked me. I ran away. Now everyone tries to kill me.” She fell fainter into his arms. Her breasts pressed against his naked chest, and unwanted memories of Japheth made her squirm. Her angel was so strong, smelled so good. Her nipples had hardened at his barest touch. But Caliban’s flesh raised no reaction, beyond disgust. His scent—blood and burned resin—made her retch.

She covered it with a splutter. “I’m so hungry. I’m sorry. I know I was…disobedient. But I can’t…”

“Hush, baby girl.” Caliban stood, and looked down at her, long locks falling on his razor-pierced nipples. Every time his muscles moved, that sharp wire cut him again…but as she watched, his uncanny flesh healed, fast even for a vampire. Fluvium’s charmed gemstone was increasing Caliban’s powers. “You have no right to come here. You refused me. You grieve our blood lord’s spirit, Rose. I should rape your girly ass and leave you in pieces for the crows.”

Rose shuddered. She’d seen Caliban naked. Knew those barbed-wire ornaments on his chest weren’t the only ones…

“I know I deserve that,” she lied thickly. God, she wanted to throw up. “But please, I’ve changed my mind. I need you.”

His eyes gleamed. “You know my price.”

“Whatever you want—”

“Say it.” Caliban’s hollow, inhuman tone scraped her spine. “Convince me you believe, my beauty. I’ll have no blasphemers here.”

She knew what she had to do…but humiliation flamed deep in her belly. Japheth was hearing this. He’d think she meant it. That she actually wanted these horrid things.

But no time for stupid pride. She had to make Caliban believe it. Say it, and make it good, and hope her angel came for her before that barbed wire went somewhere she wouldn’t like…

Boldly, she focused on Caliban’s dark eyes, and imagined.

Crisp golden feathers, teasing my bare nipples. That soft gilded hair on my face, rich hard angelflesh under my lips. He tastes of coffee, musk, glorious skin. He’s kissing me, sliding his strong hands on my ribs, my ass. I wrap my legs around him, he’s kissing my breasts, sucking them, oh God it feels so…and the hot iron blade thrust as he takes me, fucks me, rips me apart and exposes my raw insides
…

“I want the blood.” Her voice husked with hunger. Angelflesh stinging her fangs, the sweet saltiness on her lips…

“Worship with me, Caliban. Please. Let me drink you until I can’t bear it, and then you can torture me. I’ll come when you say. I’ll take it wherever you want. I’ll fuck the cattle and drink them to death with you.”

She forced down sour bile, struggling to focus. Japheth’s tongue between her legs, licking, sucking her into his mouth, while she wrapped her arms around his rock-hard thighs and licked the blood from his skin… “I’ll even…do that thing you like, with the dead ones. Just let me taste you. Please. For our lord.”

“Very good, Rose. Most convincing.” Caliban loomed over her, a monstrous shadow. His knotted hair scratched her face. He smelled of iron and empty hatred. His spiked lips cut her cheek, and she flinched, but he grabbed her hair, holding her still. “But I don’t believe you.”

Rose’s heart hammered. Surely, he could smell her fear. Her mind gibbered.
He can taste it. He knows I’m a traitor.
She wanted to scream, yell at her angel to get out of here before it was too late…

But it was already too late.

Caliban jumped astride her. She tried to break free, but he pinned her down, wrists and thighs. Jesus, he was strong. “You stupid whore.” His fangs clicked out, wickedly barbed. “Tricked by an angel. What did you think, that I’d take that stinking burn off if you spun a few lies?”

Her mind lit sharp, desperate. Maybe he hadn’t guessed about Japheth. Maybe he just thought she was jonesing for blood. “It’s not a lie,” she stammered, playing for time. “I… I can’t live alone anymore. I tried, but I can’t. It’s too lonely. I want to be part of the coven. With you.”

“Let’s see.” He dragged one big hand across his abdomen. The razor bracelet sliced his flesh. Blood trickled. “Ahh.” His eyes gleamed yellow, and he wrenched her mouth open with one thumb. “Worship, bitch. And you’d better enjoy it.”

Blood gushed over her lips. So hot. So evilly delicious… She gagged, spitting, but the hunger howled like a beast in her guts and she couldn’t help but swallow.

Oh, fuck.
Sick hunger gripped her. She swallowed harder, thirstier. It didn’t sate her. She just wanted more. Liquid fire, filling her mouth, obliterating reason and dignity, leaving only thirst, and her drumming pulse, and the dark-fire delight of demon-spelled blood.

Her nerves raked raw. The thirst wouldn’t ease. If Caliban gave her a human, she’d tear the thing’s flesh apart, wouldn’t stop until she’d wrung the body dry.

Caliban laughed, monstrous. The charmed gemstone at his throat flickered with unholy flame. “That’s it. Our thirst is pure, Rose. It’s beautiful. This is what we are. Learn to love it.”

Oh, God, help me.
The prayer choked her, and the black silence only sharpened her horror. It was like Fluvium all over again. Her body screamed with thirst. Her flesh ached to be satisfied. Her nerves cried out for punishment, agony, torture, any sensation at all to feed this insatiable yearning…

Satan’s sweet blood, she’d been such a screaming idiot.

To think that an angel—any angel, but especially Japheth, with his fuck-you-hellspawn morals and iron-cast will—would help her now.

He already despised her. He’d think even less of her now. Probably, he’d already gone.

Despair swamped her, a cold black tide. Caliban had claimed her. He’d use her, drink from her, throw her in with his human cattle and make her eat them. Kill them and make her do horrible things with their bodies. And then, he’d kill her, and eat her flesh raw, and she’d fall screaming into hell.

Well, screw that.
Defiance lit a baleful bonfire in her heart. Japheth had abandoned her. But she wasn’t ready for hell. Not yet.

Grimly, she punched her nausea down, and arched up to sink aching fangs into Caliban’s chest.

He grunted, throwing his bestial head back. She sucked, blood trickling over her chin. More warm wetness spread in her lap, staining her jeans where he rubbed against her. She could feel the ugly spikes where the wire he wore there had pierced him, made him bleed. The thought of taking
that
inside her made her shudder…

But the demon inside her exulted, and her body burned like hellfire for release. This demonic lust was insane. She didn’t want to fight it.

But she had to.

She grabbed his hair, dragging herself upwards. “Yes. I understand now. This is what we are.”

Caliban sighed, guttural, and pulled her onto his lap, wrapping her in his arms. “You can’t fight it, my beauty. We are thirst. Our lord demands it.”

She folded one leg around him, and bared her throat like prey. “Then drink me.”

His eyes flashed yellow, and he reared his head back to strike.

CHAPTER 15

Rose ripped the fiery black gemstone from Caliban’s flesh.

Skin and sinew tore, a flash of scarlet flame. Her fingers burned. Caliban screamed, smoke erupting from his eyes.

The air writhed with fiery worms, bewildered demonspells unexpectedly released from their enchanted prison. They darted blindly, screeching, snapping at anything that moved, and their rage sizzled the air to acrid steam.

The explosion blew Rose backwards onto her ass. The gemstone in her hand smoked, and she hurled it away with all her strength. It hit the wall and exploded, raining flames.

Caliban flailed, his hair afire. He raked at his eyeballs, but they melted down his pin-pierced cheeks like custard. He howled, and the darkness answered, an evil echo that stripped her blood raw.

Rose scrambled up, heart pumping. Demonspells nipped at her, gnashing their spectral teeth, enraged by her Tainted mark. She swatted them away, and whirled to run.

Frosty blue light erupted in a fireball.

She screamed, her marked forehead burning afresh, and a fiery blue-gold whirlwind grabbed Caliban and flung him twenty feet across the room.

Caliban slammed against the prison bars. Bones cracked. And Japheth unfurled his wings and landed in a blinding blue halo. The floor quaked and splintered beneath him. Lightning forked along the bars, and ozone stung, laced sharp with the angel’s rage.

“Talk to me, worm.” Thunder cracked in his voice. He slammed Caliban’s head into the bars, and his left fist clenched around a spike of blue flame, his Tainted sigil burning uncontrolled. “Or your eyeballs won’t be all that melts.”

Rose’s heart swelled, fierce. Her body still bled and burned. Thirst still tore her throat. The horror of what she’d become still stained her soul, and she wanted to dig deep underground, find a cold dark cavern where sunlight never shone.

But her angel hadn’t deserted her. He’d come for her, in all his brutal, quivering, magnificent fury.

And she didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or terrified.

*   *   *

Japheth’s palm sizzled on Caliban’s unholy flesh, and he screamed silent exultation to the sky.

Heaven forgive him, he wanted to scrape this twisted thing’s skin off. Rip those evil piercings from his body one by one and watch him burn. If only the hell-sick gutterworm wouldn’t enjoy the pain.

To see Rose at Caliban’s mercy like that… Japheth’s muscles jerked so tight, his fingers cramped. It was all he could do not to dive in and chew the bastard’s rotted brains out.