The Demoness of Waking Dreams (21 page)

Then he stormed toward the door.

“Wait,” she called after him. “Listen to reason. These Guardians have been dealing with the demoness for far longer than you or I. She is truly dangerous, Brandon. You need to know that disposal is in everyone’s best interests. In the best interests of humankind. Luciana cannot be allowed to continue her evil.”

He didn’t say a word. Just stood there and looked at her with those eyes, cold as stone.

“You don’t see how she’s beginning to affect you,” Arielle said.

Then he slammed out of the building.

Arielle knew the moment she lost it. The moment everything slipped, and the world went sideways. The moment she went into the room where the Gatekeepers were kept, and unleashed her wrath on them.

“Take them away,” she said to the Venetian angels, who stood silently, regarding her with their luminous eyes. “We’ll petition for their disposal, too.”

She shivered, recognizing the seed of something that had been growing in her for a long time.

Vengeance.

That which she had hated so much in Luciana was beginning to grow in herself.

Arielle saw it, but she had no idea how to stop it.

* * *

Brandon half hoped that the rickety old building would fall down and crush the lot of them.

He hadn’t gotten far when a wordless scream came out of the building he’d just exited. Not a human scream, but something animal.

The scream of something—
someone
—being tortured.

He rushed back into the building, up the stairs, bounding toward the room where the Gatekeepers were held. Arielle was just exiting it, wiping blood from her hands onto a cloth.

“The big one’s not talking anymore,” she said.

“Why not?”

Arielle said nothing, that inscrutable expression on her face. Brandon went into the room. There was blood all over the floor, running down the Gatekeeper’s chin. He went over to the demon, opened his mouth.

The Gatekeeper no longer had a tongue.

Brandon bolted down the stairs. Arielle looked at him calmly, perched on the ledge of a windowsill, looking out at the early morning light bouncing off the canal.

“I may have been a little overzealous. Sometimes these things are necessary,” she said.

“Necessary,” was all he could say.

“It’s not like he’s human,” she said, turning to look at Brandon. “If you begin to sympathize with these demons, you’ll never get the job done.”

* * *

Across the canal, everyone in Ca’ Rossetti heard the scream.

“That was Giancarlo,” Luciana said to Massimo, looking up from her worktable. “I know it.”

“Giancarlo and Antonio are old souls in strong, young bodies,” Massimo assured her. His face, however, had gone as white as the arsenic he was measuring. “They can fend for themselves. The likelihood that something has happened to them…”

“Screw likelihood, Massimo. I
know
what I heard.”

Fury welled up in her. She set down the flask she had been holding.

They stood looking at each other, not speaking. A staff of Gatekeepers that had taken her centuries to collect, decades to train. Ruined. By that damned angel.

Massimo’s frown deepened. Finally, he said, “Perhaps now would be the time to…”

“Go. Take the others and go to Tuscany, or go to Naples. Go somewhere and don’t tell me where.”

Massimo fell silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m not leaving you. You need protection, more than any of us. We swore an oath.”

“You’re just getting in the way here, and presenting more targets for those damned angels,” she said irritably. “We cannot remain cooped up in this house. I would leave, too, if I could. But I have responsibilities here in Venice. I must stay. Go, Massimo.”

“No,
baronessa.
Not unless you can convince me that it is absolutely necessary.”

There was a terrible silence between them. Something of which they never spoke.

“I cannot tell you that, Massimo. Not right now.”

“Then I’m staying.”

Death was not the end. They both knew that. The soul was never destroyed.

They had both died before, as humans.

But torture at the hands of the Company of Angels…neither of them knew exactly what that meant. Except for the scream they had both heard carry across the water, a wordless sound that could mean no good.

Chapter Eleven

B
randon stormed away from Arielle, slamming out the back door of the dilapidated building for the second time.

Moments later, he scaled the side wall of Luciana’s palazzo, climbing easily up the ornamental columns and cornices. What impelled him to do so this time, he wasn’t quite sure. Nor did he care. He only knew that he was past thinking.

What drove him now was pure gut feeling.

Luciana’s home was like the rest of her, Brandon thought as he popped the lock on her bedroom window and stole inside.
Opulent. Luxurious. Sensual.

Nudes adorned the frescoed walls, satyrs and nymphs in risqué positions, their partially clothed flesh portrayed in sensual colors that looked almost touchable. Swathes of silk and velvet curtained the windows and draped the large, gilt bed that stood in the center of the room.

But where is the demoness?
he wondered.

The presence of her remaining Gatekeepers and the possibility of capture, he had totally pushed out of his mind.

She came into the bedroom after a bath, dressed in a black silk robe, drying her hair with a thick white towel. When she saw him, she dropped her towel, stumbled a few steps toward the door.

“Wait,” he said, blocking her way. “Don’t call for your Gatekeepers.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “How do I know that you’re not planning on torturing us all?”

Any explanation, any words he wanted to speak were stuck on his tongue.

The message he had come to deliver hung in his mind, unspoken.

The Company is planning on obliterating you.

Too late already. He was dragged off course and drugged into senselessness, merely by her presence. He was losing his edge, and wandering into dangerous territory. She had some strange hold over him that he could not explain.

“What is it you want?” she asked, the question that had been burning between them all this time. “You said no more games. We could play at this forever, waiting for the other to give in. We will be sitting here for another century. Stuck in this stalemate of wills. Or we could simply give each other what we both want. But you have to tell me what that is.”

She thought he had come for seduction. Maybe he had.

Whether he had really come to warn her, he doubted severely.

He resisted. And yet, somewhere deep within him, the answer to her question surged up within him. What he desired was simple.

You.

Luciana was the only thing he wanted at this moment.

She was what he wanted most, and what he absolutely could not have.

“Say it,” she whispered.

What he wanted could not be voiced, at least not to a lady. She might not be a lady, but she was still a woman, and at that moment he was struck wordless by an odd silence that had nothing to do with mere shyness.

No, he was flat-out shocked by his own desires.

He wanted to plunge into her.

To take her against the wall like a wild animal and not stop, to take her in every way he knew and in ways he had not yet begun to imagine. To let go of his angelic nature for just one instant. To give in to the desires of his physical body. Desires that had not been truly sated for a very long time. Desires that could not be fulfilled with the politeness required of intimate relations with other angels.

“Enough talking. Let me show you what I want.”

He kissed her, far more urgently than he ever had before.

In that kiss, he felt her response, every bit as demanding and impatient as his.

He pulled open the silk tie holding her bathrobe closed, letting the garment fall open. His hands moved over her body, exploring its contours, fingers dragging on her still-damp skin. Moving up her back, he reached up to cup her breast, caressing, testing its heaviness in his hand. He fondled her, felt the nipple tighten beneath his thumb. In his pants, his cock throbbed, at maximum pressure and ready to explode.

She moaned, a sound that vibrated all the way into his gut as she moved against him, arching up into him, offering herself to him.

In that moment, he felt the possibilities open up, as though the universe were cracking wide-open and offering itself along with her. As he gazed into the green depths of her eyes, he saw infinite possibilities.

Perhaps things could be different between them. That possibility arose in his mind for the first time.

What if…?
he asked himself.
What if the woman standing before me wasn’t a demon? What if we weren’t mortal enemies on opposite sides of a never-ending war?

Julian Ascher had been a demon. He had found redemption in the arms of his lover.

Was it possible…? Brandon’s mind began to churn through the possibilities, contemplating exactly how he might be able to reform her. It wouldn’t take much, he reasoned.

She already seemed amenable, responsive to his lead.

She ran her hand down the front of his jeans, fingers teasing open the button of his fly.

What are the consequences of sleeping with her, anyway?
he wondered fleetingly.
Serena St. Clair survived, although barely....

But he was not Serena. He knew that if the woman who had her hand on his most vulnerable appendage chose to sink her claws into him, it would be game over.

“That’s it. It’s just a matter of getting it out,” she whispered.

“Getting
what
out?” He held her at arm’s length, separating them a little, his eyes flickering nervously over her half-bared body as she stood in front of him.

She ran a finger down his chest. “The darkness in you. You’re not like the other angels. You pretend to be at peace, but inside you, a storm is raging. I’ve seen it.”

She had hit a nerve. She saw it in the twitch of his jaw, the stone-hard stare of his gray eyes. Heard it in the low rumble of his voice, as he said, “Luciana, you’re treading on dangerous ground.”

“Why not let it out, that rage inside you?” she whispered. “You don’t know how much pleasure darkness can bring. Or how beautiful a storm can be.”

Her hand reached out, down. Stroked his thigh, once, twice.

For an instant, he considered it. She saw that hesitation in his eyes, the momentary pause. The yearning. The need.

Gently, oh, so gently, he put his hand on top of hers.

And pushed it away.

“This isn’t the way,” he said. “
I’m
the one who came to save
you.
You’ve got to realize that. It’s the only way things can work between us.”

“Oh, you’re so mistaken,” she said, leading him to her bed. “Let me show you exactly how mistaken you are.”

He said nothing. She watched him swallow, the delicious movement of his throat, the dryness of his mouth audible.

And that was the moment she knew she had won.

In the corner stood an elaborate mirror, nearly the height of the room, framed in gold.

He caught her gaze in it, staring back at him, so very green and glittering in the semidarkness. He saw himself reflected, leaning over her, as she half turned and looked over her shoulder. He turned her, so that the front of her spectacular body was reflected, and himself behind her.

“Look,” she told him, nodding toward their reflection. “Watch us. You’ll see that we’re the same, creatures of pleasure, both of us. You’re no different than I am.”

He ran his hands over her body, fever-hot and lush. Held her in front of the mirror, staring into her eyes as he felt her gyrating slowly against him.

“Don’t make this into something ugly,” he told her. “I want you to realize how beautiful you are.”

“I’m beautiful in body. But not in soul,” she said.

“You’re beautiful in both. Every soul is beautiful,” he whispered. “Some just don’t realize it.”

She opened her mouth to protest, and he cut her off with a kiss.

“Don’t argue. Just let me make love to you.”

In the mirror, he watched every reaction as it crossed her face, watched their two bodies as he knelt behind her on the bed. His view of her from behind was of the toned, perfect muscles of her back. Gently, reverently, like a man worshipping at a temple of her body, he ran one of his big hands up to cup her breast. Held its heaviness in his palm, spilling out of his hand.

God, she felt good.

Rubbing himself against her, he felt himself harden; he had thought he could not get any harder.

In his arms, she turned, his partner in an intricate dance, still watching themselves doubled in the mirror. They writhed, slid around each other and then somehow she was on top of him, straddling him, lowering herself over him.

He entered her, feeling her stretch as he eased her open.

He waited, easing his way in by fractions of inches, holding himself back, mentally steeling himself to go slowly. To enter her fully would take such a simple movement, an upward thrust of his hips he fought against. Otherwise, in an instant, he would come inside her.

As he buried himself to the hilt, he felt her relax. Felt her sink down onto him, melting around him.

In that moment, he knew the absolute and utter rightness of sexual connection, of the pure and unadulterated pleasure of it, a celebration of the divine. Demoness or not, she was still essentially a part of the divine, irrespective of who or what she
thought
she was.

He exploded inside her, emptying himself into the vessel of her body.

At that moment, it did not seem to Brandon that she was herself at all, but some female incarnation of an urge much more primordial that had emerged at the beginning of time. She existed beyond the binary oppositions of angel and demon, good and evil. She was a conflagration of innocence and temptation that spun around him and melded in his mind.

She was Eve in the garden.

She was the forbidden fruit, ripe and temptingly lush on the bough of the great tree.

And she was the green-eyed serpent, all at once.

He felt her tremble on top of him, quiver around him. The sensation brought him reeling back to consciousness, tumbling back to earth and to the certain knowledge that whatever else she might be, she was a woman.

Flesh and blood, with a heart beating beneath the perfect breast around which his fingers still remained curled.

* * *

Luciana had the moment of orgasm down to an art. She knew exactly when to moan, how to writhe at just the right times, which muscles to tense and when to collapse, seemingly out of exhaustion.

“Mio caro, I’m coming,”
she purred loudly, at exactly the right second.

He lay half sprawled over her afterward, utterly spent, with a small, satisfied smile on his face. For an instant, she resented him, because it was clear that the sex had been much better for him than it had been for her.

And while Brandon was busy thinking of Eve, Luciana was thinking about Lilith.

Before there was Eve, there was Lilith. Poor Lilith did not show up in the official versions of any religion. Her life was relegated to folklore, her history passed down through hearsay and whispered stories. According to these stories, she was Adam’s first wife, created at the same time as he was, out of the same earth. Created as equal, and not lesser than. Lilith had gotten tired of their banal monogamous sex life, and had run away from the Garden of Eden to seek a more exciting time among the demons.

Lilith was not afraid to do what she wanted, to fuck whom she wanted.

Lilith was known to attack men in their dreams.

What would Lilith do now?
Luciana wondered.

Undoubtedly, Lilith would end Brandon. Swiftly, and without regret. She would reach under the bed, to where Luciana always kept a little bit of cyanide stored, for just such occasions. When a man was either asleep or nearly asleep beneath the silk coverlet of her sumptuous bed.

And she would inject that poison into him.

Even if he did not die, Lilith would have kept him captive until she could solve the problem with finality. Until she hit upon whatever she needed, until she found a way to do away with him permanently.

That was what Lilith would do.

But Luciana was not Lilith. Even after all the deaths she had caused, over hundreds of years, she still felt remorse.

Here in her bed, Brandon’s big body rested beside her. Moonlight splayed over him, and in the dim light he looked almost like a young god sent down from the heavens.

And yet, there was something so earthly about him, something so very nearly human.

He was not the brute she had thought him to be the first time she had seen him.

What is wrong with me?
she thought, furious at her own reasoning.