Demonic and Deserted (Eternally Yours Book 4) (10 page)

“I do,” I whispered, my throat constricting with emotion. Aedan loved me. After all we’d been through together, he simply had to. 

By the time we made it back to our rooms, Humping Hitler was waiting, his bottom lip hanging down as he scowled at us. His brow dipped down so far, it nearly obscured his eyes.

He pointed a long crooked finger at me. “You go in room.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, then jumped back when he tried to swipe at me with those crusty fingernails. The monkey screeched and scooted back when Aedan growled and raised his boot.

Aedan and I shared a kiss goodbye, and though it was quick, the intensity behind it reassured me he still loved me, he still believed in us.

“Be strong,” he said as we parted, the warning look in his eyes a stern reminder I could not let the siren tempt me again. I resolved I wouldn’t. The first time she’d fooled me, but this next time I’d be prepared.

* * *

I
was not surprised to find Thelix waiting for me when I entered my room. She was sitting on the edge of the pool, completely naked with her legs spread wide, and holy fuck, she was masturbating with a brush handle, sliding it in and out of her slick opening and looking directly at me.

Damn. I could tell by the look in her eyes, she wanted to screw me with that brush, too. I clenched my legs together as desire made my girly parts ache with need.

Just let her slide it in a few times, Ash. The brush won’t count as cheating.

Weird. The voice in my head didn’t sound like mine. Holy shit! The siren was in my head, and she was trying to get me to cheat on Aedan!

I was
not
falling for her seduction again.

I covered my ears and screamed at the top of my lungs. “Leave me!”

She dropped the brush in the water, a look of shock crossing her features. “What?” she mouthed before pouting. She held her arms out to me, giving me a pathetic puppy dog look as her pretty eyes glossed over. 

The ache in my girly parts turned into a painful throb. After all the sex I’d had today, how could I have been horny again? My heart was beating so fast, it pounded like a gong in my ears. “I said go!”

Much to my surprise, Thelix left in a
poof
of smoke, just like a genie, a really evil yet tempting genie with beautiful, succulent tits. Damn, that had been hard. I was almost tempted to grab that brush out of the water and finish myself, but then I thought of all the cooties on that brush. Thelix could have had a raging case of demon herpes. Who knew how many creatures she’d slept with? 

I fell on my canopy bed exhausted, then rolled when I felt something poking my back. I wasn’t surprised to discover it was a nudie magazine with all kinds of pictures of kinky demon orgy sex. Gross. They were doing things to each other, unsanitary things that had to be outlawed back on Earth. I guess our host wasn’t lying when he’d said no pleasure was too sordid, carnal, or disgusting.

Morbid curiosity made me keep flipping the pages, and by the time I reached the centerfold, my girl boner had shriveled up and died, along with my appetite. Let’s just say that naked horny demon girls on their periods, spread-eagled and bleeding all over a dining table, was like ringing the chuck wagon bell for kinky vampire demons. Since Aedan and I had been together, he’d renamed that awful time “blowjob week.” I had renamed it “condom week.” The demon vampires in this nudie magazine had aptly named it “buffet week.”  I wasn’t so sure if the horny PMSing demons were on their periods or hemorrhaging, but GROSS times infinity!  And please, somebody get those demons some bibs and wet wipes.

And the Devil really expected God to let him back into Heaven? Really? This guy wasn’t just delusional, he was demon-shit crazy!

* * *

Sergeant Santiago Sanchez

T
he passengers had become eerily silent as the elevator lurched and slowly crawled downward.

Melanie squeezed my hand so tight, my bones ached, but I didn’t shake her off. I stared numbly at the buttons on the elevator, each floor lighting up as we descended deeper into the bowels of Hell.

“Are you sure the mother spider is on five?” I asked Cam.

His eyes were unreadable, his features as hard as granite. “The mother spider should have been knocked down a level after the Nephilim crushed her skull.”

Before we’d taken over the Nephilim’s pyramid, my friends had saved Callum O’Connor and me, as well as two Nephilim giants from sub-level four, a nasty pit with a sadistic ruler, a demonic dragon, and a spider creature the priestesses had looked to as a deity. A few of my friends had gone up against the spider, who’d stolen Aedan O’Connor’s spare scythe. Luckily, the Nephilim had been able to overpower her. I hadn’t seen the arachnid, but I’d heard of her. She was as big as a Volkswagen, with the body of a black widow and a woman’s face. I imagined she was angry with us for stealing her priestesses and banishing her to a lower level in Hell. No doubt she’d sent her demonling spiders after us as a form of retribution. I wondered how we’d be able to defeat her when we didn’t have the strength of the Nephilim army. 

“What’s your plan?” I asked Cam, hoping the Archangel had one, because I didn’t know what the heck to do. My combat training hadn’t prepared me for eight-legged aggressors. 

Cam nodded to me and O’Connor. “The three of us will kill her.” He looked at Melanie. “You and the other priestesses stay on the elevator.”

Melanie nodded. I was glad she was staying on the elevator. Sure, she’d survived sub-level four once, but only because she’d pledged her allegiance to a sadistic cult leader.

“We can’t hold it,” O’Connor’s girlfriend, Cara, piped up. “Other demons will try to get on.” 

“Then ride it until you see us coming back,” Cam answered, ruffling his feathers. “Time passes more slowly on the lower levels, so if you go up and then down, we should have time to kill the spider.”

“But if you kill her, won’t she just go down a level?” Cara asked. “How will that stop her from hatching more spiders?”

The priestesses began to grumble. After turning their backs on their former deity, I imagined they were more terrified of the mother spider and her demonlings than we were.

Cam ran his fingers over the wishing star he wore around his neck. A special emblem from God, it gifted the wearer with the ability to wish for weapons or anything else he needed. 

“We’re not just going to kill her,” he said in a low rumble, his gaze transfixed on the crack where the metal elevator doors joined. “We’re going to obliterate her.” 

“Obliterate?” I asked. Though I suspected what he meant, I never knew it was possible.

He gave me a pointed look. “She will cease to exist.”

Well damn. I didn’t think anything could be worse than eternal damnation, but the thought of not existing, not having a single thought or feeling, or a memory of family and friends, was a harsher punishment.

The elevator had just passed sub-level four when it lurched so hard, we tumbled into each other and against the walls. I caught Melanie, holding her tight as the elevator swayed before the lights went out. The girls screamed and I swore. 

“What was that?” Cara screeched. 

“What’s happening?” Melanie’s voice shook in the darkness.

“Everyone calm down,” Cam boomed.

The girls screamed again when the elevator shook and then plummeted, sending the contents of my stomach into the back of my throat. The elevator was moving much faster, almost as if the invisible cord that tethered us to the top had been severed.

There were all kinds of grinding sounds going on outside, making me feel as if we were stuck in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. When the elevator stopped moving and the lights flickered on, the girls’ screams were nearly deafening. I looked at the walls, which were coated in black widow spiders the size of my palm.

“Nobody panic,” Cam said in an even tone that left no room for refusal. “Everyone back out slowly.”

Cam and I waited at the back of the elevator. Though I had no gun to defend myself, I did have a pair of nun chucks stashed in my back pocket. Ash had given them to me for my birthday.  They were black and slick and signed by dead Bruce Lee, who’d come up with a genius idea to sell them in exchange for credits so he could move up from level six, which he’d been stuck on for almost twenty years. 

“What the hell?” O’Connor barked at Cam. 

I threw a glance over my shoulder at the familiar marble tiles. “We’re back in the pyramid?” My tone was laced with disbelief. Though the floors seemed similar, there was something different about the place.

When a little furry creature with a Hitler moustache fell from the ceiling, squawking and jumping up and down, I knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore. 

After everyone else had filed out, the spiders stopped at the threshold. They probably didn’t like the idea of getting squished by two sliding hunks of metal. When Cam and I disembarked, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. I completely lost my balance, falling against Melanie. She called for help, and Cam lifted me off her. I gawked at him in stunned silence, then at my leg, which was severed from the knee down. If Cam hadn’t held me, I would’ve toppled over head first. Why had my old war amputation reappeared after I’d healed my leg using the Nephilim’s holy water?

The elevator doors slammed shut with a taunting squeal and shot back into the sky. 

“We’ve been tricked,” Cam said in disbelief. “Listen to me.” Cam fixed us each with a stern look. “Don’t drink the wine or the water.”

“Why not?” I asked. I got the feeling he didn’t want us to bathe in it, either. I was going to need water to treat my leg injury.

Cam’s mouth clamped into a firm line. “The water stirs jealousy and desire, and the wine is tainted with the Devil’s blood. If you see a siren, cover your ears and order her to leave.” He wagged a finger at me. “Don’t let her talk to you, and for heaven’s sake,
don’t
let her sing to you.” He grabbed my shoulder, a look of desperation in his eyes before he handed me off like a hot potato to O’Connor. “Forgive me, friend,” Cam pleaded before he spread his wings, clutched his star, and shot up into the air, disappearing into the darkness.

Well, that was just fucking great. I was stuck at the bottom of Hell without the protection of a guardian angel, I was missing half a leg, and the local water source was tainted. What else could go wrong?

“Welcome to sub-level thirteen, my honored guests. I will be your host during your stay at my hotel.”

Sub-level thirteen? The bottom of hell?

A lean, tall man with oily skin and an even oiler smile was staring directly at me. Two ram horns wrapped around the crown that sat askew on his head. I was shocked to see his legs ended in hooves. A warning siren blared in my mind—The Dark One.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” I piped up, though my throat was so tight with fear, and my leg throbbed with such intensity, I was surprised I could speak at all. 

He steepled his fingers and rocked on his heels. “Oh no, I meant to bring you here.” He frowned and glared at O’Connor and the priestesses. “Are there no Archangels among you?” he asked me.

“No, he is in Heaven,” I answered, praying Cam reached our friends before they tried to come down. “Why have you brought us here?” I demanded, wincing as blinding pain shot up my severed limb.

“Why? To make a trade, of course,” he answered as a slow smile broke his face in two.

“A trade for what?” I cringed, awaiting his response. Either way, I knew we were going to get screwed on this deal.

But the demon didn’t answer me. He simply smiled and snapped his fingers. The ground shook beneath me, nearly sending me toppling to the floor as several creatures with bull heads and human bodies marched into the room. Dressed in armor plating and wide helmets, and wielding huge spears, they were at least nine feet tall with shoulders wider than any linebacker’s.

“Take the fallen to his chamber and the cursed to the dungeon,” the demon said to the creatures.

I whipped out my nun chucks and tried to fight, but a monster snatched the weapon out of my hand and flung me over his shoulder. I struggled against him, holding a hand down to Melanie before she and the other priestesses were ushered away by the bulls. O’Connor fought his captor, though it didn’t take long before he, too, was subdued and carried off with the girls.

My leg throbbed as the bull bounced me around like a sack of potatoes and finally deposited me on a bed in the center of a lavish, Grecian-styled room, complete with a personal infinity pool flanked by marble columns and a blue sky backdrop. The sound of waves crashing on a shoreline could be heard beyond the breezeway.

Our host had said we were on the bottom of hell. How could this be? I had always been told that sub-level thirteen was by far the worst of the dimensions, an eternal burning lake of fire, not a Grecian paradise.

I exhaled shakily after the bull left. I was in the same state I’d been in just before I died, bleeding out all over the place. Only back then, my soldiers had tried in vain to tourniquet my wound, and I’d succumbed to the loss of blood. Since I was at the bottom of Hell, I knew I couldn’t die again, but the pain from my injury was nearly enough to make me pass out. I bit my lip, cursing as I wrapped a sheet around my bloody stump. Blood soaked through it in no time, and I watched helplessly as the fabric began to drip. I cursed the damned spiders for putting me in this situation, and my host, who had to be Satan, and Cam for leaving me here. I prayed Cam would be back with reinforcements.

My thoughts drifted to Melanie and the others. Our host had sent the cursed to the dungeon. I worried she’d be tortured or worse. I had to get out of here, but how? I was useless with half a leg.

“Oh, you poor thing. Come. Let me help you.”

My jaw dropped, and I blinked hard as the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen emerged from the bathtub, water dripping off her lush, bare breasts and thick mane of dark hair. She had olive skin, big almond eyes, and full ruby lips I knew would feel warm and welcoming wrapped around my cock. Her skin glistened like starlight as she stood beneath a ray of sun, drying herself with a towel. When she approached my bed, she smoothed a hand down a flat stomach before cupping her mound and unabashedly stroking herself, biting her lip and moaning her delight.