bedeviled & beyond 02 - bedeviled & bedazzled (34 page)

I jerked out of her grasp and stalked into the living area, where I paced frantically for a few minutes, praying silently for guidance. Finally I realized I had no choice. Myra might be the only one who still believed in my father. I turned to find her standing just inches away, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

“Enoch came to me.”

Her lovely blue eyes widened in shock. “Enoch? Heaven help us. He’s turned against your father too?”

I nodded. “He tasked me with monitoring my father’s activities.”

“He asked you to spy on your father?”

“Yes.”

Myra dropped onto the divan as if her knees had given out on her. I’d never seen her so shocked. She thought about what I’d said for a few moments and then a hard light entered her blue eyes. “Tell me, Astra.”

I started pacing again as the pearl in my gut achieved uncomfortable proportions. “I went to the Phelps fortress and he was there, with my mother. They were talking about killing Dialle the First.”

“What!”

“That’s not all. I’ve had a vision too. Of my father, torturing King Dialle.”

That brought her to her feet. “That’s preposterous!”

I shrugged, nearly choking as the pearl seemed to extend up into my throat.

Myra had joined me in my pacing. For a few minutes I concentrated on not running into her. Finally I moved to the other side of the divan and paced there.

Suddenly Myra stopped and looked at me. “When, Astra? When did you see your father and that woman?”

“Tonight...or...” I looked at the world clock on the wall and realized night had become day. “Last night actually, around midnight I think.”

Myra’s eyes narrowed. She looked so angry I thought she was going to whack me upside my head like she’d done when I was a smaller version of my current pain-in-the-ass self and I’d done something to piss her off.

But then she smiled and it was like the sun coming out from behind a huge black cloud. “It wasn’t him, child.”

“What? How do you know?”

The smile widened and for a beat it looked like she would do a happy dance. “He was before the council at that time, with me in fact.”

“No shit?”

“No frunkin’ shit, Astra!”

I laughed then. “Oh thank the Big Guy. Oh hallelujah!” But then I realized that gave me a new problem. Several in fact.

I frowned at my angel. “Then who was I looking at in my father’s house?”

Myra’s face returned to its earlier angry appearance. “I think I just figured out who the dark angel is.”

She just...disappeared.

“Shit! Are you frunkin’ kidding me?” I screamed to the empty room. “Arrrrgggghhhh! Come back here and tell me! Damnable angel!”

~SC~

A couple of hours later I was sitting on my divan, staring into space and wishing I could sleep. My mind was spinning with everything that was going on. Sleep was a distant hope...like next galaxy distant. I’d given up on trying to rest an hour previous and was sipping another giant mug of hot coffee. When I felt the air change, I didn’t turn. I just didn’t have the energy to look at him.

I assumed it was Dialle or Emo. I said nothing and continued to stare into space, too tired to start a conversation and not in the mood for entertaining.

Imagine my surprise when Enoch spoke. “Astra? Child, what’s happened? You look as if you’ve entered a catatonic state.”

I blinked and slowly turned my head. He was bending over me and his gorgeous olive face was inches from my own. He smelled like rosewood and candle wax. A scent I’d recently smelled somewhere, but my sluggish mind couldn’t grasp where.

I took another sip of my coffee, determined not to make it easy for him.

“Astra?”

“What do you want, Enoch?”

“Right at this moment I want your attention.” He no longer sounded concerned. Anger had replaced that gentle emotion.

I was feeling a little pissed off myself. I glared at him, my jaw clenched. “You have it.”

“I realize this is hard for you, Astra...”

“Do you?” That damnable pearl was back and it had grown. A lot.

He narrowed his chocolate eyes and then lowered himself to sit beside me on the divan. I figured it was his way of making me feel less threatened. It probably would have worked had I been feeling threatened. But at that point in the game, what I was feeling was much more violent and retributive.

“I need your report.” Apparently he’d decided he wasn’t going to be able to make me feel better so he might as well get what he wanted from me.

My jaw was beginning to hurt from being clenched. I glanced away, trying to relax my face into something less aggressive. I have a feeling the result was less than what I’d hoped. “My report is this. You’re spying on the wrong angel. My father is not your dark angel.” I turned back to him. “But I’m going to find out who is and when I do that evil creature will pay dearly for his antics.”

Enoch stared at me with no change in expression. “What antics?”

Well. I certainly hadn’t expected that question. But I decided I might as well tell him what I’d seen and why I knew it had been false.

“You wanted my report, well this is my report. I went to my father’s house and skulked around like a third-class thief and I did see someone who looked a lot like my father plotting to kill King Dialle with an evil bitch who looked a lot like my mother and then I ran away like a coward thinking my father had fallen hard. But you know what? It wasn’t my father and now I’m going to find out who it was.”

Enoch’s dark, handsome face looked perplexed. “What do you mean you saw your father but it wasn’t your father. If it looked just like your father it had to be your father.”

I shook my head and stood up. Adrenalin had done what caffeine hadn’t quite managed.

I was back.

Getting into his space, I wagged an unimpressively short finger in his face. “Just like it appeared I was the one to kill a target demon the other day even though I was somewhere else at the time and had no knowledge of the event?”

His frown deepened. “Astra, I think you need some rest. You’re not making any sense.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “Of course I’m not! And do you know why? Because none of this makes any damned sense, that’s why!”

I started toward the door, intending to leave. Unfortunately I caught movement out of the corner of my eye—his hand reaching for me—and I panicked. Before he could touch me and possibly shift me away I turned and jabbed his hand with a power jolt.

He yanked the hand off my shoulder with a startled yelp. The room suddenly erupted in a violent wind that yanked pictures off the walls and blew pillows off the divan. Enoch’s wings unfolded and whipped violently around him. He’d grown a couple of feet.

Oh-oh.

I was dodging flying debris and trying to stay clear of those dangerously whipping wings and was seriously considering trying to shift out of the room when Enoch’s head jerked around to a spot beyond my right shoulder and then he disappeared with a pop.

I was so surprised by his sudden disappearance that I almost didn’t notice Prince Dialle’s arrival.

He grabbed me from behind and yanked me hard up against his long, lean body. My body immediately reacted as his hot mouth found my neck and he nibbled gently there. “Hello, lovely halfling.”

My pulse was pounding...my adrenalin level sky high...and his affectionate attentions hit me harder even than they usually did. I gave brief consideration to dragging him to the ground and having my way with him. But, alas, my life was hell and I didn’t have time to play.

I turned in his arms and placed both hands on his chest to hold him away. “Has your father returned to Court?”

He grabbed my butt with both hands and pulled me against his rigid lower regions. I gasped as he ground himself into me. “To Hades with my father.”

I laughed. “He’s been there, done that.”

He grinned. “Yes but he needs a refresher I think. He’s really starting to get on my last nerve.”

“Does that mean he’s back?”

Dialle pulled my hair off my neck and ran a finger along my throat. My knees wobbled. I was pretty sure I could hear them banging together. “Stop that! I need to know.”

He wrapped the length of my hair in his fist and yanked my head back, just on the edge of roughness. I gasped in shock and pleasure and his dark head lowered to my slightly parted lips. Just before his lips claimed mine he said, “No. He’s still imprisoned. My people couldn’t release him. I came to get you so you could help.”

Then his lips claimed mine and we moved into the place without sound or movement, where the only clear sensation was touch and we stayed there a very long time, our lips melded beautifully together and my whole body tingling in fevered response.

When I thought I might actually explode with lust, we finally emerged into reality again and Dialle pulled his lips reluctantly from mine. He leaned toward my ear, still holding my hair in his fist. “I am done waiting, Astra. When my father has been released you and I are going to consummate this lust. Or I will die.”

I tried to shake my head but he tightened his hold on my hair. “Yes. We are.” Then he let go of my hair, grabbed my hand and turned away. “Come.”

“Woof!”

He snickered. “Good doggie.”

I figured it wasn’t a good time to tell him I had to help my father before I could play, so I bit my lip and let myself be dragged along.

See, I can be diplomatic if I need to. Sometimes.

King Dialle the First was looking especially spry and yummy. Also exceedingly pissed off. He stood inside a clear box that wasn’t much larger than
he
was, with his lean, muscular arms crossed over his taut golden pecs, and glared at the collection of royals and guards standing helplessly outside his prison.

As we approached he sneered. “What have you brought this insignificant little bitch for? Are you planning to screw her while I watch? It would be a fitting conclusion to this ridiculous turn of events.”

Dialle stiffened beside me. “I warn you, Father, I won’t tolerate much more of your abuse. I’ll leave you to rot in this prison.”

King Dialle’s response was to throw a jolt of power in his son’s direction. But unfortunately for him the power jolt was simply absorbed into the prison walls and the prison compressed noticeably until it barely cleared his elbows.

Dialle grinned. “If you don’t learn to control your temper, old man you will soon be smashed between those walls like a twitterfly on display.”

The king’s response was to curl his royal lip.

I tugged my hand from Dialle’s and walked over to the prison. Placing my hands on it I felt along its walls with my power for a weak spot. There were none. The prison appeared to be flawless and impenetrable.

Dialle joined me, studiously ignoring the glaring countenance of his father just inches from us. “Do you think you can open it?”

I sent out a testing wave of power and smoothed it over the entire surface of the prison, walking around the clear cube to encompass the entire thing. “This is amazing.”

Dialle came around to join me on the other side. “What?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this. This prison is built from exactly equal parts dark and light magic. And both sides of power are uncommonly powerful. The only way it can be removed is to reapply the same magic, at the same power levels, in the exact same amounts as when it was built.”

Dialle frowned, “So what are you telling me?”

I smiled at the nearly purple devil in the glass cage. “I’m telling you that your father is most likely going to know soon what a twitterfly feels like.”

Dialle saw his father gearing up for another tantrum and said, “Old man, unless you have a desire to be squashed, you’d better hold your temper.”

I turned to Dialle and said, “Remember when I told you I’d get even when the time was right?”

He grinned. “I do recall that yes.”

I smiled my most evil smile and turned back to the king. Leaning close to the cage I motioned him closer with a finger.

Curiosity and the realization that I might hold his fate in my very small hands got the best of him and he complied with obvious reluctance. I whispered in his ear, using my power as a shield to ensure that no one else could hear what I said.

The reaction was immediate. He turned deep red and tried to grab me through the prison walls but his hands smacked painfully against the unyielding surface. He screamed his rage, causing everyone in the room except Dialle and me to step back and look worried. Then he raised his hands to zap me and realized he couldn’t and he screamed again.

I gave him a little finger wave and turned to walk out.

Dialle followed me out. “I think we’d better leave him in there for a while until he cools off.”

I nodded, “You don’t have a choice anyway. You need an angel and my mother to release him.”

He grabbed my arm. “Your parents put him in that prison?”

I shook my head, feeling lighter than I had in days. I now had proof that my father hadn’t been involved in imprisoning the king. “Nope. My mother and another angel, an extremely powerful one. I recognized her magic signature but not my father’s. But the light magic is too powerful to be anything but an angel of the highest throne.”

He thought about my observations for a minute and then glanced back to his father, who’d been reduced to pounding on the clear walls with his fists, since using his power would shrink the cage even more.

Dialle chuckled meanly. “Gerch told me the cage had been fairly large when they put him in it.”

I tsked smugly. “I think your father needs anger management.”

Dialle laughed, bringing on a new spate of screaming and pounding from the royal twitterfly in the clear glass cage. Then he grabbed my hand. “Let’s go. I have plans for you.”

I opened my mouth to argue and found myself locked that way, looking into Dialle’s grinning face and feeling like an idiot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Finally!

Our prince did take our lady fair, to a place beneath the ground,

To frolic in a magic bed, inside a fairy mound.