bedeviled & beyond 07 - beset & bewildered (6 page)

“What are you playing at, Darma?”

I shrugged, my hands skimming over his lean hips and sliding up the rock-hard geography of his abs. Despite my best intentions, my body reacted to the hard heat of him, pleasure blossoming between my thighs. “Time to go home.” I glanced past Slayer’s shoulder to Dialle. “Your Majesty.” Then I closed my eyes and pulled my power forward, sending us into a space shift that yanked the breath from my lungs. As we moved motionlessly through the silent shifting of space, I could barely breathe with the sexual fire pulsing through my belly. My traitorous body couldn’t help reacting to the sensual blitzkrieg of having Slayer’s body against mine.

We emerged from the space shift on the roof, next to Slayer’s sexy air vehicle. As soon as his feet hit the black glass tiles of the roof, Slayer swung around, his gaze spiraling with rage. “How dare you interfere?”

I stepped back, filling my lungs with much needed air. It was a little easier to breathe without Slayer’s sexy round buttocks pressing into me... minus his delicious scent spiraling through my senses...but my body still tightened with remembered need. “You’ll thank me for it once you cool down. If you’d attacked Dialle you’d be either dead or in the dungeon by now.”

The sword in his hand disappeared and Slayer stalked toward me, his long, muscular legs cutting the space between us in three strides. He reached for me and I blinked, instinctively recognizing the predator he kept barely leashed. I only just stopped myself from stepping back and, with a monumental effort, lifted my chin and squared my shoulders. “Now you’re going to beat on
me
? What kind of man hits a woman outside of battle, Slayer?”

His golden gaze sharpened, eyes narrowing. The hand he raised toward me framed my chin, lifting it as he stepped much too close for my comfort. “What makes you think I was going to hit you?” He lowered his lips to within a breath of mine and I stilled like a pale-faced Venutian deer in the hunter’s sights. His lips curved upward. “Not so tough now, are you, Princess?”

I swallowed hard, my hand coming up to wrap around his wrist. “Step back, Slayer.”

His gaze slid liquid heat over my face, dropping to the vee of my form-fitting shirt beneath the collarless leather jacket. I’d donned the jacket because the air outside was cool, but coolness was a distant memory for me in that moment. The small space we both occupied was hotter than a Moon landing in August.

“You shouldn’t have interfered, Darma.”

God save me I found myself staring at his sexy mouth and forgot to respond.

“You should have trusted me not to take it too far.”

My gaze snapped up. “Trusted you? He played you like a fiddle. All he had to do was poke you once in a sensitive spot and you were ready to slice him into gargoyle snacks.” I shook my head and tried to step away...to gain myself some much needed perspective. “Trust needs to be earned, partner.”

His sexy mouth tightened. The black flecks dancing in the golden pools of his gaze flared briefly and then he nodded, dropping his hand and stepping back. “You’re right, Darma. I overreacted.” He smiled and the tightness pooling heat between my legs flared outward, stealing my ability to breathe. “Thank you for saving me from myself.”

I frowned at the quick change of mood. “Don’t mess with me, Slayer. I’m a woman on the edge here.”

He chuckled huskily. “I’m not playing you. When you’re right, you’re right.”

A final spark of something dark flared in his gaze and then died, leaving behind the normal cockiness I’d grown to know and love in my partner. Although it was sometimes really irritating. “You seem to enjoy annoying me,” I told him as I headed for the Sky Vamp.

“God knows it’s so hard to do.”

I narrowed my gaze. “That was a shot wasn’t it?”

He gave me innocent face and I almost smiled. Slayer could be very charming when he wanted to be. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Princess.”

I slammed a palm against the Vamp. “Stop calling me that!”

He met my angry gaze across the top of the vehicle, something dark sliding back into his eyes. “Does it make you angry when someone calls you something you don’t like?”

I blinked, pulled air into my lungs and then inclined my chin. “Point taken.”

“Disengage locks and open,” he told the Vamp.

As the doors glided silently upward I couldn’t help getting in the last word. “However, you’ll notice I didn’t try to kill you for it.”

Silence beat between us for a moment and then he chuckled softly. “Touché, partner.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Hell Sucks

Dragoyles, snapes and fiery pits,

Yeah, this is gonna end well.

Hell is...well...you can probably guess what the place is like. I’ve only been there a handful of times, helping Astra save the green dragons, helping Astra save Dialle, and as the unhappy prisoner of a seriously oversexed royal devil.

Don’t ask me about that last thing. I don’t want to talk about it.

But though I knew Hell to be an ugly, unpleasant place, I couldn’t help noticing its further degeneration since the last time we were there.
Is it just me or does Hell look like...well like hell warmed over?

Slayer chuckled.
It has seen better days. Believe it or not.
He frowned in my mind.
If the situation here is a reflection of the situation on the mortal plane, that doesn’t speak well for humanity, does it?

He’d read my mind. The interplanal correlation was a well-known phenomenon, going back to Biblical times. It had been written about in prophecy back when Jesus walked the earth. The health of one was supposed to be directly tied to the other.
Maybe this is a reflection of Dialle the First being vanquished and has nothing to do with the other planes.

Slayer shrugged.
It’s possible, I guess. If we’ve learned anything over the last few years with Dialle and Astra, it’s that prophecy is malleable.

He didn’t sound convinced.
But you don’t believe it?

I didn’t say that.

The giant red dragon we were riding through Hell suddenly roared, fire emerging in a thick, ragged column from its muscular throat. Slayer responded with a few guttural squawks that I couldn’t understand. “What’s up?” I asked him.

He turned his head, his profile worried. “We’re about to have company.” Slayer lifted a hand to signal to the other red. Gerch rode the huge male with confidence, his massive form upright and his scaly red face stoic. He nodded when Slayer motioned toward the ground below, where Caninra and her two warriors easily kept pace with us. As I looked down, I saw another line of thick, gray bodies approaching them. Unless I missed my guess, the gargoyles had been sent out from Dialle’s castle. “Torre.” I frowned, my heart still hurting at the thought of him. Especially after learning he was having a crisis of conscience. I couldn’t help feeling as if I was to blame for him embracing the darker side of his nature.

An answering roar speared the super-heated air in front of us and my gaze jerked skyward again. A handful of enormous, winged creatures flew toward us in the distance. The dragon-gargoyle hybrids had massive, brown bodies, wings that looked too small to be effective, and huge heads sporting oversized, tusk-like teeth. I remembered the strange creatures from the last time I’d been in Hell. Astra had dubbed them
gargoyle surprise
and the name was apt. They were Hell’s response to the absconding of the green dragons from Hades when the sulfur levels began to threaten their very existence.

“Gargoyle surprise. Wonderful,” I murmured.

Slayer lifted his arm, pointing toward the charred black husk of a castle. Gerch barked a command to his two soldiers and they swung in that direction. I knew what they had in mind. They would circle the broken carcass of the building and come in behind the attacking dragoyles, creating our own version of gargoyle surprise.

We’d used the same maneuver the last time we’d invaded Hell. I only hoped it worked as well the second time. At least, unlike that last battle, we didn’t seem to be as severely outnumbered.

No sooner had I had the thought then a pain-filled cry rose up, reverberating on the smoky air. I glanced down and saw two more dragoyles dropping down on Caninra and her hounds, slicing at them with razor-sharp claws. “Damn them to Hell.”

Slayer turned a grim smile in my direction. “Too late for that.” His muscular thighs tightened around the red. “Hold on.” We dipped sideways on a tight turn and I grabbed him around the waist with a yelp of surprise.

His answering chuckle made me wonder if he’d done it on purpose. “Very funny.”

“Sorry. But it was necessary.” He jerked his chin toward the spot where we’d just been.

An inverted vee of nearly featherless birds was heading directly toward our bubble. About ten feet across from wing tip to wing tip, the large birds had charcoal-colored scales coating their bodies rather than feathers. A few bent, ragged feathers stuck out on the crowns of their pointed heads and at the ends of their pointed butts.

“Snapes.” I grimaced, resting my hand on Seraphim’s hilt. Though the rare Hell-living birds were goofy-looking creatures, they had razor-sharp claws and beaks and could be especially aggressive when hungry or scared. “They look mad.”

Even as I said the words, one of the gangly creatures speared upward, driving its beak into the red dragon’s soft underbelly. The red twisted sideways, roaring in pain, and spat fire toward the snape, setting the feathers of its butt aflame. It shot away with a cry but two more of its friends speared toward us.

“Hold on tight, Darma. This is gonna get squiggy.” The red flapped its wings and shot skyward in a near vertical climb. I held onto Slayer as tightly as I could, but still found my butt sliding out from under me.

A beat later the red flung its wings out and slammed to a halt. My butt crashed back down and I barely had time to catch my breath before Slayer was flinging power arrows into the sky around the snapes.

I joined him, pulling my own power forward and sending it toward the nasty things with such adrenalin fueled exuberance I turned the first one to ash with my power bolt.

Slayer killed the one behind it and the last three swung off and flew away.

Unfortunately, we weren’t out of trouble yet. The dragoyles were almost on us.

Slayer tensed, his muscles turning to iron beneath my hands. “Gerch should be here by now.”

Realizing he was right, I scanned the area around the charred castle and saw empty air, with only the usual layers of smog overlaying the gray skies. “That’s not good.”

Slayer sighed. “No. And neither is that.”

The handful of dragoyles we’d seen approaching had multiplied tenfold as, in twos and threes they dropped from the smog layer above our heads and formed into straight lines facing us. They stopped mid-air, their small wings easily keeping them afloat on the smoggy sky.

But it wasn’t the sight of the nasty looking creatures with smoke billowing from flaring nostrils that turned my blood to ice. It was the dark eyed devil sitting astride the lead dragoyle, looking larger than I remembered him and twice as fierce.

I swallowed hard.

Slayer glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like the ex came to say
Hey
.”

My lips opened but nothing came out except air. Something low in my body tightened at the sight of Torre. I hadn’t cast eyes on him for months and, despite my protestations to the contrary. I’d missed him. A lot. “We need...” The words were wrenched from my throat as if dragged through the jaws of a vise. I cleared my throat and tried again. “We need to get out of here.”

Slayer nodded, but I could tell by the look he gave me that he was wondering if my inclination to flee had to do with being badly outnumbered, or due to the fact that my pitiful heart was in danger of being sliced into ribbons again.

“Now, Slayer.”

His thighs tightened on the red and the big reptile’s head flew up, fire sheering through the smog. With a flap of its huge wings, the dragon speared skyward like an arrow.

Slayer’s arm covered mine around his waist. “Hold on, Darma.”

“Why? What’s...?”

Energy prickled against my skin. Like an army of fire ants nibbling their way down my arms. The world spun upside down without warning and I screamed as the red dropped belly up for several beats before rolling upright again and taking off like a shot. I wondered that we’d stayed on the thing’s back but the surge of energy I’d felt probably meant Slayer had something to do with that.

“Sorry, Princess. Our only hope was to reverse course the fastest way possible.”

A shout went up behind us and the air suddenly throbbed under the wings of hundreds of dragoyles in pursuit.

“Whatever, let’s just get out of here.” My nerves fizzed under a dread so heavy it made me nauseous. Thick, smoky air beat us in the face like a physical force as we flew back toward the mountains, where we’d slipped through the barrier of one plane into another. Despite the dragon’s determined impetus, forward motion through the charcoal smog was like swimming against a determined tide. We seemed to be moving slower and slower with every passing moment.

Another shout sounded, Torre’s deep voice flowing over me like dread, and I realized they were right on our heels.

“Can’t we go any faster?” I shouted into the haze.

Slayer barked something to the red in its own language and the creature beat its wings against the air, its sides heaving from the effort.

The Hades mountain range rose into a smoky sky, too far away to save us. The moment I realized it would come too late was the moment my worst fears were realized.

A roar...the snap of something whipping toward me on the air...and Slayer’s outraged cry as a lasso of sparkling energy wrapped itself around me and yanked me from the dragon’s back.

Super-heated air enveloped me as I left Slayer’s protective bubble. Scorching heat sizzled in my chest when I sucked in a terrified breath, burning its way through my body. I couldn’t even scream. The agony of the boiling air against my unaccustomed skin was beyond endurance. I was burning alive without fire.