Dancing With the Devil (4 page)

The first hit of magic almost made me cry. It was like
hearing a favorite song from childhood. Coming home to a favorite meal. Having
the person you love smile at you from across a room.

Cephiel’s hand in mine was smooth and firm. As the hum of
power rose from him, he lit up like a blue Christmas tree, a blue-white arc of
cold energy running from his hand into mine.

Zayfeer glowed a buttery gold and his hand was hot to the
touch. Rough, too, with calluses I assumed came from swinging a sword. His
power flowed warm and molten into my hand, volcanic rock.

As their combined magics snaked under my skin and searched
for mine, my pulse raced, my eyes closed and every one of my nerve endings sang
the Hallelujah chorus. I’d kept a tight hold on my magic for so long, I now hesitated
to let it out of its cage.

And while the magic in my chest had always been eager to
escape, it now held back, shy and uncertain. Sure, I was cracking open the
door, but my magic craved the dark, not the light, and these angels were a
tangled mix of both. I didn’t trust either of them and my magic sensed that.

Tipping my head back, I reached out and started to dip a toe
into the muddied magical waters and…

“Stop,” a dangerous, but oh-so-familiar voice said from
behind me.

I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder. “Luc?”

There he stood, scowling and,
hello
, naked. His
clothes were still on my apartment floor. “What the hell are you doing?”

We all jumped back, kids caught stealing from the cookie jar.
I dropped Ceph and Z’s hands and blinked. Twice. Luc’s body…oh, my. “I, um…You
must have heard me call you. Thanks for…coming.”

Just call me Amy “Lame” Atwood.

Zayfeer clapped his hands together. “Lucifer, old buddy, old
pal. Looking, uh,” —he started to slap Luc on the back and thought better of it
when Luc shot him a
don’t go there
look— “good. Very…
au naturel
.
But good.”

Better than good in my opinion. Apparently in Mikayla’s
opinion too. She inched closer, eyes dazed and a big, happy smile on her face.

I cut in front of her, lifting my arms to hug him. “Are you
okay?”

He backed away, keeping out of my reach.

Slowly, I dropped my arms. We stared at each other for a
moment. In his eyes, I saw a rare vulnerability that told me there was more to
his reluctance to embrace me than fear of the Mark. His dark gaze traveled from
me to Zayfeer and back. The vulnerability in his eyes disappeared. “Leave it.
I’ll close the gate.”

I wanted to say I was sorry. For the Mark, for not being
able to control it and for allowing myself to get so distracted, I’d set it
off. But really, I couldn’t control it and he knew that. It wasn’t like I’d
purposely caused all this.

Moving out of his way, I watched the easy glide of his
muscles as he marched past me and toward the jagged hole. His body was
absolutely beautiful, the only disfigurements two scars, long-healed but
prominent, from the places his wings had been cut off. Every time I saw those,
my heart clenched.

Zayfeer and Cephiel moved aside under Lucifer’s glare. Authority
and supremacy rolled off him. Not just power and strength, but a potent sense
of prerogative. The Hellmouth belonged to him. He would take care of it.

The closer he got to the pit, the more the smoke gurgled and
whirled. Tendrils of dark enchantments bubbled to the surface reminding me of
boiling water in a cauldron. They reached for Luc, fusing with his natural-born
power and obeying it.

He held out a hand to Zayfeer. “Give me your sword, soldier.”

The fallen angel bowed his head, took a long moment to
retrieve the sword from his belt holster. Inch by slow inch, he handed it to
Luc.

Why the reluctance? Questions about their shared past rose
in my mind.

Luc hefted the sword skyward, closing his eyes at the same
time. The sword lit up and so did he, his magnificent body taking on a reddish
glow. A flush spread over every muscle, every tendon. The smoke curling out of
the hole retreated and Luc’s body shimmered with a glimmering blaze of heat,
expanding with each breath he took.

My heart hammered, thudding in my ears and drowning out the
world around me. The heat rolling off Luc’s body circled mine, teasing and
toying. The magic in my chest welcomed it and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from
him. Couldn’t move away from his power. A warm intensity took hold of my lower
region, spreading down my legs and melting everything in its path. The heat climbed
to my chest, my nipples, my throat, building and stroking and…

In the throes of heady lust, I threw back my head, shut my
eyes and let go of a low moan. The sigil on my forehead came to life, and at
the same time, Luc said something in Latin. Bright light exploded inside the
shop, forcing me to shield my eyes.

My body grew lighter and I levitated off the ground. Still
caught in the heat and desire coming from Luc, I didn’t fight it, only let it
take me higher. I cracked open my eyes and saw the enchanted tendrils from the
pit circling me, raising me into the air. My skin glowed as red as Luc’s.

And then the light he and the sword created died. With it, the
bottom of my ride fell out.

My dead weight tumbled and I cartwheeled through the air. Spinning
like a top, I became entangled in a magical tornado. I spun. I flipped. I fell.

Strong, unseen hands caught me and extracted me from the
swirling force. I opened my eyes to find Luc holding me, his dark hair falling
over his shoulders and his eyes once again vulnerable. He was no longer glowing
or shimmering, but there was enough heat coming from his body, I flushed all
over from our skin to skin contact.

One of his fingers skimmed my bangs out of my eyes. He
glanced at the sigil on my forehead. “Did the Mark do that?”

I wasn’t exactly sure what
that
was and all I wanted
to do was curl up in his arms. My voice came out soft and slow, like I was
drugged. Maybe I was. “Do…what?”

He raised his gaze to the other angels.

From my position in Luc’s arms, I couldn’t see their
response, but Z’s voice was clear enough. “Had to be you, boss. It wasn’t the
Mark.”

 Luc lifted one elegant brow, a silent command for Z to
explain.

A heavy sigh and a pregnant pause followed. I shifted
slightly so I could see Z out of the corner of my eye. He raised the hand that
was tattooed with the familiar looking sigil. “I reversed the Mark’s effects
when I held her hand by the pit.”

A muscle jumped in Luc’s jaw. It was a fine jaw and my gaze
traced over the strong line. “You used your curse on her?”

Z glanced at Cephiel, back to Luc. “How else could we keep
the Mark from backfiring? It wasn’t like you were here to close the gates of
purgatory.”

The muscle jumped again, but Luc dropped his attention to
the floor. “How much time do we have?”

“Five minutes? Five hours?” Zayfeer shrugged. “I’ve never
used it on another Fallen before.”

Fallen? My ears rang. Maybe I’d misheard him, but I could
definitely feel an unknown danger hanging in the air. I caught Luc’s chin and
forced him to look at me. “What curse? How much time until
what
?”

He set me on my feet, took my hand. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Cephiel stepped forward. “I don’t believe that’s a good
idea.”

“Shut up, priest.”

The hole was closed, but the shop was still a disaster.
Mikayla frowned as I followed Luc past her on our way to the back stairs that
led to my apartment. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Luc,” Zayfeer called from behind us. “I have to agree with
Ceph on this one. Not a good idea, my friend. If it wears off at the wrong
moment, you could, uh, lose some important…body parts.”

Luc hesitated in the doorway. Looked over his shoulder at
the angel. “We were never friends, Xavier, and we never will be.”

A minute later, Luc and I stood in my living room. The
damage to the floor had disappeared just like it had in the shop. Cain flew out
of the kitchen mewing a hello and Luc patted him on the head.

Then, without a word, the Devil drew me into my bedroom.

A new wave of lust and heat hit me full force as Luc and I
faced each other, him still beautiful and naked, and me covered in black tarry
demon blood and green goo, my hair a tangled mess and my legs shaking.

His eyes…there was that look again. A vulnerability I’d
never seen before and one that made me nervous. “What’s wrong? What were you
and Zayfeer talking about downstairs?”

“Sshh.” Luc touched my shirt and it dissolved. Just
bam
,
no more shirt. Sort of handy. A flick of his fingers and my jeans dissolved
into a pile at my feet. “We don’t have much time.”

“I don’t understand.”

His attention zeroed in on my mismatched bra and panties.
The bra was a bright lemon yellow and the panties had a cartoon cat on them
wearing a witch hat. Another touch of his magical fingers and my bra dropped to
the floor. His gaze locked on mine; he drew his knuckles across one exposed
nipple. “I don’t have time to explain everything.”

He inched closer, our bodies a fraction of an inch from
touching. Even so, his magic licked over my skin, letting me know exactly what
he planned to do to me. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

In case your mother never warned you, trusting the Devil is
akin to selling him your soul. I’d done that once—given him my soul—and it was
just as bad an idea the second time around as it had been the first.

Since joining Witches Anonymous, I’d been working on making
better choices. Trying hard to stay away from people and situations that made
recovery from my wicked ways impossible.

But I couldn’t stay away from Luc. He was the one drug I
would never get out of my magical system, no matter how long I stayed clean.

Leaning forward, I kissed his lips, then stood my ground as
I searched his face for any sign of deceit. None existed. “I trust you.”

He pulled me down on the bed so I straddled his thighs. I
sank my hands in his thick, long hair and he drew the breast he had teased with
his knuckles into his mouth. I arched into him and his thighs spread mine
farther apart. I still wore my cat panties, but amazingly, the crotch
disappeared as Luc’s fingers touched the silky fabric and slid home.

My magic sang with happiness as Luc’s magic teased and
flirted the same way his fingers were doing. He kissed and stroked and suckled
until I was trembling with a craving so desperate, so dark, I lowered the
prison bars keeping my magic at bay. Out came my magic in a rush of freedom,
wrapping itself around him, melding and blending with his. I didn’t use it,
just let it feed him.

The high was too good. I didn’t give the Mark a second
thought as I shifted and took Luc into my body.

For the first time in a year, I was joined with Lucifer in a
dance that knew no bounds. We were free, our bodies, souls and magics merging
into one. It was a dance neither of us had forgotten. A dance our magics
gloried in as much as our bodies did.

My breath came in ragged gasps as I moved over him, taking
him in, withdrawing, taking him again. He buried his face in my breasts and ran
his hands over my skin, touching, teasing, gripping.

Heat and light engulfed me. Luc’s lips and hands urged me
on, his ardor matching mine. As the first wave hit, I arched into him again,
clutching his shoulders and riding it, letting the dance carry me away.

He shuddered, a shockwave of his magic lifting me higher.
The wave crested, rising hard and fast. I cried out his name.

In the next instant, release. Sweet, sweet release…

In the aftermath, I drifted, riding a gentle ocean wave of
satisfaction and nerve-tingling wonder.

Man, I had missed this. Not just the sex, but the after-sex magical
high. My body vibrated, and, even though I hadn’t used my magic, the place next
to my heart hummed.

An ex-witch, good or not, could get used to this.

A light flashed on the back of my eyelids and the air around
me shifted from warm and cozy to freezing cold. I started to open my eyes when
I felt myself moving backwards. Fast.

Had Luc dumped me off the bed? No. I wasn’t falling. More
like I was being suctioned down a long tunnel. Pressure hit me from all sides,
immobilizing my limbs. I couldn’t even turn my head. Tiny pinpricks of pain
assaulted my skin, but when I tried to force my eyes open and cry out, I could do
neither.

For a moment, my entire body felt like it was being shoved
through a sieve and turned inside out. My lungs refused to draw oxygen. The
next moment, I slammed to a stop.

Woozy and nauseated, I cracked open my eyelids. I was standing
on a deserted street, a long crimson robe covering me from neck to feet. There
were no people, no cars, not even a bird in sight. No noise either.

I patted the robe. No pockets. Which meant, no Dove
chocolates hidden inside.

Damn, Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas
anymore.

The barren landscape was a monotone gray, matching the overcast
sky. A thick fog hung in the distance.

But this place was familiar. The street, the buildings…I
glanced over my right shoulder and there was Evie’s Ice Cream shop. A glance
over my left showed me the rest of Eden’s downtown. The snow was absent but the
air was cold. My bare feet stung from the frosty sidewalk and I shifted my
weight from one foot to the other.

My magic thudded uncomfortably. Took me a minute to realize
my heart wasn’t returning the favor. No beat, no pulse, nothing.

Instinctively, I took a deep breath and found my lungs expanded
but did not draw air.

Don’t panic
. This had to be a dream. I’d fallen
asleep after the rigorous love-making and now I was in LaLa Land.

Instinctively, I reached once more for a Dove. Nada.

Who makes clothes without pockets for hiding chocolate?
Seriously.

I turned in a full circle, wondering why I felt so awake if
this was a dream. Must have been courtesy of my stress level. Keeping such a tight
rein on my magic and my sex life for so long had created a weird side effect.

Walking over to the shop, I frowned as I noticed how empty
it was. The signs in the window were there, but the interior was bare. No
booths or tables. No ice cream freezers or cash register. The windows of the
neighboring businesses were the same. All of Eden’s downtown was just a shell.
Like a movie set that had served its purpose and then been stripped.

Deserted movie set or deserted town, neither was good.
Keisha and I were always watching the latest horror movie and making fun of it,
but secretly, those awful things scared the bejesus out of me. As my magic continued
doing ninety in my chest, I kept an eye out for any crazy, chainsaw-wielding
maniac I was sure would come out of nowhere to turn this dream into a bona fide
nightmare.

Returning to Evie’s, I started to open the shop’s front door
when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Movement at the end of the
street where the fog obscured the view. A flash of light and a flicker of gold.

Deep, repetitive vibrations ran up the sidewalk under my feet,
thud…thud…thud
. The buildings shook from the force.

Great. Not only had I dreamed myself into a horror nightmare
with a creepy deserted town and possible chainsaw murderer, I’d invited
Godzilla as well.

I always rolled my eyes when the innocent heroine in the
movie ends up alone in the woods or an empty alley and the first thing she does
is yell, “Hello. Who’s there?” Funny, though. My first instinct was to do
exactly that.

Pressing my lips together, I pinched myself in an effort to
wake up. Nothing happened.

I squinted at the fog. More flashes of light. More sparks of
gold. Angry lightning danced in the clouds overhead. I bit my lips and the
pinching continued at a more frantic pace.

Whatever
it
was, it was getting closer and neither my
brain nor my magic was happy about that. Even though I technically didn’t seem
to need to draw air in and out of my lungs, my chest heaved as I rattled the
doorknob of my shop. Of course, just like in the horror movies, it was locked.

Running down the block, I discovered the same was true for every
shop. The alley between Evie’s and my neighbor’s building beckoned to me. It
seemed like the only hiding place.

“Don’t go in the creepy alley, Amy,” I commanded, even as my
feet moved of their own accord.

A thick fog met me at the entrance. Like the tendrils of
magic that had snaked out of the pit in my shop reaching for Luc, these twined
around my ankles, massaging their way up my calves. A shiver of revulsion ran
over me. At the same time, my magic reached out a hand.

Wake up!
I smacked my fist into the bricks of the
building. Pain shot up my arm and my knuckles bled, but nothing changed. Once
more I had that nagging feeling this was no dream.

Fine.
I wheeled around to face whatever was coming.
I’d gone head-to-head with Lilith, queen of Hell and lived to tell the story.
Godzilla and chainsaw massacres were small potatoes compared to that bitch.

The figure that emerged from the fog was neither a T-Rex on
steroids nor a Hollywood movie monster. He was an angel, thirty foot tall and dripping
gold from the crown on his head to the hilt of the sword in his hand. The blade
of the sword looked like crystal, shimmering and giving off light that burned
from within.

Greaaat. My favorite. A self-righteous angel with a bee up
his butt.

The angel’s eyes blazed an unnatural orange, as if
reflecting fire. The tips of his wings were tinged with the same color. He
towered as tall as some of the buildings, slicing at those in his way as he
stalked me. The sword destroyed brick and wood, mortar and metal, as it left a
trail of fire in its wake.

So need to wake up now
.

The angel let loose a mighty roar, deafening me and uprooting
those buildings still standing. Clamping my hands over my ears, I sprinted
across the street, dodging falling debris and raining fire as I headed for the
courthouse.

Except it was no longer the courthouse in the center of
Eden’s downtown square. The neoclassical structure that mimicked the U.S.
Capitol Building in D.C. had morphed into the gothic edifice of Immaculate
Conception—the church where Cephiel played priest.

Pure instinct drove me, nothing else. If the shops on my
street were locked, I had no reason to believe the church was any different.
The pounding magic inside my chest trumped logic and spurred me on anyway. As I
ran, I kept my eyes on the church’s front doors situated at the top of a set of
wide stairs. The fog around the perimeter of the square swam toward me,
blurring my vision until I thought I saw the figure of a woman standing on
those stairs.

Her back was to me and she wore a long, flowing cloak like
mine that painted the concrete steps a dark blood red behind her. As if she
felt my stare, she turned her head to look over her shoulder. Our eyes met,
locking on one another. My pulse skipped.

“Mom?” I whispered.

Her lips formed a tremulous smile…or maybe that was my
imagination…and then the angel’s voice roared through the square again and she
crumpled on the steps, disappearing inside her cloak.

Adrenaline rippled down my legs. I pumped my arms and shot
across the street. I don’t know how I knew that was my mother—she’d left Emilia
and I right after I was born and all I ever had was a single snapshot of
her—but I knew it was her, just like I knew this was no simple dream.

No longer whispering, I shouted, “Mom!”

I hit the narrow stairs and tripped, pitching forward and scraping
my hands and knees on the concrete. Scrambling up, I ignored the sting of the
wounds and ran hunched over toward the cloak.

The instant I touched it, the material turned to blood,
running down the steps and dissolving into the concrete. I pounded the concrete
until that damned angel yelled something—he wasn’t actually yelling, but he was
so big, his voice was way too loud—and the stairs under my feet became a solid
plane. A slippery, very steep solid plane.

My feet slid out from under me, arms and legs pinwheeling. I
ended up on my back, skidding down, down, down to an ungraceful halt at the
feet of the golden angel and his fiery sword.

His orange eyes burned with hatred. He raised the sword over
his head, the sharp, crystalline point aimed at my heart. An evil grin split
his monstrous face and his wings spread wide. “Suffer not the witch,” he
snarled.

I slammed my eyelids shut and waited to feel the Mark of Cain
come to life.

Only it didn’t.

No heat. No flare of godly light. Just me.

So I tensed for the blow that was coming. Dream or no dream,
dying by fiery sword was a hell of a way to go.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

Dark energy exploded inside my chest. From the tip of my
head to the bottom of my feet, it took hold, strengthening my defenses. My
magic heaved a sigh and my eyes snapped open to meet the angel’s glare.

His grin widened at the challenge he saw in my eyes right
before the sword plunged straight at my heart.