Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) (23 page)

“You’re more fragile than you think,” she said, with worry replacing the anger in her voice.

I smiled now, “but I’m smarter than you think.”

-Joellen-

I shook my head at him. Paul was being as stubborn as I remembered him in life.

“What you’re proposing is suicide.” I no longer considered him to be sane. His brain had been fried by the fire that coursed through his veins.

“I’m proposing living… in death.” He rolled his eyes at my stern expression. “We shouldn’t be forced to spend our existence chained to creatures like Gallu and Lilith. They only seek to use us to their own gain.”

“Gallu is an evil being, of that I am quite sure,” I said as I began to shake my head again. “But Lilith is not the same. She does not keep anyone here against their will.”

“That you know of,” he spit back. “I can’t stay here. Lavender won’t abide by it and I’m not going to put her out. She was here first.”

“We’re going to be talking in circles about this forever,” I said with a heavy sigh, and closed my eyes as I buried my face in my hands.

It was then that I heard the soft popping noise, akin to the sound of a crackling fire. I thought at first that Paul had left. But I opened my eyes as two massive creatures, one with the head of a jaguar and one with the head of a dragon grasped Paul by the arms and burst into flames with him.

The room was completely silent and still. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I just stared at the chair where he had sat not willing to believe that he had been taken so easily.

Lilith appeared in the room with a worried look on her face. “They took Paul?” she asked, though it was more of a statement.

I just continued to stare at the now empty chair, fighting against the black sand that was fighting its way into my mind.

“I have to save him,” I managed to whisper, and as the resolve strengthened in my mind, I managed to keep the sand from engulfing me. “I have to keep them from killing him.”

I looked to Lilith, hoping for a confirmation of my thoughts, for the approval that I wanted but knew I did not need. Her face was pensive.

“If I know my sister, she had taken Paul back to the place he called the basement.” She looked toward the window and spoke as though she no longer knew she was in the same room. “If you enter a gilded room, you must know that you won’t be able to depart from it other than by use of the door.”

“I cannot travel as we normally do?” It was strange to think there would be restrictions.

“Not directly from that room; none of us can.” She spoke quietly, “the walls are plated with a substance that somehow prevents it. It keeps people in and out.”

“I understand.” I turned from her and immediately dissolved into the air, reforming in Demetrius’ room.

“I have to go,” I said to Demetrius before he could lift his head from where it had been bent over his desk.

The book in front of him remained open as he stood, the binding broken from many years of reading and re-reading. “Where do you have to go?” the concern in his voice was evident.

“The Asakku have kidnapped Paul. I have to save him.” I was trying to decide the best way to go about my rescue mission. It was difficult to plan when I didn’t know what to expect. But Demetrius’ next words took me aback.

“Don’t you think he might be better off with his own kind?” I could hear the contempt that coated his words.

“I don’t care what he is,” I said as a gust of wind blew up about me in my fury. “He is my friend.”

“He’s an Asakku.” The words flew from Demetrius’ tongue dripping with disgust. “Do you think he’d do the same for you?”

“Don’t you see?” I turned the full force of my scowl on him. “That’s what separates us from the Asakku: compassion.”  I could tell that he knew it was the right thing to do, he just didn’t want to let me do it because he was afraid I wouldn’t come back. “It doesn’t matter if he would do the same for me. I will do what’s right.” And then I added, “no one deserves to be abandoned.”

I could see that my words had stung him as his jaw went rigid. “What if this is all just an elaborate trap.”

“I know Paul,”  I said, my tone hung in the air viscously.

“You knew Paul the human, you don’t know Paul the Asakku.” He leaned across his desk trying to impart his seriousness on me. “He
is
evil.”

“I have not changed who I was simply because I was bitten by an Asakku – and you can’t tell me that anyone would be the same if they were saved by a Lilitu. Our essential being is not lost. And Paul was a good person. I cannot believe that he has given in to his inner demons.”

I could see the pain that was etched in the lines of Metri’s forehead. He sunk to the chair behind him, placing his face in his hands as he leaned on the desk. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“How do you suppose I’ll be lost?” I asked quietly. I could see now that I was going to win this argument. “Gallu cannot kill me by herself and her warriors will not be able to lay a hand on me.”

“She has formed an alliance with Lamashtu before.” He looked up, his brow smoother, “I wouldn’t put it past her again.”

“I can always run if necessary. And as you said, Gallu doesn’t know what I am.”

“Precisely, and as soon as she finds out what you are she will want to enslave you.” His words came out like a hiss. “She will covet our strength and try to control it to her will.”

“You and I both know that won’t happen.” I felt myself calming as I heard the resolve falter in his voice.

“She’ll use your feelings for Paul against you,” he warned.

“I don’t think it will come to that,” I said with a smile. “I plan on using her desire for power to my advantage.”

“You do realize that the second she figures out that she’s wrong about what you are, she’ll come after both of us.”

That made me pause. I hadn’t thought of the danger that the revelation of my power would pose to Demetrius. Gallu would most certainly go after the one other demon her Asakku had lost… if she were able to put two and two together.

“I can’t abandon him.” I said in a voice that was lower than a whisper. “I would want him to do the same for me if I had been taken. I know he might not if the tables were turned, but I have to try.”

“I know,” Demetrius said from directly behind me as he placed a hand on either of my shoulders. “You have much too good of a soul for a demon, you know that, right?”

I just lowered my head, shaking it slightly. “Demon… it’s such a human description.” I hated the word now. Paul was not a demon; we may have been changed by two different types of demons, but that didn’t make us inherently good or bad.

“Go,” Demetrius said quietly. “I cannot join you. But I will not keep you from going.”

I turned to him, trying not to let the fear that coursed through me show. “I will come back.” I hoped my smile was convincing.

I knew there was a possibility that I wouldn’t return. I had no delusions that this would be a fair fight. But fair, or not, this was my fight. I wouldn’t need Metri’s help.

I kissed him lightly on the forehead and dissolved without removing my lips.

I found myself in a large cavern-like tunnel. The rock walls – glassy smooth – reflected my image in a tall distortion. In front of me stood two horrendously tall doors made of the same glassy rock. I could hear voices behind the doors, laughter and jeering filtered through the minuscule crevasse under the door.

Looking down at the full length gown I still wore I silently cursed the jeans that sat in the bottom drawer of the dresser back in Zephyr. I guess this would make the battle that was about to ensue all that more dramatic.

I flicked my hand forward, blowing the doors open ahead of me and walked in, not completely sure of what I should expect.

The large round room was brightly lit and almost completely gilt, the black doors behind me were the only things that stood apart from the gold interior. The entire room seemed to be gold plated. Gallu was seated in a throne that was perched high above the ground, her Asakku minions were stationed about the room, all in their beast-like states. I looked around the room: Dragon, Bear, Falcon, Jaguar and a new one, his body glowed bright red and his cobra head was almost transparent in its glowing. All were accounted for except for Hephaestus.  It was a pity, I would have liked to call him out, but I wasn’t going to waste time wishing for a different outcome.

Then I saw Paul. He was held to the base of Gallu’s throne platform by smokey black chains. He seemed unconscious, but he was alive.

I walked to the center of the room stopping in the middle of the medallion that was etched into the floor. I saw Gallu smile menacingly as she leaned forward on her perch. She was as strikingly beautiful as Lilith, they could have been mistaken for the same woman were it not for the shocking red hair that graced Gallu’s head, or the pure evil she seemed to exude.

“The lamb has come to play with the lions, boys,” she said in a strangely sweet voice. “Or has she come to try to convince more lions that they are in fact lambs?” She made a clicking noise with her tongue. “Tsk, tsk. Silly little delusional lamb.”

“I have come for Paul,” I said without batting an eyelash.

“Oh, have you? And do you expect us to simply hand him over to you?” She asked with a hyena like laugh. The five beasts that stood at their posts around the room snickered with her.

“I will fight your best warrior and if I win, you will release Paul and molest him no further,” I said, standing as still as possible. The five that stood around me were poised and I knew that the wrong move would bring down their wrath. I knew that I could destroy them all, but I did not want to give away my advantage before it was absolutely necessary.

Gallu raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “And if you lose?”

“I’ll be dead, and bother you no further. If your crony manages to beat me without killing me… I will join you.”

She licked her razor like pointed teeth, and her eyes narrowed as the light glinted off of them and her smile widened. She nodded and Sasha stepped forward from his position at the base of her throne platform. He smoothed his golden, black spotted fur behind his ear, his muscles quivering in anticipation, his cat like tongue licking his teeth and whiskers.  I could see from his Cheshire-like leer that he wanted nothing more than to tear me limb from limb.

I wondered idly if my calm was in any way odd or disconcerting to any of them.

“No.” Gallu called, “Jack will be my champion. Clean up your mess.”

A deep voice, full of authority, boomed from behind Gallu’s throne. “It is my unfinished business.”

Sasha shrank back to the wall, appearing dejected, and I watched the massive Greek saunter out from behind Gallu’s throne. Gallu’s smile widened. She didn’t think I had a chance.

As he walked down the curving staircase toward me, Hephaestus’s face slowly changed to its jackal form, but his leer – the same one from the night he had killed me – never faltered.

I didn’t need to read minds to know that he thought he would soon kill me again, and that he knew he would enjoy every moment of it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wrong, and so I simply smiled back. He stopped several feet from me and I realized that I no longer hated him for what he had done to me, and I was no longer afraid of him.

“Girl, you just signed your own death warrant.” Ryan howled from behind me.

I turned to the falcon, his eyes were not the glowing red of the others, they were a deep grey.
Odd.
I thought.

“Jack is going to make easy sport of her,” Giancarlo hissed toward the bear who let out a growl of agreement.

Sasha was the only one who was silent. He was staring at me appraisingly now, his red eyes narrowed as he tried to see through my unshakable calm. His brow knit further together as I looked at him and winked. “You dodged a bullet today, Aleksandr,” I said to him and his head cocked to the side with a questioning glance.

“It will be so much more fitting that I have the chance to kill my creator.” I stared directly at Gallu as I said it and I saw her eyes widen slightly.
Had she not known?

I smiled and threw my hands up into the air. A swirling vortex of air surrounded Hephaestus and I.

“Impressive,” he said as he looked to the wall that barricaded us in and his compatriots out. He reached a finger out to the wall and it was thrown forcefully back at him when it came into contact with the writhing cyclone. “So it’s just you and me, pet.”

“Now, Jack,” I said in a teasingly scolding tone. “Do you really think you can beat me?”

“I’ve killed your kind before,” he said in a nonchalant manner, and he lunged for me.

I let myself vaporize and he flew straight through me and into the spinning wall of air. He bounced off of the wall and was sent spinning into the center of our battlefield.

“Not my kind.” I assured him with a laugh that was far more evil than I had heard from myself yet. “You have no idea what you have wrought.”

“What are you talking about? The Lilitu changed you. I didn’t have a chance to change you, and besides that, I wouldn’t have changed you, even if Adam hadn’t shown up when he did.”

I looked at the jackal with a new sense of pity. “You honestly don’t expect me to believe that you were going to betray your beloved Gallu and kill me.”