Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (62 page)

“How do you know so much?” Asher finally spoke up.

Her eyes zeroed in on him immediately. “Because we too have a prophecy. It was taught to me by my mother and grandmother both.” She pointed to Lorena and I suddenly realized the old woman had to be her grandmother, but not only that, she was also a zombie now. So clearly a queen didn’t truly die, she simply became one of the next queen’s
children
when the succession passed on. It was a creepy thought.

Pulse racing with anticipation, I leaned forward on balls of my feet, wanting to shake the truth out of her. “And?”

“You are not alone in this fight, demon. My numbers are decimated right now, but once they recover, we shall be your right hand.”

“Why? Because of your prophecy?” I was so sick of everything coming back to superstition, but in this, I couldn’t deny that having such a powerful ally wasn’t the best thing I’d heard in weeks.

She inclined her head. “You are the key.”

“Key to what?” I almost growled. “To releasing Wrath? How?”

Asher’s palm pressed into the center of my back and I leaned into his touch.

“The Triad is evil, it is why we never joined with the Order. Because of who controls them. You are the key to destroying the three.”

I shook my head. “So now I’m going to destroy the Triad too? This just keeps getting better.”

“Understand we all have a capacity for evil and good. The choices you make, those you align yourself with, that is the side that will win. You can bring about the end of ages or you can usher us into an era of peace.” She held out her hand. “Join me, demon, let us defeat the darkness.”

“How are you so certain that I’m the right woman? How can you know for sure?”

She shrugged and for a second I saw the flash of youth that betrayed her mortality. “Because I know you ingested Pestilence. You were born with Lust. You proved to me that night that you are the sin eater spoken of in our legends.”

“Sin eater?” Asher’s lips turned down. It surprised me a little that he genuinely seemed shocked by that.

I was constantly feeling a step behind in everything, but that he now seemed surprised worried me for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on.

She reminded me of a bird in the way she stared at us—stutter-stop movements interspersed with blinks.

“Did you know that to consume an LCD soul as you have would naturally make the host turn gradually insane?” she asked.

She looked dead at me and I felt compelled to tell her the truth. “To be honest, I don’t know much about possession since this was my first time.”

Her teeth looked sharp when she smiled. “But not your last. To become the key, you most become powerful. Incredibly so. By the time you are through, Pandora, you’ll be Legion. We start in Tennessee—it is their home.”

Finally, a tangible clue. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

And this time when she extended her hand again, I took it. In that moment, I really believed it. That we’d be a shining beacon of good against the gates of Hell, that because I chose to fight for light, that fate and destiny would make it so, that even the angels would sing my praise.

God, I was so naïve.

I
was so exhausted by the time we exited that cave, like the weight of the world had come crashing down upon me, I moved into Asher’s arms. “Fly me home, Priest.”

He didn’t object, simply took me into his strong arms and flew through the clouds. It might have been faster to trace, but I really just wanted to just be with him a little while longer.

He gave me the silence I craved as his powerful wings glided us home.

Asher was fast, but it still took him a few hours to get to our glade. When he did, the lights were out and the world fast asleep. Dawn approached soon.

Crawling onto our bed, I watched as he stripped down for me. Strong fingers worked his shirt over his head, revealing the pack of muscles that gleamed bronze from a shaft of moonlight kissing them; the
V
shape of his waist led to strong, powerful thighs. His cock sprang free when he shoved his pants down, and that piercing almost seemed to cry out my name.

My throat went dry and my pulse started hammering. The mattress dipped when he crawled to me, moving with the skill and grace of a stalking panther.

“Priest?” I grabbed his face and inhaled his spicy warmth, letting it saturate my lungs and fill me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

“Hmm?” His brown eyes swallowed me up. I shivered, because when Asher looked at me, he wasn’t just seeing me, he was absorbing me. Sucking me into his soul, opening himself up to me in a way I knew in my heart he’d never done with another and would never do again.

The beat of our hearts moved in tandem.

“I couldn’t possibly sleep.”

I knew he was tired; he hadn’t slept in days now. We might be immortal, but we weren’t immune to the pull of the sandman.

“What do you need from me, little demon?” He tenderly brushed at the curls framing my face.

I smiled because he was always saying things like that, and I didn’t feel like they were just idle words that meant nothing. Asher meant every word he said. “No, it’s what I want to do for you. I want you to know me. Can I play you a song?”

I waited with bated breath. I’d never really done this for anyone else. Only for Kemen, who’d, for whatever reason, seemed soothed by the warble of my voice. I didn’t exactly suck, but I wasn’t going to be playing in Central Park anytime soon either.

“I would like that very much.” He smiled.

I kissed the center of his chest, scooted off the bed, and jogged into the living room, returning a second later with one of the few treasures in this world I truly valued.

Blowing out an anxious breath, I took a seat. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“Can I tell you something?”

I nodded at his serious tone. “Anything.”

“The night you awoke from the coma, I watched you sing. Your voice was so haunted, so full of pain and hurt that it was a physical blow to me not to rush to your side. I’ve always hoped that someday you’d actually know I was around and would sing for me the same way I heard you sing that night.”

Cheeks turning hot, I closed my eyes. “Priest, I…”

But the words wouldn’t come, not as easily as they had with Luc. Because I’d been saying good-bye, and this wasn’t good-bye and I wasn’t sure I could trust my instincts. Not where this emotion was concerned.

He nodded. “Me too.”

Shivering, I couldn’t speak for a second. Because I had to let those unspoken words roll around, to fill every corner of my being, to understand that sometimes you just have to let go and be willing to believe in the impossible.

It took barely any time to tune the strings, and then I played. I didn’t have a thought in my head of what I would play, but eventually my fingers seemed to settle on a song for me.

“Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young, a lyrical recounting of Cortez’s crimes against Montezuma. It wasn’t a terribly romantic song. In fact, it was the opposite of it. But the mood it set was the one I was going for, a somber, spiritual tone that fit my needs right now.

For his part, Asher just seemed pleased that I would trust him with this. Demons share only very rarely with one another and there usually has to be decades of trust built up between them; we never showed ourselves with an outsider. But nothing about Asher had ever felt like it was on the outside.

From the moment I’d met him, I’d known him. Felt him move deep within me, fill the void that’d always existed in me. I’d craved his touch, his fire, and now he was mine and I never wanted to let him go.

And as I sang the words, I held his gaze, and though I wanted to look away because it all seemed so overwhelmingly big, I knew that I had to show Asher all of me, hold nothing back. And when the last note died, I shuddered before gently laying my guitar down.

Emotionally, physically drained.

And then he was just there, and he was pulling me into his arms, and I didn’t fight him because he understood exactly what I needed even when I couldn’t say it. I clung and kissed his nude chest, so grateful that he’d found me. That I wasn’t ever going to be alone again.

And when he began to take my clothes off, I didn’t argue. I watched as his sure fingers unzipped me, as he slowly worked them off my legs. He kissed my naked thigh, nipping and biting in a way that felt like a shot of adrenaline straight through me.

His touch was loving and so tender. My skin prickled from his heat and Lust stirred, purring like a contented cat with a treat.

“Sit up,” he directed.

Smiling, I sat up and lifted my arms straight up. The pads of his thumbs licked at my skin like a trail of fire as he slipped the shirt off. Rolling my head back, I exposed my neck to him.

“Lie back.”

I didn’t know what my priest had planned, but it didn’t matter either. I’d do anything he wanted. Whatever it was he needed, there’d be no shyness from me. It’d been so long since I’d only wanted to please and not necessarily have to
be
pleased that my belly rolled with excitement like it was my first time all over again.

And for someone as old as me, that’s a minor miracle.

“You own me, little demon. Everything I am is yours.”

He kissed me, and oh the kiss was divine. It was spiritual. A surrendering, and I knew our time had finally come.

Flooded with peace, with the knowledge that this moment had been inevitable from the day he’d walked onto my ride, I smiled up at him.

I know this won’t last, nothing good ever does. But for tonight… it was enough.

~*~

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O
ne moment I was lying in bed, about to get it on with the man I was hopelessly in love with. The next thing I knew, the world exploded into madness. Glass shattered and the sound of an explosion rocked the night. I was thrown into the air, Asher ripped from my arms. Light flashed and chaos, God, it reigned.

There were screams, so many screams. Something sharp bit into my skin and I felt the hot warmth of blood flowing from my cheek. I must have fallen off the bed… into a lamp? I blinked because literally my brain felt like scrambled eggs. I coughed and hacked as the sensation of something heavy pressed down, centered in the middle of my chest, like my lungs couldn’t inhale deep enough.

And then a shadow covered me. But it didn’t belong to my priest. Claws sliced through my shoulder blades.

“We’ve found her!”

Someone screamed and I was shocked to realize that blood-curdling sound had come from me. The claws gripped tighter and I convulsed because the pain was unbelievable. My demons were silent, almost whimpering within me.

I was so freaking disoriented—my ears were ringing and I was blinking, looking at the world and unable to believe what it was I was seeing.

Somehow there was a giant gaping hole through Kemen’s trailer, and I’d been blasted through it. My cheek wasn’t pressed into a lamp like I’d thought, but against a sharp stick. The bookshelf I’d so lovingly set up was now crushing my left leg, and when I tried to wiggle my foot, I realized with a howl that it was broken.

“Pandora!” Asher screamed and I could see his shadow racing to me, but something was very wrong with him.

His arm was hanging useless by his side, and that’s when I realized it was barely hanging on by a thread of skin. His left cheek was blown open, exposing the red meat of muscle below. I shook my head.

His eyes were glassy and he looked as disoriented as I felt, and that image chilled me to the marrow of my soul because nothing got the drop on a priest. Ever.

This wasn’t real. None of this was happening. I’d just been in bed with Asher and we were going to make love, it was finally happening. And then it wasn’t, and now I didn’t know what was going on.

The claws tossed me over a hard, impossibly thick shoulder covered in a coarse jacket.

I whimpered and tears slid from the corners of my eyes as the body ran through the swamp with me draped over its back. I tried to move, to wiggle even, but a lethargy gripped me. My limbs refused to obey even my tiniest command. Every time the thing’s steps pounded the wet ground, I lifted up, only to then slam back into its hard-as-concrete muscles. Groaning, I shoved at its back, trying to yank the jacket off, only to realize it wasn’t a jacket but amber-hued fur.

“Oh God,” I sobbed, reaching out for Asher, who was now on the ground, tackled by two more giant beasts of fur and muscle.

And that’s the last thing I remembered before a fist rammed into my skull, crushing it on impact.

~*~

THE GREEN BLINKING lights were the first thing I noticed when I squinted my eyes open. The next was a horrible metallic buzzing, as if from a dying florescent lamp. The third…

The third thing was the worst. A scream of horror was trapped in my throat. Not because I was strapped down on a gurney, or even because I had a ball-gag shoved in my mouth. But because I was naked, and I was open.

From my chest cavity to the bottom of my stomach, I’d been cracked open like a watermelon.

Help! Oh my, God! Help!

Tears rained down my eyes because the words had only been in my head. There’d be no one coming for me. No knight to rescue me. I was alone and lost, tucked away only God knew where.

“Good, she’s awake. Now the testing may commence.” A disembodied voice spoke over loudspeakers wired into the room. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but it didn’t matter.