Pretty Dark Sacrifice (21 page)

“You do not have the power to banish me, Eol Ananael.” The demon’s voice crackled like fire. “Not yet.” Hearing it speak through Marcus made her blood turn to ice.

“My name is Quinn.”

“A little name for a little being. Perhaps you are not who we thought you were.”

“Get out of my friend’s body now, and I’ll let you live.” Quinn tried to sound brave, but her voice squeaked out.

“I will leave when I am good and ready, be that in a minute or a decade. This body is strong and fierce. I might just keep it.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?” The demon laughed, rising to stand above her. “You are playing with powers you know nothing about. Were you not the one who crossed into the realm between your world and ours to stand within the veil?”

Quinn grabbed the box and scrambled back as the demon advanced. “You, a beacon in the darkness, dared to delve into the shadow world and scream his name.” The demon used Marcus’s foot to crush the spirit board beneath his heal. “Did that smug protector you call a Sentinel not warn you? You are the one who seeks the boy—the one you let die so that you could live.”

The reminder was like a slap, and Quinn winced at his words. Even worse coming from a friend’s face, a face she had shared grief with, who had told her she shouldn’t feel guilty. “What have you done to Aaron?” Quinn got to her feet, refusing to let him intimidate her.

“I have done nothing to him. My mistress gets to have all the fun. He is too important to her to let one as lowly as I play with her favorite pet.” The demon pouted with Marcus’s face and Quinn shivered. “No, he is all hers.”

“Please. I will do anything.”

“Anything?” The demon arched an eyebrow. “Yes, she thought you would say that.”

“And? What does she want? Spit it out.”

The demon stared at the box clutched in her hand, and she felt a need, a bitter craving, rise in his spirit.

“You mean this?” She looked at the strange container in her hands. Could this be the distraction Aaron had been talking about? Had her finding the box been coincidence?

The demon eyed the box. “We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.” It licked its lips, slow and steady, its hunger for this precious object growing by the second. “She of many names, Lilutu, Zahriel, Kakasha, Ardad Lili, The Dark Mother, demands you return that which is hers.” The demon voice emanating from Marcus sounded like the buzz of a million bees, angry and annoyed. “You have until the solar eclipse to comply.”

“And if I don’t?” Quinn hugged the box to her chest and stuck out her chin.

“Then the boy’s soul is hers forever. Do you know what she does with her playthings?” The demon cocked Marcus’s head and studied her. “No? I do not imagine your small human mind could fathom the terrible things she has planned for him. Thousands upon thousands of years of rather creative experimentation have perfected her art for misery.” The demon ran a tongue over Marcus’s lips. “Revenge, torture, agony. These words are but poor definitions of the eternity of hell he will experience, all because of you. There are worse things than death. Won’t it be lovely to feed off the guilt you’ll have, knowing you’ve damned the boy you love to an eternity of torment?”

“But the eclipse is only a few days away. I don’t know how to get to the Underworld. I need more time.”

“There is no more time. I’m sure you will find a way, Eol Ananael.” The demon turned Marcus’s mouth upward into a wicked grin.

“Get out of his body!”

“You dare command me? You don’t even know my name.”

“She doesn’t, but I do, Nysrogh.” Azrael swooped down, chest heaving, wings settling at his sides. He looked fierce and frightening. The tip of his golden sword found the hollow of Marcus’s throat. Saliva dripped in long strands from the sides of his mouth, his body shook.

“Stay out of this, angel, lest you suffer Lilith’s wrath,” the demon sputtered, but his voice was reduced to nothing but a ragged whisper, his power waning under the point of Azrael’s sword.

“Where did you get that?” Azrael’s attention was drawn to the box still in her hand. She thought she saw a flash of fear in his eyes, and then it was gone.

“Over there.” Quinn tried to steady her voice.

“That box belongs to my mistress,” Nysrogh hissed.

“Hush, Nysrogh, or I will pry your essence loose from the boy piece by piece if I have to. You will be so broken that it will take you a millennia to knit yourself back together.” Azrael pressed the tip farther into her friend’s flesh. Quinn wasn’t sure if it was the creature or Marcus himself that gasped as blood blossomed at the base of his Adam’s apple.

“No! Don’t! You’re hurting him.” Quinn grabbed Azrael’s wrist, but he flicked her away as if she were a mosquito and stepped back, chanting under his breath.

“I will deal with you when I’m done,” Azrael growled at her between chants.

A trickle of red tainted with a trace of shadow fell onto Marcus’s shirt. Drawn forth by Azrael’s power, gray threads floated upward from the blood, the demon’s essence separating from the human’s.

Marcus’s face twisted and morphed into the true shape of the monster within. His eyes bulged, and he snarled, revealing three rows of sharp teeth. Azrael flourished the golden sword, moving the tip in a tiny circular motion, winding the shadow strands around the blade. The cords, attached to Marcus at one end and wound tight around Azrael’s sword at the other, writhed and squirmed.

While the golden sword extracted the evil squatting inside her friend, Azrael held the blue one above his head as if ready to strike. Once the threads were fully in his grasp, he struck down with the blue Qeres blade, cutting the demon off from its host. Poison worked its way through the demon’s essence, hissing and popping with electricity until every inch of the demon dissipated.

Marcus’s eyes fluttered, returning to their natural brown state. “What the hell was that?” Quinn launched herself forward, wrapping her arms around him, tears soaking his shirt.

“Well, hello to you, too.” He patted her on the back and rocked her, his arms awkward around her. “Did I miss something? What’s going on?”

The last demon standing screamed as a violet-winged angel drove a sword through its eye. With its death, the five Powers of the heavenly host turned and bowed to her before taking to the air. Only Azrael remained. He shook his head and glared at her.

“Marcus, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Left to drift through the ruins of his own psyche, untethered and trapped between consciousness and unconsciousness, Aaron succumbed to the bleakness of his situation. Another attack would wipe the slate of his mind clean. There wasn’t much left as it was, just a jumble of random images and thoughts he couldn’t hang onto for more than a few seconds at a time, but that wouldn’t stop her. Once Lilith finished with Quinn, she would be back. Not that it mattered; he no longer had the strength to fight her. He was a rag doll she could play with and throw away—no feelings, no life. He wasn’t real anymore.

All he could do was wait, suspended in his torturous purgatory with no way out. Better not to worry and embrace the feeling of numb apathy instead. No need to think about that, no need to feel, it wouldn’t do any good. Just float. Float and forget. Let it go, all of it.

Billions of stars winked in and out around him, dust, fragments of his shattered mind left in the wake of Lilith’s attack. We are all made of stardust after all, even our musings.

Muse.

The word, familiar one second, foreign as ancient Sumerian the next, echoed through his empty shell of a mind and knocked something loose. Words from a long-dead language bubbled to the surface.

Sumerian. As familiar as Quinn’s face.

He shouldn’t know Sumerian from Greek, but somehow he did. This life. Another life. This time. Another time. To not know who you were, where you were, what you were. What could be worse? He was lost, a soul without a body, a body without a mind, never to be whole again.

Quinn.

Something prodded him to try to piece his mind back together while he had time, but he ignored it.

Quinn.

Retrieving all the pieces would take too much effort, he reasoned. What was the point anyway? Each thought was as intangible as a whisper of wind on his face. Once there, and then gone.

Quinn.

His thoughts looped back around to that one word. A song stuck in his head, driving him crazy.

Quinn.

Cinders of his lost mind swirled and danced, taking the shape of her face, her hair. Something awakened deep within, a part that burned as bright as the sun at noon. If he could harness it, maybe he could regain consciousness.

Focusing on that growing spark of faith, he reached for the closest particle and pulled it back into himself. Then another. Piece by piece, he rebuilt himself, exploiting the potential power growing inside him until every memory, every grain, was back in place. Evil may have taken his mind, taken his flesh, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. If he could get free, he might break Lilith’s connection with Quinn. Giving up was not an option. Rage burned through Aaron, overriding the effects of the drug. Mind clear and renewed with energy, his eyes snapped open.

Lilith, still disguised in his essence, grinned up at him and gracefully rose to meet his dagger glare. A bomb ticked at Aaron’s core, ready to explode as more flashes of a past life mixed with his present. Lilith had wanted him to remember, and remember he did. She had trapped a weak human in bonds but awakened a powerful Elite angel and all that came with it.

“Well now, that’s a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect you to ever wake up. Seems your mind is stronger than I gave you credit for, if not your body. You look positively exhausted.” With a wave of a finger, she loosed the slack of the chains that bound him. His arms dropped to his sides as the metal links pooled at his feet. Not complete freedom, but enough that he might be able to gain an advantage. “See, I can be forgiving when it suits me.”

She thought him weak, subdued. She had no idea what she’d awakened within him. Good. Playing the part, he sank to the floor and curled into the fetal position, resisting the urge to snap her neck.

“Masquerading as you was almost too easy.” Lilith’s features rippled and morphed back into her own, T-shirt and jeans replaced with tight bodice and shadowed cloak. “She didn’t expect a thing.” She circled him, watching his reaction, but Aaron refused to give her what she wanted and kept his body still and his mouth shut. He could sense her frustration growing, a tide of anger ready to devour him.

Patience, Aaron, patience.

“Did you hear me?” Lilith raised her voice, but still he gave her nothing but mute indifference. Squatting in front of him, she squeezed his cheeks and forced his jaw up to look at her.

Lilith gasped; her eyes wide silver pools as he grabbed her wrist, and twisted hard. He locked his glare on hers and rose to his feet, dragging her with him.

“Kavash,”
the command seethed from her lips, and the demon around Aaron’s neck tightened its grip, ready to release more drugs to subdue her enemy.

Before it could act, Aaron let go of Lilith and wrapped his hand around the demon control collar. He suppressed a scream as a thousand needles ripped from his throat as he pulled the creature from his flesh, breaking Lilith’s hold over him and restoring him to his full senses. Venom spurted from a thousand wriggling legs, coating his hand in blood and amber slime.

Ragged breaths caught in his lungs, but he was free from her clutches. The creature writhed in Aaron’s hand, legs digging into his skin to make him let go, but Aaron tightened his grip. He couldn’t let the thing escape. It had one task: obey its master and bind Aaron to her power once again.

Narrowing his eyes, he held Lilith’s gaze and squeezed the life out of the monstrous control demon, black blood oozing between his fingers and down his arm. When the beast fell silent, he dropped it at her feet.

“I am tired of this game.” Flicking her shadow cloak, she raised her hands and began chanting. Smoke poured from the bottomless pit that surrounded his island prison. It curled and spun, the wisps taking shape into a circle of demons, each heavily muscled, blue-black veins pulsing with hate, heads of eagles, sharp spears at the ready. “Take care of him,” Lilith commanded, and the demons advanced.

Aaron twisted in his manacles, backing away as the demons approached. The only way to help Quinn was to get free and contact her himself. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Come on, Kaemon,
he begged
, don’t let me down now.

If he could keep Quinn from coming to the Underworld and keep her away from Lilith, he had to accept that he was part angel.

I know you loved her, too. Do it for Eve, for Quinn.

Aaron panted. It was working—he could feel the strength growing inside him, more than even the strongest man on Earth possessed.

The skin beneath his shoulder blades itched and burned as if a thousand spiders crawled below his flesh, biting, stinging, and pushing their way free. He scratched at his back, rolling on the ground and tearing his nails across skin. He clawed at the soft tissue until blood oozed from his wounds, but the itch intensified, driving him mad.