Summon Dorn (Archangels Creed) (20 page)

Lying on the floor, Sally regained consciousness and opened her eyes, groaning. The demon hovered slightly above her in the form of a beautiful male human, nude and bathed in golden light.

"My darling, I was concerned for you. Now, I bid you, rise and claim your Crown." He offered Sally a hand. "Look forward, not back. Realize your destiny with me. The angel is nothing."

Angel? What could the demon know? And how?

Sally cringed away, but the demon's eyes glowed with gold fire and her fear melted like ice under a bonfire. She rose with jerky movements, hesitant, as if battling a compulsion to stand.

The demon took her hand and lifted her to her feet.
"Show yourself, Angel. Witness as I claim my Queen."

Dorn refused the bait, remaining cloaked.

The demon, characteristic of his kind, searched for weakness to exploit. Dorn slammed his psychic doors shut in defense. "Far from being your Queen, demon. The woman is my Chosen. I have come to take possession."

Sally looked around in confusion, the demon
's trance at least partially broken. "Who's there?"

Dorn wanted to scoop her up and whirl them away, but the demon would be ready for that.
"Be at ease, Sally. I shall explain all when you are safe."

With no knowledge of the demon
's capabilities, he chose full armor, a second skin of aquamarine that flowed about him, ready to repel any assault. His hooded cloak was formed from crushed aquamarine, a woven impenetrable fabric that kept his preferred weapons close at hand. A flick of his wrist uncoiled a twenty-foot long whip fashioned from his gem in chain form. He stood at ease, calculating his attack within an immeasurable fraction of a second.

Ready, he dropped his shield and allowed the demon to see him. The pale blue whip swirled about him with silvery fire, both offensive and defensive.

Grinning broadly, the demon cloaked himself in orange-red flames and conjured a flaming sword from thin air. "Taking your head will be a great coup for me. Many of my Brother Demons have fallen to your hand. The bounty for your skin is the highest ever set. I shall live very well indeed for the next several millennia." He brandished the sword in an attempt to intimidate.                                                                                                                                                                                      Dorn moved right, forcing the demon to turn in order to keep him in view. Clearly the demon knew exactly who Dorn was, but following protocol, he gave the slime his rank which required the demon to give his. "I am Dorn, leader of the Out Rider Patrol for seven millennia. Name yourself, demon, that I might properly report your demise." He gave his whip a little flip and allowed it to reach eagerly for his enemy.

The demon feinted, getting the sword in closer. He grinned, supremely confident of his victory.
"I am Kharef, Demon Over Lord. I have corrupted untold numbers of Innocents in all the Seven Universes."

Dorn would never understand how their filth could count being a coward as some kind of accomplishment. Since Over Lord was an aristocratic position, often gained more through strategy and conniving than strength, it followed that Kharef might not be a great fighter, but Dorn was careful to avoid underestimating him.

A quick thrust before Kharef stepped back a little. He ducked and grabbed Sally's arm to drag her against his chest.

Sally writhed and kicked in vain but Kharef tightened his grip. Her struggles succeeded only in loosening the blanket she wore bound about her.

The fear in her eyes drove a bolt of anger through Dorn's chest. Some new part of his being wanted to take that fear away and punish the one who caused it. His whip moved of its own accord, coiling restlessly on the floor then flicking through the air. What was the thing doing? All his weapons and armor were controlled by the neural impulses created by thought and the last time one of his weapons had done something unexpected was… well, never. But now the whip seemed to have taken a life of its own.

Sally
's blanket continued to loosen until it slipped free and fell to the floor.

"
Take a good look at what you'll be missing, Angel." Kharef laughed.

Sally growled and dug her nails into the demon
's forearm, drawing blood.

Dorn needed to go on the offense but as long as the demon held Sally so close, his options were limited.

Sally continued to struggle a moment longer, then froze.

The demon hissed.
"Don't stop, my darling. Your ass is exquisite."

Dorn had restricted his gaze to Kharef out of respect to Sally, but now he realized why she
'd suddenly gone still. The demon's enormous erection lay pulsing against her hip.

The raw lust in
Kharef's face triggered possessive fury in Dorn and the beast symbolized on the angel's chest stirred restlessly. His whip coiled again, before snapping across to wrap around the demon's ankle, frying skin with a sizzle.

Kharef growled and swiped at the whip with his sword and the whip snapped back. Changing grip on his weapon, he laid the edge of the blade against Sally
's skin.

Dorn
's beast growled and raised its massive head, but still lay hidden. Cold fear replaced Dorn's fury. If the poison from that blade got into Sally's bloodstream, not only would she die a horrible death, but her soul would be infected, making salvation an excruciating feat. It was bad enough he'd have to perform a cleansing on her from the demon's touch, and he'd only know then how deeply she'd been affected.

Before Dorn could consider strategy, his whip took on a mind of its own again. Faster than light, it coiled around
Kharef's wrist in a crushing grip that prevented the demon from using the sword.

When the sword pulled slightly away from her neck, Sally jumped into the fray, and stomped her heel down hard on the demon
's bare instep.

His hold slipped and Dorn
's whip flickered again and sent a tentacle around Kharef's neck, tightening to cut off breathing and circulation.

Kharef
's true form surfaced. A seven foot giant bull stood upright on hind legs. Pale yellow puss oozed between cracks of thick scabs covering leathery black skin. A forked tongue, fat as a black mamba, slid out of its snout and circled her breast. "You have my permission to jerk off while you think of me fucking this fine little ass."

Sally screamed in fear, and the sexual transgression impacted Dorn like TNT.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Aqua flames exploded out of the symbol on Dorn's chest and his creature's massive head shot from the opening and flashed toward Sally and Kharef with a thundering roar that shook the room. A gargantuan hand easily knocked the demon to the floor, spread-eagled in the dust. His hold broke on Sally and she dove behind Dorn while Kharef roared and cursed. But not even in his real form could the demon move under the deadly sharp claw that pinned him like an insect on a board.                                                                                                                             

Beautiful as she was physically, the female he
'd chosen was also smart and brave.

Kharef
's fury boiled and he flung fireballs that Dorn repelled with a breath, turning them into flurries of ice. A strip of Dorn's gemmed fabric separated from his cloak and wrapped itself around Sally, stretching to cover her nakedness. At the same time, a mental nudge from Kassern annoyed Dorn.

Kharef growled beneath the claw sounding like a hundred demons with conflicting emotions.
"You let your beast do your fighting for you? I might lose this time, but I'll be back. And when you least expect it, I'll be plowing that little pussy for you, since you obviously don't have balls enough to do it!"

Possessive fury shot through Dorn and refused to let such a threat pass unpunished. He drew an aquamarine blade with a nasty serrated edge and started forward.
"Release him Maxwell."

Max regarded Dorn with sparkling aqua eyes.
"Such a stupid rule." His eagerness to kill rustled his gemmed scales like a thousand wind chimes. "When do I get the right to execute?" He released him and the demon shot to his feet and armed himself with his flaming sword.

Kharef shot a stream of poisonous fire at Dorn
's beast and leapt forward brandishing his sword.

Maxwell easily deflected the poison with the frill at his neck as Dorn side-stepped the awkward sword attack.

Saliva, thick and foul dripped from the demon's gaping snout crowded with razor sharp teeth, black as his tongue. Kharef resorted to his preferred weapon—words. "Ask your bitch how she moaned and came for me, angel." His eager laugh, low and sadistic, made puss ooze from the sockets of bulbous black eyes. "Oh, wait, you wouldn't know what that means, would you? It means she arched and squirmed and cried out in sexual ecstasy."

Sally gasped, looking mortified before whispering,
"That was against my will! I promise!"

Misplaced guilt for all the sexual assaults she
'd endured filled her voice and blinded Dorn with fury and Max snapped his teeth in the vicinity of the demon's midsection.

The demon howled in agony, bent over, while blood streamed from his groin.

The beast spat out the black flesh and shook his head at the foul taste. The demon dove and scooped it up, frantically pressing it to his injury.

Immense satisfaction followed Dorn
's realization of what Max had done. Taking his penis and testicles was the perfect punishment for his crimes. Especially since he wouldn't grow another for several centuries. He would have relished taking off the demon's head, but this humiliating fate was even better.

He took Sally
's hand and simultaneously struck with the whip, marking Kharef's cheek with his initials, a signature of the demon's failurea. Not waiting to see the effect of that final insult, he flashed himself and Sally away from the convent.

It was while leading the demons far astray that Dorn touched base with Kassern and learned of the attack at the hotel. He headed to the next safe house with Sally clinging tight to him, creating a Shield of Transparency as he went. Anyone observing would look directly through them and see nothing out of place. Afterward, Dorn spent the next several minutes flashing from one place to another in rapid succession, laying a false trail, then backtracking through a dozen locations.

Finally, within relatively easy physical reach of the others, he stepped them off the teleportation merry-go-round, and hoped the demons wouldn't be able to work out the complex trail he'd laid. From there they would obtain a car and drive to the next safe house and he could begin to cleanse that demon from Sally.

Chapter Twenty

Lucian punched the accelerator with his foot and kept it that way, eyes locked on the highway. The directions the red angel—he had to remember to call him Kassern—gave were irritatingly complex. All Lucian wanted was to get Jessie to a safe place by the most direct route possible.

"
Sorry Lucian. We have to be careful not to lead our enemies straight to where we hole up. Everything we do is roundabout." Kassern's deep voice rumbled through the interior of the car in a comforting tone. "And sorry again. Occupational hazard. Archangels hear human thoughts, sometimes too easily."

"
I'll teach you to guard your thoughts when we have a spare moment." Troy's dry laugh sounded full of experience with archangels, and not all positive. "It gets a little awkward when you know someone else can hear every bit of what you're thinking." His voice still sounded weak from the injuries he'd sustained.

"
Wonderful. Seems I have a lot to look forward to." Lucian couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Jessie laid a comforting hand on his knee. "On the bright side, at least we aren't all crammed into a compact car." He smiled at the memory of what Kassern had done to his muscle car. With the touch of the angel's finger, the low-slung fire-engine red sports car that had looked too small for a cat to drive, became liquid metal and morphed into a massive sedan from the late 1960s.

"
Did you reach Dorn?" Troy asked Kassern from the back seat where the two sat with Devyn in the middle and Karly happily on Kassern's lap.

"
Yes, he's waiting for us at the next safe point."

"
How do we know it's safe? I mean how did they even find us?" Devyn asked, constantly looking behind them for a tail.

"
Somehow through Jessie. I think it may have something to do with the trouble at the convent."