The Demoness of Waking Dreams (25 page)

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Very late at night, when Luciana stole back into Ca’ Rossetti, she heard the singing. So poignant and sad that she almost wanted to weep at the sound of it, right then and there.

Escaping with Brandon is impossible,
she realized.

Dragging herself up the staircase of her beloved home, she had made up her mind.

To flee. Alone.

Because it was the only way she could think of to lessen the risk to those she loved.

Chapter Fourteen

I
n her bedchamber, Luciana pulled a box out from her dressing table. Hands shaking, by the dim light of her lamp she sorted through her best jewelry. She put aside only the best of the old family pieces that she had painstakingly recovered after her mother had sold them to various pawnbrokers around the city.

She would not let these treasures go again. Not even at the risk of getting caught. Especially not after what had happened with Carlotta’s earrings last night.

“Going somewhere?” a familiar voice said behind her.

She jumped, the jewels spilling from her hands.

She pivoted to see Corbin, leaning against the wall, watching her.

“I knew it,” she said flatly. “I knew you would come. I knew you would find some way to intervene and spoil everything.”

“But what are you talking about, Luciana? Are you planning a vacation, my dear? Perhaps you feel like you need some time away after you deliver the angel. Tonight’s the last night, you know. I would have expected you would have finished the job by now.”

“I was simply looking through some of my things. Don’t worry, Corbin. You’ll get what’s coming to you,” she said.

“Are you having second thoughts? From my point of view, I can’t see that you’ve made any progress toward your goal. The Guardian is still out there. I have reason to believe you’ve been meeting with him in secret.”

“There’s no secret to the fact that I’ve been meeting with him,” Luciana scoffed, mustering as much bravado as she could, although she was shaking inside. “How else do you expect me to seduce him?”

“Are you falling in love with him?”

“Of course not. Not after I’ve had
you,
” she simpered.

“I’m not fooled by you, Luciana. I know you used me to get to Julian. You’re a liar and a whore. However, the fact that you’ve fallen in love with a sworn enemy is unexpectedly pathetic, even for you.”

She raised her chin and stared back at him. And dared to say, “What would it matter to you if I
was
falling in love with him?”

That was a mistake.

Corbin grabbed the jewelry she had dropped onto the bed, hurling it on the floor. Some of the more delicate pieces smashed apart, pieces of gold and precious gems rolling across the hardwood. A lump rose in her throat.

Do not cry,
she told herself.
He will destroy you if you cry.

“You’ve got a job to do. I told you to kill that angel. Tonight, the clock runs out,” he said, his voice terrifyingly normal.

“Brandon…he’s not nearly ready,” she protested weakly.

“You’ve gotten into his dreams, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but… I’m not even close. He’s strong. Too strong.”

Corbin slammed his fist into the wall beside her ear. She froze.

“There are rules in the interactions between angels and demons,” she said, closing her eyes, swallowing down her fear. “Rules that cannot be broken.”

“Rules can be bent,” he said, moving to loom over her. “You’ve said so yourself. Don’t forget what you are. What you’ve always been. A demoness and a whore.”

She opened her eyes and glared at him. “I know what I am. The task you set me hasn’t been easy, but I agreed to it, didn’t I? I will deliver the angel by the end of tonight. I hit some unexpected roadblocks, as I’m sure you know. There have been some deaths amongst the demon community here in Venice.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said, straightening. Completely toneless, he continued, “But let me just say that those who deserved it got their end. Don’t fret about Carlotta. She spent a long time on this earth. Longer than most ever dream of. It was time for her to go.”

“So you did kill them,” she accused.

He came up, grabbed her by the throat. “Why would I ever need to admit to such a thing?”

The sensation of choking was unbearable.

Like death all over again. His eyes, as cold and as unfeeling as a serpent’s, bore into her.

No,
she thought.
A snake would have more feeling.

She felt herself fading, her vision filling with stars, a billion dots of light.

“I remember what it’s like to die,” she choked out, her voice barely rasping past her lips. “Just do it.” She let her eyes close, willing him to finish it. “Kill me.”

“Kill you, my dear?” he snarled. “I would never dream of making it so easy. No, darling. I’m taking you on a tour of your own private version of hell. Just to remind you exactly what’s at stake. Open your eyes.”

My own private version of hell. I can’t go back there. I won’t.
She willed herself,
Don’t…don’t…don’t open your eyes.

He shook her just once, but so hard she thought her eyes might snap right out of her head.

Very quietly he said, “
Open your eyes,
or I will open them for you. I will rip your eyelids off, and it will be unutterably painful.”

She had no doubt he would do it.

When she looked around, she and Corbin were no longer in her palazzo. They stood on the steps of the Redentore Church. Not the
real
Redentore Church. One that existed in the deepest reaches of her wildest fears. One whose pristine marble facade had been desecrated, the saints and angels beheaded and smeared with a black, oozing substance that seemed to slither toward her.

“Welcome back to the underworld,” Corbin said smoothly. “We’ve missed you down here.”

The sky was a mottled red, with dark scarlet clouds streaming overhead in clots, like a sped-up film shot through a bloodied lens. Thunder rumbled from above, and the ground beneath her feet trembled as though it would split open. But she knew there was no farther down she could go.

“Release me,” she demanded. “You have no power over me.”

“On the contrary, my dear. I have all the power in the world over you, until you manage to fulfill your end of the bargain. And until then, it’s in my hands to motivate you. Besides, didn’t you just invite me to kill you?”

He dragged her into the church. It was empty and decrepit, the long nave strewn with rotting leaves and broken plaster. The great crucifix loomed over the altar, the figure of Christ missing and a giant crack splitting the wood in the middle.

“On your knees,” he thundered.

“Not for you,” she ground out. “Not this time.”

He slapped her then. The sting of it reverberated in the space of the church and knocked her to the floor. She looked up toward the rounded space of the dome overhead. And closed her eyes, silently begging. Just one word:
please.

“Do you think it’ll do you any good to start praying at
this
point, my dear?” he laughed. “Haven’t you learned anything after all this time? Do you think your saint is going to come save you now? That big, tattooed freak of yours isn’t coming to redeem you. I’ve told you so many times. It’s the other way around. Your job is to bring him down here.”

He grabbed her by the hair, hauling her to her feet.

“Your little tour doesn’t stop here. Let’s jog your memory some more. This is the little hotel where Julian had his rooms. Where you gave up your virginity to him. And there’s…”

She knew what was coming next.

The thing she always tried to forget.

The thing she hadn’t found the courage to tell Brandon.

“…the place where you tried to hang yourself after he abandoned you. But you didn’t succeed, did you? When you realized there was nothing you could do to save your family after all. When you realized you had failed. Admirable that you tried again, even after that disaster. Look, here’s the sucker you got to try to help you out of that. Harcourt. My, he hasn’t aged well, has he?”

She had not seen Harcourt in over two hundred years, since she had clawed her way out of this hell. His skin looked withered, shriveled, older than anything she had ever seen before. His head creaked as he turned to look at her.

“Ah, my dear,” he said, reaching toward her. “Luciana, my lethal little bride. I have been dreaming of what I would do if I ever saw you again.”

His ancient, clawed hand reached for her, grasping her around the arm. She almost screamed, but she knew such a sound could trigger a frenzy in Harcourt from which she would not escape. Forcing herself to swallow the scream, she shuddered, feeling the bony claw scrape its way across her chest to close over her breast.

“So fresh…” Harcourt groaned.

“Perhaps we can arrange a reunion between you two later,” Corbin chuckled, jerking her away. “But right now, we must move on,” said Corbin. “There’s one more thing I’d like to show you.”

Pulling her by the hair, he dragged her into another room, this one a distorted version of Carlotta’s brothel. There, in the middle of the blood-spattered room was a pile of dismembered corpses. Among them, Luciana spotted the battered, bloodied faces of some of the girls she’d worked with years ago; others she hadn’t known personally but still recognized, girls she’d seen around Venice. They were mostly girls she’d seen at Carlotta’s only a few days ago, girls who had been laughing and cavorting, and
breathing.

And among them was her sister’s face, her green eyes staring straight ahead.

“Even in hell, Carlotta is dead,” he said. “Nothing you ever do can get her out of here.”

Luciana looked at the pile of bodies, death piled upon death, stacked up.

She saw
herself
for what she was: a bringer of death.

One who brought nothing but suffering. She may not have killed these women herself, but she had killed plenty of women and men in the past.

And now, sent by the devil himself to perform the most sacrilegious and heinous act.

To kill an angel.

Not simply an angel, but a man who had grown to trust her.

A man who had grown to love her.

“What’s the difference between this version of hell and the one on earth?” she asked Corbin, genuinely puzzled.

He slapped her. Full across the face, so hard that she felt the inside of her mouth split open and the coppery tang of blood flow down her chin. His neutral expression didn’t even shift as he said, “Watch your mouth.”

She glared up at him. “Seriously. I don’t know. Whether being a slave in this hell or a slave on earth…both of them involve just as much suffering. What have those girls done to deserve this treatment? Nothing. Some of them weren’t bad people. Some weren’t even demons. They were human. Who gave you the right to take their lives?”

“I have every right in the world. I am an Archdemon.”

And perhaps if I stay down here, Brandon will just leave,
she thought suddenly.
Go back to America, realizing that I’ve gotten what I deserve. That his assignment has been finished, although not in the way he anticipated.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Corbin, guessing her thoughts. “You’re not staying down here. You still owe the devil a sacrifice, and you’re going back up there to get him. If it’s the last thing you do on earth. Which it might well be.”

He pulled her back upward. Toward the surface.

When reality stabilized around them, they were back in her bedroom, amid the ruined jewelry scattered on the floor. And then he let her go. She fell to the floor, gasping for air and clutching the burning-raw place where he had held her neck.

He dropped something next to her, a small object that hit the floor just inches from her face.

A single emerald drop earring, twin to the one she had buried last night.

“Why did you do it?” she said, tears finally spilling from her eyes.

“Why?” he hissed, bending down to look at her. His amber eyes nearly glowed with the fervor of the kill, the spark of recognition kindling in their eerie depths. “Because I could,
baronessa.
Because I have the power. I don’t need poison. It doesn’t take me a week to kill. I can kill in the blink of an eye, without consequences and without recrimination from anyone.”

“Maybe you can kill any human or any demon without answering for it,” she rasped out. “But you can’t kill an angel.”

He went wild, grabbed the chair from her dressing table and smashed it against the wall. Around her, shards of wood splintered and fell. He knelt low to the floor, near her ear and growled, “Those whores are all back down in hell now, where they belong. Let it be a warning to you. Your time with that angel is almost up.”

“I can’t,” she said. She closed her eyes, wishing she would just disappear.

“My dear,” he said, his voice all the more terrifyingly for its calmness, “that’s simply not an acceptable answer.”

He yanked her off the floor, pulling her into her closet, where he leafed through the racks of her evening gowns.

“Most of these are far too trampy. You’ll never catch an angel in any of these.” Onto the bed, he threw a floor-length white evening gown. “This one’s appropriate. White. How virginal. Like a sacrificial lamb. He’ll like that. And it’s quite ironic, wouldn’t you say?”