'Tween Heaven and Hell (34 page)

I couldn’t help it, I grinned back.

“But My Lord, just two of you against Nille, Nerul and his
court?”

“It is the way it must be. Our powers have merged and we are
a considerable force now, we have no choice. Nille must not fulfill his
destiny.”

“Yes, but let us help. My men have served the Court of
Dialle the First for thousands of years. We cannot leave you to face this enemy
alone. Please don’t ask us to.”

Dialle stood and moved to stand facing his captain. Placing
a hand on each of the guard’s shoulders he gave him a sad smile. “And can you
guarantee the loyalty of all of your guards, Gerch?”

For the merest sliver of time the truth flitted across the
guard’s thick, red face. Then he masked his concern and nodded briskly. “My men
would follow you to Heaven, Prince Dialle. They will do what needs to be done.”

Dialle stared into the guard’s eyes for a moment longer and
then shook his head, dropping his hands. “Nay. Your wishes do not make truth. Your
forces are as divided now as my court. We are safer without them.”

Gerch’s head drooped as he shook it. But when he raised it
to look upon Dialle again there was fire in his black eyes. “At least let me
pull together a small force of men who I know are loyal, my Prince. Let at
least some of us fight at your side in this.”

Dialle turned to look at me and I shrugged. “I think he’s
right, Dialle. I know you and I are pretty scary as a team,” I grinned at him
and he grinned back, “but we’d be stupid to refuse a little help. You yourself
said that Nille was too powerful.”

Dialle nodded and turned back to Gerch. “Choose very
carefully, my friend. Millions of lives depend upon our success in this.”

Gerch bowed over Dialle’s hand and kissed it. “It shall be
done, my Prince.”

Dialle’s face darkened as he watched Gerch and his men
leave. The look on his face made me distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn’t fear
exactly, but something related. I had just grown used to the idea that devil
royalty were damned near invincible. And now, when the fate of the world
depended on at least one of them being invincible, I had to get used to the
idea that they weren’t. Sometimes life just sucks.

I stood, drawn to him somehow and moved across the room. His
arms opened as I neared and I slid into them without thinking. As we touched my
body responded immediately, flaring to life and leaving me liquid with need. Our
lips seared together and his sharp, white teeth worried gently at my lower lip.
I drew in the hot, musky taste of his breath and ground my body against his. I
couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t touch him enough, couldn’t taste him
enough.

Just as I began to get pulled into the mindless heat of his
flesh against mine, I remembered something more important than my sex life and
pulled sharply away. “Where’s Emo? Is he alive?”

Dialle sighed and moved away from me. “He lives. His soul
drains away from him though.”

“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with him?”

Dialle dropped back onto the divan. Draping one golden,
muscular arm across the back of the divan, he splayed his long legs and frowned
at me. “Rayanne poisoned his soul before she mutilated his physical form. It
was one of her specialties.”

To avoid the panic that had welled in my chest I hid behind
sarcasm. “I can see why you lusted after her. She was such a gentle, nurturing
creature.” I scowled down at him and he grinned.

“I generally don’t search for such charms as those to grace
my bed, lovely Astra. If I did I wouldn’t lust after you as I do.”

My traitorous pulse picked up and I cursed myself silently. Emo
might be dying and I was standing there thinking with my…well…whatever. “I want
to see him.”

Dialle shrugged. “I’ll take you to him.” He stood and placed
his hand out toward me, palm down. I hesitated only a fraction of a second
before I placed my own hand over his. The universe shimmered into neutral and,
for the second time that day, I trusted my gorgeous devil to guide me to my
friend. I just hoped my friend would still be among the living when I got
there.

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

Fading Away

So pale, so pale, so near death’s door, the lady’s
friend awaits,

A devil’s poison fouls his blood and disengages fate.

He was lying in a shadowed room without windows. The air in
the room was cold and smelled filtered, with just the slightest taste of mildew
around the edges. As I neared the bed where he lay, I couldn’t detect any
movement at all. No breath, no flutter in the grayed-purple eyelids, no
twitching in the grayish-red hands which lay palms up, as in death, alongside
his oh–so-still form. My heart clenched looking at him and, for about the tenth
time in my life and about the fourth time in just the last week, I felt tears
filling my eyes and escaping down my cheeks.

I sat down next to him on the bed and pulled one of the
lifeless hands into my lap, clasping it tightly with both of my own. Still
nothing. It was as if he’d already left me. I looked up as Dialle moved to
stand beside the bed and my eyes asked him the question I couldn’t voice. He
returned my gaze for a moment and then shook his head briefly, reluctantly and
looked away, toward the dying devil on the bed.

I raised Emo’s hand to my lips and kissed it. As my lips
touched the cool leather skin of his hand, it shimmered and changed. My eyes
flew to his face and I gasped. Lying there, eyelids still stained with the
grayish purple of pain and weariness, was the devil who’d sat across from me in
my living room, showing me for just the briefest of seconds what he’d been
before Nerul had played with his destiny. With that thought my heart tightened
again, but with anger this time. I would avenge Emo’s life and his death, even
if it meant my own.

“Nerul’s curse has left him. I wonder…”

Dialle’s voice startled me out of my angry thoughts. I
pulled my gaze away from the friend I no longer recognized. “Why?”

Dialle turned to me, pity lay like a veil across his gaze. “Sometimes
when we die, we return to our natural state, outside forces cease to affect us.”

My eyes filled again and I nodded, swiping angrily at the
weakness that poured from my eyes.

“Or else…”

My head shot up, hope soared through me, “What?” I asked.

“Or something might have happened to Nerul.”

I frowned, feeling the hope slide away. “But he’s with
Nille. Together they are more powerful than almost anything else.”

Dialle continued to stare at Emo, his thoughts seething
behind the calm façade of his beautiful, golden face. “Yes. Together they are.”

I didn’t have time to explore the unspoken question in his
voice. The door to the room flew inward, crashing against the cement block wall
behind it. Apparently dark world types had never mastered the art of the
gentle, understated entry. Gerch strode into the room, flanked on both sides by
the two guards that had accompanied him in Dialle’s chambers.

Dialle moved across the room, meeting the Captain of the
Guards halfway and a murmured conversation followed. I paid only a fraction of
my attention to the interaction between the Prince and his Guard, my eyes
remained locked on the, now beautiful, features of my dying partner and friend.
But when Dialle’s voice rose on the name, Nerul, it pulled me away from my
despair. I twisted my gaze reluctantly away from Emo to look at him. He turned
to me.

“We must go.”

I stood. “I can’t. I have to stay with Emo.”

Making a wrinkle in time and space, Dialle rearranged
reality so that he was suddenly standing in front of me, mere inches away,
before I’d even seen him move. “No. Emo will die or not, you cannot affect that
now. Nille and Nerul have been found. We must attack immediately while they are
unprepared.”

I stared into the ocean blue of his gaze and, although I
noted the change, I wasn’t even surprised. I could feel his impatience
vibrating under the forced calm of his appearance and I couldn’t help wondering
why he bothered. He and I both knew he could just grab me and shift me away. But
I guessed he wanted my cooperation more than he wanted my mere presence. He was
right. Together we had a chance to win this battle. A slight chance, but a
chance. If we didn’t present a united front we were toast. I don’t particularly
like toast. Especially if it’s me.

Finally I sighed and laid my hand over his. As the world
faded to neutral again it occurred to me that we would not truly be partners if
I couldn’t learn to mobilize on my own. I tucked that thought away as a lesson
for another day. If there
was
another day.

Amazingly we shimmered into the blood and gore splattered
loft of the Church of the Twined Hands. As soon as we had taken physical form,
Dialle and the three guards that had been in the room with us when we left
moved forward with urgent steps. Still holding my hand, Dialle headed straight
for the center of the room, where the remains of the cross prison lay in a
broken heap. Suddenly a lot of things made sense to me. The church had
apparently been built on the channel between the light and the dark worlds. A
perfect conduit for evil as well as good to enter the physical world. Poor
Deaver probably had no idea what he’d signed up for when he’d established his
church in that building. His initial message to me about having stepped on some
devil toes when he’d moved into the church probably hadn’t been too far off the
mark.

Reaching the barricade of collapsed crosses, Dialle simply
swung one hand and pieces of cross flew away to crash into splinters against
the stone walls. I gasped. The wood of the crosses was incredibly hard and
heavy. It would take a staggering amount of power to move it, let alone fling
it with apparently no effort. What had I attached myself to?
Shit
.

As Dialle cleared away the cross debris, I became aware that
we were being joined, a few at a time, by several more guards. They shimmered
into the room, in some cases gaping around in surprise as if they weren’t at
all sure how they’d arrived there and stood in formation behind Gerch and his
two hand-picked guards. Apparently Gerch had managed to find some who were
still loyal to their Prince.

While Dialle did his dark world version of spring-cleaning,
I watched the lesser devils and demons that would stand at our backs in the
coming battle. Although I wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea of turning my
back on the motley and dangerous looking crew gathered together in that room,
their demeanor was not suspect under the circumstances. And, let’s face it, if
any of them had any thoughts about betraying Dialle once the battle began,
their ambitions were undoubtedly quenched as they watched him treat the thousand-year-old,
petrified into iron and at least as heavy, crosses like tiny matchsticks. I
personally wasn’t planning on pissing him off again any time soon.

Once Dialle had cleared a space large enough for all of us
to squeeze into, he stepped over the power barrier that had held the cross
prison together and pulled me with him. As my feet touched the floor within the
barrier I experienced a sudden and intense dizziness and found that I had to
lean on Dialle to keep from passing out. I hate feeling helpless and weak, it
really pisses me off. I turned my angry and confused gaze upward and Dialle
smiled at me.

“It will pass. You are not used to the power of the shadows.
It runs counter to yours.”

Although the confusion was not in any way cleared up by that
cryptic reassurance, the dizziness did indeed start to subside almost
immediately. As soon as I could trust my legs to hold me up I let go of Dialle.
It wouldn’t do at all to appear weak around this crew.

I realized that, as I had been working on pulling my senses
back together, the area within the power barrier had become
very
crowded. I now found myself elbow to elbow and butt to…whatever, with the
entire dangerous-looking “army”. My nose crinkled at the combined, very pungent
smell of demon and lesser devil, but I closed my eyes and forced myself to
remain calm. I had to keep reminding myself that they were on my side. Well…at
least they were on Dialle’s side and I thought
he
was on
my
side.
Shit. I really don’t like to share the sandbox with others, it’s just too
confusing. You never know who you can trust with your favorite shovel.

I became suddenly aware of a murmur of conversation around
me and felt Dialle’s power beginning to throb in invisible waves away from his
body. Expecting the waves to ping off my own power shields, imagine my surprise
when I instead absorbed them. As his power flowed into mine, my mental drawers
shifted and he was there.

We enter the shadows, Astra. Do not show any weakness
there or you will die
.

I frowned.
Gee thanks for the pep talk. Remind me not to
come to you for grief counseling if someone I love dies. I can see it
now…Dialle, I’m so sad, someone I love has died…you’ll say, death stalks us
all, Astra, no one is immune
.

Dialle laughed and squeezed my hand. Then the world shimmered
into neutral again and I emerged into every child’s nightmare.

* * * * *

The world was nothing but varying shades of black. There was
no light at all in the shadows. No geographic forms, no rounded outlines, no
trees, grass, or flowers, no buildings, nothing at all but a gray mist, melting
into darker gray, flowing into black.

As disconcerting as the lack of light, was the fact that the
shadows were not dead. They lived and breathed around me, flowing alternately
toward me and then shifting away as I turned to look at them. They throbbed and
scurried and changed shades until my skin crawled with the feeling that it was
only a matter of time until the shadows flowed over me and melted me away.