Chapter 19

“Wen!”

I remain crouching on the ground, staring at Sarah.

She’s real. And really here. Flying to me with tears streaming down her face.

Shock beats down on me with her every bounding step across the expansive room, almost making me keel over.

No. No, no, no. She can’t be here.

How is she here?

Lorcan. It has to be him. The traitor.

And to think I trusted him.

But that’s all my fault. He’s a nephilim. He laughed at how we humans once romanticized angels, toldme what remorseless monsters they are. What was I thinking when I exposed her identity to him, her importance to me, after they sentenced me to another form of slavery?

But I had no other way of reaching her, ever again. And I needed her to get free!

I only managed to trap her here with me.

I barely get up to teetering feet when she throws herself at me, crashing me into the closed side of the double door. Head barely clearing my chin, she clings to me and weeps into my chest.

Heart exploding against my ribs, fingers feeling like exposed wires, I push away enough so I can look down at her.

“Sarah...” My voice comes out a cracked croak. “Stop crying—please.”

Drowned, frantic eyes zip up to meet mine as a harsh hiccup tears out of her. “You’re okay…you’re okay!”

That’s why she’s crying? Not because she was abducted by a terrifying nephilim? Or because she was hurled into this otherworldly place filled with beings who can turn her inside out with a thought? She was worried about me?

“Oh, Sar, I’m so sorry.” I drag her back for a tight hug before stumbling away, unable to bear feeling her close, here, sharing my fate. “I should have listened to you. If I didn’t ignore your premonition, none of this would have happened.”

She shakes her head vigorously. “No, no—if you stayed put every time I had a premonition, you would have never left the apartment. I didn’t know what I was sensing that night, and it could have turned out to be paranoia.”

She’s always so quick to absolve me, and I can’t bear it this time. “But it didn’t. It was a set-up. And they caught me. But I only care that they caught you with me.” It’s me who grabs her now, unable to contain my fury and anxiety anymore. “Tell me what happened. What did he do to you? If he laid a finger on you, I’ll pluck and boil him!”

She blinks, looking taken aback. “You mean Lorcan? He assured me you are okay, and was really nice!”

“Nice?” After I bark, I remember that he is as nice as you can hope a nephilim to be. But if he told her I was okay... “Then why were you crying so hard?”

She points a shaking finger across the room. “Because she told me she ate your eyes!”

Said eyes snap across the room, and I see her. A girl lounging on a queen bed draped in black sheets and red satin comforter, one shapely leg dangling off the side, exposed to her panties by a too-short skirt. Some glossy fashion magazine is hiding her face.

I know who it is at once.

The Demoness.

My blood rising to my skin in a wave of lava, I stalk toward her, kick the foot of the bed with all I have. Those boots are really sturdy and the impact shakes the bed enough, the magazine flops from her red-nailed hands over her face.

“Get out of here, you freak!” I shriek.

Lightning-fast, she sits up and flings that magazine at me. It clips me like a glancing dagger over my right eyebrow.

I yelp as the flare of pain is immediately followed by a gush of blood dripping into my eye. The eye she was aiming at. If I didn’t jerk at the last second, it would have been its contents dripping down my face instead. She meant to blind me.

Literally seeing red, I launch myself at her.

I land on top of her, take her down to the bed. I have no move beyond that, don’t even know what this one can achieve except vent my rage, at her, at everything since Godric crash-landed in my path. Except get me maimed or killed, as he said.

But there’s no rationality left in me. Knowing she terrorized Sarah is the last straw my mind snaps under.

Before I can grab that ponytail or head-butt her, I find myself beneath her, spread-eagled, and her soft, manicured hand is around my throat.

She squeezes my windpipe with steady, inexorable strength as the burning stench of brimstone suddenly envelops me. If I could breathe, I would have gagged.

Her nails lengthen and sharpen as they dig into my neck, as do her perfect, white teeth as she grins maliciously down at me.

“It was a choice between educating you and killing you,” she purrs. “Thanks for making the decision for me. Option B it is.”

“Stop, please,” Sarah begs as she tries to pull the demon off me.

No, Sarah! Get away from her. Get out of here. Out of this immortal monsterland, any way you can.

But Sarah would never give up on me like I would die before I give up on her. She isn’t considering her own survival as she claws at the demon’s arm and shrieks, “Let her go!”

But that demon won’t, will only turn on Sarah. I have to keep her focus on me.

From my helpless position thrashing beneath her, I choke, “That all you got…Death Breath? Or is this how…you plan to kill me? Make me…puke myself to death…on your stench?”

Just as the brimstone started, it disappears, a scent of ozone and hyacinth replacing it. Then the demon presses the claw-like nail of her other hand into the wound she inflicted, deepening it.

As the pain darkens the world already teetering on the verge of blinking out, the smell of burning skin and barbecue assails me. A smell I never forgot since that day Kondar marked me.

She’s branding me again!

I can barely draw enough oxygen to keep from passing out. But thanks to Godric’s—conditioning, suffocation no longer incapacitates me, and I wheeze, “Brand me now…and I’ll come back to haunt you…until you lose your mind. They’ll have to…put you down…like the rabid Grunge Demon…that you are!”

She only grins, increasing the pressure on my neck until I stop struggling. And as Sarah sobs and begs frantically in the background, she continues whatever she’s doing to my wound.

Just as I think she’ll punch her claw through my skull and into my brain, she’s off me in one fluid motion.

“You’re lucky you’re entertaining,” she says breezily as she adjusts her clothes and fluffs her ponytail. “Inferno knows I’ll need all the entertainment I can get in this dump filled with angel prigs, nephilim pricks and angel-graced doormats. You may live.”

Struggling to draw breath through my bruised, swelling throat, I lurch to a sitting position as Sarah rushes to help me. She strokes a shaking, soothing hand down my back as I grab the demoness’s pillow and wipe the blood from my eye.

Gritting my teeth at the idea of a facial brand, I check the damage. I feel nothing. She must have given me a third-degree burn and killed my nerve endings.

As I get off the bed on quivering legs, I push Sarah behind me, needing to hide her from that monster. I contemplate every way I know how to kill a demon as she puts the finger she dipped in my blood into her mouth with a wicked wink.

Suddenly, she frowns and goes still. Her gaze sharpens on me as she approaches me again. I really, really want to cringe.

I somehow don’t. Still wheezing noisily, I glare at her, holding an adamant hand back to Sarah, warning her against interfering again.

When the demoness stops in front of me, I don’t let her see I’m ready to crumple at her feet. And I’m tall enough that she has to look up at me, some sort of edge in this vicious game of power. False as it is, it steadies me. Somewhat.

Then she issues those simultaneous sounds that make my hairs almost pull out of their roots. A hiss and a moan, like the scrape of rock on gravel, and the whistle of wind in a desolate desert.

“What are you?”

“You have the attention span of a fruit fly,” I grunt. “And the disgust factor of a demon-sized one. I thought we established I’m Nothing.”

Her eyes goes black again, and my mind races with possible counterattacks if she decides to continue her torture. But nothing I do would be effective. Not when I can’t reach for my switchblade before she finishes me off. And not with Sarah within collateral damage range.

I hate being so helpless. Even in a life of Indenture, I always had some plan, some way out of trouble. But if this gorgeous monster changes her mind and decides to snuff my life, I’d be helpless to stop her. Then she’d turn on Sarah.

I doubt she’d even get into trouble for killing us. Godric believed she could have maimed or killed me in front of everyone. He must know there would have been no serious repercussions for her. After all, she’s basically demonic royalty, and we’re two worthless humans.

Her irises heat, like a coal set on fire, and I feel something slithering through my mind. It feels like the cold, slippery tentacles of an octopus made of evil.

That monster is mentally probing me!

Rage and revulsion fill me with violent images, of Azrael’s lovely scythe chopping off those defiling probes in one vicious slash.

The demon cries out and stumbles back, pressing her fists to her temples. I stare at her as her face scrunches in pain, trying to understand what just happened.

Did I do this to her? But how?

If I have Angel Grace inside me, did it flare at her demonic intrusion? Or maybe that was my Mark acting up?

I thought it’s only made to kill us, rather than let us be taken over by another demon. Maybe this time it actually lashed out to stop the takeover attempt?

Whatever happened, it hurt her. Badly. And it feels fantastic.

Maybe I’m not so helpless after all.

Satisfaction burgeons in my chest. “Did that hurt, you poor, unfortunate, soulless fiend?”

Opening eyes flashing between glowing embers and magical ambers, and though I can tell she’s still in severe pain, she grins. Not a grin of bravado, but of glee.

She had to extinguish any sense of victory I felt, didn’t she?

Argh! Those demons and their perverse sense of humor!

“You might replace my hellcat in entertaining me while I serve my sentence here.” She chuckles, the laugh ending with a sound like a rattlesnake’s. “It’s going to be fun having you around, Nothing. ”

I strike my best challenging pose. “Which will be never. Now take your gnarly horns, and that pointy tail you must have coiled under this mini-skirt, and scram.”

Her smile only grows serene as she pushes past me, and jumps back on the bed.

The last trace of any triumph evaporates as I watch her fluffing the pillow I just smeared with my blood, before settling back on it and picking up another magazine from the bedside table.

“I said get out!” I shriek so loudly, I feel my already damaged vocal cords tearing.

A touch on my arm makes me jump and whirl around, nerves jangling in anticipation of another attack.

It’s only Sarah, and she’s mirroring my grimace. “She’s not going anywhere, no matter how much you yell at her.”

“Oh, I know she’s a demon, and has all these powers, but did you see what just happened? Maybe I can…”

Sarah shakes her head, the apology in her eyes silencing me as she says, “She’s going nowhere because she’s our roommate.”