Howler's Night (18 page)

I clenched my jaw then opened my mouth to tell her no, but said “yes” instead.

“You and she, you are fated. One path for good, one path for evil.” She cocked her head slowly. “Which side shall you choose?”

“What are you talking about? Who is she?”

“Ya-el.”

I clutched my chest, glancing quickly around, terrified that any should hear of my weakness. My shame. “How do you know that name?” I snapped. “Speak!” I lifted her chin with the tip of my sword.

She effortlessly shoved it out of her face and laughed. “Do you not know who you really are, Priest? The atrocities you’ve committed in the name of your Lord?” She stepped in closer to me, her frail body bristling with so much energy and power I knew it was not she speaking to me, but someone through her. Someone powerful enough to break through her splintered mind.

Tipping her head back, she cackled, and the sound ran like ice water through my veins. “You are no angel, Priest. You never were. The blood that runs through your veins belongs to Greed. That is why you cannot cross this ward.” She pointed to the blood, for that was the true blood of angels.

“No.” I shook my head. “Allora is—”

“Greed’s emissary.” Her stained teeth repulsed me, and I cringed away from the miniature and macabre features. “Why do you think you’ve only ever killed Lust, Wrath, or Envy?” She lifted a finger with a sharp-tipped nail. “Answer me, priest!”

My eyes widened. “I haven’t.”

“You have, for that is your true enemy. Not demons. Not nephilim. But the Triad, the high caste demon lords. Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, and Pride will do everything in their power to prevent a shift in control, even if it means killing their only chance for release.” She held up her fingers and ticked one off with each name she spoke. “Lust. Wrath. Envy. For it is they who truly govern the Order. That is why you were sent here, that is why you are to kill the nephilim. Because only Lust’s line bears the marker to open the Gates of Hell.”

“Shut up!” I shoved the blade against her jugular, only just shy of piercing, and still the child did not flinch.

She smacked my hand away, and I let her because it all was starting to make a sick, perverted sort of sense. I ran through my memories, looking for any moment I could have killed anyone not possessed by Lust, Wrath, or Envy, but I couldn’t find a one. Nor could I think of a moment when any of my partners had.

My hand shook as the sword clattered to the stone at my feet. “What is going on? Why do they want Pandora?”

She smirked. “So that she can release them. They will infect her as they have Aquilla. They will turn her, and in turn she will unchain the three of them.”

“So then I should kill her? I should do what Allora has bid me—”

Her hand found my face so fast it snapped my jaw back. I grabbed my throbbing cheek, staring at her in fury and rage. But she stood proud and unflinching, and I became sick as I realized that not only had I not been the Lord’s emissary, but that I’d signed my soul to a devil.

“What have I done?” I muttered to myself.

“Hubris, man of Adam. That is what you have done. Your arrogant pride blinded you to the truth of that night.”

I shook my head. “Then help me to undo this.”

She laughed. “We cannot. You exist to serve your master now. But you can achieve redemption, should you wish it.”

“Tell me how.”

“Choose the right side.”

“And what side might that be?”

“You already know it. She will need you to be strong for the horrors that come.”

“But I am still owned by Allora.”

“Then you do for us what you did for her. You protect Ya-el, who shall be renamed Pandora. It is too late for Aquilla. Do not allow them to do to her what they did to this one. For we fear that Pandora will be much stronger, but her heart is also much more yielding. She is not afraid to love, and love is a power stronger than any other in the universe. It is only through that love that this curse can be overcome.”

I shook my head. “I cannot protect a demon.”

“You are a demon, Asher. What you believed you knew about the world was skewed and tainted by the high caste lord’s thirst for power.”

“And how do I know that you are not one of them too?” I snarled. “I’ve been fooled before.”

She smiled. “You don’t. But isn’t that what faith’s all about?”

“What if I told you I do not believe any of this?”

“We know you do, Asher. We sense the discord in you. It is why we came to you instead of the others. For you desire that demon and we shall grant her to you. She will want only you, thirst only for you, live only for you, and in return you will keep the gates sealed.”

“No.” I shook my head, even as my soul trembled, as my mouth watered. To have her look at me, to want me as I wanted her. To have her know me… could I do that to her? “Not without choice.”

“Does it matter in the end, Priest?”

My fists clenched as I warred with my desires. “It matters,” I gritted out. But though I said the words, I fear my flesh was weak.

But the girl had only laughed, and then she’d blinked and looked at me strangely, and the light of intellect was gone. Then she began babbling in a tongue I could not comprehend…

~*~

I tossed the journal away and grabbed the book, flipping to the end, desperate to see that I’d translated it wrong. That somewhere in there it showed my emotions hadn’t been manipulated, that I was still my own woman. But the shaking in my hands and the dryness of my mouth spoke volumes. I hadn’t translated it wrong; there was nothing else to read. This was where the book ended. I threw it across the floor and stared at Asher in horror.

“Pandora, wait.”

“What did you do to me, Ash?”

I ran my fingers across my skin where he’d been touching me, suddenly needing to get away from him, from this trailer, from what I’d just read in that book. Was everything I felt a lie? Nowhere in there had it said that I hadn’t been cursed.

“Pandora, stop. It didn’t—”

But I couldn’t stand to hear another word. Without looking back at him, I traced from the room.

Pandora

I was sitting between the branches of a massive redwood tree staring out at the forest floor below me, trying desperately to forget the words I’d read.

He’d never said whether the angel, or demon, or whatever the hell that thing had been, had cursed me to love him.

Was it possible that none of what I felt for him was real? That once again I was being influenced by the will of another? I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth on the branch, running my fingers through my hair.

“And what does it matter if you are?” I growled. “I can’t change these feelings, can’t undo them. Do I want to?” I twirled around. “Yes!”

Because without will, all of it was a lie. Everything I felt, everything he’d done for me. Did it matter now? Was it real? Was any of this real?

Was my life still not my own?

And as if the weather sensed my mood, the gray clouds opened up, and I was covered in rain. I buried my face in the trunk of the tree, lost and terrified, scared to return back to that trailer, and damning Asher to Hell because I wanted to. Everyone wanted a piece of me, and I was so tired of giving it to them.

I didn’t want Luc.

I didn’t want Grace.

And I didn’t want Asher.

But I shook as my mind screamed it for the lie it was; I did want him. Desperately. The memory came to me of the time I’d first seen him at my ride: the immediate shock, the immediate sense that I’d needed him, wanted him. The feeling so intense, so demanding, one I’d never known before, and yet I hadn’t questioned it either. Because it’d felt so real.

The way I’d protected him, shielded him from Luc’s scrutiny, from Grace’s mechanizations. I’d put my safety on the line time and time again because of my overwhelming need for him.

And for what?

For something that wasn’t even real. I closed my eyes, and a dry sob tore from my throat. This betrayal was so much worse than Grace’s, than even being stolen and broken by the Triad, because my hope, my faith, anything good in me, hinged on my surety of Ash. That in all the world, I’d found one truth and I’d clung to it for all I’d been worth, so desperate for that truth.

“So you’ve been cursed to love another. My, my, that’s a fate worse than death.” A smooth, deep drawl had me whirling around, dropping into an immediate crouch, and hissing.

“Oh, sorry.” Death held up his hands. “Demons hate to be surprised.” He winked and then glanced up, frowning as if glaring at the rain.

Immediately it stopped. I didn’t want to attribute it to him, but yeah…

“Why are you here?” I shoved a lock of my wet hair behind my ear.

Licking his front teeth, he ran his palm over a section of the tree branch until curls of steam rose from it. Then, nodding, he took a seat. It was more than just a little bizarre to see a man dressed in a suit and Gucci loafers swinging his feet back and forth over a hundred feet above the ground.

“I came to have a little chat. So how are you really, demon girl?”

I hugged my arms to my chest. “How the hell do you think I am?”

“Well, you look pretty pissed.” He twitched a brow. “Do I got the gist of it ‘bout right?”

“I don’t suppose that if I opt not to answer you’ll just go away.”

His grin was broad, showing an expanse of straight white teeth. “Nope. The only way I’ll leave is if you talk to me.”

I rolled my eyes, swiping my palms roughly against my burning eyes. I hadn’t cried, mainly because I think I’d tapped that well days ago. “I’m so sick of feeling this way.”

“What way?”

“God, you’re useless.” I plopped down against the trunk of the tree. I hadn’t dressed. I was naked as a jaybird sitting in front of a fully dressed Death, and I was so beyond caring at this point that all I could do was shake my head.

He chuckled. “I never said I’d be good at this, but you need to talk this out, and unfortunately I drew the short straw.”

I couldn’t help it, I chuckled. It was an ugly sound, but it did loosen up some of the tension inside me. “Well gee, thanks for pricking my pride. Love knowing no one out there gives a damn.”

He snorted. “Never said we didn’t give a damn, only that I’m not good at this. I’m obviously here, short fry.” He spread his arms wide, staring at the vast sea of trees. “Couldn’t have found a more remote location though. I swear, you girls and your emotions.”

I laughed again. It was just easy to do around him. I couldn’t understand the creature. He thoroughly confused me, and yet I sensed no danger from him.

For now.

His lips tipped upward. “So talk, demon. I haven’t got all day.”

Giving him a hard glare, I shrugged. “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Okay, well here, lemme try.” Taking a deep breath, he hunched his shoulders and then began to speak in a high falsetto. “Dean, Asher’s been lying to me all along. He forced me to love him by making that deal with those monsters; my feelings have never been my own. I’ve been used by everything on God’s green earth, and I’m just so tired of feeling so betrayed.” He ended on a high-pitched wail.

I kicked my foot out, shoving the ball of it against his shoulder hard enough that he had to grip the branch to keep from falling off.

“I do not talk like that.”

Snorting, he rubbed his shoulder. “You pack a wallop, little bit. But how’d I do?”

Slightly embarrassed by the way he’d put it, I spread my hands wide, not wanting to admit he’d gotten the gist of it right.

He took a deep breath, and stared off into the distance. “A flood comes in and completely covers a woman’s home. She sittin’ on the roof and cries out to God, ‘Please help me.’ Then an hour later, a boat comes by, and a man calls out, ‘You need help?’ And she answers, ‘No, I’m waiting on God to save me.’ Another hour goes by, the floodwaters are even higher now, and she cries out to God, ‘Please help me.’ Another boat comes, and the driver calls out, ‘You need help?’ And she says, ‘No, I’m waiting on God to save me.’ Another hour, and more water. It’s up to her chin now. She’s not gonna make it. Same story, she denies rescue, and of course she dies. When she goes through the pearly gates, she meets Peter, and she tells him how sad she is that God never answered her prayer. He looks at her and says, ‘You idiot, he sent you three boats.’”

Unimpressed by his story, I gave him a droll look. “What exactly are you telling me? That God sent Asher to me?”

“Well, of course not. You’re a demon.” He tossed up his hands, giving me a warm half-smirk. “What I am trying to tell you is that someone out there sent you that boat. You see, sometimes a parent can see what the child can’t. And when they give you help, or tell you not to do something, it’s not because they’re stripping you of will. It’s because they understand that if you stick your hand in that fire you’ll get burned.”

“What the hell are you getting at, Dean? I have no parents.”

He sighed, his eyes going wide, and I sensed his impatience with me. “Try to focus. I don’t think I can get much clearer than I’ve been.”

“Actually, you can.” I thinned my lips. “You can start by cutting out all the parables and just getting down to brass tacks. Who’s my ‘parent?’” I finger quoted.

His grin was mysterious, and I knew I was about to get a second helping of balderdash.

“There are forces that move the players on the board. Forces you’ll never meet, you’ll never speak with, but who know every move you’ll ever make.”

Rubbing my temple, I gave him a cross-eyed glare. “You’re giving me such a raging headache. Again, what are you talking about?”

Blowing out a heavy breath, he gave me an astounded look. “Unevolved lower life forms”.

I chuckled at his obvious and rather weak attempt at insulting me. “I’m over five- thousand years old.”

His lip curled. “Nascent being, listen to me well. There are forces at work here. Forces of chaos and of order. One fights to bring about the end. The other to stave it off. When you were taken, when you were reborn as you now are, chaos won a solid victory. And now it is order trying to make you as you were.”