Howler's Night (17 page)

Though my heart pounded when my name appeared, and other words like Lust and Aquilla stood out in bold relief. But I shut my brain down and just worked, hand moving like a blur across my previously empty journal as I rearranged the words, transforming them from simple medieval sonnets into darker, deeper, and more sinister thoughts.

He’d shifted out of the bed around six in the morning, flitting his fingers across my cheek in a silken caress before getting back into the driver’s seat.

It was another seven hours before I was finally done.

I stared at the binder in my hand, rubbed my throbbing wrist, and knew it was now or never.

Opening to the first page, I began to read.

Pandora

A
sher’s Journal, Entry 1

I write these words down because to speak them would kill me, but I know the time will come when you will need to know these truths, though I do not wish to share them. Even as I write this, I struggle with the knowledge that what I’m about to do is a breach of everything I’ve ever held to be true. To understand me, Pandora, we must start at the beginning, with the day I met her...

~*~

E
ntry 2

I was born a mortal during the reign of Charlemagne. I can no longer remember my true name, but I remember my occupation. I was a Catholic priest. But I was ambitious and I was smart; in no time I’d risen beyond priest, monsignor, bishop, and even archbishop, to cardinal. I was a young cardinal, but I had friends in high places, and I exploited my position for power. My lust for influence was only supplanted by my zeal for righteousness, or my version of it anyway. One night I was called to Rome to visit Pope Stephen IV. I was thrilled and not a little nervous, as the call came during the dead of night. Everything was done under a heavy veil of secrecy. I remember vividly that no one talked or even cleared their throat as I padded silently down the marble halls to his holiness.

I was led into his private chambers, and there we spoke. He told me he’d noticed my works and the level of prestige I brought to the papacy. I drank in his words as though they were the elixir of life, expecting nothing more than his gratitude, when the conversation began to take on a different tone.

That was the night I learned of a budding organization, his brainchild that he’d named The Order. That was also the night I discovered that I lived in a world with monsters that came straight from Hell.

Dropping a damask curtain hung up behind him, he revealed a steel cage, and beside it stood a man with a wild shock of silver hair, who I would later learn was named Ari. Inside the cage was the most beautiful creature I’d ever beheld.

A woman with flowing locks of red hair that looked as though she’d dyed it in the juices of pomegranates, so rich it had been. Her hair had been plaited high on her head, and she was dressed in the garbs of gypsies, exposing the lines of her thighs and the ample shape of her breasts.

I lusted for her, and so ashamed was I by my visceral reaction that I instantly decried her as the scarlet lady. Stephen was pleased by my pronouncement. That was when he asked me if I wanted to be baptized in the blood of the lamb.

The woman inside the cage had screamed then, reaching her jeweled hand through the bars with nails like claws. Her eyes had struck me dumb because in an instant they’d gone from a normal gray to a glowing lavender.

The demon pleaded with me to spare her, begging me to let her return to her family, that she meant us no harm, but Ari notched one of his bows and shot it through her throat, so that the only thing we could hear after that was her choking on her own blood.

I knew then that I’d been crafted for the express purpose of ending everything like her. I nodded my willingness to the Pope, and that was when she appeared.

Allora, the angel in white.

~*~

I
t must have been hours that I’d sat there reading, because the room was dark again and Asher was standing by the foot of our bed. He was debating whether to come to the bed with me or not.

I crossed my legs and patted the spot beside me. He didn’t say anything for the longest time.

“How far have you gotten?”

“To the Lust demon in the cage.”

Nodding, he took off his clothes then crawled over to me, laying his head in my lap. He wrapped his arm around my waist and buried his nose against my skin, breathing me in.

I ran my fingers through his hair and didn’t start to read again until his breathing turned long and even.

~*~

E
ntry 3

Dressed in battle armor and with flowing white locks, she immediately captivated me with her beauty. Compared to the demon, she was all that was holy and lovely. A fierce and terrifying woman, her words shook the air like thunder.

“Do you wish to be a servant of the Lord from now until the end of eternity?”

I was consumed with passion for her, for the righteousness of the vision she’d revealed to me, by my desire to be the Lord’s emissary, fighting the hoards of Satan and sending them back to their fiery and eternal seat of judgment.

I nodded my consent, and that was when Allora sliced through her wrist with her own nail. My gaze flicked to those around me. To the still screaming harlot, to Ari, and to the Pope. But if none of them told me this was wrong, then it must be right.

So I took her hand, and I brought it to my lips, and I drank. That was the night of my rebirth. The transformation from man to death priest was not an easy one. Only the best of mortal kind can attain it. Only the brightest, the strongest, the bravest.

Those were Allora’s words, and many years later I discovered how true they were. She’d tried down the centuries to create a whole host of us, but for whatever reason, only seven priests could exist at a time.

Which was fine. We were strong, terrifying. We were Gods among men.

Allora taught me to fight, she gave me the sword of Veritas. The training was rigorous, and as the years progressed, my love for her knew no bounds. She was all to me; she was my world, and I thought I was hers too.

Allora taught me carnal desire, she taught me to fight, she taught me to hate. In time I began to hear rumors of a council known only as the Triad. I did not know what it was, and neither did any of my compatriots.

We only knew death and bloodshed. Violence followed in our wake, and we reveled in it.

I was the most brutal of them, taking delight in ripping the heads off those bastard Nephilim bodies, cursing them ten times to Dante’s lowest pit of Hell, hating them all. So superior and smug in my calling.

I had the blood of angels coursing through my veins.

And then Allora came to me. We stood upon misty Scottish moors, and she whispered to me of a prophecy and of how there would be one who’d come to destroy us all.

I was filled with indignation, filled with fury at the thought of it. But when I asked her who it was, she could only shrug and tell me that the prophecy hadn’t yet revealed who, only that she was coming.

That was the first night I ever began to question her will. For how could there be a prophecy of nothing? She didn’t speak again about that night for many years. So long in fact, that I’d very nearly forgotten it.

My days and nights consisted of slaughtering anything and anyone like you. And I did so with gleeful abandon.

Then one day she came to me, and I was given a name of a demon I
must
kill. Her name was Ya-el.

It took me months to track you down, so good were you at eluding me. Even then I think I began to develop feelings of pride for you, at your skills, your instincts. You were a worthy match for me.

And when I finally tracked you down, all I can remember was that time paused, as if you were a memory skipping through reality. The wind died down, colors were sharper, smells richer. Your skin so pale, your hair so dark, and your lips like a ruby red apple. You were more beautiful than Allora, than even the glittering stars shining in the heavens, and when you smiled, it wasn’t capricious or sinister, it was real, and it stole my breath.

You stood beneath the twilight, and you held that little girl, and though there were no tears, I felt your soul ringing through the lullaby you sang her. I was so close to you that night, little demon, I’m surprised you did not sense me. I was the shadow just behind you, I had my blade pointed at your heart, and I would have thrust it through you had you not administered the girl her last rites.

“May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

How often had I spoken those words in the past and yet I’d never felt them so keenly as I did that night alone with you beneath the stars with a dying infant in your arms.

When I returned next to Allora, she was beside herself with fury that I’d not found you yet. I warred with myself, wanting desperately to tell her everything, as I’d always done. But also struggling with the knowledge that perhaps you were not as soulless, as evil, as I’d been led to believe.

For nights after that I watched you. But my obsession took me to dark, dark places. I battled with what you were, and who I was. Battled with my need to do my duty while equally desirous of learning why you were so important to my mistress.

At first I learned nothing of any value, nothing that mattered, and I was beginning to suspect that your lustful charms were the cause of what was wrecking havoc with my sanity.

My curiosity had begun to turn to hate. Hate that you’d made me falter, hate that you’d made me break my vows to my Lord.

I cut myself for years, for every time I saw you and did not end you. For every time your laughter made my lips twitch. For the times when I saw you in bed with Luc and he touched you and I hated that you let him. For the shadows that crawled through your gaze afterward.

My violence was unparalleled in those days. I touched no one within your family. Some part of me felt they were an extension of you and so therefore off limits to me, but anyone else unfortunate enough to cross my path was fair game.

Then one day Allora came to me and told me that they’d finally learned the identity behind the prophecy and her name was Aquilla.

I did not stay to hear anymore of what she had to say; it did not matter. My purpose was clear: go to Greece and end its life, no matter the cost to me.

That was the night I finally learned the truth of the Triad, of the prophecy, and most especially of my mistress Allora...

~*~

H
is eyes opened somewhere around the six o’clock mark. But instead of getting up and driving us off as he had the day before, he tightened his arm around me.

“I love you, Pandora.” His whispered confession made me smile.

“I love you too.”

His touch was gentle as he traced my bottom lip. “Where are you now?”

“I’m about to discover who Allora is. But I have to say, Ash, with the way you were going on, I really thought it would be so much worse than this.” My lips twitched, but he didn’t return my smile.

Instead he rolled over, got up, and walked into the bathroom.

I frowned at the closed door and looked back down at the book in my lap. Apparently the worst was yet to come. But I really thought he was over reacting. I’d expected his past to be tainted, considering who he was. But all things considered, I wasn’t surprised by any of this. It was just standard priest procedure as far as I could tell.

When he walked out of the bathroom, he came back to me, still nude as he’d been during the night, and instead of saying a word, he plucked the book from my lap, settled himself on top of me, and proceeded to give me one of the best orgasms of my life.

A solid two hours passed before we finally broke apart. I ran my fingers through his hair. “You okay now? Can I finish?”

“Finish it, Pandora.” He sighed. “But today I’m not going anywhere.”

~*~

E
ntry 4

Aquilla was bathed in blood, plowing through the bodies of the Order as if they were nothing—as if each member of our unit didn’t know exactly how to end the beast, how to kill it. As if they were nothing more than laymen.

But she was powerful, more powerful than I could have imagined. I was outside looking in, trying desperately to get inside, but wards had been placed around the dungeon so that even I could not enter. I hissed each time I tried to cross the trail of demon blood warding the gates.

I could not understand how I, an angel’s emissary, could not overcome a bit of demon blood, and yet each time I placed my finger upon it, my flesh sizzled and burned. Hissing, I snatched it back to my chest, yelling at those inside to let me in. But they couldn’t hear me. They were tying the demon down, and they held a device in their hands.

A large, handheld machine cast from iron. I’d never seen such a contraption before, but now I could say it looked like some sort of suctioning device.

They placed it upon her chest, and she screamed with a sound I’ve never heard before or since. Her body writhed and shuddered, the force of her movements sending shock waves through the stone beneath my feet.

I gazed on in horror as I saw them pumping what looked to be bluish orbs of light from her body.

“Those are souls. Demon souls,” a small voice whispered beside me.

I glanced down to see a young girl, no more than eight or nine years old, standing beside me. Where had she come from? I’d never even felt her presence until she’d spoken up. I whirled on the child, who I knew was much more than a child.

Her eyes were entirely opaque and ringed in blue. Her blond hair was smashed down upon her head and coated in mud, and twigs poked out of it. She was dressed in a dirty gown with holes covering her from head to toe.

I recalled then that I’d seen that girl earlier in the evening, sitting outside of the castle walls, mumbling incoherently to herself, laughing and cackling, telling tales no one could understand. And yet here she was, gazing up at me.

“Who are you?”

She smiled, revealing rows of blackened teeth. “Who we are does not matter. But who you are, does. You are Asher the priest.”