Personal Demons 2 - Original Sin (25 page)

“I like jewelry as much as the next girl, but I'm not a demon, Fee,” she says, pulling it from my hand. “So, unless you're trying to give it to me, there's really no point.”

My strength starts to drain as stars flash in my eyes. My lungs burn. The more I kick and claw, the brighter the stars get, till my limbs feel so heavy that I can't move them. And just before the world goes black, I feel a sickening tug at my insides, like someone is pulling my guts out through my belly button.

When I open my eyes, the world looks different. I feel unsettled. Everything is fuzzy and distorted, like looking in a fun-house mirror. Part of it is blurriness because of my swollen right eye. But that's not all of it. I shift my gaze from the ceiling to scan the room—the toppled chair, the bloody streak on the door. A ripple of panic tears through me as I remember Lilith. I jump from the bed and look around, nearly falling over as a wave of dizziness overtakes me. My body doesn't move how I expect it to and I stagger as I gain my feet. I feel off. Completely foreign in my own body. I spin and take in my surroundings, looking for Lilith. But what catches my eye is me.

My body is laid out on the bed, pale and unmoving.

Me?
Am I
dead?

How can that be me? I nudge my motionless body. Nothing. I feel for a pulse at my neck. It's there, but barely. Dread creeps into my consciousness, and a vague sense of terror tickles my mind, but never fully develops.

With cold objectivity, I look at the bloody hand on my lifeless neck. A human hand with painted blue nails.

I spin for the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and there Lilith stands, bloody but intact, staring back at me from the glassy surface. I raise my arm—and so does she.

“Welcome to my humble abode.” Lilith's voice isn't the sound my vibrating ear drums would create if she were talking. It's an echo inside my head.

No!

Lilith smiles at me from the mirror.

I look back at myself on the bed and am vaguely aware that I should have seen this coming. I have Sight. The last time I almost died, I saw myself dead before it happened. I should have gotten some warning.
Does that mean I'm not really dead?

“Technically, you're not,” comes Lilith's echo in my head. She senses my confusion and, with triumph in her voice, continues. “I took you to the edge of death—close enough to free your soul. If I actually killed you, the celestials would have stolen it, and that would have been totally unacceptable. You belong with me.”

I look back at my body. “I'm not dead?” I say out loud. But it's not my voice I hear say it. It's Lilith's.

“Yet,” she answers in my head. “Without a soul, your body won't last long.”

Dancing in the periphery of my awareness, several truths tease me. The first is that I could will my soul back into my body. I could use my Sway to convince Lilith to let me go.

The second truth is that I should feel afraid, terrified…something. Anything. But I don't feel any of that, because my thoughts are turning to darker things. Things like revenge, and how much I hate…everyone. How good it would feel to kill someone. The fleeting notion that that “someone” should be Lilith is replaced by one overpowering thought.

Luc.

Everything that's happened to me, to Taylor, to Matt—it's his fault. Suddenly, I want him dead for what he did, for his betrayal.

I let cold rage have me. It feels so good to let it take control, not to have to hold back. A rush of adrenaline makes me shudder as I walk to the bookshelves, pull one of Luc's ancient volumes of Dante from the middle one, and rip a chunk of pages out of the middle of it. I throw them in the air like confetti. I'm not 100 percent sure that the dry laughter I feel more than hear is mine, but it spurs me on. My arm sweeps the books from the middle two shelves into a pile on the floor before I move on to his CD racks, where I pull handfuls from the shelves and throw them out the still closed window into the parking lot below. The chime of shattering glass feeds and blends with my laughter. I pick up a shard and run it across my palm, drawing a thin crimson line in blood across it. When I lick it off, I savor the metallic salt taste of it as it rolls over my tongue. My moan is a sound of desire…longing. Then I hear my voice—but not my voice.

“I want…”

Lilith's voice is a whisper in my head, enticing in its promise of forbidden pleasures. “What, Fee? What do you want? If you could have anything, do anything, what would it be?”

I picture Luc, his body moving under mine, vulnerable. I shudder in anticipation as I imagine pulling the shard of glass slowly across his chest, his neck, his face. The blood from my hand mingles with his blood—a blood promise.

That's what I want: to watch Luc die in the throes of lust. To drag his soul to Hell and to watch it burn in the Inferno. The image of the Inferno is clear in my head. As clear as if I'd seen it a thousand times.

“Very nice.” Lilith's voice is seductive, encouraging. “We'll make a great team, Fee. I can teach you so many things. And when you're ready, my king will find you a suitable body.”

A thread of fear twists through me at the mention of King Lucifer, but almost before I sense it, it's replaced with lust. Lust for Him and for His power. An overwhelming wave of desire crashes over me. I need Him. I need to be in His presence.

“That can be arranged,” Lilith says, and I feel her own shudder of anticipation blend with mine.

Suddenly, the air is charged with static electricity. I feel all the hair on our body stand on end as the charge works through me, waking every cell. I tingle all over with need. I breathe deep against the light-headedness and my racing heart as I wait for Him.

Then a wet ripping sound fills the air, and in a flash of red fire, He's here.

He's immense and powerful. I gasp at His beauty and shudder again as He starts to glide toward me, silent and eager. His black, leathery skin seems to absorb all the light around Him and radiate it back out His sharp, angular face through His glowing green cat's eyes. His twisted bloodred horns are encircled within a spiked golden coronet: a reminder of His unending power. And as much as I want Him—need Him—I'm rooted to the floor. I can only watch in awe as He stalks slowly toward me, His lips pulling into a leer.

“Frannie,” He rumbles. “Finally, you're mine again. It's been so long.”

As He reaches me and sinks the claws of His hand into my shoulder, pain and indescribable pleasure swirl through me.

“Remember,” He rasps, low in my ear.

He wraps me in His wings, and I have the sudden sense of familiarity, comfort—the fleeting image of a beautiful angel with deep green eyes. I feel His lips burning into my forehead, and His power course through my body, like being plugged into the universe—fire—burning alive—agonizing bliss. In that eternity, no longer than the blink of an eye, a part of me dies, a little at a time, till the world is a dark swirling pit, full of depraved thoughts, degenerate ideas, and destructive feelings.

The world is Hell.

I'm lost in the dark.

Then…there's nothing.

Luc

When I phase into my apartment, what I see nearly kills me. I feel my mostly brimstone heart being crushed by the weight of what I've let happen. In an instant, I'm across the room and on the bed, pulling Frannie's lifeless body to me.

I look to Gabriel, who hovers off the floor near the door in full angelic form, enormous double wings spread wide. He turns on the glow and glides toward us as I turn back to Frannie. But just as I lean down to check if she's breathing, I feel searing heat as a red blast of Hellfire lights up the room, followed instantly by a bolt of white lightning. Ozone overpowers the brimstone and nearly chokes me. My fingers contact Frannie's neck and I find that she barely has a pulse.

I expect Gabriel to help Frannie, but when he glides past us, my eyes snap to the dark image enveloped in his white light: Lilith standing near the bookshelves, wrapped in King Lucifer's leathery bat wings. An apparition. It must be, because it's been eons since the king of Hell has ventured to Earth.

Lucifer leers at Gabriel. He pulls Lilith tighter to His steaming form, as though she's His most prized possession.

“You know she belongs to me, Gabriel,” He rasps.

“Let her go,” Gabriel responds, edging closer.

I pull Frannie tight to me, confused. That's when I realize that, even though she's alive, I don't sense her essence. No currant and clove. Her soul is gone from her body.

I'm too late.

Despair chokes me as I scoop Frannie into my arms, willing her to live. Another blast of Hellfire takes out half the kitchen, but I barely notice except to shield Frannie's body from the flying debris.

Gabriel sends a bolt of white lightning sailing at Lucifer, where He's backing toward the window with Lilith tucked behind Him. Gabriel's bolt finds its mark, and Lucifer rears up and roars, the sound shaking the windows. He picks Lilith up, tucks her under an immense arm like a rag doll, and with one flap of His wings, He's on the windowsill, shattering the remains of the already broken glass and splintering the wood with the talons of His webbed feet. He spreads His wings, ready to leap, and in a flash of white, Gabriel is across the room. He dodges Lucifer's blast of Hellfire and grabs Him by a wing, swinging Him back into the room.

As Lucifer crashes into the wall near the bed, cracking the plaster and crumbling a section of the mural, I hear it.

Lilith's voice starts low and strangled, as if she's fighting to keep the words from coming out. “You don't want me. Go back to Hell.”

When I see Lucifer pause, midstride, on His way to the door, I understand.

Frannie.

I go suddenly cold with the realization. Frannie's essence is in Lilith's host body. I don't know how it's possible, but the terror in my core as I watch Lucifer skirt toward the door with Lilith tucked under His arm tells me it's true.

I lower Frannie's body gently to the bed and stand as Gabriel lunges, knocking Lilith out of Lucifer's arms. Gabriel drags Lilith behind him, where she falls to the floor in a heap. I focus all the infernal power I can muster and send a blast of Hellfire at Lucifer. At the same instant, Gabriel unleashes a blinding bolt of lightning. Both hit Lucifer square in the chest in a crimson and white explosion, knocking Him through the wall into Lili's apartment with a thundering crash.

Lucifer pulls Himself off the floor, and with an agonized roar and the sickening stench of brimstone, He vanishes in a puff of steam.

“Coward,” Gabriel mutters under his breath, turning down the glow, but there's a shake in his voice. He turns toward Lilith and shifts back into human form as she pulls herself off the floor. When she speaks, it's clear that Lilith is the one talking again.

“That celestial voodoo works only on demons, Gabriel. I'm no demon. Try it, and everyone—and I do mean
everyone
…,” she says with a meaningful glance at Frannie's body, “dies.”

Gabriel backs off a step. “Let her go.”

She turns to me, but then she pauses as her face contorts. “Leave him alone,” escapes from her mouth, sounding weak and choked.

I take a cautious step toward her, panic pushing my heart into my throat. “No, Frannie. Don't use your Sway for me. Make her let you go.”

“You can do this, Frannie,” Gabriel says, moving closer to Lilith, hope clear on his still glowing face.

But the confusion on Lilith's face clears and she turns back to me. “She's mine now.”

I'm on top of Lilith before I even realize I've moved.

“Let her go!” I roar as my hand wraps around her throat. I throw her into the wall, pushing my glowing fist into her face.

“I can't,” she croaks. “You know what He'll do to me if I don't bring her back.”

And I do. Lilith is His queen, but that doesn't mean He spares her His wrath. I've heard the rumors—and once, the screams. I glance to the hole in the wall and suddenly understand why He gave up so easily. He knows Lilith won't dare give up His prize, and He's left her to do His bidding.

Gabriel pulls me off her. “Stop, Luc. You can't kill her.”

I realize my grasp on her throat has tightened. I drop my hand and step back, unsure what to do. He's right. I can't kill her without killing the host and Frannie too.

Just as I'm thinking it, the girl in front of me shimmers into Frannie. She steps forward, reaching out to me.

A surge of debilitating desire rolls through my body like a tidal wave, knocking me back a step.

“Leave him alone, my ass. If I want him, he's mine,” she says, and everything flickers out of focus as she reaches up and touches my cheek.

I hear Gabriel's voice somewhere off in the distance, but I ignore it, because all that matters is Frannie. I press into her, feel her body against mine, and explode in a burst of searing heat.