The Demon Abraxas (33 page)

“You have such little faith,” Drake said. He fingered the empty vial that had held the small demon now possessing Gunnar. “I really have to get more of these. You two, take him to the bay and let the little one in his mind walk him into the water.”

“You fucker!” Ana shouted at him.

Drake grinned at her. “You are such a good vessel. I hope to keep you when we’re done with this.”

Ana didn’t dignify that with a reply, focused on trying to figure out how to get loose and go after Gunnar.

Abraxas, can you break these ropes?

Not these.

Do something!

I am.

Drake stepped into the middle circle of the room, a gray cloud swirling around him like a cloak. “Positions, men, grant me power and I’ll get you more than you can imagine.” The men formed up in their circles, some sitting and others standing.

How much power does he need?
she asked Abraxas.

He’s not taking any chances this time,
Abraxas told her
. The last time we met, he had demon allies. Now he’s on his own aside from those small bottled creatures. He’d like to think he can take me on his own, but he can’t.

If you’re more powerful than him, go bash him and let’s get out of here.

I can’t. He sat you in a binding position in the circles. It will take me at least a few more minutes just to undo that binding. Then we have to get your hands loose and the matter of a dozen men…

Keep working,
Ana insisted.

Johnson and then Drake took turns chanting, back and forth to each other, and Ana could feel the power bunching up in the room. It swelled around Drake’s feet, ankles, knees, rolling up into him.

Ana struggled against the ropes that bound her wrists and then made herself relax and very slowly return her fingers to the knot to worry it loose. How long could it take Lily to find her? In this city, probably days.

The chanting rose and fell only to rise higher again. Drake moved across the floor toward her, touching her forehead with his hand. Of course it hurt, but Ana was so furious she didn’t care. She accepted the pain and kept working at the knot behind her. Her fingers, slick with sweat, slipped off the rope, but she forced them back, the cramp in her hands a welcome relief from the pressure of Drake on her head.

Abraxas had said that Drake couldn’t defeat him, but Ana thought that might have been bravado. Worst case if this didn’t work for the black hood guys, they could lock her away in Johnson’s basement, as they seemed to have had little trouble binding her and Abraxas. How long would it be before she was pleading for them to remove Abraxas? And how long did Gunnar have? With a demon possessing him, he had no chance of surviving a fall into the bay. It could look like an accident or a suicide and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it unless she could get out of these damned ropes.

Drake’s touch felt like a vise on her head. If her mouth had any saliva left in it, she would have spit on him. Instead she pressed on another loop of the knot, willing it to loosen. She would not panic and throw herself against her bonds uselessly, she told herself.

The smallest of the hooded, robed figures broke from position and sprinted across the room faster than the eye could track—the way Sabel said she could move when she stuttered time. She crashed into Ana in the chair and they both fell through an invisible wall into a room that simply hadn’t been there before.

The ceiling was the same as in the warehouse. Ana blinked hard, took a deep breath and felt the looseness in her arms. As she sat up, she saw they were in a room the size of a walk-in closet with the same walls as the warehouse, but she hadn’t been sitting by any door that could lead to a space like this. Her bindings were off and the chair was gone.

Next to her, Sabel sat up. The dark robe and hood weren’t there. She was wearing dark pants and a soft, violet shirt.

“This is a time eddy,” Sabel answered Ana’s unvoiced question.

“You said that like it should make sense.”

Ana put her hands against the floor to try to orient herself. She felt off-balance still, not just physically but emotionally from being thrown out of her rage and fear into this empty space. She couldn’t hear anything from the warehouse room: not the men, or Drake, or the sound of Gunnar going to his death.

“Remember how I told you the Hecatine witches train in powers related to time? There are eddies that swirl off the timestream. I pushed us into one. For as long as this holds, we’re effectively outside of time.”

Ana took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It felt good not to be tied up or threatened and to know that wherever Gunnar was, he wasn’t getting any closer to the water.

“Do we go back to the same moment we left?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sabel said.

“The moment where I’m tied to a chair and you’ve just given yourself away and we’re surrounded by a dozen men and a demon?”

“Well, yes.”

“That doesn’t seem like the most amazing magical power ever, I’m just saying.”

“But now we have time to plan,” Sabel said.

“We’re going to need more than a plan to save Gunnar.”

Ana imagined him frozen in time somewhere on the way to his death. Was he at all conscious inside of his moving body? Did he know what was about to happen to him?

She was surprised to see Sabel smiling broadly.

“I took care of that already,” she said.

“How?”

“Johnson is betraying Drake. He called me a few hours ago for help setting him up. Instead of taking Gunnar to the bay, they’re going to take him to Drake’s apartment to frame Drake for Gunnar’s death. I just managed to get a text out with the address while everyone was distracted with Gunnar and you were on your way here. I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you sooner, but it took a while to figure out how to stutter time without Drake sensing it and then I had to get over by the phones…”

“You didn’t text me, right?”

“Of course not, I sent it to Lily and that reporter friend whose info you gave me. They should be at Drake’s place waiting for Gunnar to show up with the guys who are supposed to kill him.”          

“You really are a time witch,” Ana said with some wonder in her voice. She wanted to reach across the small space and hug Sabel but wasn’t sure if that would be okay.

“And you’re not the queen of foresight, you know that? We really need to plan these things better.”

Ana laughed. The news that Gunnar had a rescue waiting for him lifted all the weight off her chest. There wasn’t anything that could happen to her now that would be worse than knowing she’d caused the death of her brother just as he started a family of his own. Even if she died in the few minutes after they got out of this eddy, she’d be happy that he was safe.

“Speaking of foresight,” she said. “Did you send our whole cavalry to rescue my brother? Who’s going to save us?”

“Good thing we’re outside of time so we can plan an escape.”

“Abraxas is working on the binding circle we’re in so he can get free. He said he couldn’t untie me but if you can get me loose maybe he can knock some folks down…Abraxas?”

In the space of her mind where he usually answered there was nothing. She asked again in her mind silently, but still got no response and the usual sensation he created of moving under her skin didn’t happen either.

“He’s not here,” she said.

“He didn’t come with us?” Sabel asked. “I just assumed…But I never trained to bring a demon along. I didn’t think to include him specifically when I pushed you in here. He’ll be in your body in the timestream when you get back and I think your idea is good—you just have to make sure you don’t go all demoned up until after I get you loose or it’ll trigger the…”

Her words trailed off and her eyes opened wide. She touched the area over her own breastbone. Her fingertips traveled up to her throat and then down to the center of her chest.

“Oh my gods,” she said. “It’s temporal. It didn’t come with us either.”

“You mean that magical thing that keeps you from touching me isn’t here? And Abraxas isn’t here?” Ana didn’t add the last part aloud: Abraxas isn’t here to share my thoughts and feelings about you.

Sabel nodded and her eyes widened with a flash of fear or uncertainty.

“Come here,” Ana said. Although Sabel was only a few feet away, she wanted to give Sabel space to refuse if this wasn’t what she wanted now that it was possible.

They were both sitting on the bare floor. Sabel slid herself over the few feet to Ana.

“How long does this last?” Ana asked, waving her hand in an arc to indicate the space around them.

“This one’s small, we probably have an hour or two before it closes. At least that’s what it will feel like to us, technically…”

A few hours was better than what Ana had hoped for. She reminded herself that back where they’d come from, nothing was getting worse. Gunnar was going to be rescued and, from their perspective in here, everyone who wanted to hurt them was frozen in time.

She cupped Sabel’s face in her palms and kissed her hard. She wanted Sabel to feel the pent-up pressure of her need all at once. Sabel’s lips parted and welcomed the tip of Ana’s tongue. Ana put her left hand out to feel the distance of the floor and wrapped her arm around Sabel, lowering her slowly without breaking the kiss.

Right now they had a little place outside of time just for the two of them. There was a real chance they might not survive the next few minutes back in the timestream, so Ana was going to take every stolen minute she had.

This space felt real enough, even if she couldn’t understand how it existed. The wood floor rubbed rough on her arm as they stretched out on the floor together. Ana curled her fingers around the back of Sabel’s neck. She couldn’t touch her enough. She wanted to put her lips everywhere at the same time, but she wasn’t the one who could play with the timestream so she had to content herself with what her lips, tongue and fingers could reach.

Sabel’s arms were around her back and her hands clenched and unclenched in Ana’s shirt as Ana kissed around the line of her jaw and explored the delicate curves of her ear. She bit gently and felt Sabel’s back arch.

“We should have imagined a blanket in here,” Ana said.

“That’s not how it works,” Sabel whispered back to her.

Even now, Ana felt bands of tension in Sabel’s body that hadn’t released. She understood. It was hard to go from being in danger to having this momentary, lovely reprieve. Ana rolled onto her back on the floor and grinned at Sabel.

“Why don’t you show me how it works?” she said and started unbuttoning her shirt.

Sabel rose halfway to sitting and arched an eyebrow at her.

“Kiss me here,” Ana said and touched her collarbone.

Sabel bent down and her lips brushed the skin running the length of the bone. Ana shivered. She put an arm around Sabel’s back and felt her relax.

“Here,” Ana said and touched her lips.

They kissed for a long time before Sabel pulled back and looked at her questioningly. Ana traced a line down the center of her chest with her index finger and Sabel followed it with tiny, hot kisses. Ana unbuttoned her shirt just ahead of Sabel’s slow progress.

They continued that way across and down her body until they reached the point where Sabel took over removing her clothing and Ana couldn’t focus to give any more pointing instructions.

When the waves of pleasure subsided enough for her to think again, Sabel was lying with her cheek pressed above Ana’s heart and Ana could feel rather than see her smile. Her body felt completely limber now, almost as relaxed as Ana was.

She wrapped a hand in Sabel’s hair and tipped her head up so she could kiss her. Then she rolled them over so she was on top and kissed her harder, pressing Sabel against the floor with the weight of her body. Sabel’s hands gripped her shoulders and pulled, indicating that it wasn’t too much.

Ana tugged the bottom of Sabel’s shirt upward and she shimmied so that the material rose easily up her body and over her head. Before she could pull her arms out of the sleeves, Ana closed her fist around the material and held it to the floor above Sabel’s head.

“Your hands stay here,” she said.

Sabel nodded, and her eyes smiled back at Ana as much as her lips. Ana moved back far enough to pull off Sabel’s shoes and then unbuckle the skinny black belt and remove her pants. Sabel’s underpants were small and lacy and the same lustrous black as her hair. Ana wanted to sear this image into her mind of Sabel in only her underpants with her hands raised and tangled in a mass of purple cloth. She ran one finger under the low waistband of the underpants and watched Sabel squirm.

“Pretty. Do you always wear lingerie to a demon summoning turned rescue?”

“You should see my date panties,” Sabel said breathlessly.

The idea made the rest of Ana’s languor vanish in a flare of ravenous arousal. She pushed Sabel’s thighs farther apart and knelt between her legs. Her fingers played under the edges of the panties, particularly between Sabel’s legs until she was moaning and her hands around her shirt were white-knuckled fists.

Ana moved forward and kissed her, their bodies pressed together full length and nearly bare. Her hand pushed aside the thin lace and she slid two fingers into Sabel. The lush, wet interior of her burned with an intensity that made everything else fade away. Ana buried her face in the side of Sabel’s neck so that she could focus just on being inside her.

“More,” Sabel gasped. “Please.”

“I want to give you everything,” Ana whispered. She pulled her fingers out just enough to tuck the top half of her hand together and push it into her.

Sabel groaned and pushed her hips down to welcome her. Still her hands didn’t move from where Ana set them, but her whole body seemed to open and call to her.

“May I?” Sabel asked quietly and at first Ana thought she was asking if she could free her hands. Then Sabel stifled a moan as Ana pushed into her again and Ana realized what Sabel was asking. A blaze of heat rushed down her skin and gathered in her gut like lightning. She thrust hard into Sabel.