'Tween Heaven and Hell (24 page)

Sighing again, I said, “Office. Accepted speed,” and the
Viper spun a one-eighty-degree turn and nosed its way into the solid stream of
traffic that flowed through the city’s upper level. I stared off into space
dreamily, wishing that things could be simpler and wondering how I was going to
untangle the sour knot my life had become. That was when one of the larger
bumps in that knot decided to make an uninvited appearance.

Dialle shimmered into the seat next to me and set his
smoldering gaze over my startled one. “Are you feeling better, lovely Astra?”

I glared at him, feeling my blood pressure rise to platinum
level. “No thanks to you and your disgusting pet, Dialle.”

He tried to look shocked and innocent but, like me, he doesn’t
do innocent well. “I had nothing to do with the Agar’s appearance in your home,
Astra.”

Why did I hear a disclaimer in that response?

I turned in my seat and scowled more deeply at his wretched,
but incredibly good-looking face. “Are you going to try to deny that the thing
is tied to your court?” When he just continued to stare at me, with the ghost
of a smile on his face I went on. “I sensed it that day you had me dragged in
front of your court, Your Highness, I know its strings are attached to you.”

He sighed and for just the merest flicker of time, his
midnight eyes shaded into something that looked like worry and regret. “I
cannot deny my court has an Agar, both Devil Courts have them, but I was not
responsible for sending it after you. Perhaps you ran up against one of Nerul’s
Agars.”

My eyes widened a bit in surprise. “Are you telling me there’s
more than one of those things?”

“Oh yes. There are several that I know of.”

“Shit.”

He cocked his gorgeous, dark head at me. A thick strand of
wavy, black silk dropped over his shoulder to rest against his square, golden
jaw. “You have such an eloquent way of expressing yourself lovely Astra.”

“Bite me. Anyway, from what I saw of that—thing—my choice of
words was inadequate to describe the idea that several of them exist. To Hades
with eloquence.”

Much to my surprise, Dialle nodded in agreement. “Yes, I can
see where the Agar could be a bit shocking if you weren’t expecting it.”

I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh. “A bit shocking! I
nearly peed my knickers.”

Dialle threw back that supernaturally gorgeous head and
laughed too. And then, without my even realizing what had happened or seeing
him even move so much as a little finger, I was suddenly sitting on his lap. I
shrieked as his arms closed around me and tried to struggle away. He just
laughed at me before lowering his mouth over mine. Then nothing else mattered
as an incredible rush of pleasure swamped me and enticed my lips into softening
and opening for his. His hot, musky scent caused my heart to skitter
dangerously in my chest. But even beyond his scent, the essence that was Dialle
flowed into me, not just through the joining of our lips, but from everywhere
our bodies touched. Through our very skin.

It was as if I could smell him and taste him through every
widening, aching pore on the surface of my body. My power surged as if a match
had been struck to ignite it and it poured through me, mixing and mingling with
his. Mating.

In my head his words came to me in the words of Hades,
gentle and flaring with passion as they caressed the edges of my panic away and
filled me with a strange and explosive desire, the likes of which I’d never
felt before.

Our physical bodies were mashed together so tightly that I
began to fear my flesh would peel off my body if we tried to separate. Mentally,
spiritually, emotionally, we were one entity. One flaring passion built on the
most basic animal need. One power, invigorating, intoxicating, and frightening
in its intensity.

My lips were seared to his. Somehow my body got turned so
that I straddled him, my thighs pinching us together like a vise. Our groins
ground into each other, unable to get close enough. The heat that seared our
flesh began at that most intimate juncture and pounded outward until I felt as
if the ends of our hair would burn and fizzle like the sparklers of ancient
human Independence Day celebrations.

And as the heat devoured our bodies, we devoured each other.
The power continued to build until I couldn’t breathe through it. The very air
around us had burst into flame. The Viper started to buck and roll in space,
careening into the black, endless night to God knew where—driverless, unfocused
and held in the grip of a monumental flare of power that completely overwhelmed
all directional programs. And the Viper was having some problems too.

I didn’t have a moment to think about the fact that we were
careening through space without a guiding hand. My body screamed with the
pleasure of our physical mating, while my mind was being ripped apart between
the terror of what was happening to me and the ecstasy of what I knew I was
becoming.

Suddenly, when I thought the three of us—Dialle, me and the
Viper—would just disappear in a puff of smoke and ash, Dialle spasmed against
me and, throwing back his head, howled my name to the sky. I screamed then too,
helpless against my boiling need and felt a nuclear-like bloom of heat and
power erupt at the spot where our passion flared most brightly. Dialle’s body
convulsed against mine. In a frenzy of uncontrolled lust he continued to grind
himself painfully, wonderfully against me and I met him thrust for thrust
feeling as if the cloth between our bodies had dropped away to leave us
exposed, like two throbbing nerve ends, where our power and our pleasure joined
and exploded into a bright light that, for just a flicker of time, illuminated
everything for me and made me welcome my fate with open arms.

All thought of pain and fear and consequence flew away as we
plunged together off the precipice of our passion, screaming in one voice as we
exploded against it, pleasure streaming through us, eating our nerve endings,
then bathing them in warm, soft waves as the pressure began to fade. We
collapsed against each other, panting. The flame around us faded into popping
sparks and began to cool.

My body felt like just so much melted rubber. If it weren’t
for Dialle’s arms around me I would have fallen right on the floor between the
two seats. I tried to raise my head to look at him but it kept falling back to
rest against his chest. As my mind cleared and I started to think about what
had just happened, I tried to push away, but he held on tightly.

“Not yet, my sweet Princess. There remains one last task to
complete our Betrothal.”

My head flew up at that, “Our what!” I yelled.

He simply smiled and reached up to rip the soft, black
fabric of my sweater away from my neck, baring my shoulder. Then before I could
stop him, he lowered his mouth over the tender, white skin where my shoulder
meets my neck and bit down hard, piercing the skin cleanly and nearly
painlessly with those dagger-like white teeth.

I started to scream in terror and disgust, but my scream
quickly turned to a moan, as his mouth worked gently over that most tender of
areas, sealing our combined fates and altering my wretched life forever.

Chapter Twenty-
One

Back to Granny’s

The Devil’s Henchmen they did come, to drag our friend
to Hell,

Alas our lady dared the scum, to make her quake and
quell.

My neck throbbed where Dialle had bitten it, but the pain
was nothing compared to the heat of it. I sat behind the control panel in the
Viper once more and it was moving, but I wasn’t sure where we were going. I
felt dazed. My mind was a foggy cloud. I knew there was something I should be
really pissed about but for the life of me I couldn’t think what right at that
moment. I supposed the numb feeling was understandable, considering I had just
been mentally and spiritually raped and then chewed on for God’s sake!

There it was. A little jolt of anger managed to pierce the
foggy armor around my brain and it felt good. I took a deep breath and went
with it. But unfortunately it didn’t go far. I just couldn’t work up the energy
for anything but a good night’s sleep.

The Viper dropped smoothly into place at home and shut down
without being told to do so. The driver’s side door swung up and I just sat
there, feeling like that Agar thing was back and had turned me into cement
again. But the thought of that monstrous spiritual concoction did give me the
energy to drag my poor, battered body out of the Viper and shuffle into my
darkened living quarters.

“Lights on full.” Nothing. Shit. I’d forgotten I’d blown the
power to kill the Agar. “Oh well, nothing to do but sleep then.”

I didn’t even make it into my bed. Somewhere along the way I
decided it might be a good idea to rest for just a minute on the divan. I never
got back up again.

My dreams roiled in my head. I was fighting a particularly
revolting demon that exploded into my face. I was having sex with a vampire. I
was about to be sucked into a bad-smelling hole and then a gargoyle came along
and danced the jig to distract me from the foul-smelling hole and I was
laughing, feeling pretty good except I couldn’t move my arms and legs, all I
could do was laugh. That isn’t very useful when demons and vampires and stinkin’
holes and gargoyles are waiting to eat you.

The last thing I saw before I jolted out of the tortuous
series of nightmares was Prince Nille, looking as scared as he’d been when I’d
had the vision of him inside the cross prison. He kept muttering something to
me about Dialle but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I shook my head
in my dream and squinted at his sad, pleading face as if that would help me understand
him better. It was no use though. I could hear the words but they just didn’t
mean anything to me.

Then the gargoyles entered my dream, stage left and Nille
was suddenly covered in blood. The ’goyles were devouring him, tearing his pale
flesh into pieces while he stood there, his mouth moving and nothing coming
out. I tried to get to him but my arms and legs still weren’t working. I just
sat there, laughing helplessly as they ripped him to shreds.

And then, all that was left was his pretty face, floating
and disembodied. The bloody lips continued to move with an otherworldly
insistence. And those pale, blue eyes pierced me, begging me to save him.

Something about those eyes was bothering me. Had bothered me
every time I’d seen them. It was probably just the pain I kept seeing there,
but there was an innocence there too and innocence is not a trait I generally
attribute to members of the dark world, especially of the Royal Court. I sighed
in my dream, shaking my head at poor Prince Nille and shrugging. Whatever it
was, like my arms and legs, my brain just wasn’t working in that dream state.

Finally, the frustration of the whole situation got to me
and I woke up with a gasp. I bolted upright on the divan and fell off, banging
my head hard on the table in front of it. Cursing, I dragged myself back onto
the divan and sat there. I was sweaty and shaking and I realized with a start
that the bite on my neck was throbbing again.

I stood up on rubbery legs and walked into the personal
hygiene room. Pulling my torn sweater away from my neck I surveyed the wound
and discovered, to my surprise, that the bite marks were gone. In their place
was a pale, red bruise that almost looked like a teardrop. “Great, he gave me a
daimon hickey. How juvenile.” My traitorous memory conjured up the word “betrothal”
but I shook it away, refusing to acknowledge that, whatever Dialle had had in
mind when he’d played vampire to my squealing victim, it hadn’t been a juvenile
prank.

I let the disturbing thought float away and reached to
smooth a fingertip across the bruise. It was still very warm to the touch but
it wasn’t tender. The throbbing it was giving off seemed to come from the
tissues beneath, the surface of the scar was smooth and almost numb.

With a sigh, I pulled off the ruined sweater and the rest of
my clothes and stepped into the shower. “One hundred ten degrees, all jets on
full.” Six jets of fiery hot water blasted out of the shower tube and pelted my
achy skin like bullets. The heat of the water should have burned my skin but
instead it felt wonderful.

After a few minutes of just standing there letting the hot,
soapy water drill the aches out of my muscles, I shuffled reluctantly into the
drying tube.

“Water off. Dryer on.” The bullets of water stopped and a
blast of warm air took over. I stayed in the drying tube just long enough to
dry my body and then I pulled a comb through my still damp hair and left the
personal hygiene room. Moving into my bedroom, I grabbed the soft, fuzzy
nightgown off of my unmade airbed and pulled it over my head. I crawled into
bed and was asleep within seconds. The nightmares didn’t return that night.

Hours later, as the moon drifted down to join the horizon, I
jolted upright out of a deep sleep. The air in the room was hot. Suffocatingly
hot and thick with the smell of demon.

As my loggy brain registered this fact, I started to reach
for the platinum dagger I kept under my pillow. Two massive black forms that
had been shadows in the far corners of my room suddenly leapt on me. One of the
musty-smelling things knocked the dagger out of my hand and bashed me upside
the head.

Pain exploded like a laser blast into my brain and I hit the
floor beside the bed with a dull thud. I fought to stay alert but the pain was
rocketing around in my skull, bouncing off my bones and pinging into my tender
gray cells with alarming intensity. Lights danced against my eyelids and I felt
the demon shadows lean over me, speaking in razor-like demon tones over my
poor, crumpled body. They seemed to be arguing about something. I wanted so
badly to solve their dilemma for them, whatever it was, by getting up and
kicking their asses. But alas, I was a limp smudge on the cold floor.