Chapter Sixteen

On the roof, Abby wrapped Charles’ jacket that she’d discarded earlier around Maggie’s shoulders. Abby could afford the cold, but Maggie was approaching panic, shivering and clutching her abdomen as though it would fall off if she let it go.

“Over here, both of you.” Abby led them to the edge of the roof to sit against the low wall—out of sight, a block against the cold breeze, and it gave them both a chance to rest, although they would be hard-pressed to jump to their feet if anyone came through the door after them.

Charles reached to help Kara down, but Abby glared at him and pointed him away. He raised his hands in mock defeat, then retrieved his table leg to guard the roof access.

“This is a nightmare. That’s all this… Just a nightmare. Going to wake up. Not crazy. This is… I’m… This is…” Maggie shook her head and rocked and cringed.

“It’s not a nightmare, is it?” Kara said. “And we’re not crazy, are we?”

“I can’t speak to either of those things,” Abby said. “But everything that happened was real, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“And what about him?” Kara looked up at Charles. “What kind of monster is he?”

Abby rubbed Maggie’s back, just holding her against the shaking and sending what healing she could to stave off the worst of the panic. “You were in a coma. It’s not exactly like sleep. As far as we know, you’re not supposed to dream, but some people remember things happening around them as though they were dreams. And your coma wasn’t exactly normal. What do you remember?”

Kara stroked her abdomen—not out of any maternal warmth or pride, but as though reminding herself over and over that it was there, as real as the goosebumps on her arms. “I had the most vivid dreams. He was in every one of them. It feels like I’ve known him for years…. Did he do this to me? All of this?”

Abby didn’t have any excuses for him. Her silence was all the answer Kara needed.

“Like some kind of vampire, except…” Kara touched her neck, searching for scars and finding nothing.

“Similar, but not the same,” Abby said. “He won’t hurt you anymore.”

“But I still have this. What am I supposed to do with a baby conceived in my dreams?”

“I don’t know.” Honesty was all Abby could offer her, because it wasn’t as though Abby was aware of any support groups for demon victims. Most of the people she saved either didn’t get a good enough look at what tried to abduct them, or Abby distorted their memory. There was definitely a market for it here, but heaven knew where to find one. And the support group for people impregnated by demons was probably even harder to find, although Abby thought that might be easier to come by—or just create, given the prison cell below.

If they could deprogram the ones who had participated in the circle without coercion, maybe that would solve the problem of not having anyone to talk to. It would not, however, solve the problem right in front of them, which was a child inside of Kara that she’d never really asked for with a man she’d never really known—a child that wasn’t human and wasn’t even hers, just using the womb.

“Look… When we get out of this, you and I can sit down with a hot chocolate at Holy Grounds, and I’ll explain everything I can and help you go over your options,” Abby said. “But you’ve gone through a lot tonight, and that’s probably enough to process for now.”

Charles thankfully kept his distance the entire time, although he sometimes cast furtive glances in their direction. None of the cult acolytes tried to come through the door, which meant that Zekiel was more than making up for the time Abby couldn’t account for him. She knew he must have been waiting for just the right moment to strike, but that didn’t change how alone she’d felt and how much she’d had to depend on Charles, putting herself and the other women in the hands of an incubus when two of the three of them were his victims.

Zekiel flew over the roof wall.

Maggie turned her face into Abby’s shoulder and refused to look. Abby stroked her hair, letting her. Some might have considered her denial unhealthy, but Abby believed it was probably the healthiest thing for her. She’d justify and rationalize her way out of having to accept that a monstrous demon had wanted her nearly born child or that she’d been surrounded by people whose faces had smoked like skillets when Abby’s silver had struck them. If she could dismiss it as residual brain damage, if she could wake up tomorrow and it all seemed like a bad dream, she might be able to appreciate how she was awake rather than dwell on the circumstances of that awakening. It might just help her recover faster.

Kara was steadier, although just as shaken. Being more grounded in reality—as terrible as it could be—wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“I took the demon head to a safe place.” Zekiel flexed his arms as though they pained him.

Abby had never seen him exhausted before, but the golden head must have weighed a ton, not to mention having to single-handedly neutralize the rest of the mixed cult. Abby would have been exhausted, too. Oh, wait, I am.

“Did you happen to drop it into the fires of Mount Doom, by any chance?”

That at least earned her the slightest smile from Kara.

“I cannot say where I left it, but it will be melted and the remains consecrated,” Zekiel said. “I also released the prisoners. Some of them resisted, but I bound them so that they couldn’t hurt themselves, me or the other women in revenge. The other women, those who could help, aided me in taking the prisoners with them to an abandoned building a block away. I told them to stay there until help came, then closed the door. It was a heavy door, the rest locked or boarded over. My contact will call the hospital to let them know that the women are there. I should take the two of you as well, so that you will be retrieved with them and in the best of hands after your ordeal—well, the second-best hands.” He rested his on Abby’s shoulder.

If Kara had been wary of him after spending this long on the roof with the man who’d harmed her, the warmth between him and Abby eased her tension. “So that’s it? We go to a hospital, they give us a clean bill of health and we just go about our lives as though none of this happened? You don’t have some official Men in Black story for us to make sure we all tell the police the same thing when they ask?”

“There are too many of you for that,” Abby said. “We aren’t going to be able to control this narrative. You can tell them whatever you like. I’d prefer it if you left my name out of it entirely, because having to make a statement would make my life much more complicated than it already is. But if you want to tell them the truth about what happened, that’s your choice.”

“They’re not going to believe it, though, are they?” Kara replied. “Coma, pregnancy, hormones, brain damage… Even if some of the other women agree, they’ll just say it’s mass hysteria among weak-minded women and go with the more likely scenario anyway.”

“Pretty much. But I do want you to contact me when things calm down. I’m Abby Stone. Some of the nurses there know my number, but you can also find me at the Cemetery Grove clinic during the occasional graveyard shift.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Abby didn’t know whether Kara ever wanted to see her or hear her voice again, which panged in Abby’s heart, but this was her life, and if she wanted to leave this kind of chaos behind, more power to her.

Maggie refused to be moved by Zekiel, so Abby helped Kara stand, then helped Maggie while Zekiel kept Kara steady on the way to the roof access door.

“Don’t be a stranger, Zekiel.” Charles backed well away from the door when Kara refused to approach with him there, but he still gulped in the sight of her, as though knowing he would never see her again. “We’ll be just fine back here alone. I’ll keep Abby warm for you.”

Zekiel hurried the women inside from the cold, but he hesitated at the door.

Abby glared at Charles this time instead of just staring at him in irritation. She’d given him a little slack for saving her skin when he could have just handed her over and had her for himself after Moloch had risen, with the demon’s blessing. But taunting Zekiel like that as though nothing had changed quickly burned through any goodwill she might have had.

Then she blinked at the glint in Charles’ eyes.

She faced Zekiel with her back to Charles. “Go on.”

“Something must be done about him,” Zekiel murmured. “We cannot just let him go.”

“Why not? You swore to it.” Charles’ smirk permeated his words. “And anyway, haven’t I proven that I don’t actually want either of you dead? So I played a few games. Both of you already knew I played them. It’s what I am. But I saved you. I saved the other girls, even though it hits me right here to let mine go. And I’m firmly cured of apocalypse cults.”

“There might be hope for you yet,” Abby said.

Zekiel raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I think you overestimate his redemptive qualities.”

“Maybe. But I can handle myself.”

“I’ll bet you can,” Charles muttered, still smug as a cat with feathers in its mouth.

“Trust me,” she mouthed. Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed Zekiel’s cheek.

“I will return soon,” he said, “before the dawn.”

“What about the dead people below?” Abby asked. “You know, I never thought about what happens to the bodies afterward. You never hear about them on the news or anything. After all the demons I leave dead in that alley, it’s always clear the next night for the next set.”

“The ones the demon hunters don’t find and burn, the pestilence demons dispose of.”

Charles shuddered. “Those give me the creeps.”

“Why? Because they remind you that immortality doesn’t mean you’re unkillable?” Abby asked.

“No. They’re just disgusting.”

“I thought that’s what I was supposed to become.”

“Not that kind, believe me, sweet thing.”

“Are you sure?” Zekiel asked Abby.

“I’ll be fine. The worst he’ll do is make me roll my eyes right out of their sockets.” She nodded Zekiel away, then backed up to sit on the floor of the roof again, shivering and rubbing her arms.

Zekiel closed the door behind him.

“You wouldn’t know it from the square he’s become, but Zekiel used to be quite the beast.” Charles sat on the roof wall beside her, close enough for her to curl her arm around his legs—but she didn’t.

“He still is,” Abby said. “He just grew up.”

“Got boring, you mean. I’ve grown since he left me, but you don’t see me thinking I can single-handedly ensure world peace with my fists. I know my place.”

“Really? Fighting against a demon prince from the dark realm? Because I’m pretty sure you and Moloch are technically on the same side.”

“Doesn’t mean we agree how the world ought to be right now—just how it’s going to end up.” He slid off the wall to crouch next to her. “Hey, your teeth are chattering like joke dentures, love. Let me warm you up. You know I can.”

“I think you’ve done enough damage.” Although she was sorely tempted to burrow under his shoulder and wrap her arms around him. Some of his heat reached her across the short distance between them, but she recoiled slightly at the reminder of the tearing and bloodstains on his shirt. “And had enough damage done to you. When did that happen?”

“Don’t know. It could have been when I was heroically distracting the demon cult, or it could have been when I was heroically saving your hot ass. It doesn’t hurt much.”

Abby stood both of them up to get him into moonlight. She was careful with the folds of his shirt, pulling it away from his skin so that she could inspect the cuts more closely. Through the tears in the fabric, Abby glimpsed a series of angry, still-bleeding claw marks. She winced with a hiss.

“Here.” She tugged at his shirt. “Get this off.”

After all his light, mocking banter, his expression turned unexpectedly serious. Tilting his head a little, he unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off, heedless of the cold.

“I can—” Abby reached out to touch him, then stopped as though her palms hit an invisible wall.

“That’s right. I was wondering whether you’d realize your dilemma. You want to heal me? You’ll have to release me from my oath.” He ghosted his bare fingers a fraction of an inch from the line of her jaw like a caress, guiding her to meet his glittering eyes.

Her gaze drifted down to linger on his lips, then to the marred white marble of his chest, so close to her. So much exposed for the both of them. The little hairs on her arms stood up on end—not from the cold but as though they wanted to draw her closer to him. It would be so easy. Less than a second, and he could be touching her. She could be touching him.

“I didn’t save you just to kill you,” he said, barely a whisper. “Do you trust me?”

“Never.”

Charles tightened his jaw in frustration.

“But I release you from your oath.”

For a few moments, there was no movement but for the rise and fall of Charles’ chest. Then he grabbed her waist to pull her hips against his, and her arms collided with his chest. The contact between them was the most intense spark of static electricity Abby had ever experienced, except instead of making her jerk away, he drew her even closer to him with his charm, which wrapped around her like the silk of a spider’s web.

He paused just short of her lips. “Abigail,” he breathed, like a groan. He slid hands more sensuous and smooth than the leather of his gloves up her bare arms. She couldn’t believe it when she felt him tremble.

She took his face in her hands and pulled him down to claim her mouth. She’d been stalked by an incubus before, and she’d had the last week to show her what being close to an incubus was like. But nothing could have prepared her for the experience of his skin on hers.

It was the difference of a pitch-black, silent walk on a shore at midnight and taking a stroll by an ocean alit with phosphorescence and the reflection of stars, enhanced by a symphony of night insects and whale song. It was the Yellowstone caldera to the Great Plains, a tornado to a draft.

Charles drank her moans, consumed her, dominated her, wrested control of her kiss, her embrace, her thick, thrumming arousal nestled in the cradle of her hips and keenest where the bulge of his cock pressed against her.

But he moaned, too, clutching her tight against him with artlessness that Abby would not have expected from a sex demon. The man carried all knowledge of every desire, probably knew positions and pleasure points that the authors of the Kama Sutra couldn’t have begun to imagine, had encountered fantasies from which even the Marquis de Sade would flinch in shock and horror.

So why did it seem like he’d succumbed to her in his very domination?

As she ran her hands over his chest and grasped at his shoulders, dried blood crackled under her palms—the reason why she’d destroyed her last bit of protection against him.

Charles broke the kiss and gasped against her mouth as she took the glitter she’d seen in his eyes from him. The demon claw marks sewed themselves back together to form an invisible seam.

“I don’t know everything you’ve done,” Abby said. “I only really know what you’ve done to me. But you did help. And you let Kara go, even though you knew Zekiel and I would never let you touch her again. I genuinely think there’s a heart in there, under all the cold, selfish stone.”

His heart pulsed steady and quick under her fingertips. He covered her hand with his. “This won’t kill you,” he murmured. “I promise you’ll like it.”

Abby glanced up at him. The guilt must have shown, because Charles tensed.

“I didn’t say I was done,” she whispered.

She reached inside of him and pulled, draining the steady glow around his darkness like a vampire—except the light she took wasn’t the good kind of light, never had been, brilliant in the way that Lucifer was the morning star. She kept pulling at that bad light like a needle and thread in embroidery, extracting each strand of the poison and accepting it into herself, where it became harmless—at least until the day she chose to let it out again.

Charles tried to withdraw, but her power kept him attached. Shock made his face appear younger, revealing how—after all his years and no matter how sophisticated he could seem—he was still juvenile, a petulant, self-gratifying teenager scratching itches.

The flesh under her hand grew cold. Grayish veins shot through the white skin and extended up his neck to his face, where his teeth went sharp as they were exposed in his silent scream. The tips of his ears narrowed to points. His black hair absorbed into his scalp. Wings burst from his shoulders in a final attempt to flee, but the feathers fused, thinned into membranes and froze as though in ice as the stone reached his wing claws.

“I’m so sorry, Charles. I guess you were ready, whether you knew it or not.” Abby stroked his creamy marble cheek, struck by the odd juxtaposition of such a horrified visage in such beautiful stone. “Don’t you worry about your baby—or Kara, if you actually ever gave a damn about her. Zekiel and I will keep a close eye on them. It’ll be the only baby in the world with a guardian gargoyle, which do exist, because I say so.”

“Cabrera’s truly outdone herself.”

She spun around, pressing a hand to her heart to hold it in.

Zekiel stepped down from the roof wall. “She worked herself nearly to death when she first came here. I guess her quality’s improved now that she can pace herself with new residents. It’s okay if you loved him a little. I did. It speaks to your capacity for compassion, not your failure.”

“I’m sick and I need help.”

But Abby allowed Zekiel to wrap his wind-chilled arms around her and draw her against the warmth of his chest, despite how gross her clothes were from being slimed with demon pus. It hadn’t bothered Charles, either. She didn’t quite cry, but tears leaked down her flushed cheeks.

“But he’s not quite like you, is he?” she said, wiping the tears away. “He’s not moving.”

“He might have repented in his heart, but his head needs to catch up. He’ll have decades to realize what must be done.” Zekiel studied the statue. “Until then, he will have nothing but the world moving on without him, left only with his thoughts and memories.”

He broke away from Abby to approach his former lover. He whispered something in Charles’ ear, then tenderly pressed his lips to the stone neck.

“I told him I’d be waiting for his return,” Zekiel said. “Does that bother you?”

“Oddly enough, it doesn’t.”

“We unfortunately don’t have enough time for me to fly you home.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “You’ll have to go there yourself, and I left the jacket with Maggie. I apologize.”

“Have they been found by the people who needed to find them?”

“They’re all safe, either headed to the hospital or in the care of someone who knows how to deal with people who’ve been taken in by cults—demon or otherwise. I’m sorry I can’t be any clearer on this. My contact is protective of both his charges and his process. There’s nothing dangerous about it. It’s just delicate—and legally considered kidnapping.”

“Fair enough.” She guided Zekiel to the edge of the roof behind Charles. She couldn’t stop him from hearing them, but she wanted a little privacy, nevertheless. After nudging Zekiel to sit on the roof wall, his wings furled and hanging off the edge, she stepped between his legs. “Have I thanked you yet for slaying the dragon?”

“I would have saved them sooner if I had found the right opportunity to surprise Moloch without his followers easily coming to his aid.” Zekiel lowered his head. “And if I hadn’t been under my lover’s spell for so long that I missed them taking you.”

Abby lifted his chin and smiled. “We just saved the world for a little while. I think we deserve a few minutes without self-loathing. What do you think?”

She slid her hand down his abdomen to the cloth over his cock as she kissed him. She was still juiced from the arousal wrought by Charles’ kiss, but she figured he would understand. His hips jerked slightly on the roof’s edge. Grasping him through the fabric, she stroked him into half hardness, until he jerked her down and took her mouth the way he clearly wanted to take her.

As the first rays of subtle warmth struck her head, she pulled away with a small smile. She bent down so that she and Zekiel were eye to eye as he too went rigid to the touch.

“I don’t mean to be a tease…really.” She kissed his cold lips. “I’ll call in sick for the next shift when I get home. After what happened earlier this evening, they’ll understand, and God knows I need it. Tonight will probably catch up with me in the bath.”

She kissed him again, stroking the bulge that she’d made and that had frozen in an almost fully erect state. At least this time it was covered.

“See you tonight,” she whispered. “Think nice thoughts.”

 

* * * *

 

Abby couldn’t know what Zekiel thought behind that stone face before the sun set once more.

She could guess what Charles thought.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to hear it. She would wait a few months before informing him that she hadn’t necessarily chosen to do this to him. She was but an instrument, like Cabrera, like Zekiel. She had chosen to accept that responsibility, but Charles was the one who’d made the choice that had changed the trajectory of his life, whether he’d been aware of it at the time or not.

Maybe she should come and read to Charles the way she’d read to Kara and Maggie. It didn’t seem right to just…leave him there.

However, he could stand to wait a week or so for her to return and give him attention. Right now, she sat on her heels with her hands on Zekiel’s knees, staring up at a stone face trapped in an expression of pained pleasure. It really had been cruel to work him up like that again. But she planned to make up for it as best as she could.

Abby rested her cheek where the cloth draped over his cock. The weather was too cold for her to lick it.

She smiled when the stone fabric became cotton and the erection warmed as the dying light faded behind the skyline, surrendering to the studded blue velvet from the east.

“You wicked little minx.” Zekiel threw his head back and groaned when she lifted his covering, wasting no time getting her mouth around the tip, circling the slit with her tongue. “Why do you torture me so?”

“Because it makes me happy.” She grinned up at him as she wrung his shaft, shining with his pre-cum and her saliva. “I know it was so bad of me. I just couldn’t resist.”

“Neither can I.”

Zekiel grabbed her arms and hauled her to her feet, then stood and spread his wings—just enough to shield her from prying eyes, which made her grin broaden and nipples harden as he removed her peacoat. She quickly kicked off her boots and wriggled out of her jeans and underwear. Zekiel hoisted her up for her to wrap her legs around his hips, his cock slotted against her ass. He kissed her first, forcing her to hold onto him as he brought his hands under her shirt and pushed her bra up over her breasts.

Then he slid his hands down to her waist to lift her up more and close his hot mouth over one nipple, leaving the other to tighten painfully in the cold. She felt her cooled moisture against his abdomen, where she smeared it as she rocked against him. When he moved to the other nipple, his mouth burned even hotter to the cold flesh and the nipple he abandoned seemed even colder from being wet.

“Now who’s being cruel?” she gasped.

His chuckle vibrated through her. “I cannot begin to repay you for what you have put me through, woman. Twice! Perhaps when we have more privacy, we can discuss suitable punishment.”

“I have a few ideas.” She heard Charles’ laughter echo in the back of her mind. “They might surprise you,” she admitted with some bitterness.

Zekiel paused his wordless ode to her breasts and leaned her back. “I was an incubus, too, remember? Nothing you request will surprise me. You would be far more shocked at some of the fantasies I indulged within my victims’ dreams—and sometimes while they were awake.”

“I think you’re just trying to titillate a girl.” Now that she imagined Zekiel engaging in any number of libertine scenarios, she squirmed against him.

“I can do that, too.” He shifted his hips so that the head of his cock pressed against her entrance, teasing her. He returned his mouth to her breasts until the clenching muscles of her pussy practically tried to drag him in.

“As much as I’d love to play,” Abby said, “we don’t have all night.”

“No?”

“Fuck me, and I’ll tell you the itinerary.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Your turn.”

Zekiel playfully nipped her lip with his sharper canines at the pun, but he cut her giggle short when he pulled her down by her waist, plunging into her cunt in one rough motion that made her clench around him with a surprisingly intense wave of arousal.

He encircled them both with his wings, shutting out the world except for the night sky above them. Then he worked her over his cock, but she rocked over him, too, enthusiastically engulfing him over and over. He joined his fingers with hers at her clit, stroking the pulsing little nub, and where their bodies met, her folds stretched around his girth.

“I thought about this all day, too,” she said, panting. “And in my dreams. His touch, yours… I was wet all the way here, imagining you hard the entire day. You didn’t suffer alone. Yes. Fuck, yes. Faster. Just like that.”

Zekiel captured her mouth and reduced her pleas to inarticulate moans. She rode him hard to drive her pleasure forward. His kiss muffled her cry as her climax shuddered through her, and he pounded tirelessly through it. Then again, a man who could fly any distance with a giant golden head must have had unimaginable strength and endurance. The thought made her eyes roll back again through a mini-orgasm that clung to the coattails of the first.

Zekiel tore himself from her mouth and pressed his face against her neck as his thrusts became erratic.

“My light,” he whispered, almost too soft for her to understand, and maybe she wasn’t supposed to.

Awfully intimidating, knowing what he thought of her. Something for her to strive toward, perhaps. She dwelled in the night like him, like darker and much viler creatures, but she always found the light eventually with the dawn.

She gently wrapped her arms around his neck and stroked the smoothness of his head and the rippling, flexing muscles of his back until he stiffened and came. He murmured her name against her skin with every jerk of his cock inside her. She kissed his ear until he spread his wings once more and helped her down.

Abby wriggled as she grabbed her panties, then laughed. “Now my nethers are all cold.”

“You’re the one who keeps insisting on outdoor trysts.” Zekiel crossed his arms and watched her dress, amused. Lucky man only had to readjust his covering. She had all these layers, and most of those layers had some kind of fastening.

She thought of Charles’ apartment, the room, the privacy, the toys. She wondered how much rent had been paid up and whether Miranda would let her and Zekiel use it until the end of the lease. Taking him back to her house again was out of the question, at least on a regular basis.

“You said we had places to be tonight?” he asked.

“I did. No fighting. No dark alleys, no oil slicks, no demon limbs. Does that sound like a good plan?”

“I don’t object thus far, although I need to return to my duties soon.”

“So do I. It’s just… I called my mom about finding Dad in Cemetery Grove, and she called me late this afternoon to say she was flying in. She’s missed him more than she tells me. She thinks she hides it, but she doesn’t. She had this spark of hope in her voice when I told her I’d found him again, poor fool.”

“We are all of us fools and madmen, Abby, where love is concerned,” Zekiel said gently.

“Oh, believe me, I’m aware. Why do you think I searched for him for so long? Anyway, she arrived at DFW earlier, and she’s going to meet me at the cemetery with Chinese takeout and a blanket. We’re going to have a family picnic with him behind the gravestones. A little unorthodox, but I wanted to invite you. I mean, I don’t know if you can eat, but I still want you there. I want you to meet my dad.”

He smiled. “A statement of dread for so many young men—but not so for me.”

“I want you to meet my mom, too, of course, but she’ll be thrilled with you. Unless you’re going to disappear on me in ten years without warning.”

“I’m not under the same limitations as the stone angels. I have been transported before, but as you can see, I’m far more mobile. And I know how to work a payphone.”

“Like the ancient demon that you are, thinking there are even any payphones left. Up for dinner?”

He rested his hand, heavy and promising, on her shoulder. “I would be honored, if your father and his brethren will have me.”

“I’ll make sure of it.” She’d pull out the Bible verses if she had to. Something about angels rejoicing at the salvation of just one. “Let’s go. Bye, Charles. See you in a week. I’ll bring something fun to read.”

Abby climbed onto Zekiel’s back as he tried to conceal his grin. She spread her own wings briefly to overlap with his, a declaration that made him close his eyes against the swell of emotion they shared to which she could not put words. When he stepped up on the roof wall, she pulled her wings back in again and held on tight.

Then Zekiel leaped off the edge.