Chapter Eleven

Uriel

Fucking. Hell.

What was that? Expecting the familiar spark of energy when I gave someone a piece of my power, my brain hazed with much darker thoughts. Heavy desires I’d not felt in an age. Or ever. The electric current snapping between us wasn’t just an exchange of power. It was frantic need, intoxicating lust. And something more. Disturbingly more.

In all the things Lisabette did to my body and the ways she’d taken what was not hers, her kiss was the most horrific of all. A kiss was a caress of souls. An intimate entanglement of breath and affection. Or a slaughter to the senses with violent invasion. With that demonic witch, it had been one more cruelty forced upon me while under her black magic and blood spells. But this…this sensation was beyond my experiences. Even immortality hadn’t brought another’s lips to mine in the likes of Nadya.

Angling her head just enough, she opened her mouth wider and let me in. Sweet fucking submission. I slid my tongue inside and over hers. Her whimpered response only fueled me into a frenzy. On a groan, I stroked in deeper. Totally unnecessary to give her the gift I’d wanted her to have, but I couldn’t rein it in. My fingers clenched. My body ached. My brain checked out.

The punch of angel power pulsed down her throat and into her veins, rippling through her body and limbs. She shivered on a whimper as I licked deeper, my fingers digging into her waist and her nape, keeping her close. She combed a hand into my hair, her nails grazing my scalp, and a lick of heat lashed straight through me.

My hand at her nape traveled over her shoulder and down her arm, smoothing over the threadbare material separating us. Then all I could think about was getting my hands on her sweet body, her silky skin. All of it. I needed to calm the fuck down before I ripped off her robe and put my mouth on her neck, her breasts, her hips, between her legs. The crippling image of her on her back, on all fours, on her knees tumbled through my overheated brain, hardening my cock to pain.

Like a tidal wave leveling out, the electric energy I’d given her rippled slower, a heated throb sizzling between us, solidifying her new power to sift. But it wasn’t the angel power that had knocked me to my knees. It was my body’s instinctual reaction to having my mouth on hers. To having her open at my command. It wasn’t just a shock that I suddenly wanted her full submission. It was an iron fist to the chest. A clench to my throat. A threatening, debilitating need to have what I shouldn’t want. A demon witch.

Wrenching my mouth from hers, both of us panting, I stared into her dilated eyes, swamped with more black than blue. Quickly, I gripped her waist and stood, lifting her and setting her on her feet. She visibly trembled, wobbling before catching her balance, her hands shaking as she wrapped her arms around her middle, making sure her robe was closed.

“Are you nauseous?” I asked, knowing that was often a reaction when I’d given a human some of my power. It could be jolting.

She made a choking noise in her throat that was almost a laugh, her mouth partly open. Staring at me, she shook her head. There was no mistaking her expression. She wanted me. The frightening realization made me take another step back. My fists balled at my sides. If I touched her again now, I wouldn’t stop.

Speechless. I was fucking speechless. When had that ever happened? Never, that’s when. I needed to get out of here. Away from her.

“I’ll meet you here, just beyond my wards on Friday at eleven thirty p.m.”

She said nothing. Didn’t even indicate whether she’d heard me. And I couldn’t stand there one more second with her haunting eyes, her silken skin, and her goddamn temptation of a body.

Stiffening my spine, I gritted out, “Friday,” then stormed out into the night.

I needed some distance from her. The cold air washed away the heat firing through my blood. With three long steps, I launched up into the air, beating my wings to take me higher. I had to get away from her before I did something irresponsible. Irreversible. Like take her to bed and wash away the constant edge of pain in her eyes.

I didn’t want to think about the ways Vladek had used her, growling at the image that brought to mind. And I didn’t want to become a rutting beast that made me in any way like him.

“Fuck.”

I flew higher, beating my way through the icy wind and cloudy vapor, shooting like a rocket until I was above the clouds where only wisps of gray obstructed my view of the starry blanket above.

That unholy monster had surely done unspeakable things to my sweet Nadya. And when had I begun to think of her as sweet? Or mine? God, I was already lost.

She was a demon witch, there was no mistaking. She’d gone into his house of her own accord as one of many in the round of his court. She was likely comfortable in that hell house for a time. But she’d caught his eye, and then she was doomed. To be a special pet of Vladek was likely the most unimaginable kind of hell. Of course, I could guess, for I’d been the enslaved guest of his protégée. Lisabette certainly thrilled at the joy of inflicting pain. I wondered what Vladek had done to Nadya while she was in his keep.

Hell, the thought of his hands, his mouth, any part of him on her or inside her was enough to make me—

Sickening at the thought, I shot even higher, relishing the frigid blast of the high altitude, the near weightlessness as I pushed up against the atmosphere, longing for the cold to seep straight into me and end this torture. This maddening attraction that should not exist had rocked me to a disturbing degree. Of course I’d noticed her beauty. Who couldn’t? But it wasn’t until I’d seen her kindness to the Stegemann family and her genuinely compassionate nature and her abhorrence for her time in Ivangorod that I realized she wasn’t a creature of the dark after all.

No. She was a luminescent light like no other. Scarred and wounded by one particular demon in her past. A demon king who was directly in my path. Though she accepted my kiss, as a means to gain the power to sift, she wouldn’t accept me as a lover. Not after that foul fucker Vladek.

Skimming lower just above the canvas of clouds, a weighty shadow lifted up out of the mist, swirling the vapor into a whirlpool. Circe’s earthy growl rumbled on the wind. Glancing to my right, I caught her golden gaze.

“No. Go back and protect her.”

She chuffed, puffing out a cloud of black smoke that skimmed over her knotted spine. She soared beside me, pretending to ignore my command.

“Fine. You can eat anything that tries to harm her.” She blinked heavily at me. “Now go back to her.”

With an unenthusiastic roar, she banked right and down, whipping her spiked tail in the air before returning to Nadya. The creature, conjured of supernatural substance, had become a loyal servant. I knew other angels thought me a fool for possessing a demonic creature, but I didn’t care. After my time in Estonia, I’d learned one thing. Do what you must to survive, to protect what belongs to you, and what you love. I’d possess an army of dragons if needed to wipe out the evil of this world.

I’d watched for centuries before this Great War had even begun, how evil prevailed unless the innocent had proper protection, elevated power in their corner. That was when I’d decided to create the Dominus Daemonum, the demon hunters whose penance was to expel demons from this world for dying with a mortal sin upon their souls. I always gave them a choice. Some chose hell instead, but most of them longed for redemption. I offered them that. But even more, I offered protectors to the helpless in this world.

Now that the gates of heaven and hell were fully opened, the rules needed to be broken. Rules like angels shouldn’t sully themselves by possessing demonic creatures. I took great pleasure from stealing Circe from the possession of that demon prince Rook who’d made her. She was mine now. And I’d use her to smite the unholy who wreaked havoc upon this earth. The irony made me smile.

To think of all the wickedness the high demons had committed on innocents. I thought again about Vladek and Nadya, the sting in my chest digging deeper.

I might not be able to heal her internal wounds, but I could kill the one who’d put them there. The tension in my shoulders and the weight in my chest eased. I could fight not just for those nameless tortured in his dungeons, not just for revenge for what he and Lisabette did to me, but…I could fight for her. I would fight for her.

Come Friday, those demons best be ready. Because nothing was going to keep me from pounding them all down to blood and bone.