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“I told her I wished she would die.” She had never told anyone the truth, not even Jake. “The last time we saw her in the hospital, when she was so scared for me, trying so hard to warn me, I was so mad at her for ruining my wedding, for trying to ruin my happiness again. I told her I would never be happy until she was dead. I told her I had prayed to God that she would die since I was eleven years old.” She could still see the look on her mother’s face as she’d said it, the horrible pain in her eyes. “So she did.” Tears ached in her throat. ?
??And I let Jake be damned, too. That’s just as much my fault.”
“Kelsey, no,” Asher protested as the demon giggled.
“When he was sick, he wanted to believe in God again. He went to Father Tom and asked for help, and he wanted me to go with him, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t pray with him or let him pray or even let anyone mention it. I knew it was real, all of it, Heaven and Hell and all of it, but when he asked me what I thought, I told him it wasn’t. And he believed me; he never went back to the church. I let him die, and I never said a word.” She wanted to run to Asher, drop the gun and let him stop her, let him lie to her again. But she just couldn’t. “I’m sorry.”
She pulled the trigger.
Pain exploded in her head. The world was drenched in blood. She was falling; Asher was screaming; the demon was laughing. The floor cracked open, and the walls were falling away, crumbling to rubble. She didn’t hit the floor; she kept falling and falling into darkness. Asher swept by her, wings outspread, lunging for the demon, and she reached for him, grabbing his hand. He gathered her into his arms, his wings and arms enfolding her, and they were falling together, plummeting into the dark.
Purgatory
Asher felt Kelsey go limp in his arms as they fell, her head lolling back. Looking down, he saw the terrible wound in her head disappearing as her face turned deathly pale. The wind was rushing around them, deafening, making his wings useless. Wrapping arms and wings around her, he surrendered to the wind, holding her tight as they plummeted end over end into the abyss.
They came to rest after what seemed like hours of mortal time, his feet landing softly on what passed for ground in an almost perfect void. Cold gray mist swirled around them, the only source of light. He laid Kelsey down, barely able to see her in the dark. She stirred slightly, sighing his name, and he drew back from her, watching the mist.
After a while, a pale, sickly, grayish orange light began to spread across the illusion of a sky. Kelsey moaned, and thick, black tentacles curled up from the ground all around them. Asher braced himself, standing over her, but the tentacles resolved themselves into trees with knotted, spreading roots that covered the ground around them and bare, tangled branches that twisted into a canopy above. The roar of the wind faded into the rasping whisper of insects and other tiny creatures hidden in the dark. Lacy, diseased-looking moss began to snake and drip its way down from the branches, and he could smell the thick, organic stench of swamp water in the distance. Slimy-looking bracken seemed to seep from under Kelsey’s body to spread over the ground, thick and thorny in some spots, thin and bare in others. She rolled to her side, curling up, knees drawn up to her chest, and the heavy clothing she had been wearing in her physical form melted away, leaving a long, white, lacy nightgown, much too big for her and tattered as the moss. Asher crouched a little distance away from her, wings folded behind him, waiting for her to wake.
Kelsey first became aware of the sound of the frogs and the cicadas, so much like home… She woke with a start and tried to stand up as soon as her eyes were open, tripping over her nightgown. Nightgown? she thought, looking down, confused. She was wearing Mama’s special nightgown, the one with all the lace. It wasn’t one like it; it was the very one.She could smell her mother’s powder and perfume. But it had grown, or she had shrunk; it was too big for her the way it had been when she was a child, wearing it as a treat when she was sick or as a costume, playing bride. “Asher,” she whispered, too scared to cry out. The noises around her made it sound like high summer down home, but she was miserably cold. The wind was like ice, and the ground felt frozen under her bare feet.
“I’m here,” Asher said from behind her, standing as she turned.
She rushed back to his arms, almost climbing him, she was holding on so tight. “Where are we?”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead before pushing her away. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know.” His wings were still black like they’d been at the hospital, but his hands weren’t bloody any more. He was dressed in some sort of dull black armor that left his arms and shoulders bare, and she saw the scars from the night he had saved her from the demons on the street. They were much darker now, livid purple on his alabaster skin. His eyes were darker, too, the crystal blue deepened to midnight. “Asher, what’s happening to us?”
“Can’t you guess?” She could never have imagined him sounding so cold. “Stop talking to me, Kelsey.” He turned away from her, ruffling his jet-black wings. “I can’t protect you anymore.”
“Then why are you with me?” She wouldn’t leave him any peace at all; she walked around him, making him face her. “Why are you here?” One side of her face was veiled in a spider’s web spatter of blood spreading out from her temple, making her look like a broken, porcelain doll.
“I would have done anything to save you,” he said. “I did.” He reached out to touch her cheek then thought of the mortal boy dying, bleeding at his feet, Asher’s holy sword plunged through his chest. He drew his hand back from her, suddenly sick with rage. “I killed for you, Kelsey. Not because I had no choice, not to save some innocent. Someone dared get in my way when I wanted…when I needed to reach you.”
“Oh my God.” She saw flames dancing in his eyes, purple in the darkness. “Because I called you. It was too late. The damage was already done.” Her eyes stung with tears. “Why did you have to come after me, Asher? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”
He grabbed her and slammed her hard against a twisted tree, his grip bruising her shoulders as his mouth came down on hers. She moaned, her body arching up to him as he pushed his tongue deep in her mouth. He shoved her farther up the tree, her feet leaving the ground as the rough bark scraped her back through the thin nightgown. She clung to him, the heat of his skin pure bliss in contrast to the icy wind. His mouth moved to her throat, licking and biting, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, twining her legs around his hips as he pushed her nightgown up.
He groaned in agony, pressing tight against her, and the sound echoed around them, thunder on the wind that made the other night sounds stop. Suddenly the tree was moving, twisting and writhing behind her. Cold, clawed fingers tangled in her hair, dragging her head back. Still clinging to Asher, she opened her eyes. The bark of the tree had changed to sleek, reptilian skin, its branches changed to tentacles, a thousand snakes of every size writhing around them. A forked tail snaked up between her legs, lifting her nightgown, one fork tickling her belly as the other snaked around her upper thigh. “Asher!” The demon tentacles twined and curled closer, pressing them tighter together, rubbing her body against his as a thousand wicked little voices whispered obscenities, cackling with glee. A thousand tiny, fanged mouths seemed to be licking and biting at her flesh, whispering her name. “Asher!” She grabbed his hair and wrenched his head up, making him look at her, but his eyes were heavy-lidded and filled with flame. “Help me,” she pleaded, framing his face in her hands.
“I can’t.” His smile was terrible, hungry and demonic. “You won’t let me.”
He kissed her, stopping her protests, shutting out the pleading in her eyes. You’re dead, Kelsey, he thought but didn’t say, sweeping the demon’s tentacles away to slide a hand up her hip. I am fallen. This is all we have left.
His mouth still tasted just as good, she thought; his hands on her body still felt perfect, better, even, reverence replaced with passion. She could surrender so easily, melt into this madness, let herself be caught up in the whirlwind. But she could feel his flesh turning colder as she touched him, smell the first intoxicating whiff of molten metal on his skin. With every moment, more of the angel was lost, and more of the demon was born.
“No,” she said, tearing her mouth free, her lips stinging as if they’d been glued to his. She pushed against his chest, fighting against the vine-like demon twisted around her to draw her knees up to push him away. “Let go.”
“Kelsey,” he groaned against her ear, yearning in his voice that made her shiver with
desire of her own. But she heard an echo in the mist, someone else calling her name.
“Kelsey…” Jake’s voice, distorted but unmistakable. “Kelsey, can you hear me?”
“I hear you!” The demon thing around her hissed and whined, drawing back slightly. “Asher, let me go!”
“Trick,” he murmured against her throat, slurring like a drunk. “You know it’s a trick.” He pushed the nightgown off her shoulder, and a slender tentacle curled around the strap to draw it down further.
