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“My lord…” I grit out. “P-please…”
Just when I feel my bones must be on the verge of cracking, the pressure is lifted. Air pours back into my lungs and my bowels unclench. Slowly, I push myself to standing, shivering and naked and undignified.
“Th-thank you, my lord,” I say, wiping my face, and the back of my hand comes away crimson. “I will not fail you.”
“Ashtaroth was lax,” Asmodai says, reverting to his normal size in a blink. “Casziel was a lovesick fool. I am neither.”
“Of course not, my lord,” I say, bowing. “You are Asmodai, Father of Wrath. Asmodai, Eater of Souls.” I swallow hard. “Asmodai, themerciful…”
“Merciful.” The bull’s head snorts. “Fail me, Ambri, and you’ll forget you ever knew the meaning of the word.”
I back out of Asmodai’s crumbling fortress of bone and blood and immediately Cross Over. In the space of a human second, I’m in my luxurious flat in New York City. The midnight city rises up all around me, skyscrapers glittering through my windows.
I drag myself to the bathroom and regard my reflection in the glass.
“Bloody demons.”
I shower off the filth, blood, and grime of the Other Side, and with my golden locks still damp, I wrap myself in a silk robe and flop onto my king-sized bed. Demons don’t sleep, but I must wait for the exhaustion of Crossing Over to leave me. I do it frequently enough that I need not wait long, and the night is young.
I rise and go to my closet to peruse the designer clothing and expensive colognes for tonight’s revelries. Perhaps, I’ll find the poor soul I’m to entice to his own death at any one of the sex clubs and secret bars I frequent for my nightly conquests. Asmodai was hazy on the deadline, so to speak. No sense in depriving myself of a little fun with my victim first.
My victim…
The idea of driving a human to take their own life leaves a bad taste in my mouth. To be sure, I despise humans. The vermin caused me nothing but pain when I was one of their number. Now I exact revenge by wringing pleasure from them until they’re exhausted but begging for more. More of me. My attention, my touch, my tongue on their skin. I command their bodies, wielding control, tempting, teasing. I coax them to the brink of release but grant it only when I desire.
Delicious.
That’s all you are to me…
The memory stabs me; a raw wound Armand gave me at the end of my human life.
I ignore it and put onasuit of jet black and examine myself in the mirror. If one is to die and be reborn into immortal life, twenty-four is the ideal age. I’m nearly two meters tall (six feet to the Yanks) and enveloped in lean muscle. My hair is the color of gold, thick and full. My human eyes are blue-green and fringed with long, dark lashes. Full lips, straight nose, cheek bones for days…
Truly, I’m a handsome devil.
I step out into the New York night, a November chill in the air. But instead of heading to one of my usual haunts, I immediately find myself breaking into a hundred pieces, wings chittering. I take to the air in a beetle swarm and soar toward the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, as if pulled by an imaginary string.
Damn you, Casziel.
I fly among the buildings until I find the little apartment tucked behind another. The one with an empty lot in the back and the rickety stairs that lead up to a door. The pentagram Lucy Dennings drew in the dirt is no longer there. The black candle I provided for her is long gone. So is my maker, Ashtaroth, summoned by the girl and then destroyed by her angel. Sent to Oblivion.
I do not mourn him, but Casziel…
I swarm up to the warm yellow glow of the second story window—the proverbial moth to the flame—and watch with a hundred pairs of eyes. Casziel and his love, Lucy, cuddle together on the couch watching television. Now and then, without her noticing, his gaze strays to her. His love for her is palpable, like a scent on the wind that I can sense, even in my damnation.
A hundred tiny hearts in my hundred tiny bodies stutter at the same time.
The phone on the table next to Lucy buzzes. She kisses Casziel on the cheek and steps outside to sit on the back stairs.
Quickly, I flit out of sight and attach myself, en masse, to the side of the building. Lucy is speaking with Cole Matheson, her American friend who resides in London. I’ve witnessed her speak to him before. Then, the FaceTime function shows me a young man with a mop of sandy brown hair and angular features. Handsome but not overly. Unique. Deep voice, deep brown eyes behind black-framed glasses.
Judging from Lucy’s worry and the droning tone of misery coming from Cole’s end, he isn’t happy and trying to hide it.
A potential candidate for Asmodai’s command?
He lives in London, the scene of dear Uncle’s crimes…
I’d vowed to return to Britain only if absolutely necessary, but I had several million pounds in a London bank and kept a lovely flat in Chelsea that I hadn’t seen in ten years.
