devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place (24 page)

“So,” he said, with a narrowed glance in my direction. “I’m guessing He wants you to take on some new, ever more dangerous and impossible task.”

I tried not to grimace. He was partly right. “Actually, yes on the new and impossible part, no on the dangerous part. At least I don’t think it will be dangerous.”

He cocked his head slightly, causing the light to pick up the golden highlights in his red-gold hair that always made me think of halos. I’d asked him once, when I was about five, if he had a halo hidden in his hair and he had said no. He told me he’d given the halo back to God. That response had been singularly unsatisfying at the time and I still didn’t like it much, mostly because it had pulled the light completely out of his blue eyes.

“What task have you been given? Can Myra and I help?”

I tried on a smile and hoped it wasn’t the one that made me look like I had gas. I felt like it just might be that one, so I tried to stuff more happiness into it. I think the result was pretty sucky though. He started to look worried.

“Actually yes, you can help me a lot with this task.”

“Really?”

“Yes, the task is actually you.”

He frowned and opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a cool, husky voice from behind me.

“Isn’t this a lovely picture?”

He looked up and his frown deepened measurably. I tensed. Only one creature could make my father look like that.

“Hello Astra, you’re looking…strong.”

I turned to look up into a porcelain-skinned, oval-shaped face with a delicate chin and high cheekbones. Wide black eyes with thick lashes gazed back at me with a consumptive kind of power that told me, without words, that she had not appeared at my elbow by accident.

Her beauty was, as always, breath-capturing. Tall and lithe, with thick black hair that sparkled in the dull light of the diner with purple highlights, Danika Phelps couldn’t help taking over the room. The power that radiated off her like waves of heat off black metal on a one hundred twenty degree day didn’t hurt either.

“Hello, Mother.”

Chapter Fifteen

Maternal Mayhem

A mother’s love is staunch and true, no matter what the test

But when her love is bent on power, she rarely shows her best.

“Blessed Be daughter.”

The traditional Wiccan greeting was innocuous but somehow didn’t feel that way coming from her.

“Blessed Be. What brings you to this lowly place?”

Danika shrugged wide, shapely shoulders and looked around, barely holding back the slight curl to her lip that was so familiar to me. My mother finds many things in life unpalatable. Among them, her family.

She turned back to my father and tried a warm smile. It didn’t fly with my father or with me. We knew her too well. “Hello James. You’re certainly looking…human.”

The top of her smile curled up just the tiniest bit, just on one corner but enough to tell us what she thought of my father sitting in an ordinary diner wearing ordinary clothes. Always sensitive to status and power, my mother liked to forget my father was a powerless fallen angel without wings. Despite the fact that he’d fallen for her.

His allure to her had faded away with his wings and gossamer robes. And she’d never bothered to hide that fact from him.

“Hello Danika. I’ve been hearing bits and pieces about your activities from the other commanders. They’re very concerned with your current path.”

She dropped the smile and sneered. “They have no business monitoring my activities, James and you can tell them that for me.”

My father glanced quickly at me and seemed to make an effort at remaining calm. “Your life sphere encompasses many others, Danika. Your activities are of necessity important to the celestial army. You know it to be true.”

She flung a dismissive hand at my father and turned to me, effectively dismissing him and his concerns. “I am glad we met today, Astra. I have been wanting to contact you. I wish to discuss your future. It is time I took a hand in guiding your choices.”

I stared at her for several beats, wondering if my brain had perhaps melted. Surely I didn’t just hear her say she wanted to start acting like a mother.

“It’s a little late for that isn’t it, Mother?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “On the contrary, Astra, it’s the perfect time. You are of a responsible age and your powers are growing. You will need guidance on how to use them.” With this she sent my father a brief but scathing glance. Her meaning was clear. Obviously she didn’t consider him adequate to the task of guiding me.

I shook my head, fully intending to resist her efforts to “guide” me, when two things happened at once.

DD Raoul walked into the diner and stopped dead just inside the door, blinking at me in horror.

And Emo shimmered in to stand beside me, a slightly agitated look on his face.

“Astra, we’ve found the hostages but we have to move fast. Alcott’s sent a superdemon to kill them.”

I looked back and forth between Emo, Raoul and my parents and wished I were an amoeba so I could split into four parts. Well three parts anyway. My mother didn’t deserve her own part.

I realized suddenly that Emo was talking to me. I looked into his handsome face and grinned. “Hi!”

He struggled not to smile back but then gave in. His grin made my whole body warm and tingly. “Hiya boss.”

I reached a hand toward him, remembering only at the last second to turn to my father. “I’ll call you later.”

His eyes sparked with something that looked like humor and then I was locked in a place without movement and sound, the warm, muscular feel of Emo’s arm under my hand.

I couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to say to my partner. So I was left with my thoughts and they were jangling to say the least. But I didn’t have time to examine my feelings about Emo’s return. I had a superdemon to fight and I had to prepare.

We landed in a dank, moldy-smelling space that had the feel of being underground. I recognized it immediately as the tunnel beneath the dubious Diablos’ tomb.

I was surprised to see Girsch approaching us at a brisk jog. He gave me a jaunty salute and turned to Emo. “They’re spread throughout the tunnels, separated into groups of four or five. Most of them are guarded by a demon handler with a ’goyle.”

Emo nodded and turned to me. “You might want to call Prince Dialle. I think we’re gonna need him.”

Holy shit! Things must be grave if Emo was asking for Dialle.

“You mean he’s not here with Girsch?”

Emo slanted an impatient look at me and walked away. “Catch up with us as soon as you’ve contacted him.”

I watched him walk away and found myself wondering if aliens had stolen my best friend and replaced him with this snarky, confident shell that looked wonderfully like Emo. However, I had it on very good authority that the alien situation was under control so I shook it off and shuffled my mental drawers.

Dialle?

The resulting silence was deafening and I began to get irritated. The damnable devil never seemed willing to show up when I needed him but he sure as Hades liked to pop in when I didn’t want him around.

Like when I was naked and dripping in the cleansing tube!

“Hello, Astra.”

I jumped, gasping. His husky voice wasn’t in my head where I’d expected it to be and his warm, fragrant breath tickled my ear.

I felt a pair of soft lips on the back of my neck and stamped a foot in vexation. “You could have warned me you were there.” I turned to scowl at him. The scowl pinged off his slick, self-assured persona like oil off water.

He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me close, nuzzling my nose with his lips and grinning. “Astra.”

I scowled more deeply. “What!”

“I’m here.”

“Very funny, Dialle. Come on, we have demons to vanquish and hostages to save.”

He bowed low. “As always, I’m at your service, my princess.”

“If only,” I murmured and received a sharp pinch on my butt for the remark. “Ow!”

“Show some respect, Astra,” he paused and grinned, “for your betters.”

Without looking at him I reached out and touched his shoulder with one finger, zinging him with a jolt of power that made him jump and laugh, rubbing the offended shoulder.

“Respect that!”

Not too surprisingly, the tunnels got smaller, danker and darker as we followed them. At one point they widened out considerably but the ceiling dropped down so low even I had to duck my head a little. Dialle didn’t even bother ducking, he just disappeared with a pop and shimmered to a spot further down that was more amenable to his six-foot-three-inch height. “Show-off,” I murmured, wishing he’d taken me with him.

On the tails of that wish my skin started to crawl and I was suddenly aware of a malevolent aura directly behind me. I spun to meet the threat and found myself staring at what I hoped was an Orgick, because if it wasn’t an Orgick it was one huge assed rodent.

“Oh shit!” I screamed and flung out a power arrow without thinking.

The shot went wild and hit the wall behind the enormous critter, which promptly opened its huge snout and started hissing at me through yellowed fangs that were the length of my fingers.

I watched it carefully as I started to back away, taking care to stay on my toes. I knew I had to wait for it to make the first move but, considering the fact that it looked exactly like a king-sized rat, right down to the twitching wet nose and hairless tail, it was all I could do not to turn and run away, screaming like a banshee. The only thing that kept me facing it was the knowledge that, despite its current lumbering form, the Orgick was lightning fast and would soon overtake me if I ran.

I shivered as I imagined those huge teeth sinking into my back.

Its eyes glowed at me malevolently. I watched and waited. When it finally lunged I was ready. I sprang off my toes and did a rolling flip over its head, just narrowly missing a bone shattering whip of its disgusting tail as I landed directly behind it.

I shot a jolt of power into its back, hoping the jolt would turn its ugly heart into cinders and put me out of my misery but I must have missed the heart ’cause the thing whipped around with mind-numbing speed and snapped at me, missing my leg by mere inches with those enormous fangs.

Its foul breath washed over me and I gagged. I flipped again but this time the tail caught me across the midsection, throwing me to the ground about ten feet down the tunnel and I lay there, hunched in pain and gagging. I couldn’t catch a breath to save my life. And that’s exactly what I needed to do, because I was about to become Orgick kibble.

It approached with an ambling, rat-like gait and I could swear I saw a smile on its ugly, Orgick face.

Then suddenly a thin stream of power shot into the thing’s chest and it stopped. Its tail gave one agitated whoosh, slamming against the nearest cavern wall and dislodging fist-sized chunks of rock for several feet along the wall.

I covered my head with my arms as one particularly large chunk of rock plummeted toward me from above.

The rock missed my head, just barely and skittered away to land just in front of the largest pair of green, scaly feet I’d ever seen. My eyes rose up a pulsing green chest and over a wide, fleshy mouth to a pair of bulging brown eyes. From between the wide lips a tongue flicked out, testing the air for something, though I wasn’t sure what.

I followed the Orgick’s gaze and saw Dialle standing several yards away, a look of pure horror on his gorgeous face.

Still having trouble catching my breath, I initiated a trip into his mental drawers.
You’ve got to be kidding me…a frog!

I felt his mental shrug.
It’s a childhood fear. I’m mostly over it, Astra.

I glanced back to the Orgick, which looked like a giant, green frog.

Apparently not.

The thing’s tongue lashed out again and, for just a fraction of a second before the Orgick frog retracted its tongue, I saw a tiny bat struggling to get loose from the gluelike appendage. Then both tongue and bat disappeared and I gulped.

It’s gross but not very scary.

I felt Dialle’s mental shrug again.
You had to be there, Astra.

Yeah. I guess.

I struggled to get to my feet. That was a big mistake. The Orgick noticed my movement out of the corner of its eye and turned back to me.

Faster than you could say “soil your knickers” the gluey tongue lashed out and wrapped around me, drawing me inexorably toward that wide, fleshy mouth.

The thing’s breath almost made me pass out, which would certainly have made things easier for the Orgick but would have been most unfortunate for me.

I tried to pull my power forward but I needed to work too hard to keep from being pulled into that gaping maw. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to gin my power up to the level I would need to blast the Orgick to smithereens, which was my fondest wish at that moment.

I finally settled for several, quick, stinging jolts on the gooey, sticky tongue.

I could only use my fingers and my aim was off because my arms were pinned against my body from just below the shoulders to my wrists by the nasty snakelike appendage.

I managed to hit the tongue several times despite my inability to move. Each jolt caused the tongue to loosen around me but not entirely let go.

Do something, Dialle!

I’m thinking, Astra. I can’t shoot it with enough power to kill it because it would kill you too. Can you pull a power bubble around yourself?

He shot a very focused jolt of power into the thing and it flailed around a bit, taking a couple of hops toward him but it didn’t do much damage.

No. It’s too hard to concentrate. And I’m losing feeling in my arms.

The glue-like substance that coated its tongue apparently contained some kind of numbing agent. My arms and body had begun to prickle and then lose feeling, making it even harder to throw my power darts at the ugly monster.

A sudden thought occurred.
Dialle, can you use your power to hold it in place?