devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place (35 page)

I stared hard at her for a moment, dreading what I was about to tell her. When I finally spoke, the words came out in a clenched whisper, filled with pain. “That’s what I’d always thought too.”

She stood up straight and set her nearly empty mug on the counter. Then she took one step forward and grabbed me with both hands. She shook me hard, her beautiful face dark with anger. “Don’t you doubt him, Astra. Ever! He’s your father and he would do nothing to interfere with the divine goal.”

Doubt made me angry. “I don’t want to doubt him, Myra. Don’t you think it’s eating me up inside? But I saw him with my own eyes. I heard them plotting…”

Her face lost all color and her hands tightened on my arms. “Tell me, Astra. Tell me what you heard.”

I shook my head. I just couldn’t betray him that way. I wouldn’t.

“Astra, if you want me to help him you have to tell me.”

I jerked out of her grasp and stalked into the living area, where I paced frantically for a few minutes, praying silently for guidance. Finally I realized I had no choice. Myra might be the only one who still believed in my father. I turned to find her standing just inches from me, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

“Enoch came to me.”

Her lovely blue eyes widened in shock. “Enoch? Heaven help us. He’s turned against your father too?”

I nodded. “He tasked me with monitoring my father’s activities.”

“He asked you to
spy
on your father?”

“Yes.”

Myra dropped onto the divan as if her knees had given out on her. I’d never seen her so shocked. She thought about this for a few moments and then a hard look entered her blue eyes. “Tell me, Astra.”

I started pacing again as the pearl in my gut achieved uncomfortable proportions. “I went to the Phelps fortress and he was there, with my mother. They were talking about killing Dialle the First.”

“What!”

“That’s not all. I’ve had a vision too. Of my father, torturing King Dialle.”

That brought her to her feet. “That’s preposterous!”

I shrugged, nearly choking as the pearl seemed to extend up into my throat.

Myra had joined me in my pacing. For a few minutes I concentrated on not running into her. Finally I moved to the other side of the divan and paced there.

Suddenly Myra stopped pacing and looked at me. “When, Astra? When did you see your father and that woman?”

“Tonight…or…” I looked at the world clock on the wall and realized night had become day. “Last night actually, around midnight I think.”

Myra’s eyes narrowed and she stared at me so hard I thought she was going to close the few feet between us and whack me upside my head like she’d done when I was a smaller version of my current pain-in-the-ass self and I’d done something to piss her off.

But then she smiled and it was like the sun coming out from behind a huge black cloud. “It wasn’t him, child.”

“What? How do you know?”

The smile widened and for a beat it looked like she would do a happy dance. “He was before the council at that time, with me in fact.”

“No shit?”

“No frunkin’ shit, Astra!”

I laughed then. “Oh thank the Big Guy. Oh hallelujah!” But then I realized that gave me a new problem.

Several in fact.

I frowned at my angel. “Then who was I looking at in my father’s house?”

Myra’s face returned to its earlier angry appearance. “I think I just figured out who the dark angel is.”

Then she just…disappeared.

“Shit! Are you frunkin’ kidding me?” I screamed to the empty room. “Arrrrgggghhhh! Come back here and tell me! Damnable angel!”

* * * * *

A couple of hours later I was sitting on my divan, staring into space and wishing I could sleep. My mind wouldn’t let go of everything enough to let me drop off.

I’d given up sleeping an hour previous and was sipping another giant mug of hot coffee. I felt the air change but didn’t have the energy to turn and look at him.

I assumed it was Dialle or Emo. I said nothing and continued to stare into space. I was too tired to start a conversation and I wasn’t in the mood for entertaining.

Imagine my surprise when Enoch spoke. “Astra? Child, what’s happened? You look as if you’ve entered a catatonic state.”

I blinked and slowly turned my head. He was bending toward me and his gorgeous olive face was inches from my own. He smelled like rosewood and candle wax. It was a very familiar scent but my sluggish mind couldn’t grasp why at that moment.

I blinked at him again and took another sip of my coffee. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

He frowned slightly. “Astra?”

“What do you want, Enoch?”

“Right at this moment I want your attention.” He no longer sounded concerned. Anger had replaced that gentle emotion.

I was feeling a little angry myself. I turned to him with hard eyes and a clenched jaw. “You have it.”

He stared hard at me for a moment and then sighed. “I realize this is hard for you, Astra…”

“Do you?” That damnable pearl was back and it had grown. A lot.

He narrowed those chocolate eyes at me and then sat beside me on the divan. I figured it was his way of making me feel less threatened. It probably would have worked had I felt threatened by him. But at that point in the game, what I was feeling was much more violent and retributive.

“I need your report.” Apparently he’d decided he wasn’t going to be able to make me feel better so he might as well get what he wanted from me.

My jaw was beginning to hurt from being clenched. I turned away from him and tried to relax my face into something less aggressive. I have a feeling the result was less than what I’d hoped. “My report is this. You’re spying on the wrong angel. My father is not your dark angel.” I turned back to him. “But I’m going to find out who is and when I do that evil creature will pay dearly for his antics.”

Enoch stared at me with no change in expression. “What antics?”

Well. I certainly hadn’t expected that question. I blinked. Then I decided I might as well tell him what I’d seen and why I knew it had been false.

“You wanted my report, well this is my report. I went to my father’s house and skulked around like a third-class thief and I did see someone who looked a lot like my father plotting to kill King Dialle with an evil bitch who looked a lot like my mother and then I ran away like a coward thinking my father had fallen hard. But you know what? It wasn’t my father and now I’m going to find out who it was.”

Enoch’s dark, handsome face looked perplexed. “What do you mean you saw your father but it wasn’t your father. If it looked just like your father it had to be your father.”

I shook my head and stood up. Adrenaline had done what caffeine hadn’t quite managed.

I was back.

I leaned toward him and wagged an unimpressively short finger in his face. “Just like I must have been the one to kill a target demon the other day even though I was somewhere else at the time and had no knowledge of the event?”

His frown deepened. “Astra, I think you need some rest. You’re not making any sense.”

I threw my hands up in the air triumphantly. “Of course I’m not! And do you know why? Because none of this makes any damned sense, that’s why!”

I started toward the door, intending to leave, when I saw his hand reaching for my shoulder out of the corner of my eye and I panicked. Before he could touch me and possibly shift me away I turned and jabbed his hand with a power jolt.

He yanked the hand off my shoulder with a startled yelp. The room suddenly erupted with a violent wind that yanked pictures off the walls and blew pillows off the divan. I realized his wings had unfolded and were whipping violently around him. He’d also grown a couple of feet.

Oh-oh.

I was dodging flying debris and trying to stay clear of those dangerously whipping wings and was seriously considering trying to shift out of the room when Enoch’s head jerked around to a spot beyond my right shoulder and then he disappeared with a pop.

I was so surprised by his sudden disappearance that I almost didn’t notice Prince Dialle’s arrival.

He grabbed me from behind and yanked me hard up against his long, lean body. My body immediately reacted as his hot mouth found my neck and he nibbled gently there. “Hello, lovely Tweener.”

If I wasn’t already so discombobulated by my near-death experience with Enoch I would have just dragged him to the ground and raped him. I was pretty sick of waiting for this particular yummy devil. But, alas, my life was hell and I didn’t have time to play.

I turned in his arms and placed both hands on his chest to hold him away. “Has your father returned to Court?”

He grabbed my butt with both hands and pulled me toward his rigid lower regions. I gasped as he ground himself into me. “To Hades with my father.”

I laughed. “He’s been there, done that.”

He grinned. “Yes but he needs a refresher I think. He’s really starting to get on my last nerve.”

“Does that mean he’s back?”

Dialle pulled my hair off my neck and ran a finger up the back of my neck. My knees wobbled. I was pretty sure I could hear them banging together. “Stop that! I need to know.”

He wrapped the length of my hair in his fist and yanked my head back, just on the edge of roughness. I gasped in shock and pleasure and his dark head lowered to my slightly parted lips. Just before his lips claimed mine he said, “No. He’s still imprisoned. My people couldn’t release him. I came to get you so you could help.”

Then his lips claimed mine and we moved into the place without sound or movement, where the only clear sensation was touch and we stayed there a very long time, our lips melded beautifully together and my whole body tingling in fevered response.

When I thought I might actually explode with lust, we finally emerged into reality again and Dialle pulled his lips reluctantly from mine. He leaned toward my ear, still holding my hair in his fist. “I am done waiting, Astra. When my father has been released you and I are going to consummate this lust. Or I will die.”

I tried to shake my head but he tightened his hold on my hair. “Yes. We are.” Then he let go of my hair, grabbed my hand and turned away. “Come.”

“Woof!”

He snickered. “Good doggie.”

I figured this was
not
a good time to tell him my father needed me too before I could play so I bit my lip and let myself be dragged along. See, I can be diplomatic if I need to.

Sometimes.

King Dialle the First was looking especially spry and yummy but also exceedingly pissed off. He stood within a clear box that wasn’t much larger than he was with his lean, muscular arms crossed over his taut golden pecs and glared at the collection of royals and guards standing helplessly outside his prison.

As we approached he sneered at me. “What have you brought this insignificant little bitch for? Are you planning to screw her while I watch? It would be a fitting conclusion to this ridiculous turn of events.”

I felt Dialle stiffen beside me. “I warn you, Father, I won’t tolerate much more of your abuse. I’ll leave you to rot in this prison.”

Dialle’s response was to throw a jolt of power in his son’s direction. But unfortunately for him the power jolt was simply absorbed into the prison walls and the prison compressed noticeably until it barely cleared his elbows.

Dialle grinned. “If you don’t learn to control your temper, old man you will soon be smashed between those walls like a twitterfly on display.”

The king’s response was to curl his royal lip unpleasantly.

I tugged my hand from Dialle’s and walked over to the prison. Placing my hands on it I felt along its walls with my power for a weak spot. There were none. The prison appeared to be flawless and impenetrable.

Dialle joined me, studiously ignoring the glaring countenance of his father just inches from us. “Do you think you can open it?”

I sent out a testing wave of power and smoothed it over the entire surface of the prison, walking around the clear cube to encompass the entire thing. “This is amazing.”

Dialle came around to join me on the other side. “What?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this. This prison is built from exactly equal parts dark and light magic. And both sides of power are uncommonly powerful. The only way it can be removed is to reapply the same magic, at the same power levels, in the exact same amounts as when it was built.”

Dialle frowned. “So what are you telling me?”

I smiled at the nearly purple devil in the glass cage. “I’m telling you that your father is most likely going to know soon what a twitterfly feels like.”

Dialle saw his father gearing up for another tantrum and said, “Old man, unless you have a desire to be squashed, you’d better hold your temper.”

I turned to Dialle and said, “Remember when I told you I’d get even when the time was right?”

He grinned. “I do recall that yes.”

I smiled my most evil smile and turned back to the king. Leaning close to the cage I motioned him closer with a finger.

Curiosity and the realization that I might hold his fate in my very small hands got the best of him and he complied. I whispered in his ear, using my power as a shield to ensure that no one else could hear what I said.

The reaction was immediate. He turned deep red and tried to grab me through the prison walls but his hands smacked painfully against the unyielding surface. He screamed his rage, causing everyone in the room except Dialle and me to step back and look worried. Then he raised his hands to zap me and realized he couldn’t and he screamed again.

I gave him a little finger wave and turned to walk out.

Dialle followed me out. “I think we’d better leave him in there for a while until he cools down.”

I nodded. “You don’t have a choice anyway. You need an angel and my mother to release him.”

He grabbed my arm. “Your parents put him in that prison?”

I shook my head, feeling lighter than I had in days. I now had proof that my father hadn’t been involved in imprisoning the king. “Nope. My mother and another angel, an extremely powerful one. I recognized her magic signature but not my father’s. But the light magic is too powerful to be anything but an angel of the highest throne.”