Devil Take Me (3 page)

“I have no use for such play.” Namtar grabbed Antonia’s wrist as she reached for the tie of his robe. His hand easily encircled the narrow bone and he fought against the urge to squeeze until the delicate tissue shattered. No matter that the mortal had started this game, it was his queen, the woman he had respected and served, the woman he would have died for, who showed him so little mercy.

“Then what of power? Do you have use for power, Namtar?” Antonia’s breath came faster and her nipples drew to tighter points. He released her wrist as if it had burned him. Damn both women and their taste for pain with their pleasure.

“I have all the power I desire.”

“More lies. Ereshkigal knows of your plans to bring her eldest son back from exile. You are searching for a new master, would unseat our glorious monarch and—”

“As always, you twist the truth to suit your own purposes, mortal.”

“And you hide behind your precious dignity, too full of—”

“Enough. I don’t care what has come before. Join us now, Namtar. Do what my consort would not, complete our triage of power and all will be forgiven.”

“Ereshkigal.” Her name was all that he could say. Surely she couldn’t mean what she said. It would be suicide to attempt a triage. The other rulers of the Underworld would send assassins by the hundreds. They’d all three be dead before they had a chance to come into that kind of power.

“You use my given name like a lover. You will join us then?”

“I will not. I will not seek my own destruction, nor yours.”

“You dare to defy me?” Ereshkigal asked, one eyebrow arching over eyes that grew bright with excitement.

So that was her game. If he wouldn’t accept her offer of power, she would force him to play the defiant slave, the lover who conquered his queen in a dance of flesh and violence that was entirely too close to forced mating for Namtar’s taste. He’d never forced a woman, never had the urge to take other than a willing lover to his bed. But even if that had been his particular kink, he knew what fate befell those men unlucky enough to play this game with Ereshkigal.

Most of them were now eunuchs. When the play was over, his queen couldn’t bear to think a man had dominated her so thoroughly, even if it had been at her own request. Torture and castration were the order of the day, followed by a service sentence to the death pit, the most wretched corner of their court and a place from which very few ever returned.

“He wouldn’t dare, my sister of the soul.” Antonia reached for the tie of his belt again. This time Namtar purposely let his power flare.

“Namtar, please, you’re hurting me.” Antonia moaned as she fell to her knees beside him, her face twisted with equal parts pain and anticipation, and tilted toward the bed to give the queen a clear view of her performance. Goddess, the woman was clever, and knew entirely too well how to give the diseased mind of their monarch exactly what she craved.

“Good, you deserved to be punished. Punish her, Namtar. I want her on her hands and knees on the stone with you at her back. Fuck her. I want you to tear her, bleed her for me.” Ereshkigal’s hand wandered between her own thighs as she spoke, her excitement palpable in the air.

“I will not,” Namtar said, backing toward the door of the chamber.

There was only one choice left to him if he refused his queen’s order. The law of their people was abundantly clear. Obedience or imprisonment. Unless, of course, one knew of a way to escape, of the proper words to free an immortal into the world above, into an Earth reality even more dangerous than the Underworld if you happened to be cursed as their race had been.

“Fuck her, Namtar. Fuck her or I’ll let her fuck you and you don’t want to see what my little Heart is capable of with the Iron of the Gods strapped between her thighs.” Ereshkigal hissed the words as she pointed one long, elegant finger to the wall where he himself had helped hang the Iron of the Gods.

The device, a fifteen inch replica of a man’s erect phallus, cast in iron, was studded with tiny razors that mutilated the inside of the body. Even for an immortal well versed in ways to handle physical pain, the agony was intense. Namtar had heard the screams coming from Ereshkigal’s room, had seen the haunted eyes of the men and women unlucky enough to be ravaged by the Iron of the Gods brutal penetration.

If he had needed any more encouragement to aid him in his decision, his Queen’s final threat would have been enough. Pain he could manage—but pain inflicted by a mortal he loathed at the bequest of the woman he had served for more years than even his long memory could recall—would be enough to break a part of his soul. He would not submit to that indignity, even if it meant his destruction. But most certainly not when there was a chance, however small, for him to survive among the mortals of the Earthly realm and claim the power he needed to bring a change of leadership to the Underworld’s dying court.

He had not lived this long, nor served the interests of his people so faithfully to see everything they had worked for destroyed.

“Om Hanurab, onh ka ma.”

“You wouldn’t dare! Antonia, stop him!”

“Kone a ma, om Hanu.” Namtar’s only regret as he chanted the ancient spell that lifted him from the darkness of the Underworld, was that he hadn’t made this decision sooner and spared the dark court the shame of the past century.

Even if a mortal had to lose her soul in the process, surely it was worth the continued glory of an ancient immortal race. He wouldn’t let his conscience get in the way any longer. Why allow so many to suffer and fade away into the stony sleep of the immortal un-waking life to spare the suffering of one human?

It was foolishness of epic proportions, and the one thing Namtar had never thought himself was a fool.

“My queen, I can’t. My hands go straight through him.” Antonia looked panicked, terror-stricken. Namtar hoped Ereshkigal brought back the demon Azrael to punish the bitch.

As his solid form evaporated into the mist of journeying, he made a vow to his people. He would no longer let obedience to monarch and tradition keep him from protecting those too weak to defend themselves. It was time to seize the destiny that had awaited him as a boy, before his mother, the first goddess of the mortal people, had perished in battle with one of the golden ones. He would ascend to the ultimate position of responsibility among his ancient Sumerian race or perish in the attempt. Now was the time to dream his own dream.

After so many years of servitude, he prayed to the Goddess of all he still knew how.

“God.” Tears threatened for the fiftieth time as she took in the twisted metal that was all that was left of her neighbor’s brand new, custom-designed garage door.

It was a complete wreck, but a strangely comforting sight all the same. Thank God she had veered a few feet to the right, or she might have done more than smash Carla’s garage door and crush the tail end of her Lexus Roadster. She might have actually hurt someone, maybe even killed her neighbor or her soon-to-be-ex fiancé. The knowledge would have been enough to make her physically ill if she’d had anything in her stomach.

“Another good reason not to eat,” she muttered to herself as she pulled her aging sedan into her garage. It felt strange to claim the entire space for herself, but Roger’s car had been taken into custody, impounded until Carla decided if she was going to press charges in a civil suit.

Not that her fiancé would have been able to drive his most treasured possession, anyway. The police on the scene had declared the radiator busted, as well as several other vital engine parts, judging from the various fluids leaking onto the ground. The cops seemed to relish getting down on the concrete and crawling under the ruined car to see the extent of the damage. Annie had watched and listened from her position in the back of the police car, unable to believe she was observing such normal behavior after what she had done.

She must have been in shock. Between the horrible knowledge that Roger had betrayed her and the adrenaline rocketing through her body, she was surprised she hadn’t completely lost consciousness. She had blacked out for a bit, and had trouble remembering what happened between the moment she crawled out of the wrecked car and when the police arrived. But by the time the wailing sirens made it into the Copper Head Condominium guest parking lot, Carla was in tears and Roger was looking at Annie as if she were a stranger.

Annie suspected she had lost her temper, and in a hell of a memorable fashion, but she couldn’t recall what she’d said. She’d been out of her mind, at the mercy of a potent cocktail of emotions. But no matter how crazed she’d been, the state of California had declined to press criminal charges. After hours of testimony and more than a little help from Roger, attorney extraordinaire, the powers that be had been convinced. Her loss of control was judged an accident brought on by the shock, not anything premeditated or performed with vicious intent.

It helped that she had been such a stellar citizen up until that point. She didn’t have so much as a parking ticket and Roger made sure the district attorney knew the dozens of people who would testify to her kind, generous and completely non-violent character. So, after only six or seven hours of interrogation, she’d been set free.

She was sure the evening’s outcome would have been very different, however, if she’d actually hurt anyone, maybe even killed someone. Annie was painfully aware she’d come close to losing a lot more than her fiancé and her dreams for a happy future. She’d come perilously near to losing her job, her freedom, her moral integrity and the ability to claim a clean criminal record.

“Ohmygod,” she yelped, shocked from her thoughts by the violent buzzing of the cell phone in the drink holder at her elbow.

The sound violated the utter stillness of the dark garage, making Annie wonder how long she’d been sitting there in her car, replaying the worst night of her life. The automatic garage door light had gone out, so it had to have been at least ten minutes.

She’d set the light to stay on that long herself, despite Roger’s complaints about wasting energy. Annie hated the dark, had hated it since she was a child and her great-aunt refused a terrified three-year-old’s request for a nightlight. She had feared getting caught in the pitch-black garage while she was unloading groceries enough to stand up to Roger, and take over full payment of the electric bill.

“Hello?” Annie answered the phone as she turned on the overhead light in the car, not wanting to sit a second longer in the blackness if she could help it.

“Where the fuck are you, Ann?” Roger’s voice seethed out of the earpiece, quiet and controlled, but filled with an unmistakable rage. He only called her “Ann” when he was angry, and Annie could safely say she’d never heard her name sound more like a curse than it did at that very moment.

“I’m sorry, Roger.” Her voice shook with a mixture of fear and sorrow.

She still loved him, no matter what had happened, and was grateful that he’d helped her at the police station. But their relationship was over, he’d seen to that. She hadn’t felt the slightest pang of conscience when she’d slipped out the back door of the police station and out to her car, which Roger had driven to the station, alone. She didn’t want him coming home with her tonight, or any night for the foreseeable future. She would never be able to trust him again, and without trust she couldn’t imagine staying in their relationship.

Hell, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to imagine staying in any relationship ever again. If she drove cars into garage doors and nearly killed people when her heart was broken, it seemed best to keep said heart tightly under lock and key.

“Where. The fuck. Are you?”

“I’m at the house. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t—”

“You left? You fucking left without me after I spent the entire fucking night trying to keep your ass out of jail? I can’t believe this, Ann. What the fuck is wrong with you? Am I going to have to have you fucking committed?” The hateful note in his voice chilled something deep inside of Annie, hardening the core of self-preservation that was so often smothered by layers of insecurity.

“I’ll have your things boxed up by the end of the week, Roger. And I’ll be happy to cover your hotel expenses until you can find an apartment.” She was shocked she could sound so cold, like she was talking to a complete stranger, not the man she anticipated would be making love to her tonight, the only man she would ever make love to for the rest of her life.

“Don’t you dare, Annie. You’re still my fiancée. What you did didn’t change that. I still want to get married, I just think you might need help—”

“No, Roger. I don’t need help. And it’s what you did that changed things. I don’t want to be engaged to you anymore. I’ll give you the ring. I’m sure you can get your money back,” Annie said, swallowing past the lump in her throat as she realized she was going to have to slip her treasured ring from her finger.

But it wasn’t the ring itself she was so attached to, it was the promise it symbolized. With that promise broken, she couldn’t care less about keeping the stone Roger had repeatedly told her cost more than she made in three months of teaching. As if she cared about the price or the size of her diamond. It was just a small sign that Roger really didn’t know her at all, that she should never have said “yes” to his proposal in the first place.

“I don’t care about the money. Dammit, Annie—”

“Fine, if you don’t care about the money then you can pay for your own hotel room,” Annie snapped, anger surging within her again. A part of her realized she was going to have to stay angry to keep from falling to pieces.

“I’m not staying in a fucking hotel, I’m getting a cab home and we’re going to talk about this.”

“Don’t come here, Roger. I don’t want to talk, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“I’ll say when there’s nothing to talk about, Ann. Don’t you fucking forget it. I suggest you remember who you are, who we are, before I get there, or I may change my mind about helping keep your fat ass out of trouble.”

The line went dead after that. Roger had hung up. He was probably on his way to the condo right now.

Annie’s stomach heaved in protest, and a cold sweat broke out on her lip. She had about two seconds to throw open the car door before she began to dry heave onto the garage floor.

“Fuck,” she half cried, half gagged as her stomach spasmed but nothing spilled from her lips. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She sobbed the word again and again, Roger’s favorite curse feeling strangely empowering as it burst forth from some primal place inside of her. At that moment, she couldn’t say exactly whom she was cursing. But whether it was Roger, herself, God, or a mixture of all three, she knew the emotion building within her was one of the truest things she’d felt in a long time.

She was fucking tired of being Annie the doormat, of meekly accepting her rotten luck, her lousy lot, of sucking it up and putting her best foot forward day after day after day. She was sick of blaming herself for everything that went wrong, for taking the responsibility for things that were truly beyond her control. That was ending, right now. That Annie was dead, never to raise her meek, curly, black-haired head again.

“Screw you,” she whispered, swiping the back of her trembling hand across her mouth and coming to stand on wobbly legs. She slammed the car door shut behind her, suddenly not at all concerned about the dark. From now on, Annie Theophilus was going to be tougher, scarier than anything loose in the night.

Screw them, screw them all. Screw that clown car for taking her parents, screw her great-aunt for treating her like a dirty inconvenience, screw Roger for not loving her enough, and screw herself for being enough of a wimp to take it. And most importantly, screw her luck, her damned fucking bad luck she most certainly had never deserved. She didn’t believe in reincarnation and she had done nothing in her sad little life to deserve such a blighted, cursed, loveless existence. So if that’s all that God/The Great Spirit/The Universe thought she was worth, than he/she/it could screw off too. Forever.

“Screw you!” Annie screamed, her hysterical sob bouncing off the walls of the garage and echoing out into the condo complex, triggering a round of barking from the dog three doors down.

But who cared? She didn’t. Dogs were against HOA regulations, but screams of outrage, as far as she knew, weren’t expressly addressed in the Copper Head Condominiums Charter.

“Screw me?” A deep, resonant voice suddenly sounded from one of the darkened corners of the garage. Annie gasped with surprise and something else she couldn’t quite identify.

“Were you speaking to me?” it asked again. The velvety voice reached out into the night, caressing things deep inside of her no mere voice should be able to touch.

In spite of the fear rising within her, her body responded in ways that could never be attributed to anxiety. Anxiety had never made her nipples tighten, rubbing erotically against the thin cotton of her lavender T-shirt. Tension had never made her belly ache low and deep inside her, in a place that could never be simple hunger. And fear most certainly had never triggered a rush of wetness between her thighs, or a throbbing in her core that demanded to be penetrated, ravished. Satisfied.

“Who’s there?” Annie turned toward the stranger in her garage with an odd peacefulness. Whether it was the deep-seated, private rage she had just recognized inside of herself, or something entirely different, she was shocked to find fear subsiding as she confronted the incredibly large and imposing shadow.

“I’ve had many names,” the man said, his voice soft and comforting, as if he were talking to a frightened child.

Annie felt a burst of hysterical laughter threaten as she wondered if even the man who had broken into her garage thought she was out of her mind. Maybe she was, maybe Roger was right and she did deserve to be committed, but dammit if she’d go quietly. The fighting spirit she had suppressed for so long had surged to the surface, and it wasn’t about to meekly submit to anyone else’s idea of what was good, or right, or sane.

“Stop right there,” Annie ordered, holding up one small hand, realizing as she did how utterly useless any kind of physical protest would be against the man slowly approaching through the shadows of the darkened garage.

He was enormous, at least a foot taller than her own five three, with shoulders wider than any she had ever seen. If someone had told her shoulders like that on a real man were possible she would have called them a liar. Surely such rampant masculinity, such undeniable physical strength was nearly extinct in this age of desk jobs and rush hours. What kind of job must this man have, what kind of person must he be that his raw physical power would dwarf even the buffest body builders down at Venice beach?

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, once again in that soothing voice that slid silkily down her spine and pooled between her legs, knotting things low in her body.

“Why don’t I believe you?” Annie’s voice sounded breathy, aroused, even to her own ears.

What was wrong with her? Even at the beginning of her relationship with Roger, when she’d been filled with sexual curiosity, dying to know what it would feel like to satisfy the yearning that rose inside her every time they kissed, she hadn’t felt like this. She’d never felt like this, never been consumed with such instant, powerful attraction. Especially for a complete stranger whose face she couldn’t see clearly, who had broken into her home, and whose intentions were no doubt less than honorable.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”