Hell's Phoenix (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

Zen and Amos arrived at a safe house no one outside of those that traveled with them knew about.

“He’s got her.” Moisture welled in Amos’s eyes.

“I know.” Zen focused on the man-child, noting the boy’s distress. “She was headed there today anyway. This changes nothing.”

“It changes everything!” Like a tiny crack in a dam suddenly giving free, a destructive force he was unable to contain, tears raced down his cheeks. “Uncle Eli was never in my visions. She never went like that.” His voice grew hoarse and labored. “She and Alessa went together. Always together in my visions.” He hugged himself with his arms and rocked from side-to-side. “No…no…no….”

Zen touched Amos’s forehead and zapped him with a sleep spell. He laid the boy on the sofa. The child’s visions had never been wrong. Not once since he’d met him. What’d that imply? What could have gone wrong?

Angel Locks clamped the home tight from the inside. It’d keep angels out
and
angels in. Amos wouldn’t be going anywhere until Zen wanted him out. Which brought to mind, how had Elias entered the other home when Angel Locks were at every entrance?

He’d tangled with Elias before and almost died from the altercation. He didn’t like knowing Elias had his grimy hands on Madison. But he hoped Elias retrieved her for Micah and for no other purpose.

He tried to return to Madison’s location, but bounced off what had to be a demonic spell of Elias’s making. Zen attacked it with his own magic, but it took another ten minutes before he diffused the power. He returned to a bevy of panic.

“Zen, she’s gone!” Zoe rushed him. He pushed her aside and located Georgie. She stood with James and Gage across the room, the three of them deep in talk.

“How did
he
get in here?” James towered over Zen, but he ignored the man.

“How can we help her?” Gage asked.

“We wait for her command,” Alessa said. “Didn’t you all hear her comment in your head as she left?”

Zen gripped Georgie’s arm and turned her to face him. “Amos says he didn’t see her going to Hell this way. Tell me what you saw and say it fast.”

“That wasn’t the way I saw either.”

“How does it alter things?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I need something very personal of hers to try and get a new vision.”

“Be right back.” Zen walked out of the room with Petra on his heels.

“Where’s Amos?”

“Safe house thirteen.” He thrust Madison’s bedroom door open and spied what he wanted on her bedside table. He walked across the room and picked up the blade Nix had given her for her thirtieth birthday.

“I’ll meet you there,” Petra said.

“Petra?”

She halted at the edge of the portal she’d drawn up. “Yes?”

“He was distraught. I put him to sleep. He won’t wake until I return.”

“I just need to be with him, do what Madison asked me to do, and protect him.”

He nodded, as she stepped into the portal and vanished. Zen retraced his steps, not wanting to jump to conclusions until he had more answers.

“Here.” He offered the blade to Georgie.

Everyone present went silent.

Georgie must have recognized the knife because she grinned at Zen. “Perfect.” Gripping the hilt between both hands, she said, “You realize I might get nothing.”

“Try.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The dead drop snatched Madison’s stomach. The stench hit her second, and putrid just didn’t cut it. Brimstone and sulfur clogged her nostrils with heavy smoke. Screams bombarded her from every direction, along with wild, wicked laughter.

Elias’s too-familiar hand slid all over her belly and his lips brushed against her ear and neck. Never had she wanted to crawl out of her skin as much as she did when he touched her.

They landed on solid footing and he released her. His smug and triumphant gaze converged with hers before dizziness drove her to her hands and knees.

Score one for the demon, getting you into Hell ahead of schedule
. Pandora giggled. Madison ignored her and concentrated on getting her equilibrium back.

Elias palmed the back of her head. “I’ve fantasized about you on your knees.”

He chuckled at his perverted joke. On sensory overload—too many sounds, too strong a smell and the descent too swift—Madison fought back nausea.

“Still no sense of humor?”

None
, Pandora confirmed.

Madison vomited. Elias tripped backward from the spew. Too bad she didn’t spatter his expensive shoes. She could sense him watching her and a moment later, he stepped to her side and fiddled with her hair. His fingers rummaged through the locks. Lifting a swath of it, he released strands as Madison’s world slowly came back into focus.

“I like the long hair,” he said, his voice husky with appreciation. “A much better look than the shoulder-length bob you kept while playing Micah’s arm-candy.”

Feeling a little more grounded, she knocked his hand aside. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Learned a new vocabulary. Impressive.” Tangling his fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back. “You’re too thin, though. I preferred you when you were more voluptuous.”

“I’m heartbroken.”

“I could sink my teeth into breaking that attitude.”

I could sink my teeth into you
. Madison slapped mental duct tape over Pandora’s mouth.

“That’s Micah’s challenge.”

“Lucky bastard.” He released her with a smirk. “Maybe Micah’s right about you yet.”

Right about what? But she didn’t ask. She glared up at him, but didn’t feel stable enough to get off her hands and knees. A slight transfer of her weight to even out her balance and she winced when her hand struck a sharp, protruding object.

Elias watched her with his astute gray eyes as Madison shifted again and came in contact with another jagged item…and a rounded one. She scanned the floor as she sat back on her heels.

Skulls and bones besieged the terrain. Some broken, some whole, and poking up from the floor were femurs, fingers, toes, ball sockets, skulls, and more skulls.

Shooting a quick glance around her, the landscape offered a wasteland of bleached whiteness. She vaulted to her feet and stumbled over a skull. Elias laughed, offering no aid, as she staggered over bones. The crunching and snapping beneath her feet crackled against her spine in a horrifying cringe.

“Welcome to the Field of Bones, princess.” Madison winced as he crushed a skull beneath his foot. “That’s a common sound, along with the screams and suffering. You’re one of the lucky few.”

Her gaze shot to him. Lucky? Did he seriously believe she felt lucky about any of what Micah planned?

“You get to dole out the punishment, not join them.”

“I’d rather join them.”

“You’re ungrateful. You’ve been handed the world and you scoff at it.”

She hadn’t asked for the world, just a normal life.

“Micah should’ve raised you in Hell, forced you to submit. Your doggedness will be the downfall of us all. And when Hell falls, regardless of your good intentions, you and Amos will crash right along with us.”

Her focus jerked to him. Her surprise must have shown because he gloated. “That’s right. Both of your lives are interwoven with ours. Go ahead and resist what you are. You’re damned either way.”

“You’re lying.”

“I wish, bitch. I so fucking wish.”

They glared at one another, neither looking away. Something about his unflinching stare convinced her of his sincerity. Uncomfortable with that statement, she shoved snark into her tone. “I’m a Queen, not a bitch. You’d be wise not to forget that.”

“So you are. And once we have that rebellion snatched out of you, I’ll give you the respect you deserve. Not a moment sooner. Until then, you’d be wise not to forget I’m a King and I outgun you here,
princess bitch
.”

Micah stepped out of thin air, Nix beside him. “My kitten has arrived home.”

He sounds crazy
. And she hated that pet name and wished she could stuff a kitten down his throat every time he used it.

“You should know I don’t have any long-term plans to remain.” Madison wouldn’t pretend she desired to be here, but maybe it would’ve been better to keep that to herself.

“You’ll change your mind.”

“As always, against my will.”

He smiled, a frightening affectation when it held the tinge of victory. “Your free will became mine the day you said ‘I do’ and covenanted with me. Your marriage wine had my blood in it, and you’ll recall I bit your lip to ingest yours.”

Madison blanched at the reminder and hope threatened to abscond with the revelation. Micah had planned it all. He’d handpicked her parents, made a hellish deal with her succubus mother, and Madison had entered into a covenant with him freely, if not blindly.

Micah hooked a thumb beneath his shirt and flipped out a crystal in the shape of a tree with leafless branches. “Your human soul.”

The missing half of her soul.
Zen was wrong
. Micah possessed her human half, while Zen held her demonic side.

“I want your demon spirit, kitten.” He kissed her, nothing sexual, just a touching of their lips, even if they remained compressed together too long for her comfort. She didn’t kiss back, but didn’t resist either.

“I just vomited.”

He grinned. “I don’t care.”

She wedged an arm between their bodies and shoved him back. “Why do you want the demon half of my soul?” Shouldn’t it be enough that he had the decent part of her?

“So I can own you fully, of course.”

“That will
never
happen.”

“We’ll see.” Micah wrapped an arm about her shoulders as Nix approached. She watched him. Being in his presence meant she was one step closer to succeeding with
her
plan and thwarting Micah. She hoped.

Nix captured her hand and interlaced their fingers. Madison tugged against the hold, but his grip tightened. “Don’t be that way, Mads.” He kissed her knuckles. “I have a surprise for you.”

She attempted to shift out of Micah’s embrace, but failed. Unless she wanted to create an altercation, she wouldn’t be going anywhere. “Come out of Hell with me, Nix.”

“No.” Nix stepped into their personal space. Micah palmed his nape in an intimate gesture. “Even if I wasn’t bound by our covenant, I like it here. With you joining us, we can be one big happy family.”

Only when Hell freezes over, she vowed.

Yes
!
A threesome with these two hotties
, Pandora contradicted.
All my fantasies fulfilled at once
!

Chapter Twenty-two

“What happened to the two demons?” Zen asked the others as he waited for Georgie to get one of her visions.

“When they realized the other demon wasn’t going to stick around and help them out, they took off.” Alessa delivered the news. “One host was already dead. The other, we tied up in the kitchen.”

“Cowards left their bodies so fast we didn’t even get to kill them.” James’s jaw ticked from clenching his teeth.

“The demon that took Madison was Micah’s brother, Elias. Be glad you’re alive because if you’d been his focus, you’d be dead before you knew he approached.” Zen wished Georgie would get something a little faster.

“Petra said as much.” Zoe chewed on her fingernail. Gage’s arm draped along her shoulder and he held her close, lending silent support.

Georgie shook her head and made a frustrated sound. “I’m getting nada, Zen. Nothing but blackness and”—she swallowed uneasily—“screams.”

Zen processed that, and came up empty-handed. “Have your visions ever been wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever known Amos’s visions to be wrong?” He hadn’t, but she’d known the child a little longer than him.

“No.”

Bothered by the fact that when it meant the most, Amos had suffered a false vision, Zen pinched the bridge of his nose. “Someone get Georgie something of Phoenix’s. I want to know what his future holds.”

Gage handed over Phoenix’s spray bottle that contained holy water instead of breath freshener. The object wasn’t in her possession twenty seconds when her brown eyes struck him with the weight of the world’s cries. “We should talk in private.”

“Georgie, this is no time for private conversation. Nix is like our son.”

Screw Phoenix! Ark of Heaven or not, Zen’s loyalties remained with Madison and Amos. And screw James Birmingham and his plea of family. Zen’s family was in danger and that preempted James’s. He didn’t allow James to finish his statement, but clutched the psychic’s elbow and teleported her to safe house thirteen.

Chapter Twenty-three

If not for Nix’s performance at the Sherlock bar, Madison would’ve believed he’d executed the best acting job ever. The look in his eyes said he believed that crap he spewed about being a happy family in Hell.
Dear God
…the very idea disturbed her!

“Tell you what, Micah, you release Nix back to earth, retract your covenant, and I’ll do
anything
you want.” She nearly stumbled over the word ‘anything’ because the idea of following through set her stomach to heaving in protest.

“Anything, Madison?”

She nodded, even though the confirmation left her recoiling.

“Even if I asked for an orgy between you and the other Kings?”

Madison swallowed hard. A quick peek at Nix verified he showed no emotion over Micah’s question.

Nix is worth anything. Nix is worth anything
. The repetition of the thought didn’t soothe her frazzled state of mind. She’d already planned to come to Hell to save him and Zen said he was more important than she, so that meant she would do anything for him.

She took a deep breath. She would do anything for Nix without Zen’s proclamation.

Her sights landed on Elias and a gloating smile tipped the edges of his lips. An orgy with that man would leave her cold and dead inside.

Hot and awesome is what it’ll leave me
.