Sealed in Sin (2 page)

Chapter Two

In the Void, the dark between time and space, gray and white shapes blurred past. My body was now used to the sensation. I no longer felt nauseated from the disturbance of equilibrium. But this sift lasted much longer than most, making me a tad queasy.

When the world righted, I stumbled, but Kat caught my arm. We stood on a city street at the mouth of an alley. Honking horns overlapped the murmur of people shuffling and talking on the streets around us. The energy hummed louder than it did in my hometown of New Orleans. The air was less humid and about ten degrees cooler as well. Usually, we did our demon-hunting training sessions in downtown New Orleans. Not today.

“We’re in New York, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” said Kat, stepping into the alley. “I’ve been scouting for the next level to test your Vessel skills. There’s something I need to take care of, so this is the perfect opportunity to step up your game.”

New York was Kat’s domain to protect as Dominus Daemonum along with another demon hunter I’d never met named Dorian. Their job, like all hunters, was to keep the demons in line. While demons could influence human will through their seductive powers, there were rules they couldn’t break. If they did, then a ruthless hunter showed up and sent them back to hell.

“Don’t you think we should let Jude know we’re training outside New Orleans, Kat?”

“Do I look like I have a death wish?” She arched a pretty brow. “Hell no, I’m not telling him. He’s insanely protective of you. But, you’ll never know the extent of your power unless it’s tested. Am I right?”

I laughed. I loved Kat. “Definitely.”

“Well, come on, then.”

I followed in silence. Several doors—back entrances to stores and shops—lined the alley. I winced at the rank odor of urine and rotting food coming from an open Dumpster with bloody butcher paper crumpled on top.

“Gross.” I held my breath.

“At the end,” said Kat, walking faster and stopping at the last door.

“Up until now, you’ve fought only lower demons.”

“Well, except for Danté,” I added. Neither one of us wanted to revisit my half-ass escape from the demon prince Danté. In the end, Jude had saved me. I inhaled a sharp breath.

“Right,” she agreed, “but he was a bit above your skill level at the time. I wouldn’t put you in a situation I didn’t think you couldn’t handle. I sense your power growing, though you’re still not fully awakened.”

Awakened, a term for Flamma coming into their full power. Of course, I still didn’t know what this truly meant, because no Vessel before me had ever reached this pinnacle of strength.

“How do you know I’m not already awakened?”

“Because you would’ve told me.”

“But Kat—” I blew out a frustrated breath. “How will
I
know?”

“Oh, you’ll know all right. It’s like falling in love. There’s no doubt about it.”

Falling in love… Jude. Geez, I had to get my head straight. I couldn’t go five minutes without wayward thoughts of my tall, dark, fine-ass demon-hunting man.

“Gen, are you listening to me? You’ve got a glazed look.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. This door leads into a strip club.”

“A what!”

“Come on. Where do you think demons hang out during the day? Applebee’s?”

“Point taken. So who’s our target in here?”

“He’s the owner. His name is Gorham. He’s a high demon, a duke of the underworld.”

I unzipped my jacket, readying myself to unsheathe daggers at will. “Like Dommiel?”

Dommiel, high demon of New Orleans, owned a wicked-dark club near Bourbon Street, complete with skulls-and-devils décor. Classy joint. I avoided it like the plague.

“Not quite. Dommiel is a bit lower in the hierarchy than Gorham. He’s more like an earl. Gorham is stronger.”

“So, I imagine a duke is one step in power beneath a prince.”

She nodded, a grave expression in her otherworldly eyes. From a distance, Kat was a statuesque blonde who only appeared out of the ordinary because of her striking beauty. Up close, one might surmise she was not wholly human. Pools of black swirled in her irises—residue of the demons she’d expelled.

In the past two weeks, I’d expelled several lower demons from their human hosts. It had been easy, natural even. I never felt the remains of evil attaching itself to my soul as it did to the demon hunters. Rather, I felt amplified, lifted every time. Jude and Kat kept the reasons of how and why one became a Dominus Daemonum to themselves.

The main difference between high and lower demons was that high demons didn’t need to possess humans in order to do damage on earth. They maintained a human form similar to their original appearance before the Fall. High demons had once been angels. Lower demons were twisted creatures, serving their lords and masters. I had no idea how they came into being, and I didn’t want to know. They were repulsive, malformed monsters with ghastly red eyes. Hence, they needed to possess human hosts to disguise their true form in order to walk around in the human world.

“Remember, Gen,” said Kat, focusing my attention on the job at hand, “Gorham is powerful. And, to be honest, it’s extremely difficult to expel high demons. However, if we trap him with the threat of expulsion, he may cooperate. If not, we’ll make him wish he had.”

“And why are we targeting him exactly? What has he done to break the rules?”

There were high demons all over the world, luring the sinful into their service. This was fair game in the battle between Light and Darkness. Humans chose which side dominated their souls. Free will. But when demons stepped over the line and cheated, forcing a human into captivity or service by unnatural means, demon hunters showed up on their doorstep.

“Gorham has created spawn to control innocent girls and pull them into his line of business. Worse than stripping, he’s using innocents in his underground brothel.”

“That’s horrible.” My Vessel Sense sparked in fury at the thought. “How? What kind of spawn?”

High demons had the ability to create life, which was always an abomination of some kind. As a matter of fact, the legendary dragon Saint George had destroyed was actually the spawn of a demon prince. Only high demons with great power had the ability to manifest evil into a living being.

“Gorham’s spawn is a mist of his essence, an entity spawn. It seeps into the one he wants, veiling her will, so he can control her.”

Entity spawn. Jude had been giving me history lessons of angels and demons every night. Great pillow talk. Considering we were still forbidden to do what our bodies urged us to do, he distracted me with fascinating, and disturbing, tales of the demonic world. I’d learned that there were three kinds of spawn. An entity spawn is non-sentient. The demon creating it can infect objects and even people with it. Like this asshole, Gorham. There were also furies—nasty, ugly beasts who were strong and deadly powerful. Stronger than titans even. Titans were huge—monsters from fairy tales. Their power lay in their behemoth size and physical strength. It was a titan that George so famously fought and received the title of dragon slayer. Only the most powerful of high demons can create a fury or a titan.

I nodded. “Okay, so we’re just dealing with an entity. And the spawn Gorham is using on these girls is sort of like a blood cast. Right?” I shivered. The demon prince Danté had used my blood to summon my soul to his lair in the underworld. The helplessness I’d felt under his control made me even more infuriated at Gorham, who was doing the same thing to innocent girls.

“Yes,” agreed Kat, “sort of, but worse. His entity smothers their will entirely. They become puppets for Gorham, but underneath it all, their souls will still feel the evil being done to them.”

“I’m ready,” I said, reaching for the door.

“Wait.” She grabbed my arm. “We need to be cautious. Like I said, Gorham is stronger than others you’ve encountered. Also, Bamal has to know what he’s doing, since this is his territory, which means he has the backing of the local prince.”

Bamal—high demon, one of the seven princes of the underworld—currently reigned over the territory of New York. He also happened to be the prince who’d sent assassins to kill me over the past few weeks, then sent demons to abduct me. We still had no idea why he’d reduced his attacks from kill-on-sight to kidnapping.

Kat let go of my arm and stepped in front. “I imagine there are a few lackey demons hanging about, but it’s early morning, so this is the perfect time to surprise him. Whatever lower demons he has around will most definitely be fused to their human hosts.”

I nodded. Lower demons often fused to their hosts when a wicked human invited the evil spirit to stay for a prolonged period. There was no freeing a human host fused with a lower demon. Both must be destroyed. Word to the wise: don’t fuse with demons.

She twisted the knob, but the door was locked. “Hold on to me.”

I gripped her arm. The image of sand and seashore filled my mind. Every Flamma had a signature when they used their power. Kat’s was a balmy beach. She cast a protective shield to keep Gorham and his men from sensing our presence, then sifted us to the other side of the door in a millisecond. My Vessel Sense enveloped me in its own protective shield, shimmering along my skin. When I’d first discovered this other sense, this gift of power, I’d had to focus intently and say the words and think of the safest of places—the memory of being safe in my mother’s arms when I was a little girl and she was alive. Now, I no longer needed to do any of that to cast illusion or call on my power for defense. I simply willed my VS to come forward, and it responded at once, as much a part of me as breathing.

We stood at the end of a long, dark hallway with no doors. I drew the daggers. Muffled music pumped from somewhere within. An oppressive aura hung in this place—heavy and somber. Kat and I slipped silently down the hall, peering around the corner. To the right sat a stage and a long bar, over which hung in glaring red lights
House of Hades
. Round tabletops and chairs wrapped around the stage. No one in sight. The music came from the left.

“Hades?” I whispered, rolling my eyes. “Gorham is god of the underworld?”

“He likes to think so.” She winked.

One thing I knew from experience—demons had ego in abundance. Fortunately, arrogance was an easy weakness to exploit.

Kat looked at me and nodded to the left. We walked through a curtain of hanging beads underneath a sign reading VIP and stepped into an open area. There were four rooms leading off a hexagonal waiting room. The doors were simple red velvet curtains. Above each door read a name in gold, jagged script—
Artemis
,
Aphrodite
,
Hecate
, and
Persephone
.

I tugged on Kat’s sleeve and held up four fingers, mouthing
four girls
to her. She nodded. The rooms were empty.
Where are the girls?

Kat stepped toward a closed door across the room. Again, locked. We sifted to the other side, landing at the top of winding stairs leading down into a basement. The music pumped louder. A deep, masculine laugh rumbled from below along with muffled conversation.

We crept down the stairwell, coming to another hallway. To the right were more doors with dead bolts on the outside. The girls. To the left, the music beat in a slow rhythm. We headed for our prey. Daggers ready, Kat gripped my arm and sifted us in, our backs against the entrance.

We stood in a room with red walls and white carpet. Five demons. Two lower. Their eyes glinted with supernatural luster, the telltale sign of a lower demon incapable of disguising this feature when they inhabited a human host. The other three men—two lounging on black leather sofas, one in a matching armchair—were definitely of the higher order. They exuded power in rippling waves much stronger than the two lackeys with glowing red eyes. In the center of the room, a topless girl wearing only a sheer white sarong swayed seductively to the music. Her brunette hair hung in a loose braid over one shoulder. She was younger than me, maybe eighteen. Seething anger coursed through my veins.

Assessing the greatest threat at once, I focused on the man in the leather chair. Gorham. Dark brown hair waved past his shoulders. Pale green eyes regarded us with interest, though he didn’t move from his lounging position, a glass of either whiskey or scotch in his hand. Bourbon for breakfast? What else would a demon have? He was gorgeous. This, above everything else, was what disturbed me most about high demons. They kept their beauty from before the Great Fall. On the outside anyway.

One of the lower demons popped up into fighting stance. The others stayed put. Glaring but alert. The girl continued to sway, running her hands along her body, completely oblivious.

“Hold, Macon,” said Gorham from his leather throne.

One of the other high demons on the sofa uncrossed his legs and stood, hands casually in his pants pockets. He had neatly cropped blond hair and ice-blue eyes. A skin-tight white shirt accentuated muscular, bronzed arms. He walked closer to Gorham’s chair. A protective position.

“I had not expected a visit from you,
Domina
.” Gorham practically purred his nickname for Kat. She appeared unfazed. These two had exchanged words before.

“You know why I’m here, Gorham.” Gorham’s gaze drifted to the half-naked stripper, still dancing in a trance. Kat took a step forward. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”

Gorham grinned, quite pleased with Kat’s declaration. “Come to me, Artemis,” he commanded in a low voice. He’d even renamed these girls after his freaking mythological fantasy. Bastard.

The girl sat on Gorham’s lap. Her eyes were cloudy gray—whites and all—proof of his possession. I felt a knuckle crack as I tightened my grip on a dagger. Gorham’s eyes moved to me, raking me with too much interest.

“And who do we have here, Domina? A little hunter in training?”

I knew my cast of illusion was fully in place, my VS tingling, but his intense observation put me on edge. He shouldn’t be able to see through the cast. Shouldn’t.

“I’m taking the girls,” Kat said with finality, “and you’ll all be punished.”