The Seer's Lover (The Seven Archangels Series) (21 page)

Leaning in close, she spoke into his ear. “Do you want me to make it stop? Tell us where the artifacts are.”

With vomit still streaming from his mouth, Lucas stared right into her eyes. “Eat shit and die, demon.”

On him in a flash, she choked the life out of him. The transitor rushed forward, whipped her off Lucas, and flung her hard into the nearest wall. “He’s no good to us dead…yet.” Nara slumped against him, but the moment he relinquished his hold, she was at Lucas’s side and
demon-strated
, showing her true demon form. Claws drawn, she ripped into Lucas’s arm and pulled back the flesh from his forearm and threw it against the wall.

Lucas screamed.

Abaddon and his demon wife, Ronwe, overtook Nara and dragged her from the room. Abaddon barked at the transitor
,
“Watch them!”

As soon as Nara was gone, Lucas inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. His pain vanished. There were no bacteria on him, his skin was intact except where the demon had ripped his forearm. He exhaled. The transitor stood with his arms folded leaning against the wall, eyes boring into Lucas.

“Thanks for saving my life. She’s a gem. Been dating long?” Lucas’s pulse was thready from pain and panic, but he needed to talk to his guy. He needed an ally. Badly.

The transitor said nothing and continued to simply stare at Lucas. He wore jeans and an ancient AC/DC t-shirt. His upper body rivaled Alejandro’s,and his head of long, jet-black hair was secured in a ponytail that hung down his back. His face was cold and unreadable, and the hollow circles of his eclipsed eyes never blinked.

Seconds of uncomfortable silence ticked by in Lucas's head.

Dude’s a whack job.

Unfolding his arms, the transitor sat down on the floor, stretching his legs out in front of him. His hands drummed idly on his pants legs with a practiced motion, then he cupped his head between interlaced fingers and leaned back against the wall. “What could
she
possibly see in you?” When he spoke to Lucas, it was more acidic than the other three demons put together, and that was saying something.

“Who?”

“
Calise
.”

The way he said her name chilled him and ruffled his male protective feathers. Lucas played dumb. “I…I don’t know anyone with that name.”

In a split second, the transitor was less than an inch from Lucas’s face, breathing hot, acrid fumes from his mouth as he spat, “Don’t lie to me,
seer
. I saw you together. At the restaurant, at the ferry. Don’t you realize the danger you put her in by giving her that necklace?”

Lucas stiffened. “What’s it to you?”

“Calise always has been, and always will be,
mine.
See for yourself.” The transitor touched the side of Lucas’s head.

Lucas had every memory of the transitor and Cali having sex tossed into his mind at once. She was panting and saying, “I love you, Shane.” She was rolling over naked saying, “Of course we’ll be together forever, silly.” Image after image, thought after thought, graphic sex scene after graphic sex scene.

Lucas was rocking back and forth. “Stop! You’re lying! Stop!”

He touched Lucas’s head again and the images abated. “Stay away from her, or I’ll kill you myself, whether they’ve found your damned artifacts or not.” He walked back to his corner of the room.

“Funny she never mentioned you,
Shane.
” Lucas pulled the name from the implanted memories. “There’s something about you…” Lucas strained to recall what had just been withdrawn from his mind. He shut his eyes and altered his perception of the rooms in Cali’s memories. Something was different about the transitor then. Plus, she was younger in Shane’s memories than she was now.

His eyes slowly opened and he smiled wide. “You were an angel in those memories. You’ve fallen.”

Shane was on him, punched him in the jaw, and then was back in his corner before Lucas could say “transitor
.”

“Shut the fuck up, seer,” he said, panting.

This might work
. Lucas spit out some blood from the pounding blow to this jaw. “Of course she loved you,
when you were an angel.
Do you really think she’d love you now? Like this?” He looked him up and down. “She could never love you now; you don’t even love God anymore, do you? You’ve probably forgotten how to love altogether.”

Shane sprang on him and matched his former left hook with a right.

Although his head throbbed from the blows, he continued. “Real fair. Let me go, and I’ll fight you like a man.”

Shane snapped his fingers, and Lucas was free. All at once, Shane was on him, beating the hell out of him. Then Lucas found his necklace. In a flash, Alejandro and Anna appeared in the room, holding hands.

Shane jumped back as the door sprang open and Abaddon, Ronwe, and Nara entered.

“What the—” Abaddon addressed Alejandro and Anna.

Alejandro took one step to Carmen and touched her on the shoulder. Her head jerked up, her eyes wide and rightfully terrified. The rope tying her to the chair dissolved.

Flashes of light exploded as the fight broke out fast and violent. Nara leapt toward Alejandro, Abaddon dove for Carmen, and Ronwe went for Lucas. Shane and Anna kept back.

For a fleeting moment, Lucas thought better of hitting a woman until he saw that Ronwe was about to rip a chunk out of his neck with her teeth. He jerked to the side, and she connected with his shoulder, sinking her teeth into his flesh. She jumped on top on him, chewing a piece of his deltoid with gusto.

He and Carmen were no match for the demons in the shape they were in, and Alejandro was busy with Nara. What he did next, just happened. He acted on instinct to save his own life.

Lucas ripped off his necklace with his uninjured arm and smashed the glass pendant on the ground next to him. Clutching the piece of the cross in his hand, he slammed the heel of his hand into Ronwe’s nose just as she was about to bite down on his face. He shoved the bit of cross into the demon’s mouth. Her eyes became wild. As she convulsed and frothed at the mouth, Lucas slid back on his hands to get away from her.

Carmen held something small against Abaddon’s chest. It seemed as though the two of them were stuck together, and Abaddon’s eyes were rolled back in his head. Alejandro overpowered Nara with ease and held her fast with his arm squeezed around her neck. When the angel looked to Lucas and Carmen, he stopped fighting, released Nara, and stepped toward Ronwe and Abaddon.

Ronwe fell backwards, still convulsing violently. Abaddon—unaware of what was going on—had his chest pressed hard to Carmen’s hand with only the whites of his eyes showing. Ronwe stopped moving altogether.

Nara screamed and ran to her Ronwe, “Mom, no!” The demon’s head rolled to the side, and the piece of the cross fell out of her mouth, still smoking. Nara looked at Lucas, death in her eyes. “
You…
You’ll pay for this, seer.”

“Whoa,” Lucas heard Shane say, just in time to see Abaddon rising off the ground, his black aura growing dimmer. His bald head thrust backwards and his body rigid. His arms, palms upwards, were thrust out perpendicular to his body. Carmen rose a little off the ground with him. Nara snapped around to face her father who was
ascending.

Carmen muttered a prayer, low and reverent.

Nara went to her father and started punching him in the shoulder. “Don’t you dare leave me and go back to
Him.
” Her voice became low and booming, resonating off every wall as if they were in a cave.

Him
. God. Whatever Carmen held offered the demon precious redemption, and he was taking it.

Nara assumed her true and hideous demon form once again and hissed as she expanded to be over six feet tall. Lucas had heard stories, but seeing her
demon-strate
a second time was no less terrifying than the first time
.
Lucas’s father had told him tales of how a demon would reveal their true forms in times of crisis to get what they wanted. Lucas prepared to strike. A semblance of a shield formed around Abaddon as his aura continued to fade, until Nara’s sinister voice crackled at a thunderous level, “Abaddon, your wife is dead. Come back to avenge her death. Ronwe is dead!” She tried to bat Carmen away from her father, but she, too, was being held in some protective shield.

Abaddon stirred. His black pupils rolled back into sight. His eyes landed on Ronwe, and he let out a cry of despair and longing. With what appeared to Lucas to take every ounce of his strength, Abaddon ripped Carmen’s hand off his chest and threw her across the room. Carmen landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.

Abaddon fell into Nara’s waiting arms, and the two of them vanished. Lucas looked around him. Ronwe’s body turned to dust. Carmen wept. The transitor was gone. Alejandro held Anna whose face was buried in his chest. Lucas needed to get to Cali. To warn her.

Now.

Chapter 17

Irrational. Hysterical. And needing to unleash her wrath. On someone.

Poor Shane
.

Her mother murdered by a filthy seer. Her father reduced to a worthless shell of his former self who might never recover. Worst of all, Shane had stood by and watched as everything unfolded.

Shane. Who could have prevented this.

But she needed time to extract her revenge. So after they flew back to the States and set Abaddon up with twenty-four hour care at one of their mansions, Nara resolved, for the time being, to take her father’s place in the family and run their empire until—or if—he recovered. She thumbed through his reports: a demon drug dealer trying to defect, a rogue demon defaulting on a debt, and reports of compassion from a demon running an angel orphanage in Russia.

“Kill the first two, and I’ll deal with the third one in person.”

“Of course, Miss Ambassador.” The two underlings retreated in haste from her father’s ornate office.

****

Shane never asked where they were going or why as they boarded the plane to Russia. She needed to continue her father’s work and punish Shane for not coming to her aid in Costa Rica. It was time to beat her name, and her name only, into his thick head. Her demon instincts and years of training in the family’s businesses focused her on the task.

Two downers slipped into Shane’s beverage worked well to make him complacent as their driver took them to her father’s orphanage, and she read over the file on the demon that needed to be reprimanded. She was paying back a two-year debt by managing one of the many Russian orphanages he controlled. Abaddon had expensed this demon’s tuition for law school, and she was one of their top criminal lawyers, with a ninety-eight percent success rate in freeing demons on technicalities.

The complaint read, “Too easy on the children! I’ve caught her holding them, coddling them, and once even wrapping one in an extra blanket. I’m sure she is slipping them extra food as she has asked for her rations to be increased.” The report was made by the demon who delivered supplies to the orphanage three times per week.

Completely unacceptable. Unless it’s Shane’s baby…

These babies, all of them angels, were to be stunted physically, emotionally, and psychologically. They “fell” in adulthood to transitors without any effort from demons. Many even committed suicide, which sent them right to the pit. This system had worked nearly perfectly in the last century and catapulted Nara’s family to heights of respect and servitude from other demons.

When Nara flipped to this lawyer’s family history, Shane began to stir.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere you’ll never forget,” she said, closing her paperwork.

The black, ten foot gate surrounding the orphanage was fortified with electricity to keep the older children from trying to escape. It opened automatically as the limo slid past it. Nara smiled seeing the abysmal disarray and debris that littered the winding path. At least the new manager wasn’t trying to clean up the place. The dead grass was strewn with broken glass and old newspapers. The trees were barren as eternal winter painted the forlorn landscape. Dirty white bricks covered the main house. Bars covered most of the windows sealing up the prison. Faint golden orbs dotted the windows watching their arrival.

Inside, the place was dimly lit. Nara’s designer heels clacked their way over the cracked linoleum that was patterned in a diamond brown and gold repeat. Her shoes and impeccably taylored suit provided the only elegance. She rapped on the manager’s office and attached living quarters only to be met with silence. The nursery was housed in the basement by the kitchen and Nara was pleased that the infants’ continuous crying wouldn’t be a distraction to her while she conducted her business.

Finally, the demon emerged from the office with a gust of warmth and quickly shut the door to the building’s only heated area. She was tall to the point of gangly with slender boyish hips. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose knot and she wore black leggings, fur-lined boots and a wool sweater. She emitted a thick demonic air of superiority that needed to be squashed.

“What?” she asked with a glint of power that lit her glowing scarlet eyes.

She extended her hand to the woman. “Hello. I’m Nara, Abaddon’s daughter. He is currently…working elsewhere…and sent me to assist you in any way I can. Liza, is it?” She smiled coolly.

The woman balked and appeared instantly sheepish at the mention of Abaddon’s name and looked down at the floor. “Everything is fine here. He needn’t have troubled himself or your great family by sending someone all the way here.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” Nara lightly touched the woman’s arm and saw that she had been slipping extra food to the children and holding the infants after their requisite feedings were complete. “Oh, I see we have some work to do here, together, to change your compassionate mindset.”

The women shook her head. “No, I—”

“Shut up,” Nara ordered.

The limo driver appeared in the doorway, with Shane’s slumped form over one of his massive shoulders. “What should I do with the transitor and your luggage?” he asked.

“Why is he unconscious?”

“He was getting mouthy. Sorry, Miss Ambassador.”