The Watcher (30 page)

It was
never
his!

“Michael killed him,” Damiel snarled. “Not this time. I want that chance again. A chance to be a father…and I want you to be its mother.”

The pain in my head throbbing, I struggled to get up, glancing around the room. There had to be a way out of here. Damiel’s hand gripped my arm and he lifted me up to my feet as though I were weightless.

“Did you hear me? You’re going to have my child.” His mouth turned into a crooked smile as he petted my forehead.

Across the room, a candle flickered. It had almost burned out. I pushed his hand away. “Giving birth to that…that monster killed me!”

“That was unfortunate. I don’t expect it to be easy, but medicine has advanced significantly over the last thousand years. You might even survive it. If you’re good.”

I don’t know why that last statement affected me so much, but I freaked out, screaming and pounding his chest with my fists, trying to get my fingers into his eyes. “You enthralled me, you bastard! I never wanted you!”

He swiftly grabbed both my hands in one of his. I scarcely saw him move. “Now, now, none of that. If you’re not good to me, I won’t be good to you.”

I froze, and my breath caught in my chest.

“Holding your breath won’t work either.” He threw me onto the bed, and my head hit the headboard with a sharp crack. I actually saw stars.

In spite of the pain, I scrambled to sit up, but he lunged on top of me and held me down with one strong arm as I tried to wriggle free. His body weight pinned the rest of me down, and his free hand reached for my face.

“Hold still,” he warned. I squirmed and resisted with all my might, for all the good it did me. He laughed, and when he touched my face the muscles in my arms and legs went limp. I struggled, concentrating with everything I had to move even one finger, but it was futile. Each one could have weighed a hundred pounds.

“That should do it,” he said, half to himself, and backed away.

The horror of what he planned to do with me started to set in and I screamed.

“No one can hear you.” His voice was an eerily calm contrast to mine. “I only did what I did because you wouldn’t hold still. Don’t make me silence you as well.”

I stopped yelling and refused to look at him.

Damiel sat beside me on the bed, taking my limp, frozen hand in his. “I only wanted you to look at me the way you’d look at him. Just once.”

A hard, bitter lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want this to be my first sexual experience. It was supposed to be special, with
Michael
(if that were even possible), not some crazy act of violence and revenge. What if I did get pregnant? Then what? Michael could never know about it. It was for the best that I’d broken things off. He couldn’t see me now, not like this.

Was that how I handled it when it happened before? Did I want to believe the child was Michael’s so much that I convinced both of us it was? Back then, it would have been a possibility. It would have destroyed Michael to know what Damiel had done to me. I must have lied to save him then, but it didn’t work. Instead, I took the secret to my grave, and Michael died thinking that birthing his offspring had killed me, that he had killed his own son, when all along it was Damiel’s.

Damiel spoke, pulling me out of my reverie. “I chose this body because I thought you might prefer someone closer to your own age. I think I chose well.”

“Fuck off!” I shouted. “I won’t have your offspring. I’ll abort. This is the twenty-first century!”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Impossible. First of all, do you think I couldn’t stop anyone who tried to kill my child? There’s nothing they could do in the womb to destroy it, not that wouldn’t destroy you first.”

A shudder ran through me. I had almost preferred my mind being taken over to this. At least I wouldn’t have to feel it as much. With luck, I’d never remember it.

“Now,” he said, “I can do this nicely or not so nicely. You decide.”

“Uh…nicely?”

“What are you going to give me in exchange, then?” He was touching the backs of my arms with his fingers, giving me shivers again. Even though I couldn’t move, I could feel everything—perhaps more so. I wished I could bite his fingers off.

I wanted to ask what the hell I could give him that he wasn’t already taking, but I refrained. “Your son?”

“That is inevitable. I mean other than that?”

His hands wandered over my chest now, cupping my breasts through my clothes. I tried to squirm, without luck. I had to resort to internal flinching instead. The same dark smoke that had filled the air around us earlier returned, along with the spinning sensation, and suddenly his touch was no longer repulsive. In fact, it felt good. But I was tired, as if my own energy, my will to fight, was being taken from me.

“Tell me how much you want me.”

I swallowed, afraid to say anything to encourage him. “Stop that,” I said.

“Stop what?” he asked, like a cat playing with a terrified bird.

“Making me feel this way.”

“Your choice.” With a quick movement, he lifted his hands away and the glamour of his energy subsided. All the fear and revulsion returned. Instead of boyish and handsome, he looked harsh and cruel. “It would have been easier for you the other way. I thought you’d want to enjoy your first time.”

“I might have if I were with someone
else
.” I put as much venom as I could into my voice. It was bad enough being forced to have sex with a demon, but actually
enjoying it
would be
too much to endure. Was that what he’d done to me before?

“Would you prefer my real form?” He laughed at that. Not a warm laugh—it was cold, fiendish.

I didn’t want to think about what his
real
form was, probably something black and slimy like his minions outside, or worse, Azazel. “Well, since you went to all the trouble of getting this one,” I said, hoping he wasn’t bluffing, that he hadn’t planned to show me his true form anyway. Maybe I couldn’t cope after all.

“Fair enough. But if you give me the least bit of trouble…”

He was touching me again and this time his hands were cold. Instead of shivers of pleasure, I shuddered with horror.

He had just unbuttoned my blouse when I heard a piercing, inhuman cry come from outside. Damiel cocked his head to listen.

“Well, well, it seems we have company,” he said with an expression of delight. “This pillow talk has been lovely, but it’s time to get down to business now.”

I strained to move my head, trying to see something, anything, in the darkness, hoping against hope that Michael didn’t try to come. Swiftly, Damiel undid my jeans and straddled me. I squirmed and resisted with all my might and one of my legs moved ever so slightly. It was a small improvement, but not enough.

“You’re getting some movement back,” he said darkly, like he might just immobilize me again.

One of the black-skinned minions came to the doorway, so tall he had to tilt his head. “There’s an intruder. We’ve taken care of it. He’s dead.”

Dead.
What if it was Michael and he’d been killed again? A new wave of terror ran through me. I couldn’t deal with that.

Damiel jumped off the bed. “Bring him to me!”

It couldn’t be Michael.
Please, not him. Anyone but him.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The body the two cloaked creatures dragged in lay slumped on the wood floor like a statue of defeat. His broken, immobile wings furled crookedly behind him, and his head lolled to the side. His dark, wavy hair was damp and matted with blood—a head wound. Though I’d tried to stop him from having to face Damiel, deep down I should have known Michael would come. It was his nature, and he was dead because of it.

Nothing mattered now. There was nothing Damiel could do to me that was worse than this. Not his gleeful laughter nor his gloating. Bile burned in my throat at the sight of Michael’s limp, lifeless body, a body that I had been so close to only a few hours earlier. Now his once-white singlet was tattered, covered in grime, his muscular form covered in claw marks, bloody scratches, and bites. It wasn’t a clean death. He’d been hurt first. A lot.

Tears stained my vision, blurring the room, so I didn’t see Damiel walk toward Michael’s body, but I could hear his footsteps and the dreadful thudding sound of flesh being hit.

“That’s for not letting me kill you again myself,” Damiel growled.

In that moment, the last vestige of hope locked itself away as the reality of my situation seeped in. No one else would come for me. Nobody knew I was here, which left me as good as dead. I didn’t have a plan for surviving this. My plans ended at trying to leave town. Now Michael was gone too, and all I had left were memories. I hadn’t deserved his love, but he gave it to me selflessly, despite the trouble it caused him, to the point of fighting to the death to try to save me.

It was up to me to get myself out of this alive and preferably not pregnant. All I had to do was outsmart Damiel and get past his minions.
But how?
There
had
to be a way.

Damiel turned back to me, a gleeful expression on his face, as though seeing Michael dead had excited him even more. I turned my face away to hide my tears. The heat and demand of his attention pressed upon me. I tried to think fast. Since I couldn’t move, all I had left to trick him with was my mind. But a fog returned to my thoughts.

“Look at me.”

“No!”

Roughly, he grabbed my face and turned it. Seeing my tears, he said mockingly, “Aw, you’re grieving him.”

This time, his kiss was hungry and repulsive. His hands grabbed me like I was meat, making my flesh crawl. It made me sick. How could I have gotten myself into this? Turning my face away, I gazed idly in Michael’s direction, grasping for any memory of him I could to comfort me.

With all his attention on me, Damiel was no longer paying attention to Michael’s body. Nobody had noticed that his wounds were healing or that there was a golden glow coming off his skin. I did. I held my breath, hoping against hope that Michael was still alive.

When his body first moved, I hardly believed it. But then he moved again. In one swift and precise motion, he was standing, with his sword out. Then he crossed the room with incredible speed, grabbed Damiel, and pulled him off me. He’d feigned his death. It was only a bluff. Relief coursed through me as Michael took up the battle with Damiel, slashing at him with his sword.

From the other room, I heard the door burst open and a woman, or rather a female chorus, said, “Hello, boys.”

I recognized Arielle’s voice and heard her attack the two henchmen, making quick work of them. But she kept her distance from Damiel and Michael. It was their fight.

They moved so quickly I could hardly see them. Yet Michael and Damiel were desperately well matched in strength and skill. Because Michael was strong and graceful, Damiel had to be cunning. He fought hard and dirty, taunting Michael mercilessly.

“That sweet little girl of yours sure looks good. I’m surprised you can resist her,” Damiel said.

“That’s because you’re you,” Michael replied, lunging at Damiel with his sword and missing by an inch. Damiel used a different weapon; his hands were heated. Red flames licked off of them. He threw the blaze at Michael, searing his flesh.

“I’m going to enjoy her,” Damiel persisted, “and she’ll enjoy it, too.”

“You’ve incapacitated her. She can’t even move,” Michael said through clenched teeth. His sword landed on Damiel’s right shoulder, disabling the demon’s next blow. Hellfire sputtered to the floor and fizzled, leaving no mark. “You’re pathetic.”

“Your memory’s selective, old friend,” he sneered, hurling flames from his left hand. Michael dodged, and the flames missed but Damiel’s words didn’t. “Have you forgotten where you’ve been?”

Michael paled and his concentration faltered. Lunging, Damiel grasped the handle of Michael’s fiery blue sword and threw it to the ground.

“There was this one girl. It was twelfth-century Portofino, I believe. She looked just like you, Mia—well, how you used to look,” Damiel said, positioning himself between Michael and the now-extinguished sword. “Her father wouldn’t let him near her, but Michael was determined. He killed him.”

I wished I could cover my ears. As much as I wanted to know more about Michael and what he’d done, I didn’t want to hear about it from Damiel. Not like this. He would only twist things.

Michael didn’t even try to deny what was said, as though Damiel’s words had a narcotic effect. Damiel quickly gained the upper hand, lunging and thrusting at Michael with fiery fists, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. All I could do was watch as Damiel hurt him all over again.

“If you could only see the things he used to do…” Damiel said.

Michael had been hurt. What he had done in Hell was probably worse than I could imagine, but it was as though I was hearing about someone else. It didn’t fit with the guy I knew. Michael wasn’t like that anymore. Right? Holding him to blame for something that happened after he was tortured was as unfair as blaming a prisoner of war for doing what he had to do to survive.

“It’s for the best that you left him, Mia,” Damiel sneered and swung at Michael, his left fist connecting with Michael’s ribs. “Why would you want to be with someone so ruthless and bloodthirsty?”

Someone like you, you mean.
Damiel was trying to stop me from loving Michael, but I couldn’t let anything change the way I felt. Michael had been disarmed. Knowing he could feel everything I did, even doubt, I had to trust him more now than ever. Or Damiel would kill both of us.

I focused on my feelings of love, the way Michael had told me to do around Azazel. This time, I refused to fail.

Staggering from one of Damiel’s blows, Michael glanced at me, and to my relief something changed. A white rage came over him and, seeming to regain his senses, he caught Damiel’s next punch and threw one of his own.