'Tween Heaven and Hell (26 page)

I wanted to argue with him but what can I say. When you’re
right you’re right. My fuzzy, pink nightie didn’t exactly fit into my current
surroundings. Maybe something in basic black silk and blood red would do
nicely.

The guard jerked me around and pushed me through a door in
the far wall, just behind Nerul’s room-sized marble desk. With some relief I
left Nerul behind in that ghastly room. He was back to pacing and muttering to
himself. At least he was too busy to torture me. Things were looking up.

I was “escorted” through the winding, dimly lighted caverns
of Nerul’s court by three surly, red-faced devil guards, one on either side of
me and one at my back. Well at least Nerul wasn’t underestimating me anymore. The
three musketeers led me to a room that was situated deep in the bowels of the Earth.
It had only one door and no windows. The walls were probably made of rock but
they were hidden and softened behind long damask draperies of a rich burgundy
color. The only furniture in the room was a huge four poster bed, which
dominated the center of the space and several fat comfortable looking cushions
that were strewn about on the floor. After my experience in Nerul’s “office”,
or whatever you’d call it, I quickly determined that the carpet was a normal,
if excessively plush looking carpet of a rich golden color.

The bed was covered in white silk and white silk was draped
over and hung down in soft folds from the bed’s canopy. The bed draperies
pooled in aesthetically pleasing puddles around each stout mahogany leg of the
bed. Smaller silk cushions of many shapes and sizes, in colors of deep burgundy
and rich gold, were tossed with careless elegance upon the bed and around it to
form a kind of sexual playground for the room’s unfortunate inhabitants.

Wonderful. Even Hell has a good decorator. So how come my
own place was decorated in early lazy and traditional hate to shop?

As the guard left, locking the door behind him, I realized
with a jolt of dismay that the room appeared to have been created more for
carnal purposes than for violence. The realization created a cold, hard knot in
the pit of my stomach. Unbidden, a picture formed in my mind of Nerul’s little “ceremony”
in the blood-soaked cave. I shuddered. With Nerul and his merry band of
blood-inspired sexual predators around, I’d much rather deal with violence than
things of the flesh. If I were to be given the choice, of course.

I paced the room in frantic thought. I had gotten myself out
of equally tricky situations, I could get myself out of this one too. I just
had to think, think, think. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be given time to
noodle a way out of my predicament just at that moment. I heard the bolt turn
on the door and watched it slam back against the rock wall. Standing in the
doorway was my worst nightmare.

No, it wasn’t a slavering demon or a slobbering gargoyle. It
wasn’t even a naked devil carrying a human hair throw rug. Instead, it was the
lovely and cruelly malicious Princess Rayanne, bearing wispy clothing, which I
presumed was for me.

She stalked into the room and threw the little nothing of an
outfit onto the bed. “We meet again, Tweener Astra and it seems that, as usual,
you are causing more problems than you are worth.”

I squared my stance and looked her in the eye in what I
hoped was my scariest, bad-ass bitch look. She didn’t even have to look at her
hand of cards, she called me and raised me five thousand goose bumps with her
scariest, you’re-a-pipsqueak-in-my-world look. She won. She was right. However,
it didn’t keep me from trying to look like I could kick her ass.

“I’m surprised to see you here, Princess Cold Freeze.” Which
was, of course, an understatement of gargantuan proportions. What the hell was
she doing in the bowels of Nerul’s court? Why wasn’t she at home playing footsy
with my darling devil Dialle? What was this, a cosmic case of two-timing? Was
she making the ultimate sacrifice and playing spy for my gorgeous devil? Or was
she simply cuckolding my cutie? Twanging two instruments? Working both sides of
a one-way street? Huh? Enough? Okay.

She laughed and narrowed her eyes at me. My knees buckled
and I hit the floor hard. My head bounced off the soft carpet and I bit my
tongue, experiencing the copper taste of my own precious blood.
Shit
.

Rayanne glided across the room to stand over me, like an
aggressive dog trying to prove its dominance. She smiled in a not so nice way
and kicked me with a dainty foot that was encased in a cream-colored ballet
slipper. “You are nothing. You are a puny, powerless nuisance. I rue the day I
saw your plain, unexceptional face. If I had my way you’d be dead.”

I pulled myself to my feet, leaning on the bed for support. Trying
to breathe normally I looked her in the eye again. If I couldn’t kick her ass,
at least I could piss her off with my staying power. “But apparently you aren’t
going to get your way are you, Evil Barbie? You aren’t in control here any more
than I am.”

Whomp. I was on the floor again and this time she added a
tearing, blistering jolt of electricity for good measure. As the power slashed
its way through my body, I tried to remain calm. It wasn’t easy with every
muscle in my body jerking in constant, gut-wrenching spasms.

Just when I thought I would die for sure, she stopped. The
power left my body and slowly my muscles started to relax. I just lay there, trying
not to breathe too hard for fear it would hurt. I concentrated on taking
shallow, even breaths. I knew it wasn’t a good thing to show weakness, but at
the moment I didn’t have much choice. She’d really taken something out of me
with that one.

Stepping away from me with a satisfied chuckle, Rayanne
pointed to the wispy little nothing on the bed and gave my poor, battered body
another kick. “Put that on. You will be entertaining later.” With that ominous
news she floated out of the room, still laughing.

I continued to lie there for a few more minutes, savoring
the temporary peace. I knew I would have to get up eventually and fight my way
out of there, but somehow it seemed like too much to ask right at the moment. I
took some more deep breaths and lay there trying to think.

So far I hadn’t tried to use any powers. Somehow I had just
been too busy to attempt it. But now, I figured was the time to try. Lying
there still, I closed my eyes and tried to pull the forces within me into
focus. With a monumental effort of will I felt a tiny spark and then…nothing. I
tried again with much the same result. Something was blocking my powers. Interesting.

I pushed myself to my feet and went to the door. Even before
I touched it I knew it had been enchanted with some kind of restraining spell. I
could almost feel the vibrations it was giving off. As my hand touched its
rough wooden surface it felt like one thousand volts of electricity hitting me
right in the gut. Sparks flew, scorching my palm and I was flung several feet
from the door. I hit the floor so hard I bounced. Shit.

The door started to open again and, despite my recent
attempts to escape through that very door, I found myself scooting backward
toward the bed as it opened toward me.

At this point I knew there was nothing good gonna come
through that damn door. And the evil Barbie’s last words were still reverberating
through my head. Whatever was about to come at me, I was pretty sure I didn’t
want to “entertain” it, or anything else in that place.

Which was why the figure that stepped into the room so
shocked me. I sat on the floor, my knees knocked together and my fluffy, pink
nightgown bunched around my butt, my mouth hung open as if I hadn’t a firm
thought in my head and my eyes were stretched with surprise and something that
felt suspiciously like awe.

He was tall and beautiful and somehow…ethereal. He stood
there, looking down at me with the palest of blue eyes, which somehow managed
to tell me a story of the pain he’d endured, while at the same time offering
reassurance that was like a soothing balm to my tattered nerves.

He stood just inside the door, his long, pale hands crossed
in front of him and his shoulders slightly sloped, as if he were trying to
appear less menacing. He favored me with a sad, beautiful smile as he nodded in
acknowledgment of me.

“Princess Astra. We meet at last. I fear it is all but too
late now to save either of us. But despite that,” he said, offering me the sad,
soft smile, “I am happy to make your acquaintance.”

I gulped and tried to speak but my throat closed around the
words like a vise. I cleared my throat and swallowed hard, trying to force spit
past the clench in my vocal chords. Finally I managed to croak out his
name…though it seemed an inadequate response under the circumstances. “Prince
Nille…”

Before I could croak any more than that out, Nerul sauntered
into the room behind Nille. I fought the urge to shiver. It occurred to me that
Nerul brought cold, crypt-like air with him wherever he went. Like a cologne. Eau
de death.

I scrambled to my feet and Prince Nille moved between his
father and me. To my extreme surprise the beautiful prince appeared to be
trying to shield me from Nerul. Then the three of us shared a serious soap
opera moment.

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen the holographic
special about ancient human daytime television. You know, those shows where the
television actors all stopped just before the commercial break and looked
around the room at each other meaningfully…nobody saying anything with their
lips but everyone contorting their expressions comically to speak volumes about
what they were thinking and feeling. Once grimace is worth a thousand
words…that kind of thing.

Well that’s what the three of us did in that room. We all
just stood there, glancing meaningfully back and forth, building the drama of
the moment beautifully if somebody had wanted to grab a holographic camera and
put it on record. Unfortunately, the dramatic moment didn’t do a damn thing
about getting me out of the predicament I found myself in. And the commercial
never came to release us from the silly moment. But events did conspire to move
the show along.

So suddenly that my eyes almost couldn’t register it, Nerul
moved a hand and Prince Nille burst into flame before my very eyes. Nille’s
expressions after that would have thrilled fans of the ancient soap opera. Unfortunately
they were precipitated by genuine and extreme pain.

Chapter Twenty-
Three

Stop, Drop and Let’s roll

The maiden watched the princely form, consumed by
Hades fire,

Although she doused him with her tears, much more did
he require.

I screamed and jumped back as the flames danced outward and
seared the pale hairs on my arms. Ridiculously, the words stop, drop and roll
scrolled across my brain, a warning I’d heard about a thousand times in school
days.

As I watched the tender young Prince writhe in agony in his
coat of fire, I found myself unwilling or unable to move toward him. My
cowardly feet refused to move. It was almost as if I were being held there by
some outside force. But then my eyes were pulled to his and what I saw there
terrified me.

His face was contorted in silent agony. The air around his
head popped and throbbed to about the level of his chin, but somehow the fire
didn’t touch his face, it danced around his torso with heat and flame, melting
his delicate white skin as if it was made of tissue paper. Above the horror
that was his flaming body, his gaze reached out to me, like a physical force
and drew me toward him. From somewhere in the depths of the pale blue orbs, a
light began to glow and throb, even as the fire consumed his body.

I didn’t want to move into the fire. Every fiber in my body
railed against it. But despite that, my hand began to reach toward him. As I
moved to touch him, he gathered together what must have been a monumental
effort of will and lifted his flame-encased arm in my direction. Our fingertips
touched. For just the barest flicker of time, the flame shot down his arm and
ran up mine. Before I could even scream or flinch away it was gone and a cool,
healing wind ran across the reddened flesh, taking away the sting and leaving the
flesh numb behind it. My smoking sleeve was the only remaining evidence of the
flash fire that had touched my arm.

That was when I heard Dialle. His words came to me broken
and uneven, as if they were being subjected to outside interference. I could feel
his presence though, like a warm blanket that wrapped me in its protective
layers and held me away from the Hell that awaited me within a fingertip’s
touch. I could smell him. Emotionally, I reached out to him before I even
realized what I was doing. Then I reined myself in and pushed him away.

The teardrop on my neck started to throb and my power
flared. Without my conscious direction, power surged into my arm and flowed
toward Prince Nille. It entered him through the channel formed by our touching
fingers. Our eyes never drifted as my power entered his smoldering flesh. With
a slight jerk and a widening of his blue gaze that showed his surprise he
accepted the power and I felt it mingle with his own.

Before my amazed eyes the flame began to die and the room
grew cool again. Nille reached out and pulled me into his body, his riveting,
blue gaze never leaving my own and sighed as our bodies molded together. I
could feel his flesh humming against me as it regenerated. I kept my eyes on
his because I was terrified of what I would see if I looked away. The smell of
old fire filled my nostrils but surprisingly I couldn’t smell burned flesh.

Expectancy lay on the room like a sour odor. Of what I didn’t
know. After a long, uncomfortably silent moment, I tried to pull away and found
I couldn’t. But, though Nille didn’t hold me, something was. Like an invisible
cord, our shared magic had bound us, both physically and emotionally. My
initial inclination was to fight it, but the feeling was peaceful and pleasant.
Not at all sexual as it had been with Dialle.