Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 (31 page)

“Shut it down,” I said quietly. Volume didn’t matter. The demon could hear me,
would
hear me, no matter whether I whispered or screamed.

Agares turned to face me, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fancy meeting you here.” He grinned, the unnaturally handsome face so out of line with the soul behind its façade. “And I see you brought…what? An entourage of one? Not your usual practice Madeline Niteclif, but I’ll give you points for style. A priest.” He chuckled.

“Niteclif?” The angel lifted his head and reached out beseechingly.
 

My stomach knotted up. I wanted to run to him. Protect him. Save him. In the end, I only managed a single step in his direction.
 

“Stop.” Agares’s smile disappeared as the wraiths pulled in tighter.

Air moved behind me and I knew Father O’Cleary had moved in close.
 

The demon’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think you can accomplish, holy man? It’ll take more than a little prayer and a blessing to get this miserable sack of shit out of trouble.”
 

The downed angel was trying to drag himself away. He made only inches at a time as he pushed and pulled, his labored breaths fogging the air. Blood matted his hair. One arm was clearly broken. His clothes were ripped and torn, hanging from him in tatters.

“Be still.” Agares kicked the creature hard enough I thought I heard the muffled crunch of ribs breaking.

The angel grunted and fell to the concrete.

My heart hurt. My eyes burned. I couldn’t breathe. “Don’t.”

“Does this hurt you?” He kicked the angel repeatedly. “Good ol’ Gagiel seems to like it. See how he just lies there and takes it?”
 

“Don’t,” I shouted, stepping forward. I reached out a shaking hand, beseeching. “What do you want, Agares?”

“He’s a man, Maddy.” Father O’Cleary laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Just a man.”

Agares threw his head back and laughed. “A man? I see you’ve never crossed the Divide, you bendable, breakable mortal.”

“The Divide?” The father’s hand tightened.

“You’ve never seen beyond this mortal plain to the supernatural,” I answered, the words falling from lips gone numb. I’d been a fool. Such a fool. And now Gagiel would pay for my hubris in trying to stop Agares alone.

“Let’s rectify that.” Agares began to strip.

Father O’Cleary stepped around me. “You’ll cease this nonsense immediately, young man. You’ve no right to beat an innocent man. Leave now and I won’t call the Guarda.” And God bless the priest, he tucked his Bible under his arm to pull his cell phone out.

Agares stepped free of his pants. Standing bare before us, he rolled his head back and forth, stretching the muscles in his neck. His hands curled in on themselves. Everything happened so quickly after that that it was impossible to say what came first and what changed last.

Scarred black wings exploded from his back as his skin darkened. Ash-colored, his toes and fingers split as talons shot forward, curling into the asphalt as if it were soft clay. His body grew. And grew. Short, bony spikes erupted over his shoulders and the crown of his head. Tall horns grew from the back of his skull and rose high, curling back. His face elongated, his lower jaw widening and jutting forward. His mouth was a mess of serrated teeth. Eyes that had been blue bled to crimson and were filled with unfiltered loathing and…hunger.

I shuddered.

The wraiths scattered, hovering well away from their keeper.

A heavy thud made me look over, well,
down
at Father O’Cleary. He’d fallen to his knees, his Bible dropped beside him. The rice paper pages fluttered in the breeze, the sound abnormally loud. The father’s lips moved, sounds coming out low and unintelligible.

Agares snarled. A thin line of drool escaped, lingering before falling. The ground sizzled where it landed.
 

Brimstone was rich on the air, the sulfurous saturation a noxious poison, and Agares’s smell underlined Hell’s aroma. He was death, carnage, blood, and stank of them all. Nude, it was impossible to ignore his hooked and barbed semi-swollen shaft.
 

I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to run, wondering just how fast the Vitesse really was. Could it outrun destiny, fate, free will, whatever the hell this horror was? Was it powerful enough to keep me far in front of this horror bearing down on me? And what of Gagiel?

As if he’d read my mind, Agares turned to the fallen angel who had managed to drag himself partially behind a large bin. “Trash,” the demon muttered. “Appropriate. Heaven didn’t want you after you sinned, Gagiel. Hell has a special place for you in our army.”
 

Walking to the angel on all fours, animalistic in his movements, Agares flipped the fallen angel over and ripped his torso open.
 

Gagiel arched his back, his mouth opened in a wordless scream.

“Easiest way to get the soul out.” Agares looked over at me, ignoring the priest. “You’ll need to know this.” Then he chuckled, deep and rumbling, an internal avalanche of sound. “Well, not really. The causing of pain is pleasure. You probably need to know
that
more. Beheading them gets the job done efficiently.” He grabbed Gagiel’s head.

I saw abject fear in the angel’s eyes. He knew what was about to happen, was helpless to stop it.

“Stop.” My command was far more plea. “What do you want from me?”

Agares looked back, lifting one shoulder in an indifferent shrug. “If you’ve not figured it out, you need therapy, Maddy.”

“Hellion,” I whispered.

He blinked slowly, a calculating look further hardening his chiseled features. “Is his life worth the life of this Nephilim? Because I’m willing to trade, soul for soul.”

I looked at Gagiel and he pleaded with me in look and word. Temporary madness drove me to my knees. I couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t give him what he wanted. “I…”

“An answer, Madeline. If you’re to negotiate with me, you’ll do well to answer quickly to avoid my wrath.” When I sucked in a breath, he shrugged. “Too late.”
 

With a vicious swipe, his claws rendered the flesh of Gagiel’s neck, severing his head in one harsh move.
 

I slumped forward to one hand, desperate not to collapse. Cold stung my nose. The smell of the car exhaust combined with the garbage in the alley and around the bin to make my eyes water. This wasn’t how this was supposed to have gone down. Gagiel wasn’t supposed to have been beheaded. His arterial spray wasn’t supposed to flaunt my failure as it ran down the brick wall.

Shuddering, I looked up to find Agares starting for me. The idea of being close to him, intimate in sharing space, made me insane. I pulled my Colt 1911 and racked the slide as I shot to my feet. The first bullet left the chamber the second the grip safety disengaged. Emptying my clip was a study in methodical target practice. I’d become emotionally and mentally disengaged. The demon was nothing more than a target I had to eradicate.
 

The first two shots did little. The third ricocheted off his horn and ripped through his wing.
 

He screeched at the star-crusted sky.

I never let up.

The fourth shot found one eye, the fifth shot hit something unknown and the sixth shot took out his other eye. And when he opened his mouth to roar in pain and fury, I shot him in the back of the throat too.
 

Two shots left. That was it. I’d have to pause to reload. If he wasn’t down by then, I was screwed.
 

Agares fell forward, his eyes bleeding freely, blood running from his mouth. He tried to speak but couldn’t. He lifted his face to me and took a deep, shuddering breath. And smiled.
 

A chill raced up my spine, little needle pricks that each drew psychological blood.

Father O’Cleary was still down, staring ahead with dumbfounded fear. Talk about a rough introduction to the shit I was dragging him into. No shock and awe campaign could have gone better.

A rent suddenly appeared in the air behind Agares. Heat poured out of that unnatural fissure, mirage shimmering up from it in hard, fast waves. The demon scuttled backward, tucking his wings in tight to his body. Unsteady, he stood when he reached what I knew was a doorway to the Underworld and bowed. Gagiel’s soul drifted up and joined the other wraiths reluctantly returning to the demon. Once he’d joined Agares, the demon dragged himself through the tear between planes and was gone.

Gagiel’s body lay in the alley, not just broken but destroyed. A flash of light exploded before us. When the spots finally cleared and we could see, Gagiel’s body was gone.

I sank back to my knees, overwhelmed with such a sense of defeat that I didn’t know what to do. My plan had failed. I’d taunted Agares with the priest and Gagiel had died a harder death for it. Not only that, he’d died because I was unwilling to trade a soul I cherished for another I knew nothing of. I’d bought Hellion time by damning Gagiel.

And Father O’Cleary? He knelt with his head bowed, hands on his knees. He’d done nothing, hadn’t believed anything I’d said and had folded under pressure. I didn’t blame him. Not exactly. But I sure as hell wasn’t happy with him.

“I-I-I—” O’Cleary stuttered, trying to mop the sweat from his brow. He kept dropping his kerchief, though, and finally gave up. “What?” he croaked, waving wildly toward the end of the alleyway.

Balancing on the balls of my feet, I dropped to his level. “I told you what we were looking for. A demon. A fallen angel. Hell on Earth. You didn’t truly believe me because you didn’t have anything to compare the reality to. I get it.” Rising, I offered him a hand to stand.

He stared at me, swallowing convulsively.

“You indicated you’ve done exorcisms before. I would’ve thought you’d be a little more prepared for this.” The bite of my words wasn’t remotely diluted by my disappointment.

“I’ve interacted with demons, but never like this. I had no idea…” He reached up to push his glasses back up. “They look like men.”

I nodded. “Right up to the end. But I told you he would, that they both would.”

He nodded vigorously as a little color returned to his cheeks. “You did. But I didn’t believe it could be true.”

“So much for faith,” I muttered, shoving the gun back in the holster I wore under my jacket.

His chin jerked up, and I was stunned to see the feral anger in his gaze. “I failed my faith, yes, but you need not condemn me, Ms. Niteclif. This isn’t over.”

“Over?” I asked, incredulous, as he stood. “Hell, yes, it’s
over
. That demon will be back and he’s going to be gunning for me. I have to find a better defense. I’ll drop you off at the parish.”

Father O’Cleary stood, dusting himself and his Bible off. “What is it the demon wants? Truly wants?”

“Hellion. I told you that too.” Sighing, I started picking up spent casings. In the distance, sirens sounded. “We’ve got to go.”

The priest followed me to the car. “If the demon’s sole interest lies with Hellion, I’d think he’d be more focused on drawing the man out instead of ensuring every interaction involves you.”

I spun around. “You think I haven’t thought of that? That I’ve ignored the fact that there’s something Agares wants besides Hellion? He could have come for Hellion any time before now. He didn’t. He waited for me to be part of the picture. But he could have come for me at any time as well. There’s something about Hellion and me together that he needs. I just don’t know what it is.”

“Hellion has been Agares’s beard. No doubt he wants the man, but he’s most interested in you. I think you know why.”
 

It made sense. Horrible, awful, logical sense. I looked at the priest, chewing my bottom lip until it was raw. Again, I knew the answer at the same time I knew I was missing something.

He waited.

“Maybe Micah was Agares’s bait. Maybe he knew the Nephilim would find me, lead him straight to me. With the pheromones acting like a veritable mating call, he could have known I was in my prime. Micah knew, and he could have told Agares, or maybe the demons knew about the child some other way.”

O’Cleary’s forehead creased as his brows drew together. “Child?”

“I have to get pregnant,” I croaked out. “And it seems like there’s a very dangerous bidding war going on regarding who’s going to father the child.”

“It seems there’s more to the story you haven’t told me, but an unplanned pregnancy doesn’t sound like the solution.”

“You don’t know that half of it, Father.”

And he really didn’t. I was a walking tomb with a womb, because more than half the males who wanted to father this child were most interested in seeing me dead soon after birth.

“Let’s go.” My words were squeezed out around the tangled knot of emotion that had formed in my chest.

Father O’Cleary was right on my heels when he spoke, and I could smell the lingering whiskey. “There’s still the matter of your crisis of faith.”

“The agreement was that we’d talk about it after Hellion was safe. He’s not.”

Father O’Cleary followed me to the driver’s side of the car. “I beg to differ. We’ve established that Hellion may not be Agares’s primary focus. If that’s true, Hellion is safe.”