devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place Read online

  Fiery arms wrapped around me and I felt my skin start to melt as the demon squeezed me in its deadly embrace and opened its nasty mouth to bite my face. I screamed and threw my power out, this time joined by an additional burst that had Dialle written all over it. Thankfully the demon shot away from me and hit the rock altar. Then I shot him again and held him with the power while I took physical inventory. My arms and shoulders where the demon had grabbed me were bright red and looked like they would blister and peel. I suspected my face looked very similar. My clothes were still smoking and hung in tatters from huge burned-out spaces where the demon’s arms had clutched me. But I was happy to report to the Astra Q Phelps medical assessment team of one—that’s me—that I would live.

  That’s when I remembered to take friend and lover inventory as well. Emo was barely holding his own against a demon that didn’t, thankfully appear able to flame out. He was basically just holding him away with a power bubble but I could tell from the look of strain on his face that he wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. Dialle had managed to take out three of the nasty things and was fighting two more, even while giving me a power boost.

  Now that just pissed me off.

  He couldn’t be that much more powerful than I was. I let the anger fuel my power and refocused it on the demon that was even now trying to regain its feet and come back at me. I managed to throw him back to the ground but he didn’t blow up into millions of tiny little pieces and disappear like I wanted. Shit!

  A movement above the clearing caught my eye and I looked up at the hundreds of spirits that hovered just above the action at the edge of the clearing, watching the festivities with happy spirit faces. Their hovering presence gave me an excellent idea.

  I decided it was time they joined the fun, on the side of the good guys. Well, the good guys as compared to what we were fighting.

  It’s all relative you know.

  Reaching upward with my power, I used it to gather up the spirits and draw them in. At first I felt resistance but then they came to me almost eagerly, as if they finally realized that I was going to let them join the fight.

  One thing I’d learned about spirits is that they resent the inability to use their personal power more than anything. I was about to give the spirits in that clearing not only a pathway to use their own power but I was also going to give them access to more power than they had ever experienced in their before and after lives.

  The first spirits hit me with a painful jolt and I gritted my teeth against the onslaught. But as they started to accumulate and my power sucked up their collective energy, I no longer felt them as they climbed into my body and surrendered their power to me.

  The energy in my body grew until I felt like I was getting taller, bigger, larger than life. Then I noticed the demon had unfurled itself from the ground at the base of the scorched tree and was looking at me as if, for a change, it wasn’t sure it wanted to tackle me. I laughed and the sound shook the trees around the clearing.

  I realized I should have been startled by this but somehow I wasn’t. My cells had literally swollen with power and it felt as if the power belonged to me. I had incorporated it into my body and it had become a part of me.

  Somewhere outside my consciousness I realized that everything around me had stopped and appeared to be waiting for me to do something.

  So I did something.

  I turned to the demon that now moved toward me and smiled. Wisps of spirit flowed from my eyes and my mouth as I did. I looked down at the ground and realized that yes, I was larger than life. The ground was further down than it should have been.

  I threw back my head and laughed again, reveling in the power I contained within my body. Then I threw out a hand and the demon jerked backward from the strength of my power and flew upward, dangling from my upraised hand by an invisible thread of power. I made it dance for a moment, laughing as its horrible spiky limbs performed a jerky pantomime of dance in the air. Then I remembered there were other of its kind in that clearing and decided to finish it off. The demon’s mouth opened and he screamed again, this time in fear as its body started to pull apart, ion by ion until it finally exploded outward into a million, tiny little purple pieces.

  Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

  I turned to the remaining demons and they disappeared with a pop. The horrified fear on their ugly demon faces was the only impression they left behind as they fled my power.

  I looked at Dialle and my face must have shown my regret because he laughed. “Let the spirits go, Astra. You can’t keep them.”

  I scowled at him but relented. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and concentrated on letting the power ease away from me. As the power ebbed the spirits flowed, making their escape in a sprightly fashion that spoke volumes about their opinion of recent events.

  Then they began to fade away, most of them leaving us with happy smiles and one even threw me a jolly salute as he left the human sphere for all time.

  It felt sad to see them go. For a moment, I was like an empty vessel without them. But once that feeling passed, it felt good to have given them a means to fight one last battle, taking away the helplessness that had held them to the Earth for far too long.

  The first thing I realized when I opened my eyes was that I was small again. Shit! The second thing was that Raoul stood before me, the hood of his robes lying flat on his back and his face a mixture of anger and shame.

  Then Dialle moved to stand with me and all I was aware of was how good he smelled and how yummy he looked in those tight pants.

  Damn! Flattened by the horn dog express again.

  Raoul scowled at me but seemed unwilling to meet my eyes. It was an interesting combo of emotional emissions and I just watched him, waiting to see how he would explain the night’s events.

  I didn’t expect the first salvo.

  “Astra, you had no right to come here tonight.”

  I just looked at him. I heard Dialle chuckle but decided to ignore him. I could only deal with one beady little brain at a time.

  I glared at Raoul and poked him in his black robed chest. “Are you frunkin’ crazy? The woman on that altar would have been killed. What were you thinking calling a fire demon to join your little party?”

  He placed his hand on his chest where I’d poked him as if it hurt. Maybe it did, I didn’t think I’d released all of my power yet.

  Then he sighed and looked away, shame taking precedence on his face for the moment. “I had no choice. I would have stopped it…somehow…before it killed her.”

  The angry retort that rested on my lips fell off into the dirt at my feet. Shock made me nearly speechless. Nearly.

  “What do you mean you had no choice?” Suddenly I was overcome with a feeling of hurt self-righteousness. I planted my fists on my hips and leaned toward him, really pissed now. “You berated me for even suggesting that black magic was being used in your coven! You abused me over it. And here you are using sexual energy to call the worst type of demons into this world. How dare you stand there now and tell me you had no choice!”

  Raoul looked at me with a mixture of rage and pity in his chocolate-brown eyes. “You’ll understand some day, Astra.”

  I waited for him to go on with his explanation. He just stood there looking at me like a whipped puppy.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say to me?”

  When he continued to stand there mute I lost it. Throwing my hands into the air I turned away and stalked toward the woods.

  I didn’t even realize Emo and Dialle were behind me until I felt Dialle’s hand on the small of my back and Emo’s shoulder brushed mine. I turned to Dialle as I stalked toward the edge of the clearing. “You were doing pretty well for yourself out there, pal. How’d you manage to take out so many of them?”

  Dialle smiled. “I only vanquished one.”

  I turned to Emo, raising an eyebrow in question. He shook his head at me.

  I stopped and turned
to the lone figure standing in the center of that clearing. A visual of him standing on that rock platform chanting as we fought off the demons played itself out in 3-D through my mind.

  As my eyes found him the clouds cleared from the fat moon and a trail of light beamed down to illuminate Raoul, standing there, watching me. His face was obscured but his body language spoke volumes.

  We stared at each other for several seconds and then, shaking my head, I turned away and headed for the Viper.

  I felt immeasurably sad.

  I was pretty sure a long and treasured friendship had died in that clearing.

  And I had no idea what I was gonna do about that.

  Chapter Nine

  Misplaced Blame

  The death detective happily blamed, the devil for the deed,

  And closed his mind to every fact, our lady then did plead.

  I told the televisual in my office to disconnect and sat staring out the large window behind my desk. Outside the sky was a leaden, metallic gray that matched my mood completely.

  I had spent the morning trying to find someone in the paranormal police department who could tell me what was going on with the hostage situation. Nobody wanted to talk to me. They all wanted to tell me it was police business, with the obvious hidden message that I needed to butt out.

  How I longed for the days when DD Raoul had been active. Raoul understood what I had to offer and respected me. I gave a huge sigh and stood up to pace. Thoughts of Raoul brought pain, sharp and bright to my heart. I didn’t want to believe he’d turned to the dark purpose. But it was pretty hard to ignore the evidence when it wags a wilted pee pee at you and spits on your partner’s new silk shirt.

  I was deep into this type of philosophical thought when I felt the air around me change and my angel shimmered into view. I turned to smile at her. As usual she smothered my smile with a cranky pillow.

  “Let’s go, Astra!”

  I jerked my arm away when she reached for it. “Not until you tell me what’s up.”

  She scowled at me and all but stamped a foot in temper but after twenty-nine years of dealing with me she knew it was just faster and easier to give me what I wanted.

  “The first hostage has been killed. The demons dumped him on the altar at St. Edward’s.”

  I gasped. “Holy shit!”

  Myra’s response to that was to reach for my arm with the speed of a striking cobra. And my outraged reaction was locked in time and space, as she spaceshifted us to the church.

  When light and sound returned Myra immediately put a soft, white hand over my mouth to squelch the string of obscenities that hovered there before I could screech them out to all and sundry in the quiet church.

  I glared at her over the hand and she scowled back at me.

  Finally, I gave her a short nod and she lowered the hand. I stage whispered, “Damnable angel.” Before she could put her hand up again and then grinned at her like a naughty child.

  She sighed and turned toward the front of the church, where several cops from the strange deaths department hovered around a form that had been draped over the altar.

  Following the direction of her gaze, I noticed that they hadn’t even covered the body yet.

  I turned back to say something to Myra but she was already gone. Angels like to stay on the fringe of all human events, there to help when needed but never interacting directly with the humans.

  It’s company policy.

  As I walked down the softly carpeted aisle of the old church, several heads turned to watch my approach. One death detective said something in low tones to a DD I couldn’t see and then began ushering the other death detectives away from the scene. When they had dispersed, I was left looking at Raoul. He stood from where he’d been examining something on the floor and watched me as I approached.

  When I got to within five feet of him I stopped. We stared at each other for a beat of ten and then I gave him a small nod. “Death Detective Raoul. Why are you here?”

  His chocolate-brown eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit and he gave me a sad smile. “I’m doing my job, Astra.”

  I snickered and his shoulders stiffened in offense. “You can’t ride the air train in both directions at once, Raoul.”

  He looked nervously over his shoulder at the knot of death detectives across the church from us. “Keep your voice down, Astra. I need to keep that part of my life totally separate from this.”

  I snorted unbecomingly. “I bet you do.”

  “Damn it, Astra. I’ll explain it all later, just work with me here will you?”

  It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. I wasn’t sure I could believe anything he told me at this point. But I decided our years of friendship had earned him one more chance. “Okay but you’d better have a damn good explanation, Raoul, or I’m going to have to tell your boss what you’ve been up to.”

  The chocolate-brown gaze covered the range of anger through sadness as I watched but he didn’t say anything, he just nodded. Then he turned to the body on the altar and motioned for me to approach. “I’d really like your opinion on this, Astra.”

  It was the body of a young male. Probably about twenty-five years old, with longish brown hair that was streaked with golden highlights on the tips. He had been well built, even husky in life. Now his muscles sagged with death and the evidence of massive abuse before he’d died.

  The naked body was covered in pentacle tats. There was even one on the slack, gray penis that lay against one muscular thigh.

  “That’s the obvious cause of death.” I said, pointing to an eight-inch-long silver cross that was embedded in his chest. It looked like it had gone right into his heart.

  Raoul nodded in complete agreement but said nothing. I could feel his brown gaze on me as I examined the corpse.

  “The tattoos would suggest Satanism. A cult perhaps.”

  He frowned at this but stayed mute.

  One hand was clutched tightly around something and, when I pried the fingers open, I saw a ring, covered with a thin layer of gold. The ring held the crest of the court of Dialle the First, a pitchfork with flames shooting from its deadly looking tips.

  I couldn’t help myself, I chuckled softly. The crest was so him.

  The ring was obviously a cheap imitation but it looked just real enough to serve its purpose if you weren’t looking too closely.

  Shit!

  I closed the dead man’s fingers back over the ring and said nothing. After a few more observations regarding injuries that would suggest some pretty nasty physical abuse, I stood up and walked away from the body. My stomach roiled with what I’d seen and I silently vowed that the demons would pay big-time for what they’d done to the young man.

  Raoul stood looking down at the floor between his feet, his hands folded behind his back.

  I knew what he was thinking but thought it would be best if he said it himself rather than my bringing it up.

  It didn’t take him long.

  “I don’t know what to think about your loyalties, Astra, if you’re going to protect him and his kind when they do things like this.” His dark head jerked to indicate the body.

  “The royals didn’t do this, Raoul.”

  His eyes met mine and I held his gaze. He thought I was lying, either to him or to both of us but I had the strength of knowledge on my side. I knew the demons were behind the murder. Unfortunately he didn’t and he thought I was too intoxicated with Prince Dialle to see the truth.

  He touched my arm and led me a few feet away from the altar, where he was sure we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “The demons have declared war on the royals, Raoul.”

  He stared at me for a few beats more. “I’ve seen this type of thing in the past, Astra and it was always the royals.”

  I nodded. “I understand that. It was made to look like them, no doubt about it. But this time it was the demons.”

  Raoul shook his head and looked away as if he were afraid to see what was in my eyes. I held
my ground, watching him carefully.

  Finally he released his breath in a frustrated sigh. “Okay, Astra, let’s assume you’re right and this was the demons. Then why? Why kill this human and leave him for us to find? Why try to make it look like the royals did it?”

  Now it was my turn to feel the frustration. However, I put on my best attitude of patience and simply said, in a calm voice, “You and I had this discussion the other day, Raoul. The demons want their freedom. They want their own court. King Dialle won’t listen to them so they’re trying to force him to listen.”

  Raoul’s gaze slid back to the corpse on the altar, which his men had begun the process of removing to the crematorium. Finally he looked back to me and his intense, chocolate-brown gaze held mine. “I know you told me that, Astra. Hell, I can even identify this victim as one of the people who has disappeared recently and was last known to be at Demonica. What I can’t do is trust anything King Dialle the First ever says or does. The royals are evil incarnate, Astra. You of all people should understand that.”

  I nodded and stepped aside as the death detectives moved past us with the body, now encased in a breathable, thick paper husk that would enhance its flammability when they put it into the flash cremator. My heart throbbed painfully at the thought that a life could be erased so quickly, so irrevocably. I didn’t know the unfortunate young man on that stretcher but he was of my generation and I felt like I knew him just a little.

  I leaned toward Raoul and lowered my voice. “What about our discussion regarding your coven, Raoul? Don’t you think there might be more working below the surface here than you’re seeing?”

  He turned angry, brown eyes on me and squared suddenly stiff shoulders. “I’m not having that discussion with you here, Astra.” He glanced quickly over his shoulder to where his men had gathered in a knot at the back of the church. Then he looked back at me with hard eyes. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  He turned and started down the aisle, his long legs carrying him away from me and toward his men, quickly and decisively.