The Devil You Need Read online

  “Shit.”

  “Crude but accurate. Your connection with Dialle was what allowed him to become the unifier. Without you…” My father shook his head.

  “He’s being seduced by the dark.”

  “Yes. That’s bad on many levels. It’s bad for the Royal Devil Court on Earth, because as long as you and Dialle are tied to the court it will continue to crumble and degrade, until Dialle begins to heal, or…” He shook his head and went on. “The disintegration of the court is really bad for humans and, by extension, the Celestial Realm. Without the good in Dialle to restrain their baser instincts, the royals and lesser members of the court will explode into violence. Humans will be slaughtered and debased by the thousands—maybe even millions—depending on how quickly we can get the situation under control.”

  “And how will you get it under control?”

  He just looked at me, pain shining brightly in his clear, blue gaze.

  “You’ll have to kill them all.”

  “Yes.”

  “Frunk me to Hades.”

  “Exactly. And it gets worse.”

  I snorted, figuring he was joking. But when I looked into his eyes I knew he was about as far from jokes as he could get. “What? Give it all to me so I know how much shit I’m gonna need to wade through to fix this.”

  James Phelps, Seraphim of the Celestial Realm, shook his gorgeous blond head. “You had to acquire your mother’s language gene didn’t you?”

  I didn’t think that needed a response. There was absolutely nothing frunkin’ wrong with my language.

  “The royals of the court won’t go down without a fight. Even now they plot to disconnect Dialle and you from the court to save themselves.”

  I frowned. “Disconnect?” He lifted an eyebrow and I sighed. “I’m about to become the catch of the day again aren’t I?”

  “You are. But don’t expect them to release you once you’re caught. The only way to save the court from its current, rapid rate of decline is to kill both you and Dialle and install a new king and queen as quickly as possible.”

  “Well just shit. That’s frunkin’ wonderful.”

  “Offensive, but succinct. And true.”

  * * * * *

  Moments later, I shifted into Dialle’s quarters, hoping to find him there and avoid the other members of the court. The room was empty and looked as if a war had been fought between its walls.

  The stench of dark magic stained the air and scorch marks slashed across the draperies lining the walls, the thick velvet hanging in tatters along the floor. The bed where Dialle and I had made love just days earlier looked as if it had been sliced with a sword. The contents of the mattress bulged outward from the jagged rift in its center and trailed down the sides to the floor. Puffs of stuffing littered the ground and skittered past on a brisk draft.

  I shivered and my gaze slid to the long wall of windows. Two of the massive panes of glass were broken, and debris blew into the room through the shattered surface. My horrified gaze quickly scanned the room, moving to the closet and the single door leading into Dialle’s personal hygiene room. I splashed through a puddle as I pushed the door open, a power ball sizzling on my palm. The hygiene room was in even worse shape than his bedchamber was. The shower tube had been ripped from the wall and soapy water poured from the hole in a steady stream, creating a growing puddle that spread across the floor and out the door to saturate the once-beautiful carpets. The mirror over the sink was cracked, its surface used to send a horrible message, written in blood. The words scrawled across the reflective glass made me shudder. Dark. Cold. Evil.

  It was the message of a fractured mind. I only hoped it hadn’t been Dialle who’d written it.

  I hurried back out into the bedchamber, heading for the door. I would find Gerch or Brina and find out what was going on. As soon as I opened the door, though, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  The halls were thick with devils, demons and gargoyles. The combined stench of sulfur and blood made me gag and cover my mouth. Metal clanged against metal as the dark worlders of the court fought a brutal battle, fed by a depth of bloodlust I hadn’t seen in a long time, not since the Devil had cast a magic veil over the Earth, infusing everyone with a lethal kind of anger.

  I watched the chaos beyond the door for a long moment, trying to figure out how best to move through it without being immediately skewered. But before I could talk myself into stepping into the melee, a sword blade appeared from nowhere and slashed toward my face.

  Chapter Five

  Into the Devil’s Backyard

  Alas our hero’s in a spot, his predicament so dire,

  But our young miss will fail him not, she’ll yank him from the fire.

  Without even thinking, I lifted my hand and sprayed power into my attacker’s face. He flew backward with a grunt, smacking into the wall on the opposite side of the wide hallway. A large hand grasped my forearm and yanked me out from behind the door, flinging me into the center of the roiling mess of savage dark worlders.

  I stumbled backward, ducking just as a wide, heavy blade whizzed toward my head, and spun. A lower devil dipped its head and charged, the sharp points of his curved, black horns heading right for my midsection. I spun again and had the satisfaction of watching the horns skewer the royal behind me.

  Pain blossomed in my back as the handle of a sword bludgeoned me and my breath momentarily left my lungs. I dropped to one knee, struggling to breathe and just missed being impaled as a knife flew overhead.

  A roar to one side had me lifting my hands in a defensive maneuver that, infused with a jolt of my borrowed power, allowed me to use my attacker’s momentum against him. I shoved hard on the demon’s wide chest as he flung himself at me, and sent him flying over my head. He hit the wall behind me with a wet thump. I jumped to my feet and started running.

  I didn’t get far.

  At the first turn in the hallway a large, scaly red arm reached out and hooked me around the waist, dragging me into a covered alcove. I pulled power into my fingertips and then stopped as a massive paw wrapped itself over my fingers.

  I looked up into Gerch’s worried, red face. One side of his face was covered in blood and the eye on that side was swollen shut. He held a thick finger in front of his craggy lips and pushed me deeper into the alcove, pulling the heavy wall hanging over the opening.

  “What the hell’s going on, Gerch?” I whispered.

  He just shook his head and peered down the hall through a crack between the wall and the hanging. After a moment he turned to me. “You need to get out of here. If one of the council sees you you’ll be dead before you can blink.”

  “Not until I find Dialle.”

  He grabbed my arms and looked down at me, his uninjured black eye swirling with irritated color. I’d never seen Gerch’s eyes swirl before and was surprised by it. Though I knew he was just about one of the highest level non-royal devils I knew. “I can’t protect you both, Astra.” It was a measure of his distress that he called me by my name instead of his usual, snark-infused address of “my queen”.

  “Where is he, Gerch? Is he safe?”

  He swore, looking past the hanging again. “No one is safe in the court anymore, my queen.” And he was back. “But you and the king are especially vulnerable given the current situation.”

  “What exactly is the current situation?”

  “I don’t have time to talk about this now. You need to shift out of here and I’ll bring the king to you as soon as I can.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not leaving without him so you might as well take me to him, Gerch.”

  He swore again but crossed his massive arms stubbornly over his broad chest.

  We indulged in dueling gazes for several beats and then I sighed in defeat. “All right, you’re not giving me much choice.”

  The muscles in his jaw relaxed and his shoulders came just a fraction of an inch off square. “That is the point, my queen.”

  I nodded. “F
ine.” He turned away to look back out at the action and I lifted my hands, grabbing the heavy wall hanging in both hands and jerking it loose from the wall. As it dropped I ran forward, shoving the dense hanging before me like a shield. The hanging gathered dark worlders as I ran and I used my power to smack them hard into the wall.

  I spun, swinging the heavy material around me like a bludgeon. The power-infused swing took the legs out from under two demons and a royal who were coming at me with blade and claw. As they hit the ground I shot them in the chest with a jolt of magic, killing them. “To Hades with you fool, for God hath tired of you.”

  I ran toward the end of the hall. If Dialle wasn’t in his rooms he’d be in his throne room.

  I wasn’t sure how I heard him coming over the rest of the noise, but my senses seemed especially alert since the adrenalin had kicked in. I spun just as a tall, skeletal royal lunged. If I hadn’t turned he’d have buried his blade in my heart and I’d have died before I even knew he was there.

  I shoved the hanging in front of the blood-covered blade as it swung back, and arched away as it sliced clean through. Fire seared my ribs where the blade grazed me. I yanked the hanging sideways, pulling the sword from the royal’s long fingers, and flung it against the wall. With a scream of pure rage, I flung myself at him, smacking him hard on the forehead and sending energy in a thin stream of bright light into his brain.

  He was still twitching on the floor as I leapt back to my feet and took off running.

  The battle thinned as I neared the throne room and I had high hopes that Dialle was safe there, locked behind the double doors made of gold. When I spotted Gerch’s guards standing in front of the doors, swords drawn and already covered in blood, I felt even better. Several bodies littered the floor before them, evidence of their work.

  I ran toward the guards. “Let me in!”

  The soldier in charge stepped forward, his sword lifting. “I cannot open these doors. The king is in danger.”

  “Open the doors you steaming pile of gargoyle shit, or I’ll blast you and open them myself!”

  The man started to shake his head and I lost all patience. But instead of striking out at one of the apparent few who were willing to protect Dialle, I finally took Gerch’s advice. I pictured the space on the other side of the golden doors and shifted.

  The world dropped away and fell silent. A moment later I felt it slide over me again like a shroud, my feet hitting the firm stone of the floor. The room was dark, so silent that I thought for a moment I was still in my space-shift. But the area smelled gamey, like…

  A low growl throbbed through the silence, not more than five feet away from where I stood. Two sets of red eyes glared at me through the deep black and I squinted to see movement in the dark.

  “Ah, shit.”

  Two low-slung, densely muscled forms started toward me, their growls turning to saliva-drenched snarls as they opened enormous jaws filled with impossibly white teeth.

  “Frunk me,” I murmured. “This is definitely going into the shitty day book.”

  I pulled power into my palms and held it, spitting and ready. I knew from experience that Hell hounds could move with impossible speed. They could be on me in the time it took me to blink.

  My only hope was to send power directly into their chests as they slammed into me. Because if I missed I’d be torn into tiny little pieces before I could try again.

  The energy spitting in my palms illuminated a circle about four feet around where I stood. I waited for the hounds to step into the light, knowing it wouldn’t make my job easier if I could see them, but finding comfort in the thought nonetheless.

  But the hounds stopped just outside the circle and waited, temper throbbing in their thick throats in a constant drone. When I realized they didn’t intend to come closer, I risked speaking. “Dialle?”

  A soft footfall made my gaze shift in the direction of Dialle’s throne. “Are you all right?”

  A gentle wash of breath, like a sigh, filtered toward me. “Dialle, talk to me.”

  Light blossomed like the sun, filling the room with eye-straining illumination. I blinked, stared at the two massive black canines sitting calmly just a few feet away, their wide, snubbed snouts wet with slobber and their terrifying gazes locked on my face.

  As my eyes adjusted to the light I cast my gaze toward Dialle’s throne. What I saw there was more terrifying than the two Hell hounds could ever be.

  Dialle sat slumped in his throne, his head dropped to his chest, his limbs sprawled loosely as if he were unconscious. I softly repeated his name, barely more than a whisper, and his head slowly lifted. His beautiful face was a portrait in despair, the sexy black eyes completely devoid of color or passion. He looked like a man just a heartbeat from death. But he had not a single wound or injury that I could see.

  His wounds were all internal.

  “Oh good Him, Dialle. What have I done to you?”

  He just stared at me, the black gaze dancing icy fingers down my spine. His once-beautiful hair hung limp and dull around his face and the clothes he wore draped loosely, like cast-off clothes on a farmer’s scarecrow.

  How far he’d fallen in the few days since I’d left.

  I took a step closer and the Hell hounds snapped, sending spittle in a wide arc around their massive heads. I jerked to a halt. “Call them off, Dialle.”

  His cold gaze slid slowly toward the hounds and then back to me. “Go away, Astra. Leave me alone.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you. Come with me, Dialle. Let’s get away from this place and I can make it better. I promise.”

  His black eyes suddenly spiraled with icy, hostile silver. “You’ll make it better? How? I nurture a cold, dead mating mark in my breast. No light infuses the mark. Only the oily black of Hell. My court rots around me, like my cursed soul. The very air I breathe is like poison. I no longer belong here. There is no making it better, Astra. Unless you’ve come to tell me you’ve regained your power.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him exactly that, despite the fact it wasn’t strictly true. In that moment, I realized I’d do anything to save him. But the doors behind me slammed back against the wall and, startled into action, the hounds attacked.

  I’d started to turn to see who was coming at me from behind when the first massive hound hit me, throwing me to the ground and sending me skidding across the floor. I rammed up against something that felt like rock and looked up to see Gerch peering down at me. Burning spittle dripped onto my cheek. Standing on my chest snarling, the hound’s sulfurous breath painted my face. My hands pressed against its chest, holding the snapping teeth away from my throat.

  Just barely.

  Gerch stared at me for a moment, his craggy face dark with anger.

  “A little help here?” I gasped as those impossibly white teeth made headway toward my cringing flesh.

  He reached down and grabbed the hellhound by the scruff of the neck, flinging it away. The thing landed with a yelp and the two hounds skulked away, tails tucked.

  “How strange to see you here, my queen, since I told you to leave.”

  I climbed to my feet and brushed rock dust off my ass. “And I told you I wasn’t leaving without Dialle.”

  Gerch frowned, his small, black eyes nearly disappearing beneath a wide, red brow. “Well, since you’re here we might as well escort the king from this place together.”

  I nodded and we turned. Horror knifed through me and I had to reach out and grab Gerch’s arm as dizziness made the world spin.

  “Where is he, Astra?” Gerch spoke the question in a soft voice, his eyes sliding to mine.

  “I…” The throne was empty. As was the throne room. Oh Good Him. Dialle had left without us.

  * * * * *

  With the last of my quickly faltering power, I shifted Gerch to the office. We spent the next hour contacting everyone we could trust, asking them to come to my office for a confab on what to do next.

  The office was empty
when we got there. Apparently Bob and Ralph were out on a job.

  Gerch and I settled into my office to wait for my friends and family to arrive. While waiting, I tried to fill Gerch in on what had happened before he arrived in the throne room. “I’m afraid Dialle’s going to hurt himself. You should have heard him.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t?” He fixed me with an accusing look that made me bristle. But knowing the loyal Captain of Dialle’s guards had done his best in a terrible situation, and he’d remained loyal when everyone else had turned against us, I bit back my angry retort and said nothing.

  Again with the maturity. Impressive, yes?

  The air in front of my desk shimmered and Brina appeared, looking slightly the worse for wear. The skin under one of her eyes was puffy and bleeding, she had a long, healing wound down one slim arm, and blood caked her usually silky black hair. The feisty royal still held a bloody sword in one hand. “I tried to trace the king’s magic signature but lost it at the dimensional split. He’s definitely left this dimension.”

  “The Shadows?” Gerch ventured.

  The royal shook her head. “I can’t know for sure but I don’t think so.”

  Slayer shimmered into the room and picked up the conversational thread. “Could he have gone to Olympus?”

  We all looked at each other but Brina finally said, “It’s possible.”

  My sister shimmered in next. She and Slayer shared a look that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

  I inclined my head in her direction by way of a greeting and told my gathered friends what I knew. “He’s very depressed. I’d even say suicidal. He told me that he no longer belonged here.”

  Slayer frowned. “If he doesn’t feel he belongs here he probably wouldn’t go to Olympus either.”

  “Or any of the light dimensions,” Brina agreed.

  “He could have gone to Hell.”