Chapter 10
Ashmedai
The paladins were predictable. Ashmedai was certain they didn’t think so, but their patterns were decipherable enough for a being as ancient and clever as him.
They were prey as easily caught as the damned souls in the Pit.
Fodder on which to feast, to lay waste, to take out his frustrations.
He didn’t just eat their sins. He rended the skin from their bones before he feasted on the energy from their blackened souls, watched them bleed and delighted in their screams before he finally ended their filthy, worthless lives.
He barely noticed the passing of time. The rising and falling sun was a blip, an inconvenient pause he was forced to take on the hunt each day.
He had nothing else. Only the hunt. The kill. The hollow taste of sin.
Sins had never left him feeling unfulfilled before.
No amount of eating could fill the void Nicolas had left behind.
It was a cruel fate he’d been given, to need someone so fiercely who didn’t want him in return.
What was the point in feeling this way? Why should he have a connection like this with anyone at all? It did nothing but cause him pain.
He’d avoided the Sentinels since the day he’d ripped through the apartment.
He didn’t want to face their inquiries. They’d asked him to stop killing paladins, but he’d rather gnaw off his own arm than let the paladins think for a single moment that they were safe from him.
They would be unhappy with him, but he didn’t care.
Valac had invited him to the surface to kill.
No one was allowed to dictate how or when he did it.
He wasn’t one of them. He was a monster, and monsters didn’t take orders.
They didn’t stop killing just because someone asked them to.
Now, he was in a sprawling cemetery with a trio of black souls.
One was pinned to the grass by his power, his wounds weeping crimson, while Ashmedai sucked the sins from the other.
Until he’d come to the surface, he hadn’t known that doing this would kill a living human.
In Hell, drawing on the black energy of a damned soul hurt them, but they were already dead.
He’d never seen the effects of his appetite on a living soul. It was… very satisfying.
Other demons circled them in the shadows, drawn by the scent of terror and blood. An arleth, camouflaged in the darkness, growled impatiently, while a skinny crex watched him from its perch on top of a nearby headstone.
“You may have them,” he said slowly, testing each word, “when I’m finished.
” He’d been practicing his speech during the daylight hours when he couldn’t hunt, speaking aloud to himself, sounding out each word.
He wasn’t sure why, since he had no one to speak to.
But he was determined to prove to himself that—in this small way, at least—he wasn’t so different from anyone else.
He could speak, even if there was no one around to hear.
The crex whined, its slender tail lashing from side to side.
“Please,” the prone paladin whimpered, struggling uselessly. “Please just let us go.”
Ashmedai laughed. “Why? You show us no mercy.”
The man’s face twisted with disgust. “Because you’re monsters! You kill people!”
Ashmedai grabbed the human’s face, his claws digging in. “I eat sins, stupid human. Only kill sinful.”
The human’s eyes bugged. “No! No, that’s a lie!”
“You sin with every breath,” he went on, then jerked his head at the begging crex on the headstone. “Have a taste, friends. But do not kill him. Or I will kill you.”
“No! No! No!” The words fell away as his protests became screams of pain. The crex and arleth demons gurgled happily as their teeth and claws sank into the meat of the human.
“Shut him up,” Ashmedai said, and one of them covered his mouth to muffle his sounds.
He bent over the third one, grabbing his head and lifting his face. The sin tasted like ash and went through him like sand in a sieve. It did nothing to nourish or satisfy. It wasn’t what he truly wanted.
But he couldn’t have what he truly wanted.
With a snarl that sent the crex and arleth skittering away, he grabbed the shuddering human and lifted him, sucking the sin from his twitching and whimpering body until there was nothing left.
When he raised his head, the arleth had fled, but the crex studied him, wearing a smile on its eerily human-looking face. Solid black eyes blinked up at him, and it clacked its flat teeth together as though in anticipation. It was hoping he would find more humans to share with it.
Another presence joined them abruptly, and Ashmedai turned to find Valac standing amongst the headstones nearby, his violet eyes striking in the shadows. The dark tendrils of his power undulated on his bare arms.
“We would like a word,” Valac said, sparing a brief glance at the bodies and the crex hovering beside him. At the behemoth’s attention, the crex fled into the night.
Ashmedai turned away. “No.”
“No?” Valac repeated.
“Nothing to say.”
“We had an agreement. You would stop killing—”
“I was made to do this,” Ashmedai said. “I will not stop.”
There was a thoughtful pause. “Your language is improving.”
Should he say thank you? Somehow he didn’t think so. “I will kill who I wish.”
“You agreed to a temporary cease—”
“They deserve this!” he snarled, whirling around.
“Because they hurt him?” Valac guessed. Too soft, too understanding, his inhuman eyes filled with sympathy that Ashmedai didn’t want or need.
He turned away. “Because they sin,” he responded coldly.
“And because he returned to them,” Valac added.
Ashmedai’s lip curled, though Valac couldn’t see it.
“You understand he didn’t choose them over you, right?”
Ashmedai growled. The behemoth was overstepping. This wasn’t his business.
“His brother is with us now,” Valac said, cutting Ashmedai’s growl short. “You should meet him.”
“His brother isn’t him.” What was the point in meeting someone who wasn’t him?
“No, but Nicolas loves him, which means he’ll be important to you, too.”
“No.”
Valac huffed. “You can’t deny what you feel for him.”
“What should I do, then?” Ashmedai snarled, taking a menacing step closer.
“Do nothing? Wallow? Go and beg? Pretend I’m something I’m not?
” No amount of pretending would make him like the Sentinels or their demons.
They’d spent centuries on the surface blending in with the humans.
Ashmedai would never be like them. He could never go into the light with Nicolas.
Even the artificial lights in the skating rink were irritatingly bright.
Valac’s brow furrowed. He gestured at Ashmedai. “This isn’t wallowing?”
Ashmedai turned away with a snarl. He didn’t know what it was like to be denied. None of them did.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder, and he was dragged through dark space against his will. He roared, and when they appeared in the Rink, he spun, shoving Valac away from him.
“No!” he hissed, startling everyone in the room.
His eyes found the brother immediately. This was the human who’d accompanied Nicolas home after the night they met.
He looked like Nicolas, but younger. Dark, curly hair.
Light brown eyes, flecked with green rather than Nicolas’s gold.
He was a little smaller than Nicolas, his face less shadowed with stubble, and his eyes widened in recognition.
“Holy shit, you’re the one,” he said.
Ashmedai leveled a scowl at Valac. “Leaving.”
“No the fuck you’re not,” Talon said firmly. “We need to talk.”
Ashmedai wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation. He turned toward the door. He needed darkness to teleport—one more way he was different from the rest of them—but Valac stepped in his path.
“Ashmedai, we just want to talk,” Julian said, raising his hands in appeal.
“No talk,” he said stubbornly.
“You agreed to stop attacking paladins for a while,” Talon said, crossing his arms. “Color me surprised when I’m still getting reports of dead paladins a week later.”
“Things changed.”
“What, your boy toy left, so you’re taking it out on the rest of us?”
Ashmedai met his black eyes with furious calm. “Do you know… how easily I could kill you, leviathan?”
Alex tugged on Talon’s arm. “Don’t piss him off.”
Talon was unfazed, dark eyes flashing with anger. “We had a deal.”
Ashmedai opened his mouth to retort—and then the little brother stepped between them, giving Ashmedai a look caught between a smile and wince. The breath stalled in Ashmedai’s lungs. They looked so similar it was almost painful to look at him.
“Hi. I’m Daniel. I’m Nicolas’s little brother.”
“I know,” Ashmedai grated out.
“I don’t know what Nic told you, but when he’s done helping them find the kids, he’s leaving the guild.
I know he sent you away, and you’re probably very hurt and confused.
And you should be! Nic’s kind of a dumbass when it comes to relationships.
But I’ve never seen him conflicted about anyone the way he is about you.
He didn’t send you away because he doesn’t want you, I promise.
He just… needed some time. After he finds the kids, he’ll join us here, and we can both tell him how stupid he’s been.
” His brows lifted hopefully. “But it’ll be easier for Nic if the paladins think these guys had held up their end of the deal by stopping you. ”
Begrudgingly, the fight drained out of him.
If Nicolas was really going to leave the guild, Ashmedai’s kills might be making that harder to do.
He wasn’t convinced that Nicolas would ever want him, but that didn’t change the fact that Ashmedai wanted him to be safe.
If he’d promised Daniel he would leave the guild after he found the kids, Ashmedai needed to do what he could to make that happen. “Fine. One week. Then they’re mine.”
“That should be long enough to prove to them that we’ve done our part,” Nathan agreed, standing by the table with Storm. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
Weariness settled in his bones. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t even want to hunt. All he wanted, more than anything, was to go to Nicolas’s quiet apartment, inhale his scent, touch his warm skin. It was the only thing that would grant him peace.
He barely felt himself move away from the others. No one stopped him this time, and the moment he slipped outside into the darkness, he disappeared.
He meant to go to the apartment. His subconscious had other ideas, because he appeared in Nicolas’s bedroom. The lights were off, the curtains drawn, and a silent lump laid in the middle of the bed, burrowed beneath the blankets.
Nicolas.
His soft breaths did more to soothe the hollowness in Ashmedai’s bones than anything else all week.
He was powerless to resist now that he was already so close.
Leaning over the bed, careful not to put too much weight on the mattress, he inhaled, dragging Nicolas’s sweet scent into his lungs over and over.
It was so good, but not enough. Never enough.
Nicolas stirred, turning his head, and Ashmedai barely had enough time to pull away before their noses brushed.
“Ash…” he murmured in his sleep.
Ashmedai leaned closer. “My light,” he breathed, claws trailing ever so softly down the side of Nicolas’s face. “I miss you.”
Nicolas’s eyes fluttered, and Ashmedai pulled away, disappearing before they could open all the way and focus on him.
Ashmedai reappeared in his quiet apartment, wishing he could hold the scent of Nicolas in his lungs forever.