Chapter Six
This sucked. Usually Razr’s
punishment came from Azagoth or Hades, although Zhubaal had filled in a couple of times. Z didn’t like it,
not like Azagoth and Hades, who both seemed to enjoy
doling out a little torture, even among friends, but sometimes things couldn’t
be helped.
“Please,” Jedda whispered as Shrike’s heavy steps crossed
the room. “Surely this can wait—”
“It can’t,” Shrike said, his eyes glowing with that unholy
crimson light again. “Even now, he’s feeling pressure build inside. His skin is
burning. His blood feels like lava. Every minute without punishment increases
the agony. Isn’t that right, Razr?”
Unfortunately, yes. “How the fuck do you know?”
Shrike stroked his finger over the cat-o’-nine’s smooth
handle, and how fucked up was it that Razr actually
experienced jealousy? He hated the cat. But it was his, and he
despised the fact that this fallen angel fuckwad was
caressing it.
Yeah, fucked up.
Shrike’s voice was soft, almost...tender. “Does it matter
how I know?”
Not really, but Razr guessed there was one hell of a story
behind his knowledge. “Just get it over with. Six of them.”
“No!” Jedda put herself between Razr and Shrike. What the
hell was she doing? He was a stranger to her, and yet she was trying to protect
him.
Unaccustomed to being the recipient of such kindness, he
hung his head, at a loss for how to handle this. His wings, bound so tightly
that they ached, quivered under his skin as if wanting to erupt from his back
and shield her from what she was about to witness.
He lifted his head and looked at her from over his shoulder.
“Jedda,” he said roughly, “it’s okay. Don’t look. It’ll be over quickly.”
For the span of a dozen heartbeats
she hesitated. And then, reluctantly, she nodded and moved aside for Shrike,
but she still cried out as the first blow fell across his shoulders, which,
although fully healed, were still sensitive from the last flogging he’d taken
at Jim Bob’s hand.
Pain exploded and blood splattered. He clenched his teeth
and bore the second blow with a grunt. His ears rang, but through the buzz he
could hear Jedda pleading with Shrike to stop.
Nothing she said would stop him. She couldn’t stop
him. This was something Razr had earned, and he’d learned the hard way that it
was much less painful to take the blows than to suffer for days sometimes until
an angel showed up to flay him with ten times the number of strikes.
Sixty fucking blows.
He normally healed within a few hours, but it took him days
to recover from that kind of angel-inflicted torture.
Another blow landed, and his vision blurred.
He didn’t even feel the next one.
“Gods, you’re heavy. You’re damned lucky my species
is freakishly strong.”
Razr was also lucky that there was a Harrowgate just a block
away from Jedda’s house or she’d have been forced to explain to a taxi driver
why she was hauling around an unconscious, bloody man in the middle of the
night.
She gasped with effort as she unceremoniously dumped Razr’s
unconscious body onto her bed, and so much for her new jade and amethyst
comforter and sheets. All ruined by sticky smears of blood.
What was up with that, anyway? Why had Razr needed to be
tortured? And why did she care? She hadn’t cared about anyone since the day an
angel killed one sister and sent the other into the wind. She’d been lonely at
times, but mostly being alone meant not having to compete with anyone else for
anything. Like the gems that kept her alive.
Oh, their parents had planned ahead
of time to avoid competition between Jedda and her sisters, and for the most
part it had worked. But her species was naturally competitive, and honestly,
she was surprised that she and her siblings had stuck
together for as long as they had. Most gem elf siblings lost touch within a
couple of years of reaching adulthood at the age of sixteen human years.
She wondered where Reina was, if she was even still in the
human realm. The last time Jedda had seen her sister had been a decade ago at
an underworld gem and weapons show on the outskirts of the Ca’askull
region of Sheoul. They’d run into each other at a
display booth for cursed magnetite, and it had done nothing to heal the hurt
between them.
Absolutely nothing. Reina knew how to contact Jedda, but she
hadn’t.
Not that Jedda was totally blameless. She’d followed up
once, but after finding that Reina no longer lived at the location she’d given
Jedda, she’d given up. Sure, she could attend the weekly gem trade in the elven realm where Reina would surely be on a regular basis,
but Jedda was stubborn, and she wasn’t going to be the one to make overtures at
this point.
A sound outside her front door followed by a wave of intense
evil jolted her out of her thoughts and raised the hackles
on the back of her neck. Silently, she slipped to the living room window and
peeked between the sapphire curtains. There, hanging in the shadows just off
her porch, was a demon she recognized from the sacrificial dinner. He just
stood there, his back against the side of the house as he looked out toward the
street.
Not. Cool.
She whipped open the door. “What are you doing?”
He turned to her, flashing sharp, ugly teeth. “Shrike wants
me to keep an eye on you. Make sure you deliver what you promised.”
“Tell Shrike he can go fuck himself. I don’t need a
babysitter.”
The bastard started toward her, but screw that. She wasn’t
giving him a chance to so much as lay a finger on her. Throwing out her hand,
she summoned the power of the very gem Shrike wanted her to find, the ice-blue
diamond of myth and legend. All around her the air shimmered as heat built.
With a mere thought, she released the energy, hitting
him with a shockwave that sent him tumbling all the way to the street, where he
landed in an awkward heap against a lamp pole.
“Stay off my property,” she shouted. “Or next time that wave
will take you apart.”
It wasn’t true, but he didn’t need to know that. Oh, she
could have summoned twice as much power, but she lived in a human neighborhood,
and there was no sense in drawing attention to herself. Especially since many
humans were aware of the existence of the supernatural thanks to recent
near-apocalyptic events, and nothing good ever came of humans and their fear.
Still, she’d always wondered how truly powerful her gem
would be if paired with its mate and the angel who possessed it.
Before he killed Manda, Ebel the Angry Angel had said that
the paired gems were capable of widespread destruction on an atomic level, and
she believed it. Even now she could feel her gem’s power like a pulse inside
her, as if it wanted to unleash everything it was capable of.
Shivering, she went back inside and fetched the med kit from
the bathroom. Razr was still passed out cold, so she
gently stripped off his slacks.
He didn’t wear underwear. Oh, my.
Her mouth went as dry as the sand forest in her elven homeland as she took in his magnificent body.
Everything began to burn, parts of her she’d all but forgotten she had in the
five years since she’d last been with a man. The fallen angel was about as
perfect as anything she’d ever seen. Made sense, she supposed—she’d never
thought angels would be anything less than perfection. But seeing one naked and
up close? No one could blame her for wanting to take pictures and post to all
her friends on Instagram, right?
Cursing her ethics, she arranged him on his belly to allow
access to his shredded back. Shame at the fact that she’d just ogled him shrank
her skin. Gods, he must have been in so much pain. She’d nearly passed out
herself during the beating, unable to stomach the sight of muscle and bone
exposed by the deep lacerations.
Making matters worse, Shrike had reveled in the gore,
growing angrier with each strike, as if he’d been taking some deep inner pain
out on Razr. When it was over, he’d thrown down the cat and fled the office
without a word, leaving her to gather Razr’s unconscious body and find her way
out of the castle.
At least the wounds had stopped bleeding and were already
starting to heal. Still, this was one of the times she wished she’d chosen the
garnet Gem of Enoch instead of the diamond. Jedda and her sisters hadn’t known
what power each of the gems had possessed at the time they’d chosen and
assimilated them, but neither Jedda nor Reina had been completely happy with
the outcomes. Manda had embraced the killing power of her stone, but Reina had
no desire to heal anyone and had been furious. And while Jedda’s gem had given
her a handy ability to violently repel demons, being able to heal would have
been cool too.
Very carefully, she cleaned Razr’s wounds and applied
bandages, each one drawing an elven curse from her.
Such a perfect body, torn to shreds on a regular basis. He had no scars—at
least, none that were visible. She’d heard there were species of demons that
could see scars no one else could, and she wondered what one of those demons
would see if they looked at Razr.
Jedda saw a very fit, very toned male.
Bronzed skin stretched over thick veins that helped define
the sharp-cut muscles of his shoulders and arms, and if there was an ounce of
fat on his body, she’d turn her jewelry store into a yogurt shop.
Tenderly, she ran her fingers over his biceps and forearm,
all the way to his fingers. His ring fascinated her, and when she touched the
black diamond in the center, she felt the oddest buzz, as if it contained an
enchantment that was restrained and trying to get out. Even stranger, enchanted
gemstones were always aligned with good, evil, or neutral energy, and she
couldn’t get any kind of read on it. Was he aware of its potential power? Or its alignment?
Putting her questions aside, she followed a thick vein up
the back of his hand and then laid her hand over his, marveling at how much
bigger his was. As an elf, she was naturally on the
delicate side, but he truly created a stark contrast in not only their size,
but their coloring. Where she was light, he was dark.
Even the tattoos that looped around his shoulder blades and
ran up the back of his neck in twin Celtic-style braids before disappearing
under short-cropped black hair were dark. Not in color––although they were deep
blue––but in nature. She recognized the symbols woven into the rope-like
pattern. They were often burned or carved into objects, like cursed or
enchanted gemstones, to dampen their power.
Were Razr’s tattoos more punishment for whatever he’d done?
Gods, what had he done? It had to have been bad to
get kicked out of Heaven, but then to be saddled with extra punishment?
She eyed the door. Maybe she’d made a mistake bringing him
home. She’d heard there was a clinic right here in London that treated demons
and fallen angels and the like... She could drop him off and then check on him
tomorrow.
He shifted, wincing at the slightest motion, and she sighed
in resignation. After all, a girl had to bring home the wrong guy at least once
in her life, didn’t she? And hey, he’d tried to warn her, tried to get her out
of the dinner party before everything went to hell. If she’d listened instead
of arguing, maybe she wouldn’t be in this mess.
She owed him for trying.
Plus, he seemed to know a lot about the Gems of Enoch. It
made her a little nervous, but at the same time, she’d love to learn more. She
and her sisters had only discovered them because they’d felt them in use, and
they’d stolen them before they’d learned what they
were. Since that day a century ago, Jedda had done as much research as
possible, but very little was known about them.
Seemed that very few angels
published books about their greatest weapons. Go figure.
After she finished patching him up, she went to the kitchen
to prepare something to eat and to plan her next move. Clearly Shrike was
serious about getting what he wanted, and if he’d really enveloped her in some
sort of sacrificial demonic magic, she was in trouble. Maybe she could get her
hands on the horn he wanted, but there was no way she could give him her gem,
even if she wanted to. It was part of her. It was why her heart was beating and
her blood was pumping.
Without it, she would die. The thing that sucked, though,
was that if she didn’t give it to him, the result would probably be the same.