Chapter Fifteen
Dommiel
We stood outside a tavern in the small German village of the Erzgebirge Mountains. The village was cut off from the world and therefore was safer from the ongoing battle of otherworlders. Humans shuffled to and fro, even in the deep snow, all of whom turned a questioning and violent eye toward me and Anya.
Strangely, they didn’t run or ring a bell in the square announcing that monsters had arrived. This was the kind of old village where one might expect a mob to show up with torches and pitchforks.
“Are you sure this is the place?” asked Anya.
I glanced at her guarded expression as she scanned up and down the street. After our third and last round of mind-melting sex, we’d drifted off. When we woke, I’d been quiet, uncomfortable with the shared intimacy. Sex, I could do. Intimacy, I could not. Never had to deal with such a feeling.
Hell, I’d had all-nighters with women before. With more than one woman at a time, truth be told. But sex with Anya had laid me bare. She’d exposed some part of me I’d thought snuffed out with the betrayal from my brother, with my fall from grace, with my sentence of eternal damnation, and finally with being cast out by my own kind. It was easier, safer here in the dark—alone. No risk involved when you flew solo.
And yet, she made me yearn. Made me want. Made me want to sink into her sweet, soft body and cling to her bright, hopeful ideals. It scared the fuck out of me. Which is why today I’d been distant. Cold. She’d noticed. For once, I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t trust myself around her. So I’d focused on the task at hand, bringing us to this far-flung pub on the outskirts of civilization in this picturesque German town that apparently was doing all right because of its isolation.
“This is the one. Axel’s vision was clear.”
“So now what?”
“We go in and sit at a particular booth and hope that tonight the waitress is Nadya’s friend.”
“And if not?”
“We come back again tomorrow.”
“I’ve never met a demon witch.” She looked at me. “Are they dangerous?”
I arched a brow. “Very.”
She exhaled a heavy sigh, her cold breath a white puff in the air. “I suppose she must be cautious this way, but—”
Not for the first time, I noticed her brow pinching together almost in pain.
“But what?”
She glanced at me, wiping her expression blank. “I just want to find Uriel soon.”
“I know you do. Come.”
I opened the door of the tavern, the warm light of lanterns and candles spilling out. As I suspected, we were the only otherworlders in the room, which wasn’t packed but wasn’t empty either. The muffle of voices died at once. Hard-faced men and tight-lipped women watched us enter. I nodded, having made sure my beast was well-hidden, my fangs having receded, my eye a human shade.
I stalked to the far wall and sat in the booth all the way to the left, the one Axel had indicated. Anya sat across from me, tucking her wings tight against her back. She had cast illusion so these humans couldn’t see her wings, yet they sensed we were other all the same. We were obviously not locals.
After we sat calmly and didn’t seem about to tear the place apart and attack them, the villagers turned back to their low, murmuring conversations, drinking their beer and eating their soup and bread.
After a minute, a ruddy-cheeked, stout woman with a friendly face stepped up to us.
“Not from around here, are you?” she asked in German.
“No,” I answered in her language. “We’d like two pints of your local beer.”
“We’ve got potato and ham soup as well. Would you like two bowls?”
I knew Anya would likely not eat, but I wanted to keep things as normal as I could.
“Yes. We’d also like to speak to Nadya.”
The waitress flinched.
“If that’s possible,” I added.
“Don’t know a Nadya.” The tremor in her voice said otherwise.
“I think you do. Tell her, Axel sent me.”
She frowned. “Not sure what you’re about, mister. I’ll get your beer and soup.”
She marched off, glancing over her shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen.
“Well,” Anya broke the silence. “I’m not sure we’ll ever meet this Nadya, if it’s up to her.”
“Patience, angel.”
Her slender fingers were laced on the table as she searched the room. “These people look like they don’t even know there’s an apocalypse taking place beyond their village.”
“Oh, they know.”
“They’re the lucky ones, aren’t they? Secluded from the violence in the big cities.”
The waitress returned and plunked two pints of beer on the table. “Soup will be out shortly.” Without a backward glance, she returned to the kitchen.
Anya took a swig of the beer, her brow puckering before she coughed into her sleeve. I took a drink myself. Good, strong German beer. I pulled from my inside pocket my cigarette pack. Lighting one up, I let the brimstone sizzle along my senses and amp up my demon energy.
There were no otherworlders in the vicinity except Anya sitting across from me. The locals talked of a coming blizzard and food stores and keeping the farm animals fed through the winter. One couple in the corner talked of love. The young man held the girl’s hand under the table. He wanted her to go home with him, despite the fact her father said he wasn’t good enough for her. The look in her eyes said she’d be going to the boy’s bed tonight, which made me drag my eyes back to Anya.
She watched me. Intently. Specifically my lips when I put the cigarette to them. Neither of us spoke, the tension burning a hole through both of us. She tilted her head, her black hair sliding in a glossy sheet, brushing the table. My fingers twitched, knocking the tip of ash on the table. Her pretty mouth slipped into a smile.
“Do you regret last night?”
Taking a long drag, I blew a slow stream up into the air.
“Never?”
Her voice held a thread of challenge. Interesting. The angel wanted to play.
She took another drink, downing two big gulps, then set the tankard back down with a determined thunk.
“I think you do have regrets. Maybe not about last night. But something in your past.”
“Do you now?”
“Tell me. Why do you treasure a well-read copy of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?”
When the fuck did she see that?
“You were snooping at my place?”
“Hardly. I was looking around.” She shrugged a shoulder. “It wasn’t hidden.”
That’s because I’d never brought anyone into my personal lair. No one. Except her. Refusing to acknowledge why that particular piece of literature hooked me hard, I kept silent, watching her.
She wiggled in her seat and cleared her throat.
“I’m just curious why a self-professed condemned demon would cling to a narrative poem about a man finding redemption.”
I sucked in a deep drag of brimstone till it burned in my chest, singeing me from the inside out.
“It’s not about redemption. It’s about penance.”
She stared, then squirmed again. Something about her discomfort made my beast perk up and sniff the air. Seeking her.
“I beg to differ.” Her delicate, long-fingered hands cupped the tankard, one finger tapping lightly. “The old man must tell his story over and over to those in need of hearing his tale. So they will learn from his mistake. He’s seeking redemption for what he’s done.”
I wanted to laugh, my mouth twisting into a cynical smile. “You’ve misinterpreted the whole point. The man made a terrible mistake. A sin against the heavens. So what happens next? He wanders the ghastly sea, starving, dying of thirst, then meets the Grim Reaper and Lady Fortune along the way. They gamble for their lives. And does he die as he should? No. His shipmates are all taken, their zombified bodies doomed to sail the ship alongside the mariner. His punishment continues.”
“But then the angels come for him—”
“No.” I slashed my hand with the cigarette, then flicked the ash. “They come for his shipmates. Not for him. The mariner is left alone. Completely alone.”
Some cold, dark thing clawed inside my chest. A raw emotion choked off my speech for a moment, and I realized my fangs were sharpening. I closed my eye, breathing in deep and slow, calming the monster inside. When the beast backed down, I opened my eye to find her watching, violet eyes wide, breath coming quick.
“The story is about his payment. His long-suffering, endless payment. Nothing more.”
She raised her imperious chin in the air, gaze narrowed. “You’re one of those glass half-empty people, aren’t you?”
“I’m a realist, baby. I don’t color the world with pretty dreams. I see them as they are. Coleridge wrote that poem because he saw a man who’d committed a sin and who should pay for it. Eternally. I like that. The idea that the truth is…there is no redemption. Because there isn’t.”
“What are talking about? Of course, there is.”
I stubbed out the brimstone cigarette and relaxed, my arms spread along the back of the booth. “Tell me, Anya. You’ve spent your entire immortal life serving as a guardian and a warrior angel. At what point have you been released from service? At what point have you experienced this so-called redemption? This paradise for your sacrifices? When does your endless duty end?”
Tears pricked, making her eyes brighter, more beautiful. I wanted to reach across the table and pull her into my lap, cover her mouth with mine, invade her body, her mind. Her soul. The compulsion was a fierce, terrible thing, cutting my gut into little pieces as I remained still, refusing to do the beast’s will.
She gulped hard and licked her lips. “The redemption doesn’t come in the end, Dommiel. It comes in the laughter of a child I’ve saved from abusive hands. In the gratefulness of a mother I’ve saved from a horde. It comes from the small grace I feel inside when I’ve done what’s right and good.”
She clenched her fist to her heart. My own breathing was labored, my chest rising and falling more quickly. Defiance, denial lacerating my innards.
“And that’s enough for you? To remain a slave for the heavens for those small moments of grace?”
“Yes.” Her declaration was strong and clear and pierced straight to my nonexistent heart. “Is it enough for you to serve only yourself? Collecting coin and hoarding it like a cold-hearted dragon? To live alone? To be alone?”
I growled and leaned forward, flattening my palms to the table, my voice menacing and harsh.
“All of us are alone, Anya.”
“I’m not.” Her slender, pale hand slid across the table and wrapped around my flesh one. “Not when I’m with you.”
Shock didn’t describe what I felt in that single, goddamned moment. I froze, pulse firing through my blood with painful speed. She couldn’t do this. Tell me such insane, fucking things that made me wish for more. Wish for her.
The waitress sidled up. “Here we are.”
I jerked my hand away, still watching Anya as the girl set the bowls of soup and a basket of bread down. She cleared her throat, drawing my attention away from the temptress across the table.
“You might want to eat that bread while it’s hot.” She pushed the basket toward me with an arched brow, then walked away.
Flipping open the cloth that kept the bread warm, I saw a piece of paper folded at the bottom. Quickly, I opened it, scanning the brief note scrawled in a swift, pretty hand.
“Well,” Anya whispered, as if anyone here knew what we were about. “What does it say?”
I slid the note across the table.
“Looks like you get to meet your first demon witch.”