Chapter Six
Anya
Cold salt wind gusted off the open sea as I soared above Dommiel and the Twelver. A welcome distraction. My pulse drummed wildly in my chest, my senses still humming from the burning memory of his mouth on my skin.
I should be repulsed by having his lips on me. It was rather the opposite. It was like he reached inside me and opened a door I didn’t know existed. A door that led to sensation and ecstasy and sinful desire. This must be the compulsion of that demon prince.
Reaching up, I touched the place on my neck where the prince had bitten me. A pulse of memory rippled along my skin. This could be the only reason for my reaction to Dommiel. I must find Uriel soon, before the prince’s poison wound its way deeper. If the toxic essence captured my heart, it would steal my soul, too. I would be a slave to the darkness, my spirit a lost shell of the angel I was.
But again, I couldn’t stop thinking of the fierce aggression in Dommiel and that look in his deep crimson gaze when his demon rose to the surface. He didn’t wear the color of so many demons, the bright blood hue. No, his was darker, deeper, rimmed with black. It was a sign of something I’d never seen before. No high demon bore eyes that shade when his beast was riding him.
San Giorgio Maggiore was a welcome sight, though it was nothing more than a cold presence across the channel, seemingly abandoned. My heavenly senses felt the many heartbeats of others, especially the children sheltered in the darkened buildings of the small island.
Below, the Twelver slowed her boat as they approached a rocky outcropping and a quay tucked just beyond the man-made reef. A sort of hidden landing pad onto the island, not the main wharf, which would’ve been commonly used. Winging down, I landed on the stone wharf just as Dommiel stepped free of the vessel, his ruby-eyed gaze hard on me for a blink before he scanned the surroundings, his beast still riding him hard.
“This way.” The Twelver zipped past both of us, leading down an empty alleyway, her hood up and cloak billowing. We followed.
Dommiel’s presence was welcome at my back. Strange. But I’d never had a stranger night than this one. And it appeared to grow stranger as we wound through empty streets, our footsteps echoing off the walls, the chill night air swirling the remnants of snow in dusty swirls along the stone walkway.
Finally, we stopped before a building that time had roughened. Dommiel halted at the entrance, while the woman pulled keys from her pocket.
I paused beside him. “What is it?”
“What is this place?” he asked the Twelver.
“Longhena Library.”
He scanned the doorway. “It was once a Benedictine monastery.”
She removed her hood and unlocked the heavy wood door. She pushed it open and used her body to hold it open.
“Don’t worry, Dommiel.” The fact that she used his name surprised me. “The wards that once protected this place as a sacred space no longer keep your kind out.”
“The monks’ presence lingers,” he added before following through the door first.
I crossed through. “What is your name?”
“Zoe. And you are?” Her tone was still sharp and clipped, not one of a courteous host, but a hesitant one.
“Anya.”
She dipped her head in a quick nod, her gaze landing on Dommiel again. “If you’ll both follow me.”
She moved ahead, her boots echoing on the tile floor. The shadowy place appeared empty; yet again I honed in on the many heartbeats of humans dwelling here.
Once more beside Dommiel, I glanced to find his normally blank expression pursed in a frown.
“Is it painful to walk in this once-sacred place?” I asked.
For there were some rules still intact since the war began. Demons couldn’t walk on sacred ground, even in the apocalypse. But the wards that once protected this place had evaporated over time.
He glanced my way, then kept pace right behind Zoe. “Not exactly. It’s pushing at me, but not too hard. Odd.”
Zoe led us through a room with dark-stained wood bookcases, their ornate structure resonating from centuries earlier. This was a very old library, obviously now some sort of headquarters for these Twelvers. Voices drew closer as she took us down another hall, the flickering of candlelight spilling from open doorways.
One room held three children sitting on a mattress together, playing a card game by lantern light. In another room was a woman cleaning a weapon, her eyes narrowing on us as we passed. She quickly put down the gun, leaped to her feet, and stood in the hall watching us as we followed Zoe. She left in the opposite direction. Another room was dark, but there were humans sleeping inside, their heartbeats a calm drumbeat within. We rounded the corner to the end of a long hallway where no one seemed to be.
Zoe pulled open a door and held it open for us to enter. The room was stark. A mattress on the floor, like the one where the children were, a bare desk with a lantern upon it, a tattered but cushioned wingback chair, and a small window too high to gaze out from at standing height. Still, moonlight spilled into the room.
“Stay in this room until I come for you.”
Without another word, she closed the door and locked us inside.
Confused, I looked at Dommiel. “We can sift outside of the room. Surely, she knows that.”
He nodded, his good hand on his hip as he scanned the room. “She does.”
“Then why bother locking us in?”
He settled into the wingback chair, tossing his satchel aside, and pulling something from inside his jacket. “It’s a test.”
“But why?”
Removing a cigarette from a metal case, he found a lighter and flicked open the flame. With the cigarette between his lips and an inhaling hiss, he lit it, the end glowing bright red. Not a human cigarette, but brimstone. I’d seen others smoking them before.
“She knows we can sift out and leave this place. Or attack, if that were our intention. She’s testing us to see if we’ll do as she asks. I imagine if we do, then we’ll get to meet Marko.” He dragged deep on the cigarette, lounging back in his chair like a king, his legs spread, his mechanical arm resting on the arm of the chair, his wicked one-eyed gaze on me, still dark ruby red. “Have a seat and relax, angel. I imagine we may be here awhile.”
My pulse leaped ahead. I wasn’t sure why. Was it being locked in a small room with Dommiel? Or the way he looked at me now? The way he did back in Venice when he had me cornered in that niche, his strong body pressed against mine, his lips descending on me and stealing what sense of self-preservation I had.
“What’s wrong, baby?” He tilted his head on the next drag before slowly blowing out a stream of smoke. “Do I make you nervous now?”
I didn’t answer but instead took a seat on the mattress, stretching my wings to lay flat against the wall so I had a good view of the window and the moon peeking from behind wispy clouds.
“You ever tried brimstone?” he asked.
With my gaze on the indigo sky, I almost laughed. “Of course not. I’m an angel.”
“Oh, Anya. When are you going to learn that all of those lines are blurred now? Didn’t you see those angels in Venice? Hanging with demons and enjoying the pleasures of the flesh like lesser beings? Like us demons.”
I didn’t miss the cynical lilt of his words as he hissed in another deep drag of brimstone, the scent smoky sweet, like charred honey, filling our small space. Chancing a glance at him, I wished I hadn’t. The way he looked at me now was unsettling. Like he knew my secrets. Like he knew I’d enjoyed his lips on my skin, his body pressed to mine, and wanted him to do it again. Do more.
“I saw,” I admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’m one of them.”
“No. You’ll never be one of those angels,” he said with finality. “You’re set apart, Anya.”
My name on his lips did something inside me, something unwanted and wanted at the same time. I couldn’t help but watch the slow rise of his fingers, the cigarette held firmly between, pressed to his lips—lips that were so much softer than they appeared—dragging across my skin, sending the most unforgettable pleasure racing through my body.
“How so?”
His keen, brooding observation quickened my pulse, unsettled my nerves. This was so unlike his cavalier manners of before. I couldn’t take my eyes from him.
“You’re a warrior, but you fight for no army. You care for the humans, showing compassion even when it’s hopeless. You act as an individual, rather than following the mindless horde of heavenly hosts into battle. So unlike angelkind. You are different. Independent but still married to the code of good and all that bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. There is good, and there is evil.”
He grunted. “No gray in between?”
Rather than answer a question that challenged everything I’ve ever believed, for fear I’d not like where this conversation took us, I steered it in another direction.
“What does that do for you?”
“What? This?” He flicked off a tip of ash from the brimstone. “It heightens my senses, brings me back in tune with my demon.” He raised it in offering. “You want to try?”
“No.” I was afraid of what I didn’t understand. Of the way he looked at me. Of myself. For what if the brimstone heightened the senses of the demon who had bitten me? Would I fall even further from myself? Would I become more evil than good? What if it heightened a darkness that was already there, waiting to be lit from within?
“You need some sleep,” he said as a command not a suggestion.
“No. I’m fine.”
“This world is wearing you down. I can see it in your eyes. Trust me. You need sleep. And I don’t think they’re coming for us anytime soon.”
He was right. In Elysium, I never slept. I was fueled by the air around me. But here, the weight of this world pressed harder and heavier every day. Without further comment, I lay down on the mattress, letting my wings fall flat behind me at rest.
Dommiel gazed, observing with close scrutiny. His expression waning to something nostalgic. I perused his broad shoulders, imagining what he would’ve looked like as an angel. Before the fall.
“What color were your wings before?”
His eye, having drained of the ruby red back to the dark brown, almost black shade. “What color do you think?”
“Black,” I answered on quick impulse.
A subtle smile ticked up the corner of his mouth.
Before I thought better of it, I poured out more. “The darkest sable. So rich that it shined, begging for fingers to touch it.”
He froze, his hand with the cigarette resting on his thigh, a plume of gold-gray smoke rising like a cobra from its cage. He didn’t say a word, just stared at me.
“Like that of your familiar, the raven.”
His mouth spread into a full smile, sending my pulse pounding yet again.
“You noticed Puck?” He took another drag and blew out another stream of smoke. Once more, I was drawn to his lips. A dangerous thing. “Of course you did. You don’t miss anything.”
“Neither do you.”
“You got that right, baby.” He held my gaze, capturing me in a smoldering look that made my middle pool with warmth.
“You named your raven after a Shakespearean character?” Such a peculiar demon to have an interest in the Elizabethan bard. Just as I did.
“Rhymes with my favorite word,” he smirked. “And he likes getting into mischief.”
“Like his master?”
He dragged long on the brimstone, the fire-red tip brightening the room before he blew out a stream of the heady smoke, dropped the stub, and ground the heel of his boot on top.
“Go to sleep, Anya,” he commanded again, more softly.
And I wanted to obey him. A strange compulsion, since I’d only ever obeyed the commands of my angel superiors. Yet here I was, falling under some strange spell by the former high demon of New Orleans, now an outcast with motives to aid our side that I’d yet to puzzle out. For though he had joined me on this quest only for drakuls, I knew he wouldn’t have taken the job had he not other reasons.
I unbuckled my dagger sheath and set the belt aside, then closed my eyes, trusting the demon on watch, the demon who was slowly drawing me in. Making me wonder about my beliefs of my own world and of his. Making me wonder if the lines truly were more blurred than I’d thought. If he was right, I’d have to confront everything I’ve ever known…and change.