A Demon Bound

  Chapter 16

  Do it," Gregory commanded. "Do your thing."

  We were at the first of the werewolves' houses and they were away at work. It was a family of three. Father, mother, ten year old son. I didn't know what the hell Gregory wanted me to do.

  "Your thing," he said impatiently. "Do it."

  "What thing?" Was I supposed to fuck Wyatt on the lawn, blow a hole in the driveway, throw a bolt of lightning through the picture window, or strip the skin off some human and forcibly Own them?

  "Change," he waved his hand around. "Change into something, then change back. Leave a big old demon energy signature right here on the front lawn to scare Althean away."

  Great. He was too lazy to hex the place, so I needed to convert my entire flesh. Did he want me to do this at every house? There were forty werewolf residences in the Waynesboro area. Was I supposed to do this at thirty nine of them? Fuck that. And what good would it do? Was Althean so stupid, or possibly so insane that he wouldn't realize that that fortieth house, the one without my energy all over it was a trap? Any self respecting demon would just head elsewhere. Somewhere outside the little regression line Wyatt showed on his computer. Stupid fucking angels. Like a dumb ass lemming.

  "You're joking. You expect me to convert my entire form at thirty nine houses today? Do you realize how much raw energy it would take for that? I'd be drained to nothing," I announced dramatically. I had more than enough raw energy, but I didn't want him to know that.

  Gregory raised an eyebrow. "Do it," he commanded. His voice had power behind the compulsion. Huge power. It swept over me with the intensity of a forest fire. I admired his ability to put forth such a huge volume of power, but in spite of it, the compulsion slid over me without effect.

  "Fuck you," I told him.

  He frowned and I could tell he had expected the compulsion to work.

  "Do it now or I will make your human toy into a eunuch," he announced, changing tactics.

  Wyatt turned white. He'd do it too, without a second thought. Asshole. Fine, I'd do it, but I wouldn't make it pretty.

  I was pissed, so I exploded out everything but my personal energy and stash of raw energy in a rapid blast. Time froze, as it always did when I converted my whole self and I felt the seductive pull of eternity. I could just let the matter go, let it drift on out taking my personal energy with it. I would fade into the fabric of creation, become whole. I forced myself to focus and snap back into flesh. It was like a sonic boom, once out and once in. Crack, crack. Wyatt and Candy were both knocked to the ground. Gregory stood as if untouched, the bastard.

  "And she's naked again," Candy said, getting to her feet and dusting off her pants. "There doesn't seem to be a day that goes by that I'm not treated to the sight of your naked body. Can't you possibly do this without losing your clothing?"

  Of course, I'd blown my clothing to bits when I converted, and didn't know how to create new ones.

  "Is she always like this?" Gregory asked me, gesturing toward Candy. "No wonder Althean is trying to exterminate the werewolves if they're all as annoying as she is."

  "She's alright," I chuckled. "I'll bet she fucks with all her clothes on and the lights off, though."

  Gregory looked around, no doubt sensing my energy usage.

  "Do it again, over here a bit. I don't think that will be close enough to the house to suffice."

  Fuck, this was going to be even worse if I had to do a conversion multiple times at each house. I really would be running low if he kept this up. Was this some way to determine how much I had stored? How much I could do before I collapsed exhausted in a heap? I complained again that this was a stupid idea and that there was no way I was going to be able to keep doing this.

  He stopped and looked at me sternly. "Did we not just have this conversation? Let me see. Yes. Yes, it was the same conversation. There was some whining from you, then I threatened to do physical harm to your toy, then you grudgingly complied. Perhaps we can just skip all the middle part and get to the part where you comply? Otherwise, I'm liable to get angry and do all sorts of things I'll really enjoy now and mildly regret later."

  I hated this angel.

  I walked over closer to the house and again converted myself violently in an explosion of pressure and sound. Wyatt and Candy stayed farther back this time and managed to stay on their feet.

  "I had forgotten about the clothing thing," the angel said as he turned his back on me and walked toward the car. "You'll need to strip each time you do this since we don't have a truckload of outfits for you to ruin."

  I glared at him as I followed him, naked, to the car, and noticed him rub a hand over his ear. Blood. That was interesting.

  The next house he stood back farther. I smiled to myself and blew everything apart and back with even more force. Candy clutched her head. "Can Wyatt and I be somewhere else for this? If she keeps it up I'll be tossed into the adjacent county. Maybe we can just wait for you all to finish this at a local coffee shop?"

  Gregory shot Candy an irritated look, and didn't reply. He clearly had a slight nose bleed this time. "I don't think you need to change your whole self next time," he said rubbing his nose. "Maybe just a portion of you, instead."

  The following few houses I experimented, changing just portions of me, using less energy, changing the residents' dog into a rat, which Candy insisted I change back. I can easily convert myself, but I'm not so good at changing other beings. The dog didn't quite go back the same as it originally was. The owners would never be able to tell, but the unfortunate thing would die in a few weeks. I should have left it a rat. At the next house I burned a circle in the lawn with green fire. None of these seemed to have any noticeable impact on Gregory.

  "The fire isn't going to have the effect I want," the angel scolded. "The energy signature is too vague and like natural fire. You need to actually change something, preferably yourself."

  Men. They always want you to change yourself, why can't they just like you the way you are? I recreated a foot, but did it with a vengeance. Pop, pop. Candy stuck her finger in her ear, and Wyatt stretched his jaw, trying to normalize the pressure in their ears. And there it was, the light trickle of blood. So it wasn't the size of the conversion that affected him. Was it the pressure change, or the sound, or both?

  He stood back further the next time. I was bored with just recreating Samantha Martin, so I decided to experiment with some of my forms from back home. This time I snapped back as a gryphon, making it extra loud. Gregory looked grim as he approached me. He was coughing this time and I could see the specks of blood.

  "You can't drive around in the car looking like that. You need to change back into human form."

  I didn't wait for him to back away, I snapped out and in with a huge sonic boom. He staggered, then shook his head. Blood dripped from his nose, and trailed down from one ear.

  Sound. Everything he'd done with his energy, everything Althean had done had sound or color. Plasma and the usual destructive forces didn't have maximum effect on them, even my raw energy glanced off them with less than expected damage. I couldn't do color, but sound I could do.

  "This isn't going to work," Gregory said, turning away from me and surreptitiously wiping the blood from his face. "It's way overkill. You're leaving a huge signature and he'll suspect something."

  Well duh, he'd suspect something anyway if he could see I'd been to thirty nine of forty houses, conveniently leaving one house free with a big bow on top and a 'kill me' sign on the door. I wasn't sure what the fuck Gregory's game plan was with all this. Was Althean's drive to kill the werewolves in a bizarre pattern overriding his common sense? Were we just herding him toward our trap? If so then the overkill wouldn't matter. I couldn't believe Althean would be so stupid, but I really didn't know anything about angels. A demon would never have gone for this. We'd have been merrily killing werewolves halfway across the country if we saw a blatant trap like this being laid down.

  "What do you mean it's no
t going to work? I'm exhausted from all this, and now it's not going to work? Plus we have twenty six more houses to go," I whined. There was no way we could watch twenty six residences. Althean had the odds in his favor. He'd strike again and get away, hopefully moving closer to Sharpsburg where I could take my chances of escape through the wild gate.

  Gregory paused for a moment. "We'll split up. I'll take ten houses and hex them, and you take sixteen. Just make sure you leave one open. Meet me back at the cabin whenever you're done."

  What, leaving me unattended with Wyatt and Candy all day? With plenty of time to escape? And no very specific orders to be here at this time, and there at that time? Did he want me to run, so he could snatch me back out of thin air, deliver a smack down, and teach me a lesson? Maybe he needed some private time. Candy had been annoying as all hell, and spending the day in the company of a demon couldn't have been easy for him either. Or possibly he was just tired of the constant nosebleeds my conversion was causing him. Either way, he had to have some faith that I'd stick around, or that he could find me if I tried to bolt for it.

  I puzzled over this and my tattoo as we drove to our allocated houses. Did the mark allow him to find me and bring me to him, or only let him know if I strayed outside a certain distance from him? That kind of constant monitoring would probably require a deep connection, and a sharing of personal energy. If that were the case, then the red-violet inside me could hold a portion of him, and he might have even taken on a portion of me. Oh, that would be unbelievably ironic! My kind does this type of personal energy swap when we breed, but we don't keep the connection to the other person. We just combine their energy with ours to make a new being, then isolate it. There's no desire to carry around a portion of someone else inside you, or maintain a kind of link with them. How much would it irk him if he had a chunk of me inside him, or if his own precious self was tied up inside me? If this were the case, no wonder he was in a crappy mood.

  By late afternoon we were down to the last five houses, and I was tired and bored. I'd been riding around naked. I hadn't brought a spare set of clothing from the cabin and had nothing to change into until Candy raced into a Walmart and picked up a pair of jeans and a tank top for me. I refused to wear them since taking clothes off and putting them back on at each house was a pain in the ass. After a long argument, Candy insisted the least I could do was wrap myself in a blanket from her trunk. She claimed it was so we wouldn't get arrested. I'm surprised she didn't put newspapers down on the seat.

  I'd gotten creative with my form, doing a goat-lion cross I'd put together for one of the elf parties decades ago, and variations of the stereotypical devil theme from artwork throughout the ages. Wyatt particularly liked the sexy red one with big boobs, and long rope tail that I twirled around suggestively. It looked like something out of Heavy Metal. He did not like the muscular black one with the huge two foot phallus and testicles like bowling balls.

  We pulled up to a lovely McMansion, with a professionally landscaped yard out back, complete with a grotto pool and hot tub. These werewolves had it good. Wyatt and Candy sat in the air conditioned car while I took my time admiring the pool. Half the pool was edged in flagstone with a wide set of flagstone steps rising from the water to the naturalized patio. The other half consisted of a man-made cave and a twenty foot molded boulder with tiny streams of water trickling down the edges. The cave was partially underwater with a ledge to hold drinks and snacks. My pool was the standard issue, and I thought about possibly adding a feature like this. The molded boulder was probably fine by human and werewolf standards, but its fakeness annoyed me. If I did this at my pool, I'd create my own boulder. I missed my pool, and since I was naked anyway I jumped in to do a few laps.

  The water was wonderful. They used a saline system instead of chlorine, and the minerals made the water slide like silk over my skin. I explored the little cave a bit and floated around in the water. Candy and Wyatt had to be wondering what was taking so long. Screw them. And screw that pissy angel, too. I'd get done whenever I felt like it. I did a few more laps, swimming low to see the decorative tile work in the bottom of the pool.

  That's when I noticed an odd shimmer in the pool wall. Diving down, I took a closer look and just about swallowed the water in excitement. It was a gate. A wild gate. Well, it was actually more like a wild jagged tear. It extended the entire depth of the pool, but it was narrow. I wasn't sure I'd be able to squeeze through it and not leave a chunk of myself behind. It was wider down at the bottom thankfully. I came up for air and went back down again. I couldn't really tell where the gate came out at, but I was running out of options.

  This was my only chance. There was no way I could manage to sneak away tonight and come back here. We'd never be close to this house, again. If I didn't go for it with this gate, my only other chance would be the long shot that we'd somehow come close enough to the one in Sharpsburg. This was my bird in the hand, and I needed to grab it. I'd been told my whole life that I took insane chances with minimal regard to my safety, and that's saying a lot coming from my kind. This was the time to prove them right. I went up for air one more time, then swam down and slipped through into the gate.

  It was a bad, bad idea, and I realized how bad the moment I stepped in. The gate engulfed me in blackness, snapping shut behind me. It felt like I was encased in black Jell-O. I tried to push through it, but it resisted against me bouncing back. I could rip and tear it, but it was slow going, and it flowed back to itself, leaving no trail of where I'd been. I couldn't tell how far I'd come, but it felt like I'd been plowing through the stuff forever. I had a horrifying feeling that I was going to spend eternity in here suffocating in black Jell-O. It could be worse, I thought.

  Never think that. The Jell-O was starting to become sticky and cling to me. I shook it off, trying to push it away and noticed red bloody marks where it had tenaciously stuck on my skin. As if one hickey mark wasn't enough, it seemed I was about to be covered in the things. I wasn't one to give up, so I kept slashing and pushing, making my way each precious inch at a time. Hope filled me as the Jell-O began to soften and liquefy, and a glimmer brightened the darkness. Finally, I though, I might be reaching the other side of the gate. I hoped it didn't open up into a black hole or something equally deadly. The glimmer expanded and I was blinded by a white flash. I felt something more solid than Jell-O encase me and with a second flash I realized I was underwater. Maybe I had gated into a rock in an underwater cave. I hoped so.

  No such luck. As my vision cleared, I realized that the rock was covered by wet cotton fabric. Shit. I should have known. Gregory's grip shifted, but instead of being swept up in his arms, I was dumped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as he carried me up the steps and out of the pool.

  He had to be furious. I'd had no idea how he'd managed to find me in that horrible Jell-O mess of a gate, let alone get us both out of there. I can't believe he bothered. He must have known what that gate was. If it had been me, I would have said "screw this" and let him die in that thing. Why had he risked himself to pull me out? Was I really of that much use to him? Or perhaps he was too proud to allow me to escape him at all. Maybe he had a need to have absolute control over me and my demise. He slid me down off his shoulder and held me tight against him, my face smashed into the wet cotton of his polo shirt. I waited patiently to be crushed to a pulp. Instead I was held in place, with the angel's ragged breath warm against the top of my head.

  "I have no idea how you've managed to survive this long, little cockroach," he said, his voice tight. "How did you make that gate? That was the worst thing I've ever seen in my long, long life. Crippled lobotomized elves with one eye could make a better gate than that."

  I didn't know specifically what having one eye had to do with gate creation, but I got his point.

  "And you didn't end it anywhere. The edges weren't stable; it didn't really have edges. The whole thing was slowly collapsing in on you. I honestly don't know how I managed to find you in that thing
, let alone pull you out of it in one piece."

  I held very still against him. He didn't sound very angry. I thought he'd be furious, smashing me into little bits for defying him and trying to get away.

  "If you're so bent on killing yourself, cockroach, just be patient a little longer and I'll do it for you." He said, sounding as if he anticipated that moment. "I don't know what to do with you. I can't be with you every second, I can't bind you any tighter. Now, I find you can create gates, no matter how terrible and ineffective they are. I should just go ahead and kill you now, you are such an annoyance. Any usefulness you provide is far outweighed by your time wasting and disrupting actions."

  Okay, so he risked himself to pull me out of a wild gate only to kill me himself? I guess it was more satisfying if you did the deed yourself rather than have your target die through suicide by stupidity. I could identify. It was so disappointing when your prey fell off a cliff and broke its neck before you could sink your teeth into it and have it die by your hand.

  We stood there for a few moments more, then he slowly pulled away and looked me over. I was naked and covered in bloody Jello-O hickey marks. Not exactly a good sight. I risked a quick look up at him. No pointy teeth, no black filled eyes, no glowing, no sword. He actually looked rather bleak. These were hopefully good signs for my continued existence.

  "Fix yourself," he said with a sigh, and stepped back to let me work.

  I stood and stared at him a moment, sure that I heard him wrong, and that any minute he was going to lop my head off with that sword of his.

  "Go on," he urged. "I don't really care, but if we walk back to the car with you looking like that, your toy is going to go insane and try to blow my head off with his little cannon, again. I've killed one human this week; I don't want to kill another. I'm way over my quota for the year, already."

  I had an odd feeling the last statement was some kind of angel humor, but I didn't want to ask. Quickly I fixed the Jell-O marks, thinking that Wyatt was going to flip anyway with us walking back together, both soaking wet and me naked.

  Wyatt was not happy. He was even less happy when Gregory grabbed the blanket from Candy's car and proceeded to dry me off, himself.

  "Here, put your clothes on," the angel told me. "I'm going to gate you to the last few houses so I can keep you with me. I'll hex them, and these two will follow us in the car."

  Wyatt turned red and clenched his jaw, but at least he kept his gun to himself.

  It was a slow process. The gating around was fast, but then I had to stand there a moment squished against Gregory to keep from falling over while the world righted itself. Then we had to wait an eternity for Candy and Wyatt to arrive, since Gregory informed me he couldn't trust me to my own devices while he was occupied creating the hex. He told Candy at the first house that she was to watch me and if he found me so much as a foot from where he left me, he'd bash her face into the pavement. I wondered if angels were always this violent or if I was having a peculiar effect on him.

  I was a good girl, much to Candy's relief. Besides, where would I go? He'd catch me, and just be more pissed off. Part of me still wanted to try for the Sharpsburg gate, but part of me was really afraid to try that shit again. There were more pleasant ways to commit suicide. That sword of Gregory's probably wouldn't be as bad as dying in a wild gate, but I didn't really want to give him the satisfaction of causing my death. I'd rather suffer horribly.

  We finished by dark, and at least three of us were starving since we'd missed lunch. The house with the pool and the wild gate was our intended target. Not that it mattered. I wasn't about to try Jell-O world again, especially if it didn't lead anywhere. We grabbed take-out Chinese and headed back to the cabin to collapse in exhaustion. I didn't even bother with the Tinkerbell shirt, and just wrapped myself up naked in a blanket to sleep on the porch. Candy took her couch, and Wyatt the bed. Gregory sat in the porch chair with his feet up on the railing so he could keep an eye on me. It was rather unnerving having someone stand guard over you while you sleep, but I was worn out and dozed off quickly.

  I woke up with my heart racing. It was early, well before sun up, and it took me a moment to realize where I was and what had woken me. Something was here, something I knew, something I wanted to kill. I reached out and felt his presence, about five hundred yards into the woods to the northeast. Althean, stealthily creeping closer.

  What in the world was he doing here? Two who are gunning for him are here, and none of his targets. Then it hit me. Candy. Maybe he was ready for his hit, and she was here and sleeping soundly. I'd left no strong energy marks around the cabin, and Gregory hadn't hexed it. We hadn't thought that Candy could be a potential victim, since she wasn't a local. Maybe Althean wasn't going off a database or map, but some kind of sense that located werewolves themselves. That could have been why he'd hit the Robinson house, with Craig and Candy both there.

  I carefully turned my head to look at the porch chair. Gregory was gone. I reached out to look for him. I was fairly convinced I could accurately determine his location if he were nearby with all the time I'd spent with him recently, and this tattoo with the red purple stuff inside me. I couldn't feel him within a quarter mile radius, but I wasn't positive in the outer edges. That left me alone, with prey approaching and no one to interfere with my hunt. My focus narrowed to a laser. I wanted this kill. I was going to die anyway; I might as well have a last supper. Smiling, I slid out of the blanket and tracked my victim, edging quietly around to flank him as he approached the cabin. I wished I could convert into something scary and vicious looking, but I needed to keep this under the radar until the last moment so I didn't scare him off.

  Althean's gold curls shimmered in the faint moonlight. He was not trying to be as human in his appearance, and his skin was solid and marble looking with the glow and the blur at the edges. He was naked, which was kind of bizarre. He'd had clothing on at Robinson's. Did the nakedness signify something important? Did he just lose his clothes or blow them to bits like I always managed to do? Of course, I was naked too, and he'd probably wonder the same about me if he saw me. I assumed that his teeth were pointy and his eyes dark. Better keep my arms away from those teeth. One tattoo was enough for me.

  I watched him edge toward the cabin. There was a clearing of about fifty feet long between the woods and the porch steps. The best place to grab him would be right at the edge of the woods. He'd pause there to check out the clearing before he made his dash. If I waited until he was in the clearing, he'd be liable to see me and gate out before I reached him. Better to grab him while his attention was on scanning the porch and clearing for activity. Slowly, I trailed him from the side, utterly silent, my heart thudding and adrenaline surging. I had to struggle to keep my energy deep within myself where he couldn't sense it.

  Finally, he paused at the edge of the woods to survey the clearing and I made my move. I blew everything out, then back in with a boom of sound. The trees disrupted some of the effect, but Althean dropped to his knees. I jumped on him, knocking him into the clearing and straddling him, and punched him in the face just because I felt like it. It didn't do much except hurt my hand and give him a chance to throw me off and scramble to his feet. I hit him again with another boom of sound, and he staggered. I threw another one at him, knocking him down and giving me a chance to straddle him again. Then I began pummeling him with the sound; he clutched his head. The blood dripped out his nose, eyes and ears, from the corner of his mouth, and even began to seep out his pores. I knew I wouldn't have the time to own him, so I'd have to be satisfied with just killing him. Once he was dead, I'd shred him to bits. I'd roll in the blood and flesh of his empty form. I'd savor the pain and fear of his last moments.

  He was struggling less, so I placed my hands against his chest and made ready to hit him hard and loud, when I was grabbed from behind. I knew who it was, so I spun around and threw the blast I had into Gregory instead. He made an oof sound and grabbed me in a wrestling hold.

&nbs
p; "Stop it," he commanded, covering my energy with that slippery shit, again. I didn't have to look, I knew Althean was gone.

  "You fucking bastard," I snarled. "I had him, and now you let him go. He was here to attack Candy."

  "I know," he said, sounding oddly affectionate and still holding me against him. "You were just protecting your friend, I'm not angry with you. But you can't kill him. I won't let you kill him."

  It was less about protecting my 'friend' and more about making my kill, but whatever.

  "Well I'm angry. You let him get away. Again! You don't care anything about stopping him, bringing him to justice, or having him pay for his crimes. All you care about is covering your ass by sweeping the whole thing under the rug, protecting your reputation and Althean's. You'll grab him, take him to Aaru, and stick him in some nice office job. Then you'll assign another angel to the werewolves and act like the whole thing never happened."

  "What, because that's what you'd do?" Gregory asked. Now he was angry. "You know nothing about me, nothing about how we operate. Don't go making assumptions about our society based on your own twisted lawless nature. You know nothing about us."

  "I know enough," I retorted. "I was at the place in York. I know what happened. I felt the bodies, saw the video tape. Althean killed a pregnant woman. An innocent woman and an innocent child died. And from what Candy says, lots of the victims have been innocent. I honestly don't care who you kill, but you have an agreement with these people. They've given up a lot, the least you could do is keep to your end of the bargain. Althean isn't keeping the contract, and neither are you."

  "There are subversive factions among us who would bypass protocol and take action. If Althean were just one of these vigilantes, he would be punished harshly. And trust me, prison and punishment among our kind is worse than death. He's wavering in his convictions, though, making him capable of redemption. The last few kills have caused him to go nearly insane with doubt and guilt. The death of the woman and baby have put him over the edge. I know there is something in him still worth saving," Gregory insisted.

  "He's not worth saving, and neither are you. You were there in York, too. You covered it up. I saw you put the mark on the woman and the baby, I read your energy signature. Even without the video tape, I know your energy signature very well by now. It was you. You marked them both as if they were criminals. You fucking hypocrite. You'll save Althean, cover the whole thing up, but where's the justice for the werewolves? Their dead have all been marked as criminals. A baby, for fuck sake!"

  He'd held me by the wrists away from him to look at my face as I ranted. Finding I had a foot free, I kicked him in the shin. It was like kicking a wall with my bare foot.

  He looked down at me in amazement. "Marked them as criminals? What are you talking about?"

  "The angel wings on their temples," I told him. "I could see it on the woman, and I saw you place it there from the video tape. I got your energy signature off of it, and then I felt the same mark, the same energy signature on the unborn baby. How in the fuck can you justify marking a baby as deserving of death? It's not only against the contract, it should be against your very nature. Unless your kind has changed that much in the last two million years, it should be contrary to all you hold dear to condemn an infant, especially an unborn one."

  Gregory stared at me as if I'd gone insane. "Criminals? The wings don't make them criminals, they are to convey that someone has paid for any crime they may have committed, that they are clean. They're a forgiveness mark, a blessing, not a condemnation."

  I was stunned. What incredible arrogance it was to deign to convey forgiveness on those they killed. I hated these fucking angels.

  "So those who violate every rule, every clause of the existence contract, they get forgiveness, too? Same blessing as an unborn baby? Because all of the executions bear that mark."

  Not that I thought dead people gave a shit about some pompous asshole angel granting them forgiveness. What the fuck? No wonder we ditched these psychos for our own place. They were so full of themselves, it wasn't even funny.

  "Yes, even the worst criminal deserves forgiveness. They've paid their dues with their death, and they should approach their afterlife with a clean slate."

  I rolled my eyes. When I finally could resist it no longer and let my entire being scatter throughout the universe, I doubted if it gave a flying fuck whether some angel gave me the thumbs up or not. All were equal in death. Maybe that's what he was saying though in his own full of shit way.

  "You'll still cover it up. I know you will. You killed a cop, and you covered that up too. Fucking holier-than-thou hypocrites, all of you."

  "I did a lot of things in anger that day that I'm not proud of, but I refuse to feel guilt for that death. I will never let you get away, never let you escape me, and the deaths of a million humans are an easy price to pay for that," he said with determination, finally letting go of my hands.

  It was a little unsettling to know that he'd casually plow through a million human lives just to have the pleasure of killing me himself. And they say we are evil.

  "He's one of yours," I insisted. "Tell me honestly that you'll kill him, that he'll see justice, because I just don't believe that's going to happen."

  "Althean will pay for what he's done but you cannot kill him. The justice needs to come from our own kind, from someone with the proper authority to deliver judgment."

  We stood there a moment as the bugs sang in the woods around us. I wasn't sure I believed him. I suspected Althean would live for millions of years as they plowed through the red tape of who had jurisdiction and what laws pertained to this suspected offense. There was something else I wondered about though.

  "Those demons that you've killed, do they get wings too? Are they granted your forgiveness?" I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear him say it.

  Even in the dim moonlight, I could see a bolt of pain cross Gregory's face before it hardened into a rock like mask.

  "Demons are filthy creatures, abominations beyond redemption and forgiveness," he said bitterly. "They don't deserve forgiveness or mercy, either in life or in death."

  I shrugged. "Doesn't matter. None of us want your blessing. None of us give a shit about your forgiveness. Like we even care. We return the same. You'll get no mercy from us. No forgiveness, either."

  I saw him wince at the last few words.

  "None of you has the capacity for mercy or forgiveness," he said. He was furious, but at least he wasn't glowing. "Your vibration pattern will continue to diminish, you'll continue to devolve until the lowest worm has more divinity than you. You deserved to be banned from Aaru, to be banished for all eternity. You deserve to be killed on sight with no mercy. I should have killed you the moment I saw you. I should have killed you when you tried to escape me. I should just kill you right now."

  That pronouncement should have had me on my knees, begging for that mercy he told me he'd never dish out. But I was pissed, so I taunted him the best way I could think of.

  "Then why did you do this instead of killing me? What is this you've done to us both?" I asked, running my finger up the underside of my arm and over the tattoo of his sword.

  Gregory jerked and clenched his fists. "That," he said. "That is a terrible mistake."

  I smiled to myself as he stalked away into the woods. Just what I had thought. He'd fucked up whatever he'd done to me somehow and what the mark did went both ways. If only I could find out exactly what it did and how to work it, I could do to him as he did to me. Whatever that was. Right now, I could turn him on. Funny as that was, I couldn't see how it would work to my advantage in the long run. Hopefully, more useful applications would reveal themselves in the near future. Hopefully, before he killed me.

  I turned around to walk to the cabin and my smile faded. Candy and Wyatt had woken up to the booms of sound in the front yard as did many of those in the neighboring cabins. They'd all been an interested audience to the whole exchange. The neighbors must be
particularly entertained to see a naked woman arguing with a clothed man in front of the cabin. I also had a depressed feeling that any chance I'd had of a continued relationship with Wyatt was vanishing by the moment.