Without Limits: A BWWM Collection of Passion and Desire, page 113
Belial clucked his tongue. “So melodramatic, Jordan, dear. You’re not dead, but you are…”
He licked those pretty lips of his. “…in rather bad shape, I’ll say. Your defenses lie in tatters around you. That’s how I am here.”
I eyed him. “So…this is a dream?”
He nodded once. A long breath escaped me. “Oh. Well, that’s nice. I’m going to wake up now, so fuck off.”
I shut my eyes and concentrated. I wasn’t great at lucid dreaming, but in the past, it always worked if I chanted ‘wake up’ in rapid succession with utter commitment to it. Silence. Nothing happened. I was still in the middle of a maze with my mortal enemy. Great.
“I’m afraid it won’t be quite that easy,” the demon said patiently. “You almost died, from what I can tell. You’re stuck here until your spiritual energy is restored.”
I crossed my arms. “And you just conveniently showed up, huh?”
He smiled. “I thought you might miss me.”
“Yes,” I deadpanned. “I always miss people who murder me and completely rip my life apart. Get out of my head or I’ll make you.”
“Oh, it’s not quite that simple, my pet,” he said, casually strolling towards me, spinning the red rose between his long fingers. I tensed, staying put, but ready to fight at a moment’s notice. “It’s not just your head. This is a shared space. You are a talented Seer, but you don’t know everything. Tell me what you remember about dreams.”
“Why should I?”
“Humor me.”
I took a deep breath and restrained myself from punching him. “Dreams allow long distance contact between Seers, angels, and demons. It’s like a form of telepathy between the spiritual community, but it requires dedication and concentration. Obviously, I have neither since you wormed your way in here.”
“That’s rudimentary, but correct. However, you’re missing some details. You’ve been to the void where souls pass through to Judgment, and that is its own separate plane of existence. Dreams exist in a similar state. All those anointed or damned connect to this space whether we realize it or not during slumber. If one has the wherewithal, they can find a person of interest at any time when they are asleep and unguarded.”
He held the rose out to me, his smile suddenly quite sharp. “Hence our reunion.”
I took the rose, snapped the stem in half, and threw it away. “Get to the point, asshole. What do you want?”
Belial breathed in, as if summoning more of his patience, and fixed me with a steady stare. The five archdemons of Hell had the same mark of royalty—slitted pupils instead of round ones. He reminded me of a snake when he stared at me like that, and it wasn’t far from the truth. There was nothing he wanted more than to devour me whole. I suppressed a small shudder at the thought.
“To chase you.”
I stared at him. “What?”
He grinned. “You heard me, Seer. Run.”
“What are you, nine? I’m not playing Hide-and-Seek with you, especially since you just said I’m mostly dead right now.”
“It’s less of Hide-and-Go-Seek,” he said, folding his arms behind him. “More Hide-and-Go-Freak, if that is still the colloquialism.”
It took me several seconds to speak, and the response came through my clenched teeth. “You have exactly three seconds to get away from me before I strangle you to death.”
“Skipping the foreplay, are we?”
“Look, if you’re going to try to kill me or assault me, we’re going to square off. I’m not a coward. I don’t run. I’ve killed you before and I’ll do it again, with or without my body.”
He arched a thin eyebrow. “You will, will you? Go ahead. Summon a weapon. Kill me, Seer. I dare you.”
I lowered my right hand and focused all my energy into forming a Smith & Wesson .9mm semiautomatic. It materialized in my hand—heavy, formidable, and reliable.
I raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Belial lifted his hand and caught the fucking bullet.
I stared at the barrel of the gun in disbelief and then emptied the clip.
I couldn’t follow the motion, but I knew that I’d seen his arm and shoulder move. He opened his hand and all of the slugs clinked together on his palm.
Well, shit.
Belial tipped his hand over and let the bullets hit the grass. He looked up at me again and the serpentine smile on his lips made me shiver.
“Run.”
I threw the gun at him.
It whacked him dead in the forehead and he snarled in pained surprise. That was my only victory before I turned and ran at a dead sprint into the maze.
Right. Left. Right. Left. Left, left, left, right, right, left, right.
I didn’t think about it. No time to think. Act. Flee. Survive.
I’d been running for what felt like eons before my weary body forced me to stop. I found a corner and knelt in the cold, dark leaves of one of the maze shrubs, panting for air. This didn’t make any sense. Why had he brought me here? What was the point? And how was I going to get out of here?
I strained to listen for footsteps, but knew there wouldn’t be any. Belial was a hunter. He’d had my scent in his nose ever since he stumbled across me over a year ago. Once upon a time, I’d been confused about why he became so obsessed with me, until I discovered that he’d had a servant named Zora—a Seer, like me—who also shared her soul with the angel Uriel. She’d been his informer until they were caught and Heaven banished her to Purgatory, leaving both Belial and Uriel half of a whole until Judgment Day. In any other case, that sounded like a Shakespearean tragedy, but it wasn’t. He wanted me to take her place, to spend eternity kneeling at his feet, licking his boots and whatever else he wanted to put in front of me.
I suppressed yet another shudder and thought hard about what I’d been taught by the angels. There had to be a way to get out of this nightmare. Some kind of trick.
I ran through what Belial had told me so far. Energy. My spiritual reserves were at zero. How could I replenish them? Sleep was usually the easiest option, but clearly that wouldn’t be fast enough. Sooner or later, he’d find me.
I flinched as the rose bush dug into my arm, batting it away. My skin tingled where a thorn had pricked me. I glanced down to see that I wasn’t actually bleeding, but there was a phantom sensation over my brown skin. Something familiar.
I checked the corner of the maze again and plucked one of the roses, smelling it. Coolness breathed through me. Comforting. Almost like when the archangel Gabriel had healed me before.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, plucking one of the rose petals. The base of the petal had some kind of soft white glow to it, like dewdrops in sunlight. I let it sit in my palm and felt it absorb into my skin, travel down my arm, and settle in the center of my chest.
I snatched rose after rose from the bush and plucked their petals, eventually creating a bed of them beneath my knees. I flattened my hands over them and concentrated, absorbing it all into me as fast as I could.
“Well,” Belial said dryly from directly behind me. “It took you long enough.”
I didn’t offer another scathing remark. Instead, I whipped my right leg around at his head as hard as I possibly could.
Belial brought up his forearm and blocked it. I didn’t want him to grab my leg, so I curled my leg in and landed in a crouch. I pounced up towards his smirking face, launching into a flurry of jabs and straight shots. My fists breezed past his cheeks by mere millimeters, so close that I felt the flutter of his black hair over my knuckles. I tried to knee him in the groin, but he blocked it. Truth be told, I knew he was toying with me, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of surrendering. I’d go out fighting. After all, I had before.
“You’ve gotten better since we last fought,” the archdemon mused, twisting to one side as I aimed a kick at his knee. “Faster, more confident. To a less able demon, you’d actually present a threat.”
He was lecturing me in the middle of a fight. Pure fury filled me. My limbs felt like bars of white-hot lead. I swung harder and swifter, fueled by the need to make the bastard bleed. He slapped my arms aside and smoothly dodged everything else without even the slightest effort. Screw it. If I was going out, I’d take him with me.
I stepped back and concentrated what little energy I’d been able to absorb into something huge, metal, and unmistakably deadly. My right shoulder ached from the weight as it materialized in both hands.
I’d summoned an RPG.
Belial’s eyes went wide, and then narrowed to slits. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I smiled. “Watch me.”
Just as I pulled the trigger, Belial grabbed the barrel and tipped it straight up. The rocket sparked out of the barrel and exploded several hundred feet up in the cool, dark night sky like a lone, neglected firework.
I fell on my ass in the grass and the launcher flopped right behind me out of reach. I tried to scramble to my feet, but by then, it was too late. Belial slammed me down onto the grass and pinned my wrists, straddling my waist so I couldn’t shove myself back up. My heart thudded against my chest, in my throat as I struggled in vain. Not enough energy. I was caught. Prey.
“You know,” he said slowly, his snake eyes roving over my face and neck. “I almost forgot how cute it is when you try to resist me. I know you won’t believe me, but I have missed you, pet. I missed that fire. No one else on earth has your kind of fire.”
“Save it,” I spat. “I don’t care how powerful you are; you’re not getting into my pants. I’ll die first.”
Something predatory skittered through those pale eyes. “Is that so? Why do I seem to recall a very different reaction to my advances in recent history?”
Hot blood rushed up through my cheeks. I tried not to conjure up images, but they crashed against the surface of my mind anyway. A hotel in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Georgia. Cheap bed, ugly sheets, ratty carpet. I’d punched him over and over, screaming how much I hated him, seconds before he rolled us over on the bed and kissed me senseless. I wanted to forget that moment, erase it, delete it, but it wouldn’t happen no matter how hard I tried.
“Doesn’t matter,” I growled. “It won’t happen again.”
“I think you know better,” the demon whispered. He stretched my arms out above my head, nestling them in the rose petals, and leaned over my neck. His lips brushed the side of my throat, lightly, over my pulse, so delicate it could have been a gentle breeze.
“Admit it, Seer. Some part of you has missed me.”
“The part that wants to kill you, maybe.”
He chuckled, and hearing that deep, velvet voice from so close sent a buzzing sensation rushing down the front of my body, awakening parts of me that it shouldn’t have. “That is the part I have missed most of all. Why else do we keep finding ourselves in this same position, playing this same game over and over?”
He lifted up enough to brush those plush lips against the shell of my ear. “How long can you resist me, Jordan?”
I met his gaze as he rose over me. “Forever, demon.”
Belial tilted his head until his lips hovered over mine, his silken hair sweeping over my cheeks, his long lashes brushing mine.
“Nothing lasts forever, my pet.”
I woke up screaming.
Chapter Two
It sounds obvious as hell, but getting beaten to death hurt.
I crashed into consciousness, and my body proceeded to give me a detailed report of everything that was FUBAR. My swollen face throbbed with every heartbeat. My ribs felt like they’d been splintered like uncooked spaghetti noodles and then unceremoniously shoved into my lungs. The muscles in my stomach were wound tight in knots, most likely from whatever internal damage Bridgett had done. Thankfully, the little bitch hadn’t bothered with my legs, so they were relatively fine except for the dull ache of pure exhaustion.
Every breath was agony. I couldn’t get enough air. My lungs wouldn’t expand due to the tightness of the bandages around my upper torso. Tears welled up and spilled out of my eyes as I tried to move, but none of my nerve endings got the message. The pain gave way to pure panic. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. God help me, I was paralyzed.
Then a woman’s voice spoke in the darkness again.
“If you don’t stop that wheezing, you’ll pass out again.”
My eyes darted back and forth, eventually adjusting to the dark. I was in a hotel room and a cheap one by the way the springs of the bed underneath me dug into my spine. The silvery moonlight spilled in from a dingy window to my right, illuminating the long, jean-clad legs of a woman. A bright orange spot glowed for a second and dimmed. I smelled cigarette smoke a moment later as she exhaled.
“Focus. Breathe slowly. One of your lungs collapsed earlier and I had to heal it, so I need to know if you’ve recovered yet.”
“W-Who…?”
“No questions,” the woman said. “Breathe.”
Frustration bubbled up through my raw body. “W-Who…are…you?”
“Shut up and do as I say or I’ll leave your ass here to die.”
I gritted my teeth, wanting to defy her on principle alone, but I didn’t have a choice. I focused all my energy on getting my lungs to fill with air. More tears eased down the side of my face as the sharp pain lanced through my chest, but after about the eighth time I did it, I could feel the oxygen expanding into normal breaths.
“Good,” the woman said. “Guess I’m better at this than I thought.”
“You’re…a…Seer?”
“Congrats,” she said, finally standing up. “You’ve stated the obvious. Rest. I’ve got more work to do. You can interrogate me when you’re not half-dead.”
I had just enough energy to imitate Billy Crystal. “Only…mostly…dead.”
The woman exhaled through her nose. It sounded like a snort hiding a laugh. Go me. “I’m definitely going to regret saving someone who quotes the fucking Princess Bride to their savior. Get some rest. We’ll talk soon.”
She still hadn’t stepped all the way into the moonlight, so I passed out with only an image of a lit cigarette in my mind, floating brightly in the void.
I didn’t dream. Thank God.
When I woke the second time, the pain had lessened. The swelling around my eyes was minor, only puffy as if I’d had a bad reaction to something. Breathing still hurt like a bitch, but instead of feeling like I had a porcupine inside me, it was that irritating prick similar to getting a cramp after a long run. I couldn’t feel my face well enough to know if my nose was still broken, but it didn’t feel terrible either, so maybe she’d fixed it. Truth be told, I really wasn’t looking forward to seeing my reflection. I probably looked like Quasimodo.
The room was empty this time. Judging by the faint sunlight, I guessed it was morning. I checked my watch to confirm it and nearly paled as I realized the date. I’d been unconscious for two whole days. Merciful God.
In small, painful movements, I managed to push myself into a sitting position. The room had two twin beds, and the other one was rumpled all to hell. One dresser, what appeared to be a tiny bathroom across from it, and an equally tiny closet beside it. The door was straight ahead. No sign of my mysterious Good Samaritan Seer friend. Weird.
Standing took nearly everything out of me. My hands trembled as I clutched the dresser to stay upright. The room swirled and pirouetted, eventually stabilizing after I held still for a long moment. I shuffled one foot at a time to the door and opened it.
A fucking hellhound stood on the other side of the door.
Like every hellhound I’d ever laid eyes on, he was every bit of three feet tall and covered in shaggy black fur that still smelled faintly of sulfur. Creatures of Hell weren’t allowed on Earth, but hellhounds were unfortunately permitted on a technicality. The demons would take a normal dog and pour copious amounts of demonic energy into it until the dog turned into a ravenous monster that could reduce a stadium full of people into Spaghetti-O’s in a matter of minutes. They could be killed, but certainly not by a mostly dead Seer who could barely hold herself up. I was thoroughly screwed.
The hellhound locked its red eyes on me and bared its enormous yellow fangs. I don’t know if you’ve ever stood in front of a growling dog before, but it is not a pleasant experience. Take that pants-shitting sound and multiply it by infinity and you’ll finally have a glimpse of what I just described. Primal fear exploded out of me all at once as the hound hunched down in attack position, ready to pounce and rip my throat out.
“Oy!”
I jumped as I heard the woman’s voice again, only this time she stood on the sidewalk with two plastic paper cups and a plain white paper bag.
She was about two inches taller than me and even darker-skinned than I was. Her black hair was short enough to just barely touch her chin and the front swoop was mostly white, like Rogue from the X-Men. She looked to be mid-forties, but her body didn’t show it at all; her frame consisted of voluptuous curves piled on top of pure, sculpted muscle. She had high, pronounced cheekbones and striking russet eyes narrowed at the hellbeast in front of me.
“Run!” I said, glancing side to side in the room in hopes of finding a weapon. “I’ll distract it so you can—”
“Ace, heel!” the woman snapped at the hound, walking closer. “No one’s in the mood for your bullshit right now, you dumb mutt.”
The hellhound glanced at her and then sat down on its haunches, its growl dying down to a low murmur.
My jaw promptly unhinged from my face and hit the floor.
“That’s better,” the woman said, and then glanced at me as if I were an idiot. “Wouldja go back in the room before someone sees you? Do you want breakfast or not?”
She pushed past me and shut the door with her foot. I turned around, my trembling arm still pointing at the door.
“But…how…”
“Long story, kid,” she said, setting the coffee and food on the dresser. “I’ll fill you in later. We need to eat and then get on the road before someone finds us.”
“Okay,” I said finally, holding out both hands. “What do you mean ‘we’? You still haven’t told me who you are, why you helped me, where we are, or where we’re going.”
