“My master made me.” He looked about as dejected as you could get. My heart went out to him despite the fact that I was now in serious trouble because of him. “I’m a lich. When my master gives me a command, I follow it. I am bound to him.”
I pursed my lips, wondering if I wanted to know what a lich was. I decided that so long as I had met Satan, I might as well hear everything. “And a lich is what?”
“I was a spirit. An Ilargi stole my soul, and had me resurrected. When soulless spirits are resurrected, they become liches.”
“The things you learn when you least expect them,” I said, filing away the lich info. “So this boss of yours told you to steal something from the big mucky-muck of hell? Is he insane, too, or just sadistic?”
“Both. I just don’t understand why the Tools were destroyed. It doesn’t make—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes opening wide, but before he could say anything more, he just blinked out of existence.
I stared in disbelief at the rock where a second before Ulfur sat, finally gathering my tattered wits together enough to wave my hands through the air, but he didn’t just go out of my vision; he was gone.
“Well, hell,” I said, my brain giving up at that point and more or less simply curling up into a fetal ball and whimpering softly to itself.
“Not hell, Akasha,” a woman’s voice corrected me. I turned to see two people approaching, one of whom, at least, I recognized.
“Diamond!” The relief I felt on seeing her cheerful little blond self was almost overwhelming. Until, that is, I realized that if I was seeing her there, it must mean she had been banished with Ulfur and me. “Oh no, not you, too?”
“There you are! Margaretta told me that she’d find you, and here we are. Isn’t this exciting, Cora? We’re in the Akasha!”
I looked from Diamond to the little woman who stood next to her. She was under four feet tall, had a bright, slightly brittle smile on her face, and was holding a pamphlet, which she gave to me.
“Good morning, and welcome to the Akasha. I am, as your friend said, Margaretta. I’m the greeter here. If you consult the pamphlet, you’ll find in it many useful details about the Akasha, such as what you can expect during your banishment, a history of the notable figures who inhabit these regions, as well as a biography of our Hashmallim of the month. You’ll see that this month we’re featuring Hashmallim.”
I looked at the pamphlet she shoved into my hands. Sure enough, there was a section titled “Get to Know Your Gaolers,” followed by a subtitle of “Hashmallim of the Month: Hashmallim.” Beneath that was the picture of a large black blob. “Uh . . . what’s a Hashmallim ?”
“The Hashmallim are the Court of Divine Blood’s police force, and they rule over the Akasha.”
“You have a policeman of the month here? ” I couldn’t help myself from asking. It all just seemed too bizarre for words.
“Hashmallim of the month, yes. As you can see, Hashmallim gave a particularly interesting interview regarding the subject of perpetual torment.”
A question trembled on the tip of my tongue. After a few moments’ struggle, I decided I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Just out of idle curiosity, what was the previous Hashmallim called?”
“Last month’s Hashmallim of the month?” Margaretta thought for a few seconds. “That would be Hashmallim.”
I nodded. It was what I had expected. “They’re all named Hashmallim, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes. That is what they are,” the little woman told me earnestly.
“I’ve always wanted to see one up close, but my grandmother wouldn’t let me,” Diamond said, looking thoughtful for a few seconds before taking my arm. “Oh, Cora, Margaretta says that they’re having a ‘Meet Your Fellow Damned’ breakfast, and I think we should go. You never know who we could meet—Margaretta says the meet and greets are always very popular, so we’ll want to get in right away to get a nice table. That way we can eyeball who’s there. Wouldn’t it be romantic if you had to be banished to the Akasha in order to find your one true love?”
“You can’t be serious,” I asked her, squeezing the last morsel of disbelief from my emotional center. “Why aren’t you screaming and yelling about being here? Why aren’t you freaking out? Why aren’t you asking what’s going on?”
She tipped her head to the side. “Why should I freak out? This is a chance in a lifetime, Corazon. Not many people get to actually visit the Akasha.”
I glanced at the little woman. “The man who was with me, Ulfur, he said something about the only way you can get out of this place is if someone summons you. Is that right?”
“Yes, it’s right. Although I should note that unless you have some sort of a bond with the Summoner, it’s not easy to remove a member of the Otherworld from the Akasha. It’s policy, you see. Now, you mortals, you’re different.”
“We are?” My hopes leaped up with a happy little song on their lips. “You mean we can leave?”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head and glancing at her watch. “It would hardly be a place of perpetual punishment if you could just walk out, would it? I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cut this short if I want to see the lich you mentioned before I have to give the welcome speech at the meet-and-greet breakfast. It’ll be held to the south, by the way, in the fifth quadrant, at the lodge level in the Hall of Burning Flesh.”
“Fifth quadrant?” I asked, watching as Margaretta made a tick mark on a list of names and bustled off. “Hall of Burning Flesh?”
“Sounds like such fun! Are you coming?” Diamond asked, trailing after Margaretta.
“Er . . . no, I think I’ll pass on the flesh-burning breakfast.”
“Pfft,” Diamond said, giving me a cheery wave. “This isn’t Abaddon, after all. I’m sure they won’t burn anyone’s flesh at the breakfast. That would be totally unhygienic. See you later!”
I looked upward, at the sky, as if an answer to all my woes would be written there, but there was nothing but brownish gray sky that led down to the stark, inhospitable landscape. “Could this day get any weirder?”
No one answered me, for which I was strangely relieved. I decided that if I had a better chance than most at getting out of the (probably quite literally) godforsaken spot, then I’d best be looking around to find that way out.
I wandered around for what could well have been days. I know it was at least a few hours, because my shoes were beginning to show wear from the sharp rocks. The color of the sky didn’t change, however, and I didn’t seem to find any way out of the rocky-moor area, assuming Margaretta wasn’t full of bull about there being welcome breakfasts in what sounded like the civilized part of the Akasha.
“I swear I’m going around in circles,” I muttered under my breath as I glared suspiciously at a car-sized boulder vaguely in the shape of a hand flipping the bird. “You look familiar. Right. I’m going to go that way this time.” I moved around the rude rock and came to a dead stop. Lying on the ground snuggled up next to the base of the boulder was a man. At least I thought it was a man.
“Hey. You OK?” I asked, not wanting to get close, but at the same time wanting to make sure he wasn’t hurt or something. “Mister? Dammit.”
I crept closer, my skin twitchy as I neared him, the devil in my mind pointing out that it was just last week that I’d watched a horror movie where a body that looked dead actually wasn’t, and had leaped up in a manner guaranteed to cause incontinence in viewers, subsequently ripping the unwary couple who stumbled over it to shreds with long, razorlike claws.
I checked the guy’s hands, but there didn’t seem to be any signs of claws. As I neared him, I adjusted my image of someone who might need help, to someone who was long past it.
“Oh, you poor guy.” I squatted down next to his head, taking in his gray skin, and cheeks so sunken, the cheekbones stood out in painful relief. His mouth was a slash of gray the same color as his flesh. He wore what was probably a very expensive weathered black suit coat and pants,
but was now covered in the same brown dirt that tinted everything in the Akasha. His hands bore long, sensitive-looking fingers, the sinews that stood out on the backs of his hands lending credence to the fact that he was dead. “Did you die out here all by yourself? I wonder.”
There were no obvious signs of injury, no blood, no mangled limbs. . . . It was as if he’d simply lain down and died. A strange sense of sorrow filled me at the sight of the man. He looked almost familiar, but as I studied his face, I realized that it must have been a trick of the shadows. Still, I felt an inexplicable, frustrated need to help him. Perhaps there was someone I could call to take care of his remains? Someone who would clean him up and give him a decent burial. I brushed back a lock of hair that lay across his forehead. His hair was dark brown, almost black, sweeping back from the brow down to about ear length. “When you were alive, I bet you were quite the hunk,” I said, gently combing his hair into a semblance of order, wishing I could wash the dirt from his face.
Without thinking, my fingers trailed down the length of his jaw, his slight stubble rasping softly.
“Very hunky,” I said, unable to keep from noticing the gently blunted chin, and barest hint of a chin dimple that had he been alive, would have driven me wild. His nose was long and narrow, but with a couple of little bumps in it that most likely owed their existence to acts of violence. “Were you a fighter rather than a lover, then?”
A brown beetle emerged from under his open shirt, wandering out across his collarbone. I picked it off, lifting up his shirt a little to peer underneath and make sure there were no more insects inside it.
My fingers traced the curve of a thick pectoral muscle.
“OK, I’ve changed my mind. You weren’t just hunky—you were mind-numbingly gorgeous. What did you do to end up here? And why did you die?” I sighed, and tidied up his shirt, standing up to look around. “Let me see if I can’t find someone—hey! You! Yes, you! How many yous do you think there are around here?”
About a hundred feet away, a slight woman with a hunted look on her face was dashing around the rocks in a serpentine manner, tossing a worried look over her shoulder. She glanced toward me, pausing with the body language that said she was going to bolt any second. “Run!” she said, waving a hand vaguely. “There’s a wrath demon on the hunt!”
“Bully for him. There’s a dead guy here who needs our help.”
“No one can die in the Akasha,” the woman said, glancing behind her again.
“Well, someone has, and he needs a proper burial. Are there some sort of funeral-home people here?”
“No one dies in the Akasha,” she repeated, stepping toward me a half-dozen feet. She peered over the edge of the boulder. “Oh, him. He’s not dead. He’s a Dark One. He simply has no blood left.”
“He’s a vampire?” I looked down at the man, aghast. “What’s he doing here?”
“Nothing, unless someone feeds him, and no one is crazy enough to do that. Dark Ones are not to be messed with.” She looked over her shoulder again, suddenly jetting off, throwing back at me, “And neither are wrath demons! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of here!”
I looked in the direction she had pointed, but didn’t see a sign of any movement. Still, if something scary was coming, it would be best to move along.
“I’m sorry,” I told the comatose vampire. “It’s nothing personal, but my brother-in-law aside, I haven’t had good experiences with you guys.”
I hurried off in the direction that the woman had taken, my feet slowing as I thought back about the brush of the vampire’s hair against my fingers. It was long and silky, despite being coated with dirt. And the stubble on that sexy chin had felt soft, yet abrasive enough to make my fingertips tingle. Likewise the soft brown hairs of his chest when I had picked off the beetle. It struck me then that his flesh hadn’t been deathly cold.... It was cool, below room temperature, but not the icy chill of death.
“Poor guy,” I said again, turning back to look at the obscene rock. I couldn’t believe I was feeling any sort of empathy for a bloodsucking fiend, but somehow, the shrunken, gray-skinned man who lay back there didn’t seem at all to be the fiendish short. He was . . . needy.
“No one will feed you,” I said, gnawing on my lower lip. The savvy part of my mind told me to run far, far away from the vampire. I knew how deadly they could be—I had almost nightly reminders of that. But the idiot part of my brain, the part that fell for con artists, and lost puppies, and kids who cried in stores because they couldn’t have a toy, that part commanded my feet to take me back the way I’d just come.
“This is stupid,” I told the man when I got back to him. “You’re a vampire. You’re nothing but trouble. I’m not going to feed you and have you go kill someone.” I knelt next to him, wondering how one went about feeding a comatose vampire. It wasn’t something that came up much at the office. I pried open his lips and smooshed my wrist up against his teeth, prodding him on the shoulder as I said, “Mister? Soup’s on. So to speak. Oh, god, what am I doing? I can’t believe I’m actually trying to save you. Only . . . if you’re as powerful as I think you are, then you can get Diamond and me out of here. OK? Do we have a deal? I give you blood and you get us out of the Akasha? One bite for yes, two for no, all right?”
The vampire just lay there, his eyes closed, his hair begging to be stroked. How on earth did one resuscitate a vampire? Mouth-to-mouth? I removed my wrist from his mouth, eyeing his lips with concern. He wasn’t dead, but it seemed somewhat creepy to just slap my mouth on his and breathe for him. What if there were beetles in his mouth?
“Urgh,” I said, shivering. “Too icky. I’d better look before I try that.”
If anyone told me that one day I’d be kneeling in limbo, prying open the mouth of an almost-dead vampire to see if insects had invaded him, I’d have laughed myself silly. It didn’t strike me at all as funny as I angled the man’s head first one way, and then another, trying to get enough light to see into his mouth. With a muttered apology, I wiped off my forefinger as best I could, and swept it around his mouth to make sure there were no lurking bugs.
His mouth was surprisingly warm, not moist the way a mouth should be, but slightly humid. I sat staring down at him, my index finger in his mouth, a sudden jolt of awareness hitting me that I was ashamed to admit was akin to arousal.
It got worse when he started sucking on my finger.
“Oh, my,” I said, staring in amazement as his neck muscles worked. “Mercy. I think . . . oh, man. Mister? You there?”
I pried up one eyelid, but his eyes were rolled back. Still, he must have some sort of an awareness if his suckle reflex had been triggered.
“What could work on a finger can work for a wrist,” I told him, gently removing my finger, letting it trail along his parched lower lip. I was going to edge my wrist between his teeth, but some urge deep inside me instead had me bending over him, holding my hair out of the way with one hand as I angled my neck down over his mouth. A strange awareness prickled along my skin as his dry, cool lips touched my neck. I waited a minute, but he did nothing. With a sigh, I scooted down until I was partially draped over his body, my hair spread over him like a screen as I shifted in tiny little movements until my nose was buried in the dusty silken coolness of his hair. I slid a hand under his neck, pressing his mouth to my flesh, my whole body tight and tense, as if I were waiting for a blow.
A soft exhalation of his breath warmed my skin for a moment, followed by a brief rasp of his tongue. “Go ahead,” I told him, breathing in the scent from his hair, ignoring the musty smell of the dirt to revel in the woodsy, earthy scent that seemed to sink in through my pores.
Pain suddenly flared in my neck, pain that quickly turned to heat that rippled outward, flowing down through my veins. I moaned, clutching his head to me, the sensation of life flowing from me to him more arousing than anything I’d ever felt in my life. No wonder Jacintha didn’t mind when Avery needed to feed from her—this was the mos
t erotic sensation I’d ever felt, and that was with a comatose vampire. What would it be like when he was awake?
The impaired side of my mind cackled to itself that I could even contemplate feeding the vampire after he was on his feet again, but at that moment, I would have been willing to sign away all common sense in order to stay just as I was.
Two hands suddenly gripped my arms, the fingers biting into my flesh, holding me against him as he continued to feed, the sensation of his mouth making my breasts grow hot and heavy, and much more secret parts sit up and take notice.
Suddenly, I was on my back, the rocks beneath me digging painfully into my back, the vampire’s body heavy on mine, but none of that mattered. It was his mouth that my entire awareness was focused on, his wonderfully hot mouth still on my neck as he drank deeply, and I had the oddest feeling that I could actually sense the blood flowing through his body, replenishing him, like water poured over parched earth. It soaked into every atom of his being, and with each passing moment, I felt myself soaring on a sort of high, a blissful awareness that I was fulfilling a need that had, until that moment, lain dormant in both of us.
My hands slipped from his head as I gave myself up to him, floating away on a fluffy cloud of euphoria, content with life at long last.
Chapter Three
Alec couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had rolled over to find a woman in his arms. She lay on top of him now, her head limp against his neck, her heart slowly beating, yet at the same time he could swear he felt it beating within him, as well.
Someone had fed him. Someone, this woman lying across him, had, for an unknown reason, fed him.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice harsh and rough from his coma.
She didn’t answer; she just lay across his torso, her body warm on his. He closed his eyes for a moment at the pain that awareness brought with it.