Without limits ssion and.., p.123
Without Limits: A BWWM Collection of Passion and Desire, page 123
She struggled against him, reaching for me, her face red. He jerked her away from me and dragged her to the door, barking at her to stand down. By the time he reached the doorway, she’d realized he wasn’t about to let her fight me and stomped out into the gallery alone. Jon shut the door behind her and straightened his ruffled jacket.
The angels were all staring at me now, their expressions unreadable yet unnerving. It was too quiet in here.
God, I wanted to go home.
“Look,” I said finally. “No one in here has to march in this parade with me. I know what I’ve done. I’m certainly not proud of it, and I don’t expect you to understand, but it’s not about me. It’s about fifteen innocent people who haven’t seen the light of day for possibly years. Forget me. Think about them. Think about the other people we can save if we shut down their organization. We’d be killing two birds with one stone. No more demons, no more drugs. You guys are back to just stomping out regular old sociopaths, killers, druggies, and whatnot. And if you don’t trust me, then I will sit in this room from now until the raid is over so that you know I haven’t betrayed you.”
I took a deep breath. “Please. Please help them.”
Silence pervaded the room. Jon glanced around at the many faces and cleared his throat.
“All in favor of assisting the people held captive at the Kiln, say aye.”
“Aye.”
Ten voices.
“Majority rules,” Jon said, a faintly relieved smile on his lips. “Let’s get to work on a plan to save them.”
Chapter Seven
“So I get the feeling that you don’t have a sense of self-preservation.”
I snorted into my Heineken bottle. “You’re just now getting that feeling?”
Myra shrugged. “Hey, I’m not always perfect at reading people.”
“You were the one who scraped me off the floor of that warehouse,” I said, lowering the sweating green bottle to the top of the bar. “I would have assumed you knew that about me.”
A sobering thought entered my mind. “I take it you were there when they grabbed me?”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “There were too many of them that day and I didn’t have my rifle or I’d have stopped them before they…”
She licked her lips, leaving the sentence to dangle there painfully. No more words needed, really. I wouldn’t have blamed her anyway. She saved my life. End of story. The details didn’t truly matter in the end.
“Lost track of you for a bit,” she said a while later. “The mutt picked up your scent and eventually we found you.”
“Remind me to thank him.”
Myra smirked. “He won’t care.”
“Sure, but it’s the principle of the thing.”
We drank for a while. It was one of those nights where I was allowed to break my dry streak. We were one day away from breaking into a demons’ nest. It could my last day alive. Still, I didn’t want to spend the precious cash for some good whiskey, so I settled for a beer instead. I could remotely stand Heineken, at least.
The bar we’d chosen was one of Myra’s favorites. It was just your average sports bar, but she knew the bartender from her days as a bouncer and he gave her half off anything she wanted. Various games—football, baseball, hockey, basketball, soccer—droned on in the background, punctuated by masculine howls of either praise or damnation when someone made a big play. I didn’t mind the noise. It was…comforting, in a way, to know the world spun on even when it felt like mine was about to end.
“You should have punched that bitch,” Myra grunted.
“She could have kicked my ass if I did.”
“Still. She deserved it, accusing you of being the demon’s whore.”
I sighed. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit about my reputation at this point.”
“Liar,” she said softly, glancing at me. “I saw the way you reacted. Even if you’re guilty about the breakup, you took the insult personally.”
“So what if I did?”
“Look, I remember what Gabriel taught me when I became a Seer. Letting something like that fester inside you is a bad idea. Are you sure there isn’t anything you want to get off your chest in case tomorrow is our last day on this rock?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. So what if I come back as a ghost? It’s better than where I’d be headed.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “Are you telling me you believe that bitch now? You think you’re bad news? Is that why you came all the way to Houston to save my kid and my husband? Is that why you risked your life getting information when no one else would?”
“She’s right about me,” I mumbled. “I’m not a hero. I do this because I have nothing else left. I don’t have a family. I don’t know what the hell I am anymore.”
“No one does, Jordan. No one on this blue marble has any idea what the hell they’re doing and that’s why we bond with each other, human or angel. We all screw up.”
I glared at her. “Have you ever screwed up so bad that over a thousand people died because of you?”
“No. But I have seen people die because I didn’t stop it. Numbers don’t matter. Intentions don’t matter. You’re still trying to save people and that’s what counts, not your motivations.”
She drained her bottle and motioned for the bartender to get her another one. She popped the cap off and took another swig.
“You know what’s crazy?” I murmured.
“What?”
I almost smiled. “If I wanted to, I could call Belial right now and tell him to shut down this whole operation and he’d do it in a heartbeat.”
Myra stared at me, her piercing eyes half-lidded. “No bullshit?”
“No bullshit.”
“Wow. What’s it like having an archdemon as your booty call?”
I let out a hollow laugh. “You know, maybe that’s what kills me the most. I probably wouldn’t be this screwed up if I actually had given in to him. It’s like you have a vault full of drug money and the key is just sitting in your pocket every day and you have to wake up and come up with a reason not to use it. I hate knowing that I could have everything I want if I just said yes to him. Sure, I’d forfeit my soul, but it hasn’t been doing me that much good to begin with at this rate. I’m just…drifting.”
“Maybe you are,” she agreed. “But that’s not what makes you who you are. Maybe you look at yourself and just see the scars, but it isn’t a reflection of you as a whole. Sometimes the only way to do the right thing is to just keep saying no to that tempting offer.”
I pressed the cold bottle to my forehead. “I know. But how long until he breaks me? He told me I’m the only one who has ever held out this long. He’s been alive for millennia. What if he’s right?”
The question hung in the air like suffocating humid mist. After a while, Myra grinned and slapped my shoulder hard.
“Don’t be stupid. Men are never right, babe. Come on. It’s time to go.”
She dropped me off at my hotel. I did my usual ritual of peeling off my makeup and collapsed in my bed. I wanted nothing more than to sleep, but I knew that there was a good chance You-Know-Who would be waiting for me. I’d been too tired to do it before, but tonight was important. Possibly my last night to sleep. I wanted to be left the hell alone, literally.
I rolled onto my back. I still couldn’t access my energy without blowing my cover, but I could construct mental shields without exposing myself as a Seer to the outside world. Belial had taught me. It was like building a brick wall. I held that image in my mind and constructed the wall one brick at a time until I felt satisfied that he couldn’t break through it. Then I rolled over and went to sleep.
I dreamt of my mother’s kitchen.
Catalina Amador was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but I supposed all little girls thought that about their mothers. She had long, wavy black hair, beautifully arched eyebrows, one of those lovely aquiline noses, stunning cheekbones, and full lips. Like me, her skin was a rich brown. I could always just barely hear her accent as a warm undercurrent when she spoke English.
Right now, she stood at the small counter across from the little round dinner table she and I ate at every night, chopping the bright red and yellow bell peppers that would go into her homemade paella. There was a little girl with a frizzy ponytail seated at the table with a spelling workbook spread open. It was me, age five, doing my homework.
Every so often, my mother would smile at me and gently correct me, or tell me that I’d done a great job on something. The little five-year-old me preened each time she got a compliment and swung her tiny bare feet back and forth as she started the alphabet song again, this time in Spanish. My mother had always stressed that our heritage wouldn’t determine where we ended up in life, only our intelligence and perseverance. She knew that teaching me her native tongue as well as English could someday give me an advantage. She wanted me to be prepared, to have a chance out there in the world.
I stood at the entrance to the kitchen, trembling in disbelief that I could see my mother in front of me for the first time since my brush with death a couple of years ago. I almost never could remember her clearly, and any time that I did, it was a nightmare of when I’d been taken away from her to live with my abusive Aunt Carmen.
I stepped forward to talk to her, to touch her, to hug her, to tell her that I loved her more than anything, but I ran into some kind of invisible force-field. I flattened my hand against it and something pushed against my fingers. I realized with a start that it was my mental shield. How was it keeping me out? Had I just bottled it all up over the years to protect myself from the pain? This hadn’t ever happened before. I didn’t even know I was capable of such a thing.
Unless it wasn’t me at all who had done it.
“You know,” a quiet male voice spoke from behind me. “I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but I heard she left quite an impression.”
I pressed my forehead against the invisible wall. “Get out.”
“You know full well that you don’t truly want me to go.”
I whirled on Belial. “This is my memory. This is my life. You have no place here. Now get out or so help me God, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Even though I can help you?”
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Just stop it already! Stop lying, stop manipulating, stop following me around and just let me rot in peace!”
He stared at me with those icy eyes. “No.”
I tried to punch him, but my center of balance was off because I was shaking so hard with rage and grief and desperation. He leaned to one side so that my shot missed, but I launched myself at him, clawing and scratching like a wild animal. He just wrapped his long arms around me. I struggled to get free, but it didn’t really matter. I was broken. Completely, utterly broken.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because you don’t deserve to be alone, Jordan.”
“You don’t know what I deserve. We’re both monsters.”
“Perhaps we are.” He tilted his mouth towards my ear. “But we don’t have to be lonely monsters.”
“Why did you show me this?”
“Because the past is poison,” he said softly. “Indulge in it too often and you’ll lose your life. There is nothing left for you back there, Jordan. Memories at best are warnings. Precautions. Aesop’s fables with a lesson to be learned at the end. Take what you can from them and let them lie or you’ll fade into dust alongside them.”
“I miss her.”
“I know. She is with you nonetheless.”
I slowed my breathing and let his words sink in finally. He was right. I was scared and unsure of myself. Memories were easy to lean upon in hard times. I could lose myself in the way things were and not have to face what lay in front of me.
I untangled myself from him. He let me, but he kept my hand in his as I faced the invisible wall. I rested my hand on it and watched the sunlight spill through the window, giving the little kitchen its own holy glow. I smiled through my tears and shut my eyes. When I opened them again, it had disappeared. Instead, I stood in the bedroom of my old apartment. It had hardwood floors that creaked and groaned, the bathroom was laughably tiny, and it was always too cold, but I loved it.
“I might die tomorrow,” I said absently, staring out the window that used to face an apartment complex on the other side of the street.
“You might,” Belial agreed.
“Is this the part where you lecture me about being reckless?”
“No. This is the part where I make you a better offer.”
I wiped my cheeks clean and faced him, tugging my hand free. “Then this is the part where I tell you to shove it up your lily-white ass.”
He inhaled deeply, as if trying to be patient with me. “Considering the alternative, perhaps you should hear me out.”
“Why? What has changed since the last time, Belial? I know what you want. I may not have much to live for, but it’s still my life. I won’t be your puppet for all eternity.”
“Oh, Jordan,” he said softly. “How wrong you are. You’ve known me all this time, and yet you still don’t fully understand what I’m offering.”
“Really? And what’s that?”
“Freedom.”
“From what?”
“Yourself.”
I froze. “What are you talking about?”
“You are a very particular kind of woman, Jordan,” he said, and then started to circle me one step at a time. “Prideful. Stubborn. Cynical. Altruistic. Self-sacrificing. Diligent. Powerful.”
He went around three times and then stopped directly behind me. “Alone. In spite of all that you’ve done to save the human race, here we are. You remain unhappy and solitary because fate doesn’t care about what is fair. You have had everything taken away from you one by one until only you remain.”
I swallowed hard as his words sunk into my skin like thick, gelatinous poison. “So what? That’s life.”
“No, that’s not life. All this time you have assumed this is the lot that you have been dealt, that it is your responsibility to carry these burdens until your knees buckle. You’ve been blinded by the promise of heaven, by the lie that when all is said and done, you will waltz into the Father’s arms and bask in the land of milk and honey. You’ve been fed a lie, Jordan. It’s nothing more than cheap manipulation by the Almighty to get you to play His game, to be His servant when you could be something more…”
He leaned in towards my ear, letting the last two words drop into it like a secret. “A goddess.”
I shut my eyes. “I won’t join you just for an ego boost. I know what you want. I’m not turning my sword on the angels.”
Belial sighed. “Why do you see the world in black and white? The world is shades of grey. It’s not good versus evil. Everything comes down to choice, and they’ve led you to believe that you don’t have one when you do.”
“What choice?”
“The choice to be truly free of both sides.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Oh, but it is. Do you think I cannot provide that for you? That I cannot find you a place where nothing can touch you, neither man nor angel nor demon? No one said you had to live this wretched calling forever, Jordan. This is not about what I want. This is about what you deserve.”
I gasped as his fingers slipped beneath the hem of my dress shirt and his fingertips lightly grazed the scars on my back. No two were alike; some were thick, the ones that had torn open my skin so badly they had to rush me to hospital for stitches, others thin and crooked as a garden snake, all of them too deeply inflicted to ever heal. “These scars that you wear like armor are preventing you from seeing the truth. You have let them define who you are. These painful, damning memories have convinced you that you are nothing but a tool to be used to deliver their falsehoods of justice. You use them to remind you of the monsters that lurk in the darkness.”
He slid his hand higher up my back, sending soothing shivers wherever his fingers touched my skin. “I can lift that burden, sweet Jordan. I can free you from these shackles you’ve unknowingly entangled yourself in. I’m not asking you to raise arms against the Father, against the angels, against mankind. I’m simply asking you if you think that your soul is worth more than what they have offered for it.”
He trailed his hand around towards my side and pulled me back against him, his lips brushing my ear, his words soft and sweet, yet dripping with filthy promises. “I know exactly how many nerve endings there are in your body. You could spend days, weeks, months, even years in endless ecstasy. I can do things to you that no man on this earth has even dared to discover. You could finally rest and be at true peace, without any preoccupation, free to do as you please without repercussions or penalties or fear of damnation.”
Belial swept my hair to one side and kissed my neck, traveling down towards my shoulder. “I would be at your beck and call, only there if you dare ask it of me, never when you wouldn’t want me. You could be free, Jordan. Never be forced to make another decision you didn’t want to. No more ultimatums. No more deals. No more sacrifices.”
He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my palm. “No more nights spent alone. Just you, me, a bed, and the darkness as our companions. Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t something you want?”
I closed my eyes. He wasn’t wrong, damn him. “I…m-my husband…”
“He walked out on you,” the demon whispered. “Tell me, Jordan. Have you heard one word from him since it happened? Has he made even the slightest attempt to ensure that you are alive and well?”
Something inside my chest withered. “No.”
“Don’t let him hold you back from what you want. As you said before, this is your life. The choices you make from now on are yours and yours alone.”
I didn’t realize he’d been unbuttoning my dress shirt until the material slipped off my shoulders. He cast the shirt aside and ran his hands over my hips, my waist, holding me in place as he lowered his mouth to my shoulder blades. He kissed the sensitive space between them and then trailed his mouth down to where my scars began. I shivered as those soft lips traced them carefully, as if trying to commit them to memory. It had been so long since I’d been touched, held, pampered, spoiled with attention. Pleasure simmered up through my skin. I’d missed it.
