Page 29 of The Demon's Fire
He dropped his grip on Celene, doubling over. “Bitch.” As he stumbled toward her roommate, another guard entered the room.
He stared at the mess. “Stop, Bayd. We aren’t authorized to harm them. What caused all this?”
Bayd held his crotch while he glared at Jace. “They want to meet Lort.”
“We have to contact the general with their request. Let him decide.”
Celene grinned as the guard continued to rub his injured joystick. “I bet that’s the most action your dick’s had in a long while.”
Bayd snarled, the other guy bodychecking him. “Soon, bitches, my time with you will come.”
When the asshats left, the two women looked at the disaster in the kitchen and then at each other. Celene started giggling. She couldn’t stop. Her hand flew to her mouth, but sounds kept pouring out.
Jace, infected with her roommate’s laughter, slumped to the floor, tears rolling down her cheek, her palm clasped to her belly. “We don’t know why we’re here, where we are, or who’s keeping us. They could kill us today, tomorrow, or twenty years from now. I’m going to starve myself while I sit right here.” She stretched out her legs and leaned against the wall.
Celene laughed harder, sinking alongside her fellow prisoner. When their giggling fit ended, she turned serious. “Let’s hope our hunger strike brings the big boss for a visit. Maybe he’ll have some answers.”
“Not knowing is the worst.”
“In the meantime, if we get an opportunity to overpower them or escape, we do it. Before we collapse.”
Jace snorted. “Like that’s going to happen. Look at our jailers. Each guy’s bigger than the other. We know they aren’t human. Hah! There’s a phrase I never thought I’d use. The doors are locked. They hear everything we say, and our attempts to escape so far have failed.”
Celene took Jace’s hand. “I sure wish we had started this hunger strike thing after dinner. I’m starved.”
“Me, too. But it beats doing nothing.”
“GetThe Pathdown. It’ll cheer us up.”
Jace pushed off the floor and snatched the story about Aeternals from the bookshelf. She lounged on the sofa while Celene, on her feet now, paced the room.
“Here we go.” Jace flipped through the pages until she found the right spot.
Home to gods, goddesses, and the OneCreator, the Vast is a buffer between Angor and the Evermore. Though it is a place of eternal sunlight and warmth, it is not without problems.
To manage those problems, the OneCreator had his winged assassins, the Feard. They chased down unredeemed, unrepentant immortals who had defied the laws. They locked the perpetrators forever in Angor or delivered true death. Only they, Michael, or the big man himself could smite everlasting beings, ending their existence for all time.
Ohngel, one of the OneCreator’s Feard, hovered above his current assignment.
He watched as Basil zigzagged across the skies, his flying erratic, his feathers mottled with the blood of his victims. The boss himself had summoned Ohngel, handing him a containment order, a pleasing assignment because capture required more skill than a straight out kill. It promised a prolonged battle and his prey’s ensuing, infinite pain.
Ohngel almost felt pity for the guy. Not enough to give him a break because, after all, justice unserved was chaos. Besides, today Ohngel had a need to punish. Rage blasted in flames off his wings. It wanted an outlet. Basil, who had nothing to do with the problem facing Ohngel, would be the outlet. Lucky him.
The fire-winged assassin’s complication was the betrayer in the Blood Coven. The Cambion, as ordered, had instructed his witches and warlocks to remain on Earth with their offspring. Niviane had not complied. New stratagems were required to offset her perfidy.
But now, Ohngel had his pressing assignment. Though unrelated to the cause of his rage, the chase and capture might assuage his anger.
He flew with effortless grace to follow Basil, who had become entangled in an ageless tale. He loved Elise, but she had broken faith with him, heaping her favors upon another. In his fury, the cuckolded lover had cut a bloody path through the Vast, taking down those who got in his way. Assholes and innocents. The young and the mature. Males and females. Though his victims would not die, they would require much time to heal, and their pain would be excruciating. So, the containment order went out, accepted by the nearest of the Feard, Ohngel.
Spotting the OneCreator’s warrior, Basil paused in flight, his wings marking time until, in a second of frightful clarity, he took off—trying to put distance between himself and certain seizure.
“Idiot,” muttered Ohngel, his feathers of red, gold, blue, and crimson blazing outward from his spine. Now was the moment he relished, when his fiery, razored wings whipped forward, jetting him toward his prey and battle.
Basil, turning to defend himself, his options for escape nil, lashed out. His wings were also weapons, overlapping knives which he wielded with some skill. But he lacked precision. He lacked the killer instinct. His broad downward strokes left his underbelly open to attack.
Ohngel took advantage. Holstering his dagger, he used his blazing feathers as laser swords, lunging, thrusting, slicing, whipping one out and then the other. His motions were so quick they blurred. With a forward drive, he stabbed into his opponent’s abdomen with the tips of his hot blades.
His eyes wide with horror, Basil glanced at his bloody injury, crying out from the pain.
