Angela Knight - Over The Moon

Beldar simply lay there now, moaning softly and panting, slicked with perspiration as he continued to glow, as light slowly overcame darkness. But it was a cool dampness, not a warm one that drenched his skin.

"It's burning the corruption away, Beldar," I said, caressing his wrists in comfort now rather than in restraint. "Soon," I crooned. "It's almost done."

His chest heaved, filling and emptying like a bellow. "I pray that it finishes soon, either way. As long as I never experience that pain again. Dying would be better than going through that again."

"Hush," I admonished gently. "You're not going to die. You're going to live." I was certain of it now as the warmth in his skin faded even as the darkness within him disappeared. When the last speck of that rotten blackness vanished in a stunning blaze of glorious white light, the radiance was gone. Like a switch suddenly flipped off, he suddenly stopped glowing, and the light vanished back into Beldar in one quick flash.

I ran my hands gently over the new skin on Beldar's chest. His flesh was smooth, whole, healed. I felt only solid muscle and untorn skin beneath my palms as I slid my hands lower, over his abdomen. Sensed only wellness through my tingling moles.

"You're well," I said, smiling brilliantly.

He lay there on his back, looking completely wrung out. "I feel as if I've been to Hell and back."

"I did that once," I said quietly. "I felt as if I were being torn apart."

"That pretty much describes it." Beldar's lips curved into a tired smile. "You healed me."

I shook my head. "I'm not sure that I did. My powers don't work like that. Maybe it was simply your own lunar light within you. Maybe that healed you once it was brought out."

"No," Beldar said with soft surety, "you healed me."

We ended up taking turns showering. I went first at the men's insistence, even though I thought Beldar should go before me—the putrid smell still clung to him.

Amber efficiently bagged the comforter and Beldar's shirt, both stained with slimy blackness, and threw them out. The room smelled much better with them gone. Beldar ended up wearing one of my size large T-shirts, one of the ones I usually wore to bed.

"It smells of you," he said, his emerald green eyes somehow looking even larger and more brilliant with his damp hair slicked back away from his face.

I didn't know how to treat him now. Not with the combative banter we usually thrust and parried our words with. We might not have had intercourse, but we'd been intimate, and I discovered that that in and of itself created a bond. Less strong but still there. And somehow, I could read him better' now. I saw the sadness that filled those eyes for one brief moment before he slid his usual carefree mask back on, a charming roguish smile once more gracing his lips.

I felt an answering sadness in me that I had to give him back into Mona Sera's cruel rule. That he couldn't belong to me.

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

The doorbell rang and I went to the door and opened it without looking because I knew by their slow heartbeats who were on the other side of it—Gryphon and Chami. But they weren't alone. Another, whose heart did not beat, stood beside them. Lucinda. And in front of her was what looked like an amazingly big dog.

I backed up slowly and instinctively away from that big dog because I knew that wasn't what it really was.

I'd never seen a hellhound before, had only heard their hellish baying, but as I looked into those yellow eyes—not amber but almost a true yellow, like the burning fires of hell, feral and frighteningly intelligent—I knew that that was what stood before me. A hellhound almost as big as me, its head reaching nearly to my shoulders, brindle black and brown in coloration.

It padded silently into my apartment and for one wild moment, I seriously considered giving in to my body's screaming urges and throwing myself out the window to escape it, even knowing that it was seven stories down to the bottom, a distance I could not survive. It was a gut primal reaction to danger, the desire to flee. These creatures ate big bad demons, gobbled them down. Even the demon dead fled before them. It took a huge straining effort on my part not to run screaming away from it.

I moved slowly backward until I bumped up against Amber. His hands lifted to my shoulders and began to shift me behind him, but I resisted, shaking my head slightly. Beldar was a still, unmoving presence beside Amber, though that wasn't completely true. He was still in the sense he wasn't running, but he was moving—trembling. Almost violent tremors shook his entire body.

We were all deathly still, fearful that any sudden moves might trigger violence. Only Lucinda strolled casually into the apartment with swaying lithe ease. Gryphon and Chami entered and closed the door behind them, and the latching sound it made seemed loud and portentous in the harrowing silence.

"You lied to me," Lucinda said, her eyes cool, wide, and alert. "No one here has been bitten."

"They didn't lie," I said hoarsely. "Beldar was bitten but he's healed now."

Lucinda gave an almost evil laugh. Melodious, tinkling even, but with a malice that made your skin creep. "Now I know you surely lie. No one heals a hellhound's bite."

Well, hell. How do you argue with a demon dead princess? "It's the truth. Can't you smell it, the decaying scent? It lingers still on Beldar."

Both mistress and beast padded over to Beldar, and he looked as if he didn't know which to be more frightened of, Lucinda or the hellhound. Beldar's eyes grew enormous but he didn't run. More than I could have done, I think, faced with the two of them so close they could touch you, kill you, rip you apart. Or simply bite you again and leave you to die in rotting corruption.

"You must be Beldar," Lucinda crooned. One long, sharp fingernail scraped down his cheek. He shuddered and I wondered it if was in fear, or in reaction to Lucinda's sensual voice slithering over him in a tactile caress.

"Yes," he rasped, a faint sound barely audible. He looked as if he were trying not to breathe too hard. Be still and maybe the beasts before him would not tear him apart.

A long pointy fingernail stroked down Beldar's chest, slipped under his T-shirt and lifted it up, baring his tense, ridged abdomen.

Lucinda's head lowered and her cheek brushed against Beldar's nipple. "I do smell something…" She turned her head slowly back and forth, rubbing against him almost like a cat, and drew in a deep breath "… here."

There was a dazed expression in Beldar's eyes, helpless and bewildered. Fear was there, yes. But also arousal. Shocking, unexpected, sexual excitement was growing against his will. He hadn't known what a demon dead could do to him.

Beside Lucinda, the beast's great jaws yawned wide and open, revealing something no earthly canine possessed—a double row of razor-sharp fangs. As if one row wasn't already enough. A long pink tongue rolled out and lapped against Beldar's healed fleshed in the exact spot where he had been bitten, leaving behind a flushing redness, as if sandpaper had scraped across that skin. Beldar looked as if he were about to keel over or throw up. Lucinda straightened up and captured Beldar's eyes. "Did Brindell bite you?"

Brindell, apparently, was the hellhound's name.

"Yes," Beldar said faintly, his voice dry and crackly. "And Mona Lisa healed me."

All eyes, including those frightening yellow ones, swung to me.

I never did well being the object of everyone's scrutiny. Made me want to distract them. "If you can't heal a hellhound's bite, Lucinda, as you say, then why did you come?" Even without serving as a distraction, it was something I wanted to know.

Something flickered in Lucinda's eyes. "I was going to kill him. Free him from his pain. Give him a chance to make the transition to Hell before all his energy was completely consumed."