Page 41 of The Devil and His Goddess (Sinners Do It Better #2)

Perseus

LET ME IN, TOO.

The words played over and over in my head. She believed I had shut her out, but that was where she was mistaken. She’d been inside this entire time.

If I had a soul, she’d be carved into it, and I’d spend everyday memorizing those fine etchings. She was a part of me, wrapped up in my very making like two halves of the same whole, two pieces of a scattered puzzle, two wings of the same butterfly. She was my peace, my breath, my heart, and when asked what the point of life was, I’d forever point to her.

It was because I cared so deeply for her that I couldn’t push the matter of my own needs, not until I knew she was truly okay. If I had perished before then, so be it. I’d rather die than to cause her more suffering. Though, it didn’t seem that was likely anymore.

That blinding kiss had certainly been a sign that she was getting comfortable with me again, but I hadn’t pushed for more since then. I wanted to let her decide when she was ready for more in her own time, at her own pace.

While I waited, I kept myself busy by helping her with dance—putting on my artistic director hat when needed and my pas de deux partner hat when she asked it of me. When she went to sleep, I’d lie with her to ensure the nightmares didn’t return, and then I’d go pay a much needed visit to the one who’d caused all of her torment.

Which was exactly what I prepared to do now.

I started to pull my hand out of Harper’s when her fingers tightened around mine, and her eyes fluttered open. Even through the darkness of the room, I could see her clearly as she sleepily searched for me in the dark.

“Are you leaving again?” she murmured.

I squeezed her hand and rubbed the back of it with my thumb. “Unless you need me. He can wait, if so.”

She shifted on the bed, pulling the blanket closer to her face. After a pregnant pause, she softly asked, “Is today the day?”

Harper knew that I had Drake locked away somewhere, just as she knew my ultimate plan for him. She never asked for the details, just as she never brought the bastard up at all. Despite all the progress she’d made in her mental health, thinking too much or talking about that night or the man involved was something she didn’t do. When she tried opening up or when the memories swooped in at seemingly random moments, she’d take many steps back in her healing journey and have to make those strides all over again.

I studied her outline in the dark. I wasn’t sure what to do for her when it came to dealing with those memories and the man who saturated them.

“Do you want to come?” I asked, wondering if unleashing all of her anger and hurt on him in the act of revenge would help.

“No,” she quickly shot out. She shook her head and squeezed my hand tighter. “No, I never want to see that monster again.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears while her voice cracked. She took a deep breath before whispering, “Can you promise me one thing, though?”

“Anything, Goddess.”

Through the dark night, her eyes, which glowed with fury, met mine. “Make it hurt. Make him rot. Make him break .”

I smiled. “I promise.”

MY FIST SMASHED INTO DRAKE’S face, hurtling him across the room. Spit and a tooth flew from his bloody mouth as he sagged in a crying heap on Dante’s cellar floor.

I shook out my fist, admiring the crimson painting the knuckles.

“Damn good hit, Pers,” Xander praised with a chuckle.

I smirked. “Thanks.”

Xander and Zagan leaned against the wall behind me. The three of us had been taking turns beating on the loser, and it was currently my round. Dante wasn’t here right now. The human woman he’d met had become his priority lately, which I was happy to see. The demon needed a human companion to soften some of his hard edges, and from what I’d seen, Serenity was just the human for the job. He was with her at the moment, but he assured us that we could go ahead without him. He’d fucked with Drake plenty during the human’s time at his home.

“Please!” Drake begged, sending more blood and spit rolling down his chin. He looked up at me through swollen black eyes. Snot dripped from his nose to his bruised lips. “Please let me go! Have mercy!”

“Let you go?” I snarled, coming to stand over top of him. “Let you go ? Did you let Harper go? Did you show Harper mercy?”

At the mention of her name, Drake giggled. A wide grin stretched his cracked mouth, exposing the multiple missing teeth. “She liked it just as she loved me.”

“Fucking asshole,” Zagan seethed behind me while Xander snarled at the disgusting sentiment.

I gritted my teeth and stomped on Drake’s fingers, relishing in the crunch beneath my heel and the howl of pain he let out. Fury nearly made what little control I had snap. I needed to get this done before I lost my head entirely and killed the fucker myself.

Drake glared at me—as much as he could given how swollen his face was— and spat at my foot, which still pinned his broken hand in place. “You won’t get away with this! You’ll go to jail for doing this to me!”

“What a threat,” I laughed darkly and clapped my ringed hands. “Go on. Threaten me some more. Let’s hear it.”

“Crazy bastard!”

“Me? Oh, no,” I chuckled while getting off Drake and backing up toward the wall where Zagan and Xander waited. “I’m not the crazy bastard you should be worried about right now.”

A black snake appeared between my feet and slithered slowly across the floor.

“As much as I want to kill you myself,” I hissed, “that would be too merciful.”

The snake drew up short near Drake’s purple and red face.

“And didn’t you know?” I asked coldly, letting my voice drop. “We demons show no such thing. Coldin !”

The black snake grew larger as the shadows around it changed. The black mass was no longer a snake but Coldin standing before Drake in dark jeans and a t-shirt that exposed his many tattoos. The Letum demon stared blankly at the human on the floor, who screamed and tried but failed to crawl away.

Xander laughed under his breath and rubbed his hands together. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

“Should’ve worn ponchos for all the blood that’s coming,” Zagan noted with a look down at his band t-shirt and jeans.

Snickering along with my boys, I yelled, “Coldin.”

The Letum’s human green eyes met mine.

“Remember what I said. Keep it tame enough for us to stomach. You can do more once he’s yours.”

Coldin’s fingers curled one at a time to crack, and he rolled his head to loosen up the muscles.

With one final look at Drake’s wailing, bloody face, I ordered, “Kill Drake.”

The green of Coldin’s eyes broke apart in dark lines before turning solid black. Flames erupted in the void of his eyes, and when he snickered, fangs had sprouted in place of his canines. Black ram horns jutted out of his brown hair, and his clawed fingers curled in excitement.

I was used to the demon, but that didn’t stop a shiver of fear from rippling down my spine at the sight of his demonic form, though this one wasn’t nearly as terrifying as his true form. If he’d been able to slip into his real form, none of us would’ve been brave enough to stay in the same room as him. Thankfully, he wasn’t allowed to go into that form with the demonic bindings wrapped around his wrists.

Even still, this half-demonic form of his was enough to have a nervous sweat breaking out on the back of my neck, because I knew what he was capable of. I knew what dying by his hands meant. It was why he needed to be the one to kill Drake.

Anyone killed by a Letum demon became their prey for eternity. Their soul would be trapped in the Letum’s collection where the demon could torture them forever . They’d feel every ounce of pain as though alive and never be able to escape it through death. Suffering would be all they knew once killed and claimed by a Letum.

That was the only ending fit for Drake.

Or rather, a beginning—the beginning of an eternity of misery.

I wouldn’t have access to him once he became a part of Coldin’s collection, so I was happy to witness the death of his pathetic human life. I wasn’t typically one for violence. I didn’t get off on blood, screams, or the pain of others. Not all demons were like that, and Incubi certainly weren’t.

Tonight was an exception.

Coldin shoved his clawed fingers into Drake’s stomach and slowly shredded his abdomen like a hot knife through butter. Drake’s face contorted in agony as he kicked his legs and shook violently from the sensation of having skin, tissue, and organs sliced open. Sickly wet screams that could unnerve even the big man himself echoed in the basement as blood gathered in his throat and spurted out of his wide mouth. The sound had a grin lighting up my face.

A breathy laugh of pleasure seeped out of Coldin’s peeled back lips. He crouched over a twitching Drake to dig two clawed fingers into his eye sockets, plucking out the white balls with a hard yank and a spray of crimson, which splattered Coldin’s cheeks. That only made his eerie grin wider and the flames burning in his eyes brighter. I curled my fists to keep them from shaking with the same kind of excitement that thrummed through the Letum demon.

When the room went quiet and filled with the smell of fresh, warm blood, I inhaled and savored the scent.

Coldin straightened, and the wild grin he’d sported during the killing faded until his face was dotted with crimson and blank. He turned to look at the three of us and held up his tattooed arm to lick the blood dripping down his wrist. His tongue piercing glinted in the dimly lit room. “Done.”

Silence stretched for many moments as the rest of us let the sight of the bloody scene settle. Even though Coldin had gone easy on him, the sounds, smells, and sight of it wouldn’t have been easy on the two demons standing with me. For once, I relished in it. I wanted to bathe in that blood and laugh at the face of the mutilated, open-mouthed corpse.

Zagan was the first to speak, though he had to clear his throat many times before he could. “Feel free to go to your hole in Hell and play with your new toy. Clean this up first, though.”

Every Letum had a hall in Hell that housed the souls they claimed. It was where they could pay them visits and continue the torture into the afterlife. It was also where he took his time with them and performed his more … gruesome torture.

Coldin’s black-and-fiery eyes surveyed the dead body and pools of blood around the room. “What a shame.”

He snapped his clawed fingers. Every speck of blood, chunk of flesh, shattered bone, and the body burst into shadows before swarming toward Coldin as though he were a vacuum. As the wisps disappeared, the room became spotless. There wasn’t a single shred of evidence to indicate that any torture or killing had taken place here. Coldin followed, disappearing into smoke, no doubt traveling to his hall in Hell to begin his real fun with Drake.

“He’s one scary motherfucker,” Xander noted, blowing out a breath.

I smirked. “Be glad he chose to go easy on that piece of shit while in front of us.”

“I don’t want to know what he does with them once they’re his,” Zagan said as his lip curled in disgust. “Knowing it’s pure Hell is good enough for me.”

Normally, I agreed. Thinking too much about the devious torture Coldin enacted on people made me want to vomit, but I had no intention of letting Drake’s eternal sentence go. He was one soul I couldn’t wait to get details on.