If he were anyone else, I would’ve fought for my life. However, this was the devil. Violence would only beget more violence. And in that arena, I was hopelessly outgunned.
“You know the great thing about being a vampire?” he said conversationally. “You can withstand immense injuries and heal yourself.” Even as he said this, I felt the torn skin of my skull stitch itself back together. “But that doesn’t prevent you from feeling pain.”
To emphasize his point, he slammed my head against the ground again, cracking the marble floors further.
“You do realize this is my day job?” he said. “I know just how much psychological and physical trauma will break a person.”
He moved his hand from my hair to cup my jaw. He squeezed it to the point of pain. “I know exactly how to torture you to agree to my terms. The only reason I have not cut out your tongue, smashed in your eyes, and disemboweled you—just to name a few—is that I’d prefer that you are not under duress. But that is my preference, not a rule I have to abide by.”
I guess smashing my head into the ground, backhanding me, and kicking me in the stomach didn’t count as duress.
“Also,” he continued, “your form happens to please my eyes.” He ran a finger down the exposed skin of my arm, his eyes trailing the movement.
I closed my eyes and breathed in and out my nostrils. Now I needed to be brave. The rest of this evening would be worse, much, much worse. At this moment, Leanne came to mind. No wonder her eyes had that hollow, haunted look to them for the past few weeks. She’d known all along that we’d be tortured, we’d be killed.
If I just agreed, then maybe they’d let her go. But lying here, in a house made from the agony and sin of others, maybe didn’t seem good enough. Not when that same seer insisted that I let her die before I acquiesced to the devil’s demands. I had to trust that based on whatever she foresaw, she thought that choosing my soul over her body would lead to the best outcome. It still felt a whole lot like betrayal.
My body tensed as the words left my lips. “I will not accept your offer. Not now, not ever.”
“You foolish girl!” he shrieked in my face. He snapped his fingers and we were instantly back in the cathedral.
He threw me down the steps we appeared before, my cheek banging against a femur. The sound echoed throughout the room.
He grabbed me by my hair and heaved me up. I shrieked as the force used to lift me up ripped hair from its roots. I felt a trickle down my face as blood seeped from my head wounds.
The devil dragged me across the room to the foot of the altar Leanne laid across. “She will die!” he said, thrusting my face towards her. His voice rang out again and again as the sound resonated against the walls.
“I know.” The words slipped out, hushed and broken.
The devil backhanded me again, this time with enough force to send me sprawling across the room.
He stalked towards me and knelt. “Do you know how many others would die for this offer?” He hauled me to my feet. “How dare you reject me!” The bones of the church shuddered at his voice.
He held me in front of him, the fabric of my dress twisted in his hands. I’d never seen such distilled anger within someone’s eyes; I could feel his hands shaking with his rage.
His gaze never left mine when he gave the order. “Kill the sacrifice.”
Chapter 24
My eyes moved to Leanne’s unconscious form. Shadows peeled themselves from the dark recesses of the room and clustered around the altar. As I watched, their form began to change from something dark and wispy to something solid. Within a matter of seconds, they looked like humans. Whether they were or not was a whole different story.
“You kill her and you lose the only bargaining chip you already have,” I said to the devil.
He laughed. “I don’t think so. There are plenty of people you care about. I will wipe each one of them out, one by one, until you agree to my terms.”
Something about his statement was off. From what Andre had told me about him, the devil didn’t think in terms of a single soul. He always had a larger strategy at play.
In fact, now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure the devil had just slipped up. His offer and the lengths he’d go to get me to agree to it weren’t normal. Which meant that either my soul was particularly coveted, or this was bigger than me.
“I won’t ever agree to your terms.” I glanced over at the altar.
He flashed me a condescending smile. “Forever is a long time, and no mortal I’ve met has held to such absolutes. Everyone has a breaking point.”
“But you only have an evening to convince me,” I said.
His eyebrows rose, and his grin deepened. “You think I only have an evening? You do not understand the property of ley lines. Here, within these energy roads, the laws of time are bendable so long as the user knows how to manipulate them. And I know how to do just that. So this evening can be stretched into an eternity, should you decide to holdout forever.”