Sin of the Saints (Between Delusion and Sobriety Duet #2)

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Bartimaeus

I smell her as she walks into the living room. She’s all charcoal and living flame.

“I think Valentina’s been here too,” she approaches the couch where I sit helplessly. “I found clothes in the closet I’m sure were meant for her.”

“Uh-huh,” I nod, yearning to see what she looks like.

“So what’s the plan, Bar?” she asks, receiving no response. I close my eyes and open them again; her scarlet aura mesmerizes me. “What’s up?” She gently puts her hand on me, and I’m forced to take a deep breath to keep from bursting. Her touch is enough to excite my inner flame. She notices my reaction and pulls her hand away. “Is it me?” her voice cracks.

“No,” I force myself to answer.

“Then what is it? Tell me, because I really don’t get it. After everything that’s happened… I guess I just imagined it all differently.”

I hear the pounding of her heart. A living, breathing winged demoness. A fact I haven’t yet processed in all the chaos of the past day. I feel my heartbeat jumpstart to life around her.

I avoid her question. “We have to find a way to get that collar off you, Belle. I have no idea how demons got their hands on such a sacred item.”

“I think there are many things we don’t have a clue about.”

I nod and am satisfied that she drops the subject. “So let’s start from the beginning. What happened the day we were separated?”

“I thought I’d done the unforgivable,” she wipes her nose. “And then Libretto found me in that field, he put a curse on you. I tried to help you, I really did—”

“A curse?”

“I don’t know what it is, no one told me anything when Libretto locked me up in the castle dungeon.” I close my eyes and let out a sharp breath. The curse . The curse the Pope had spoken of. Was that not God’s punishment for my sins? Was it actually Libretto’s doing?

“When I sent Valentina, I was afraid to find out that I’d actually lost you.” I hear the vulnerability in her voice, and it hurts me.

“They buried me for three years, Belle. In silence and darkness. I’d become a sinner. I was required to return to the correct path so that I might reach redemption.” The words leave a bitter taste in my mouth. If the curse was Libretto’s doing, why did the Pope attribute it to God’s plan?

“And did you find it? Your redemption?” She places a soft hand on mine, like she really believes redemption is a goal you can simply achieve that easily. The followers of the Church devote their lives to redemption, and many fail to find it. I know actions and thoughts are different things. They could obey all the directives of the Church, yet impure thoughts always strike in our moments of weakness; I should know.

Did I find it? No, damn it, I didn’t find it. “They claim it will soon be revealed to me. That it’s been many years since a wingless guardian angel walked the lands of Adam. It will be revealed to me by the new chosen of God, His messiah who will bring His new word,” I explain

“So many previous messiahs have failed, splitting the devotion of the men of God into different religious, different faiths… but they keep hoping.”

I go on, “Their hope tarnishes them. They’re desperate. They claim the ends justify the means, but their means are no less monstrous than those of the damned.”

“The damned,” she repeats my choice of words. “I wonder what your saints would say about a winged demoness walking the realms of Man. Because that’s how I feel, that I’m damned. That’s how they see me, and they’re not wrong. The question is whether you see me that way too.”

I want to tell her that I no longer see anything but her aura, yet I sense her in the deepest places of my soul.

“No,” I answer without hesitation, reaching out and finally finding her thigh. I caress her gently and feel her skin tremble. Her crimson aura connects with my white aura, flooding my senses. “But I want you to tell me what happened with Libretto. I need to know everything.”

“While you were sleeping, Lilith awoke,” she says.

“When the Pope woke me, he said you’d appeared to him in a dream. He knew about it.”

“You believe that?” she scoffs.

“We’re not meant to question the word of His Holiness.” Doubts have long since crept into my heart, ever since setting out on my mission to the demon academy, but her contempt stirs unease in me. I have a feeling I can’t shake that I must protect the side I still belong to. Yet sanctity is suddenly foreign to me. Something is happening inside me, something trying to push me down as though seeking to make me disappear. A war I feel I’m losing.

“Sounds to me more like shutting people up. Your God prefers you stupid. But if you don’t ask questions and dispute what is presented to you as absolute fact, how will you find the truth?”

“I suppose faith is blind.”

“Yes, they say the same about love.” I detect a note of bitterness. Did she say that because she knows how I feel about her? Is it a challenge? Before I can ask, she continues: “I guess I have no choice but to confront the truth. I’m tired of running. I really fucking hate running.”

She mumbles to herself, as though having some internal dialogue with words not meant for me.

“Tell me,” I say, continuing to caress her thigh, hoping to motivate her to keep talking. Good God, her skin is a wild flame and I can barely keep my ass rooted to the couch so I don’t pounce on her.

She mutters something, and her words make my mind go foggy.

“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil 1 .”

Lilith had become the essence of sensual frenzy, and she’d dragged Hillel along with her. Driven by rage and vengeance, burning with lust for her partner, she finally formed her plan.

If He considers her unworthy of the Garden of Eden, then none shall set foot there. The thought accompanies her as her last grasp of reason falls away from her.

“I can’t get enough of you,” Hillel says as he brushes his fangs over the hot skin of her neck. She groans in response, ready to give herself over to her desires and passions, which in the past were forbidden to her; yet now there is nothing she will deprive him of, or that he will withhold from her.

“Then devour me, Hillel. If your body cannot be sated in mine as it requires, eat me. I want to writhe beneath the touch of your mouth,” Lilith blurts out her proposal in the heat of the moment, and the wheels of her mind immediately begin turning.

“As you wish,” Hillel gurgles, kissing her neck and making his way to the pulsing point between her legs.

“Wait, I think I’ve realized something,” she groans as he buries his face in her, his tongue claiming her body. She tries to evade his touch but his grip holds her in place.

“Certainly,” he growls as he feeds on her, drunk and lost in her intoxicating flavors. She squirms with pleasure, submitting to him, lost in frenzied ecstasy.

“Yes, yes!” she shouts. Hillel interprets her cries as pleasure, but in fact the idea within her is taking shape as her climax speeds towards her. Hillel, driven wild by Lilith’s intoxicating wetness, stabs his fangs into her inner thighs and she roars at the total loss of her senses. Her back arches until it almost snaps her bones, heat bursts from her body and envelops her in the aura of the underworld. “Hillel,” she addresses him, panting, while he busies himself with feasting upon the evidence of her desire.

“Yes, beloved?” His eyes gleam with fire and passion, her body is a temple to their fleshly lusts, to the desires of his corrupted heart.

“Take me to the Garden of Eden, we have a score to settle with Him ,” Lilith whispers, her eyes black and her pupils narrow. Hillel jumps back, her body continuing to writhe beneath him until it’s remarkably smooth, a terrifying and hypnotizing serpent.

Hillel finally comes to his senses, and the terror is replaced with sincere awe. She really was created for him. “ He has fed us lies, now show His humans the truth.”

Belle asks me something, and I have to blink to dispel the strange fog that had come over me.

“I’m sorry?” I manage to raise my head, but my eyes are shut tight.

“What’s with you? Did you hear a word I said?” There’s concern in her voice, and I feel her hand touch my cheek. “Look at me,” she demands, and I shake my head. There’s no point either way, I can’t see anything. The thing living within me is winning. I feel myself grasping onto the last thread connecting me to reality. “Bar,” she pleads. Her voice sends something trembling within me, and a swarm of butterflies go wild in my guts as she caresses my skin. I plummet downward, feeling a sobering loss.

I can’t not respond to her. I open my eyes and watch in awe as her crimson aura goes wild around her. She’s burning. Igniting before my eyes as my hand resting on her thigh goes tight.

“You’re not the only one who’s cursed. The world is so dark, but I see you. I see only you.”

I’m about to commit an unforgivable crime, to betray all my beliefs, my essence, my calling. But I’m ready for it. I’m ready to sacrifice myself, all of me, to have her.

And then I let go, and feel the tearing of that last thread I’m holding onto. I know what I must do: I must sell my soul to the Devil.