Read devil 04 - the devil you know for Free Online Page B

“Dialle.” It sounded only slightly muffled that time as he realized he could say the word without moving his jaw.
    I frowned. Surely I hadn’t heard him right. “Did you say, Dialle?”
    He blinked, looking relieved. “Yes.”
    I glared at him. “You’re lying.”
    “No! It’s the truth. King Dialle sent me to kill you!” He grimaced as he forgot and moved his mouth, no doubt sending shards of pain stabbing through his jaw.
    I stared at him for a long moment and then stood up. Slowly, I lifted my hand, palm out, and he blinked, throwing up his hands. “No! Argghhh!” He tried to scoot away. “You promised. Ouch!”
    “I lied.” A numbing cold slid through me, sweeping away any remorse I might have felt as I pulled my power forward and sent it into his thick chest. The black eyes widened in inexpressible pain for just a beat in time and then dulled and darkened as he died beneath my power. “To Hades with you fool, for God hath tired of you.”
    Leaving the bodies there, I turned away and headed toward the Red Knight. Somewhere deep in my core I felt concern for the coldness that was even now keeping me from feeling remorse at killing the devil soldier. Somewhere a warning was sounding a strident call. I knew I was sliding toward my dark side. It was my greatest fear. But as my heart broke at the thought that my Dialle would send assassins after me, I couldn’t quite bring myself to care.
    Right at that moment I wanted to kill them all. And it really didn’t matter to me how black my soul became.
    * * * * *
     
    “Have you heard from Dialle?”
    I glanced at my sister’s hopeful face and knew I couldn’t tell her my fears. I simply shook my head. “You heard from Torre?”
    She visibly deflated. “No. I thought for sure he’d have contacted me by now.”
    “You know they’re in a parallel dimension right? It’s not easy to communicate between where they are and where we are.”
    It was kind of a lie. I think. But I was willing to do anything at that point to get the fearful look off Darma’s face. Torre was the first man she’d fallen in love with and she didn’t really know the rules. All she knew was that she had no control over what was happening to her at that moment.
    And my sister is all about control.
    Over the last few days I’d watched her condense down into a traumatized shell of her former self. And though there were times when we’d been growing up that I’d have given anything to see her lose some of her starch, I was finding that it wasn’t as pleasant an experience for me as I’d thought it would be.
    “I know you’re right. But I can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong. He should have found a way to communicate with me by now.”
    I let that thought drift away on a wave of silence. We were walking down the street near Darma’s home, returning from a shopping trip. Not in any way your traditional female, it usually took a cataclysmic event to force me into shopping. But with everybody who usually anchored me off planet and out of my plane of existence—or possibly trying to kill me—I’d been wobbly enough that an invitation for lunch and shopping had seemed, momentarily, like a good idea.
    It had only taken a few minutes in my snotty sister’s company to remind me why it was about as far from a good idea as you can get.
    “I miss Father and Myra.”
    I lifted an eyebrow. “Really?” I mean, I missed our father, Seraphim James Phelps too, but his sister the cranky Archangel with a pretty sizeable stick up her narrow ass was hard to miss.
    Darma scowled at me. “Don’t you ?”
    I shrugged. Never once had Darma asked me about my Settling. It was as if she was afraid to know which way I was gonna go with it. But having the lighter side of the family off for several weeks at a Heavenly conference was so not doing me any good. All I had for influence on the light side was Darma.
    Bleurgh!
    “I miss Father. It’s hard to miss Aunt Myra.”
    Darma didn’t