Go lower into the pit with failing powers? No way.
"Nah, here is fine, but the rocks-"
He crushed her mouth with a kiss and transferred both her hands into one of his, still able to hold her, which was truly disconcerting.
"It's all in your sweat," he said through a ragged breath. "Adrena�line, fight pheromone, rage, fear... that and your skin, the way you feel beneath me. I've suffered for you, woman... This time I'm be�ing selfish, but will make it up to you at the next vanishing point."
Her clothes had dissolved with his before she could blink. He'd knocked her head back so hard with his massive jaw that for a second she was sure she'd blacked out. Something seven feet tall with an iron grip had her. She was looking at his old Neteru tattoo blackened in the center of his chest; all silver was gone. The flash of mate-bite fangs made her yank her head to the side with a scream, and he almost bit the wall, but came up furious.
"I forbid it over my husband's bite!" she yelled, going for a battle versus whatever else Cain had planned. "I chose the better man, ass�hole! No matter what you do, you'll never be Carlos Rivera!"
Her hands were suddenly loose, but not soon enough to block the backhanded blow that sent her sprawling. The Isis went one way, and she went the other. Stunned, she had never had the snot knocked out of her like that in her life. No demon or vamp had landed a blow so squarely. Not even in the Amazon had she been sucker punched and unable to instantly get up. This time she'd heard bone actually snap. Tasting blood in her mouth, her lip split, she quickly tried to stand, but was flattened by a black arc drilling heat into her chest.
"You make me nearly lose an empire, ransom my soul, disgrace my mother, and raise an army for you, and you tell mewhat! Rivera is the better man? Bitch... I will slaughter you! Will f**k you to death down here! Are youinsane?"
Gone was the gorgeous hunk with the megawatt vamp smile. Huge wings ripped out of Cain's shoulders, casting a shadow over her in the dim fire-lit cavern. His eyes went from a desirous crimson glow to solid black gleam. Fast-moving ghostly phantoms whizzed by, tak�ing cover as the cavern imploded with a sonic boom and flames. Damali shielded her face to the inferno with her again bleeding fore�arm. The searing ground against her na**d body made her arch in agony and try to reach the Isis and draw it to her, but just as quickly as she did so, Cain's massive body blanketed hers.
"You have tested my patience for the last time, lover," he hissed in her ear. "When I am done with your disloyal, traitorous carcass, you will be vomiting blood and choking on your own womb."
Dark energy was prying her thighs open; the cavern floor was scorching the flesh on her back. She could smell her own skin burn�ing, hear it sizzle. Sulfur fumes were making her choke and gasp, while the heavy male demon on top of her was crushing the air out of her lungs.
A prayer for survival sent silver shock into her mind. If she could just live to fight another day. He'd dropped twelve inches of battle-length fangs and had pressed them to her throat in a snarling threat, breaking the skin. His talons were digging into her forearms as he lifted her hands above her head. An angry, razor-sharp tail swished like a bullwhip in the dense smoke. Something akin to marble, the length and width of a baseball bat, pulsed against her thigh. Damali squeezed her eyes shut. She could feel her jawbone knitting back together from an unknown source the harder she prayed in her mind.
"Angels hear me!" Damali shrieked when her thigh muscles gave out and Cain finally parted her legs. "Protect me from all that is un�holy!"
Her voice cracked with a sob, and her wings tore through her shoulder blades as hysteria overtook her. Her back was suddenly cool, and the sulfur began to dissipate. Cain leaned back, his eyes normaliz�ing with confusion. His fangs retracted as he brushed her wild tangle of locks away from her sweaty forehead to better see her eyes.
"No!" Damali kept screaming between the sobs. "Until my body is a limp dead rag I will never concede! Never! Get thee behind me, spawn of Satan! No!"
Cain backed off of her with a pain-filled roar and stood. "You're a Powers? A Realm Six healing angel?" He looked around the cavern nervously. "Downhere?" He raked his locks and backed up farther, de-bulking and retracting his tail, wings, and fangs. "How can that be?
They do not walk the Earth in human form! There has never been a Neteru blend of that. It is forbidden."
He pointed between her legs and she glimpsed down. Her sex was encased in a solid silver, glowing shield of liquid metal, white-hot heat.
Damali covered her nakedness with her wings, sobbing. "Fuck you!"
Disoriented, Cain stumbled backward. "You speak curses, come here, mate like a lusty human female, even take a vampire lover, but have wings?" He clutched his chest like a man experiencing a heart attack and leaned against a boulder. "I felt it when you were in Nod, in my arms, so close to letting me inside you... there was something beneath your skin that I had never encountered. But I dared not be�lieve."
Damali stood, dashed for her Isis, and clutched it to her, her eyes frantically glancing around for an exit.
"Devastation, as an angel in the Light, I cannot take you against your will. But do you know what we could create together?" Cain murmured in an awed rush. "Do you realize what type of being you and I could create, if you'd just stop chasing after that young fool and become my bride? Divorce him now!"
"Please God, send in reinforcements!" Damali shouted, looking up at the endless black ceiling. She raised her Isis over her head. "I need an airlift, an extraction-stat. Warrior angels, one of your own is trapped in Hell. Send a beacon; I've got a crazy big demon on my ass!
Cain covered his ears and yelled in pain. The cavern filled with light, causing bats and vermin and unseen phantoms screeching for dark corners. Cain stood covered by smoldering wings, glimpsing up as Damali folded away into a silver splinter.
"Concede to me, Damali, or I will raze the planet!" he called after her. "That is my ultimatum!"
Damali tumbled onto the sand, clutching her Isis, her body so sore that she could barely get up. Her ripped tank top and ragged jeans were back on, her wings sealed away beneath her skin, but somewhere along the chaotic route back she'd lost her shoes. She looked up at the villa and saw the team on the deck, gun barrels pointed at her, Carlos standing at the ready with a sword in hand.
He cleared the deck rail in a one-handed jump. Guns lowered. The sky was lit with thunder and lightning in a display that rivaled the Fourth of July. She was crying harder than it was raining by the time he reached her. A torrential downpour and hurricane-level winds made waves slam against the beach in an ominous warning. Carlos hugged her hard and she groaned, and then nearly passed out from the pain.
Carlos half-dragged, half-carried her into the villa with one arm, both of their blades cutting into the sand as they walked. The team parted as Carlos looked at her jaw in disbelief. He dropped his blade where he stood once he truly saw the bodily damage she'd sustained, and he took her sword and angrily cast it away with a loud clatter.
Water streamed onto the floor from their drenched bodies, placing them in a huge, spreading puddle. Their clothes clung like second skin and his eyes searched hers as he studied the large, purple, angry bruise that had begun to make her cheek swell. Blood still ran from her nose, and she sniffed it back. Carlos's eyes darted downward to look at the deep talon gouges in her arms, and then he saw her blade arm and fi�nally freaked. Damali shivered, going into mild shock.
"Oh, Jesus... get a towel, some ice, some-fucking-body move!"