Rude Awakening

Dante and I made our way downstairs. Chase was passed out again upstairs. Dante hadn't bothered to take him down from the wall. He figured it would be safer to leave him there until we'd dealt with Asher.

I wasn't sure how I was going to explain that one to him when he woke up, but right now I was a little more concerned with what was happening to me.

Dante had gently but firmly pulled me off of Chase and put him back to sleep. Once I was no longer kissing Chase, I felt that weird heat take over everything but it finally faded and left. It took a few minutes but I felt normal again. Dante studied me for a whole five minutes to make sure I was really ok. Then he nodded as if satisfied that I'd gotten it all out of Chase and wasn't about to go all crazy on him.

I didn't really feel any different now that I wasn't near Chase. Should that be something I worried about? Wasn't I supposed to go all psycho and insatiable? Maybe I hadn't done it right. Maybe Chase still had some of Lust or the seed or whatever inside of him. What if I hadn't really gotten it all out of him?

Dante was talking to me but I wasn't really paying attention until he snapped at me. "Eliza! Did you hear anything I just said?"

"Er..." I shrugged. If he wasn't screaming at me it wasn't generally that important - at least not in my experience. I'd listen just as soon as he got all red and that vein of his popped out on his forehead. Like right about now. Now would be a good time to listen closely.

"What was that now?" I asked, pretending I hadn't been ignoring everything he'd been saying for the last minute.

"I said..." he started between clenched teeth. He did that a lot. "If you find yourself having a thought that's not totally yours, it probably isn't."

"Wait? Can it do that? Make me think something but it's not really my own thought?" That wasn't something a person could just prepare for was it? I wasn't sure. I didn't think so, but how could I even be sure that was my own thought right now?

Ugh, this whole situation was such a pain in the neck.

"Absolutely. Think of Lust as a virus. It has its own agenda and it can make you see, hear and feel things that aren't there, or isn't real. Asher can do it too, which is why you have to be extra careful when dealing with him in your weakened state," Dante explained.

"Is that what happened to Chase? Lust made him see things or believe things that weren't true?" That would explain a lot of what Chase had been ranting about before Dante had knocked him out (each time). It was a relief actually; at least it was better than thinking he'd gone crazy on his own. Now that I had the sin, maybe he'd be able to tell reality from fantasy again.

At least I hoped so.

Dante nodded looking pensive instead of furious for a change. "I'm almost sure it did. I think we can safely assume the reason he attacked Kara was because of whatever Lust had shown him. I can't be entirely sure without tapping into his thoughts but I think it's safe to assume he concocted a whole scenario where she was you and she did something to anger him."

I narrowed my eyes going over what he'd just said. "What do you mean by tapping into his thoughts? Do you mean like reading his mind or something?"

"Or something. I can't read minds like what you're thinking, but I can pick up a thought if it's loud enough."

I knew he was lying to me. There was no way he was telling me the truth on this one. Call it female intuition, or maybe it was the fact that I was actually starting to get to know him a little better. Either way, I knew for a fact that someone like Dante would never want me to know the full extent of all his mighty power. I could respect that. I really didn't want to know anyway. All it did was give me a headache and at this point I was long out of Tylenol and I was pretty sure the drug store was already closed.

Plus, I had bigger things worrying me at the moment. Like staying alive long enough to make some kind of deal with an evil demon who was expecting to pick up a shipment of damned souls in the next day or so. God, when I said it like that I actually sort of depressed myself.

I made my way around the destroyed shop, still picking my way over all the broken crap from my fight with Celeste, and Chase's fight with both Brady, Dante, and myself. It was going to take a while to get everything back to normal, so we just mutually decided to leave it as it was until we had more time. We didn't figure Aunt Celeste would mind our newfound laissez-faire work ethic. Besides she had like a huge haystack she could stare at.

I found the small loveseat from the backroom and swept most of the broken bits off it. How the hell had it gotten all the way out here? I couldn't even remember. I didn't try too hard to recall as I plopped down on it, watching for any missed glass in case I landed on it and needed Dante to heal me up again. Dante was watching me like a hawk as if making sure of the same thing.

"How do you feel?"

"Exhausted," I said honestly.

"Don't fall asleep, Eliza."

"Who can sleep?" I asked. Ok, I could. Some much needed z's sounded awesome right about now, but I wasn't about to admit that to him. He was looking at me like I strangled kittens on my days off. "What? Why are you staring at me like that? I told you I'm not going to sleep!"

"I mean it, Eliza. This is no time to go to sleep. We have a lot of stuff to prepare for if we're going to deal with Asher."

I got up off the couch. "Ok, I heard you. Do you mind if I get something to eat though? You know, so I have something to throw up right before I die?"

He was still glaring at me but nodded the teeniest, tiniest bit. "Fine. But hurry up. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Where are you going?"

"To check on some things," he answered in his usual evasive manner.

"Yeah? What things?" I asked, trying to put him on the hot seat for once.

"The none-of-your-damn-business-kind. Stay here. I'll be right back. Don't let anyone in."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," I waved dismissively. I didn't really care. I just wanted him to leave.

He obliged, going through the front door, which I quickly relocked, though I don't know why I bothered considering one of the large windows was totally blown out. I watched Dante jump into his truck and roar away. I turned and headed back to the sofa. I just needed to rest my head for five minutes.

Just five minutes and I'd be ready for anything else Dante wanted to throw at me tonight.

Really, what it could hurt?

~~ ~

It was like the worst fever of my life. It was in my skin, in my blood. I felt like I was burning up. I was so hot. I was pretty sure my clothes were smoldering from the heat coming off my body.

Dante leaned over me concerned. I could tell because his brows were furrowed more than usual. "Eliza, are you ok?" His voice was raw, so rough sounding that it moved over my body like the most delicious sensation. It sent shivers along my spine and across my heated skin.

It was really insane how darkly sexy one guy could be.

I opened my eyes, though it took a lot of effort. His beautiful cerulean eyes had darkened with worry. They were the color of sapphires now. He wore the same black shirt and dark jeans from earlier, but it was only now that I noticed how fantastic he looked in black. He wore it all the time, I didn't think he owned any other color.

I bet even his underwear was black.

My breath caught just thinking about it. I bet he looked freaking fantastic in black boxer shorts. I bet he could still look ticked off in just shorts and socks. I almost laughed at the image, but then found myself a little breathless again as I imagined him glaring at me in just his skivvies.

Really, was there anything hotter than a guy who rarely smiled?

Maybe that's why I found him so wildly attractive. He was always so mad. I wonder if he ever stopped for a minute to enjoy the now, instead of being pissed at it all the time.

As I looked into his eyes, I reached for him. "I am now," I replied. He didn't pull away as I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him down for a kiss. His lips were hard, unyielding against my own. It was like everything else about him - even his kisses were all hard planes and rough edges.

But he didn't pull away like I thought he would. Instead, he kissed me long and deep. Even as I felt some part of me protesting against what was happening, against what I was doing, a bigger part wanted Dante to kiss me - almost needed him to.

His mouth moved across my lips and my jaw, as he nuzzled my neck and the sensitive part right behind my ear. He was whispering to me in a language I didn't understand - it was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. But something about the hard consonants and smooth vowels tickled the back of my mind - like something almost remembered but just out of reach.

His lips felt cool against my fevered skin as he rained kisses along the column of my throat and jaw. When he got to my lips again he whispered against my mouth.

"What?" I asked breathless.

He pulled back a little ways, his blue eyes now almost entirely black, as if they were fully dilated. "I said, snap the hell out of it and wake your ass up!"

I started awake practically jumping out of my skin as a furious Dante glared down at me. I was lying on the displaced sofa, a slight line of sleep drool running down the side of my chin.

Yuck.

Dante didn't seem to notice or care. I didn't think any fluid I leaked was going to get him any angrier than he was right at this particular second. "I swear to God Eliza, you just can't do anything right! You can't follow the simplest of instructions! What is the matter with you? I told you not to fall asleep. It was the only thing you had to do. Not. Fall. Asleep. And what did you do the second I walked out of the room for like thirty seconds? You freaking fell asleep!"

"Ah....uh..." Wow. Really? Was that going to be my brilliant defense? I tried to come up with something a little more evolved, but it was proving difficult. I was still reeling from the dream I'd had and I wasn't making it any easier on myself by noticing how cute he looked when he was really angry with me.

Dante didn't seem to notice my deficiency at the moment, well at least no more than usual. He continued on his tirade, "Lust is an insidious sin Eliza. It doesn't attack outright like wrath or avarice. It waits until you're vulnerable, susceptible to its unique brand of perversion and evil."

"Like when I'm sleeping?" I ventured to guess, proud that I had strung four whole words together.

He nodded and looked at me like it was the most obvious fact in the known universe. "Yes, like when you're sleeping, you moron."

I held up my hands in the universal symbol of 'time-out.'"OK, so let's talk about the name calling for just a second. It's mean and rude and unnecessary. I'm not a child, nor am I an idiot or a moron."

"Really?" he asked feigning shock. "You could've fooled me."

"See and here I thought you were older than sliced bread. I almost thought your maturity would at least rise to the level beyond a preschooler." Ok, so maybe egging him on right now wasn't really the smartest thing for me to do, but part of me didn't want to let it go. I wanted to fight with him. It was a little...exciting.

He narrowed his eyes as he looked me over. "What were you dreaming just now?" he asked, suspiciously.

Uh-oh. This could become an awkward conversation pretty fast.

"Er...why do you want to know that? What does it matter?" I asked backpedaling a little bit.

"It matters because we need to see if Lust's targeted someone for you already."

Oh. So this was potentially really, really bad. Not to mention highly embarrassing. Wasn't it bad enough that I thought he'd been cute before...now I was probably going to turn into a raging, sex-crazed Dante-fanatic.

"How exactly would we know that?" I asked stalling and trying to pull myself together at the same time. I was becoming really good at multi-tasking.

"Because you'd start dreaming about that particular person," he answered slowly, like he was talking to someone a lot younger than I was.

"Dreaming?"

"Yeah, you know, like the uncontrollable, hormonal teenage variety that plagues millions of youths every year," he responded sarcastically.

I choose to ignore the tone if not the actual words that were coming out of his beautiful mouth. "Oh. Ok, that makes sense. But uh...how would you know that it was Lust's doing, and not a run-of-the-mill ordinary, hormonal teenage variety?"

He sighed, shaking his head like he was so put out having to explain this all to me. It wasn't like anyone had given me a manual or something. Aunt Celeste hadn't left me detailed instructions about all the evil she'd been the cause of - I knew this because I already looked for it.

"These dreams aren't like regular ones. They're really vivid, almost real. And they get worse. They intensify and build on each other, each dream topping the next, escalating your already high strung feelings. You can't do anything except think of whomever you're fixated on. Thoughts of the person consume you, haunt you every minute of every day, until you snap."

I shuddered at the memory of the last time I'd been alone with Chase, before Dante had found us. "That's what happened to Chase. He snapped because he couldn't stop thinking about me?" The same nice boy who'd helped me at his dad's hardware store what seemed like ages ago, and was currently chained up tight in Dante's room.

He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. "So, are you gonna tell me who he is?"

"Who what is?" I repeated dumbly. I wasn't about to act like I knew what the hell he was talking about. The first thing I learned from my dad was the benefits of the right to remain silent. It was my right as a U.S. citizen and there was no rule saying I couldn't use it against freaky powerful, seemingly-ageless immortals that looked a tic-tac away from snuffing me out on an hourly basis.

"The guy you were just dreaming about before I came in here and woke you up?"

"How do you know I was dreaming about a guy? What makes you think it was that kind of dream anyway?" I asked all defensively. Perhaps he would take my righteous fury as a sign of innocence.

Dante raised one dark eyebrow in surprise. "Was it a girl then?" he asked curiously.

Ugh. Leave it up to him to totally read my righteous denial into something else. Something that he looked a little too fascinated by if I was any kind of judge.

"Nooooo," I replied slowly, trying to stay calm even as my brain was racing a million miles an hour.

I was only making everything worse by not coming clean, but I couldn't tell him. Maybe it was just a regular sort of obsessive dream. It wasn't like I hadn't had a few already featuring Dante since I'd arrived. True, none had ever been quite so vivid and hot, but I was under a lot of stress lately. It didn't have to be the sin taking hold so fast, did it? Wasn't there like some kind of grace period? Chase had had a whole day and night before he started acting all nutty. I hadn't even had the sin more than an hour at this point.

Dante's face suddenly grew darker and more furious. Had I not seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed such a thing was even possible at this point. When he spoke again, his voice was so loud I could feel it shake the various glass and ceramic knick knacks around the shop floor. "Dammit to hell, Eliza! Tell me even you're not that stupid!"

What a Neanderthal. I'd already brought up the name calling business once tonight. Really, what was it going to take for him to start acting a little more mature around me?

"What are you talking about now, psycho?" I could fling out hurtful labels too I thought haughtily - although in his case it was more true than not.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger, like he'd just been whammied with the worst sinus headache in the history of antihistamine. "For the love of all that is holy, please tell me even you're not as stupid as that. Just tell me it was anybody else on the planet but me, Eliza. Anyone else. Please. Just say anyone else."

I swallowed back my automatic sarcastic response. What was I going to say? I didn't have any real defense. My face grew so hot I was pretty sure I could put a tomato to shame at this point.

"Dammit, Eliza!" he roared again, causing me to flinch a little. "I told you not to fall asleep! How hard could it have been to stay awake for just another five minutes until I came back?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!" My mortification slowly gave way to a much more helpful emotion. Raging pissiness. "If you knew that was a possibility, why did you leave me alone in the first place, huh? Why didn't you stay to make sure I didn't pass out? Or maybe, for once, you could've shared a little bit more information before it was too late. How 'bout that Dante? Huh? Huh?"

He looked like he wanted to throttle me into next week. "It doesn't bloody well matter now does it?"

"It sure as hell doesn't, but it may have kept us from being in this particular mess now."

"It doesn't matter! We're already in it!"

"Oh calm yourself, you big jerk. I'm not about to hold you down and rip your clothes off with my teeth or anything."

"Not yet," he spat derisively.

"Not ever," I ground out between my own clenched teeth.

"Don't' be so sure about that, sweetheart. You'll be dreaming about me hot and heavy every time you close those pretty little eyes of yours."

"I'd rather suffer through brain deteriorating insomnia," I snapped back even as I got a little thrill that he'd called my eyes pretty. Really, I would've been disgusted with myself at this point, if I didn't have bigger things to worry about. You know, like keeping my immortal soul outside a Russian nesting doll.

"That's perfect, seeing as you're going to have to learn how to function without it." He looked around the room but at what I couldn't begin to imagine. When he spoke to me, most of his ire had been replaced with a new found urgency. "Get up. Right now. Asher will be here to collect soon."

"How soon?" I asked. My anger instantly extinguished under the weight of a terrifying fear of the creature that had turned Aunt Celeste into what she was. Even she was scared of him and Aunt Celeste was no joke - I was really not looking forward to having to face this demon one on one.

"Real soon," The last word had just fallen from his lips just when a cloud of foul smelling black smoke exploded inside the shop. A hooded figure stood within the center of the horrifically putrid smelling cloud.

The hooded figure raised his head and though I couldn't see anything inside, I could just make out a pair of red, gleaming eyes. When he spoke, the words made my stomach cramp in terror and an icy cold ran through my bloodstream.

"Leave us." And just like that Dante was gone. He didn't walk out or fade out, he was just gone, like he'd never been standing there in the first place.

Asher turned, all his evil attention focused on me. "Hello, Eliza." His voice stretched out my name in an awfully familiar tone. It made my skin crawl. "I have looked so forward to this moment. Imagine my delight to realize you now work for me."

Damn.

I just knew I should've never gotten up today. This day was officially one of the suckiest ones in the history of my all-too brief life. At least that was my last coherent thought before the most intensely awful pain engulfed my body and brought me to my knees in front of the demon that was now my boss.