DEMONS OF EDEN SERIES - UPON THIS ROCK - Chapter 9

I stepped off the Gulfstream onto the pavement of Leonardo Da Vinci airport at six in the evening with a cool Italian breeze blowing up my dress and a blinding sunset in my face. The temperature was notably cooler than San Antonio at this time of night. Exhaustion dragged at my eyelids, begging me to close my eyes for a minute or two … just a minute. I hadn’t slept at all in the hotel, and I only caught a short nap on the flight after being inducted into Mithra’s mile-high-club. I was so damn sore it hurt to walk.

Wearing Urvashi’s slinky black stripper-pole outfit and one of her Burberry cotton jackets, I looked a hell of a lot better than I felt. Urvashi led the way. Renault, Nick and I followed. We were several yards from the airport entry ramp when five blue cars bearing a white stripe and the word POLIZIA screeched to a halt in a circle around us.

Uniformed men burst from their cars with handguns and flashlights blaring in our faces, and threats shouted in Italian. I didn’t know the words but I understood what was happening. Get on the ground or get shot.

I looked to Urvashi as her teeth peeled back like a feral animal. She snarled at us all. “Don’t run! Don’t say a word. Do what they tell you! I’ll handle this!”

I didn’t know who was more fearsome, the brutal Polizia threatening to blow my head off, or the lethal Apsara who could decapitate everyone if they ruined her designer dress on the grimy airport tarmac.

Renault spit curses in his guttural French as they manhandled him off the ground, yanking his arms behind him at a vicious angle. I had no idea what he’d said, but it earned him a nasty pistol whip across the back of his skull. He shut up after that.

Terrified, jerked around, and fondled, I felt violated when one officer pulled up the back of my dress to flash my scrawny white ass to his buddies. I wasn’t wearing panties. I caught looks that made my skin crawl. What kind of things did Italian police do to women? They cuffed Nick and tossed him into the back of the police car beside me. His stunned gaze sunk into my soul.

He looked like he might throw up. “I think I should have stayed home.”

* * * *

Don’t say a word. I’ll handle this! Urvashi’s last command rang through my mind every time the dark-haired, black-eyed police interrogator Agente Marco pressured me for information in his heavy accent.

So many times I was tempted to open my mouth, but Mithra stopped me. His hand held my lips shut, his soothing murmurs calmed the riotous pace of my heart. He stroked away the terror, forever urging me to be quiet with his sweet words and gentle hands. My Mithra. He was my only solace in life, the one who’d always been there, guiding me, watching over me. He reminded me repeatedly – trust Urvashi, trust the Apsara.

Holding silent was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Legs shackled to a chair with my hands cuffed to a steel loop on a rusted metal table I kept my mouth shut in the face of shouts, accusations, and horrendous threats.

“You murdering bitch! This is not America! We do not forgive murderers. No book deals or television exclusives. You will never leave prison alive. Down the hall where the cameras do not reach, my men will take turns fucking you. Some of the prisoners, their families pay me to let them sodomize girls like you. You have no rights here. No one listens to the complaints of murderers.”

Mithra seized my tongue and lips, froze me in place, incapable of speech. I would have talked if I could have. If he promised to leave me alone, I’d have told this psychotic man anything he wanted to know. Mithra wouldn’t allow it.

“Nothing to say?” The Agente grinned and his aura streaked with colors of malice and desire. This man took pleasure in hurting women … had probably done it many times. He leaned down into my face and blew sausage breath all over me. “We will fuck you until you scream everything I want to know.” He licked his lips as he reached into his pants and fondled the lump at his crotch.

I felt the power flare into my hands. I could roast him with a wave of my arm and burn the flesh off the wiggling thing in his pants.

Mithra shut down my power and encased me in a protective hold. {{No, Tesorina. If you kill him, the soldiers of Rome will hunt you down. Wait and endure. There is a time and place to reveal your power. Not now.}}

Marco looked at me like a whore on the street. I knew with sickening certainty he and all his corrupt buddies would cram their sweaty dicks in me any way they wanted. Terror seized me but I couldn’t escape Mithra’s hold over my body.

“Killers have no legal rights in Rome. This is the home of the Inquisition.” Marco shook his head and smiled. “There will be no extradition. I know the judge personally. We are friends. I can persuade him to block the US officials. Maybe we lose your passport, cannot verify your identity.” He shrugged with a smug grin. His aura flared with lust. His hungry eyes drifted down my legs, as if he’d pry them apart at any moment.

Mithra forced me to bite my tongue to keep from saying something. Mithra’s power flowed over me, around my skin, inside me, curling in my stomach, stealing away my anxiety, dampening the pain and taste of blood in my mouth.

“Women disappear in Rome all the time … most are never found, not even their corpses. I can keep you as a sex slave, force you to serve me and my men. When we tire of using you, we sell you to the Albanians. They love to play with the cheap abused whores.”

Through accusations, threats, and disgusting promises to perform every nightmarish sex act ever imagined, I didn’t say a word. Tears streamed down my cheeks and my fisted hands shook in terror, but I held silent.

The sound of Mithra’s quiet, strong, loving murmurs flowed steady in my mind. {{Take shelter in my embrace. This foul man holds no power over you.}}

Eyes filled with wicked intent, Agente Marco stepped around the table and put his nasty right hand on my bare thigh. Mithra struck hard with a deep spike of power shooting up Marco’s arm. The bright flare reached through Marco’s body into his spinal column. Marco seized up, shaking in the grip of Mithra’s power, his back arched in agony. Mithra pushed him off me and the Agente cried out, staggering into the cinderblock wall, twitching and cursing in Italian. His face contorted in pain as he breathed hard, leaning against the wall for support. He shook the offending hand and looked at me with shock and fear.

“Mai toccarla!” Mithra’s words flowed from me in a language I didn’t know, but I understood the meaning. Never touch her.

Marco slid further down the wall, putting more distance between us – obviously intimidated by the not-so-girly voice coming out of my mouth. He shook his hand again, still in pain. He inspected the beginnings of an angry red scorch on his palm.

I felt the conviction of Mithra in my soul, surging through my body. The power of his will protected me against any attempt at bodily harm or rape. I was cherished by a God. I was his vessel. No matter what they said, no matter what they threatened, I was Mithra’s to have and hold, forevermore.

* * * *

“You look worse than I feel.” Nick smirked at me through the bars of his cell as I was escorted down the hall by Agente Marco.

The nervous Polizia interrogator gestured for me to enter the cell. He had learned his lesson not to touch my skin, and refused to go near me. Happy to be rid of the pervert, I slipped into Nick’s jail cell without a word. Marco locked the steel door behind me.

I caught a glimmer of movement from the shadows in the far corner and recognized her aura. Standing in place, exhausted and ready to collapse, I tried to focus my blurring vision as Urvashi materialized out of the shadows of the cell and moved toward me.

She looked concerned, but her aura swirled in a strange combination of fury and sympathy. “What happened?”

My eyes drooped closed and I almost collapsed. She pulled me to the concrete bench and tried to talk to me with the same insistent question. I looked at her and shook my head. I couldn’t put the experience into words for her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Mithra curled his loving arms around me and carried me off into glorious, restful sleep.

* * * *

I snuggled into Mithra’s soothing hand on my face, my head on his lap, cheek rested against his hot thigh.

“Ashley, I’m not Mithra.” His voice was all wrong, but the soft palm of his hand felt comforting as he brushed the hair off my face. “Just before they took Urvashi for questioning she told me we would be released today … one way or another. I didn’t really understand her. Seemed like she was waiting for something or someone.”

Nick’s droning voice pulled me from a dreamy world of Mithra’s embrace. I found myself lying on a concrete bench, my head rested on Nick’s lap as he petted my face with soft strokes of his warm hand. Something hard strained at the crotch of his pants, pushing against the back of my skull.

“What are you doing?” I brushed his hand off my face and sat up quickly.

He looked guilty. From his aura I knew he enjoyed cuddling a little too much. I’d been sleeping with Mithra … not Nick. Fuck.

Mithra was in my head all the time and it had become difficult to distinguish reality from dream.

Nick smiled weakly. He hadn’t slept much and it showed from the dark circles around his eyes. His elbows were bloody and scraped from our rough handling at the airport. Seeing him like this, sitting beside me in a jail cell, my heart ached for his mistake. Nick never should have come with us. He shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t his journey or his fight.

I prayed to Mithra that whatever happened, Nick would make it out of this mess safely.

“Sorry if you thought … Sorry I woke you.” He looked down at his lap and back to me with a sheepish grin. “You were getting kinda cuddly.”

I knew then that he liked me. His aura shone with embarrassment but something else swirled around in there, hope? He hoped one day I’d cuddle on his lap with his name on my lips … instead of Mithra.

“It’s okay. I needed to wake up and figure out what to do. Urvashi didn’t say anything else?”

He shook his head. “She’s cagey with me. It’s you she talks to. Must be an alien thing.” He winked at me and I couldn’t help but smile.

“How can you be so calm? I can barely keep from screaming. Those soldiers we left back in San Antonio are dead. I committed murder, Nick.”

“Self defense. You saved both our asses. You and the alien samurai avenger. She’s a hardcore badass. I think she’s planned our exit and we won’t be leaving quietly.”

Still exhausted, I sighed. “I can see the headlines now, Aliens attack Rome. Pope declares hell on Earth.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t that be great?” Still grinning at me, I considered again whether Nick might not be completely sane.