Destiny's Wrath (Destiny Series - Book 3) by Straight, Nancy (read full novel .txt) 📗

the Glock woke Max from his trance. He sat up quickly, trying to jump out of bed, fearing I was in trouble. I shook my head at him, and he saw the handgun in my hand, the folded up body of Samael lying on the other bed. As we both watched, Samael’s wounds seemed to grow larger by the second. The gaping holes began to sizzle as if on fire. Max asked, “What about. . .”

I interrupted him. “Killing him isn’t enough. To destroy him, so he doesn’t exist, we have to trust that he’s gone and never coming back. He isn’t real; he’s gone.” Max agreed. He remembered Renny telling us this before: Samael could be killed easily enough, but to destroy him we needed to believe that he didn’t exist, trust that he would never return. In my mind, I knew this was absolutely the case. I did trust that he was gone for good.

Max eyed my outfit and reached over to my thigh, “So, what’s up with the sexy ensemble? Giving him a heartfelt send off?”

“Something like that. I needed to get him out of you. There was no way I was going to risk someone on the Council or Cabinet getting a wild idea and trying to kill you.”

“I guess you wore that outfit for me, even if it wasn’t for me to enjoy? We’ve got a little time, we could put it to good use.” Max’s arms wound around me, tugging me toward him on the bed.

“Max, I just killed a demon: the same one that hunted me down in a campsite and put me in a coma for over two years, the same one who took you hostage and hid you in a bank vault, the same one who made a teenager kill nine people. I’m not feeling all that frisky right now.”

“He’s gone. He’s really gone, Lauren. It’s just you and me. I think we should celebrate.”

I shook my head as my lips found his, “Let’s celebrate later. I think I need to change into something a little more formal before we meet with the Council and Cabinet.”

Five minutes later we were downstairs and members from both the Cabinet and Council began arriving. The meeting went very well. Max and I shared with both groups what had become of Samael. Both were interested in our achieving Virtue and the interesting way I was able to convince Samael to leave Max and take on his previous form. Renny responded first, “Lauren, that was genius, absolutely brilliant on your part. He was weakest right after regenerating himself.”

I recognized a face I’d seen before, but did not realize she was a member of the Cabinet: it was Ebony. She spoke in a condescending tone, “So, you killed him. Big deal. He’ll be back in no time. You can’t kill Samael. He immortal.”

“Ebony, so nice to see you again. I didn’t realize you were a colleague of Dakota’s. What fancy emotion do you represent?” I asked her, trying to keep the disdain to a minimum.

“Oh, c’mon girl, take a guess.”

“Boyfriend tempter?”

“That isn’t an emotion. I tode you I was testin’ him for you. He passed wif flying colors.”

Dakota interjected, “Lauren, I wasn’t aware you had met Ebony. She represents Deceit, which would make your hostility toward her understandable; she obviously tried to pull the wool over your eyes.”

“Ebony, you’re wrong. Samael’s dead and he’s not coming back.

“How you be so shore?”

“Because I put the bullets in him. He’s dead. I trust that he can never hurt another, and he’s never coming back.”

“Shooooot, you tell yourself that. He deceived more people in a day than I do in a month. He’ll be back. When he does, nobody goin’ help you. You be on your own.”

“He isn’t coming back. He’s dead. He’ll never walk this earth again.”

“Prove it.”

I thought for a minute. How could I prove that there really was nothing left of Samael? Then it hit me. Every time we had run up against one another, I’d won. The last time, I’d taken all his powers from him, except one.

I smiled, and visualized the darkest, sleekest, Black Panther I’d ever seen. I pictured bright yellow eyes, razor sharp fangs, paws the size of baseball mitts. I thought of smooth black fur so dark that purple highlights glistened off of it. I went to the floor and transformed into the majestic predator right in front of twenty-one sets of eyes. I had taken his power of shape shifting away: there truly was nothing left of Samael.

I felt magic, somehow, like there was nothing I couldn’t become. I let out a heinous, “RAAAWR,” as I saw all eyes staring in disbelief. To drive my point home, I began stalking toward Ebony, slowly, creeping toward her with my tail down, looking like I was ready to do a full frontal assault. Out of my peripheral, I saw the desk clerk in the lobby leap over the counter and sprint for the door. When Ebony had backed up all the way to the wall and could crawl no further away, I visualized my body again and transformed back into myself. Mike from the Council jumped up to go after the terrified desk clerk.

My smugness couldn’t be hidden, “Satisfied?”

Ebony, probably for the first time in her entire life, was speechless.

“Trust is powerful. Sometimes you must believe in something you cannot prove. Sometimes you have to convince those that are ill-prepared for a new reality.”

Renny cleared her throat, “A new reality? You intend to pick up where Samael left off?”

I shook my head, “No, Samael was the last of his kind. I am no more a demon than I am a saint. I have his magic. When I die, it dies with me.” I stared daggers at the Council members before they could come to the conclusion, “Do not get any ideas about making that day come any sooner than I am ready for it to come. I have his power because I trusted