Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

city.
    He ordered Carlotta to make an appearance. When the courtesan arrived in his stateroom, she curtsied graciously. And he thought, Luciana ought to take lessons.
    “What can I do for you, your lordship?” she stuttered.
    Corbin grabbed her by the front of her elegantly tailored suit and said, “Very pretty. But let’s dispense with the formalities, shall we? Now why is a whore like you cooperating with the Company of Angels? Why did you feel you needed to take that angel to Luciana’s?”
    “I needed to get him out of my establishment. I have a business to run. Girls to protect.”
    “And you thought that was the smartest thing to do?” He caught her by the throat.
    Their eyes met. “Yes, Corbin. I did.”
    “There’s something about you that reminds me of Luciana,” he said.
    “Men think all Italian women are the same,” she said, rising to the bait a little. “We are either regarded as hypersexualized or not regarded at all. Not much has changed in the past two centuries.”
    For a long moment, he held her pinned against the wall. “You’re a poor substitute for Luciana, but you might do in a pinch. Courtesan. Cortigiana. Hora. Puttana. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, isn’t that what they say?”
    Her mouth tightened, but she didn’t dare say anything.
    “Deep down, all women are whores,” he said to her, partly because he really believed it, and partly to see her react.
    But she was well trained in her trade and simply smiled a simpering smile.
    He slipped his hand down the front of her blouse, popping the buttons open. Grabbed her lush breasts, fingered the nipples roughly, then shoved her onto a nearby desk.
    And then he opened his trousers and sank himself into her, pumping forcefully until he came, thinking all the while about Luciana and how furious she had made him. When he was done, Carlotta stumbled away, adjusting her clothing. What he sensed in her was not uncommon in the women he fucked, a kind of emptiness and a barely concealed terror. Carlotta knew exactly what he was capable of.
    “How long did Luciana work for you?” he said, zipping up his fly.
    “As long as she needed. She had to clear her debt to the devil, once he let her out of hell. She was a very popular girl, but as soon as she worked off her debt, she left. It has been hundreds of years since she worked at the gallery. Hundreds of years since I’ve seen her.”
    “That many? I don’t believe that for a second. You’re a two-faced lying bitch, just like her.”
    “I take that as a compliment,” she said, trying to make light of it.
    It pissed him off. She would pay for that later.
    In the past, no demon would have dared to contradict him. Since his last run-in with the Company of Angels, he was severely weakened. The underlings could sense it. In the past, Corbin would have taken care of this situation with relative ease, dematerializing in and out of dimensions with the same ease as a human walking through a doorway.
    The run-in with the angels had left him stripped of that power. It had lowered his position within the ranking of Archdemons, knocking him from the top of a ladder he had been climbing for many hundreds of years.
    Being unseated from that position left him furious.
    Corbin had barely gotten out of hell this last time. He had bargained his way out, promising the Prince of Darkness himself that he would find Luciana and bring her back. That was a task he would accomplish with the greatest of pleasure.
    Oh, yes, Corbin thought. I will return Luciana to hell. I will reap my rewards from the devil. And once again I will walk amongst humans as the most powerful Archdemon on earth.
    He would claw his way back to the top if he had to.
    Regardless of whom he had to destroy to get there.

Chapter Seven
     
    V ery early in the morning, before the sun rose, Luciana crept out of the palazzo.
    And she went back alone to the glass gallery. To gather information.
    What a shame they had put everything back in its place, not a shard askance. The rows of glass stood, perfect and pristine. Glistening and still. Artful. Tasteful. And all restored merely one day later. When she had trashed the gallery, it had been enormously satisfying. Smashing all that beautiful glass had been such a liberating feeling.
    Entering the back room, she pulled open the door and mounted the stairs.
    “Mother of Lucifer, how I despise this place,” she muttered to herself.
    Once upon a time, when she had been a girl,