Iscariot

When I need your love, if I need your help, would you rescue me?

"Naomi!" Mika tried to pull away from Damien, but his arms only tightened around her. "Let me go!" His brothers formed a protective ring around them. The bright light of the foyer's chandelier showing their worry and fatigue. They could hear the young woman through the front door. A bright pair of headlights from the driveway cast Naomi's silhouette onto the gauzy curtains of the thin window beside the door. Her sobs tore at them, the pain and desperation triggering Mika's own.

"Damien, what do you hear?" James demanded, watching the girl through the window. He was weak, nowhere near recovered from the fight with Shadow, and his power of command was gone. But his thoughts were loud and firm in Damien's mind. Hell if I will let anyone or anything hurt my family, not my brothers or Mika.

Beyond the door? "There's nothing." Damien shook his head, hugging Mika's back tighter against his chest to give comfort. "No thoughts from her at all."

"Naomi's possessed. There isn't anything to hear," Matthew insisted, shifting closer to the door, himself. "I saw her." He pulled his knives from his pockets and looked back over his shoulder at Mika, seeing her dread. "Don't believe what you hear. Eris has her body now. The devils want you and they're trying to trick you."

"But-" Mika flinched as the desperate pounding continued.

James looked back at them all. "Damien's power doesn't work on devils." His features went stoic, changing once more to the cold calculation of the Demon Lord's regard. "Mika," he caught her attention. "If he can't hear her, then this is a trap. They've taken her body and she's gone. Killing her would be a mercy," he reasoned.

"No!" Mika shook her head, trying to pry Damien's arms off of her. "Don't!"

"If she's gone, then why does it sound like Naomi instead of Eris? How can they mimic her voice like that?" Sam wasn't convinced, either. He pushed James back, shifting to guard the other side of the doorway across from Matthew. Catching his younger brother's eye, an unspoken agreement passed between the two of them. No one would get past them if either could help it.

"Eris told Matthew that Naomi was still in the body," Damien revealed as he heard his brother's uncertain thoughts. "It is possible her soul hasn't been forced out, yet."

"Forced out? Out to where?" Mika looked between them, none of them able to meet her gaze and say it.

"If Naomi let the devils possess her, then her soul is forfeit," Erik spoke from behind her. "It is part of the bargain."

"They take her soul?" Mika stared back at him, horrified. She sagged in Damien's arms. "What she did with Andrew... I was so mad, I couldn't forgive her. But I wouldn't want her to go to Hell for it."

Except that I did. Her mind admitted and the guilt twisted like a knife. She hadn't said those words specifically, but the pain of her friend's betrayal and Andrew's infidelity had hurt. In her anger, she'd wanted Naomi to hurt, too.

Sometimes I think the world just bows down around her, Andrew had said it to Matthew, Mika remembered.

"You didn't," Damien's voice was firm in her ear.

But how would he know? So much had happened. Even the smallest thought or want could have done it. She didn't control Diana's spell. Hell, you never even knew it existed!

"I did this to her." Mika didn't want to accept it, but the sick, oily feeling in her stomach betrayed her. She had done it. She drove Naomi to it.

"Mika, this is not because of you!" James turned back and took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. "What happened to us, what happened to me; I made those choices and brought on the consequences of my own actions. Not you. Not Ezaeur. And definitely not some spell!" James locked his gaze with hers. "Naomi made her choices as well. She let the devils talk her into possession. There are rules, laws. They could not do it otherwise. You did not cause this."