For Past Transgressions

"And the Devil won't return?" Josh repeated.

"If he is truly gone, yes. If you believe you have dispelled it but only are fooling yourself, all will be illusion."

Clutching the vial in a fist, the necklace around his neck, Josh returned to the villa at Discovery Bay. Something told him he knew what he'd find there, and he was right.

Elaine was splayed over the side of the bed, belly to mattress, her feet on the floor, her eyes focused on the door to her bedroom where Josh appeared. She was showing a smile of deep satisfaction. Demonde—the Devil Demonde, complete with horns, hoofed feet, and swishing tail, was standing behind her, holding her waist between his hands. He was fucking her in her ass, taking long, deep strokes. He too was looking at the doorway where Josh appeared, a smug look of victory on his face.

The expression changed, though, immediately after he saw the necklace around Josh's neck. Josh raised the cross-shaped vial, stretching it out toward Demonde as far as the leather strand would permit.

With a slurp, Demonde pulled out of Elaine's ass and backed toward the open French window, with an arm thrown across his face, his upcurved erection monstrous.

Josh stepped forward, his hand tugging at the vial, working his fingers to where he could break it at the metal band. The leather strand snapped at the power of his pull and the distance between him and the Devil was being narrowed.

But Josh . . . just . . . could not carry through—at least for the extra couple of seconds it took Demonde to back through the window and disappear from sight. But then the vial snapped where Josh's fingers had been pressing on it, and the liquid dropped to the Oriental carpet underneath, where is sizzled and burned holes through the thick carpeting as acid would.

Angry at himself. Resolved now—perhaps for the first time genuinely resolved, he believed—Josh turned and ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house. He ran all the way back to the cove where the fortuneteller's shack was located. He moved in a frenzy, muttering to himself that he needed more potion. That this time he would carry through. That this hold of the Devil's must be broken—for the first time convincing himself that he believed not only in the physical nature of the Devil that besieged his life but also in the power of Obeah.

But when he reached the cove he sought, the shack was not there. There was no evidence it ever had been there. Was this what the fortuneteller had meant about it all being an illusion if he wasn't genuinely prepared to exorcise his demon? Were even the shack and the fortuneteller—and the very basis of Obeah—illusions to those unable to believe?

But he was a believer now, he whined. Ah, but you weren't then, a little voice inside his head said. You weren't a full believer that Demonde was the Devil when you stood before him and could have destroyed him.

"But I am a believer now," he repeated, saying it out loud. Turning and screaming it to the sea. "I am now! I am ready to free myself of the Devil now."

The only sound that came back to him was the sound of the surf of the Caribbean sea lapping against the sand of the cove below.

He trudged back to the villa, his mind working on what he could do to combat this demon. Regretting now that he was entirely on his own in doing so. As a last resort, he knew, there was the Glock in the Land Rover's glove compartment. It could be an ultimate answer for him and the rest of the family—if it was not an answer for Demonde and the Devil inside him. Josh was won over now. Demonde wasn't just a randy Jamaican hunk. He was the Devil incarnate. Josh's own personal demon.

When he got back to the villa, the cook had returned to start preparing dinner. The Land Rover was gone. Had Elaine left him? Josh wondered.

"Where is Mrs. Cameron?" he asked Angelina, trying to keep his voice casual.

"Mrs. Cameron and Miss Ellie are in their rooms," Angelina answered. "I was just upstairs and I saw them both. They are sleeping."

The Land Rover, Josh wondered. Who had taken the Land Rover? Had Demonde stolen it?

"And Jason?" he asked. "I guess he's still at the Discovery Bay compound."

"Oh, no, Mr. Cameron. He wasn't before. He just was through here, raiding the refrigerator. He and Demonde. But he may be off to the vacation compound, playing basketball, now. I hope that son of yours is a very good basketball player. He seems to have devoted his life to it." She topped this observation off with a hearty laugh. Josh attempted an appreciative smile, but what she said was pounding at his brain.

"He and Demonde? Demonde was just here?" Josh asked, fighting for breath, his voice sharper than he had intended.

"Oh, yes. He was just here. With Master Jason. He said they were going to Discovery Bay. To play basketball."

Something roared in Josh's brain. He knew now that he should have told Angelina that Demonde was not supposed to be here anymore. The fear that gripped him wasn't just that Jason had never taken the Land Rover before to go play basketball at the Discovery Bay villas compound. It was what Josh had seen in the front foyer just now.

Jason's basketball. He never went to play basketball without taking his basketball.

Demonde had Jason. Josh knew that as well as he knew anything. Demonde undoubtedly was fucking Jason too—and had been all along—and was fucking him now.

The image of his eighteen-year-old son, bent over a rock somewhere, with Devil Demonde mounted on his young hips, tail swishing, raucously laughing at Josh as his thick cock moved up inside the tender channel and Jason, rather than crying out at the assault, panted and begged for the fuck—more competition for Devil Demonde's attentions—was overwhelming.

Josh collapsed into a straight chair and lowered his head between his knees, fighting the nausea and racked by frustration and despair. Not the frustration and despair that he had brought himself to believe in. The frustration was that Demonde was fucking Jason and not him. The despair was the realization that he never was going to shake this demon. That he never was going to deny Devil Demonde's power over him.

And with the Land Rover gone, so was the salvation of the Glock.