Deals With Demons (10 page)

“Yes.” Brown eyes met his briefly before dropping back to the floor. “There is a woman—”

“I am the Lord of Wrath, king of the vengeance demons, not a damn matchmaker. Release me now, human,” he growled, rethinking his earlier plan. He was going to enjoy taking this creature apart piece by tiny piece.

The man’s head shot up, surprise lining his features. “I don’t want her love, my lord.”

“No? Then what is it you seek?”

Eyes narrowing, a look of intense hatred bleeding into those brown orbs, the man growled, “I want the bitch dead.”

“And if I do this for you? What are you willing to sacrifice?”

“Anything. Everything.”

Asmodeus studied the pitiful being for a moment, then a grin slowly spread across his face. Dead he could do. In fact, he would relish every moment of the act: skin tearing beneath his nails, blood oozing forth and the fragrant cries of pain tickling his ears. But he was getting ahead of himself. First there was payment. And then he had to decide if he would kill the human after reaping his soul or just maim him, leaving him alive to do Asmodeus’s future bidding. Oh, so much pain, so little time.

With one tiny hand, she brushed sweat-drenched hair from her eyes while she reached out with the other, fingers trembling slightly, to nudge the prone figure on the bed.

“Mommy,” she whispered. Her gaze fell to the empty bottles littering the bedside table and she knew it was a waste of her time. Mommy always got like this after the bad man left. But she had to try. “Please, Mommy. You need to wake up.” She grew louder as her urgency rose. “The bad man is coming back. We have to hide.”

The soft voice in her ear told Tory she was running out of time. Hands swirled out of the mist in an attempt to herd her away from Mommy but she clutched Mommy’s shirt tightly in her fists. Unexpectedly, pain exploded throughout the side of her head, filling her eyes with tears. Mommy had hit her.

“Go back to bed, you little shit,” Tammy Bishop mumbled, rolling away from her. “Get out of here.”

“But Mommy…”

The voices were frantic now, raising the level of terror coursing through Tory’s small frame. Then she sensed him, the bad man, the one Mommy had said was her daddy. But she’d felt the evil rolling off him and knew Mommy had lied. Tory’s daddy was a prince. Or an angel. Or maybe a princely angel. Just not the bad man.

She let the mist guide her into the hall closet and burrowed under a blanket that had been thrown carelessly on the floor. Surrounding her, the mist obscured the blanket and her presence beneath it only moments before the front door of their little apartment crashed open. She slapped a hand over her mouth to conceal a tiny cry, tears beginning to slowly leak down her cheeks. The voices murmured softly, trying to

soothe her, but it wasn’t until heavy footsteps went unheeded past her hiding spot that Tory’s immediate panic receded. And then the screams began.

Clasping her hands tightly before her, Tory began to pray to the angels. She didn’t want to die and even though Mommy sometimes called her a baby, she wasn’t. Tory knew if the bad man found her, he would kill her. And so she prayed until Mommy grew silent and the laughter began. The sound, one Tory knew she would never forget, chilled her to the bone. Her prayers were forgotten as pure terror filled her soul, squashing all that was good, all the hope and love within her, leaving her dejected and heartsick.

It called to her, trying to draw her into its evil web, and the only thing holding her back from answering was the mist. They saved her that night, the spirits drawn to her light, not releasing her from their otherworldly grip until all was silent and the veil of evil had lifted. Only then was Tory able to crawl out of the closet.

“Mommy?” she called as she slowly trudged down the hallway.

Coming to a stop outside Mommy’s bedroom, the hands tried to hold her back, but she slipped right through their grasp. Their protection had weakened them and she had to see…had to know.

What filled her vision stunned her for one split second before high-pitched screams of horror were ripped from her throat. And while she shrieked, tears streaming down her cheeks, trails of her mother’s blood slowly trickled down the walls.

Don’t bother looking for trouble. It’ll find you.

Break

© 2010 Tarra Blaize

An
Angels and Demons
Story

Layla Roads’ life is a laundry list of irony. Trailer trash. High school dropout. Beautiful liar. Highly skilled computer hacker. And one additional, extraordinary gift: the ability to see the demons and angels engaged in a ferocious battle on the urban streets at night.

When kidnappers hold her brother, Layla finds herself up to her neck in a plot to bring down a powerful blood demon. A crude, sexual, violent demon who kills without flinching, pushes her buttons, and looks at her with too-knowing eyes. What’s worse is she feels an answering tug of desire.

It doesn’t take Gethin long to figure out he has a pretty traitor on his hands—and that she’s being blackmailed. As a lone human female her quest to save her brother is hopeless—just like the attraction between them. For even if Gethin helps her save all she holds dear, she can never be his…

Warning: Includes a devilish demon, a heroine caught between a rock and a hard place, several magical battles, and the steamy backseat of a car.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Break:

The sheer sexuality of the blood demon shook Layla Roads down to her core every time her gaze met his heavy-lidded red eyes. Through the transparent walls of her high-tech cubicle, she had a clear view of him prowling across the empty office with all the dangerous, lithe grace of a panther. Given how his eyes fixed upon her with blatant hunger, she couldn’t help feeling as if she were the prey. Prey that, as casually as possible, hid the computer document she’d been in the process of memorizing and pulled up another one on-screen.

There was no one in the office besides her and Gethin. The downtown LA cityscape that sprawled out behind her through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls had yet to be tinted with the orange hues of morning. In the teeming metropolis that extended for miles beyond the heart of the urban jungle, most humans remained in bed behind locked doors, pretending to be safe from the shifting shadows of the night. Night was the battleground for the demons who had escaped from Hell and the angels who wished to push them back in.

The snowy white carpet beneath her heels would soon be stained black with blood. She didn’t know when, just that it was a matter of time. Her trembling fingers removed the prim plastic glasses from her face to check the wire core visible through the gray frames of her glasses. A bad habit, but one she hadn’t been able to break yet. The information she was memorizing was the only thing that could save her brother’s life, but it did nothing to save her own. She was well aware that she was a liability. What demons did to

liabilities caused her to wake up night after night drenched in her own sweat and muffling screams of terror.

Perhaps the air demons would be merciful and kill her quickly and painlessly once her role in their scheme was done. If they left her behind Gethin would know that she had betrayed him, and she knew very well what he was capable of. His vengeance came from a deeper, uglier part of Hell than theirs did.

She had decided long ago that Gethin never slept. Despite this, there were never signs of exhaustion on his face, just carefully controlled violence and good old-fashioned lust that never failed to ignite a matching heat in her. This morning was no exception. The flimsy door to where she worked swung open with a speed that made her jump in her chair, even though she’d steeled herself.

“Ms. Gills.” His voice was darker, deeper than the crevices his kind had crawled from, she thought bitterly. It was underscored with pure steel. Heat too—a weapon he used on her without mercy. He wanted her. He’d made it clear by the second day. Anyway, anywhere. In his bed. On her desk. On his desk. On the floor. Against the wall. And no matter how much indifference or discouragement she threw at him, that list grew longer and longer with every passing day. If she’d been exactly who she pretended to be, then who knew? Perhaps then she could act on the desire he stoked. But she wasn’t Ms. Lana Gills as he thought she was. So she could never let it go further than words.

There was no hesitation showing on the hard, angled planes of his face or in his stride. His dark eyebrows formed a heavy, disapproving line across his forehead as he stalked behind her and pulled out the umpteenth hair clip she’d purchased, letting her heavy hair tumble down about her shoulders.

The heat of his fingers burned her scalp as if he’d branded her. “That,” she said in the most frosty voice possible, “was uncalled for.” Her voice didn’t shake the way she worried it would.

Gethin simply sat on the corner of her desk and tilted her face up with a relentless hand. She didn’t fight his superior strength, especially as he opened his other fist to let small pieces of silver rain down on her lap. She scowled at him, meeting his intense gaze squarely. “You owe me a new hair clip.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I thought I’d told you to keep your hair down, Ms. Gills. It suits you.” His gaze, crimson red where hers was brown, moved slowly from her eyes to caress the golden curls he’d just released. She’d been warned he had a thing for blondes. They’d been right.

“I generally find that women with tight buns are restricting their sexuality.”

She couldn’t help it. She snorted. “This, sir, is a workplace.”

He grinned wolfishly, and her heart skipped a beat. Whether it did so because the rare humor that graced his face made him even more desirable or because he was fooling around with her bloodstream again, she didn’t know. She’d once made the mistake of accusing him of elevating her heart rate as blood demons were able to do. She’d nearly ended up flat on her back on top of his desk, shirt unbuttoned, skirt around her waist, begging for more.

Well, if she had to be honest, she
had
ended up there, but given how quickly she’d come to her senses and scrambled away, it didn’t count.

It’s all about the story…

Action/Adventure

Fantasy

Historical

Horror

Mainstream

Mystery/Suspense

Non-Fiction

Paranormal

Red Hots!

Romance

Science Fiction

Western

Young Adult

www.samhainpublishing.com