Binding Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys of the Underworld Book 3) (15 page)

She jumped at the contact, and her body came right up against his erection. She’d assumed he wanted her too, but the rock-hard confirmation only fueled her desire.

His one hand stayed firmly on her upper thigh while his other covered her hand, moving it up and away from her body until her elbow locked and her palm faced the crumpled demon on the tile floor.

“Tell her about the mortal,” Kier commanded of the demon.

He shook in fear now, the idea of hellfire terrifying him. Muriel had never seen a demon so scared before. Was hellfire that painful to them?

“I’m telling you, mortals can’t enter Hell!” he cried in desperation.

“I don’t believe you,” said Kier. Somehow he called her fire up. She could feel the energy flowing through him, into her and out her palm. There were no visible flames, but she felt as though her whole body was burning.

John let out a scream of agony unlike any Muriel had ever heard, and she had doled out her fair share of torture as an angel. Even as he writhed in pain, there were no flames coming from his body. Kier was taming the fire. Keeping it contained to the demon’s internal organs.

Muriel had to admit, the idea sounded painful.

Muriel only let it go on ten seconds. It seemed too brutal to keep up any longer. She closed her hand and the flow of fire stopped.

John gasped for air as his entire body shuddered in relief, limbs motionless on the cold floor.

“How did you do that?” she asked Kier.

“You,” he breathed against her ear. “After we met, I gained the ability to control the hellfire. I guess it’s only fair that you got it from me.”

Muriel snorted. “Not sure how fair that sounds to me.”
Why didn’t she hate him anymore?
She should have him writhing in pain on the ground, not rubbing up against him like a cat in heat.

When had her feelings for him become so muddled?

It was his smile. Right after she first trapped him, through his anger and frustration, he smiled at her. He enjoyed her cooking. She couldn’t see him as an evil demon when he liked her bacon!

Even if she didn’t think of him as a malicious being, that was no excuse for the way she was acting. Practically running up to him after not seeing him for a month was crazy. Not even schoolgirls crushed this hard.

Muriel pulled away from his embrace, but he didn’t let her go. His arm tightened around her hip as his fingers pressed gently but firmly into her thigh. His hand around her outstretched wrist held her in place.

“We aren’t done with the lesson yet,” he reasoned. “John, why don’t you tell us what you really know about the mortal who got into Hell? Names, dates, and spells used this time.”

“I don’t know anything worthwhile, I swear. There was a mortal Eblis and I saw walk through a hellgate once, but that was over three hundred years ago. He was captured by Lucifer before he walked three steps. That’s all I know! He was dead before anyone even had a chance to ask how he got there. I swear, that is all I know! Please don’t burn me again!” he pleaded.

As John’s confession spilled out, Muriel stopped fighting Kier’s hold. There really had been a mortal who walked into Hell. That was great, but it didn’t change anything for her.

Mortals could only enter Hell as souls. A living being would burst into flames just like an angel would. The soul would wither away, never allowed to enter any realm ever again. Well and truly dead.

Muriel being alive wasn’t the problem. Her soul still held celestial properties, so her physical body would survive the trip as long as her soul was contaminated enough by the demon blood to camouflage her from the protection spell around the Hell realm.

Something she had no way of testing until she stepped into Hell and hoped that she didn’t spontaneously combust.

A pounding on the door caused Kier and Muriel to both jerk their heads to the noise. “Muriel! You in there?” shouted Samuel.

“Please let me go,” said John from below her.

Muriel ignored him for the moment as she looked over her shoulder to Kier, knowing that Samuel couldn’t find them together. “I guess that’s my cue to leave,” he said with obvious regret.

“It’s probably best. Especially if you wanted to avoid bullet holes,” she told him with a small smile, even though the thought of him leaving again made her anything but happy. Who knows when she would happen to raid the same bar he was at again?

He didn’t return her smile. His stare was intense and she tried to decipher his thoughts. He leaned in close as if he wanted to kiss her. She wouldn’t fight him. She wanted his lips on hers.

The pounding on the door got louder as the fallen bookshelf began to move out of the way. Samuel must have gotten a vampire to assist him in busting down the door.

Kier stopped just before their mouths connected. “Do me a favor,” he whispered.

Muriel nodded, unable to form words when he was so close to her.

“Make sure John doesn’t make it out of here alive.”

With that, he disappeared from her sight. The cold confronted her as his body heat was abruptly removed. The door crashed off its hinges, falling on top of the bookcase.

Muriel looked over to John. He must have heard Kier’s whispered command as he crawled even farther into the corner and cowered away from her.

“Tell me, John. Did those children you and Eblis killed beg for their lives?”

John frantically shook his head in denial. “I promise, I will never hurt another child as long as I live. I will—” He never had a chance to finish his begging.

Muriel held her hand out and felt the invisible flame flow through her body and into his. She was able to control the flow this time, keeping the flames from her skin and focusing the burn inside John’s body, but without Kier to help her, she couldn’t hold back.

John didn’t even get out a full scream before he turned to ashes at her feet.

Just then, Samuel and Jared burst over the barricade of the broken door and bookshelf. They halted their charge when they saw Muriel was in control of the situation.

“Is that Eblis’s partner?” asked a breathless Samuel.

“Yep. He was a child killer too, so I took him out,” said Muriel, careful to keep her expression blank.

Kier ordered his death. No matter how strong her pull toward him was, she couldn’t blindly follow his orders. Seeing John wounded and begging for his life struck a chord in her. She pitied the demon. An unfortunate side effect that occurred when you became friends with one.

She blindly accused him of killing children, and when he didn’t deny it, she had all the evidence she needed to take him out.

She befriended a demon. Was that really what Kier was to her? A friend? It didn’t sound right. They’d had sex, but he couldn’t be considered a boyfriend. She felt like herself around him. She hadn’t felt that way around anyone in years.

Tina was never allowed to know about her past, and Samuel expected her to be some sort of savior. Kier knew her for what she was. But what did he want from her?

“Did anyone see you?” Samuel did a sweep of the room, gun drawn.

“I would have taken out a threat if I saw one,” she said, tiptoeing around a lie. She honestly didn’t see Kier as a threat.

After looking in every room of the apartment, Samuel finally lowered his gun. “I thought you weren’t using your fire as a weapon. Isn’t it too hard to control?”

Apparently it was much easier to use when you had the demon who gave you the power in the first place give you lessons.
“I’ve been practicing. This was just an experiment.” Still not lying.

Samuel looked over at the pile of ash and back to Muriel. “You need to be careful. Your hellfire is our ace. If demons find out that you have it, we could lose an element of surprise.”

“Yeah, it would be bad if demons knew about it.”
Shit
. So much for Kier not wanting anything from her.

A sobering wave of shame washed over her. Did she honestly believe that Kier liked her? That he had any respect for her or cared for her happiness? He was a demon, for crying out loud! He wasn’t even capable of empathy.

The sooner she pushed him out of her mind for good, the better.

Kier walked aimlessly through the streets of Hell, at a loss as to what his next move should be. The constant winds blew against him as the ever present screams of tortured souls filled the air.

He wanted to get away from her. He wanted to get away from his traitorous thoughts, but these familiar streets didn’t console him like they used to.

As a boy, he was always relieved to make it back to Hell, where no angels or mortals could hurt him. Angels killed demons, no questions asked. Humans killed demons to protect themselves. Demons only killed each other if they had something to gain. As long as he kept out of their way, he was safe in the Hell realm.

Now he didn’t feel safe. The screams bothered him. He wanted them to stop. The wind set a chill in his bones that he had never before felt. Demons only felt the cold or heat in extreme conditions.
What was happening to him?

He was well and truly ruined. He was unable to take souls without feeling the crushing guilt of ruining someone’s afterlife. He had helped to kill one of his own, which in and of itself wasn’t that unusual. But he’d assisted a fallen angel in killing one of his own.

Not just any fallen. One with whom he was psychically linked and more than a little obsessed.

Demons passed him by on the street. Some he knew and some were strangers, but he couldn’t help but feel like an intruder among them.
What if they knew what he was thinking? What if they found out how he had protected Muriel? How he taught her to use her hellfire?

As if he’d conjured them with his thoughts, two of Azazel’s men appeared, one on each side of him. Before he could even clench his fist in readiness for a fight, the guards grabbed his upper arms and transported him straight to Azazel’s palace.

Kier controlled his breathing as he tried to act calm. How could Azazel know anything? Of course, Azazel didn’t need proof. All he needed was the slightest suspicion to justify burning a demon alive. Or worse.

The king of Hell didn’t live modestly. His lavish throne room was decorated in bold red and black colors. A chandelier made up of thousands of black crystals hung from the high cathedral ceiling, but most of the light in the room emanated from four glowing orbs, one in each corner of the room. Their brightness varied on the number of souls being tortured at any given time, their agony giving Hell its main power source.

Display cases lined the walls, containing the various treasures Azazel had collected over the centuries: jewels or body parts of his enemies. His most prized treasure sat at the right hand of the throne. It was a small case that always had light shining down from the ceiling. It was the ring finger of Lucifer himself.

Azazel had burned the former devil piece by piece but had been unable to give up every souvenir. That one finger was a reminder to all that Azazel took down an archangel all on his own. Now that he had all the souls of Hell as his own personal battery and an entire army of demons behind him, he was unbeatable.

At least, that was what everyone had thought before this new prophecy was revealed.

“Kier, welcome. We don’t see much of you down here these days,” said Azazel.

He sounded friendly enough, but he never did anything kind without expecting something in return.

The two guards released Kier. His gut told him to transport out of there as quickly as possible, but he knew that was impossible. Azazel’s power prevented transporting from any demons except for him and his guards. Kier was stuck here until he was allowed to walk out.

The guards who had grabbed him moved back to stand in formation with the eight other guards. They all varied in appearance, from demons no older than seventy to one that appeared to be at least a millennium old.

Azazel was by far the oldest-looking of all the demons in the room. He bordered on ancient, only reaching Kier’s shoulder when extended to his full height. His nose was a bit too broad and his eyes spread out on his face, making him stand out when so many demons these days resembled modern mortals.

“I’ve been around,” he responded. Vague answers were best. He didn’t want to tell the truth but knew that lying was an immediate death sentence.

“You know Hell has been all aflutter recently? Prophecies and all.”

“I’ve heard rumors, but I have tried to stay out of it.” Was that a lie? He had tried to convince Muriel to forget Azazel and live her life. That was one way of staying out of it.

“The rumors are true. There have been prophecies, but prophecies can be fickle things. Even if they do come true, they rarely unfold as one would expect.” Azazel stared Kier down for a moment as a long silence stretched out. It was the oldest interrogation technique in the book. Let the awkward silence go on long enough and someone would try to fill it.

Kier wasn’t opposed to the quiet. Better to be uncomfortable for a few moments than be dead.

After a few minutes, Azazel gave up that strategy and started a new one. “Tell me about the angel. When is the last time you saw her?”

Kier’s first instinct was to lie. Tell Azazel that he hadn’t seen her since that fateful night five years ago, but something stopped him. There was a small curve to Azazel’s mouth, a knowing look in his eye. He knew something; Kier just had no way of guessing how much he knew.

Then it hit him. The lesser demons had seen Muriel and him leave together. He was screwed. A blurry truth was his best course of action. “I hadn’t seen her for five years. Haskel convinced me to pay her a visit a few weeks back, but apparently she had friends in high places. She trapped me and planned some elaborate revenge plan. She cut me loose when she heard about the prophecy. Her people probably would’ve killed me if I hadn’t caused a distraction and transported my ass out of there. That was a few weeks ago in the middle of the desert. I have no idea where she could be.”

Shit. Was that too much information?
Maybe he should have just given one short answer. People who were hiding things always spoke too much. Kier controlled his nerves. He stopped himself from gulping nervously and concentrated on keeping his heartbeat as steady as possible.

Azazel took a minute to process Kier’s story. “I heard rumors there was something going on between the two of you. They say you were holding her hand when you left that shithole of a restaurant with her.”

He had been right. Azazel did know something. “She’d just trapped me at the time. I didn’t want the lower demons to know I had been bested by a mortal. It was embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than letting them think that you were fucking an abomination like her?” he asked with a raised voice.

The power of Azazel’s magic swirled around Kier. He held his ground; if Azazel wanted him dead, running wouldn’t make a difference.

“Pride is a powerful and confusing emotion, my Master,” he said, referring to Azazel by his formal title. When in doubt, it was always best to stroke the ego.

“I don’t want to hear any details,” said Azazel in a softer tone. “I have a simple question for you, and I want you to understand that if you lie to me I will know and you won’t make it an inch before your head is rolling on the ground. Understand?”

Kier nodded his understanding, mentally calculating how quickly he could make it to the door. He winced when he admitted to himself there was no way he could outrun Azazel, let alone the ten guards.

“I need you to tell me if the angel has feelings for you,” said Azazel.

The question caught Kier by surprise. “Um, I never asked her,” he blurted out.

Azazel backhanded him across the face, the force of which broke his jaw on contact. The momentum of the blow sent him crashing to the floor. Before he could push himself up, Azazel’s sword stabbed through his shoulder, pinning him to the ground. He groaned in pain, and every movement of his mouth sent fresh waves of ache through his face and neck.

“One simple question. One simple answer. I’m not known for giving second chances, but I will ask again. Does she have feelings for you?”

“No,” said Kier through clenched teeth. He didn’t even have to think about his answer. The lie came out as though sacrificing himself for another happened all the time. As though demons performed selfless acts on a regular basis.

Azazel knew he was lying. His jaw clenched and his breathing quickened in anger. “You would lie to me for that wretch? For an
angel
? Even after knowing how I can make you suffer, you lie to protect her?” Azazel twisted the sword in Kier’s shoulder, and the metal scraped on bone. Kier tried to remain silent, but the scream was wrenched from his throat. “I thought she could be stupid enough to care for you but I never considered that you would return the feeling. What a pathetic excuse for a demon,” he spat at Kier.

Abruptly, he pulled the sword out and turned to walk away. He tossed the bloody sword to the ground, where it clattered loudly against the stone. Azazel lowered himself onto his throne, where he contemplated the bloody Kier.

“This is your lucky day,” he muttered.

Funny, he didn’t feel all that lucky at the moment.

“I can’t kill you,” said Azazel, obviously not happy about it. Kier slowly pushed himself up on his good arm. “The prophecy says that the fallen angel is powered by a broken heart. If she’s stupid enough to love you, then keeping you safe and keeping her happy is my secondary prerogative. My main goal is to kill her, of course, but you are not allowed to join in the hunt. If you want to keep your life, I suggest you get up off your ass and find that mutant angel of yours.”

Kier didn’t know whether he could believe his ears.
Was he truly the one who the prophecy was referencing? Would he break Muriel’s heart? Why would he do it? Why wouldn’t he do it?
It was too much to take in, and even though he was already healing, the pain made it hard to think straight. If Azazel was letting him leave, he wasn’t going to question it.

He slowly backed away from the throne. When Azazel made no move to stand or call his guards to attack Kier, he turned to walk out of the palace.

It was a long walk. Well, more of a limp. The throne room was the size of two large ballrooms. Without running, Kier moved as fast as he could.

“One more thing,” said Azazel just as Kier was about to step out the door. “If I find out that you broke her heart, legends will be told of the tortures you will endure.”

With that thought fresh in his mind, Kier walked out of the palace and transported away before the door swung closed behind him.

~~~~~

Muriel stared at herself in the mirror of her small bathroom attached to her dorm at basecamp. She looked for any visible sign of changes. Some proof that she was different. When she turned mortal, there had been signs, subtle but still noticeable.

Her skin had changed. The angelic glow was gone and even the best makeup products could not quite recreate it. Her hair had been harder to control. Instead of falling perfectly into place, she had to work to style it. It would frizz in the winter, and the warm Arkansas summers caused her to sweat too much to ever take it down from her standard ponytail.

Now that she could sprout fire from her fingertips, there were no noticeable changes. Was she mortal anymore? If she wasn’t mortal, what was she? Part angel and part demon? The entire idea was crazy. Demons were created by an angel so, by rank, she was above demons. Granted, the angel who created them was high on the power of corrupted souls. Those corrupted souls gave him the power to create his own army to collect even more souls, growing his power exponentially.

All the power in the world and underworld couldn’t save him from being struck down by his own creation. When she was an angel, it was easy to hate Lucifer. He turned his back on everything angels stood for, demanding to be treated as an equal with the mortals he watched over.

Now that she was mortal, she saw him in a different light. She even respected him. It was hard for angels to feel any emotion, and he had felt such pride in himself and jealousy of mortals that he turned his back on Heaven to rule the emptiness of the underworld.

Feeding off the power given off by damned souls, he had formed his own land with his own creatures to guard him. As the demons grew in numbers, along with Lucifer’s power, he became more and more corrupted until he was an even greater monster than any of the ones he had created.

Was she no better? Feeding off Kier like a vampire. Consuming his blood and powers at the same time. He didn’t exactly seem opposed to her using him. He even appeared to enjoy teaching her to use her fire at the hot spot earlier that day.

She knew her soul was turning darker and darker, but why didn’t this bother her? She hadn’t even considered that Kier could be playing her until Samuel said something. That wasn’t like her. She was used to being suspicious and strategizing the best way to approach a battle. She had never gone gaga over a boy, let alone a bad boy.

Even knowing everything she knew about demons, even knowing that Kier was the same demon who had forced his blood down her unwilling throat, she still doubted that he had ulterior motives. The way she was drawn to him was too intense to be one-sided. When he was in front of her, it was as though the world stopped turning. Nothing else mattered but his touch. His smile.