Pleasure Unbound

This book is dedicated to every single person who came to the aid of my family after Hurricane Katrina . . . you were instrumental in getting me back on my feet and writing again. Without you, this book would not have been possible. I will never be able to thank you often enough or well enough, but know that I will not forget.

To my parents, who never stopped encouraging me, who supported my dream from the beginning. I love you very much.

To my husband, Bryan, and my son Brennan, who put up with countless nights of hearing, “You’re on your own for dinner,” while I was under deadline. You mean the world to me.

To Roberta Brown, for being an incredible agent and having faith in my writing, and Melanie Murray for being patient, helpful, and enthusiastic about this project.

To HelenKay Dimon, Alison Kent, Lynn Viehl . . . you know why.

To my fellow Gnippers, who have been rooting me on for years.

Last but not least, to Karen Boss and Dee Knight, who took time out of their busy schedules to provide last-minute reads and the best advice ever, and Stephanie Tyler, Jaci Burton, and Lara Adrian, for more than I have room to list.

The Aegis —Society of human warriors dedicated to protecting the world from evil. See: Guardians, Regent, Sigil.

Council —All demon species and breeds are governed by a Council that makes laws and metes out punishment for individual members of their species or breed.

Dresdiin —The demon equivalent of angels.

Guardians —Warriors for The Aegis, trained in combat techniques, weapons, magic. Upon induction into The Aegis, all Guardians are presented with an enchanted piece of jewelry bearing the Aegis shield, which, among other things, allows for night vision and the ability to see through demon invisibility enchantment.

Harrowgate —Vertical portals, invisible to humans, which demons use to travel between locations on Earth and Sheoul.

Infadre —A female of any demon species who has been impregnated by a Seminus demon.

Maleconcieo —Highest level of ruling demon boards, served by a representative from each species Council. The U.N. of the demon world.

Orgesu —A demon sex slave, often taken from breeds bred specifically for the purpose of providing sex.

Regent —Head of a local Aegis cell.

S’genesis —Final maturation cycle for Seminus demons. Occurs at one hundred years of age. A post-s’genesis male is capable of procreation and possesses the ability to shapeshift into the male of any demon species.

Sheoul —Demon realm. Located deep in the bowels of the earth, accessible only by Harrowgates.

Sigil —Board of twelve humans known as Elders, who serve as the supreme leaders of The Aegis. Based in Berlin, they oversee all Aegis cells worldwide.

Ter’taceo —Demons who can pass as human, either because their species is naturally human in appearance, or because they can shapeshift into human form.

Classification of Demons, as listed by Baradoc, Umber demon, using the demon breed, Seminus, as an example:

Kingdom: Animalia

Class: Demon

Family: Sexual Demon

Genus: Terrestrial

Species: Incubus

Breed: Seminus

The demon is a prince of the air and can transform himself into several shapes, delude our senses for a time; but his power is determined, he may terrify us but not hurt.

—Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

Had Eidolon been anywhere but the hospital, he would have killed the guy pleading for his life before him.

As it was, he’d have to save the bastard.

“Sometimes, being a doctor blows,” he muttered, and jabbed the demon in a human suit with a syringe full of hemoxacin.

The patient screamed as the needle passed through mangled thigh tissue, releasing blood sterilization medication into the wound.

“You didn’t numb him first?”

Eidolon snorted at his younger brother’s words. “The Haven spell keeps me from killing him. It doesn’t prevent me from dispensing a little justice during treatment.”

“Can’t escape your old job, huh?” Shade pushed aside the curtain separating two of the three ER cubicles and stepped fully inside. “The son of a bitch eats babies. Let me wheel him outside and waste his sorry ass.”

“Wraith already offered.”

“Wraith offers to waste all the patients.”

Eidolon grunted. “Probably a good thing our little brother didn’t go the doctor route.”

“Neither did I.”

“You had different reasons.”

Shade hadn’t wanted to spend that much time in school, especially since his healing gift was better suited to his chosen field, paramedicine. He was all about scraping patients off the street and keeping them alive long enough for the Underworld General staff to fix them.

Blood dripped to the obsidian floor as Eidolon probed the patient’s most serious wound. A female Umber demon, the same species as Shade’s mother, had caught the patient sneaking into her nursery, and had somehow impaled him—several times—with a toilet brush.

Then again, Umber demons were remarkably strong for their petite size. The females were especially so. Eidolon had, on several occasions, enjoyed the application of that strength in bed. In fact, when he could no longer resist the final maturation cycle his body had entered, he planned to make an Umber female his first infadre. Umbers made good mothers, and only rarely did they kill the unwanted offspring of a Seminus demon.

Putting aside the thoughts that plagued him more frequently as The Change progressed, Eidolon glanced at the patient’s face. The skin that should have been a deep reddish-brown was now pale with pain and blood loss. “What’s your name?”

The patient groaned. “Derc.”

“Listen, Derc. I’m going to repair this unsightly hole, but it’s going to hurt. A lot. Try not to move. Or scream like a cowering little imp.”

“Give me something for the pain, you fucking parasite,” he snarled.

“Doctor parasite.” Eidolon nodded at the equipment tray, and Paige, one of their few human nurses, handed him clamps.

“Derc, buddy, did you eat any of the Umber’s young before she caught you?”

Hatred rolled off Shade’s body as Derc shook his head, sharp teeth bared, eyes glowing orange.

“Today isn’t your lucky day then. Didn’t get a meal, and you aren’t getting anything for the pain, either.”

Allowing himself a grim smile, Eidolon clamped the damaged artery in two places as Derc screamed vile curses and struggled against the restraints that held him on the metal table.

“Scalpel.”

Paige handed him the instrument, and he expertly sliced between the clamps. Shade crowded close, watching as he shaved away the shredded artery tissue and then held the newly clean ends together. A warm tingle wound its way down his right arm along his dermal markings to the tips of his gloved fingers, and the artery fused. The baby-eater would no longer have to worry about bleeding out. From the expression on Shade’s face, however, he would have to worry about surviving more than two steps outside the hospital.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d saved a life only to have it taken once the patient had been released.

“BP’s dropping.” Shade’s gaze focused on the bedside monitor. “Could be shock.”

“There’s another bleed somewhere. Bring up his pressure.”

Reluctantly, Shade placed his large palm over the bony ridges in Derc’s forehead. The numbers on the monitor dipped, raised, and then stabilized, but the change would be temporary. Shade’s powers couldn’t sustain life that wasn’t there, and if Eidolon couldn’t find the problem, nothing Shade did would make a difference.

A rapid assessment of the other wounds revealed nothing to explain the drop in vitals. Then, just below the patient’s twelfth rib, a fresh scar. Beneath the razor-straight mark, something bubbled.

“Shade.”

“Hell’s fires,” Shade breathed. His gaze snapped up as he raked his fingers through nearly black hair that, at shoulder-length, was longer than but identical in color to Eidolon’s. “It might be nothing. It might not be Ghouls.”

Ghouls. Not the cannibalistic monsters of human lore, but the term for those who carved up demons to sell their parts on the underworld black market.

Hoping his brother was right but not ripped from the womb yesterday, Eidolon pressed softly on the scar.

“Derc, what happened here?”

“Cut myself.”

“This is a surgical scar.”

UG was the only medical facility in the world that performed surgery on their kind, and Derc hadn’t been treated here before.

Eidolon caught the pungent stink of fear. “No. It was an accident.” Derc clenched his fists, his lidless eyes wild. “You must believe me.”

“Derc, calm down. Derc?”

Monitor alarms beeped, and the baby-eater convulsed.

“Paige, grab the crash cart. Shade, keep his vitals up.”

An eerie wail seemed to leak from every pore in Derc’s skin, and a stench like rotting bacon and licorice filled the small space. Paige lost her lunch in the garbage can.

The heart monitor flatlined. Shade removed his hand from the patient’s forehead.

“I hate it when they do that.” Wondering what had frightened Derc so badly he’d felt the need to stop his own bodily functions, Eidolon opened the scar with a smooth slash of a scalpel, knowing what he’d find, but needing to see for sure.

Shade dug through his uniform shirt pocket and pulled out his ever-present pack of bubble gum. “What’s missing?”

“The Pan Tai sac. It processes digestive waste and returns it to the body so his species never has to urinate or defecate.”

“Handy,” Shade murmured. “What would someone want with it?”

Paige dabbed her mouth with a surgical sponge, her complexion still greenish, though the patient’s death stench had largely dissipated. “The contents are used in some voodoo curses that affect bowel movements.”

Shade shook his head and passed the nurse a stick of gum. “Is nothing sacred anymore?” He turned to Eidolon. “Why didn’t they kill him? They’ve killed the others.”

“He was worth more alive. His species can grow another organ in a matter of weeks.”

“Which they could harvest.” Shade let out a string of curses that included some Eidolon hadn’t heard in his hundred years of life. “It’s gotta be The Aegis. Sick bastards.”

Whoever the bastards were, they’d been busy. Medics had brought in twelve mutilated bodies over the last two weeks, and the violence had escalated. Some of the victims showed evidence of having been carved up while still alive—and awake.

Worse, demons as a whole couldn’t care less, and those who did wouldn’t cooperate with other species’ Councils in order to organize an investigation. Eidolon cared, not only because someone with medical knowledge was involved, but because it was only a matter of time before the butchers nabbed someone he knew.

“Paige, have the morgue fetch the body and let them know I want a copy of the autopsy report. I’m going to find out who these assholes are.”

“Doc E!” Eidolon hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when Nancy, a vampire who’d been a nurse since before she was turned thirty years ago, shouted from where she sat behind the triage desk. “Skulk called, said she’s bringing in a Cruentus. ETA two minutes.”

Eidolon nearly groaned. Cruenti lived to kill, their desire to slaughter so uncontrollable that even while mating they sometimes tore each other apart. Their last Cruentus patient had broken free of his bonds and destroyed half the hospital before he could be sedated.

“Prepare ER two with the gold restraints, and page Dr. Yuri. He likes Cruenti.”

“She also said she’s bringing a surprise patient.”

This time he did groan. Skulk’s last surprise turned out to be a dog struck by a car. A dog he’d had to take home with him because releasing it outside the ER would have meant a fresh meal for any number of staff members. Now the damned mutt had eaten three pairs of shoes and taken over his apartment.

Shade seemed torn between wanting to be irritable with Skulk, his Umber sister, and wanting to flirt with Nancy, whom he’d already bedded twice that Eidolon knew about.

“I’m going to kill her.” Clearly, irritability won out.

“Not if I get to her first.”

“She’s off-limits to you.”

“You never said I can’t kill her,” Eidolon pointed out. “Just that I can’t sleep with her.”

“True.” Shade shrugged. “You kill her, then. My mom would never forgive me.”

Shade had that right. Though Eidolon, Wraith, and Shade were purebred Seminus demons with the same long-dead sire, their mothers were all of different species, and of them, Shade’s was the most maternal and protective.

Red halogen beacons rotated in their ceiling mountings, signaling the ambulance’s approach. The light splashed crimson around the room, bringing out the writing on the gray walls. The drab shade hadn’t been Eidolon’s first choice, but it held spells better than any other color, and in a hospital where everyone was someone’s mortal enemy, every advantage was critical. Because of that, the symbols and incantations had been modified to increase their protective powers.