Summoning Darkness (2 page)

But Lillian was real. She was human, and even though she was no longer mortal, as a Forgotten, she maintained all her human traits. He plunged deeper inside her, tasting the sweetness of her cream.

“Yes!” She quivered beneath him, her hips lifting off the bed and her back arching in an effort to bring him even closer to her pussy. “Take me over the edge, Master. Take me… Bite me. Claim me.”

She repeated the words like a mantra. He kissed and suckled her sex, filling his lungs with the scent and taste of her. His cock felt like it would explode, and she hadn’t even touched him.

Take me. Bite me. Claim me
.

“Do it. Make me yours.”

She’d been asking him the same thing every night for weeks. Somehow, she’d learned more about demons than any lost soul ever had. She knew what his bite would do to her, and she wanted it.

Wanted
him
. Forever.

Take me. Bite me. Claim me
.

The heady chant swam in his head, heightening his libido like a potent aphrodisiac. If he bit her, she’d be his. She’d be like him, transformed from a mere Forgotten mortal into a demon-kin, a half-breed. Baal would have no choice but to accept her.

The idea had seemed beyond contemplation when she’d first suggested it. Yet now, with his head buried deep between her thighs, he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t given in sooner. Turning her would solve so many problems. It was the one thing he could give her after everything she’d given him.

Varin’s hands moved across her back. He clamped his palms on her ass to steady her, then shifted his mouth slightly to her inner thigh. All his control and common sense was gone now, lost in a sea of lust. He was drowning in it and he had no intention of ever again coming up for air. He bit down hard. She screamed, her cry sending a pang of agony into his heart. He suckled the wound quickly, knowing his saliva would already be traveling through her bloodstream. A few drops were all he needed to pass on to her. Genetics and the nature of things would do the rest. He waited for her cry to subside, but it never did. Instead, it took on a wild keening edge. She pushed him away, shoving at him with her knees, kicking him with her feet. He fell backward off the bed, too stunned to speak or resist her sudden tantrum.

The world spun around him. The importance of what he’d done slammed into him, shaking him to the core. Surely this was simply a side-effect of the turning. He’d never done it before. To the best of his knowledge, no one had. Fucking a human was sometimes frowned upon, but generally accepted as common practice. Turning one into a half-breed was blasphemy, a desecration of everything the Prince of Darkness held dear. Lillian levitated off the bed and spun in the air, heading straight for him. Her eyes glowed a deep crimson, brighter than that of an excited souleater. A volatile, vivid anger burned within their depths. The sight of it stole his breath.

“You!” Her voice sounded raw, filled with enough grief, pain and misery for a thousand tortured souls. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for years.”

Varin rose unsteadily to his feet. The savage fury etched on Lillian’s features clawed at his heart. “You need to learn how to control your powers. I’ll help you. I’ll teach you.”

She hissed at him, black claws springing from the pads of her fingertips and scoring the air before him. “Like you taught me to fuck? Like you taught me I was only useful as a vessel for your cock in this place? No more!”

Varin lunged for her, but she moved out of his grasp, sliding effortlessly through the air.

“I know more than you think! I listened. And I watched you. All of you. I knew I’d need to be prepared when the time came. And I am.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and he marveled at the creature he’d created. All the innocence he’d loved had disappeared, leaving in its place a woman he no longer recognized.

Knowing he needed to get the situation back under control, Varin began to chant an incantation that would bind her. Tendrils of elemental power sprung up around him, forming a net out of green-tinted energy. With another wild shriek, Lillian spit out words of power back at him. Her depth of knowledge stunned him. She’d learned so much!

The net he’d carefully constructed began to unravel, then re-knit itself and turned on him instead. She flicked her wrist and sent the magical netting to drape over him. The energy bound him, gagged him, blinded him. With the last blink of his eyes, he saw her tear a veil into the fabric of the Underworld and plunge through it, her pale body a sharp contrast to the deep crimson gash into time and space.

A moment later, Baal’s powerful voice boomed through the cavern. The strength of his Lord’s fury swept Varin away, slamming him against a rocky ledge. Pain tore through his body, threatening to tear his limbs apart. He was hurled again and again, like a child’s toy, pummeled against the rocks. The netting keeping him from fighting back, even if he’d wanted to.

He didn’t.

When the souleaters came for him, he didn’t fight them. Instead, he simply allowed them to take him away, to strip him of his rank and his powers then cast him down into the pits of Hell with the rest of the Forgotten. He was one of them now.

The Prince of Darkness had no mercy, no pity for those who failed him. Varin welcomed the eternity of torment Baal promised, knowing that only the sting of everlasting pain would take away the memory of Lillian’s blue eyes, her pale skin, and the permanent imprint of her betrayal on his soul.

California, Present Day

Heidi Cole tasted blood on her lower lip.

She swept the tip of her tongue over the wound. Her chin and right cheek pulsed with a dull pain from the impact of the demon’s closed fist connecting with her jaw line. She tilted her head backward and felt the snap of bone as her neck cracked, spreading some of the tension that had gathered there into the rest of her body.

“Please, Sir.” She imbued her voice with as much sincerity as she could muster. “Show some mercy.”

Broad-shouldered and built like a football player on steroids, the demon slammed his closed fist into his palm. Behind him, instruments of torture and pleasure vied with one another for prominent spots on the black walls of the dungeon cell. Whips, canes, paddles, straps, floggers and clamps of all sizes hung on the walls, while sleek tables held pincers, cuffs, nipple toys and other devices she couldn’t even name.

Heidi tore her gaze from the instruments and focused it on the demon instead. He showed perfect white teeth when he grinned.

“You’re not here for mercy, little slut. You’re here to be used and abused. I paid good money for a sex slave. I was told you liked some rough play with your pleasure.”

Heidi swallowed back the scathing retort that settled on her tongue and lowered her gaze to the floor. Her eyelashes swept down, hiding her eyes. The demon’s scent intensified, filling the room with the stench of sulfur. Heidi almost smiled. His arousal grew with every blow he dealt her. He fed on her fear, her pain, her discomfort. She shifted slightly and her knees dug into the bare floor, sending another pulsing ache through her limbs. He’d kept her in this position for the last hour, wrists shackled behind her, ankles tethered to the floor, nipple clamps dragging her full breasts down with every breath.

“Yes, Sir. I’m here only to serve.”

He stepped closer. From her vantage point, she could see his muscular calves quiver as he approached her. He stopped in front of her and gripped her chin, then yanked it upward. The tip of his cock, wet with precum, nudged her lips. She opened to his demands, knowing her role and how to play it. His massive shaft stretched her lips. He tasted like he smelled: cloying and potent, almost overwhelming. Any one of Juliet’s real sex slaves might have passed out by now.

After two years of hunting demons, Heidi was too familiar with their stench to be put off by it.

As he worked his rod deep inside her mouth, nudging the back of her throat with each desperate thrust, Heidi flexed her fingertips. Ragged strands of sparkling magic danced across her nails, pulling at her skin, grazing her knuckles.

The demon tangled his fingers in her curls and roughly tugged her head back as he fucked her mouth. Heidi greedily took everything he had to give, feeding on his sexual energy just as he fed on her fear. His cock scraped against her split lip with every motion. She knew he felt her pain and gave herself over to it. A groan slid from her throat. His rod muffled the sound before it could escape, but she was sure he heard it. His shaft stiffened to impossible hardness. Muscles quivering with barely controlled demon power, he prepared to climax inside her mouth. With his seed still flooding her throat, he’d use the magical energy he gathered from her to open a portal into the Underworld. He’d drag her through it with him, where he’d introduce her to a fate worse than death. His movements stilled. He was ready.

So was she.

The chains holding her wrists snapped first. Delicate tendrils of power cut right through them, freeing her hands. She used the momentum to arch her back and embrace the bulk of sexual magic she’d accumulated. Pulling back in a smooth motion so his cum splattered her chest instead of spilling inside her mouth, Heidi grasped outward with her mind, seeking the bond she had with her sisters.

A mystical chant fell almost unbidden from her lips. Magical energy swam in front of her eyes, tearing a path straight to the demon’s heart. Though it slammed through him with enough force to knock him backward and make him stumble, it wasn’t enough to destroy him. Not by itself. The door burst inward, spilling shards of silvered metal inside the room. Five women dressed from head to toe in red leather stormed through the doorway. Heidi focused all her energy on sharing the sexual power she’d gathered with each of them, though they barely needed it. They’d been indulging in sex play of their own earlier that evening, though unlike her, their pleasure had been genuine. They’d built up their reserves of magic for the moment they’d have to use them.

The room exploded in a shower of light and color. The Scarlet Summoners aimed their collective talents on the demon. Heidi could no longer see him through the haze of magic, but it didn’t matter. She could
feel
him. And this time, it was his fear that intensified his stench. Sweat trickled down her temples and slid into the valley between her breasts. Her concentration never waned as she joined her sisters in the chant that would ultimately send the demon back where he belonged. To the Underworld. Permanently.

Heidi’s eyes watered. Images came unbidden to her mind, flooding her thoughts with mental pictures of a man whose face she could never banish from her thoughts entirely. His thick, silky brown hair fell over his forehead and bordered the proud jut of cheekbones, the straight angle of his nose, the beautiful mouth that curved slightly at the corners when he spoke.

Emotions Heidi kept barred behind a wall of courage and determination threatened to pour out as memories of the way he’d claimed her, body and soul, swam through her mind.

She’d met Luke Howard when she and her sister, Bianca, had attended his

“Too Hot To Handle” magic show. She’d been instantly captivated by him, but when they had hid behind the scenes to watch him perform, she could have never imagined how her evening would end. Back then, she wasn’t Heidi Cole --demon hunter. She was Heidi Cole --E.R. surgeon and complete loner. She’d been introverted and quiet, completely out of her element in social settings and large crowds. And she’d been a virgin at the ripe age of thirty.

Luke Howard had changed all that.

With one flick of his wrist, he’d locked her inside a coffin for a magic trick and then proceeded to send his non-corporeal form in there with her. He’d fucked her senseless, showing her pleasures beyond her wildest dreams. He’d fulfilled every fantasy she never knew she had. And just when she’d thought she could spend the rest of her life convincing Luke Howard to give her more of that wondrous bliss, he was snatched from her. By a demon.

The creature who’d taken Luke didn’t have a human visage like the monster she and her sisters were sending back to the Underworld tonight. She remembered the way the demon’s black claws raked over Luke’s naked flesh. Its red skin had glowed with an unnatural light, casting its eerie sheen over everything and nothing at all. The sight of the beast alone had promised eternal damnation and torture more cruel than any Heidi could imagine.

She had no doubt that the monster had intended to punish Luke for taking Heidi from him. She was to have been its prize, its plaything to use in every vile way imaginable before killing her… if she was lucky. A cry tore from her throat. Her voice sounded raspy in the dry air, savagely unrecognizable to her own ears. A tendril of magic escaped the cloud forming around the demon.

Her
magic. She guided it around the demon’s throat and latched it closed, the incorporeal noose shifting, tightening, yanking. A gap formed out of thin air. It lengthened and tore the fabric of space and time. The demon struggled, its pitiful wail making the walls shake. Raw sexual power slammed against him, shoving him through. The tear sealed closed in the blink of an eye, leaving in its wake a smattering of cloudy dust that fell to the floor.

“Damn, hon, what’d it do to you?”

Arms closed around Heidi. Warmth enveloped her from all sides, and she found herself grateful for the support, even if she didn’t need it. She smiled shakily and looked at each one of her sisters in turn. They weren’t blood relatives, but they were closer to her than Bianca, her real sister, had ever been.

“We got the fucker.” Heidi raked a hand through her unruly curls. Her mass of red hair fell forward, and she blew a few loose strands out of her eyes. “That’s all that matters.”

“You were born for this, you know.”

Heidi turned toward the sound of the confident voice. She stared into Lillian Smith’s deep blue eyes, pulled by the swirling turmoil she saw in their depths. Not for the first time, Lillian’s penetrating stare sent a shiver of unease down her spine.

Heidi shrugged as she tore her gaze away. “Every demon we send back to Hell is one less demon who’ll take an innocent soul. And with each one, I’m one more demon closer to Luke.”