Chapter Nine
A
haze of death, rot and sulfur swirled throughout the chamber and Shiloh had to work hard not to gag. She’d seen the smoke before, but had never felt it like this.
Napthulo sneered, a trail of sulfuric smoke circling from his nose. “It’s about time you stopped sneaking around.” His voice rubbed her like tiny needles digging into her skin.
Damien fired a switch star at the demon’s head. Napthulo caught it, the blades sizzling against his thick hide.
The demon chuckled as Damien made a dash for the portal in the bedroom.
“By all means, go ahead,” Napthulo called from his chair like a lazy host. “Fight before I suck you down to hell.”
Shiloh fought down a wave of panic. Damien wouldn’t know what to do in hell. Neither would she, but at least she wouldn’t be an unarmed walking target for the damned.
She wanted to go to him. To run, to flee, but shock left her unable to move. She was alone in the demon’s lair.
Shiloh’s head swam and she tried not to hyperventilate. Napthulo was too confident. He had it rigged. They’d failed. He’d kill Damien. She hoped he’d kill her. She didn’t even want to think of the alternatives.
Napthulo scoffed at the switch star, bent and smoking in his hand. “What a fucking mess.” He leaned forward and speared it into the ice bucket.
“Fawzi!” Shiloh gasped.
The bucket shook as the switch star lay smoking, halfburied in the lid.
The demon snarled at her. “He’s not getting off that easy.” His yellow eyes took on a sickening glow. “Neither are you.” He regarded her with unadulterated hate. “First I’ll rip your fingernails out, one by one.” His awful eyes raked over her. “I’ll skin you,” he said with relish. “And when I grow bored lapping at your blood, I’ll boil you alive for eternity.”
She splayed a hand on her chest, trying to get hold of herself as blue lights flashed from Napthulo’s bedroom. Damien was at work.
The demon laughed. “You want to watch him fail first? Yes, I think you deserve that.”
“No,” she whispered.
“I can feel his soul opening up.” Napthulo rumbled. “Give him a moment longer and I can have that too.”
Horror speared Shiloh. Damien’s power had turned electric blue. “He’s going to kill you,” she said on a shaky breath.
“I thought you knew better than that,” Napthulo said, grasping her by the wrist, his cold grip seeping through her as he dragged her toward his throne. “Then again, you are a lesser.” She felt his sticky breath against her cheek. “No, I’m afraid your demon slayer was destined to fail.” He trailed a single taloned finger down her neck and on to her breast, drawing blood. “If a slayer wants to reverse a demon’s power, he needs to use the demon’s power.”
Shiloh couldn’t stop shaking. She wet her lips. “Lizzie Brown did it.” That slayer had almost destroyed them all.
“An unfortunate mistake,” Napthulo said, watching the blood stain her peach gown. “Careless. That slayer took demon power into herself. The slayer in there has nothing.”
Shiloh’s heart thumped against her chest. Damien had her demon’s power. But would he know how to use it?
Hope flared within her.
She could help him use it.
Napthulo would never suspect. Demons were incapable of connecting, of sharing, of love. But she’d bonded with Damien. Their powers had meshed. And they’d only strengthened the connection last night when he made love to her. She’d felt it down to her toes.
Now Damien needed her to complete the bond and take hold of hell.
Shiloh grabbed the ice bucket and smacked Napthulo upside the head with it. “Die, demon!” Her sweaty hand clutching the handle, she dashed into the bedroom, the demon’s cackle echoing in her ears.
“Damien,” she gasped.
He stood with his arms outstretched in a storm of blue power that almost knocked her backward. “Damien!” She fought through the winds that seared her skin and buffeted her body.
She could see his muscles straining, feel the weight of the portal above them. There was no way he could hold on much longer.
He saw her and the agony on his face nearly made her swoon. “Leave, Shiloh. Run!”
“You need me,” she hollered, battling her way to his side. He was fighting for his soul and he was going to fail unless she could make it.
She didn’t know how she was going to reach him. His power tore at her. “Trust me,” she begged.
He lowered his hands a fraction and she pushed through the last layer of resistance, climbing up to his side. She threw her arms around him, touching him, kissing him, feeling her dark strength well up inside her.
“Take it! Take power from me.” She threw her demon energy into him as she drew him down for a searing kiss.
God, she hoped she was right.
The power sizzled between them, twining together, mixing and flowing. She ground against him as their energies melded and grew. He drew one arm around her, in a desperate, eating kiss that consumed them. The power storm howled around them, spinning into a massive cyclone above the bed. Then she felt it expand and shift.
The mirror flashed as the vortex flipped and opened.
Napthulo stormed into the room, eyes wide with panic. Claws out, teeth bared, he dove straight for her. The demon howled as the winds caught him, sucking him up into the portal and straight to hell.
Shiloh clung to Damien, kissing him with the pent-up passion of a lifetime as her sister succubi screeched past her. The minions went next, dark masses clamoring and hissing. Shiloh gasped as Fawzi’s ice bucket sailed past.
Damien caught it by the silver handle and brought it down to her, wrapping her shaking fingers around the mangled silver handle. “Don’t cut yourself,” he said, pointing the crushed switch star away from her.
She almost cried with relief. Shiloh clung to Damien as she felt Las Vegas empty itself of demons once more.
She sank into Damien, amazed. They’d done it. They’d actually pulled it off. And just when she was about to tell him so, she felt the portal grab her.
It drew her up by the arms. She felt the stinging cold of hell as she gaped in horror at the swirling blue light above her.
“Shiloh!” Damien’s hands gripped her waist.
Shiloh choked with fear. “I’m evil.” Just like the rest of the demons. She was going to hell.
“Damn it, Shiloh. Hold onto me.” The vortex was growing stronger. It wanted one last demon. She felt Damien’s hands slip.
His goodness surrounded her. As she’d emptied her demonic power into him, so was she filling up with his goodness.
“Hold on,” he yelled as the churning mass swirled above her.
He clutched her by the ankles now as the icy grip of hell chilled her to the core. Her breath came in gasps, and she stared down at Damien. She could feel the heavy weight of contentment, understanding, love as they began to take hold inside her.
And then the warmth.
“Let it in, Shiloh,” he pleaded. “You have a choice.”
She almost swooned with the beauty of it. She’d never had a choice. She’d existed to be ordered about, used.
He was the pure one, the noble one. If she could choose, she’d want to be with a man like Damien. “Stay with me, Shiloh.”
“I will,” she said, focusing on the powers that bound them, seeking out the good and the honest and the real affection she felt for this demon slayer.
She imagined him as he was that morning, hair tousled and warm as he slept next to her. She thought of their tacky wedding pictures, making lion faces outside the MGM Grand and even the stupid stuffed pink bear.
“That’s it,” he said, his affection for her plain on his face as the portal loosened its grip.
She accepted his goodness into her body and her heart. It drew her toward him, weaving them together.
She imagined him as he’d been in the Sloth room, putty under her hands as she massaged his temples and made bad jokes. She thought of how he’d taken her to his special place. And she thought of what an amazing day it had been when Damien had walked into her life.
She slid down the length of him as the portal faded and disappeared. “Kiss me,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. He did.
A few remaining winds buffeted the room as Damien folded her against his warm chest. “Your hands are cold,” he murmured.
“I’ve been to hell and back,” she said against his warm skin. He held her as if she was the most precious thing he’d ever found.
His heart was beating as fast as hers. “I thought I was going to lose you.”
“Me too,” she mumbled against his chest, content and safe for the first time she could remember. “I’m good,” she said, hardly believing it herself.
He gave her a small squeeze. “Told you I was going to save you.”
She drew back. “Rub it in.” She tried to frown but ended up smiling as much as he was. “You know, for the record, I saved you too.”
He flexed his hips against hers. “However will I repay you?”
“We’ll think of something,” she said, sliding a warmed hand up under his T-shirt.
He’d just lowered his head to kiss her when a man cleared his throat in the doorway.
They looked up to see an aged priest holding a large cross and a bucket of holy water. Rufus had followed him in, tongue lolling. “I see you closed the portal.”
Father Riley. This man had sent at least a dozen demons to hell. Shiloh’s throat contracted. “Don’t kill me.”
The priest set down the bucket. “Don’t worry,” he said, “You’ve done good.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, trying to casually move behind Damien. It was just like an exorcist to be tricky.
The white-haired priest shook his head as Damien helped a reluctant Shiloh off the bed. “Evil is not about our birth. It’s about our choices.” He held a hand out to Shiloh and she took it gingerly. “You’ve made good choices,” he said, giving her hand an extra squeeze.
Shiloh stared down at their joined hands. She never would have imagined this in a million years. “What do I do now?”
The priest grinned. “Well, I suppose the first order of business would be to let your friend go.”
They looked down to the shaking ice bucket Shiloh held.
She closed her eyes. “Oh no. Not Fawzi. He’s going to smite me.”
“Why?” Damien asked. “You freed him from Napthulo, just like you said you would.”
She grinned. She had, hadn’t she?
Rufus jumped up on the bed in crazed dog affection, licking them wherever he could reach.
Shiloh scrunched his fur between her fingers. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay, sweetie.”
Damien crouched and let Rufus attack him with affection. “He was never a bad dog, Shiloh. He just needs a good owner.”
“Me,” Shiloh said, capturing Rufus in a big hug. At last, she’d have a hellhound of her own. “I can hardly believe it.”
“You deserve it.” The priest grinned as he sprinkled holy water around the edges of the room.
Shiloh was shocked to realize she didn’t even mind the holy water. In fact, it made the room smell a whole lot better. The sulfur faded, replaced by a pure unearthly scent. “Amazing,” she said to herself.
“Stick with me,” Damien said, drawing her to his side.
The priest straightened from where he’d been sprinkling holy water behind a large fire pit. “No annulment?”
Shiloh’s breath caught. Was he really suggesting what she thought he was? The demon slayer wanted to stay married to her, to be with her?
Damien pushed her hair off her shoulders and drew her close. “Why are you so surprised? I can give you freedom, love.” They both smiled as Rufus inserted a wet nose between them. “A hellhound . . .”
Shiloh’s heart swelled with love. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted more.
“Maybe we should renew our vows,” Shiloh said, wrapping her arms around Damien. “I’d like to remember them.”
He grinned. “Lucky for us, there’s a priest right here.”
The Bride Wore Demon Dust
Lexi George
To my writer’s group—cheerleaders, whining boards, promotional team, and friends, all wrapped up into one.
To Melissa—an extra pair of eyes when I needed them. Thanks for sharing the joy of this adventure.
To Erin, my crit partner and sister from another mother: Love you, chicka.
Chapter One
B
unny’s wedding was perfect—until her husband tried to kill the photographer.
Her strapless, white tulle gown with the silk taffeta sash fit her like a dream. The bridal bouquet of white roses and calla lilies was the picture of simple elegance. And the quaint old church by the river had provided the perfect setting, with its heart pine floors mellowed and warped with age, beadboard wainscoting and hand-stenciled blue and white ceiling.
Even the weather had cooperated, gracing them with a cloudless sky, a gentle breeze and temperatures in the low eighties, an unusual occurrence for late September in the Deep South.
Bunny thought she might die of happiness as her daddy walked her down the aisle between rows of smiling friends and family to the altar where
he
had waited for her. Rafe Dalvahni, six-foot-four inches of hard-muscled masculine perfection in a black tuxedo, a man so mouthwateringly gorgeous half the females in the church swooned just looking at him. His handsome features were schooled in his usual expressionless mask, but the look he had given her as she floated toward him could have melted concrete. It made her feel shivery and weak.
He
made her weak.
It was hard to believe this beautiful, sexy man with the stern manner and the hot mouth and gentle, roving hands that drove her wild would soon belong to her, Bunny Nicole Raines, small-town librarian with a double stripper name.
The past few weeks had been a blur. First, she had been attacked at the library late one night. Bunny remembered little of what happened, only searing pain and blackness. Then waking in Rafe’s arms and knowing,
knowing
this was the man she’d waited for her whole life. A dizzying, whirlwind courtship followed . . .
Culminating in the Big Day.
Vows were spoken and they were married. Bunny felt a surge of giddy happiness as they walked out of the church and into the late afternoon sunshine. She was his and he was hers, husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Rafe Dalvahni, forever and ever amen. Now they could begin their happily ever after.
Arm in arm, Bunny and Rafe stood at the foot of the steps and greeted their guests as they left the chapel. After directing everyone to the white tents down by the river for the reception, they slipped into the rose garden at the back of the church to take a few more pictures.
And that’s when Bunny’s perfect wedding had morphed into a nightmare and her dreams of a quiet, ordinary life with the man she loved went up in smoke.
Or demon dust, to be more exact.
“Oh, darn, my battery’s dead,” Spence Hardy, the photographer, said after the first few shots. “I’ve got some extras in my car. You two lovebirds stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He hurried off, leaving Bunny and Rafe alone in the rose garden.
Rafe pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Bunny caught an intoxicating whiff of his cologne, something green and spicy and earthy. God, he even smelled beautiful.
He nuzzled her neck. “I missed you.”
“It was only one night,” Bunny protested, shivering in response. Lord help her, she was a goner for this man. Rafe touched her and she went up like a Roman candle. It had been like this from the moment they met. “How was the big bachelor party? Did you get drunk?”
“The Dalvahni do not get drunk. We are not affected by alcohol and other drugs.”
She smothered a giggle. She thought it was cute the way he referred to himself and his brother Brand in the plural. “The Dalvahni” this and “the Dalvahni” that, like they were a breed unto themselves or something.
And maybe they were. Bunny had never seen anything like the Dalvahni brothers. Tall, green-eyed, stacked with muscles, they were both inhumanly handsome, although Brand had dark hair and Rafe’s was the blood red color of garnets.
Bunny found Rafe’s older brother grim and intimidating, but her friend, Addy Corwin, seemed to like him just fine. Brand and Addy were a hot item. Bunny thought there was something lethal and predatory about Brand, but she kept her thoughts to herself. After all, Rafe put up with her older brothers, Cam and Coop, and they were an acquired taste.
“Your brothers drank a large quantity of ale. I took them home,” Rafe continued. “I do not understand the human affinity for substances that make them lose control.”
She smiled up at him. “What about you, Rafe? Do you ever lose control?”
“Only with you,
cara
,” he said, kissing her.
It was a lovely thing to say, Bunny thought wistfully, although she suspected it wasn’t true. Rafe always seemed to be in perfect control. Sometimes his perpetual calm bothered her. He was so disciplined and she was all over the place with her emotions, especially lately.
Rafe deepened the kiss and Bunny forgot everything but the heated joy of his touch. His tongue brushed hers and she tasted honey and spices. The taste of him, the heat radiating off his big-muscled body and his special, masculine scent made her lightheaded with longing. A delicious ache started in her breasts, then spread to her belly and between her thighs. She wanted him now. Heck, with a little encouragement, she’d do him right here in the rosebushes behind the Mount Carmel Methodist Church, with half the town and her entire family within shouting distance.
Not exactly the photo spread she’d envisioned for the Hannah
Herald.
The crunch of approaching footsteps brought her to her senses; Mr. Hardy, returning with the fresh batteries. Blushing, she slipped out of Rafe’s embrace and turned to face the older man with a welcoming smile.
Her smile quickly faded. A pleasant, round-faced man with thinning silver hair, Spence Hardy was Hannah’s unofficial photographer, even though his business was thirty miles away in Paulsberg. He had taken her baby pictures and the gap-toothed photograph of her in the first grade. The formal portrait of her in a white dress at sixteen that hung over her parents’ mantel was a Hardy original. He was there when she and her classmates graduated high school, taking snapshots of them in their caps and gowns. But the person walking toward them looked nothing like the man she’d known all her life. His skin was sickly gray, his facial features stretched and rubbery.
And his eyes . . .
His eyes were blank, dark pools above his grinning slash of a mouth.
“Mr. Hardy?” Bunny squeaked.
To her shock and surprise, Rafe produced a lethal-looking battle-axe out of nowhere and stepped in front of her. He twirled the battle-axe, and the thing wearing Spence Hardy’s skin hissed.
“Did you think to find me unprepared, fiend?” her new husband asked Mr. Hardy in a cold, dangerous voice she’d never heard before. “I protect what is mine.”
Fiend? Unprepared? What on earth was he talking about?
She peeked around Rafe. Mr. Hardy looked bad, really bad, like something out of a horror movie. But monsters don’t exist, so he must be sick. Yeah, that was it. Mr. Hardy was ill. Maybe he was coming down with the flu.
Or he had something worse like the plague, the nasty, flesh-eating kind that made random body parts fall off.
Oh, good Lord, she’d hired a plague-infested photographer. Everybody at her wedding was going to die of a pernicious, infectious disease, and there would be dead bodies and stray body parts everywhere.
Eww.
The caterer would be pissed. She’d probably lose her deposit.
She tapped Rafe on one broad shoulder. “Rafe, what are you doing?”
“Anon, Bunny. Stay back. I will deal with this foul creature.”
Anon
and
foul creature.
His speech was always formal and proper, a bit stiff and old-fashioned, and he never used contractions. He reminded her of something out of one of her books, a knight errant of old. Usually, she found it charming, but not in the face of an honest-to-goodness, bona fide wedding emergency.
Bunny stepped around Rafe. “Mr. Hardy, you obviously aren’t feeling well. Why don’t you go ho—”
Mr. Hardy rushed at her with a horrible gobbling noise.
Rafe waved his hand, and Bunny shrieked as she was tossed into the air and turned end over end. She lost a shoe on the third rotation. When she stopped spinning, she was hanging upside down. The voluminous skirts of her wedding dress and petticoat fell down, covering her head in a suffocating swathe of tulle and netting. It was hard to think with the blood pounding in her temples. What was happening?
A cool breeze fanned her nether regions.
Good Lord
, she realized with a spasm of mortification.
I’m mooning half of Behr County.
She wasn’t wearing much. A scrap of lace here, a couple of bows there, held together by a narrow strip of ribbon and not much else. She’d spent a great deal of time picking out this particular pair of panties and imagining Rafe’s reaction to them on their wedding night. This was not the “reveal” she’d planned. But who could plan for a thing like this?
“
Rafe,
” she said, equal parts terrified and humiliated.
If she hadn’t been so scared and confused, she would have cringed at the shrill sound of her voice. She sounded like a squeaky toy in the jaws of a frustrated Boxer.
Without warning, she turned right side up. Slapping her skirts back into place, she swatted the gauzy folds of her wedding veil out of her face. Her stomach did a queasy flip-flop. She was suspended high in the air with a bird’s-eye view of the river and their wedding guests milling around the white tents.
Bunny hated heights. It was all she could do to climb a ladder to reshelve books in the stacks. She always sat on the bottom row of bleachers, she avoided balconies and she
never
had dreams of flying.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said, flailing her arms and legs about in panic.
To her surprise and relief, her clumsy movements propelled her forward. She floundered weightlessly through the air until she reached the church steeple. She grabbed it and held on. Looking down, she saw her family and friends mingling around the champagne fountain. A line of live oaks separated the church from the river. No one at the reception could see the drama unfolding several hundred yards away. The orchestra was playing. The party had started, but the bride was stuck on the roof like an abandoned Frisbee, and the groom . . .
The groom and The Thing That Was Mr. Hardy were engaged in a death match in the rose garden. Or what was left of it. Rosebushes, statuary, great clumps of dirt and sidewalk pavers exploded as Rafe and the possessed photographer hurled lightning bolts at one another.
“
Rafe
,” Bunny screamed, terrified for him.
Terrified
of
him, this godlike creature with the blazing eyes who hurled death from his fingertips.
The ornate, three-tiered fountain at the center of the garden flew through the air and crashed to the ground at Rafe’s feet, narrowly missing him.
He’s going to be killed. He’s going to be killed.
The singsong litany ran through her mind.
Rafe threw his double-headed axe. It sailed across the garden toward his opponent.
Bloop
, Mr. Hardy disappeared from sight with a high-pitched giggle. With a metallic whine, the axe made a wide circle and returned to Rafe’s outstretched hand.
Bloop
, Rafe disappeared, too.
Bloop, bloop
, he and Mr. Hardy reappeared on the other side of the garden.
This was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real. Spence Hardy was a gentle man who filled his pockets with Tootsie Rolls and Smarties for the kids. At Christmas, he would set up a backdrop in front of the hardware store and take pictures of people in a sleigh pulled by eight Basset Hound reindeer wearing jingle bells and felt antlers.
This was not the Spence Hardy she knew.
This was not the Rafe Dalvahni she knew either, this hard-faced man with the glowing eyes and the supernatural powers.
He was unrecognizable, a stranger, and that frightened her most of all.
To Bunny’s shock, Brand materialized on the roof beside her. As Rafe’s only family, he was a member of the wedding party. He looked sinfully handsome in his tuxedo—in a dark and deadly I’ll-kill-you-if-you-so-much-as-look-at-me-cross-eyed kind of way. His long, dark hair gleamed in the sunlight.
“I heard a noise over the obnoxious clamor that passes for music here.” He briefly observed the mini-war being waged below them in the devastated garden. “I see my brother has things well in hand.”
To her astonishment, he vanished. Left her on the roof with no explanation and without offering to help her or Rafe. Like possessed photographers and fireball-wielding grooms and people popping in and out of thin air were everyday occurrences. They were so
not.
To add insult to injury, he had dissed her wedding band.
“Obnoxious clamor?” She shook her fist at the empty spot where he’d been standing a moment ago. “Do you have any idea how lucky we were to get a band
at all
on such short notice?”