Bittersweet Seraphim

Cover

title page

Bittersweet Seraphim

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Debra Anastasia

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Omnific Publishing

Dallas

Copyright Information

Bittersweet Seraphim, Copyright © 2012 by Debra Anastasia

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Omnific Publishing

10000 North Central Expressway, Dallas, TX 75231

www.omnificpublishing.com

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First Omnific eBook edition, November 2012

First Omnific trade paperback edition, November 2012

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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Anastasia, Debra.

Bittersweet Seraphim / Debra Anastasia – 1st ed

ISBN: 978-1-623420-02-7

1. Hell—Fiction. 2. Supernatural Romance—Fiction. 3. Devil—Fiction. 4. Angels—Fiction. I. Title

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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna

Dedication

To T, D and J: You are my Heaven.

Eyes of crystal gold
looked inside me
Saw the demon that I am
You just laughed and held my hand

I should have worried you then
A better man would have walked away
but I am weak behind my lies
All I wanted was for you to stay

I would chase the dark across the night
And the sun across the dawn
I would fight all of my demons
But without your hand in mine
I would still be wrong

You’re trapped by your pure heart
And chains that I have made
I will rip this world apart
To put you back where you should have stayed

You would tell me to pray to God
Well I can’t do that
but I’ll have faith in anything
just to get you back

~Satan Jack

Part 1

Hell, 1985

Chapter 1

Of all the horrible jobs to be assigned in Hell, coal was the worst. Nero scraped endlessly at the wall and tossed the bits of loosened rock on the flames. His hands felt magnetically attracted to the shovel, nearly impossible to remove, and occasionally blood swirled down his forearms from the constant friction. The ironic part was that if he did manage to let go of the shovel, the fires stayed just as hot. They didn’t really require his little additions at all. Sweat stung his eyes and his muscles ached, but the compulsion to shovel outweighed everything.

Brut and Nero had shoveled coal side by side for eons. Then Brut, a silent and horrible companion, began speaking one day, telling tales of Hell’s minions crawling to Earth. He said that upon touching the soil, minions lost their mandates, their compulsions, and they could just
be
. In Hell, the Devil saw to it that there was a constant flow of fresh flesh and endless, impossible-to-refuse activities for the damned. As Brut continued to tell his tales, day after day, finding the opportunity to simply be free for a bit became, in a way, its own compulsion.

Working one day (or was it night?) Nero hit the wall with his shovel, but instead of finding solid rock, the blade sunk right through, revealing an open space. At their next respite, Brut and Nero looked through the hole to find a crude tunnel. After that it took them months to explore the passageways that ran like veins through Hell, while still doing their jobs.

When they finally found the one that led to the surface, they had to power through their compulsions and
force
themselves to crawl through and stand on solid ground. But once they’d done so, the implications were amazing. Minions
could
be on the surface. All the security measures and traps were rendered useless by this one, perfect escape hatch.

They weren’t the first to get out, but it had been so difficult, there couldn’t have been more than a few others. Brut took off running, wild and free. Nero took deep breaths of the fresh, clean air. The last time he’d seen the stars, his humanity barely made him different from the animals. But now he looked around to see houses, cars, lights…so much had changed.

He was out of Hell. He didn’t know what to do first. He wanted to just lay back and curl his fists in the green grass. He’d crouched to run his fingertips over the soft blades when he saw her. She was playing with a tiny dog, which started growling the minute he saw Nero. The minion curled his lip, and the animal yipped like he’d been bitten.

But she was something. Her brown hair had been basking in the sun and, even in the darkness, bits of sunlight threaded between the strands. Her eyes were brown as well, but ringed in gold. She followed her dog’s line of sight, and then she saw him.

Nero stood, his leather pants and rippled chest marked and burned from the flames in Hell. He couldn’t imagine what she thought of him.

“Who is it?”

She asked the question like she thought he might be intimidated into providing his résumé in response. Instead he walked slowly toward her. The poodle jumped up, and she caught him in a well-practiced move. She watched Nero as he came closer.

“I’ll call the police. They can be here in less than two minutes.”

“I do not seek to injure you, woman.” Nero stepped into a white pool of illumination. The cabin’s lighting offered him a stage. He was still as she assessed him. He watched as the understanding that he wasn’t human reached her eyes.

“Oh…
Oh.”

“Your police?” He said the words as if they were a foreign language. “What will they do? I wish only to breathe fresh air, but your beauty has stopped me from enjoying nature.”

She cleared her throat and brought her poodle closer. “Flattery won’t stop me from calling the authorities.”

“I speak only the truth as I feel it.”

“Well, you better go back to where you came from. Don’t step any closer.”

Nero could tell she was trying to stay angry, but his body—clad only in torn leather pants—had mesmerized her.

“I will not step closer. For you, I will stay here. But I would like to touch your hair and see if the different colors have distinct textures. I would love a cool drink of water, and after that, I will touch my lips to yours in appreciation of your kindness.” He remained fixed as a statue as he spoke.

“You know what? Why can’t a guy like you—wearing all his clothes, for that matter—approach me in a bar? If you said that to me on a Friday night I’d hand you my panties in surrender. Instead you have to be a thing that emerged from the dark of my backyard. My luck sucks.”

She moved slowly and carefully to the side of the cabin, never taking her eyes off of him, and turned a small wheel. A hose puffed up with a rush of liquid, and soon there was a cold, clear stream pouring onto his feet.

He growled at the sight of the water and knelt quickly, dipping his mouth into the stream and lapping it hungrily like an animal.

She sighed and set her poodle down. The nervous canine scampered away as she picked up the hose to demonstrate. “Look. Here, you can pick it up and drink.” She held it to her lips and took a small sip, wiping her mouth when she was done.

He rose and took the hose carefully, not touching her. He felt her eyes on him as he drank his fill. Then he held his hand under the stream and reveled in the silk of the water covering his fingers. He turned the hose toward his chest and closed his eyes. The sensation was too pleasurable to bear.

“You’re smoking.” She took a step back.

He smiled at the cloud of steam around him, and she bit her lip as he sighed and scrubbed his chest. “Can I have your lips now?” he asked suddenly. He let go of the hose, and the stream drenched the leg of her jeans on its way to the ground. When she gasped, he stomped on the green rubber to stop the watery assault.

“Maybe we should know each other’s names?” she shot back, recovering quickly. “And no, of course not. I don’t want to be a slut.”

But he could see her looking at his mouth. “I’m known as Nero. What do you go by?” He pushed his dark hair from his forehead.

“Um, Jenny. I go by Jenny.” Her poodle peeked around the house and barked.

“Your beast is tiny and angry.” He pointed to the shaking poodle.