The Devil's Soldier: A Paranormal Vampire Romance Novel (Devil Series Book 3)

by Raven Steele

  These thoughts had settled deep inside him and turned into a near uncontrollable rage. He couldn’t wait to see Boaz again. He’d hold nothing back until one of them was dead.

  While Lucien drove to the other side of the city, trying to keep his temper in check, Charlie called Liane and explained what they were doing. Lucien listened in to distract himself.

  “Do you need my help?” Liane asked. Her voice sounded tired, as if she had just woken up.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Charlie said. “You do well against witches.”

  “Can I get a ride?”

  “Can you take a cab? Sorry, but I’m not at the Deific.”

  She was silent for a few seconds then said, “Where did you say it was?”

  “Roxy. It’s a night club on 77th.”

  “I need to get dressed, but I should be able to get there in thirty minutes.”

  Charlie glanced at his watch. “That should work.”

  “Be careful, Charlie,” she said before hanging up.

  Charlie lowered the phone to his lap and peered out the window, his expression solemn.

  “Is it serious?” Lucien asked.

  “Is what serious?”

  “Whatever it is you have going on with Liane.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want it to be?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” Charlie answered, his voice quiet. “She is a means to an end.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Charlie’s silence weighted the air in the car.

  “Charlie?” Lucien asked again.

  “Park over there,” Charlie said, pointing to a space in front of a shipping center.

  Lucien drove into the empty spot and shut off the engine. “We are still several blocks away from the club.”

  “I know.” Charlie opened his door and jumped out.

  Lucien followed after, wondering if he should press the issue about Liane, but decided against it. Charlie could do what he wanted with his love life.

  They were a block away when Lucien heard the club’s music with his sensitive hearing. It wasn’t his type, way too much bass, and would make it difficult to hear anyone talking inside.

  He and Charlie rounded the corner. There was a long line of people waiting anxiously to get inside, and by the looks of their nicer-than-usual-club attire, this was a much classier place than he was expecting. The women mostly wore dresses and the men were in nice shirts and dark slacks.

  Charlie must’ve noticed too because he glanced down at his own pants. “I don’t think I’m dressed right.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get us in.”

  “What? You don’t think I could?”

  Lucien looked him up and down. Charlie was still in his work clothes, tan pants and jacket, and a red polo shirt. “You look like you just left your shift at Target.”

  Charlie glanced down at himself again and grimaced. “Damn it.”

  “Follow me.” Lucien led the way to the front of the line. Several people called out to them to get in back.

  “This is never going to work,” Charlie mumbled.

  Two security guards stopped them at the door. “Did you miss the line?” the one with short hair and a Metallica t-shirt asked.

  “John called us,” Lucien said. “He said to come down and fix some issue with one of the speakers. We’re from Electronics R Us.”

  “Sure you are,” the other guard snorted.

  Lucien gripped his upper arm. The short-haired guard reached to stop him, but Lucien grabbed his arm also. His hold was tight enough that neither of them dared move. “We don’t want any trouble, but we will be going in there. Do you understand?”

  Lucien looked at each of them and released his vampirism through just a gaze. Their eyes widened. One of them nodded and reached back with his free hand to open the door. Lucien released them and motioned Charlie forward, despite a sudden shout of protests from the customers in line. Before the door closed, Lucien saw the short-haired guard fumbling with a phone.

  Charlie noticed too. “Those tricks don’t work as well as they used to, Lucien. He’s reporting you as a supernatural.”

  “Let him. The DSRD is coming either way.”

  Lucien walked farther into the club, his hair and clothing blowing from dozens of fans mounted high along the walls. The club was packed both on the main floor and on a balcony that circled the room. Blue lights pulsed from above, illuminating the people below and flashing on bodies moving in sync to a throbbing beat.

  Charlie grabbed his arm and spoke loudly in his ear. “Liane just texted. She’s almost here. I’m going to wait for her by the entrance.”

  Lucien nodded and turned back into the crowd. He took a second to scan the people, looking for anything out of the ordinary, but saw nothing. He turned to his vampire senses. Right away, he detected several supernaturals in the room, but determining if they were dangerous was going to be a little trickier.

  He slipped inside the giant ever-changing organism of moving bodies and made his way toward the bar where a man with long dark hair chatted with a female. An electric energy surrounded him, unlike the humans; it flickered in the air the way an illusion appears on the horizon in the hot desert. It wasn’t strong, but enough to mark him as a supernatural.

  Lucien sat on the stool next to where Long-hair chatted and expanded his hearing so he could listen in on their conversation. It took less than a minute for Lucien to determine he wasn’t a threat. The woman he was with was a coworker who was trying to set him up with one of her friends.

  Lucien made his way to the next unusual energy force. This supernatural was a woman with a faint animal smell. Lucien couldn’t detect what kind, but he guessed she was a shifter. When he passed, their eyes met. She nodded in recognition and returned to the man she was with. He didn’t feel she was a threat either.

  A more powerful energy, more felt than seen, drew his attention to the balcony above. Henry was standing against the rail eyeing the crowd. He locked eyes with Lucien and motioned his head to the right. Lucien followed his gaze to a tight crowd of people all jumping up and down in front of a massive speaker. The air there was especially hazy, more so than anywhere else in the club. Somewhere within that mass lurked someone powerful. Lucien headed in that direction.

  A woman approached him, taking his hand. “Want to dance?”

  Lucien shook his head and kept moving, his focus on the crowd ahead. He searched for an opening into the clustered group. As soon as one opened, he dove in, but his head spun and the sounds in the room slowed.

  He rubbed his eyes hard, trying to clear the fog from his mind. Humans swarmed all around him, bouncing up and down and bumping into him on all sides. It took him great effort to lift his gaze. The men and women all had their heads turned downward, as if someone had coordinated the motion. He caught a glimpse of their eyes. They were wide open and full of never-ending darkness. No whites of their eyes could be seen.

  Lucien whirled around, still trying to fight the dizziness in his head. In the center of the group, he spotted a woman different from the rest. She wore a short black dress and was thrashing her head back and forth, whipping long red hair to the side in time to a musical beat. He approached her slowly, having to physically move people away from him. No one protested, as they all seemed to be in some kind of a trance.

  Lucien was almost to the woman when her eyelids snapped open. The intense stare coming from her blue eyes nearly dropped him to his knees. He flexed his muscles in concentration to fight off the power she seemed to be having over him.

  She moved forward, her full lips threatening to break into a grin. She came to stand inches in front of him, her eyes scanning him up and down.

  “You are magnificent,” she purred. “A perfect,” she said, leaning toward him until her mouth was only a breath away, “specimen.”

  The sweet smell of her breath, and the way her gaze held his further clouded his mind. What was it about her? She was
not familiar, and yet… her exposed skin, her slender fingers, the tiny diamond pendant around her neck. He reached up as if to touch it, but she caught his hand and entwined her fingers into his while her other hand trailed up his side and slipped beneath his shirt. He would’ve shivered had he been in his right mind. No one had ever touched him like this except for Eve.

  Eve.

  He pictured her now. Imagined that the woman in front of him was her. It was an easy illusion, especially when the red-haired woman’s eyes flashed brilliant green, just like Eve’s. She lifted on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his. He didn’t fight it, not when Eve felt so close. He snaked his arm behind her back and pressed her to his body, making her gasp.

  The kiss turned deep and passionate, and he drew her tongue into his mouth and grinded himself into her. She moaned and slipped a hand between them and down to his hard member. She rubbed the length of it.

  “You are so delicious,” she moaned.

  There was a moment, small as it was, where Lucien sensed something else in the kiss, a probing on his mind. He thought he should fight back, but then he would have to let go of the illusion of Eve that felt so real.

  The kiss ended and the woman said, “Thank you for the magic. Now sleep.”

  Lucien closed his eyes and dreamed of Eve.

  A moment later, his eyelids flew open to a sharp sting across his cheek. Liane was standing in front of him, yelling something. She slapped him again. Charlie stood next to her, his eyebrows pulled tightly together. Slowly, Lucien’s hearing returned.

  “Snap out of it!” Liane said. She raised her hand to slap him again, but he caught her wrist.

  “What happened?” he asked. He was still in the club, standing alone in front of a large speaker. The redheaded woman was gone.

  “You completely lost it, that’s what!” she said. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Charlie placed his hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “You need to shake off the magic. She really did a number on you.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?” Liane snapped. She glanced around anxiously.

  Charlie leaned forward and said into his ear, “Alarica is here.”

  Chapter 36

  Alarica melted into the crowd, her hair slowly changing from red to black. Even her dress turned gray. She kept her eyes on Lucien, and whispered his name, the syllables sliding from her tongue. There was a beautiful darkness inside him, buried deep within, and it had tasted so good. Maybe she could tap into that dark magic somehow. Before she killed him, she would try.

  He was standing in front of the speaker, his head down as he was still in a trance. She had expected him to put up more of a fight when she had stolen his magic, but he had easily caved, and all it had taken was a single image of Eve. Alarica would very much like to kill his love for Eve. Perhaps then she could eat all that darkness inside him.

  Charlie appeared in front of Lucien, along with a woman. Alarica searched Eve’s memories until she came up with a name: Liane, another witch. She was yelling something at Lucien, and then she slapped him. Lucien shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind. Charlie whispered something in his ear. Lucien straightened, completely alert now, and by the way he was suddenly scanning the audience, he must know about her.

  Time to make her move. This was going to be so much fun. The first thing she needed to do was change the music.

  Toward the back of the room, a DJ stood behind a table, his head bobbing up and down while his hands played with several of the dials on the electronic equipment. The song he was playing, a mix from a popular boy band, was giving her a headache. She reached her hand up in his direction and began to squeeze, focusing her energy on his throat. The DJ’s eyes widened, and he clawed at his neck. Alarica squeezed tighter. Blood vessels in his eyes burst, turning the whites of them red. His face grew scarlet, then a deep purple, almost to the color she loved, but she didn’t have time to wait for the shade of death’s gray.

  The DJ fell backwards, dead. Alarica mentally changed the musical tracks so quickly a loud screeching sound vibrated the room, making everyone cover their ears. She stopped only when she found a song she liked. There were no voices, only a fast pumping beat and several violins. It took a few seconds for the crowd to recover from the screeching and to get into the music. Their bodies swayed and thumped to the rhythm.

  So did she.

  She stood in the center of the room, surrounded protectively by others. When Lucien finally sensed her, he tried to break through the crowd, but Alarica didn’t allow anyone to move. She held them fast with magic, knowing that neither Lucien nor Charlie would hurt a human to get to her. But then, both startling her and impressing her, Lucien shoved humans across the room, and by his stone expression, he didn’t care about any of them, only getting to her.

  If she were capable of love, she could love this vampire.

  Charlie took hold of Lucien and attempted to pull him back. Alarica glanced to the crowded balcony above them. With a flick of her wrist, she exploded the metal poles that held it up. The whole side began to fall. Several people on the balcony screamed and clawed at anything they could grab onto. A few fell the twenty-foot drop to the floor. The rest of the balcony should have fallen, too, but it was curiously still in place.

  Impossible!

  Alarica glanced around. The whole room had become a mob; people pushed and shoved to get outside. On the other side of the room, Charlie and the witch Liane were trying to get people off the broken balcony as quickly as possible while Lucien searched for a way around the crowd. It would take a minute for him to find his way over to her.

  High up on the opposite side of the great room, near the edge of the balcony that still stood against all odds, was, she narrowed her eyes, a vampire. An ancient and powerful one: Henry. Alarica’s smile grew as she remembered who he was. Henry was just the vampire she needed to remove the curse, and she knew exactly how to make him do it.

  She snapped her arms downward and whispered, “Ascendo.”

  Her whole body lifted and continued to rise until she was standing on the balcony near him, but not close enough that he could make a grab for the necklace.

  Henry had one hand pointed in the direction of the fallen balcony and the other turned toward her in a defensive position.

  “Do you really think you can do both?” she asked.

  “Do you care to find out?”

  She smiled, wanting very much to know the answer to his question, but she needed something else first.

  “Henry,” she said, “I’m surprised you showed yourself to me of all people. You know I’m working with Boaz, right?”

  His eyes flashed to the broken balcony where many people were still scrambling to get off. “You could do better.”

  Alarica laughed. “So true, and that’s why I need you.”

  He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “You see, Boaz put a spell on this necklace that is making me do whatever he says. I need that spell broken.” Alarica sensed Lucien coming up behind her. She quickly spun around and shocked him from the balcony. His body flew through the air and hit the ground. She turned back to Henry. “So, how about a trade? You get rid of this spell, and I’ll keep your secret.”

  “Maybe we can discuss this another time,” Henry said. Deep creases etched his forehead as he continued to concentrate on telepathically holding up the balcony. She didn’t appreciate the distraction while she was trying to have a conversation with him.

  She turned toward the balcony and stretched forth her hand. With a spin of her fingers, the entire structure collapsed to the floor, sending a plume of dust into the air. Several people screamed in terror. Their sounds only added to the macabre music still playing from the DJ’s table.

  Henry’s face twisted into both horror and anger. His face snapped back to hers. “Fine. Come close, and I’ll fix your little problem.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?
” she asked. “The second I come near you, you’re going to try and get my necklace.”

  She touched the dangling orb hanging from her neck. To everyone else it appeared as a tiny jewel.

  Out of nowhere, Lucien leapt up and over the railing, his fangs bared. She barely had time to raise her hand, trapping him midair within a tight ball of energy.

  “It’s not time for you,” she growled at Lucien.

  Henry lunged for her, his hand outstretched toward the necklace. Alarica backhanded him across the face with such force that his body spun around.

  “Enough of this!” She cast her arms downward, propelling her once more into the air.

  Lucien fell from her mental cocoon and landed in a crouching position upon the floor.

  “There’s nowhere for you to go, Alarica,” Henry said. He was following her slowly along the remaining balcony while her body floated high in the center of the room.

  “Who said I’m trying to leave?” She glanced down at a woman who was crying and holding her ankle. A man tried to help her to stand. His efforts were pointless. Only Alarica could help.

  She mentally took hold of the woman’s leg and twisted hard, flipping the woman onto her stomach. The woman cried in pain and clawed at the concrete floor as Alarica dragged her to the center of the room. Charlie and Liane rushed to help her, but Alarica sent a burst of energy toward them, knocking them both into a wall. She raised her left hand high, her fingers pressed together. Just before she snapped them apart, she turned to Henry and winked. Her fingers parted. At the same time, all five extremities of the woman, her legs, arms and head, were torn from her body, spraying blood across the room, but it looked more like ink beneath the room’s blue lighting, which disappointed her.

  Henry growled low and pushed forward with both of his hands. An invisible force smashed Alarica in the chest, sending her spinning across the room until she smashed into a metal pipe near the ceiling. She grunted but then smiled. It was nice to have a little competition.