Sealed in Sin

by Juliette Cross

  For Jude and his fellow demon hunters tell her she is a Vessel, one who is born to serve the Light, but can be corrupted into a weapon of darkness. And to survive, she must trust a man whose unearthly eyes promise heaven…but whose powers unleash hell.

  Warning: Contains a dark and brooding demon hunter who harbors even darker secrets, a snarky heroine who’s being hunted by every demon in the underworld, and a sadistic demon prince with a fancy for violent sexual encounters.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Forged in Fire:

  The music pumped hard and loud, wavering between old-school classics and modern tunes. Mindy suddenly squealed with delight. I knew why without asking. The Cure’s song “Fascination Street” started thrumming all around us. As much of a Barbie Doll as she was, Mindy had eclectic taste in music, and anything by The Cure required complete adoration. Taking my beer with me, I followed her back onto the floor, squeezing through the sweaty bodies.

  Unfortunately, Steven did too. Persistence—I suppose that is a virtue in some people. Right now, it was just annoying. I sipped on the Abita to avoid talking to him and moved to the slow beat. Mindy and David shuffled off together, locked in an embrace. I feigned interest, pretending to listen to Steven yammer about who-knows-what, but all I wanted was to peer behind him at Mr. Rugged and Beautiful.

  He hadn’t moved, still watching from his solitary post with hooded eyes. Actually, from here, I couldn’t really tell if his eyes were directed at me or simply in my general vicinity.

  Oh crap! Here came sandy-haired gyrating boy again, more earnest than ever. His hands found my hips, quickly moving south.

  “Back off!” I shouted over the music, elbowing him in the ribs.

  Not too hard, but hard enough to make the average guy get the hint. He didn’t.

  “Dude, did you hear her? Back off!” Steven stepped in.

  For once, I was thankful he was present. Steven grabbed the guy’s shoulder, but Sandy-hair pushed Steven so hard he fell through the crowd into the DJ’s stage. Other dancers sidestepped and turned back to their partners, probably thinking him drunk. Sandy-hair swiveled to me. A cold expression shuddered across his face. I stepped back, but he caught my wrist in an unbreakable grip. He pulled me hard against his chest, knocking my bottle to the floor, pinning my arms under his. He grinned. Primal fear flared inside me. Something was very wrong here. Again, a flash of red skimmed across his eyes. Was I already tipsy from half a bottle of beer?

  “Let her go,” a deep voice rumbled directly behind me.

  Sandy-hair tore his gaze from mine. One glance at the deep-voiced person over my shoulder, and shock skittered over his expression. Or was it fear? He bared his teeth like a cornered animal, then let me go, backing away toward the exit of the club.

  I twisted around, looking up, way up, into the face of Mr. R-and-B standing a head taller than me. I was five eight and wearing boots. Dark eyes, so dark they were almost black. An unreadable expression set in harsh lines. I couldn’t form a coherent thought, much less a sentence. From far away, he was stunning. Up close, I couldn’t even breathe. He gazed down at me for what seemed like an eternity while lights and music pumped around us. Captivating. Hypnotizing. Was he putting me under some spell? Why couldn’t I think straight? My mouth hung agape as I tried to regain composure.

  Finally, he spoke. “Are you all right?”

  Me? No! I’m about to need resuscitation from lack of oxygen. Preferably mouth-to-mouth. And from you, please.

  “Yes. I’m fine,” I whispered, clearing my throat.

  All of a sudden, it was very hot in here. Where was that beer?

  He stared at me a moment longer. He appeared to be somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, but something in those dark depths made him seem so much older. His olive skin reminded me of warmer climates; not here in Cajun country but somewhere distant, exotic. Wavy dark brown hair hung loosely across his forehead and to the nape of his neck. He hadn’t shaved recently, and man, oh man did I want to run my fingers across that scruffy jawline. I realized I was staring, no, gawking at him. A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. Without saying anything else, he pivoted and headed for the exit, which was quite a pleasant view.

  By this time, Steven was back at my side, scowling.

  “Where’s that dude? I’m gonna smash his face in!”

  Yeah. Whatever.

  I couldn’t figure out exactly what just happened. Of course I was thankful Mr. R-and-B showed up, for more than one reason. There was something very wrong with Sandy-hair. Maybe he was on drugs. Ecstasy could make people very touchy-feely, so I was told. The way he glared at me, the sheer menace in those strange-colored eyes—disturbing to say the least. Must be the laser lights in here.

  I waved the bartender over and downed the beer the moment it was in my hands, I tried to chill out. Glancing back at the dance floor, I saw David half carrying Mindy toward the bar with a rip in her jeans at the knee.

  “Mindy! What happened?”

  “Fell and twisted it.” She winced with each step. I pulled up a stool.

  “Let me go get the car,” said David. “I’ll pull it around.”

  “No, David,” Mindy whined in her lilting drunk voice. “Stay with meeee.” She hooked her arm tighter around his neck. One too many appletinis.

  “I’ll go.” I set my beer on the bar. “Wait here.”

  Mindy grabbed my arm. “Sorry.” She pouted with glazed eyes. “Didn’t mean to ruin your birthday.”

  “You didn’t.” I smiled. “Be right back.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Steven took David’s keys and followed me. We pushed through the crowd back to the entrance, passing by big-and-beefy at the door.

  “Later, Sunshine,” I called with a wave.

  He nodded with a thin smile. Not a soul walked the street. I found it sort of strange to have a bar located in the more industrial end of town. But it was an eccentric place. Maybe that’s what they were going for. Exclusivity, to make it more appealing. A gust of wind whooshed by, lifting my hair. I wrapped my arms around myself as we angled down the side street toward the car.

  “You cold?” asked Steven behind me.

  “No.” But something made me shiver. “You have the keys?”

  “Yeah, right—”

  I heard the keys jingle and fall to the pavement, then a thump. I spun to find Steven slumped against the wall. Unconscious. Before I could register what happened, my body slammed up against the brick wall behind me. Pinned in place by none other than Sandy-hair, his hand grasping and squeezing my throat.

  “Keep still.” Voice low and gravelly. “Don’t scream.”

  As if I could. How could I, of all people, get myself into a defenseless position? I knew how to fend off an attack in a hundred different ways, but he already had me in such a tight grip. He crushed me against the wall, choking the life out of me. I stared up at him, hoping to memorize his face for a police report later. If there was a later. Spots hazed my vision, though I definitely recognized those hate-filled eyes, blazing blood-red down at me. What the hell?

  “Such a pretty one.” A guttural murmur. “Such a shame to have to kill you.”

  Kill me? What! I squirmed, trying to pull free. Useless. A sinister hissing laugh in my ear. Lightheaded. Dark spots at the corner of my vision. I couldn’t see anything anymore. I drifted. I thought how sad my father would be that I died in such a violent way as I slipped further into oblivion. I thought of my mother.

  Suddenly, I gulped air back into my lungs. I was free of him, sliding down the wall, feeling my way along the cold brick behind me. A dark shape loomed, grappling with my attacker. Finally catching my breath, chest still heaving, I focused to see a shadowed figure lifting my would-be killer by the throat off the ground, holding him midair. His words confused me even more.

  “Stop human-hopping, and come out to play.”

  I knew that deep voice from the dance floor: R-and-B. Sandy-hair held on to my hero’s arms. He laugh
ed that wicked laugh again.

  “Make me,” he hissed.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  R-and-B placed his free hand on the guy’s forehead, still holding him aloft. He whispered something I couldn’t hear. Sandy-hair screamed in agony. His body blurred. A second head twisted, separated from the first. How was that even possible? The second one was malformed and hideous with deep-set eyes, no nose at all and gnashing fangs. R-and-B pulled the monstrous head, slowly ripping a writhing, ghastly creature from inside Sandy-hair, letting the human host slump to the pavement. The monster screeched and hissed as my dark rescuer chanted inaudible words. Tiny hairs on my arms rose with a rippling chill. An aura of flickering golden light swept wide above his head and shoulders, beaming off his back.

  I rubbed my eyes, sure I’d been slipped some mind-altering drugs in the club. R-and-B whispered more vehemently, words I couldn’t quite hear in another language, though they sounded familiar. The creature screamed, twisted, unable to free itself. The size of a small child with bony, spindly limbs and gnashing teeth, the thing beat and scratched and clawed the air. I heard the final words of the creature’s captor, his aura flickering like flame.

  “Go back to hell.”

  One stranger seeks to claim her heart…another is destined to destroy her.

  Idol of Bone

  © 2015 Jane Kindred

  Looking Glass Gods, Book 1

  Ra. Just two letters. Barely a breath. When she stumbles into the frozen Haethfalt highlands, her name is all she has—the last remnant of a past she’s managed to keep hidden, even from herself. Her magic, however, isn’t so easy to conceal—magic that’s the province of the Meer, an illicit race to which she can’t possibly belong.

  The eccentric carpenter who takes her in provides a welcome distraction from the puzzle of herself. Though Jak refuses to identify as either male or female, the unmistakable spark of desire between them leaves Ra determined to find out what lies beneath the enigmatic exterior.

  But more dangerous secrets are brewing underneath the wintry moors. Jak’s closest friend, Ahr, is haunted by his own unspeakable past. Bounty hunters seeking fugitive Meer refuse to leave him in peace.

  Harboring feelings for both Ra and Ahr, Jak nonetheless struggles to keep them apart. Because like the sun and the moon coming together, their inevitable reunion has the potential to destroy Jak’s whole world.

  Warning: Shape-shifting? That’s so last millennium. Reincarnation? Yawn. Get ready for a gender-bending fantasy that will fire your imagination and haunt your dreams.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Idol of Bone:

  “I don’t know where she came from,” Jak insisted in a low voice. The stranger was curled in a chair by the fire in the gathering room, drinking a hot cup of kerum while the rest of the moundhold huddled in the kitchen trying not to be obvious about the fact that they were huddled in the kitchen. Their guest had offered up no other information about herself or her situation, content to drink the pungent liquid with an air of curious interest.

  “She looks Deltan,” said Keiren, opening the kitchen door a crack to glance out.

  “So what?” Jak pulled the door shut, eyes narrowed with irritation. This was obviously about Ahr. “Why must we have such mistrust for anyone from the Delta? Aren’t we all, originally?”

  Peta, the mound matriarch, shrugged absently. “My nan came here from the Delta. Rem’s great-grandparents were northfolk.”

  “We’ve no objection to Deltans,” Oldman Rem said gruffly, packing his pipe at the table. Jak couldn’t refrain from laughing out loud, and Rem frowned. “It’s not your friend’s race we object to, Jak, it’s his standoffishness. The mounds are a cooperative collective, not every man for himself. A man’s got to give something to get something, and he gives precious little.”

  Jak sighed. “Can we just leave Ahr out of this for the moment? Besides, she speaks perfect Mole. She has to be from around here somewhere.”

  “Then someone will be looking for her,” said Peta. “She must have suffered some trauma, hit her head perhaps.”

  Keiran snorted. “Or perhaps she’s just daft.”

  Peta ignored him. “She must stay the night, at any rate. It’s too cold to let her wander about on her own. We’ll try to help her find her people in the morning.”

  Keiren’s scowl deepened. “How do we know she’s not going to kill us all in our sleep?”

  “Oh, for soothsake, Key.” Mell, normally quiet, tossed a dishrag at her partner from her spot by the sink. Jak tried and failed to suppress a grin, earning a black look from Geffn, who’d said nothing since Ra’s arrival—not that silence from him was unusual these days when he and Jak were in the same room. But if looks could kill, the moundhold would have had one less name in it from the vitriol in that glance.

  For once, unexpectedly, he had something to say. “What’s this really about, Jak? Went out and scrounged up new blood because you ran out of people in Haethfalt to fuck?” The room went silent, and Jak sucked in a sharp breath.

  Peta put a hand on her son’s shoulder, but Geffn rebuffed the gesture and swept from the room, letting the kitchen door swing closed behind him with a bang.

  Keiren tossed the damp dishrag back into the sink. “Congratulations, Jak.”

  “What in sooth did I do?”

  Keiren opened his mouth, apparently all too eager to enumerate Jak’s sins, but Mell grabbed her partner by the arm and steered him toward the door. “We’re going to bed.”

  “See you all back here in the morning, then,” Keiren threw over his shoulder, not bothering to lower his voice when he added, “if our throats aren’t slit.”

  Jak was left standing awkwardly before the couple that had become like second parents, though they were getting on in years; Geffn had been a late-in-life surprise after they’d lost their first son, Pim. Rem avoided Jak’s eyes, studiously lighting his pipe.

  “Why don’t you find our guest something warm to wear before we sit down to dinner?” Peta suggested, smiling fondly. At least she hadn’t judged Jak for the disaster of the failed relationship with Geffn. “I had the distinct impression there wasn’t much beneath that cloak of hers.”

  Jak looked toward the door. “I got that impression, too. Honestly, I hope Keiren’s right and she’s just daft. I’d hate to think what else would send a woman out onto the moor in this weather dressed like that.”

  Ra followed Jak down the hallway with an amiable shrug at the suggestion that she might like to change clothes, relinquishing her empty kerum cup to Peta with a somewhat reluctant glance after it, as though she’d rather have more.

  In the darkened bedroom, Jak fumbled to light the oil lamp, and nearly knocked it over when the flame came up with a sputter. “Holy fucking sooth.” The words were out before Jak could stop them.

  Ra had slipped off the cloak and dropped it where she stood. There was nothing underneath. She gave Jak a quizzical look, completely unselfconscious, as though standing naked in snow boots were nothing out of the ordinary. If something untoward had happened to her, there was no sign of it. Not a single blemish or bruise marked the pristine flesh.

  Jak closed the bedroom door and picked up the cloak to shove it back at her. “Look, just—hold on to this for a minute.”

  Ra gathered the awkward garment in her arms beneath the white slopes of her breasts. “It’s warm down here.”

  Jak tried to focus on the ridiculous boots, but it was impossible not to look as Ra came forward into the room to examine the sparse furnishings. She had the palest skin Jak had ever seen, paler still in contrast to the mane of ebony that hung past her hips—just shy of covering her backside while she bent toward the mirror over the dresser.

  Jak swallowed and muttered, “It is now.”

  The pale brow furrowed with some unidentifiable emotion. Ra looked at everything, even her own reflection, with a sort of wonder, as if for the first time. The black sapphire eyes met Jak’s in the mirror, and Jak meant
to look away, but couldn’t seem to. A person could get lost in that liquid ink, like staring into a night sky dusted with the brilliance of stars and forgetting the earth. Like her unconscious poise, Ra’s gaze held no shame, only curiosity. The frankness of her appraisal made it feel as though Jak were the one who was naked.

  Jak blushed, turning away to rummage through the wardrobe. “You really need to put some clothes on.” It was doubtful any of Jak’s pants would fit her tall frame, but maybe something with a drawstring waist would do for now. Jak tried to concentrate on anything but Ra’s unadorned skin.

  “Skirt and sweater,” Ra murmured.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any of those.” Jak glanced up, holding a pair of painter’s pants, but Ra was somehow already dressed. The foreign fabric of a long, dark skirt and a cardinal-hued sweater hugged her form perfectly. This time Jak managed to not only knock the lamp over, but slammed a thumb in the wardrobe door as well.

  Cursing, Jak righted the lamp before the oil spilled out. “How did you—?” The question fell unfinished. There was no answer Jak could accept.

  Ra said nothing, her expression unreadable. Images of the dark gods of the Delta sprang to mind—gods who could conjure and kill at a word—but Jak shook the thoughts away. It was superstition and nonsense. The Meer had been nothing more than men. There were no such things as gods—or Hidden Folk, for that matter, even if wisdom dictated that the tradition of honoring the land as a living entity was better heeded than ignored. This was something else, something beyond Jak’s experience. Something completely and utterly devoid of rational explanation. There was nothing Jak hated more.

  “I expect you must be tired from your travels.” Jak took time relighting the lamp. “We don’t get many visitors this time of year.”

  “I’m not daft.”

  With one hand still cupping the burning match, Jak studied Ra’s placid and slightly amused expression. “Sorry?”

  “You were wondering before. I’m not. But I thank you for your hospitality…” Ra paused, at last taking in Jak’s appearance with an expression Jak had seen a hundred times before. “I’m sorry. Is it sir or madam?” Above Ra’s head, the hobnail glass of the windows circling the mound at ground level—Rem’s masterful touch that made their mound the most distinctive in Haethfalt—glittered in the lamplight.