The Demon Mistress

by Ashlee Sinn

  At the end of the stage, Flint dropped to all fours and started dry humping the floor while giving his fans a sultry smile. Men screamed his name—some of them passing out. The crowd parted to allow the bouncers to pull away the men on the ground, and when it did, Flint’s eyes found mine.

  I’d never met the fae before, but he studied me like he’d just seen the queen. He flipped his hand in the air and the DJ turned up the music, spinning it to a different speed. Flint stood, ignoring the men stuffing money in his pants, and beckoned me to the stage. I shook my head and crossed my arms.

  He pouted, and then whispered something to one of the bouncers near the stage. The man turned, grinned at me, and stomped my way. Flint continued his performance all the while watching what was about to go down with me.

  “Flint want’s you on stage,” the bouncer yelled into my ear.

  “No.”

  “Come on.” He grabbed my arm and I immediately showed him my strength by standing put. The man gave me an inquisitive look before he finally dropped his hand from my bicep. “Please?”

  I laughed. A polite bouncer. “I don’t dance anymore.”

  “Flint said you do.”

  I glanced up on the stage only to see Flint wink at me. God dammit. I needed his spell, and if I had to dance with him to get it, then I would. It wasn’t like my whole existence depended on it or anything.

  With a groan, I unzipped my skirt and slid it down my legs. The bouncer watch with his mouth hanging open as I took off my sweater until I only wore my bra, thongs, and stiletto ankle boots. “Do you mind?” I asked, handing my clothes to him.

  With a robotic move, he let me lay my garments on his arm and helped me make my way through the crowd. Flint cheered when I reached the stage, giving me his hands to lift me up. In one quick move, he had me up on the stage in front of the entire club.

  “Everyone, please welcome Bella!”

  They all cheered, even the gay guys, and the energy from them helped egg me on. The beat was perfect for a walk, so I made my way to the pole half way down the stage. Grabbing hold, I swung my head back and bent in half. Side to side I let my hair flow back and forth with the beat. When I stood up, I noticed that a group of women had gathered near me. Flint raised his brows a second before pulling himself up on the pole and executing a perfect split as he hung upside down.

  “Showoff,” I grumbled. Knowing I couldn’t do that, I slid down to the stage and crawled over to the women. Beautiful and drunk, the three closest to me started shoving money down my bra. One of them squeezed my nipple, but I let it go. The adrenaline rush of performing and pleasing had taken over and I didn’t care if I usually had a no touching rule. Swinging my hips around to face the outside of the stage, I pushed up onto my heels and bent over in front of the crowd. With a shake, I showed them all what I might have to offer. The women threw more money at me, and Flint laughed loud enough for me to hear.

  He made his way toward me, strutting to the beat and holding onto his suspenders. “You’re a natural,” he cooed.

  “I’ve been up here before.”

  “I can tell.” Flint suddenly wrapped both of his hands on my ass and pulled me against his hips. He pushed me backward and dipped me around to the other side like a choreographed dance. The crowd cheered, so when I snapped my head back up, I kicked my leg out to the side and let it land on his shoulder.

  “Oh,” he breathed, running his hand down my thigh.

  I slapped it away and grabbed his crotch, squeezing just hard enough to get him excited. Everyone clapped while Flint laughed, playing to the crowd like he did this every night. Dropping my leg, I snapped his suspender, and started to walk off the stage toward the curtain. Being sure to shake my ass on the way out, I blew Flint a kiss before disappearing backstage. I heard the customers chanting “Bella!” as they clapped, but I didn’t plan on going back out there. Flint got the show he wanted, and now it was my turn to get what I came here for.

  His bouncer was waiting for me backstage with my clothes. Giving him a smile, I dressed myself before Flint bounced through the curtain and let out a shout. “Holy shit, that was awesome.” Jumping down to greet me, he pulled me into a quick hug and then held me back at arm’s length. “I’d heard you were good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. The infamous Soul Snatcher twins. You two are a legend in my world.”

  I glanced around the room, “This world?”

  He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “Yes, this one. And maybe the homeland too.” With a wink, he directed us past the other male dancers and led me to his private dressing room. The guys all gave him compliments as we strutted through the backstage holding room, and Flint seemed to eat up every single piece of attention.

  When he finally closed the door behind him, he plopped down in his chair and swiveled it around to face me. “So, to what do I owe this honor?”

  I leaned against the counter on the opposite side and crossed my arms. “I’ve been told you might be able to help me.”

  He chuckled. “I can do a lot of things that help a lot of people.” With a snap of his finger, an apple appeared in his hand. He bit down into the juicy piece of fruit and gave me another wink. “What is it you need?”

  “I have to kill an angel.”

  Flint froze, staring at me with apple juice running down his chin. Then he laughed. And laughed some more until I thought he was going to die from the convulsions. But when he saw my serious face, he finally stopped. “Wait, is this for real?”

  I nodded. “It is.”

  “You know what I am, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, then you know that I can’t help you kill another living thing. If I do that, I’d be signing my own death sentence.” Flint visible shivered, the words haunting him more than he insinuated.

  “I’m not asking you to kill him with me. I’m asking you to help me find him.”

  With a sigh, Flint set his feet up on the only other chair in the tiny room. “Oh, well, that’s different. That I can do.” He winked at me again and tilted the apple toward me. “For a price.”

  “What do you want?”

  “World peace and happiness for all.” When I narrowed my eyes at him, he dropped his feet and leaned on his knees. “I’ll take that dagger you have shoved in your boot.”

  “What?”

  Flint cackled, and I swear his face briefly took on a different shape. “You heard me, Soul Snatcher.”

  “But I thought faeries couldn’t touch iron.”

  “We can’t,” he grinned. “But that’s Satan’s steel and I want it.”

  I briefly thought about Mammon’s reaction when she learned I gave up the dagger. But then I thought about the consequences of my failure should I not kill Jericho. I would be a slave to the serpent demon and our lives would be exposed to humans. Those two options sounded much worse than a lecture from Mammon, so I pulled out the dagger and tossed it to Flint. He jumped in the air, catching the blade and turning it over in his hands.

  “Excellent!” he cheered. “So, where is this angel you need to find.”

  “He’s in the city, or at least he was.”

  Flint closed his eyes and spread his arms. A few seconds later, a blue light surrounded his body and he levitated several inches off the floor. Tiny bolts of lightening shot across his skin while his lips murmured something I couldn’t understand. And then, just as quickly as it happened, Flint dropped back to the floor and clapped his hands together. “He’s still in the city.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jumping forward and giving me a kiss on the lips, Flint grinned and tapped the side of his head. “Fae magic, my little demon.”

  He said another quick spell which opened a portal to some type of storage area not connected to this building, or at least I didn’t think it was. Flint stepped through as I watched him pull out a bunch of different ingredients from lavender to dried rats and a giant egg while he danced around the shelves. Suddenly, he
started tossing me the ingredients and told me to make a pile in his dressing room. I complied and several minutes later, the portal snapped shut and Flint handed me an old piece of paper.

  “This can only be performed with a new moon, so you need to wait until tomorrow night.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped when Flint pressed his finger to my lips. “If you want to do this right, you have to follow the rules.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Is there something special I have to do?”

  “Nope,” he said as he piled the ingredients in a shopping bag that read Hot Stuff on the side. “Start an hour before sunset. Oh, and you might want to use one of your older pots to cook this in.”

  “Why?”

  He held his nose. “Very stinky.” His nasally voice made him laugh. “Now, run along and go get your angel.” Flint started shoving me out the door but then suddenly stopped. “Why do you have to kill him, anyway?”

  “To protect our secret from the humans.” It was a shortened version, but it was an explanation all the same.

  Flint bobbed his chin. “Good. We need to stay in hiding.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a small smile.

  “Go forth and conquer, demon.” He was already playing with the dagger, ignoring me and the news I’d just revealed to him.

  Go forth and conquer. Okay. I would. I had to.

  Jericho the Angel had no idea what was coming for him.

  I had no idea a faery spell could smell so putrid. If I hadn’t been in the penthouse suite of my building, I believe I would have had several neighbors knocking on my door and asking what had died in here. And how long had it been decomposing in my house. It wasn’t the dried rat or the egg that stunk, it had been the tree root and the liquid essence of a dragonfly that pushed the whole sloppy mix into rotten body territory. Ashby would have hated this.

  I smiled, thinking about my sister. But then I just got angry again because she’d left me to deal with this all on my own. While she was living it up in New Zealand on her honeymoon, I was being forced to kill someone to avoid becoming enslaved. Maybe her getting married was the best thing that could have happened to her. It certainly took her off the radar of Leviathan, and Mammon seemed to forget that my sister even existed.

  Maybe I should get married, too.

  Or maybe I should swallow this damn potion myself and die a putrid death. It would probably be less torturous in the end.

  I dropped in the last of the ingredients, a pair of ladybug wings, and waited for something to happen. A pop or a sparkle or maybe even that blue lightening? But instead I got nothing. Not a damn thing told me this was ready to go, and I had no idea if I’d prepared it correctly.

  “Fucking faeries,” I muttered to myself. They loved playing tricks on people and I really hoped I hadn’t put my faith into the wrong one tonight. I was down to my last twenty-four hours to kill Jericho. If this didn’t work, my whole life would change. The whole world could change.

  I hated this kind of pressure.

  Pouring the concoction into a glass, I did my best to try not to breathe in the fumes. I would dump the pot in the dumpster and I planned on getting outside with the glass as soon as I could. Slipping on a pair of jeans and a sweater, I stepped into my boots and held the potion and piece of paper with the incantation in my hand, and transported to the alleyway next to my building. Being on the ground level, and in the alley, I realized that the smell of the potion wasn’t much worse then the stench of urine and trash. This city had always smelled, and I briefly wondered if letting demons reveal themselves may actually do more good than harm.

  “It might help clean this place up,” I muttered to myself.

  Setting the glass and the dark brown, thick liquid on the ground, I opened the paper and started the ritual. Four steps west, three to the east, one north, one south and repeat ten times. With each step, there was a faery word I needed to speak and I hoped my pronunciation was good enough that the great fae magic gods would let this spell work. By the time I finished the ritual, I sucked in a deep breath and spoke the last word.

  And then I waited.

  Again, there was nothing.

  I waited some more.

  “Sonofabitch!” I spat, ready to throw the glass against the wall. “You fucking—”

  A light started to glow from the glass and then shot up into the air like the beams that came out of Jericho’s hands. It danced around about my head for several seconds before shooting up over the building and taking off into the city. Thinking quick, I blinked onto the balcony of my apartment and searched the sky for the beacon of light. It took a few minutes, but from my perch above the city, I could see most of it.

  “Where are you, Jericho?”

  A light off to my left caught my attention and I smiled. There, dancing above the Brooklyn Bridge was my tracking light, meaning Jericho must be somewhere on the bridge.

  “Gotcha,” I whispered. Now I just had to get myself ready for a fight. Without the dagger, I would have to rely on my own strength to kill the angel. It was possible, but only if I caught him off guard.

  Transporting to the bridge, I made sure to stick to the shadows. Traffic was backed up on both sides due to an accident in the center lanes, and I just had a feeling that was where I was going to find the angel. Horns blasted through the evening sky, bright red and blue emergency lights dancing across the impatient drivers. A few of them yelled at me as I walked past, but I did my best to ignore them.

  Halfway across the bridge, I stopped. Several police cars had parked themselves sideways to block traffic, allowing only three ambulances to pass. I stood beside one of them, watching the scene in front of me. Two cars and one SUV had collided. One of the cars was flipped on its roof, the other two vehicles smashed against the barrier. The air bags had been deployed but the EMTs were still working on the people inside. Except for the car that had flipped.

  A body lay on the ground in the middle of the chaos, and hovering over him was Jericho.

  With the way the humans were rushing back and forth, I suspected Jericho had himself shielded from their view. He hunched over the teenage boy, resting his hand on the boy’s chest, head hanging like he was in prayer.

  This wasn’t like with Otis. No, Jericho was doing that thing all angels do—he was trying to save a life.

  I could see the boy’s soul floating a few feet above his body. A blurred piece of him was still attached to his leg, but most of the soul had started to move on. The ghost-like form snapped his head and stared directly at me. Then he focused on Jericho and back on me again. Back and forth. Back and forth. I never knew how much awareness a soul had when it detached, although Sophia had once told me that she knew about everything going on just before I’d shoved hers back into her pitiful human body when she’d almost died. I suspected this boy was aware.

  He started to drift toward me, his ghostly foot still attached to the human part and keeping him anchored to this earth. I shielded myself from the human’s view as Jericho flared his beautiful white wings, the light casting a glare on both me and the boy’s soul.

  “Am I dead?” the boy asked me.

  “Not yet,” I whispered. “Do you want to die?”

  He cocked his head to the side and looked back at the accident. “I did this,” he answered instead. “Maybe I deserve to die.”

  “Are you a bad person?”

  He shook his head and wrinkled his brows. “I don’t think so.”

  Standing and walking toward the soul, I continued the conversation. “Then you shouldn’t come with me.”

  “Are you the Devil?” His eyes widened as he took in my body. “You don’t look like the Devil.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” I said with a smile. “But I am not the Devil.”

  “He’s an angel,” the boy said, looking down at Jericho who still hadn’t realized I was here, as he continued talking to the soul he was trying to save.

  “He is.”

  “My mom always
said they were real. But I didn’t believe her.”

  “Most humans don’t.”

  “But my mom did,” he said quietly. “She said they were going to help her pass peacefully.”

  With the way the boy stared at Jericho, I had a feeling he’d suffered enough for now. If he’d lost his mom, he would grow to be strong. It wouldn’t be easy for him, but I sensed that he was a survivor.

  His transparent foot started to break away from his solid body.

  “No!” I shouted, grabbing onto of his arms and walking him back toward Jericho. “You are going to live.”

  “But I…I…”

  “You want this, trust me.”

  And just as I said those words, Jericho locked eyes on me and jumped to his feet. His wings spread wide as he noticed the boy’s soul in my grasp. “What are you doing to him?” he growled.

  “I’m returning him,” I grumbled, pushing past the angel and kneeling on the ground. “This is going to hurt,” I told the boy just before I shoved him back into his body.

  Jericho watched for a few seconds as the boy’s soul howled in pain, but then he dropped down beside him and resumed his prayers. Jericho’s light flowed into the boy’s bloodied head and arms. It danced across the ground, circling the teen until it dipped in and out of his wounds as though stitching them back together. As Jericho prayed, I remembered my job.

  I needed to kill this angel. And now was the perfect time.

  He was distracted and too focused and probably weakened. It might be the only chance I got.

  But suddenly, Jericho reached back and grabbed my hand. It was warm and it burned my skin like an electrical shock. He let out a long breath and turned to look at me. “Thank you,” he said.

  I yanked my hand away and fell backward. “Don’t thank me, angel.”

  His wings were still spread wide, but they’d dulled a little in their luster. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Yeah, well. We’ll see what he does with this second chance.” I glanced up to see several EMTs rushing toward the boy and knew we needed to get out of here. “We should—”