“Nice shot,” I called down to her.
In one fluid motion, Wren spun, pulled another arrow free, and lifted her bow to aim at my chest.
Chapter Two
Corson
Her crystalline, sky blue eyes narrowed when she spotted me. Her pale blonde hair dangled in a braid over her shoulder to one of her breasts. Anger flashed across her face, but I had a feeling the anger was more at herself than me. She hadn’t noticed me, and I’d been watching her the entire time. That had to piss her off.
She would take my head off with the same glee she’d sliced off so many others, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her. My hand went to my empty right ear as I recalled the first time I’d met her. At one time, an earring from a woman would have dangled from the tip of one of my ears, or both, and possibly from my earlobes too. When I first encountered Wren, I’d been wearing three different earrings from the three women I’d been with the night before, but none had pierced my ears since that day.
At first, my wearing of the earrings had been a joke. The first human I slept with had tried to hook one of her earrings around the tip of my ear. She’d laughed and blushed prettily as she sought to balance it there. Taking the thing from her, I’d pushed it through the point of my ear to let it dangle there.
“Now, you’ll always have something to remember me by,” she’d said with a giggle.
The only thing I remembered about her was the flower earring she’d given me. It had been a rose that I’d lost soon after. The next day, we’d traveled to a different section of the wall, and I moved on to my next human. That woman hadn't wanted to be undone by the other one, so I’d stuck her earring through my other ear.
Over time, wearing the assorted earrings became a thing for me—a thing Kobal hated, and as much as I respected my king, I couldn't deny I enjoyed annoying him by wearing the jewelry. Plus, the human women liked it. For some reason, they found me more approachable and fun once I started wearing their decorations. It didn’t take me long to realize that having something dangling from my ears equaled more women warming my bed.
Most demon women didn’t wear earrings, but the human jewelry hadn’t deterred them from my bed either. However, demon women were like me and simply easing the needs of their body before moving onto another partner. Human women made me laugh more than demons did and were often more enthusiastic in bed. Because of that, I’d started to spend more time with human females than demon ones over the years.
I’d laughed in Hell, but not like I had since coming to the human realm. Things were easier here, for demons at least. People had taken a beating since the gateway opened, but many of them still found laughter in things.
Not Wren. I’d never heard her laugh, and I was determined to make her do so one of these days. She never wore any jewelry either, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day she created a necklace from the teeth of the demons she’d killed.
“Spying on me, demon?” Wren demanded.
“Not likely, human,” I replied and dropped my feet down to swing them back and forth again. “I was on guard duty so I could have some time away from you mortals, but you interrupted my break.”
“Unlike you, and the rest of your brethren”—she spat the word brethren like it was something foul—“I don’t get a break, and we mortals require actual food to live. I don’t expect you to understand; this isn’t your world.”
“That, my dear Wren, is where you’re wrong. Some of your fellow humans made this my world when they fucked up and tore open a gateway into Hell. Even with said gateway now closed, there is no going back to the way things were. We’re a part of your world now.”
Her jaw clenched, and her eyes burned, but she didn’t reply as she swung her bow onto her back and turned away from me. I would far prefer her beneath me, her nails raking my back as she screamed in ecstasy, but I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. At least she’d spoken to me; she often avoided doing that much.
Maybe things would be different between us if I hadn’t tried to flirt with her the first time we met. During that brief encounter, I’d inquired if she wore earrings, told her I’d be willing to go without them for her, and that demons were capable of fucking all night.
Many women would have blushed, laughed, flirted back, or told me to screw off. Wren tried to punch me. She slaughtered demons and Hell creatures without blinking an eye, but my flirting was something she didn’t seem to know how to handle and I suspected that infuriated her.
My first impression had been the completely wrong one with her. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I continued to exasperate her, and she continued to despise me. Humans were prickly creatures sometimes, and Wren was the sharpest of them all.
I’d always been confident in my ability to get a woman; Wren had proven I didn’t know females as well as I believed I did. I’d never chased a woman in my lifetime, never expected I would, but I found myself strangely infatuated with this one.
Does she fascinate me because I can’t have her?
I didn’t think that was it either. I’d had women tell me no over the years, not many, but it had happened. I’d shrugged them off and moved onto the next one. That wasn’t working now.
Wren knelt next to the deer to examine it. Her fingers hesitated on its forehead before she bent her head and brushed back its fur in what looked like an apology. My eyebrow rose at this exchange. I’d never seen her look regretful after killing something, but she did now.
She rested her fingers against the deer’s chest and murmured something I couldn’t hear. Then, she gripped the deer by its legs and pulled it toward her.
“Are you going to carry that back to camp by yourself?” I asked.
“Yep,” she replied.
Shifting the deer, she somehow managed to lift it onto her back. Turning back to me, she gave me a smug smile as she stuck out a hip. My gaze drifted to where the weight of the deer pulled her shirt back to emphasize her breasts. Bark broke off beneath my hands as images of cupping those breasts flashed through my mind. They’d fill my hand as I bent to lick her nipples until they stood out from her body. Then, I’d run my tongue across the hardened buds before scraping my teeth over them.
I tore my attention away from her breasts and back to her face. Her cheekbones were high, her mouth full and a soft pink color. Her chin had a small point to it, giving her a stubborn look that matched her personality.
I wanted to run my hands over every inch of her—while she would prefer to shoot me with her arrow. She wouldn’t brush the hair back from my forehead after shooting me through the heart. No, she’d cut my head from my body to make sure she’d completed the job.
“It will make an excellent meal,” I told her.
“It will,” she replied.
The deer hadn’t bled much, but I detected the coppery tang of its blood on the air when the breeze shifted.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a hand with it?” I inquired.
“Not from you, demon,” she retorted.
“I do have a name.”
“I know,” she replied with her usual aplomb. “I don’t care to use it.”
“I see.” Releasing the branch, I dropped thirty feet and landed noiselessly on the ground. “If we’re working together now, you should call me by my name. You call the others who came with me by their names.”
Wariness flashed across her features when I stepped toward her. I'd never seen her fear anything before, not even Kobal.
“Don’t take offense, demon; I don’t use the names of the new Wilders who join us either. They may have survived this long out here, but I never know how long they’ll last with us. If they make it more than three months, then I stop calling them ‘new guy’ or ‘new girl.’”
“So next month you’ll start using my name?”
“Probably not.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I don’t like you.”
“Liar,” I teased.
She shifted her weight and adjusted t
he deer on her shoulders. “I think lying is a demon’s specialty, not mine.”
“I can assure you that demons are not liars. Most of us are brutally honest.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” I confirmed.
“Good for you. Would you like a treat for your honesty?”
I grinned at her. “Only if you’re the treat.”
A muscle in her jaw twitched. She’d most likely try to kill me in my sleep one of these days, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop myself from teasing her.
Chapter Three
Corson
The talons, which were a part of my skeletal structure, slid silently from the backs of my hands as I released them from my body. At nearly a foot long, they almost touched the ground while I walked toward her. Wren showed no response to them. She’d seen me use them multiple times since we’d started our journey into the Wilds, but no matter what she thought of me, she knew I wouldn’t use them on her. I wouldn’t have released them if I’d believed they would upset her.
“I could gut and skin that deer for you without a problem,” I offered, hoping to distract her from our conversation by helping her. I lifted one hand and held my hand before my face. The white talons shone in the sunlight filtering through the trees. “These will make quick work of it for you.”
“I don’t require help, demon,” she replied
“Corson,” I said. “You could call me by it.”
I itched to trace my finger over the tip of her chin when it rose more stubbornly into the air. “I’d prefer not to. You may be immortal, and it may take a decapitation to off you, but you’re still more likely to die out here than I am.”
“Is that so?” I drawled.
“Yep.”
“Are you afraid you’ll get attached me if you use my name and then something will happen to me?”
“Of course not,” she scoffed.
The sun setting over her shoulder made her pale hair shimmer with oranges and golds as I strolled closer to her. Eyeing the string tied around the end of her braid, I contemplated pulling it free to undo the braid and run my fingers through her hair. Does it feel as silken as it looks?
“You think I’m incapable of surviving the Wilds when I survived Hell?” I inquired.
Stopping before her, I searched her eyes for the small flecks of sea green I’d noticed the first time I’d seen her. Every time I got close to her, I looked for that green. The color was such a striking contrast to the blue of her eyes, but so small it was barely noticeable.
“I think you knew Hell and that, once you were free, you knew the safety and protection of the wall, but you don’t know the Wilds.”
“And you don’t know what the fallen angels that recently escaped Hell are like,” I reminded her. “You also don’t know what the creatures who lived behind the seals in Hell are like.”
“You don’t know what those creatures are like either,” she retorted.
“True,” I agreed.
I’d lived with Hell creatures, demons, and fallen angels, and I’d dealt with some of the things locked behind the seals while in Hell, but not all of them. Now, the seals that once kept the worst of Hell locked away to keep demons and other Hell creatures safe, had been destroyed and the occupants were free. Not all the things imprisoned behind the seals had managed to escape Hell, but none of the seals existed anymore. Many of those seal creatures were determined to slaughter everything in their way and were incapable of any reasoning.
Unless a new gateway opened into Hell, one Kobal didn’t control, a lot of the creatures that escaped the seals would remain trapped within Hell, but enough had broken free to wreak havoc on this plane.
I may not give a shit about most of mankind, but there were a few people I’d come to consider friends. Plus, the existence of demons and angels hinged on the survival of mankind. Out of the three species, humans were the only ones with a soul and the only ones capable of creating new souls. If humans became extinct, without the souls of their dead to feed us, angels and demons would perish too.
That was why we’d left the wall, built to separate these wildlands from the civilian population, to travel into the Wilds. Most of the old occupants of the seals, and the angels, avoided going near the wall. Not only was Kobal at the wall, but so was a human military presence and a fair number of paliton demons.
Until recently, most of the civilians on the other side of the wall hadn’t known about the existence of Hell and demons. When the gateway opened, they were told that a war with a foreign government had torn their country apart and left the central states decimated. The people who resided on the other side of the world had been told the same thing about the countries affected there. After the gateway opened and Hell spilled free, the human governments built the wall in an attempt to keep their citizens safe.
When the seals fell and Hell came to Earth, the wall and all those defending it were incapable of keeping the outpouring of monsters back. The tidal wave of Hell creatures going over the wall had eased since the initial rush, but the truth could no longer be hidden from the civvies.
Most of the escapees from the seals remained in the Wilds of this country and Europe. The fallen angels hadn’t been seen much since Lucifer’s demise, but I didn’t doubt they were trying to gather a new army to fight Kobal, and I would do everything I could to stop the bastards.
Until then, I had Wren to contend with, and she was probably more hostile than most of the seal creatures.
“One day I’ll hear you say my name, Wren,” I said.
“I doubt that, demon,” she snorted. “Where are your earrings?”
Hostility flashed through her eyes. Did I crave her so badly that I’d imagined the tinge of jealousy in her words? She’d only ever seen me wearing earrings once, but I knew the others talked and that she was aware of what those earrings meant.
My neck warmed as the flecks of green in her eyes deepened in hue and her steady gaze held mine. I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed. I’d never be ashamed of pursuing the things I wanted. It was the way of demons after all, but I found myself not liking the fact Wren knew so much, yet so little about me. She’d judged me and found me lacking.
Normally that wouldn’t have bothered me, but it did with her.
I rubbed my thumb and index finger together as I resisted running them over the high arch of her cheekbone. “I’ve decided to try something new,” I replied with an indifference I didn’t feel.
“Hmm,” she said by way of reply.
She turned and stalked into the woods with far less caution than she typically exhibited. I stared after her for a moment as I debated following her. Wind howled through the branches, causing them to click loudly together. A shiver ran up my spine as the chilly air cut through my clothes. The Wilders had revealed to us that when the gateway into Hell opened, this area became warmer. They said the closing of the gateway hadn’t changed that, but it was nowhere near as hot as Hell was, and I hated the chilly November air.
It didn’t surprise me the gateway shutting hadn’t put the temperature back to what it was supposed to be. The closing of the gateway had done little to repair the damage its opening had wrought on Earth. That’s why demons could now retain their immortality on this plane, when before we would have been forced to return to Hell.
Earth was far different from Hell, mostly in a good way, and I had adapted to it during the fourteen years I’d lived here. The only thing I missed about Hell was the constant heat. I found snow worse than a barta demon on a rampage, and I despised the bear-like barta demons now roaming Earth as well as Hell, but I enjoyed the changing seasons and the sunrises and sunsets that marked the days.
All my days in Hell had blended one into another with no way to mark their passing. I found myself stopping to watch every sunrise and sunset with an awe that hadn’t dissipated over my years here.
Unlike humans, I felt no dread over a sense of time slipping away from me when each of those days ended. While in Hell, I’d wat
ched some people complain about their gray hairs and aching joints. Since coming to Earth, I hadn’t heard anyone complain about aging. Probably because many of them knew they might never get the chance to grow old and those who did were fortunate to have made it so long.
I was aware my time on Earth had changed me. It had changed most demons in some way and it had also changed the humans. Every species adapted or died. Many demons had become a little more caring, like humans, while many people had become more vicious with their need to survive and more able to endure adversity, like demons.
Wren was one of those who had adapted exceptionally well, I decided as I watched her walk away. Knowing that it was time for me to return to camp, I started after her.
Chapter Four
Wren
The weight of the deer dragged on my shoulders and compressed my spine, but I refused to let Corson help me with it. I wouldn’t have let anyone help me with it, except for maybe Randy, and there was a very distinct possibility Randy was dead.
The deer could crush my spine before I ever allowed that highly annoying, if not somewhat attractive, demon who insisted on flirting with me to carry it.
I despised demons. Okay, well, not despised, at least not anymore. For many years, I hadn’t known the truth of what happened with the gateway opening, and I’d blamed demons for everything.
Living in the Wilds, I’d known more than the civvies about what had happened to this land, but I still hadn’t known everything. I knew the truth of it now.
The demons didn’t somehow find a way to break free of Hell on their own and invade Earth with the sole intention of striking down everything in their way. No, imbecilic human governments had been messing with things they shouldn’t have. In doing so, they accidentally opened a gateway into Hell and allowed its hideous occupants to spill free.
Hell on Earth (Hell on Earth, Book 1) (Hell on Earth Series) Page 2