by Holly Hunt
Champagne Books Presents
The Devil's Wife
By
Holly Hunt
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Champagne Books
www.champagnebooks.com
Copyright 2011 by Holly Hunt
ISBN 9781926681801
March 2011
Cover Art by Amanda Kelsey
Produced in Canada
Champagne Books
#35069-4604 37 ST SW
Calgary, AB T3E 7C7
Canada
Dedication
For Grumps. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.
Prologue
The Universe was causing God another incurable headache. Everywhere He looked, there were sinners running unpunished—adulterers, thieves, blasphemers, idolaters, murderers. There was no way for Him to stop them. He wrote the code for Free Will into their souls, and, by the Rules of His universe, He had no right to remove it now, no matter how despicable He thought His greatest creations were.
But a headache for God was the greatest joy for the Devil, the Demon who loved what God loathed, saved what God doomed, and cherished that which God discarded. The Prince of Darkness who drew men to Sin and Vice with careless ease.
And, in the Beginning, I did.
My name is Lucifer. Don't start with that "Devil" or "Satan" bullshit. I am no more demonic than God is angelic. God destroyed my life when he threw me—Me! His righthand Angel—from Heaven. He destroyed my family, He killed my lover, and He left me on the barren wasteland of Earth in punishment for disrupting His plans for His universe.
I am nothing like the depictions of me that humans have created over the last three thousand years. I don't have hooves, I don't have horns. Sure, I have the wings, and they are made of red leather, the skin the right shade of red so that it always looks sunburned, but that is the closest the humans have ever gotten to accuracy in my description.
I do not seduce young women and get them pregnant. I never created witches—that was Michael's spite—and I hate cats. Especially black ones. I can't give magic to warlocks or sorcerers, witches or enchantresses. I never created plagues, and I didn't seduce or tempt Eve to eat the apple. It's all fiction created to give me a bad name.
But the truth is...I'm lonely.
There is no other word for the feeling. I crave an eternal companion. God robbed me of that when He threw me from Heaven.
My wife, the most beautiful Angel I've ever seen, fell to Earth with me, but God did not give her wings as she tumbled toward the ground. God held me back, physically stopping me from saving her, so I was forced to watch as she plummeted to her death.
Sera died from the Fall, while I was doomed to walk the Earth alone among the humans and the Demons, involuntarily gaining my immortality from the eternal natures of humanity's varying sins.
One
Lucifer Morningstar
The King of Hell, Prince of Darkness, perched precariously on the rooftop of New York, staring down at the traffic below me. As the past five thousand years had passed, so too did this night. My tail flicked out behind me, my wings ruffling slightly, the leathery sounds echoing along the city block.
I pondered the cars below me. I doubted very much that I could kill myself falling—I'd tried that back in 1929, during the stock market crash, in Chicago—and the impact with a speeding car wouldn't kill me, either (2004, after a run-in with a pissed-off Lamborghini driver). In fact, I couldn't think of anything that I hadn't tried that would kill me.
Damn God and His ability to remake reality.
I didn't like New York. Usually, I didn't like anywhere I was forced to go by the sins, but New York City was different. I wasn't just forced into a city of sin, I was forced into my old brother-in-law's territory. It was only a matter of time until Aspen the Wonder Cat showed up. Ungrateful feline. After all I had done to help him, before and after the Fall...
The city stank of Gluttony, Sloth, Greed, Envy and Lust, the scents of the sins driving their way into my sinuses with every breath. The honeycomb of Lust, onion of Greed and the decay-scent of Envy were dominant in Las Vegas almost a quarter century ago, but they'd been driven east by the Great Moral Purge of 2029, when the hotel-casino city had been closed down indefinitely.
The tide of sin had fled east, landing in the welcoming port of the Land of Opportunity. I couldn't leave until the tide did, and it wasn't going to move any time soon. The presence of solder-Wrath, greasy-Gluttony and curry-Sloth announced themselves forcefully to any Demon that would sniff out the stench of six of the seven Great Sins. Pride was shared among all cities, especially those with a high concentration of politicians. It was so common that it faded into the background now—the oily, sick smell of ozone only smelled after a storm had scrubbed the air clean. It was so potent that even humans could smell it. I gave up contemplating suicide and sailed downtown on my leather wings, riding the currents of sin through the streets. I alighted on a rooftop overlooking the Hudson, one leg dangling over the edge, my chin resting on my other knee. I watched the sun setting over the river, skyscrapers coming alive with the passing of time.
Below me, the city came to life, people waking from their dreams and their jobs, emerging into the night of opportunity.
The stench of Lusty honeycomb increased with the setting sun. It was Saturday night, after all.
My eyes slowly drifted down the derelict buildings below and in front of me, drawing a sigh from my heart. There was an alley down below, its tarmac littered with trash. Shapes, not all of which were skulking animals, made their way through the premature night time to do their normal nefarious deeds.
There were three men there, each the same size and build as me, though they moved like fighters, while I did not. They were wearing thin, black clothes, designed more for the New York summer than for the biting autumn winds blowing through the alley. They each wore a bright blue sash around their upper right arm.
These men were members of the newest and worst gang in the city: the Hellraisers, led by a man called Jason de Bowver. There were three distinct factions of the Hellraisers, the leaders of which answered to Jason: Brandon, Levine and Marcus. Each member was a sadist, known to me by the scents of soldered iron, honeycomb and onions that burned my tongue with their proximity. These men exuded Wrath, Lust and Greed in quantities that bit at my senses torturously.
I watched as nine more of the despicable Hellraisers rounded the corner into the alley where their friends were waiting for them. I recognized them: they were the gang that I'd seen robbing a jewelers' earlier. They brought the total of humans in the alley up to thirteen, including the woman they hauled along with them. She was cursing and trying to hit them, and they hit her in return, slicing at her skin with a knife, making her audibly growl and struggle harder.
The gang had obviously coerced her to go with them on their way back to their friends, ignoring her struggling and cursing. The man holding her threw her to the ground, and she swore. She kicked out at the man behind her and hit him in the knee, knocking it backwards. One of the other men kicked her in the stomach and she curled up, trying to suppress the retching the blow had caused.
After a few seconds, her face pasty white, the woman stood up and brushed herself off, swearing and glaring at the men around her. I could see the skin missing from her palms as sh
e spat at the leader. Another man hit her in the kidney, and she swung around and landed a punch on his jaw. The other men restrained her as one of them grabbed the back of her neck, making her hunch her shoulders and swear again.
I ghosted lower, putting my wings away, the wings and my tail shrinking and folding into my back. I was fit enough to use window ledges and gutter pipes to climb down to the balcony above the men, watching them in case they noticed the sound of my descent. The buildings around me were abandoned, so there was no one nearby to see me, which must have been one of the reasons the Hellraisers chose this alley.
"Bradley," she spat at the man who had the most potent Pride I had ever smelled. "What a surprise to see your fat face here. Shouldn't it be between the legs of your latest whore?"
"Shut up, you bitch!" I heard the leader snarl at her, and I peered down at them.
Bradley slapped the woman with the crack of palm on cheek, throwing her face away from my sight. I felt my lips curl back from my teeth. There was never a reason to strike a woman, anger or no.
My view from the balcony was restricted—I could see Bradley's face, and the faces of his men, but I couldn't see the woman's. Her stance, however, was rigid, yet at ease. She was obviously a fighter, and the Wrath I could feel coming from her made my mouth taste like copper.
The man holding the woman's arms pushed her forward, making her stumble, as the man next to him played with a knife. He was suave and cool, smirking as though he thought the piece of sharpened metal in his hand made him a man.
"Never speak out of turn," Bradley said coolly to the woman climbing back to her feet, motioning to the knifewielder playing behind the woman. "Or I will have you gutted."
The gang laughed as a man stepped forward, wrapping his hand around the woman's neck and holding one of her arms behind her back in a way that could break her arm should she struggle. She struggled and cursed regardless, using three different languages to express her hatred. The taste of Wrath became stronger in my mouth, and I silently gagged on it as it combined with the honeycomb, decay and onion tastes of Lust, Envy and Greed wafting up to me from the alley.
"Go fuck yourself, you disgusting pervert!" the woman spat in English, her voice coated in hatred. I couldn't hear any fear in her voice, which amazed me. "Jason has a decree out that only he is to kill me, remember?"
Bradley laughed at her. "I'm not going to kill you, girl. What I have in mind is far more fun than simply killing you."
Bradley smiled, stepping up close to her. I shifted on the balcony above his head, then drew still as the gang members looked up at me. I cursed myself as the leader gestured up to me—the humans obviously weren't as blind or deaf as I thought they were—and guns were pulled out and leveled at my hiding place.
With a sigh of frustration, I stepped up onto the balcony rail, balancing carefully on the thin iron. My tail and wings were hidden away, but I wasn't some misguided, unbalanced human—I didn't wobble at all. After a second, I jumped down to land, crouched and cat-like, next to Bradley with hatred curling my lip further.
"I suggest you let her go," I growled, darting forward to grab him.
There was only the slightest of sounds behind me, but that was enough to tell me a fraction of a second too late that someone was there. A knife entered my kidney and I squawked, turning on the man and knocking him flying into the wall with my arm. Another man grabbed me, and I cursed—I was an Angel at heart, I didn't know how to fight like these humans. He locked my arms behind my back so I couldn't throw him off, forcing me to my knees.
"Look, boys," Bradley said, retrieving the knife from my back and making me groan. "We found ourselves another player!"
The gang members laughed. I ignored the dull throb from the region of my wounded kidney. I had a human's body, but, unlike them, I couldn't be killed. They could be killed, however, and I was going to be the one to do it.
"Tell you what, sweetheart," Bradley said, stepping up close to the woman again and running the flat of the blade down the side of her face, "you do what I say, and I won't kill him." He grinned at her. "Yet."
She lifted her knee into his groin with all the force she could muster. The man staggered back, holding his crotch, his face red, and collapsed to his knees, then fell to his side, fighting to breathe through the pain.
"Go suck yourself off, Bradley. You're not going to touch me," she snarled at him, and spat at him where he lay on the ground.
The gang members growled like a pack of wolves. Bradley's second-in-charge backhanded the woman, throwing her head toward me. Her blue eyes seemed to light the darkness, they were so pale... so familiar...
I stared at her senselessly, my surroundings and the pain forgotten. There was only the shock of seeing her familiar—oh, so familiar—face here.
"Holy shit," I breathed. "Sera!"
The woman stopped struggling against her captor,
frowning at me as though trying to work out if she knew me from somewhere. Her brown hair fell across her face as she seemed to decide she didn't know me, and she stood on the foot of the man holding her. It did nothing—the man was wearing steel-capped boots—except to make the man twist her arm up further behind her back. He laughed as she hissed in pain.
Bradley was already recovering from the woman's blow. He stood up, pulling her face around to make her look at him. She tried to knee him again but he slapped her other cheek, throwing her strike wide. I struggled against the men with renewed energy, but to no avail. They were stronger than I was, my physique a magically-induced illusion rather than actual muscle.
Bradley stood flush against her, in such a way that if she tried to knee him again, she would only hit his thigh. He held her jaw, forcing her to look at him, and she struggled, trying to hit him.
"If you do that again, I will kill you," he threatened. "I am not so afraid of Jason that I'd allow you to disrespect me like that."
She spat in his face. I laughed, earning a punch in the kidney from the man behind me. I groaned and sank to my knees, faking pain. Bradley wiped the spit from his face and hit her again. I growled, trying to pull my arms from the humans' grips.
"I'm going to enjoy this," Bradley said with an evil smirk, stepping back and gesturing to the man holding the woman. "You have no idea how big a pain in the ass you are or how glad a lot of people would be to see a criminal like you dead on the side of the road, cut, burned, and fucked until your heart explodes in your chest."
The man holding the captive woman threw her to the ground, and before she could recover, Bradley pounced on her, rolling her over and straddling her hips, hooking her hands up above her head in a tight grip. She stopped trying to buck him off when he picked up the knife and pressed it to her cheek, though she glared death up at Bradley and continued to scratch at his hands.
"Every time you try to throw me off," he threatened, using the blade to slice her shirt open, "I am going to order a finger to be cut from this man. If he runs out of fingers, we move to his hands, then his arms. If you keep going... well, there are a lot of men here who haven't been laid in a while."
The woman stilled, glancing at me. I shook my head at her, trying to tell her not to worry about me, and she growled up at the man holding her. He sliced through her bra, leaving her breasts open to the air. One of the other gang members tied her hands above her head. He held the trailing end of the rope firmly, holding her hands where she couldn't strike their leader.
The woman's face grew as red as mine when she saw the lustful looks on the faces of the humans around her. I gagged on the strong, sweet honeycomb taste of Lust filling the air. I slowly pulled a foot up underneath me, ready to release my wings and escape the humans' clutches. The woman's eyes flickered to me, taking in the sight of me. She seemed to understand that I was going to create a distraction. I could see annoyance in her glance at how long it was taking, but she seemed to know I would create a distraction large enough to allow her to throw off the man now fondling her chest and trying to cut away her pant
s.
Bradley grinned down at her, mashing his lips against hers. The knife at her stomach prevented her from biting the tongue I could see he was forcing into her mouth.
With a savage growl, I pushed myself upwards, pushing the humans away from me with my wings as they burst out of my back. I sliced the throat of one of the men with my tail as I hovered above them all. As I flapped my wings to keep myself airborne, the woman bucked her hips, throwing the man over her head. She cursed and groaned as the man's knife buried itself to the hilt in her stomach. She moved closer to the rope in order to create enough slack in it so that she could put her hands on her stomach and stop the bleeding. She pulled the knife out of her abdomen to use on the rope, wincing occasionally as the crimson blood flowed down her stomach. I could see she was gritting her teeth against the pain.
Bradley staggered to his feet and looked at me as I landed in front of him, growling. I struck out to grab him, my fingers clawed, and I lifted him from his feet. The Hellraisers broke and ran, dropping their knives and guns. Only one stayed, pulling out a Glock and shooting at me.