by Lizzy Ford
A Demon’s Desire
By Lizzy Ford
http://www.guerrillawordfare.com/
Edited by Christine LePorte
http://www.christineleporte.com/
Cover art and design by Dafeenah
http://www.indiedesignz.com/
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Special feature at the conclusion: excerpt from
Abigail
By paranormal romance novelist Heather Marie Adkins
http://heather.bishoffs.com/
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A Demon’s Desire copyright October 2011 by Lizzy Ford
Smashwords Edition
Cover art and design copyright 2011 by Dafeenah
Abigail excerpt copyright 2011 by Heather Marie Adkins,
Used with permission
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Smashwords edition license notes:
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
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See other titles by Lizzy Ford and Heather Marie Adkins at
http://www.indie-eclective.com
You can follow the GW team and Heather Marie Adkins on Twitter:
@LizzyFord2010
@cleporte
@dafeenajameel
@hmarieadkins
Twitter hashtags:
#guerrillawriter, #fantasy, #romance, #paranormalromance, #eclective
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Chapter One
Olivia flew through the restored Victorian, a crumpled shopping bag clutched to her chest. Most of the members of the coven were in the living room, watching the latest episode of True Blood. She didn’t stop to greet them but hurried through the kitchen and to the door of the basement. She opened it, her elated thoughts sliding into unease at the unnatural glow emanating from one wall of the basement. She descended a few steps and paused. The scent of sulfur made her nose wrinkle, and heat rendered the basement hot compared to the rest of the drafty, old house.
Forcing herself onward, she let her eyes fall to the fissure in the basement wall through which the orange flames of Hell glowed.
It had grown larger the past few months. Not by much, maybe half a foot or so. Two years ago, it had appeared after she killed her third victim and was no larger than a tiny crack the size of her pinkie. The more black magic she practiced, the larger it became. The only benefit of the heat of Hell: it kept the coven’s electricity bill low during the coolness of the late October autumn in rural northern Maryland.
One of her ghostly slaves moved from its place in the poorly lit basement, and she jumped in surprise.
“Not now!” she barked at the shadow demon. It slinked back to the corner. Olivia plucked the content of the bag and set it on the wooden desk by the wall of the basement opposite the fissure. She clapped her hands in delight at the sight of the decomposed finger. It stank, but not as much as the portal to Hell.
“You’ve been out all day,” a man’s voice said. She tensed at his voice. She never heard him coming. “Must’ve been important to leave my bed so early.”
“It is,” she said. “Leave me alone, Jeffrey. I’m busy.”
“Not the proper way to thank your host, especially since you’re a member of my coven.”
She spun on him with a glare. With silky black hair, chiseled features and a lean frame, Jeffrey’s looks alone had drawn more than one witch to his coven. And he slept with all of them. He was not the kind of man who would ever know how deep and satisfying loving another could be, which was why she didn’t give two flips about pleasing him the way the other girls did. She did what he expected of her to retain her place in the coven-- and nothing more.
“None of them brought you that,” she said and pointed to the fissure. “You were a poser, Jeffrey, and everyone knows it. I made you legit.”
“I’m more legit than you’ll ever understand. But yes, you brought me the fissure,” he said with irritation. He lifted his chin toward the table. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He strode across the basement and pushed her aside to see her treasure. She shoved him back, but not before he saw what it was.
“I’m being replaced by a dead man,” he said. “Where’s the rest of him?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. He’s my soul mate-- I’m meant to find him.”
“And I’m …?”
“Just a warm body.”
“You obsessed bitch,” he whispered. His jaw ticked in anger. He was close enough for her to feel how tense he was. “You know Hell will demand your soul for helping you.”
“I’ve promised it a soul. Doesn’t have to be mine!” she snapped. “Leave me alone, Jeffrey!”
He gazed at her for a long minute. Of all the witches in the house-- and people on the planet! -- he was the only one who seemed immune to her mind influence spells. He turned away finally, and she watched him go, again wondering why he was immune to her spells. The basement’s darkness clung to him like it did her shadow demons. He stopped near the stairs, and his gaze went to the fissure. He closed his eyes, pleasure crossing his features.
With a shiver, she looked at the gateway to Hell. As adept as she’d become at using black magic, even she didn’t feel so comfortable around the fissure. The emotion passed, and Jeffrey trotted up the stairs. She returned to the severed finger and held it up. Her only love had been dead for two years, and still her soul sang when she touched his body!
“Soon, my love, you’ll be back with me forever,” she said and lovingly wrapped her hands around the finger in the only hug she could give her dead lover. It was the culmination of two years of spells and research. One of her shadow demons had finally found him. “Just one more thing, and I’ll recall you from the dead.” She set the finger down and pulled her wallet free from her purse. “Slave!”
“Yes, mistress.” The shadow demon’s voice was monotonous and his presence cold as he joined her.
“Find this girl,” she ordered, pulling out the only picture in her wallet. It was of two people: her soul mate and the interloper who stole her soul mate from her. Ages ago, the three of them had been friends. Her gaze lingered with repressed anger on the woman in the picture. The interloper’s was an earthy beauty: peachy skin, light brown hair, dazzling green eyes, and a beautiful smile. Olivia’s own beauty was cold, gothic: her skin was porcelain, her hair straight and black, and her eyes a mesmerizing blue. Her spells had taken some of her beauty from her, which made the jealousy in her blood burn hotter.
“Adam,” the shadow demon said and took the picture. “I will bring him back soon, as my mistress demands.”
“My sweet Adam. I’ve waited two years for this,” she whispered. “I’m almost ready for you, bitch. You won’t run from me this time, Emma, and Adam will stay with me forever.” She looked at the shadow demon. “Go find her, slave!”
* * *
Across the state line in northern Virginia, Emma shivered as she reached the door to her sister’s apartment. The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end, as if she were being watched. It was the same sense she felt every time she came to visit her sister, though this time, she could almost feel the presence of someone lurking in the darkness of the stairwell. She looked around then shook off the feeling. She was beyond tired from her late work schedule and frequent visits to her sick niece.
She entered the quiet apartment. Her sister was curled on the couch, asleep. Emma pulled a blanket over her before she went to the doorway of her niece’s bedroom. Sissy’s baffled doctors ha
d finally given up the day before with a grim prognosis that Sissy would probably die within the week. Emma felt the black witch’s curse: the coldness of the shadows crowding the corners and stuffed animals. Earlier, in broad daylight, she’d ventured into the room to snag a toy and shoved it in a box, running out before the dark shadows could claim her, too.
She balled up her fists. She never suspected Olivia’s cruelty ran so deep as to target a four-year-old.
Damn you, Adam. As usual, you took the easy way out and left me alone to deal with the witch.
If he hadn’t jumped off the Bay Bridge two years ago, she’d push him and Olivia off the bridge herself to make sure they both stayed out of her life for good. The outcome of that doomed affair-- sweet, innocent Sissy pale and limp on the bed before her-- made her stomach roil.
“I’ll fix this, Amber, I swear it,” she whispered to her sister.
“No one … can help her,” came the despondent, drowsy response. Emma turned to face her sister, who pushed herself up from the couch.
“I know I can. I did some research, and I’m going up the Maryland coast to a small town north of Annapolis.”
“You think you found a doctor?”
“Maybe,” Emma replied vaguely, unwilling to tell her sister no doctor could fix Sissy.
“Hurry, Emma,” Amber said.
“I will, Amber, I promise,” she said. “Take care. I won’t be gone long.” She took one last look at Sissy’s tiny frame and Amber’s haunted features and left the apartment for the parking lot. Even as she neared her car, she could feel the coldness of the toy in the box on the passenger seat.
If someone like Olivia could inflict Sissy with illness, only someone with the same skill could lift the curse. A list of addresses and names of people and places associated with the occult and witchcraft were scribbled hastily on the notebook next to the box in the passenger’s seat and her GPS was already loaded. She’d gone only to say farewell to her sister on her way out of town.
The late October sun was setting earlier than she wished. She flipped on the interior lights of her car, hating the darkness. She already had a headache from a couple of sleepless nights of research, but seeing Sissy’s helpless body reignited her desperation.
She had to fix this. No doctor could help Sissy, but maybe, just maybe, she could.
Her hope held out until sunset the next day, after she’d visited the two dozen shops that lined Demon’s Alley, the downtown of Wooster, Maryland, which boasted of its ties to witchcraft and the occult.
“Sure, we can help. It’ll cost you your soul.” The clerk with black nails and pink hair burst into laughter.
“You know, that joke is getting really old!” Emma snapped. She snatched the box off the counter and left, agitated to see the sun was near setting. She’d been to almost every store on the Alley with no success. The tourists had thinned out for dinner and were replaced by Goth vampire wannabes and fairies in heels. The locals took pride in their hallmark Alley, enough so that the street was decorated in Halloween colors and signs that read Welcome to Hell on Earth.
“They got that right,” she mumbled to herself. Her eyes settled on the only storefront she hadn’t visited. The Devil’s Depot was directly across the street from her car, behind a group of teenagers dressed as fairies in cheap plastic wings. She set the box on her hood and checked her pockets for the third time that day. She’d lost her keys somewhere along the Alley.
The clerks in all the other shops grew uneasy when warning her against visiting the Devil’s Depot. She’d left it for last because every clerk claiming to be a vampire, witch, or demon had become strangely uncomfortable discussing the shop’s owner.
He’s the only real demon in the Alley, one clerk confided in her after the joke about her soul. Emma, torn as to whether she wanted to try the store, had tried everywhere else first. After all, she needed a witch to counter Olivia’s spell, not a demon.
The Devil’s Depot was her last chance. With a deep breath, Emma crossed the street and noticed the small sign on the window advertising Occult and Unnatural Incident Consultations. She knelt before the panting hellhound lying on the wooden stoop in front of the shop. It was much tamer than the barking Rottweiler hellhounds with spiked collars guarding one of the shops down the street. The Great Dane showed its age; gray trimmed its muzzle, flanks, and ears. She waved a hand in front of milky-white eyes. The dog didn’t blink, but its long tail thumped, and a tongue flicked out in search of her.
“Any man who keeps a blind dog can’t be too bad,” she tried to convince herself. “Stay here, angel, and watch out for those idiots in capes.” She fished the squishy remains of a candy bar from her pocket. Her hand emerged coated in melted chocolate and coconut.
“Dammit.”
Emma pinched the wrapper away with her opposite hand and handed the remains to the dog, whose nose prodded her forearm at its scent. It scarfed the candy and licked her hand clean. She rose and wiped the dog slobber on her jeans before glancing at the store name once again.
Candles flickered at her entrance into the shop, and she distinguished several rows of shelves sagging under the weight of goods her eyes were too tired to make out. One wall glowed with the outlines of drink freezers. Her gaze lingered before she realized Coke was the last thing a place like this would stock. It smelled better than the other shops, emanating a spicy, masculine scent with an undertone of basil.
On the opposite end of the store, scowling clerks at the cashier counter looked up when the wooden floor creaked beneath her feet. She girded herself for yet another unfriendly exchange when a warm, charged current of air reached her. She glanced in the direction from which it seemed to come. The store was chilly aside from the peculiar current emanating from the corner to the right of the entrance. The darkness of the corner was impenetrable.
Someone’s there.
She blinked away the eerie sense, turning when the hellhound’s paws clicked on the wooden floor. It ambled into the shop, swung its massive head from right to left, wagged, and sat in the doorway. Had the two silent, brooding clerks not been staring at her, she would’ve retreated to pet the single friendly soul on Demon’s Alley.
“Good evening,” she said and started toward the counter.
“What are you looking for?” one asked.
“I need a consultation on the occult,” she said.
“Consultation?” The girl glanced at the other. “Advice isn’t free. You have to buy something.”
“Can you tell me if you’re going to be able to help me first?” she asked.
“Buy something then we’ll talk.”
Emma looked around, frustrated. Her eyes settled on the hellhound.
“Your dog,” she said.
“That’s Tristan’s. You’ll have to ask him,” the clerk said with a roll of her eyes.
“Fine. Just tell me what you want me to buy, and I will!”
“Don’t worry about it.” The girl sat down with a huff and tossed a hand toward the front corner before sitting down and pulling out her iPhone. Emma watched her text someone and waited. The girl looked up. “Go see Tristan. He’s over there.”
Emma held back her temper, but her pounding head was ready to explode. She started toward the corner with its impenetrable darkness. Her fear of the dark made her stop at the edge of where the light reached, a safe distance away from the inky blackness.
Light reflected off two black eyes peering at her from the dark but disappeared as she blinked. Unable to summon a clear explanation among her tired thoughts, she chalked the glowing eyes up to imagination and waited for the figure in the corner to emerge.
“What kind of advice are you looking for?” The voice was soft, husky, and dark. It sent a shiver through her and was very much like the scents in the store: masculine and soothing.
Suspecting someone was hiding in the darkness hadn’t bothered her; knowing someone was there did. Emma’s tired senses heightened, but she took a step forward. Her imagination wa
s strained enough with the events of the past two weeks that she didn’t need to make monsters out of men sitting alone in the dark.
“Could you please come out of the dark?” she said. “I like to see the people mocking me.”
“I’m not mocking you.” His voice was like the early fall breeze, sweeping over her in a combination of warm and cool, tickling her ears and the sensitive hairs at the base of her neck. She shivered.
The man materialized out of the shadows in a way that brought to mind the warnings from the other shops’ clerks. He took shape as he moved from total dark to partial light. Shadows clung to him, obscuring the width and shape of his frame even when he stood before her. Darkness hovered around him like a cloak, stretching toward her ...
Emma stepped back. The shadows were gone.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m a little tired.”
She looked up into the man’s face, and her breath caught. His features were uneven and his eyes close together, yet his dark aura rendered him mysterious where he wasn’t necessarily handsome. Sculpted lips were full, and his skin was olive tinted. A low brow with thick eyebrows hovered over dark, warm eyes.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked in the quiet voice.
Run like hell, her instincts urged. One of his eyebrows quirked, and her tired mind suspected he heard her thought.
“Please.” His tone softened, a faint smile tugging up one corner of his mouth. He took her elbow, and the spell of his gaze released her. She drew a deep breath, surprised to find she had been holding it, and pulled away.
“Wait,” she said and shook herself mentally. “First, I’ve wasted a lot of time today, and I can’t afford to waste more. I need some sort of consultation with someone who understands … who understands … witchcraft.”