SLAVE TO THE DEMON:
POSSESSING THE REBEL ROSE
A Steamy Erotic Fantasy Based on Dani Smith’s BDRR Series
Written by RUBY MCKENZIE
NOTE: This book is an erotic fantasy based on characters from the BLACK DOG AND REBEL ROSE SERIES by Dani Smith. It is meant to be read as a stand-alone title and should be considered separate from the actual series.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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 author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Publishers Note:
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is entirely coincidental.
Second Edition Publication: Tarnished Ruby Publishing/ Ruby McKenzie © 2016. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Edited by: Lenore Elliott/Wicked Muse Productions
Cover Art/Design: Dani Smith
For all entertainment and non-literary inquiries please contact the BDRR copyright holder at: [email protected]
For the fans of BDRR…
You are all to blame.
Between you and me
It's hard to ever really know
Who to trust
How to think
What to believe
Between me and you
It's hard to ever really know
Who to choose
How to feel
What to do
Never fade
Never die
You give me flowers of love
--The Cure, “Bloodflowers”
PART ONE
THE DIRTY 30
Baby, I know you’re scarred like me…
--Chamber of Echoes,
“Scar Tissue”
What am I doing?
God, tell me I’m not insane.
Rose sat bent over her vanity table like a hunchback, staring into the cracked mirror. Her strange eyes—one sapphire blue, one earthy brown were separated by the thin jagged crack that splintered her face in half.
Fragmented.
Yes, she was fragmented. That’s what this was all about at the end of the day, wasn’t it? The fact that she was a fucked up, shattered, impossible being that in all reality had no right to exist. A fusion of two separate worlds, two separate dimensions that had somehow come together via an impossible love.
Her parents. Angel, human. Celestial, mortal. Impossibility. Breaking all the rules. Rose sighed, stroking her fingers through her long dark curls; long pale digits catching among the exotic tumble. Behind her, bent and twisted window blinds let in the rich red-gold of a late afternoon sun, and that rusty glow filled her crappy studio apartment, chasing away some of the meeker shadows and turning the light catching in the mirror crack to bloody rubies.
That’s what you’re doing, girl. That’s what you’ve been doing for the last two years…breaking all the rules. Turning the Universe on its head and caning it across the ass as you ignore its pleas for mercy.
Words and thoughts suddenly failed her. Perhaps that was a good thing.
Rose looked down at the chipped surface of her vanity and at the list lying atop it. A grocery list, really. Mostly food, terrible stuff that would only appeal to an extremely obese shut-in or one of the demonic races. Fried chicken. Cheap pizza. Wine that was as sickly-sweet as funeral flowers. Jam. Skriker would love it all, and she would offer it willingly to him, with a girl’s bashful affection.
He was so good to her; he was always lavishing her with gifts. Wonderful gifts, expensive gifts; one of them hung around her neck this very moment. An elegant sapphire, Israeli diamond, and white gold pendant, presented to her for their second anniversary earlier that summer. Her fingertips brushed the jewel, gazing at the cool blue rays it flashed across the surface of the mirror.
'Do you know how much I love you, Rose? Can you even comprehend it? Sometimes, I think you can’t…I think that you don’t want to see it—because I’m half demon. And there’s a secret part of you that will always hate that part of me.'
She had so often seen it in his eyes, heard it in his voice. How much loving her, on some deep primordial level, scared the shit out of him. How much he dreaded that his demon side would somehow chase her, the love of his life, away.
'There is a part of you—that will always hate that part of me.'
The sex was good. No, good wasn’t the right word. Good didn’t even touch the tip of the horndog’s iceberg. The fact was that Skriker was a god in bed, as blasphemous as it was for a Nephil to label him. She adored how he could turn her celestial pride on its head, slap it across the ass, and make it beg.
Yes, beg. He could make her beg…beg him to plow her holy depths with that monstrous tool of his and give the finger to Heaven while he did it. She liked it, by God—liked it and ached for it when they were apart. There were so many times when she caught herself rubbing off in the tub in this shabby studio, moaning and writhing as she dreamed of his chiseled tattooed body, his high-spiked ice blond hair, the devilish gleam of his tomcat eyes.
The angel in her standing off to the side, screaming and beating huge crimson wings…Traitor child! Your father would blow himself into oblivion from the shame of this!
She chose to ignore that side when her lust was at its peak.
The ordinary silence around her was crushing, like a wave plummeting down on a hapless swimmer. Rose thought of her lover’s laugh, careless and bright, and she couldn’t wait to see him.
Another sin.
She pushed her threadbare velvet-cushioned vanity chair back and stood up; the peeling chair legs screeched against the rough wooden floor. She strolled to her rumpled unmade bed and sat down at its end. There was a box sitting on the hilly bedclothes, a long glossy black mini-casket tied with a broad ribbon the same color as the ocean-hued jewel that hung around her neck. Rose plucked it up and untied the ribbon, letting it fall across her lap. She raised the lid of the box and gazed into its velvet-lined interior, a strange melancholy shimmering in her strange eyes.
Her stereo suddenly flickered and bloomed with static before falling silent. Her television flickered on, then off again.
'What are you looking at, Rose?' The voice came telepathically through the ether, shimmering in her mind like an intangible jewel.
Rose glanced up calmly and gazed at her father, who was leaning quietly against the wall across the room where just a second before no one had been, his face partially in shadow. Dusty, wearing shabby leather and suede garments, his big chiseled warrior’s arms bare. Curling hair tumbling just past his shoulders in a dark web. Earth-dark eyes glittering eerily in the red light of a dying day.
Rose answered him in her own human voice, outside of the ether, stubborn as always. “Nothing." Just—old stuff.” She hurriedly dropped the lid of the box and snatched up the ribbon.
Just as she was pulling it around the wooden casket Alexius was there, taking it from her; one second it was lying across her palms and the next it was gone. She tried to snatch it away from him and he stepped back, holding it out of her reach.
He lifted the lid and stared down at the object lying across the box’s velvet lining, his thick dark brows furrowing.
Rose jumped up and snatched the box away from him, slamming it shut again. She stomped away from him and knelt by her bed, shoving the little casket underneath beside her ammo boxes and pistols and rifles and other hunting sundries.
“What is that, Rose?” Alexius asked, cocking his head in that annoyingly angelic way that a
lways drove her crazy.
“I told you—nothing. Just an old trinket I’ve had for a while.” Her eyes flicked from the top of his head to the toes of his scuffed boots, and her mouth twisted. “Jesus, daddy, you look like shit.”
Alexius made no reply. He paced across the floor, his boots thumping with agonizing slowness, his hands knotted behind his back. A tiger in a cage. He moved nearer to her.
Rose gazed at him suspiciously; she could feel him probing her thoughts, nosing around in the corridors of her mind. His powerful jaw muscles flexed, and she watched the dark stubble ripple along his jaw and chin. He slowly reached for her, his fingers brushing near her face, and she danced lightly out of the way.
Nice try, old man.
“You haven’t a pet,” he said quietly. “What need have you for such an object?”
Rose chewed her lip. He was probing, trying to get her to slip up. She raised her chin proudly. “If you must know, it’s for Skriker’s dog.”
“That stinking demon hound?”
“His name is Trash, daddy. And he’s very sweet. I like to bring things for him sometimes.”
Alexius’ eyes narrowed. “You lie,” he quietly accused.
Dammit, she should have known better.
His hand suddenly darted out, impossibly fast; she felt his fingertips bush her forehead, light as a wing feather. She watched as his eyes narrowed and a hot silver-white light blazed to life in them, fierce and terrifying in its celestial beauty. Alexius’ handsome face contorted and he snarled, baring his teeth.
She started yelling before he could, and their usual father/daughter combat began. “I have never understood why you cannot mind your own Goddamned business!” she shouted. “I am a grown woman, daddy! I drink and I fight and I fuck…deal with it!”
Alexius officially flew into a rage. “That you lie with a half-breed piece of hell shit is shame enough!” he roared incredulously. “But this?! You offer him that as a gift, along with what? The last shreds of your angelic pride?”
Rose rolled her eyes, flinging her arms out. “Oh, yes! Spoken like one of Heaven’s true whores! You of all people, of all beings, should understand how unorthodox love happens, daddy—and what someone is willing to do to nurture and preserve that love!”
Alexius’ eyes blazed brighter, so bright that the red afternoon light was banished as if by a huge floodlight. “I have seen what you intend to do with this—gift!” he cried. “It is an abomination…a cruelty to me, to the memory of your mother! Do not compare my love to your infatuation with that—Hell filth! It is not the same, Rose! It was his kind who killed your mother and my dearest companion! The girl I gave up Heaven for!”
“Don’t hand me that ‘lost wings’ sob story bullshit again, daddy!” Rose yelled. “I have heard it again and again, and I am fucking sick of it! We aren’t the only ones who suffered! Skriker has been through the same thing I have! His entire family was torn to fucking shreds in front of him by his own kind. He’s not the same as other demons! His father was not the same! He chose love, like you. He chose redemption!”
Alexius thumped a big fist against his chest, snarling. “It is not the same!” he yelled. “Such words are razors in my heart, Rose!”
Someone in the apartment next door banged on the wall and shouted for them to shut up.
Rose spun about and screamed, “You shut the fuck up!” She pushed past her father and sat down at the end of her bed, turning on her television. She flipped the channels in an angry flourish, refusing to speak, her odd eyes flicking over infomercials and outdated sitcoms and Holy Roller programs, where preachers in black suits hollered robustly about God and his angels.
Alexius stepped forward and raised one scarred hand. Static bloomed across the TV before it flickered, sparked, and went dead.
Rose chucked the remote across the room. It bounced harmlessly against the corner of the television and skidded across the floor. “Fuck!” Rose shrieked, burying her fingers in her hair. “Get out, daddy! I love you, but you make me bugfuck crazy! You can’t understand—you never will understand! No matter how many times I try to explain, you hear what you want to hear and go stone deaf with the rest!”
Alexius pointed to the sapphire and diamond pendant that hung against her breast, his finger a stabbing exclamation point. “And that…he gave that to you?”
Her hand flew protectively to her necklace, her eyes blazing. “Yes, he did! So what?”
Alexius shook his head slowly, the fire in his eyes flickering, cooling back to pools of earthy darkness. He closed his eyes, his long thick lashes brushing his cheeks, and for a moment he reminded her of some cemetery angel you might glimpse in a churchyard, stony and coldly beautiful. “You are my Nephil,” he spoke softly. “You are one of the most unique, magnificent creatures in all of Creation…a rarity, a treasure. Do you not understand this, Rose? Do you understand that he is not worthy of even looking upon you, much less touching you?”
Rose averted her eyes. “I’m a screwed up hybrid,” she quietly replied. “I shouldn’t exist. The Watchers all got their asses kicked for making the first wave of my kind all those centuries ago. The Maker had no problem destroying those Nephilim. Why I’m somehow different, why I’m still here, I don’t know, but I’m damned tired of being this fragmented thing. And Skriker frees me from those worries. I feel like I can breathe with him. He makes me laugh and brings light into my fucked up world do you get that? He’s my soul mate—”
Alexius eyes snapped open, and his mouth twisted. “To call such a beast your soul mate,” he hissed, “is turning your back on your heritage. Turning your back on Heaven.” He struck his chest with his fist again. "On me.”
Rose didn’t flinch. “Well, aren’t you the pot calling the kettle black. You fell in love with the human you were supposed to kill, daddy, and made a baby with her. Don’t tell me again, that there is no comparison. I’m sick of riding that high horse alongside you. I can’t be an angel all the time. I don’t want to be. Especially if it means that I would hurt Skrike with it, as if my heritage were some sort of blade with which to cut him.”
Alexius leaned forward then, his mouth a knife-slash, and the elegant stone angel she had pictured him as was gone. In its place was a cold, rigid soldier whose eyes burned with an unearthly light. An image that blew the benevolent glowing image of an angel right out of the water. “The day I tried to flee back to Heaven, my duty done…flee to keep you and your mother safe, I wept bitterly as I walked away toward that sunset-drenched sea.” As he spoke, his voice was a husky rumble that seemed to make the air to vibrate. “And Psyche chased me down. Chased me down and begged me to stay, and she had no idea yet that she was with child. ”
He let out a sad sigh.
“She followed me because she loved me and wanted me. All I wanted was her, and you. All I wanted was a family, Rose. Something few angels ever get, and it was demons that took that away when you were small. I do not see how you can lie with that scum and still look upon your own face without shame or rage—not with the marks that you still bear from that terrible night.”
Rose’s mouth twisted bitterly. “I never asked to be born, and I never asked who the Fates wanted me to love. And you bringing up these scars is a fucked up move. I’m tired of making Skriker feel that I am paying penance being with him, when all he ever has been is good to me! “She shook her head slowly, tears welling in her eyes. “And you know that I hate you for making me anyway, right?” she whispered, and she saw something else flicker in his eyes… agony?
Terrible, wrenching agony that left him all but paralyzed. She knew she plunged yet another verbal blade into his heart and left deeper scarring, but today she didn’t care. “Sometimes, I wish you’d just beg your way back Upstairs and be gone. “She looked away, wiping her eyes furiously with the heel of her hand.
When she looked back, he was gone. “I’m sorry,” she muttered bitterly to nobody, to the now empty apartment. “I’m sorry but it’s the truth. “She ducked b
ack under her bed and pulled the long box out again. The blue ribbon had fallen to the floor during her argument with Alexius, and she tied it around the casket with care, blinking away the sharp sting of tears.
Flouncing the sapphire-colored bow on top of Skriker’s gift, Rose raked the back of her hand across her eyes again and got up. “Fuck it. I don’t care. I don’t.”
She grabbed the overnight bag she 'd packed earlier that day, tucked a knife and a gun deep into the pile of clothes and toiletries—force of habit—and swiftly darted out the door.
* * *
Skriker’s birthday was in early September, when the sun beat down on the city without mercy, even at the end of the day. The time of year when little trickles of sweat tended to roll down one’s brow and a thin sheen seemed to descend and lie heavily on everything, making the afternoons swim blearily.
As the day that her lover would turn thirty deepened inexorably toward night, that suffocating heat began to gently lift. Rose pocketed her shopping list and struck out on her Harley Nightster. She rode out of the swill hole in which she lived and through the urban wasteland, passing by gaggles of squealing children, loafing teens enjoying the last few days of summer break, and couples strolling arm-in-arm as they moseyed to patio cafes, bars, and used bookstores.
She made a number of stops on the way, loading up the saddlebags on her bike and tying other items to the back of her saddle, and the heavier her bags became, the better she felt; her fight with her father seemed to fade from her mind little by little, as she trekked through the city.
At one point, as she pulled up in front of Skriker’s favorite donut shop, slamming her kickstand down and slipping from her saddle, a small throng of teenagers watched her with greedy eyes. As she strolled past them, a swell of whistles welled up from the gaggle of boys. Rose paused outside the door of the shop and smirked at them, raising one dark eyebrow.
“Hey, baby,” one of the boys, a gangly brunette with a fresh crop of acne gleaming on his oily cheeks, called out. “You want some real power between those amazing legs?”
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