Just for an extra bit of emphasis, Lucifer accentuated each word with a little burst of flame in the crackling fireplace across the room.
Jerry put up his hands in a sign of submission. “Yes, my lord. Happy to end my seventeen-hundred-year run on Earth as your go-to demon. I’m sure she’s so worth it.”
A deviant smile crossed over Lucifer’s face.
Jerry had no idea.
Chapter 3
Riona had only known Dee and Marc for four months. Most of that time had been spent in training, honing, testing, coaching and all-around prepping for her new part-time job. Pure social interaction was by consequence, not design. They kept her focused; as long as Jerry was out there, he was a danger. The crash course in vanquishing and exploding demons had left little time to play friends.
As the three Pure Souls relaxed in a booth at Paolo’s Pizza Pie Emporium, feeling their first big bust had gone pretty damned well, thank you very much, an awkward silence grew between them. There was no program to run they knew of called “chill.” A buxom waitress provided a welcome distraction as she arrived to take their orders, being sure to lean over the table just enough to let Dee, the semi-sex-god that he was, see her daily specials.
Dee grinned up at her, causing a blush more natural in lobsters. “Two Sam Adams and an unsweetened iced tea. Large cheese pizza with olive, garlic, feta, tomato, more olives, more garlic…”
“Dee!”
Riona’s admonishing look only made him shrug. “What? I’m Greek, remember? Olives and garlic are like water and air to me.”
“You told me your mother was a patent lawyer from New Jersey,” Riona snapped back, looking desperately through the menu for salvation, and salavation.
“Yeah, who got knocked up by Zeus. And could that be any more Greek?”
Luckily, the waitress didn’t seem to take any note of the odd comments openly declaring his hybrid ancestry. Probably because Dee was charming her with a crooked smile and a wink that had her thinking about just how big his own lightning rod might be.
Yeah, the poor unsuspecting lass would be under him, atop him, and, depending on whatever else Dee was planning, perhaps behind him by the end of the night.
“Make that monstrosity for him.” Riona pointed accusingly at Dee. “Me and the other guy will have a large pie, light cheese, thin crust, no garlic.” Riona shoved her menu into the waitress’s stomach. The blonde barmaid strutted away with an oh-no-you-didden look in the wake of her departure.
“Well,” Dee finally said, breaking their tension, “that went pretty well.”
“Except for that whole trapping-me-in-mime-land bit,” Riona chortled, rolling her eyes.
Dee looked up from spreading a napkin over his lap. At least, that’s what Riona hoped he was doing with his hands under the table. “Say what?”
Probably in the confusion of the scuffle, they hadn’t noticed or maybe understood her predicament. “It was weird. Jerry used this charm I’d never heard from you guys, and it was like he threw an invisible force field up. Solid as a brick wall, see-through as water in a glass.”
Dee’s face suddenly went rigid. “Do you remember the charm?”
She nodded. “Something like fruity perimeter.”
Marc, who suddenly seemed a whole bunch more interested in what she was saying, leaned in over the table. “Infuita permuter?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
The priest turned to Dee. “A Morgana Box? I thought only the elites were capable of those.”
Dee shrugged. “Yeah, but Jerry wasn’t exactly straight off the bus. In all his centuries, he might have picked it up somehow. Don’t forget, he is… was a gnosis demon. Forbidden knowledge is sort of their shtick.”
“Yeah, but why would he have used a protective barrier spell? If he was trying to kill the Keystone, wouldn’t he want all the other demons coming after her? Why would he isolate her like that?”
Dee scratched his chin. “Maybe he thought it’d be a blow to his ego to have help. Maybe some sort of pissing in the sand move to mark his territory.”
“Or, maybe he didn’t want to kill her. Maybe he was going through all the gusto not to lose face, and was trying to figure out a way to get her out.”
The suggestion that Jerry may have been faking his evil in the bar hit Riona like a three-day-old dead fish. It smelled funny and left her feeling a little funky in the soul. Was it possible she had just vanquished someone on the up and up? Someone who was just as scared as she was?
No, Jerry was a demon. Demons were capable of kindness, but only as a means to an end. Just because she had a temporary moment of pity, a transitory nanosecond of feeling for him, didn’t change what his true nature and purpose were. And, besides, she had vanquished him. If there was no use crying over spilt milk, there was certainly no good fretting over an exploded demon.
The waitress returned with the drinks, breaking their conversation. Blondie delicately set two steins in front of the men, but almost dropped the iced tea she assumed was Riona’s in the witch’s lap. A parting wink at Dee, and she was off without an apology.
“What the heck is her deal?” Riona asked as she patted away a few splashes of tea from her shirt. Marc used the distraction to exchange Riona’s beer for his tea.
Dee grabbed a napkin to wipe a few drips from the table. “She probably thinks you’re with me, since, you know, you’re with me. She’s just jealous.”
Marc swigged his tea, swallowing loudly. “Yup.”
Riona, however, felt a pang of unease. “There was something weird about Jerry. He just seemed to give up. Not like him, y’know? He’s so damned confrontational on everything. I wanted TV, he wanted to go to a movie. He wanted Chinese, I wanted steak. He wanted to be on top when I wanted…”
She paused while Marc’s eyes looked for anything else in the room and Dee’s seemed concerned with anything but.
“Well, anyways,” Riona resumed, “like I said, confrontational. I don’t get why he’d suddenly change like that.”
The bottle hesitated at Dee’s lips. “Kinda makes me wonder what you saw in the guy, if you fought all the time. To tell the truth, that is.”
“Well, Jerry… He was just… I don’t know. He was funny, and flirty, and liked all the same music and movies and even the same bars as me. I mean, that was probably a game, looking back. You know, to keep me engaged with the glamour? But, damn, he was really, really good in…” The two men across the table eyed her with knowing smiles as she blushed, finding her fingers mysteriously tracing down the valley of her chest. “Canasta.”
“Right, canasta.” Dee finished off the beer in one long pull before pounding it on the table and pivoting in his seat. Leaning against the counter across the pizza joint, Blondie couldn’t rip her eyes away. “Think I might like to play a hand or two of that right now, and I bet she’s a great canasta partner.”
Marc let out a huff and added under his breath, “Sure as hell beats playing solitaire.”
As Dee sauntered away, Riona focused on the priest’s expression. He wasn’t in his collar and coat today, but always carried the air of the clergyman within to some degree, like he wore his collar on the inside.
“How did you end up here?”
She took in the rugged cut of his jaw, the stubble that showed he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He wasn’t bad looking by any measure, and he probably could have been quite the heartbreaker if he wasn’t a man of God. His eyes weren’t brown, they were black, and glistened like onyx pendants. A firm jaw and supple lips were likely often employed more for battling the fires of Hell than fanning the flames of lust. Nevertheless, the tools were there to be used, if he so desired. For a man of the cloth, he sure cut that cloth fine. The priest rose to what she considered the perfect height, had a body not too muscular, but hardly milk t
oasty, and a swagger in his walk that would make a lady think he could move his body in all the ways the good Lord intended.
If only his collar and his personality weren’t pressed with double starch.
“Paolo’s is the best pizza in town. Trust me on that, I’m Italian.” Sarcasm wasn’t his most attractive trait, but it was one of the most prominent.
“Don’t deflect the question,” Riona commanded with a click of her tongue. “I mean being one of the Pure Souls. I know how you found me…”
“… secured in a straitjacket and pending shipment to a cushy psychiatric facility?”
She crossed her arms and grimaced, wondering suddenly if the hex she’d learned to give demons jock itch would work on humans. “Look, you walk through the steel wall of a meat locker and try to explain it to the police in a way that doesn’t get you 5150’ed, and then you can talk. But, I mean, a priest? Isn’t the Catholic Church, you know, kind of not kosher with the whole magical powers and battling goblins thing?”
“Technically, the Catholic Church isn’t kosher with anything,” he returned. “Kosher’s a Jewish thing, not that I think the people of the book are anymore approving of mortal combat with the spawn of Hell. I was born into it. Magic is a birthright, you know. It shows up in my family every couple of generations. Just like being a priest — like my father before me, and his father before him.”
He gave her a sly little wink as he sipped up the last of his iced tea.
“Hardy-har, har,” Riona snapped back.
“What about you? You didn’t know this was in your gene pool?”
It was the first time Marc had ever asked her anything so personal. The feeling clutched at her, like a new sweater in the store that just didn’t fit right.
“Must have been from my father’s side,” she returned with a shrug, studying her half-empty mug o’ Miller. “Mom never said anything much about him. He’s sort of a big question mark.”
“I see.”
The silence fell between them. She was glad for it, glad that he didn’t ask any more details about the whys and why-nots. But she wasn’t quite ready to let a more-easy-going Marc slip away so soon. “You’re joking about your father being a priest, right? I mean, aren’t priests supposed to be celibate?”
He leaned in and spoke across the table in a conspiratorial tone that made heat boil beneath the surface of her skin. “Interested, Keystone?”
Quickly, she moved to distance her demeanor. “I don’t do virgins, Father. Okay, back to you. So, it’s hereditary, but when did you know? How did you find out you could do all this?”
With a sigh, he leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. “The first parish I was ever assigned to was in this tiny backwoods town in Alabama. Let me tell you, on a scale of one to fucked up, backwoods Bammer ranks at about an episode-of-Jerry-Springer-during-sweeps. My congregation was only about fifty people, most of them not so bad beyond a few premarital shaggings and petty blasphemies. There was this one woman though, old and wrinkled. Had an attitude like a pig poked with a popsicle stick. I’ll never forget her name: Evangeline DuBoux. Is that not a classic Cajun belle? Anyways, come Ash Wednesday my second year there, Evie comes to the front of the church, and leans into me and says, ‘I know what you are, and I know what you need.’ She invited me over for dinner about a week later.”
“Ew, I asked how you became a Pure Soul, not how you had your innocence stolen in the throes of horny granny sex.” Riona’s lips curled in disgust. “You didn’t… you know… jiggle your prunes for her, did you?”
Marc looked insulted by the very idea. “No, and gross. Anyways, she drags out all these weird voodoo trinkets and totems, and I’m like a Jehovah Witness at an atheist convention because I’m all green and young and think I can save her mortal soul and all that shit. So I start talking to her about the wonders of God and the glories of Heaven and how faith can lead her away from Lucifer’s snares, and she just goes about her business, mixing up something that smelled like a cat pissed after eating a crate of broccoli.”
“And you know this is an apt comparison… how?”
He had the gall to look ashamed of her ignorance. “Some things, even a priest won’t confess, Keystone. But I was just about to give up for the day, and Evie pours this stuff in a big dish and sets it on fire. Next thing you know, I’m looking at a three-foot-high wall of purple smoke in front of me, and I start to see people’s faces in the smoke. And I think I’m fucked, because all my education at the seminary has taught me that I’ve somehow fallen for one of Satan’s tricks. Turns out, Evie was an old wood sprite, could see the magic welling up in me. I’d had a few sparks of magic before, but I always hid it, suppressed it, was embarrassed. But Evie,,, She showed me a whole bunch of other stuff I couldn’t…. Well, I had no way of knowing then. You know, things that would come to be, but hadn’t. People I’d meet. Like him.”
He pointed across the room to where Dee brushed a fallen strand of hair from the face of one seriously flushed waitress.
“When I saw Dee for the first time in real life, that sealed it for me. I felt it. Inside. Dee was already working for the Seven, brought me into the fray. Bastard’s been through a lot with me. He’s the best friend I got this side of Heaven and Hell.”
“Dee?” Riona questioned with an incredulous smirk. “Ah, yes. Our friend, Dionysus Zitka. The half-human/half-deity brought a priest into a wiccan assault force. Just curiously, his father is the head of the Greek pantheon. How does that square with the whole ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me’ dogma?”
“Didn’t say anything about after Him, though, did He?” Marc looked pleased as punch with his quip. “You have to read the fine print, Keystone. Especially in cases of politics and religion.”
“Why don’t you ever call me by my name?”
That fact had been driving her mad for weeks. Only on one occasion, on their initial meeting in the psychiatric ward, did Marc actually utter, “Riona,” and then only as a way of confirming he had the right psycho. Since, her fated role, Keystone, had been the only moniker he employed. Even after months, Marc remained an enigma to her. He wasn’t a complete jerk; she’d witnessed his compassion when priestly duties called. Once when Dee and she met him at a small parish church in South Boston, he demonstrated a gentle demeanor and comforting spirit with his parishioners. But with her? At the best of times, he was merely standoffish. In the worst of times, he was a certifiable prick, worthy of an honorary PhD in Assholery.
“You are the Keystone, Keystone. You wouldn’t fault me for calling a cop, ‘officer,’ would you?”
Fidgeting with her straw, she glared at him. “And shall I call you priest?”
“Or Father. Whatever zooms your broom.”
Studying his features, Riona realized something that had somehow eluded her before. Sitting back just as Blondie took enough of a breather from Dee to haphazardly toss the pizza on to the table, Riona crossed her arms over her chest and nodded her understanding.
“Oh, I think I get it.”
Marc’s right eyebrow rose to attention.
“You don’t like the fact that you’re a Pure Soul.” His fidget suggested she’d tapped into something. “Oh, sure, you accept your duties because that’s the good, pious nature you have, but you don’t jive with this. You think you’re being punished somehow, or maybe, will be punished later for it. So this is your way of keeping it impersonal.”
He leaned forward, shoving the pie to the side, his eyes burning her in effigy. “Is that what you think, Keystone?”
She answered, boasting her psychology minor in college, that it was precisely what she thought.
Marc reached inside his coat and withdrew a worn, brown leather wallet. Taking a meager collection of greenbacks from it, he let them fall to the table.
“You know w
hat they say about making assumptions, don’t you?” He was out of his seat before the words were fully out of his mouth. “Just a bit of friendly advice from a priest: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Something in his look, his glare, gave her a fright. Riona hadn’t led an existence filled with debauchery and depravity, but there was one rather particular detail of her nature — other than being a witch — that she knew the more pious members of the church would frown upon.
As Marc turned away from their booth, Dee rushed over like someone had just handed her a grenade and he was the bomb squad.
“What’s up?”
Watching Marc’s little frankly-my-dear,-I-don’t-give-a-damn strut out of Paolo’s made her wonder the same thing.
Chapter 4
Nicotine. Damn it, he needed nicotine and stat.
Marcello Angeletti picked up his nasty addiction at the age of fourteen. Currently boasting twenty-nine years, half of his life had been partnered to the habit. Several attempts to kick the cancer sticks amounted to little; he always gave into temptation about the third day in and made up for lost time by sucking down half a pack in no time flat. His inability to toss out a self-destructive behavior was just one piece of evidence toward proving his worst flaw: when Marc tasted something he liked, he was too weak and obedient to his desires to give it up. Magic and religion were two tastes that suited his palate. The combination was a difficult one, like trying to serve two masters, each demanding total exclusivity and submission.
A rough-and-tumble street punk from Back Bay, he wasn’t the only one surprised when he heeded the call of the cloth. His free-loving, nonconformist mother had proclaimed him the black sheep of the family ever since. Coming from an upbringing where anything goes and self-destructive behavior was written off as self-determination, religion served as his form of teenage rebellion.
Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) Page 3