“Just needed a change of scenery,” she answered, sighing. “You know, after a few centuries of blissful and beautiful, you need to expose yourself to the pulse of life again to remember why that all has any meaning. I’ll go back eventually. I just need to get away for a little while.”
“You and that bastard are on the outs again.” It was a conclusion, not a question.
Persephone clicked her tongue reproachfully. “That’s no way to talk about your uncle.”
“You’re right. There should have been a fucking before bastard. I make exceptions of kindness when my asshole uncle is also my sister’s husband.”
The Mt. Olympus family tree didn’t exactly grow up and out. Persephone sat on one of the incestuous branches that had been turned back in and wrapped around itself like a food court soft pretzel. She tried to explain to her half-brother that the ancients didn’t view these sort of intra-family pollinations the way modern folk did, but Dee didn’t buy that as an excuse for the status quo continuing to quo.
She sighed. “Hades is Hades, what can I say?”
“That you wised up and left the bastard for good. That you’re not just pulling another one of your temporary ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ shticks until he shows up with flowers and a box of candied ambrosia and sways you back,” Dee returned harshly. “But maybe that’s hoping for too much.”
Her eyes surveyed the bottom of the window pane. “You know I can’t do that. I’m obligated.”
“Yeah, everyone knows the story. Here’s the thing though, Steph. I don’t buy it. Why do you think I turned down the opportunity to rise to the mountain? Because it wasn’t worth the exchange. I loved Clare too much to give her up just so I could live forever. Because I knew that what I would be doing without her would be dying forever.”
Persephone’s eyes narrowed ruefully. “Well, I don’t see her here and now, so apparently that whole ‘I can’t live without her’ spiel of yours turned out to be crap.”
Dee’s head lashed from side-to-side. “I’ll be with her again someday.”
“Where?” his sister scoffed. “In Heaven? May I remind you, dead gods don’t go to Heaven. He has exclusive claims on that territory, and He doesn’t grant favors to our kind.”
“True, but I am half-human, and when I held Clare in my arms and in my heart, I was the closest thing to a man I’ll ever be. I have to just hope half-human is enough.” He tipped the last of his champagne into his mouth before concluding, “And if you had half a brain and a sliver of the heart you claim to have, you’d renounce your immortality too and beg for a conversion.”
“Never. I could never ask someone who loved me to sacrifice their own life for that to happen,” she stared down into her champagne. “I could never ask anyone to do for me what Clare did for you.”
“No, I guess you’re right. No one will ever love you like Clare loved me unless you can learn to value yourself first.” They stayed a moment in silence before Dee turned to her, getting back to the moment at hand. “Anyways, what’s going on here with your pest problem? How you so sure it’s something demonic?”
“Whatever it is doesn’t affect me, but for all the others, it gets worse as the night goes on.”
He shrugged. “Could just be all the alcohol building up.”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m sure some of it’s that. But this thing… It’s not just random people, and even the Red Bull devotees get sucked in. Dee, this is a night club on the edge of a college campus. Horny kids are just part of the package. But I have regulars who’ve been coming forever who don’t want anything, but to let off steam on the dance floor. They’re not the different-partner-every-night types. And out of nowhere they just … start screwing in every corner of the club, shooting up any drug they can lay their hands on, drinking to extremes that frighten even my liver… anything and everything. I stay on the floor for as long as I can take it, but I can barely last past ten anymore before it all becomes too much for me. It’s like being at home; everyone’s screwing everyone else and they don’t care what the ramifications are or who they hurt, even if they end up hurting themselves.”
A chord struck as Dee noticed the rhythm of the swinging bodies change below, of the way hands and arms and torsos were suddenly grinding up like the club was some sort of underworld flour mill.
“Good people have bad days, but they don’t en masse just toss their morality away like that. You’re right. Something demonic, making good ones turn bad.”
Purity torn asunder was the dark side’s ultimate high, and the purer the soul, the more fabulous the euphoria. That’s why they all had wet dreams about turning a Pure Soul. It was like hitting the MegaMillions lottery while discovering a cure for cancer.
The thought hit him like a brick.
“Wait! You say, people who don’t ordinarily…” he stumbled. “Fuck. Steph, I have to find Riona and Marc, now!”
“What… Why?”
“He’s a priest and a Pure Soul in love with the witch. You figure it out,” was all Dee had to say to make the imminent threat apparent.
Halfway down the stairs, lust wrapped itself around Dee, taking his temperature up about five degrees. In an instant, licentious instincts triggered and his radar began scanning the bar for any female needing company. Pausing and reeling from temptation, Dee tried to focus on what had changed between the time he left Persephone’s office and this moment that would have such an effect.
With a libido naturally in overdrive, it wouldn’t take long for the effects of a seduction charm to undo his inhibitions. Dark magic penetrated the human body through one of the five senses. He did drink the champagne, but knew his sister would never overlook something so fundamental. Nothing had touched him, and he hadn’t smelled anything sinister in Persephone’s office and only the sweat of the clubbers on the dance floor. Sight-charms rarely proved useful (other than the all-too-human tendency to love the pretty faces a glamour could conjure), so the demons didn’t even try those.
Which only left...
“Io actom auditat nuc!”
Calling on his own magic, Dee cut off his ability to hear. In a wash, the desire evaporated. Yes, his suspicion was right. The beats being tossed by the DJ were more than hypnotic; they were imbued with dark magic. It all added up. Besides, Dee had always suspected that dub step was part of a larger, devious ploy.
Persephone, a few steps ahead of him, turned and mouthed something. Lip reading remained a skill that eluded Dee. Luckily, gods didn’t need vocal chords to communicate to each other.
“The music,” he said to her psychically. “It’s cursed.”
“But it’s not affecting me.”
“Must be customized for human souls. Hit me like a crack whore with a vendetta the second we came out of your office. Your demon must know you’re a divinity and wouldn’t pick up on it. Smart motherfuckers. Steph— Marc and Riona are very human. They won’t be able to resist. Take care of the DJ while I find them?”
“You know I can’t fight the battle for human welfare,” she reminded him.
Dee shoved a hand and annoyed expression towards the back of the club. “No, but as a boss you can fire his sorry ass or, hell, just smack him down.”
Persephone gave a quick nod, turned on heel, and dove into the throbbing horde.
Seduction charms were no laughing matter, but weren’t exactly cutting edge fashion. Humans were doing a good enough job in the modern era of screwing each other and their own souls in the process to need demon help. Still, there was one demon who was the granddaddy pimp of seduction charms, and Dee had no doubt it was indeed Asmodeus, Lucifer’s numero uno disher-out of lust since before lust was cool, working the DJ board.
He considered for a moment casting a deafness charm over everyone in the club, but knew that would tip off Asmodeus and send him scattering into the shad
ows. Not to mention, he just didn’t think his magic was strong enough to envelop so many people. Persephone was immune from most demon charms, but could she really do anything to counter such a heavy weight? Dee didn’t know. Despite his own divine heritage, the only way to understand the full canvas of a god’s power was to sit on the mountain, and he had never sunk so low as to rise so high up the chain of the immortals.
Nope, he needed to find Riona, so she could send this damn demon straight back to his mama.
How many times had he dreamed of this very moment? Well, maybe not this one as much as the several that would follow it: when Marc found himself wrapped in Riona’s embrace while he held her to him and made love to her. Now, as his eyes locked into her hungry gaze, as he tittered on the edge of losing his own innocence, about to cast off and forsake all his vows, he found himself hesitant.
“Marc?” She seemed to have taken notice of the confusion marring his features. “Marc, why did you… I thought… I thought you wanted me?”
Using every fiber of his will, he swallowed hard and kissed her. But this kiss was not to kindle the passion, it was to contain it.
“More than is holy,” he admitted as he closed his eyes and let his forehead fall against hers at the same time as he slowly lowered her legs to the floor. “But the consequences… I don’t give a damn about myself, but I can’t ask you to pay for my sins.”
His ache for her, both in his heart and in his body, was excoriatingly potent. If he didn’t back down now, he knew he wouldn’t. And so, instead of the mild acceptance he had expected, he felt the wetness of her lips against his, the last tendrils of resistance tying him to the sake of his mortal soul let loose.
Riona stood just an inch short of him in her heels, and her strength wasn’t exactly lacking. In a sweep and shift, she took him by the shoulders and pushed him against the wall. Before he knew what was happening or could offer any defense, she was crawling up his body and positioning herself over his still very solid and extremely ready member.
And God help him if he didn’t have his hands on her hips, helping to navigate her.
“Voi actom auditat nuc,” was the last thing they both heard before their worlds were plunged into silence.
Marc’s legs fell out from under him, bringing Riona crashing down on top of him. But, thank the Lord, not in a sexy way. In fact, in a way that made his face turn red and brought a yelp of his inner little girl ringing from his throat. Though he couldn’t hear it, of course, he knew from the raw pain that ripped his vocal chords, that’s what it sounded like.
Riona took his face into her hands and pulled it up. He made out “Are you okay?” from the movement of her lips. Though winded, he nodded.
The witch didn’t hesitate for a minute. She scrambled off Marc and left him to straighten himself up. Rising to his feet, he saw Riona and Dee jump up on the platform where the DJ was secured in a vice grip by Persephone. Despite thrashing more than an Amish man on harvest day, the ugly brute was making no gain against the goddess’s superhuman biceps.
Dee manhandled the mixing table, flipping it over in one mighty heave and bringing the music to an end. The crowd might as well have turned to stone, the way they froze on the spot. Realizing what was already so obvious to Dee and knowing the danger had died with the speakers, Marc threw off the deafness charm just in time to hear Riona rattle off a vanquishing spell, sending the DJ’s body into a puff of smoke and Persephone stumbling backwards.
Dee jumped off the stage after helping his sister to her feet. Riona followed. Marc, out of breath and confused, shriveled like a head of lettuce under a hot light when he caught himself in Dee’s glare.
The demigod pointed once at Marc, then at Riona.
“You and you, with me. Now.”
Chapter 18
The donuts weren’t the only things with holes. Though invisible to the naked eye, Riona and Marc had a matching pair in their heads.
“What the Jim Dandy fuck were you thinking?”
Dee struggled with his volume amid the gaggle of middle-of-the-night patrons at Donuts DeJour. Not that he thought any of them gave a damn about anything he was saying. And frankly, a handful of them were suspicious, dark world wash-ups anyways. Failed demons reportedly really enjoyed a midnight crueller.
Riona’s expression wore “fuck you” like it was the latest thing off the Paris runway. “It was the charm, Dee. You honestly believe someone as green as I could stand up to something Asmodeus himself was dishing out? The demon has been heating things up since the Ice Age.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dee said sweetly. “I didn’t realize you only signed up to fight middle-management evil.” With a blink, the scowl returned to his face. He focused his attention on Marc. “And you, Father Feely. I thought we had this all sorted out with our little powwow the other night? Do you not truly grasp that you were within six inches of damning yourself to Hell and becoming a demon?”
Marc remained nonplussed. Without looking so much as concerned, he pulled a white mug of caffeine sludge to his lips, and rattled off, “About nine inches, actually,” before drawing a sip.
The coffee never reached his mouth. It became a Jackson Pollack-inspired masterpiece on the wall adjacent the table at which they sat.
Dee leapt to his feet, his chair demonstrating the principle of Newton’s first law of motion as he lunged forward and plunged his fist down on the tiled tabletop, cracking it straight down the middle.
“Is this all a joke to you?” he bellowed, drawing Marc and Riona’s gazes back from the mug’s trajectory and its final resting place. “What part of ‘damned for all eternity and serving the dark side as its demon minion’ don’t you get? Yes, someone like Asmodeus is about as hard as they come. You still kicked his ass back to Hell, Riona. Barely. If you’d been ‘distracted’ a minute more, who knows though? You both have got to get a hold of yourselves before things go too far. I refuse to stand by and watch another person I care for get killed for something as silly as love.”
Now it was Riona’s turn to spring. “Jesus H. Christ, I am not in love with the priest here. I don’t know where the hell you and Ramiel get these ideas.”
“Ramiel?” Marc blinked violently several times. “You’re talking to Ramiel about us?”
Dee didn’t miss that dangerous two-lettered word. “Us?”
The witch slashed her hand through the air like a confused ninja using flies for target practice. “No, there is no us. Marc and I are not a thing. It only came up because Ramiel kept hinting that I have some destined love that’s supposed to shake the cosmos, or start an apocalypse, or melt the polar ice caps, or something. I think he was warning me not to be distracted,” she whipped in Marc’s direction, “by screwing you.”
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to make this my fault?” the priest shot back. “I backed off. I tried to stop. You’re the one who decided to act like a kitty that wanted to climb my tree.”
The witch blanched. “How dare you?”
By this time, even the transient who’d been having a three-way conversation with himself had paused and was watching the trio with utter confusion. Dee, noticing their audience, leaned in over the remaining half of the table and pushed the red-faced Riona back into her seat. Her attempt to resist stood no chance against Dee’s demigod strength.
Narrowing his gaze on the reticent couple, he yelled through a whisper, “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. You’re both on the hook if something happens; Marc for obvious reasons, and you because you would never subject someone to Hell, if given the choice. That’s it, I don’t see another solution. You two are not allowed to be alone anymore.”
“Seriously?” Riona barked.
Marc said nothing, but Dee knew his friend well enough to recognize sadness in his eyes.
“Chaperoned visits only from now on, preferably wit
h Ramiel or me,” Dee confirmed. “It’s as much for your own good, as well as for our mission. I know I’m pretty damned talented, but I can’t fight evil on my own.”
“You’re right.” Brow furrowed, Marc nodded solemnly. “You’re right, indeed.”
But Riona didn’t like the looks of that bandwagon. “Oh. My. God. I am an adult and perfectly capable of putting a kibosh on my own behavior. I do not need to be chaperoned like this is some goddamn reenactment of Victorian courtship.”
Marc turned to Riona, taking her hands in his. The witch dashed a look at him in confusion, trying to figure out from his expression why he would do something so traitorous to their claims. It was when the saccharine words began to fall from his lips that she understood.
“My child, we all fall prey to Satan’s snares from time to time, and acquiesce our better judgment to the darkness. There is no sin in being human, the only sin is failing to strive for purity when we realize the error of our ways.”
She ripped her hand away as if Marc’s palms were a hot stovetop. “Don’t you fucking pull the compassionate clergy routine on me, Father. I am not one of your parishioners, and if I recall correctly, your error was about to make a beeline straight for my purity.”
Dee couldn’t stop the harrumph that escaped his throat. Riona was many wonderful things, but sexually pure was not one. While they had never discussed her history of conquests, he knew she was the conquering type by instinct. Like the old saying goes, takes one to know one.
Not to mention that she’d been introduced to the world of magic by her demon-in-glamour ex.
As the fire of Riona’s stare turned to Dee, the demigod saw the situation quickly getting out of control. He had to sum this up with no possibilities of misinterpretation, and pronto.
Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) Page 15