Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls)

by Killian McRae

  “Yes, I can,” she insisted. “I did it a few weeks ago at the club when Marc and I were in the hot tub together.” His eyes flashed confusion and jealousy. “It’s not what it sounds like. We were both naked and...”

  “You were what?!” Red specks covered his cheeks. “You sure Marc’s still pure?”

  “Yes, we didn’t do anything, not that it’s any of your business. Anyways. Invisibility? Si, se puede.”

  “If that’s true, Riona, you and Ramiel need to have a heart-to-heart soon. Invisibility? Fuck, this is all beginning to make a whole lot more sense.” Jerry’s eyes flew up the direction of the heavens. “I’d like to know which one of you celestial bastards is responsible! See what you fucking wrought?”

  “Jerry?”

  But he only shook his head wildly. “We need to stay focused. Fine, you can be invisible? Prove it to me. Do it now.”

  Without hesitation, she pulled the charm over herself. Looking down at the driver wheel, she saw the edges of her hand and arm becoming pale, then turning transparent. A few moments later, only the sleeve of her shirt was visible, looking as though it were floating in suspension.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Each profane utterance was accentuated with a pounding of Jerry’s fist against the door. “Shit. This just got a whole lot more serious.” He swallowed like he was trying to take down bad medicine. “Okay, okay, let’s just… not worry about that part right now. Focus, focus, focus… Riona, lose the clothes.”

  “You never give up, do you?”

  “Like the demons are going to miss a pair of purple yoga pants and a long-sleeved black tee walking towards them. With your permission…?” His voice trailed off. Reluctantly, she made no objection. “Eínai gymnós!”

  The chill of the leather seat on her backside told her without looking that Jerry’s abilities to strip her in no time flat were actually as magical as she recalled.

  “I swear, I’m so not picturing you naked and driving a cherry red sports car at the moment,” he said in a tone that made it so obvious he was. “Now, once we get there, charge straight for the door. Ramiel and I will handle the minions, just in case you flicker back. And, oh… One last thing you should be cautious of.”

  “What?”

  “Me.” Somberness clouded his features. “I’m on your side, but Lucifer still owns my soul. The second he figures out I’ve sprung loose from Hell and taken this body, he’s going to be pissed. He might use me. My demon powers funneled through the body of a Pure Soul might be a temptation he’s unable to resist. If he catches on that it’s me, promise me you won’t let that happen. I couldn’t take it if I ever hurt you again. Promise me that if he makes a move, you’ll send me packing right back to Hell without a second thought.”

  “But, Jerry…” Her mind was playing out the truth of what his being here meant. “You’ll have to go back to Hell eventually. What will he do to you? Won’t he be pissed?”

  The demon exhaled loudly, running a hand through Dee’s silky, black locks. “Once you’re in Hell, what does it matter how far down you go? But yeah, once I get back, I’m fucked.”

  A tiny bit of the tenderness she once felt for him crept up from the recesses of her heart. “I’m so sorry, Jerry.”

  He grinned. “I’m not. If y’all come out of this, it will have been worth it.”

  With a screeching halt, the car came to a rest on the curb. A flashing thought that she should care if any damage resulted ran through her mind, but her feet were hitting the pavement and on the run toward her building’s front door before she had the chance. Ramiel stood at the ready. Angels didn’t have heartbeats, but his face went ashen nonetheless when he realized she was cloaked. Her eyes caught a thin layer of disturbance crawling over the brick exterior. The Morgana Box shimmied like waves of heat off blacktop on a hot day, visible only to those with a mystic’s eye.

  Ramiel began to pace, running a hand through his majestically perfect blonde hair. “This is like Jericho all the fuck over again.”

  Jerry was unfettered. “Yeah, but they still brought down that Morgana Box then, and so are we. Riona, run. Now.”

  She wasn’t about to wait for an invitation. But when she went for it, the box’s walls rebounded her. She landed flat on her ass with a huff.

  “Riona?”

  Jerry must have heard her cry out.

  “I can’t get through.”

  The demon took one assessment, then nodded. “That’s good. It means he’s trying to stall you, which means there’s still time. He hasn’t completely seduced Mark yet. Use your charms, Keystone. Rip a hole in that motherfucker.”

  Fine, if Lucifer was going to play that way…

  All her magic, all her concentration, and all her heart poured into her words as she expanded out her magic and poked and prodded. The box’s walls were the toughest enchantment she’d ever felt and her attempts were proving worthless. She’d have better luck puncturing a diamond with a tooth pick.

  “It’s too strong.” Her arms fell to her side as the tears pricked the corner of her eyes. “I can’t do it. It’s impossible.”

  She felt a pair of hands on her shoulders that squeezed reassuringly. How he could “see” her, she hadn’t a clue, but Jerry came straight to her side. The sensation sent her back to their showdown at Dante’s Inferno all those months ago. Only then, it was Marc’s reassuring voice that calmed her, giving her strength. The memory made her heart ache. But this time, instead of the priest’s encouragement, it was Jerry’s voice that whispered into her ears.

  “Feel my soul, Riona.” The heat of his breath fell upon her neck, sending shivers down her spine. “Feel my strength. Feel my power. Reach out and harness it. I give it to you willingly.”

  Magic borrowing. She had heard of it, but it wasn’t possible.

  Ramiel put his metaphorical foot down. “Jerry, you know a human can’t magic grab.”

  Jerry’s demon nature reared its freckled head. He might not have horns while possessing Dee’s body, but his voice possessed sharp canines in folds. “And you fucking know that she can and why, don’t you, angel? Now, Riona, do it. It will smell like the sweetest roses you ever had, like sunshine through autumn leaves, like creation. Breathe it in, deep as you can, and use it.”

  The scent tickled her senses, but she resisted. “Jerry, I can’t… What if it hurts you? What if it throws you out of Dee’s body? What if you wake up back in Hell?”

  He kissed her cheek. “I’m already in Hell. Not because I’m a demon, but because I love you like you love him, and will never have you. You have my heart, now take my magic and punch through this bitch so you can save him.”

  She didn’t want to cry. She refused to weep over any feelings she had for Jerry. He was a demon, and he tried to set her up to kill an innocent just so she’d be damned. But, damn… She wasn’t going to be able to hold up.

  She stilled herself, then inhaled the deepest breath she ever took.

  Her body hummed with power. It was a like reliving the Awakening all over again, only on a smaller scale.

  And naked.

  She stepped forward.

  No enchantments this time; the Morgana Box parted before her, letting her pass unobstructed as its border waned. What the f—? Was Jerry’s magic that strong? Undoing the barrier felt no more taxing than shooing away a feather.

  Riona’s mouth flickered with joy, her feet longing to alight and burn up the stairs. A quick look over her shoulder, however, distracted her.

  “Jerry?”

  Ramiel was helping the demon to his feet, the latter breathing heavy and red-faced.

  “I’m fine, go on,” Jerry declared, though Riona couldn’t help but wonder, seeing his arm braced across his abdomen like someone had just delivered unto him the mother of all sucker punches.

  The
growl that erupted from the building’s entryway gave her only enough warning to turn her head. Horned demons with green skin and red eyes charged full force in her direction, and further up the corridor inside, she could see a half dozen following.

  Jerry’s body flew full force into them just in time, Ramiel pulling up behind.

  “Run, Riona!”

  She knew she had to listen, no matter how the idea tugged at her that she should stay and fight. It might be too late already. She had to get to him. She had to save Marc.

  Working her legs, Riona hit the stairs at a gallop, not bothering to look back.

  Chapter 24

  Some parts of his body had spontaneously developed a brain of their own. At least, given the way his hips, hands, lips, and tongue were acting independently, each trying to reign supreme in the conquest of Riona’s flesh, a coup de corpe seemed the most likely explanation.

  Riona pulled Marc’s hand back into hers and away from her waist for the third time. His fingers had once more hooked around the hem of her white-trimmed panties. Some part of him wanted that slip of silk and ribbon off this very minute so it could join its distant relatives — Aunt Blouse, Uncle Jacket, and little cousin undershirt — in the pile on the floor.

  “Maaa-aarc,” Riona cooed, her amusement sparkling, when he resisted her tug and tried again. “You take those off, and little stands between us, but one bad decision.”

  “One bad decision? Already giving it a nickname?” He joked as he brought his mouth back down over hers before pulling back to examine the way she wore lust in her features. “Like a thin layer of cotton would stop me if I was going to follow through.”

  Both were playing the parts of erotic diplomats with every inch of their bodies, the territories being negotiated by treaty. The essential articles that staved off overindulgence remained in place. Riona lay on her back atop her bed in her matching bra and panties. Marc, bare-chested, successfully managed to keep his pants fastened up and his belt on, although at one point, it was unhooked by Riona’s lithe fingers. But even the heavy-set thick cloth of his black slacks couldn’t restrain that piece of him engorged and pressing uncomfortably against its cotton-weave confines, wanting to get out so it could, in turn, get in.

  As he tasted the flesh where Riona’s neck was the sweetest, and felt her tremble beneath him, concern filled him. What was the matter? Was she scared? Nervous? Cold?

  But when he drew his eyes up to her face, he saw that she was, in fact, laughing.

  “Something funny, Keystone?”

  At first meekly, then frantically, she shook her head back and forth. “No, Marc. I… I just can’t believe this is actually happening. I’ve wanted this for so long, wanted you for so long.”

  They were in the same leaky dinghy on that one.

  Marc grinned in Technicolor. “Me, too.”

  “What is Heaven like, Marc?”

  The question threw him for a loop and made his body go stiff. Now? She wanted to discuss theology now?

  Pulling a deep breath through his teeth, Marc leaned on an elbow and pushed himself back beside Riona. She shimmied and turned to face him. Despite the pause in activities, the fingertips of his free hand still traced patterns over her collarbone and painfully close to the borders where her bra covered two perfectly-sized breasts, speckled pink by the heat of her own body and the working of his mouth.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said, his gaze drifting, as though he was looking off in the distance. “What are you asking exactly? What it looks like? A lot of people make the mistake of getting caught up in the presentation.”

  “And you?”

  He shrugged as best he could in his position. “I don’t think Heaven is something you see or smell or step on. It’s not billowy clouds and perfumed air and waters that flow eternal. It’s bliss. Pure, ecstatic, all-encompassing bliss. It’s the feeling that you’re content, that you’d never want for anything more, need for anything more. It’s being… whole.”

  When he turned back to her, Riona was wearing both amusement and disappointment in the quirk of her eyebrow and the grin of her mouth.

  “At least, that’s what I think, anyways. Guess we won’t know until we’re there, huh?” As his finger traced a path from the valley of Riona’s cleavage down to her belly button, he found himself chuckling. “Guess I should say, if we get there.”

  “You’re so totally off,” she boldly declared. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “I don’t mean to sound all holier-than-thou, but the whole Heaven-Hell shtick is sort of my life’s work. The details might be vague, but I don’t think I’m totally off.”

  She mirrored his posture by propping herself up on one elbow. The angle and blessed presence of gravity made her breast peek just a bit more around the edges of her bra, giving Marc a flash of deep pink flesh, just made for suckling.

  “True or false: you have to die to get to Heaven?”

  The ferocity on her face was so attractive. “True, except under truly unique and unusual circumstances.”

  “Okay, true or false: we are not dead.”

  Confused, he looked at her askew. “Channeling Carl Sagan? What are you getting at?”

  Leaning in, Riona’s free hand lifted to cup his cheek as her body rose to his, her eyes and her lips mere inches away. “You’re here, and I’m in your arms. Pure, ecstatic, all-encompassing bliss. If that’s what Heaven is, we’re already there. You make me whole, Marc. You make me whole.”

  That was it, he was undone.

  Marc’s body raged to life with a fire he’d never before experienced. They found a place beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond language. Verbs were now spoken in kisses, and nouns were his hands upon her hips, pulling the white panties down. Riona’s replies came in her actions: finally conquering that belt and unhinging it, undoing the button and fly of his slacks, using her nimble legs to move the cotton and his boxers down the length of his legs, past his ankles, and after that, who cared?

  A moment later, as he sheathed himself inside her, feeling her warmth and wetness as she welcomed him, Marc knew she’d won the debate. Oh, God… Yes. This was bliss, this was Heaven. As his hips began beckoning him to continue what was only natural, as he slid out, feeling her muscles pull on him like a lover trying to recapture her beloved, he knew he’d been completely and utterly wrong.

  His mouth covered hers as he pushed into her again, bringing from Riona’s chest the most magical, musical and minute moan that teased his ears. If what he was doing did that to her, he was going to be at this for all time.

  “Gah…” He tried to speak. He did know how to speak, didn’t he? He could feel his mouth go lax, as every fiber in his body focused on the rapture of being inside Riona. He wanted this to be perfect, wanted her to hear him say the words, to know the notion he was communicating to her with each swivel and dip of his hips.

  “Riona, I… I lah… I love…”

  “Marc, NOOO!!”

  All.

  Movement.

  Stopped.

  The lovers jolted, still joined below, but heads spinning in the direction of the door. A red-haired, flushed, and breathless woman stared at them with panic and dread.

  Marc’s head threatened to explode. A naked and crushed Riona in the doorway, a naked and ensheathed Riona beneath him…

  How was it…?

  Turning back to the paramour in his arms, the truth of the deed smacked him in the face like a two-by-four. With hair black as coal, and skin pale as the dead, the transformed woman beneath his fevered body grinned up at him.

  “Hi, handsome,” she giggled as her hand gave a little curt wave.

  “Wha… Who…”

  Mockingly, she presented her hand in front of her chest, as if offering to shake his. “We’ve never been properl
y introduced. I’m Lucifer. Or as Riona knows me, Lucy.”

  Chapter 25

  “Lucy?” Riona panted the name like a chubby teenager being forced to run a mile. “You’re Luci… You’re the devil?!”

  “In the flesh,” the black-haired and voraciously curved human imposter declared boldly as she sat up.

  Marc looked like he just died. White as cream, the priest pulled back, fleeing, falling unceremoniously on his unholy bum off the end of the bed.

  “You know, Riona, it’s been awhile since any Pure Soul has entranced everyone the way you have. I knew the moment my soothsayers saw you, you were special. I knew that you were one filly I needed to get into my stables. But you played hard to get, even got Jerry to fall for you. You know, you ruined one of my most valuable agents, don’t you? Ah, but that only proved how right the soothsayers were. You are special. Special enough that I made Jerry take a fall so I could pursue you myself.”

  Too much confusion, too much information at once. Could a demon be ruined by love? Or, even more, could he be saved by it?

  And that brought Marc to mind. In the shock of discovering Lucy’s secret, she temporarily forgot that Marc was the reason she high-tailed it here to begin with. His naked and shivering frame was huddled face down on the floor at the foot of her bed, his hands lashed behind his head as it shook woefully. She could hear him mumbling. As she focused, she realized he was praying.

  Riona bit her lip as an ache in the pit of her stomach. Realization was written all over Marc’s face.

  “Marc, we’ll find a way to undo it,” she whispered to him as she fell to the floor beside him, putting her arm around him. A small throw blanket she kept at the end of her bed had fallen to the floor. She used it to cover his bare body, giving him back a modicum of dignity.

  “Riona,” he sobbed. “I didn’t know. I thought it was… I thought you were… That she was…”

  “Toast,” Riona declared, bringing Marc’s confused and bloodshot eyes flashing. “I forgive you, Marc. Don’t worry, I’m so going to toast this bitch.”