Familiar Demon

by Amy Lane

  Edward shook his head and accepted the phone. “My lady—I have a debt I can never repay—”

  “Ha!” she laughed, and Silver repeated the sound. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  “Yeah, they’d better laugh,” Cory burbled. “Oh, honey, don’t you worry. I’m not sure how or when or where, but we will come knocking on your door someday—or even on your phone—and say, ‘Oh, guys! We’ve got a thing only you can do!’”

  “And I’ll say ‘We’ll do it.’ In a heartbeat. Without question,” Edward said, bowing, Mullins at his side.

  Cory grinned. “Excellent. We’ll try not to bring the forces of hell down on your heads when we do that—because yeah, it was novel, but it was a little too damned interesting for a picnic in the garden, you think, Silver?”

  “Dammit!” Silver said proudly, and Cory grinned at her.

  “Anything else you want to say, little lady?”

  “Dammit! Dammit!”

  “Awesome! Let’s go see Nicky and we can blame this on him!”

  “Dammit!”

  “That’s right—once more with feeling!”

  Mullins and Edward both laughed, and Cory turned around and left the room.

  “So,” Mullins said, going back to the food and starting to dish up their plates. “Food first or conversation with Emma first?”

  Edward looked at the phone.

  Fifteen messages, forty phone calls.

  “Could you make me a plate?” he hedged. “I think I’ll do both.”

  The room had two stuffed chairs near the window, facing a small television, and Edward sank into one of them and hit Emma’s number.

  Time to face the music.

  “Are you dead?” she asked before the phone had even finished ringing.

  “I’m pretty sure Francis and Bel told you I’m not!”

  “But they must have been mistaken,” she responded sweetly, “because here you are, not dead, and yet I haven’t spoken to you by phone or brainwave in almost twenty hours. There’s a block around the hill, you know. Harry was sick—I get that—which means you’re the one I trusted to tell me you all aren’t dead.”

  For a moment Edward thought of brushing it off, Harry style, and saying, “Not even a bruise. Maybe a little one,” but he couldn’t.

  “Harry got really sick,” he told her honestly. “Emma—I think he almost died. And… and he could barely stand, and he did anyway, and sent me to hell to bring Mullins back. And we got back and there was”—he had to use the word—“fucking chaos, and battle, and Mullins wasn’t breathing and… and I did it. Mom, I did it, but I don’t know how….”

  His voice broke, and Mullins’s hands on his shoulders grounded him as Emma soothed.

  “Now see?” she said when both of them had calmed down. Her voice sounded shaky and broken. “This is why I talk to you, Edward. You’re the one who tells me the truth. Now what’s your plan from here?”

  Edward took a deep breath.

  And a bite of toast.

  And remembered his belief in truth and his belief in reason.

  And remembered who had taught him these things.

  “I think Francis is going to need to stay—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “Bel will come back with you all, and Francis should come with him. He needs to be with Bel until Bel returns to England. When Bel goes back, he can return to Green’s.”

  Emma knew best. Oh God, she really did.

  “And Harry needs to sleep here for a week,” Edward told her, his voice wobbling.

  “Ask him when he’s ready to return,” she said softly. “Green’s consort—”

  “The Lady Cory?”

  “No, I got an impertinent young man named Nicky. Does he have more than one?”

  “Yeah….”

  The conversation continued as Edward told his mother about the hill and she told him about how to make sure his brothers were as whole as possible.

  When he finally hung up, his plate was clean and Mullins had placed it on the dresser with the tray. Mullins had flung himself across the bed and was facing him, eyes half-closed. He heard Edward sign off and opened them.

  “So?” he asked softly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting to face Edward.

  “We stay here until Harry’s ready to travel. We rest. We make love. We enjoy our break.” He grimaced. “Bel and Francis are going to… to need to figure things out on their own. Francis will probably come back here after Beltane leaves again.”

  “Until he’s ready,” Mullins said softly.

  Edward swallowed and looked away.

  “You’ll miss them.”

  Oh, he felt so foolish. “I… I had this vision. The six of us, the family business—”

  Mullins’s laugh was so gentle, Edward almost missed the tone of an older lover. “My darling,” he said. “We have so much time for that to be our reality.” He smiled, and it was blinding. “Your brothers will always be your brothers. I think if yesterday showed anything, it was that you will always be inseparable.”

  In his head Edward could hear Harry calling him a “worrier princess,” and he took a deep breath. “Harry’s going to be okay,” he said, remembering Green’s kiss on his brother’s brow.

  “He will.” Mullins stood and moved to between his knees again, then took his hands.

  “And Francis and Bel will find their way,” he realized.

  Mullins smiled and nodded, kissing the backs of his knuckles.

  “And you and I will be together until death do us part,” Edward said, the revelation seeping into his bones.

  “I wouldn’t have left hell if it wasn’t to be by your side,” Mullins told him reverently.

  Edward’s eyes burned. “I’m so very glad you did,” he rasped, and Mullins bent to take his mouth.

  The kiss wasn’t passionate—although there would be plenty more of that. It was a blessing, a promise, and a prayer.

  It was their future as two, their more-than-mortal lifespans made beautiful, sustained in their hearts, by being lovers side by side.

  They would be two, and their family would follow, and there was happiness—such happiness—to hold gently in the palms of their hands.

  Purple

  Amy’s Alternate Universe

  Familiar Love: Book One

  One hundred and forty years ago, Harry, Edward, and Francis met an angel, a demon, and a sorceress while escaping imprisonment and worse! They emerged with a new family—and shapeshifting powers beyond their wildest dreams.

  Now Harry and his brothers use their sorcery to rescue those enslaved in human trafficking—but Harry’s not doing so well. Pining for Suriel the angel has driven him to take more and more risks until his family desperately asks Suriel for an intervention.

  In order for Suriel to escape the bindings of heaven, he needs to be sure enough of his love to fight to be with Harry. Back when they first met, Harry was feral and angry, and he didn’t know enough about love for Suriel to justify that risk. Can Suriel trust in Harry enough now to break his bonds of service for the boy who has loved his Familiar Angel for nearly a century and a half?

  There will always be a Hammer and an Air...

  Graeme and Eirn have no words for what they are to each other. Children, clinging together in a crowded orphanage; friends, battling back to back in a school yard; and bedmates, finally bridging the gap between sleeping next to a body and allowing it to touch you in the night—all of these roles are summed up by just their names: Hammer and Air.

  The innocent exploration of their newest roles is brutally marred when a violent, ill-tempered master threatens Eirn, and Eirn’s “Hammer” kills the man in a fair fight. The two run off into the wide world with only each other for safety. It’s difficult to forge a good life with only a blacksmith’s hammer and a printer’s cleverness, but together, Hammer and Eirn will learn to negotiate the dangers of magic and motion, of sex, obsession, and tenderness, and of the word that can make sense of it all—one word they mus
t earn for themselves.

  When Teyth was but a child, a cruel prince took over his village, building a great granite tower to rule over the folk. Greedy and capricious, the man will be the bane of Teyth’s existence as an adult, but as a boy, Teyth is too busy escaping his stepfather to worry about his ruler.

  Sold into apprenticeship to the local blacksmith, Teyth finds that what was meant as a punishment is actually his salvation. Cairsten, the smith, and Diarmuid, his adopted son, are kind, and the smithy is the prosperous heart of a thriving village. As Teyth grows in the craft of metalwork, he also grows in love for Diarmuid, the gentle, clever young man who introduces him to smithing.

  Their prince wants Diarmuid too. As the tyrant inflicts loss upon loss on Teyth and Diarmuid, Teyth’s passion for his craft twists into obsession. By the time Teyth resurfaces from his quest to create immortality, he’s nearly lost the love that makes being human worth the pain. Teyth was born to sculpt his emotion into metal, and Diarmuid was born to lead. Together, can they keep their village safe and sustain the love that will make them immortal?

  In an act of heroism and self-sacrifice, Anderson Rawn’s sister saved him from the destruction of their tiny mining colony, but her actions condemned the thirteen-year-old to ten years of crushing loneliness on the hyperspace journey to a new home. Using electronics and desperation, Anderson creates a family to keep him company, but family isn’t always a blessing.

  When Anderson finally arrives, C.J. Poulson greets him with curiosity and awe, because anyone who can survive a holocaust and reinvent holo-science is going to be a legend and right up C.J.’s alley. But the more C.J. investigates how Anderson endured the last ten years, the deeper he is drawn into a truly dangerous fantasy, one that offers the key to Anderson’s salvation—and his destruction.

  In spite of his best intentions, C.J. can’t resist the terribly seductive Anderson. Their attraction threatens to destroy them, because the heart of a man who can survive the destruction of his people and retain his sense of self holds a solid core of alpha male that will not be denied.

  “I am not beautiful...”

  Knife’s entire existence has been as twisted as his flesh and his face. The only thing beautiful in his life is his sister. When Gwennie is obliged to turn a suitor down because she fears to leave her brother to the brutality of their village, Knife is desperate for anything to ensure her happiness.

  Her suitor’s cousin offers him a way out, but it won’t be easy. Aerie-Smith has been cursed to walk upright in the form of a beast, and his beloved village suffers from the same spell. Aerie-Smith offers Gwen a trousseau and some hope, if only Knife will keep him company on his island for the span of a year and perform one “regrettable task” at year’s end.

  Knife is unprepared for the form the island’s curse takes on his own misshapen body. In one moment of magic, he is given the body of his dreams—and he discovers that where flesh meets spirit and appearance meet reality, sometimes the only place to find truth is in the darkness of a lover’s arms.

  Readers love Familiar Angel by Amy Lane

  “Familiar Angel is fantastic… a transcendent love story…. Harry and Suriel are heroes to die for, and their love is a lesson…. I can only have faith and desperately hope she will keep turning out more tales like this!”

  —Cindy Dees, NYT and USA Today Bestselling author

  “Both striking and sensual, the thought-provoking novel pays equal attention to love, sacrifice, the divine, and family.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Amy Lane remains one of the queens of storytelling.”

  —Joyfully Jay

  “A masterpiece.”

  —Paranormal Romance Guild

  AMY LANE lives in a crumbling crapmansion with a couple of growing children, a passel of furbabies, and a bemused spouse. She’s been nominated for a RITA, has won honorable mention for an Indiefab, and has a couple of Rainbow Awards to her name. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action-adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and gay romance—and if you accidentally make eye contact, she’ll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She’ll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.

  Website: www.greenshill.com

  Blog: www.writerslane.blogspot.com

  Email: amylane@greenshill.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/amy.lane.167

  Twitter: @amymaclane

  By Amy Lane

  An Amy Lane Christmas

  Behind the Curtain

  Beneath the Stain

  Bewitched by Bella’s Brother

  Bolt-hole

  Christmas Kitsch

  Christmas with Danny Fit

  Clear Water

  Do-over

  Food for Thought

  Gambling Men

  Going Up

  Hammer & Air

  Homebird

  If I Must

  Immortal

  It’s Not Shakespeare

  Left on St. Truth-be-Well

  The Locker Room

  Mourning Heaven

  Phonebook

  Puppy, Car, and Snow

  Racing for the Sun • Hiding the Moon

  Raising the Stakes

  Regret Me Not

  Shiny!

  Shirt

  Sidecar

  A Solid Core of Alpha

  Tales of the Curious Cookbook Anthology

  Three Fates

  Truth in the Dark

  Turkey in the Snow

  Under the Rushes

  Wishing on a Blue Star

  BONFIRES

  Bonfires • Crocus

  CANDY MAN

  Candy Man • Bitter Taffy

  Lollipop • Tart and Sweet

  DREAMSPUN DESIRES

  THE MANNIES

  #25 – The Virgin Manny

  #37 – Manny Get Your Guy

  #57 – Stand by Your Manny

  #62 – A Fool and His Manny

  FAMILIAR LOVE

  Familiar Angel • Familiar Demon

  FISH OUT OF WATER

  Fish Out of Water • Red Fish, Dead Fish

  A Few Good Fish • Hiding the Moon

  KEEPING PROMISE ROCK

  Keeping Promise Rock • Making Promises

  Living Promises • Forever Promised

  JOHNNIES

  Chase in Shadow • Dex in Blue

  Ethan in Gold • Black John

  Bobby Green

  Super Sock Man

  GRANBY KNITTING

  The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters

  How to Raise an Honest Rabbit • Knitter in His Natural Habitat

  Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny’s Lair

  The Granby Knitting Menagerie Anthology

  TALKER

  Talker • Talker’s Redemption • Talker’s Graduation

  The Talker Collection Anthology

  WINTER BALL

  Winter Ball • Summer Lessons

  Published by Harmony Ink Press

  BITTER MOON SAGA

  Triane’s Son Rising • Triane’s Son Learning

  Triane’s Son Fighting • Triane’s Son Reigning

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Published by

  DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Familiar Demon

  © 2019 Amy Lane.

  Cover Art

  © 2019 Reese Dante.

  http://www.reesedante.com


  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. 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 the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-64405-186-3

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64405-187-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960688

  Digital published February 2019

  v. 1.0

  Printed in the United States of America