Brimstone Prince

Chapter 3

Michael instinctively headed to the nearest redoubt he knew. Lily needed a protected place to perform her ritual and he would need to switch the motorcycle for a vehicle that could hold supplies for two. When he’d started touring the Southwest, he’d decided to travel light, but he’d also wanted safe places to crash in between gigs and inevitable clashes with Rogues. He’d found the perfect place already built by a wealthy survivalist with an environmentalist streak outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

He pulled the motorcycle into a drive that had been created with packed earth and crushed gravel as reddish brown as the surrounding sand. He felt Lily become more alert behind him after the mind-numbing miles they’d traveled. The sun was rising, but the earth-sheltered home built into the ground of the Sonoran Desert would be a cool respite. Especially if they went to separate rooms. A glittering expanse of glass greeted them, but between the layers of glass were blinds that automatically opened and closed when necessary to keep the temperature of the home consistent. The thick cement construction was hidden by earth and the roof was covered with desert grass with only strategically placed skylights to indicate the home beneath the ground.

Like an ordinary dog, his beloved Grim waited at the sliding glass front door. The hellhound could have morphed through in a swirl of smoky shadow. Instead, he watched and waited for them to climb off the motorcycle and walk to his side. Michael watched as Lily approached the massive, ugly creature carefully, but without trepidation. Hellhounds were rare. He wasn’t surprised she’d never seen one. He only knew of one other in existence besides Grim. His cousin, Sam, had been given a hellhound puppy when he was a baby. There was much to admire in Lily’s attitude toward the beast that was as tall as her chest. When she actually reached to place her hand lightly on the top of Grim’s head as if a hell-spawned dog was nothing to fear, Michael stopped and stared.

She was petite. Her jeans were dusty and torn at the knee. Her pack had seen better days. But as the sun rose it glinted off her hair the way the lantern light had the night before. It created a halo effect that caused him to blink and look away.

He clenched his jaw against the burn in his blood. Samuel’s daughter. Had the affinity in her blood been so powerful that it affected her aging the way Brimstone did with daemons? He’d heard of Samuel’s Kiss his whole life. It had changed the course of his family’s history. His mother never would have fallen in love with his daemon father if it hadn’t been for the affinity Samuel had bequeathed to her. He had mixed feelings about that.

The door opened with a whoosh of displaced air. The passive solar home was always a perfect, comfortable temperature. It was his inner heat that caused perspiration to dot his upper lip.

“Make yourself comfortable. There should be food, drink, towels...anything you need,” Michael offered. He was already retreating to the master bedroom, where hopefully a cold shower would help him regain control of the lava in his veins.

* * *

Lily showered and put on a fresh change of clothes from her backpack. She washed out the clothes she’d been wearing and hung them in the spare bathroom to dry. She found canned fruit in the kitchen and sat down to eat a bowl of peaches while water ran in a nearby room. She needed calories to deal with elemental spirits, and eating redirected some of the tension from resisting Michael’s Brimstone pull.

Had the daemon king meant to throw them together? Would he spell out what he expected from her or was she supposed to play this by ear? The debt she owed him would have its price. She’d always known that.

Once the water had been turned off for a long while, Lily went in search of her host. She didn’t want to set up her mother’s kachinas and play her flute without warning the daemon prince to brace himself against her affinity’s call.

She found him bare chested and tending several minor wounds in the master bedroom in front of a full-length mirror. He’d pulled on a pair of slim-cut jeans after his shower, but they rode loose and low on his hips. So loose and so low that she could see the muscular plane of his abdomen and the dusting of golden hair that disappeared into the waistband of his pants. He was lean, hard, beautiful...and scarred.

Lily stopped in the doorway with an inadvertent gasp on her lips.

His body was amazing. Muscular and obviously toned for something besides strumming the guitar. No wonder he’d been able to fight the Rogue daemons with his bare hands. His arms bulged and rippled as he moved to place a bandage on a cut on his side. But there were other ripples, too. Burn marks dimpled his skin on his chest and back. Similar marks lightly streaked his arms and his abdomen.

“From a time when I didn’t know how to control the burn. It almost consumed me,” Michael said. He answered a question she never would have asked. “My father was a daemon. I’m not. I never will be,” he continued. “The Brimstone doesn’t rule me.”

“Daemons aren’t inherently evil, you know. They’re not human, but Brimstone doesn’t actually signify damnation...” Lily began.

“I can fight my blood and I will,” Michael interrupted.

Lily nodded as if she understood why he would reject his heritage. She had run away from hell herself. She should understand. But his burn was already such a part of the man she had just met that she couldn’t believe he would be so deluded about who and what he was.

“Let me help you with that,” she offered. She came into the room where he was trying to reach one last cut on his back with an antiseptic wipe.

“Be careful. Sometimes my blood can be dangerous,” Michael warned.

“It seems fine right now. No smoke. No fire. Look. The bandages aren’t turning to ash,” Lily teased. She dabbed at the cut and listened to his very mortal hiss before reaching for the bandage he’d already taken from its wrapper.

“For now. I’ve got it under control,” Michael said. She could hear the tension in his voice. He spoke with a tight jaw and narrowed eyes.

If so, he was doing better than she was. Her heartbeat had quickened. Her lungs had tightened. She was as close to him as it was possible to be without embarrassing herself and it wasn’t close enough. She’d had several months of practice dampening her affinity, but that practice fell to dust with Michael. Her hands trembled as she placed the bandage over the cut on his back.

But worse than the tremble that betrayed his effect on her...she allowed her fingers to brush over the ripples of his scars. His chest expanded in a sudden gulp of air at her touch. She shivered. Her affinity tuned her in to the agony of his long-ago pain. No wonder he rejected the heat of his Brimstone blood. It had almost burned him alive from the inside out.

Their gazes met in the mirror and Lily’s hand paused. She didn’t jerk it away, even though his skin began to heat.

“You want the bandages to scorch?” Michael asked. His voice had gone deeper and more melodic than before.

If she’d been honest, she would have told him she was a full-on pyromaniac in that moment. She’d been sheltered from this burn her entire life even though she’d been raised in hell. The daemon king had buffered and dampened and kept her safe. She’d run away from that refuge. She’d run from the frying pan into the fire. And she wanted Michael to burn. Her father had used the last hours of his life to bargain for her safety, and now all she wanted was to step into this dangerous man’s arms and throw away all thoughts of a safe haven.

Even so, alarm flared in her breast when Michael stepped forward, nudging her body toward the mirror with his. She didn’t resist. She backed up until she was pressed between the cool glass and his hot chest. Her hand had fallen away from his back, but now she lifted both of them. She meant to press her palms against his shoulders to hold him back. But the move became another caress of sensitive fingers down the scars on his arms.

He trembled beneath her touch and she looked up to see that he’d closed his eyes.

“This won’t be a refuge for long. We have to determine where we go from here,” Michael said. His voice was only a rough whisper. It revealed what her touch made him feel, but he didn’t lean to kiss her. She could feel the desire in his body. She could tell that he held himself in check even though he was pressed against her. The glass at her back no longer felt cool. His Brimstone heat had transferred to her. She wondered that the mirror didn’t melt, because she felt as liquid as lava.

“I’m going to have to play the flute. My affinity will fill this place,” Lily warned.

“I’ll be outside. For as long as I can manage to resist,” Michael said.

But he didn’t immediately move. Their respiration synchronized. They breathed in and out together. Each slow, shaky inhalation was a confession. Each exhalation seemed to invite and encourage their lips to draw closer. Tingles of awareness charged her skin as he drew nearer. Their mouths were only slightly apart, their gazes locked, their breath coming faster and shallower when Michael finally moved away. The cool rush of space between them was harsh. They had stood together far longer than they should have. The pause hadn’t been innocent. It had been a test of self-control—for both of them.

Lily shivered, suddenly chilled.

She watched as he pulled on a clean T-shirt and called for Grim. The hellhound rolled into being from the paws up as it moved toward the door. She’d been sheltered in the palace. She’d never seen one of the giant creatures until today, but he still reminded her of home. She touched the top of his head earlier because there was something familiar about the frightening beast who obviously loved his master. Touching Grim had soothed her. Touching Michael had left her completely undone. He was scarred from his own Brimstone, in and out.

She was already certain there was no way she would be able to fulfill her guardian’s wishes if what he asked was for her to throw Michael into the flames he’d spent his whole life resisting.

Chapter 4

Her bag was a trusty familiar tool she approached with more caution than she’d used before. Michael’s presence and the daemon king’s possible manipulations were added elements that caused her previous work with the elemental spirits to seem like child’s play. A child who had no idea she had been playing with fire.

This time she dug deep into her pack to draw out the oldest kachina first. She’d never dared to use it in a ritual and she certainly wouldn’t now that she’d met its living, breathing embodiment. But she couldn’t resist unwrapping its familiar shape and tilting its face toward the light. Sun beamed into the room, softened by the tinted glass of the skylight above her. The kachina’s carved features were barely illuminated. She’d memorized them long ago, but now she’d seen the sharp angles of cheek and jaw in real life. The tightening of anger and concern. The softening of humor...and desire.

She’d tasted Michael’s lips. She’d craved the heat of his tongue. Lily had grown up in a palace in hell. She called on Earth, Wind, Fire and Water and they answered her call. But this tiny figure come to life had shaken the fabric of her reality until it seemed the very shadows whispered with secrets she could almost hear for the first time. The recessed skylight was framed by several feet of packed earth encased in adobe that had been painted rich, deep ocher. Desert grass moved in an outside breeze she couldn’t feel and its swaying created a dance of shadows across the kachina’s face.

A warrior angel. A daemon prince. Its black wings boldly arched over its muscular back. Lily closed her fist around the doll, feeling its weight and shape in her hand. Every curve, every angle fit perfectly into the soft crevices of her palm as if the lines and indentations had been made to hold it.

She had no time for this reverie.

Sunlight wavered, painted dark by grass shadows and passing clouds. She quickly rewrapped the kachina and vowed not to take him out again. Instead, she reached for the wrapped dolls that represented Earth, Wind and Water. She imagined she could feel heat rising from the wrapped form that represented Fire as her hand hovered over it. Her fingers were a hairsbreadth away when she fisted them and pulled them away.

She would leave Fire in her pack, unsummoned. She’d had enough heat for one day. Her lips still tingled and no amount of moistening kept her from feeling a parched ache for a forbidden sweetness she suspected only a daemon prince’s kiss could satisfy.

Her flute was cool to her touch when she slid it from its pouch. The dolls were easily placed in position. Dancing shadows painted their blocky features with darkness and light. The earth-bermed home surrounded on the top and three sides by packed desert dirt was ideal for the ceremony she would initiate to call for the spirits’ guidance. It wasn’t a kiva, but the earth embraced it. Lily dropped her pack on the bed and sank down on a woven rug that was only the thinnest of barriers between her and the packed-earth floor.

This time she softly trilled an ironic measure of a classic tune about stairs to heaven. Spirits were playful. They wouldn’t mind. And she needed to settle her nerves. Affinity took the tune from there, quickly morphing her wry beginning into a complexity of air and vibration that claimed her entire body from blood to breath to bone. She communed with the universe by sound. Her music was a prayer. She combined the teachings of her mother with the power gifted to her by her father to come to a deeper connection with the spirits than others had achieved before. Her ability was unique, but that meant it was a challenge to navigate. She felt her way through every possibility as she went along.

Hair began to move around her face, tossed by a breeze that was both as natural as could be and eerily impossible in the closed room. Beneath her the earthen floor trembled, and moisture began to coalesce in the air around her until her parched lips were dampened and her lashes sparkled with what felt like unshed tears.

Lily paused in her playing. She held her breath. The last note faded and she carefully lowered her flute from her lips.

“Lucifer’s wings,” she whispered into the silence that seemed heavy with humidity from an approaching storm. The complex challenges she faced made the words seem more curse than request. The wings had to be meant for Michael Turov. They wouldn’t be a means of escape or a bargaining chip he could use to barter his way out of hell. They would seal his fate. Michael Turov’s rejection of his daemon legacy was well-known in the hell dimension. He’d visited. He’d walked away. No one expected him to return for good...except the daemon king.

“L-L-Lucifer’s wings,” she said again. Her hair whipped around her cheeks now. It had grown damp and stung her eyes and skin like a thousand tiny lashes. The earth rumbled. A crackle of electricity charged the air as if lightning was seconds away. A wash of ozone rode the elemental breeze.

Her pack at the edge of the bed behind her tumbled to the floor and landed open beside her. The two dolls she’d tried to leave wrapped and hidden rolled out. The warrior angel figure stopped against her shoe, still wrapped, still unsummoned. But the doll that represented Fire was loosened. Its burlap wrap was scorched and blackened. Smoke curled from it into the air.

Lily grabbed for the smoking doll, but it was too late. She cried out and pulled back burned fingers as the wrappings burst into flame. More smoke than the fuel justified billowed upand rose into the spirit-tossed air, but Wind and Water didn’t touch the rolling gray smoke. It had a life of its own and it was soon evident exactly what...or whom...the smoke would become.

Lily stumbled to her feet and backed away as rain began to fall. Her wind-whipped hair was plastered against her face, but she saw the smoke come together to form a familiar figure. The grumble of the earth seemed a herald of sorts, more powerful than a plague of angels’ trumpets as the smoky form became solid walking toward her.

He moved like a king before he was any more than ashy smoke. As his muscular body solidified, he conquered the room by right and by the price he’d paid evidenced by every scar he bore—both seen and unseen. Lily knew Ezekiel’s heart was as craggy as the battle-marked planes of his chest and cheeks.

She had summoned the daemon king. Or had she? She doubted if her guardian had to be called. He’d arrived at his own appointed time.

“Sir,” Lily said. If her earlier “Lucifer’s wings” had been a curse, this was a prayer. Because she dreaded the price of the protection he’d given her these last fifteen years.

“You are well. Your mother’s request might have been lethal,” Ezekiel said. His voice was deep and rich, warm with an interest that could be terrifying if you weren’t braced for it. Lily had the practice of years behind her, but she still blanched. Her cheeks chilled and her head went light. Her mother had wanted to preserve the old Hopi sites from daemon destruction. But mostly Sophia had wanted to help Ezekiel against the Rogue threat. It had been a last gesture of unrequited love. Lily had agreed because she owed her guardian everything, even though Ezekiel’s distant devotion was difficult to bear. Hadn’t she seen her mother suffer for years because she had fallen in love with a “man” who merely cared for her as a means to an end?

“She wanted me to help you, but she also dreamed that one day I’d be free,” Lily said.

Her guardian was fully formed now and his worn leather armor told much about his mood. He was perfectly capable of manifesting ordinary, everyday clothes. He didn’t always dress like he sat on a medieval throne.

“The only way you will ever be free is to die. I’ve promised to prevent that for as long as I’m able,” Ezekiel said. “But your affinity is your jailer. Not I.” His scent was familiar. Wood smoke tinged with a hint of sulfur, ancient leather, and a metallic hint of blood. Yes, her childhood had been interesting. The daemon king smelled like home.

“So you haven’t come to punish me for running away?” Lily half joked. She feared his devotion to the D’Arcy family he’d adopted because of his love for Elizabeth. Its ferocity. Its fire. She feared his expectations would consume her as she burned herself out trying to repay him. Never did she fear he would purposefully harm a single hair on her head. But he might inadvertently scorch her and everyone else on the earth to protect and promote those he truly loved.

“I would sooner slay an entire army of Rogues bent on my destruction,” Ezekiel replied. “Alone. With my bare hands.” He cared for her. Not in the way that he cared for the D’Arcys, but he did care. It had always been obvious that she and her mother were mere obligations. He’d disappeared for years at a time to watch over the D’Arcys while she and her mother stayed in the palace alone. She’d learned early on not to expect visits or attention. She hadn’t learned not to be hurt by the neglect.

Lily could no longer hold herself back from the pull of the only familial affection she’d known since her parents’ death. She threw herself into the daemon king’s arms and he held her to his armored chest with a fierce grip just shy of being painfully ferocious. It was startling. He’d never been demonstrative with her in the past. She’d expected him to stiffen and hold her at arm’s length.