Brolach (Demon #1) (9 page)

“
What did you say?” Brolach faltered, his eyes flicking to where Ruby lay sprawled, her beautiful pink flesh exposed to the world, the residual heat of Lucas' demon tongue giving the skin a flushed look.

A place that Brolach had tasted of and found perfect.

Found to be his.

It would be again.

“The Walker has stolen my demonic essence.” Lucas took a swaying step to his feet and Brolach recoiled from what he saw there. Lucas' entire body had paled, save the instrument of his usual device of torture.

His cock and phallus-tipped tail remained a true scarlet, though they were beginning to bleed to white.

“A Walker?” Brolach asked in a voice that growled. But he backed up, keeping the two angel warriors in sight while the apparent Walker gazed at the angelic leader and Nolen, the second to his first, kept an eye on Lucas and him. There was a female that looked like a walking corpse, her face devoid of the animation that marked her as human.

His gaze swung back to Lucas, who was obviously going through some transition. “Step away from Ruby. I don't give a smolder in Hades what happens to you in the hands of the demons, just move away from the breeder and we will let the challenge between us go.”

Lucas shook his head. “No, you see what I'm becoming,” his hand moved from the top of his head to his feet. “She is the coin of trade amongst the angels, Brolach. You?” he shrugged his question at Brolach. “You have a hoof in one realm and a halo in the other.” Lucas' eyes moved to the glittering halo, sunset colors alternating and burning with their independent fire in the fist that held them.

“
They'll kill you,” Brolach said, stepping nearer to Lucas, the barbs from the halo pressing all around his hand but not biting. Wanting to toss it into Lucas deeply for having tasted of Ruby.

“
No, they will torture me with this new cloak of goodness the Walker has began.”

It was a stalemate.

Brolach turned his attention to the angels just as Braedan and the Walker came together and the splash of light from their touch washed over the forest like the backdraft from a fire- the forest, creatures and atmosphere holding its breath. Then, the icy light fell like a curtain around them, blanketing the group and Brolach was driven to his knees for the second time that night.

Lucas slumped into a heap at Ruby's feet. Brolach was angel enough to withstand the first wave of purist power that roared through the forest in a searing path of delivered contact. He crawled with the last of what he was, his halo dragging itself along in his hand as he moved in beside Ruby, her flesh glowing in response to the call of heaven.  He spooned her against himself, her nakedness coming against him as his body coiled around her in protection.  Something tight and awful loosened inside him, quieting the thing that had been clawing to get out until he had Ruby beside him.

The last thing Brolach remembered was tucking her head underneath his chin as he wrapped himself tightly around her chilled body.

There was a painful shimmer of agony that tore through Brolach like an abusive breath of air, his eyes flicking to Lucas, who gasped for air against an atmosphere gone heavy with weighted purity, the vestiges of their demon essence struggling against it.

And losing.

One minute they were in the human realm, inside a deep forest on the outskirts of the sea.

The next they were in a realm that was poison to their kind.

Lost.

And found by the enemy.

Above

Ruby was drowsy and so thirsty it was painful to be awake for it.

There was a moment or two of numbing disorientation and then her last few moments of true memory came crashing on top of her.

She sat straight up in a bed that was the softest she'd ever known. The borrowed shirt bunched up as she moved and Ruby unconsciously pushed it down, touching bare skin and felt her yoga pants were approximately where they should be. But put on like the person that did it had no knowledge of her body.

Heat rushed up into her face, lighting Ruby's scalp on fire. She was so embarrassed she could hardly breathe. The memories slid through her mind: the demon who she'd escaped from in Hades, had been eating her out.

Ruby loved that part best. She was like a walking smorgasbord for devils. First Brolach then the other one.

Wonderful and
ick
. Of course, what made it worse was how they'd both made her come until her brains felt like they were slipping out of her ears.

Especially Brolach.

She felt her body had portrayed her. That the Walker chick had taken out her need for revenge one the demon by using Ruby as the vessel for his punishment. Ruby's eyes snapped open and she groaned at a sight that was as strange as it was awful.

An unconscious Brolach was strung up in front of her- naked, his beautiful face touching his chest as he hung. As was the demon that had lapped at her until she screamed into that empty wood on earth.

Because Ruby knew, that no matter where they were right now, they were definitely not in Kansas anymore. In fact, she doubted they were even on earth.

Ruby understood she'd been in hell before. Just as she knew she was in heaven now.

Her bed was a cloud, her hands sinking into a moist cool surface that gave resistance at just the right depth, that warmed under her flesh to just the right temperature.

Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it was not too hard, nor too soft.

Just riiighht.

To Brolach's left was the other demon who had... yeah. Better not to think about it. He had been scary before, all bad ass blood-red, dick-on-a-stick snapping tail. Now, he was ice and light, his pale skin with the rippling undercurrent of glacier blue. Beautiful. The tail remained but the tip had changed shape.

A ball at the end tipped the nexus of an enormous penis, a little nub at the end of a pleasure wand that Ruby was sure would be painful to the recipient. He also slept like the drugged and Ruby was glad.

She shuddered, thinking what he could have done to her with that. Not a weapon of pleasure, but maybe just a weapon. Period.

His tail hung to his feet, his toes grazing a floor made of some kind of jewel, the glass-like opaqueness releasing fragrance, a true and deep green that mimicked the ocean she loved- that Ruby missed.

Ruby gazed at the demon, her heart beating painfully inside her chest, the cushion of cloud she laid on seemed to float beneath her body, transparent yet solid wherever she touched.

They were alone and her eyes took in every surface, the manacles that held the demons where bolted to walls that appeared like thick glass, smoked like new age fractured quartz, the clouds hovered over the smooth walls and roof that held Ruby like a prison to torture the two demons that shared this new room she was in. The only solid thing in her “room” was the door.

Which opened as she noticed it and she immediately jerked the blanket up to her neck, then realized it was part of the “cloud” stuff. Ruby had to only conceptualize she needed a covering and the cloud came apart and became the blanket that she needed the moment that she needed it.

Ruby looked into eyes that were a pale dove gray but shone like pearls, his black hair a gauzy cloud that spun past a nipped waist and hard narrow hips.

He chuckled at her study of him and she flushed anew.

“It is fine, half-breed. I know that you have never seen a full angel before. Nor a warrior,” he added.

Ruby just stared. Well,
they certainly were their own fan club around here,
she thought.

He came closer and she shrunk away. He frowned. “I will not harm you.”

Ruby smirked,
yeah right
. Her lips cracked from the motion, her thirst its own zip code.

A goblet of alabaster appeared at her left elbow and she startled away from it. She began to reach with her right and it appeared inside the palm of her dominant hand. Ruby almost dropped it but her thirst came over her in a painful roar and her left hand quelled the trembling as she gulped whatever the liquid was in the inside.

It tasted like champagne, apple cider and the coolest water. It was gold on her parched tongue, precious gems in her stomach and utterly revitalized her senses.

She forgot the angel, the hanging demons, that she might be in heaven (almost certainly was in heaven) and drank. Ruby drank until there was nothing left and let the goblet go, expecting it to crash.

Instead, the image of it wavered in front of her for a long second or two then vanished.

Ruby stared at the spot where it'd been then turned her gaze to the one with wings like Brolach's, but eyes like pale smoke, hair that floated like an ebony cloud with the purest white stripe starting at his temple and disappearing into all that black.

He mesmerized her, he terrified her.

“
I am Nolen,” he said in a voice that threaded through and clung to her like silken taffy.

She paused. Then finally responded, “I'm Ruby,” she said, still clinging to the blanket made of nothing.

Their gazes locked and she asked the question that most mattered, the one that burned in her head so hard she thought Nolen could hear it. “What is this?”

He smiled and his teeth dazzled her and she moved backward again, suddenly feeling nauseated. “Above,” he answered.

Something made her look over his shoulder and her eyes met Brolach's.

Ruby trembled with the rage she saw there.

It wasn't anger at her. It was anger at the one who stood in front of him, who faced Ruby with such arrogance.

In a costume of deceit.

For at that precise moment Brolach's tail curled in the air, thinning to become a dark slash of flesh and rope. He snapped it forward, his arms straining against the bonds of his captivity and pierced the angel in front of him.

Steam escaped and the fa
çade of angel melted away.

Ruby screamed at what lay underneath the clever disguise. It was her demon father Damon. Come from hell to heaven. To have her no matter how far she ran.

He followed.

Ruby leapt out of the bed and he raced to intercept her, the white skin bleeding to the half-burnt old blood color she remembered so well. He swooped low, his stunted tail trying to slash at her as she slid close to him. Damon moved low but she was smaller, sliding between his legs and rolling between them, going for that door, moving between the tethered and straining demons who were awake and trying to break their bonds.

Both had tasted of Ruby and found her sweet, neither wanted the renegade father to lay hold of a rare female of her lineage, of her unique purity. Ruby didn't know any of that. She was thrust back into survival mode and did what she did best- escape.

But the chains of heaven held them against the walls of her jeweled prison while her mercenary father charged after her.

The demons who would rescue her fought the ties of
above
while the imposter laid his hands on her and Ruby screamed for mercy.

Brolach broke free with one hand, his tail at its furthest point, Damon just out of reach, Ruby too, as she made for the door and his hand curled into a fist around her pale hair, jerking her back against him.

Brolach bellowed as Damon laughed, his hand curling around her throat, a talon, though short, dug into the soft side where her neck met her shoulder.

He would kill her
, Brolach thought.
Give me the strength to do something,
he raged inside his mind. Just this once, he pleaded.

To whom, he did not know.

His manacles became mist and he plowed forward, his tail stabbing the jeweled surface of this strange realm, at once balancing him and propelling Brolach forward. He landed within striking distance of Damon, Ruby's eyes protruded with fear, her skin smoldering against his, her mermaid eyes dark pools of terror.

The solid door burst open and the male angels, the real Nolen and Braedan, entered and viewed the scene in front of them.

What they saw were two demons about to due harm to a precious breeder of angelic descent and they reacted without thinking, their halos sailing off their perch into the waiting bodies of the demons.

Ruby hollered to warn them, instinctively knowing what the halos might do.

Her horror of a father dropped her and she fell on top of Brolach as the halo made its way through his chest, going for his heart.

The heart she'd hoped to hold someday. Her hands found his hot skin and held on, the halo moving.

Always moving.

Ruby's tears fell on his body.

They were not wet as they landed, but shone like the gems they were.

Glittering and beautiful on his flesh and blood.

Rubies.

THE END

*Want to know what happens to our Bad Boy Con? Check out the next installment in The SIREN Series,
BRANDON,
coming soon!