Hell's Revenge

Hell’s Revenge

Eve Langlais

Published 2011

ISBN 978-1-59578-852-8

Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509

Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © 2011, Eve Langlais. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Liquid Silver Books

http://LSbooks.com

Email:

[email protected]

Editor

Victoria Miller

Cover Artist

Amanda Kelsey

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Blurb

I am literally going to kill my mother.

To say I have mommy issues is putting it mildly. The woman who abandoned me has a lot of nerve to just saunter back into my life without warning and drop a bombshell of atomic proportions. I tried to kill her as way of resolving my inner Freudian issues, but my damned boyfriends stopped me. Spoilsports.

As if wanting to strangle my birth mother isn’t enough, once again, someone is messing with my life and a new player steps in to save me. Did I mention my dark knight is tall, gorgeous and fanged? Just don’t tell my lovers because apparently they’re not willing to share me with the undead.

The final showdown with the mysterious figure—also known as the major pain in my ass—fast approaches. I don’t care how powerful they are. They screwed up big time when they took something precious of mine. It’s never a good idea to piss off this Princess of Hell because revenge is my middle name.

Lucky me, I had the three most important men in my life sitting down for a nice family dinner. The irony of having Satan, my dear daddy, and the words “nice” and

“family” used together did not escape me. After some careful negotiation, I’d made sure my father would behave at this and future dinners—we’d even signed the contract in blood. With my dad, you could never exercise too much caution. Not that I needed it for this particular meal. My father currently beamed like an escaped mental patient. Kind of freaky for the uninitiated, but as his daughter, I considered it endearing. And the reason for his joy? I’d just announced David was moving in with Auric and me.

“I can’t believe it, my daughter living in sin with not one man, but two. You do a father proud,” he said, toasting the occasion. I swear he almost wiped a tear.

Auric rolled his eyes, familiar with my father’s antics, but David appeared taken aback. My father’s sense of humor took some getting used to.

Life in the week since we’d vanquished the hooded one had returned to normal, or as normal as it could get for a princess of Hell. I’d avoided, in my usual ‘head in the sand’

fashion, some of the things Gabriel told me when I captured him. My cowled nemesis, for the curious, was a fallen angel who’d delighted in torturing me. When I finally got him on his knees at the point of my sword, he began to spout all kinds of crap. I’d decapitated the freaky bastard rather than listen to his monologue. Like hello, I’d seen enough movies to know letting the enemy talk gave them time to wait for reinforcements. Besides, watching my men fight at the time made me horny and not in the mood to exercise patience.

Apart from Gabriel, who I refused to discuss, Auric kept trying to talk to me about my absent mother. As if I wanted to think about the bitch who’d abandoned me with a curse on my mind—not! Sticking my fingers in my ears and humming soon brought those attempted conversations to a halt. Poor Auric, I was really making him practice his sighs of impatience a lot lately.

Anyway, I refused to dwell on the crap I’d gone through lately and, in an attempt for a life of normalcy, I’d arranged for my dad to come for a nice family dinner—cooked by Auric, of course. Anything less would have seen me punished for cruelty.

The pasta primavera came out divine, the chicken succulent, the conversation ribald; in other words, dinner appeared a complete success.

It figured my aunt Fate would fuck with it. A knock sounded at the door and I’d like to say I heard haunting music, that my eyes rolled back and I experienced an ominous premonition. Alas, my precognitive skills were limited to the knot which formed in my stomach. I knew from a lifetime of experience that if things were going well something would come along to screw with me, which meant whoever stood on the other side of that steel reinforced barrier was about to fuck up the nice new life I’d settled into.

“Don’t answer,” I said in a childish attempt to avoid whatever calamity waited for me in the hallway.

Apparently, my worry was contagious because Auric grabbed his holy sword before he headed to the door when a second knock sounded. Auric twisted the knob and swung the door open, keeping care to ensure his bulky body remained in front of the doorway, blocking direct access inside. It also meant I couldn’t see who’d come calling.

I drummed my fingers on the table, which caused David to stand and move to stand in front of me protectively. My men, throwbacks to a time of chivalry when women were fainting damsels. Cute and yet so unnecessary. They knew by now, even if they refused to acknowledge it, I could take care of myself.

I heard a chair sliding back and hitting the floor. Looking over, I saw my father staring at the door, a look of stunned surprise on his face. The knot in my stomach tightened into a really painful ball. I’d never seen my dad look so spooked. And if the caller had the ability to freak out Lucifer, Lord of Hell, it didn’t bode well for me.

“No, it can’t be,” he muttered.

A burning need rose in me, overcoming my trepidation. I had to see what had my father looking like he’d seen a ghost. I walked around David who, to my surprise, didn’t try and stop me.

“Hello, Lucifer.” A petite woman, with creamy smooth skin I envied, walked in.

“It’s been a long time.” Dressed in a green suit, that would have looked appropriate in the boardroom, she didn’t sport claws, or horns, heck, she didn’t even have a weapon. It didn’t matter though, panic engulfed me. Taking a step back, I butted up against the dinner table. I didn’t understand my reaction to the seemingly innocuous looking woman.

My instincts screamed danger even as my men stood there, letting the stranger into my home. I palmed my dinner knife behind my back.

“Do you know this woman, dad?” I asked. Did Auric know her as well? Was that why he’d let her in?

“Yes, and so do you,” my father replied, the expression on his face drawn, his eyes full of sorrow.

I hated cryptic answers, they made my head hurt. The woman looked at me with her long hair and familiar face. The room spun and I swooned. Thankfully, there were several pairs of hands there to catch me.

I regained consciousness seated on Auric’s lap with David handing me a glass of water, which I took with shaking hands. The knife I’d palmed fell into my lap, not that anyone noticed. The center stage currently belonged to the woman watching me enigmatically, my long lost mother.

“What’s your name?” I suddenly felt a monstrous need to know. I had no memories of her, no one did. And now that I had a face, I wanted an identity to go with it. A name I could curse.

She arched a brow and I found her smile condescending. “I would have thought your first question would have been why am I here?”

“Fine then, why are you here?” I let my impatience show. I hated momentous news before dessert. Especially when I knew Auric had spent the afternoon crafting a caramel topped cheesecake from scratch. Long lost mother who abandoned me versus decadent cheesecake dripping in creamy caramel delight? I wondered how quickly I could get rid of her. Of course, her next words pretty much blew all thoughts of dessert out of my mind.

“Why, to witness the birth of your child. My grandchild. Which reminds me, congratulations to the fathers.”

Now, there were a myriad of ways a person could comport themselves when meeting their mother for the first time. They could fall on their long lost parent, crying and hugging while trying to blubber how happy they were to be reunited.
Blech.
They could coldly tell the absentee mother to shove her attempt at reconciliation where the sun never shone.
A touch better.
A person could even faint in a damsel-like fashion or run from the room screaming “I hate you” just before they slammed a door shut. But, as a princess of Hell, I tended to lean towards the more dramatic—I did have a reputation to uphold after all. I threw a knife at my visiting mother’s head.

In my defense, it was only a butter knife, unfortunately and, I knew even before I fired it with deadly intent, it would never make its target—an even bigger shame. Gasp in shock all you want, the woman had not only abandoned me as a young child, she’d also left a nasty spell on my mind that made me writhe in pain if I so much as said the word

“mother”. To say I had anger issues was putting it mildly.

Her teensy-tiny announcement of my pregnancy by not one, but two of my lovers factored somewhere in the equation as the icing on the cake. Not that I believed her, of course. I mean, seriously, me, pregnant?

Anyway, possible uterine situations aside, I chucked a butter knife at her. It hit an invisible wall and went clattering noisily to the floor.

Chaos erupted, most of it caused by me, and I found myself manhandled, without the usual erotic groping, until I stood hidden by the broad back of my consort Auric, while David, my second lover, grabbed me in a wrestler hold from behind—again a lot more fun when we were all naked.

“Let me go,” I growled as I thrashed in David’s implacable grip.

“Not until you calm down,” he retorted.

My mature reply was to slam my foot down on his instep. A human would have dropped me, screaming like a stuck pig. However, my lovers weren’t human, so he didn’t even grunt. Instead, the jerk just lifted me high enough that my flailing feet pedaled in midair. Frustrated and still in the mood to inflict some bodily harm, I appealed to my other lover. “Auric, you tell him to unhand me this instant.” I disliked that my request came out sounding petulant; although, it probably went well with my jutting lower lip.

Vivid green eyes met mine as Auric turned to peer back at me. “He’ll let you go when you can comport yourself as a lady.”

I snorted. Like that would ever happen. “When Hell freezes over.” At his arched brow, I flushed and amended my statement, “Again.” See, not so long ago, the pit of damnation had experienced its very first winter. I’d really enjoyed the pure white look, but as it turned out, Hell freezing over was a bad thing for humanity. Who‘d have guessed there was some secret force out there keeping track of all the vows made with conditions such as “I’ll sleep with you when Hell freezes over.” Needless to say, when Hades’ temperature plummeted, a lot of women found themselves putting out whether they wanted to or not.

I snapped my wandering mind back to the situation at hand instead of a past I’d conquered.

“She’s got a right to her anger,” said my father.

I beamed at my dad. Sue me. I took pride in being a daddy’s girl. “Yes, I do. So, let me at the cow.”

My men ignored me and when I looked sideways at my father, waiting for him to come to my aide again, he shrugged helplessly.

“Some Satan you are,” I grumbled. Actually, if I weren’t concerned with possibly hurting the people I loved most in the world, my dad and my lovers, I could have broken free using my innate magic. Their well-being in the face of my still not entirely reliable power and a twisted set of rules and morals which I’d created for myself, made me stay my magical hand. Besides, a girly part of me enjoyed the manhandling. It made me think of our bedroom games where one would hold me down while the other did superhot things to my body. However, I was allowing myself to get distracted again, pleasant as the mental images were. I brought my naughty mind back to the present in time to hear my father speak.

“Actually, your men might have the right idea. I’d like to hear what she has to say before you rip her head off.”

“Well, I don’t,” I muttered stubbornly as I struggled anew to free myself. I was sure my mother had plenty of handy excuses as to why she’d abandoned me and I wasn’t interested in any of them. The only thing that would satisfy me involved wiping the smug look off her face but all the invectives in the world wouldn’t loosen David’s grip.

Damned shapeshifter, he just had to be as strong as he was good looking. The jerk.

Rescue came from an unlikely source. “Oh, let her go. She can’t hurt me.” The petite form of my X chromosome donator came into view as my mother walked around Auric.

If I hadn’t been so pissed, I would have laughed at the look on my father’s face as she brushed him in passing—part shock, part lust and a touch of fear—not a reassuring sign.