Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) (3 page)

A few moments later, the silence was permeated by the click-clack of Riona’s heels. The priest doubled over, breathless, and looked up to take in her blood-stained visage.

“What happened to you?” he gasped.

She looked down at herself in observation. “Jerry always did like a big finish,” she said. “Father, maybe a word or two…”

The priest looked up at her in confusion. She motioned with her hands at the piles of dust surrounding them.

“Oh, right,” he answered as he straightened up, grabbing a whiskey bottle from one of the amazingly undisturbed tables nearby and taking a quick swig. “Heavenly Father, we thank you for overseeing our acts today and keeping up safe. May they all burn in Hell.”

“Amen,” Dee added, taking the bottle from Marc’s hand. 

He laughed, only seeing afterwards the remaining hurt evident on Riona’s face.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dee cooed. Crossing to her, he put an arm around her shoulders before pulling back. The sleeve of his jacket covered in something. Or was it, someone? “You did good. That was hard. It’s what they do; play with your emotions that way. Don’t let anything he said get to you.”

“I wanted to give in for a moment,” she answered shamefully, eyes downcast. “For a moment, I thought about how good it would feel not to vanquish him.”

“But you did it. Riona, it’s not about what you want, it’s about what you decide to do despite that. The Council is going to be very happy with what you pulled off here today.”

“What
we
pulled off,” she corrected. “Though I have to say, you all could have been a little more proactive in the ass-kicking.”

Marc shook his head. “No, we couldn’t. Direct orders. You had to sink or swim on your own.”

“You mean,
this
was the plan all along? Me against twenty-four demons, one of which could read my mind?” Riona gasped.

Though it made sense. After all, she had unknowingly spent months having conjugal visits (and re-visits (and re-re-visits)) with a pretty high-profile demon. True, his service to Old Nick hadn’t exactly been part of their pillow talk, but sure as sunshine, her loyalty had to be tested at the get-go.

“As it turned out, twenty-four demons and an imp,” the priest corrected.

Riona shot him daggers with her eyes. She half-contemplated picking up one of the leftover beer bottles and chucking it to complement.

Marc pointed to the bar. “He was hiding behind it. Lucky for us you used the right hex that works on both. Beginner’s luck.”

Dee could see trouble brewing; his eyes focused in on the witch’s fist clenching and the priest gave her a “get-over-it” glare. Quickly, he moved to turn things towards the positive. “But, hey, you got the job done. Seriously, Riona, we wouldn’t have gone along for the ride if we didn’t trust you at the wheel. Marc and I have been near death too many times to rush into something that’s over our heads. Or, I guess in this case, over your head.”

Riona smiled warmly, knowing Dee wasn’t the type to deceive. And frankly, yeah, she had been pretty damned awesome. 

“Fucking great. Can we eat now?” 

And in the end, Marc was still Marc, and still didn’t seem like a man who had any speck of good will for her personally. Riona nodded in response to his rude inquiry, and hooked elbows with him, making him squirm in discomfort at the familiarity. “But this time, it better be something more than cheap wine and vanilla wafers. I am so not crashing another first communion.”

Dee fell in line behind them as they left Dante’s Inferno. “How about Greek? I know someone who’d cut us a good deal.”

“The last time you said you knew someone, you gave my dry cleaning to a centaur.”

“And did he not return it sparkly white and crisp?”

She grimaced. “Yes, yes he did,” she admitted, before bitterly adding, “and that was my favorite black silk shirt. Pizza, Dee, let’s just do pizza.”

They made their way down the wet street, passing through the September night, not even turning back once to see the dark eyes following them from the shadows of the alley next to the bar.

Chapter 2

The sound of falling water ceased and the Dour Power of the Hour himself stepped out of the bathroom and a bank of steam. “Your water pressure is amazing.” He wrapped a terry cloth towel around his netherworld region. “Thought that whole thing at Dante’s Inferno went pretty well, didn’t you?”

Yes, Jerry had played his role perfectly. Now that the other two Pure Soul ninnies had gotten a chance to train her up a little, Lucifer wanted to observe Riona’s power and prowess in the field. The results were… enthralling. Better than expected even. Not only had she kicked ass, but there was a moment when the Keystone was tempted to have sympathy for a demon. A demon who had already screwed her over once, and probably would again if given the chance.

Lucifer tingled with anticipation. If she could be broken by compassion for a member of the damned who had given her nothing except a good roll in the hay, what would be possible if she found herself a woman in love?

“Of course, with me handling it, what else did you expect, right?” Jerry threw the towel on the black leather sofa before crossing to the hearth to dry himself by the flame.

The ashen lips of the devil stretched into a sneer. With a flick of the finger, the wet towel vaporized, leaving the sofa safe. Demons had no respect for the proper treatment of fabrics. Turning his attention to Jerry, the devil used the resources of Hell to complete a charitable act: clothing Jerry’s hellbound soul-body in some damned fancy rags. The temptation to turn the demon into an actual pile of scraps loomed. Yes, the little set-up had gone off well enough, but Jerry was more foolish than a lemming if he thought his momentary softening of the heart when looking at the witch had gone unnoticed. And this little strut-a-gut thing he was doing now was not exactly pleasing either. The last thing Lucifer needed was a cocky goblin who thought for no good reason he was the shit.

“Don’t get on your high hell-hound. She’s green, that’s the only reason everything went the way it did. Don’t forget, if I hadn’t been hiding in the shadows, throwing that Morgana Box up when you needed it, you never would have gotten as far as you did. You wouldn’t be so lucky if you ever ran into her again.”

“If I ever had the chance to run into her again,” Jerry interjected as he shoved a cotton swab into his ear, causing a brown ooze to trickle down the side of his face, “
your
plan would be known in a heartbeat. Can’t exactly get up to Earth without a body now, can I? No, not unless the great Devil provides me a pass and a fallen angel guardian to take me. And it’s well known, you don’t do that. I can picture it right now, the Council of Seven sending out a tweet, ‘OMG, Bitch Lucifer is fronting our Keystone. #CosmicForcesFail.’”

“Which is why you gave up your earthly body, Jerry.” Not to mention, Lucifer really didn’t care for the fuss Jerry made over having to give up that body, telling Satan that his number one demon was still having defection fantasies. “I can’t have this fucked up. I’ve waited for this one for far too long. I. Want. Riona.”

Just for an extra bit of emphasis, Lucifer accentuated each word with a little burst of flame in the crackling fireplace across the room.

Jerry put up his hands in a sign of submission. “Yes, my lord. Happy to end my seventeen-hundred-year run on Earth as your go-to demon. I’m sure she’s so worth it.”

A deviant smile crossed over Lucifer’s face.

Jerry had no idea.

Chapter 3

Riona had only known Dee and Marc for four months. Most of that time had been spent in training, honing, testing, coaching and all-around prepping for her new part-time job. Pure social interaction was by consequence, not design. They kept her focused; as long as Jerry was out there, he was a danger. The crash course in vanquishing and exploding demons had left little time to play friends.

As the three Pure Souls relaxed in a booth at Paolo’s Pizza Pie Emporium, feeling their first big bust had gone pretty damned well, thank you very much, an awkward silence grew between them. There was no program to run they knew of called “chill.” A buxom waitress provided a welcome distraction as she arrived to take their orders, being sure to lean over the table just enough to let Dee, the semi-sex-god that he was, see her daily specials.

Dee grinned up at her, causing a blush more natural in lobsters. “Two Sam Adams and an unsweetened iced tea. Large cheese pizza with olive, garlic, feta, tomato, more olives, more garlic…”

“Dee!”

Riona’s admonishing look only made him shrug. “What? I’m Greek, remember? Olives and garlic are like water and air to me.”

“You told me your mother was a patent lawyer from New Jersey,” Riona snapped back, looking desperately through the menu for salvation, and
salavation
.

“Yeah, who got knocked up by Zeus. And could that be any more Greek?”

Luckily, the waitress didn’t seem to take any note of the odd comments openly declaring his hybrid ancestry. Probably because Dee was charming her with a crooked smile and a wink that had her thinking about just how big
his
own lightning rod might be.

Yeah, the poor unsuspecting lass would be under him, atop him, and, depending on whatever else Dee was planning, perhaps behind him by the end of the night.

“Make that monstrosity for him.” Riona pointed accusingly at Dee. “Me and the other guy will have a large pie, light cheese, thin crust, no garlic.” Riona shoved her menu into the waitress’s stomach. The blonde barmaid strutted away with
an
oh-no-you-didden
look in the wake of her departure.

“Well,” Dee finally said, breaking their tension, “that went pretty well.”

“Except for that whole trapping-me-in-mime-land bit,” Riona chortled, rolling her eyes.

Dee looked up from spreading a napkin over his lap. At least, that’s what Riona hoped he was doing with his hands under the table. “Say what?”

Probably in the confusion of the scuffle, they hadn’t noticed or maybe understood her predicament. “It was weird. Jerry used this charm I’d never heard from you guys, and it was like he threw an invisible force field up. Solid as a brick wall, see-through as water in a glass.”

Dee’s face suddenly went rigid. “Do you remember the charm?”

She nodded. “Something like fruity perimeter.”

Marc, who suddenly seemed a whole bunch more interested in what she was saying, leaned in over the table.
“
Infuita permuter?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

The priest turned to Dee. “A Morgana Box? I thought only the elites were capable of those.”

Dee shrugged. “Yeah, but Jerry wasn’t exactly straight off the bus. In all his centuries, he might have picked it up somehow. Don’t forget, he is…
was
a gnosis demon. Forbidden knowledge is sort of their shtick.”

“Yeah, but why would he have used a protective barrier spell? If he was trying to kill the Keystone, wouldn’t he want all the other demons coming after her? Why would he isolate her like that?”

Dee scratched his chin. “Maybe he thought it’d be a blow to his ego to have help. Maybe some sort of pissing in the sand move to mark his territory.”

“Or, maybe he didn’t want to kill her. Maybe he was going through all the gusto not to lose face, and was trying to figure out a way to get her out.”

The suggestion that Jerry may have been faking his evil in the bar hit Riona like a three-day-old dead fish. It smelled funny and left her feeling a little funky in the soul. Was it possible she had just vanquished someone on the up and up? Someone who was just as scared as she was?

No, Jerry was a demon. Demons were capable of kindness, but only as a means to an end. Just because she had a temporary moment of pity, a transitory nanosecond of feeling for him, didn’t change what his true nature and purpose were. And, besides, she
had
vanquished him. If there was no use crying over spilt milk, there was certainly no good fretting over an exploded demon.

The waitress returned with the drinks, breaking their conversation. Blondie delicately set two steins in front of the men, but almost dropped the iced tea she assumed was Riona’s in the witch’s lap. A parting wink at Dee, and she was off without an apology.

“What the heck is her deal?” Riona asked as she patted away a few splashes of tea from her shirt. Marc used the distraction to exchange Riona’s beer for his tea.

Dee grabbed a napkin to wipe a few drips from the table. “She probably thinks you’re with me, since, you know, you’re with me. She’s just jealous.”

Marc swigged his tea, swallowing loudly. “Yup.”

Riona, however, felt a pang of unease. “There was something weird about Jerry. He just seemed to give up. Not like him, y’know? He’s so damned confrontational on everything. I wanted TV, he wanted to go to a movie. He wanted Chinese, I wanted steak. He wanted to be on top when I wanted…”

She paused while Marc’s eyes looked for anything else in the room and Dee’s seemed concerned with anything but.

“Well, anyways,” Riona resumed, “like I said, confrontational. I don’t get why he’d suddenly change like that.”

The bottle hesitated at Dee’s lips. “Kinda makes me wonder what you saw in the guy, if you fought all the time. To tell the truth, that is.”

“Well, Jerry… He was just… I don’t know. He was funny, and flirty, and liked all the same music and movies and even the same bars as me. I mean, that was probably a game, looking back. You know, to keep me engaged with the glamour? But, damn, he was really, really good in…”  The two men across the table eyed her with knowing smiles as she blushed, finding her fingers mysteriously tracing down the valley of her chest. “Canasta.”

“Right, canasta.” Dee finished off the beer in one long pull before pounding it on the table and pivoting in his seat. Leaning against the counter across the pizza joint, Blondie couldn’t rip her eyes away. “Think I might like to play a hand or two of that right now, and I bet she’s a great canasta partner.”

Marc let out a huff and added under his breath, “Sure as hell beats playing solitaire.”

As Dee sauntered away, Riona focused on the priest’s expression. He wasn’t in his collar and coat today, but always carried the air of the clergyman within to some degree, like he wore his collar on the inside.

“How did you end up here?”

She took in the rugged cut of his jaw, the stubble that showed he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He wasn’t bad looking by any measure, and he probably could have been quite the heartbreaker if he wasn’t a man of God. His eyes weren’t brown, they were black, and glistened like onyx pendants. A firm jaw and supple lips were likely often employed more for battling the fires of Hell than fanning the flames of lust. Nevertheless,  the tools were there to be used, if he so desired. For a man of the cloth, he sure cut that cloth fine.  The priest rose to what she considered the perfect height, had a body not too muscular, but hardly milk toasty, and a swagger in his walk that would make a lady think he could move his body in all the ways the good Lord intended.

If only his collar and his personality weren’t pressed with double starch.

“Paolo’s is the best pizza in town. Trust me on that, I’m Italian.” Sarcasm wasn’t his most attractive trait, but it was one of the most prominent.

“Don’t deflect the question,” Riona commanded with a click of her tongue. “I mean being one of the Pure Souls. I know how you found me…”