Brimstone Prince

“Yes,” Lily responded. “Until he decided he wasn’t a killer after all.”

“But you decided you would kill in his stead?” Michael asked.

Lily noticed him take a step toward her, but she wasn’t sure he noticed himself. There was nothing she could do about the affinity for daemons in her blood. The daemon king was the only being she knew who could dampen her call. It was a vulnerable feeling to be fully herself in the New Mexico desert, but it was liberating as well. She would deal, come what may.

But when Michael took another step toward her she couldn’t help that her heartbeat quickened.

His Brimstone was a pleasant burn even if it shouldn’t be.

“I defend myself and my work,” she answered. Then she sheathed her father’s sword at her back and rose slowly to meet his advance. Only at that point did he realize he’d moved toward her. He stopped. He blinked. His hands fisted at his sides.

“Is it your command of the elements that calls me? Your command of fire?” Michael asked.

“My kachinas are packed away,” Lily reminded him.

“Then what? I have control over the Brimstone in my blood. I gained control as a child and I’ve never lost it. I’ve always credited the music for keeping it in check. My music soothes it. Or so I thought,” Michael said. He’d taken two more steps. He was directly in front of her now. She had to lift her chin to look up into his eyes. They glittered in the firelight. He didn’t have to tell her that his Brimstone was burning nearly out of control. She could feel it. The heat came off of him in waves and nothing could have stopped her from taking the last step between them.

Her affinity had blossomed up and out. Her body hummed with it. No song necessary at all. She took that step and Michael sucked in a deep breath in response as her breasts touched his chest.

“Daemons are drawn to me. It’s something bequeathed by my father’s blood,” Lily confessed.

“Samuel’s Kiss bequeathed an affinity to my mother and her sister through their mother. A dying man saved my grandmother. Gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he gifted her something else with those life-saving breaths,” Michael said. “She passed it to her children, and my mother passed it to me.”

Lily hummed out loud when his hands came up to cup the sides of her face. Moisture filled her eyes. She’d never known her father was responsible for gifting the D’Arcys with affinity. Ezekiel had never told her. Michael’s human grandmother. The passage of time in the hell dimension didn’t match with the passage of time on earth.

“My father’s name was Samuel,” she breathed out.

“How is this possible? Samuel died before my mother was born,” Michael said. His mouth was so close to hers that his warm breath caused her lips to tingle.

“I don’t know,” Lily lied just as Michael leaned to press his lips to hers.

The moisture in her eyes wasn’t for the loss of her father. He’d already been gone a long time. She’d shed all the tears she could shed for him years ago. Her eyes filled because she knew in that instant that she’d been right about the daemon king’s manipulations. Michael wasn’t some random prince she’d met in the desert night. He was the reason she’d been allowed to leave the palace. And it didn’t matter that his likeness was nestled with her kachina dolls in a dusty backpack on the sand.

He wasn’t meant for her. Her destiny might be twined with his but not for reasons of the heart. He was meant for the throne. And the daemon king expected her to help him force Michael to accept it. His Brimstone blood made him vulnerable to her powerful affinity and that made him vulnerable to the daemon king’s manipulations, if she didn’t resist them herself.

His lips were full and warm against hers. She didn’t reject the intimacy of his moist, hot tongue. She opened for him. She eagerly met his tongue with flicks of her own. She pressed into his muscular body and his arms fell from her face to her back, where they smoothed and molded the curves of her body to fit against him. She had been forced to find haven in hell, but she tasted heaven on Michael’s lips. It was a paradise flavored with salty tears.

She would be damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.

Her father had made a deal with the daemon king to protect her. For Lily, it had been fifteen years ago. On earth more time had passed. Enough for a Brimstone prince to be born and grow to his majority. And now Lily could guess what price she might have to pay for Ezekiel’s protection.

* * *

The hellhound saved them. He leaped through the fire, scattering embers and sparks and coals in his wake as a ferocious growl erupted from his chest. They broke apart and he landed between them on stiff legs with his back hunched high.

“What the hell, Grim?” Michael protested.

“No. He’s right. We can’t burn so bright. It’s time to go,” Lily said. She was already finishing the job Grim had started, kicking apart the fire and burying the coals with desert sand.

“We don’t know which direction to take yet,” Michael protested.

“Away. First we go away and then I’ll take the time to determine specifics,” Lily said. “Rogues always find me. You found me. More will come. Especially if I don’t tamp the affinity down.” She stomped on the buried fire as if to physically illustrate her point. Then she stilled and closed her eyes. She actually knew when he took a step toward her. Lily raised her hands and held them up to ward him away.

He might have gone to her side anyway except Grim was staring out into the desert night growling at the darkness. Something was out there stalking them. Probably more than one thing.

“Right. Come on,” Michael said.

It took only seconds to grab their things. His guitar. Her bag. Grim growled louder, deep in his chest, an obvious warning to whatever approached. Lily glanced one more time at her dented SUV, but it was too far away. Michael had climbed onto his motorcycle. It was a decision of the moment to hop on behind him and wrap her arms around his chest. He didn’t seem surprised. The machine roared to life beneath them as daemons appeared from the shadows.

Michael wasted no more time. He pointed the motorcycle to the road and goosed the accelerator. Lily held on tight as they narrowly escaped dozens of daemons they couldn’t have possibly defeated even with Grim’s help. The hellhound must have been able to count. Lily saw him materialize on the road beside them, already running full speed, his legs a blur of shifting smoke.

They drove until dawn, which arrived in a burst of russet hues from umber to golden orange, but in the hours of road-eating travel Lily failed to figure out how she could break it to Michael Turov that he’d just rescued the woman who would be forced to seal his hellish fate.

Chapter 3 (#u5232f25a-0f0a-577b-b7cc-37200b3f461a)

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.