Blaze

by Suzanne Wright

  Suzanne Wright lives in England with her husband and two children. When she’s not spending time with her family, she’s writing, reading or doing her version of housework – sweeping the house with a look.

  She’s worked in a pharmaceutical company, at a Disney Store, at a primary school as a voluntary teaching assistant, at the RSCPA and has a First Class Honours degree in Psychology and Identity Studies.

  As to her interests, she enjoys reading, writing, reading, writing (sort of eat, sleep, write, repeat), spending time with her family, movie nights with her sisters and playing with her two Bengal kittens.

  To connect with Suzanne online:

  Website: www.suzannewright.co.uk

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/suzannewrightfanpage

  Twitter: @suz_wright

  Blog: www.suzannewrightsblog.blogspot.co.uk

  BY SUZANNE WRIGHT

  The Dark in You

  Burn

  Blaze

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Piatkus

  978-0-3494-1318-1

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Suzanne Wright, 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  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, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  PIATKUS

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  Blaze Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  To all those who agree with me that archdemons should be real. Sure, they’d be powerful enough to destroy the world, but we can’t let a little thing like that get in the way, right?

  Acknowledgments

  Firstly, I have to thank my family for somehow managing to live with someone who spends so much time in her own head – playing with fictional people, no less. Even I know that’s just weird. Although it does beat being alone.

  Big thanks to my hyper imagination… you worked yourself hard during this book and I appreciate that.

  Of course I have to sincerely thank my assistant, Melissa, who not only supports me and works her ass off, but also saves me from my unsociable self during book signing events.

  I wish to also thank everyone at Piatkus, especially Tara Loder, who is exactly what every writer wants in an editor.

  Last but not whatsoever least, thanks to all my readers. Each and every one of you is the shit – pure fact. If you wish to contact me, you can reach me by email at suzanne_e_wright@live.co.uk or via social media.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Stop right there, bitch!”

  Snapping her gaze from her cell phone to the pistol now aimed at her head, Harper Wallis froze. Well, shit. She couldn’t deny that she had some karma to burn off. She was no angel. Being a demon, she was quite the opposite, in fact. But having a gun pointed at her by a human with a shaky hand and dilated pupils that said he was drugged up to his eyeballs… well, it just felt like the universe was being a little unfair, that’s all.

  “Put the phone on the ground!”

  She so didn’t have time for this. She’d taken a quick break from work so she could head to the ATM —

  “Put the phone on the ground!”

  “Do I really have to?” The floor of the alley was covered in grime, cigarette butts, glass fragments, and dirty rain puddles. Then there were those dubious-looking stains…

  “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  With an inward sigh, Harper slowly did as he asked.

  Note to self: Stop taking shortcuts through alleys. It wasn’t exactly a scenic route with the dumpsters, trash bags, moldy walls, and the scent of rotting food… although the graffiti was pretty cool. The artist definitely had potential.

  “Hands up and keep them up!”

  She raised her hands, all the while staring into blue eyes that flickered with nervousness. Sparky here wasn’t as confident as he was trying to appear. But he had every reason to feel at least a little confident. They were alone except for the rats, she was small where he was burly, and he had a weapon while she was unarmed – or, at least, that was what he thought. Not that the stiletto knife tucked into her boot was going to do her much good against a gun.

  Really, she should know better. This area of North Las Vegas was high in crime… which, incidentally, was why her family fit right in. The Wallis demons were pretty notorious for doing exactly what all imps did: mostly lying, stealing, tricking, cheating, and, of course, breaking and entering. Although Harper was a sphinx like her mother, she’d been raised by her paternal family and was an imp by nature.

  “Now throw me your purse!”

  “You told me to keep my hands up,” she pointed out.

  “Well, now I’m telling you to give me your damn purse.”

  Okay, that was going to be a problem. It had been a gift, and she wasn’t going to hand it over to anyone.

  “Now, bitch!”

  How rude. Not that he was wrong. She was a bitch and she took pride in it. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  His brows drew together. “What?”

  “See, someone very important to me bought me this. I tell him not to keep buying me shit, but he doesn’t listen. He likes to spoil me, even though it makes me uncomfortable —”

  A burger wrapper crumpled under his foot as he took an aggressive step forward, lips flattening. “Throw. Me. The. Purse.”

  Her inner demon snarled, eager for Harper to either slit his throat or do something equally entertaining. Like shifters, demons had a dualism to the soul. Shifters shared their soul with an animal. Demons, however, shared theirs with a dark entity – an entity that was without conscience, possessed a strong sense of entitlement, and lacked both empathy and the ability to emotionally connect. “Come on, give a girl a break.”

  “Oh, I’ll give you something,” he said, a lewd gleam in his eyes.

  Like hell he would. A dark yet protective power unfurled from within her and rushed to her fingertips, making them prickle. Her demon urged her to release it on the human, but there were other ways of dealing with him.

  “You don’t want the purse,” she said in the compelling tone that all sphinxes were gifted with, enabling them to confuse people. Satisfied when his eyes glazed over, she continued. “You don’t want to hurt me. You want to drop the gun.” She wished she could compel him to never do it again or to confess his crimes to the police, but her compulsions wouldn’t hold that long.

  A car honked in the distance, making him jump, and the glaze fell from his eyes. “Give me the purse!”

  “This is getting tedious.” She fli
nched at a loud bang. Motherfucker. The human had shot at the ground in front of her feet. She wasn’t sure if he’d purposely missed; she had no interest in finding out. Before that shaky hand could shoot again, she acted. Faster than he could ever hope to be, she whipped out her knife, kicked the gun out of his hand, slammed him into the wall, and put her blade to his throat.

  Breaths quick and shallow, he stared at her through wide eyes.

  Well, he’d be a lot more scared if she’d granted her demon’s request and infused hellfire into the knife. It would be pretty funny to watch his face go slack, but that would expose herself as inhuman and… and was it just her or had the temperature dropped seriously quickly? It was also darkening fast. She looked up. A dark, heavy, ominous-looking cloud had formed.

  Harper’s eyes snapped back to the human as a large, sweaty hand crushed her wrist and sharply yanked it, making her drop her blade.

  His free hand wrapped tight around her throat as he spun them, slamming her into the wall. The breath whooshed out of her lungs. Fisting her hair, he rammed the back of her skull against the wall, and there was the sickening sound of bone hitting brick. Spots danced in front of her eyes and a ringing sound filled her ears.

  “Bitch!” He bit down hard into her cheek as he roughly tore open her fly.

  Motherfucking bastard. She slapped her palm to his forehead, and the power prickling her fingertips shoved its way inside him.

  With an agonized sob, he dropped to his knees and slapped his hands against his head.

  A little on the dizzy side, she rapidly blinked. The bite mark on her cheek was throbbing like a bitch. Watching him whimper pathetically at her feet, she gently probed the lump that was quickly forming on the back of her head. Fucking ouch.

  Giving up any pretense of being human, Harper crouched in front of him. “Do you know why one simple hit to your body took you down? Because my touch can cause soul-deep pain. I can’t really empathize, because I’ve never felt it myself. I’m told that the pain burns each nerve ending, cuts through each organ, slices through each bone and then lances through the very soul, making it feel like it’s shattering. Does it?” She was genuinely curious.

  Eying her with a newfound terror, he clumsily scrabbled away from her.

  Understandable, really.

  His gaze fell to the gun, but it was too far away and he was in too much pain to get up.

  “You might as well lose the dream of shooting me,” she told him, grabbing her cell phone off the floor and tucking it into her purse. “Now, what should I do with you?”

  A cold wind blew through the air, flapping her T-shirt and causing her loose hair to whip at her face. Looking up, she saw that the murky cloud was bigger and darker. The air felt… charged, somehow. Wary, she slowly stood upright.

  Ping. Ping. Ping.

  Something hard and sharp bounced off her hand onto the concrete. Wincing, she frowned down at the small white ball. Hail. “Well, shit.”

  In a matter of moments, a torrent of icy pellets was raining down on them, stinging the skin of her face and hands. She shrugged off her jacket and held it over her head. But, like the rest of her clothes, the material couldn’t protect her from the hard sting of the hailstones.

  The deluge was deafening. Each pellet pounded into the ground, hammered into the garbage cans, and splashed out of the rain puddles. The pellets weren’t big, but the force of them was bad. They were no doubt chipping windows and denting cars all around.

  Seriously, where the fuck had this storm come from? One minute the weather was mild, the next there was a hailstorm and she was freezing. If it was anything like the other recent strange storms, it would end as abruptly as it had begun.

  She could hear raised voices coming from the end of the alley; watched as people scrambled to escape the torrent. She would have followed their lead and run for shelter, but there was good ole Sparky to consider. She was going to have to do something with the little bastard, who was now crawling toward the gun, proving yet again that he was indeed a bastard.

  She kicked it far out of his reach, and it slid into a slushy puddle.

  With a groan of defeat, he rolled onto his side and curled up into a fetal position, shielding his face with his thick arms. Like her, he was wet and his teeth were chattering. Maybe she should have felt bad for him but, well, she just didn’t. He’d freaking attacked her.

  A very familiar mind slid against hers. Harper, where are you?

  Even telepathically, her mate’s voice was like an erotic stroke to her senses. Hell, everything about Knox Thorne stroked her senses. But seriously, his smoky, velvety rumble was pure liquid sin.

  Caught in a hailstorm, she told him. He was no doubt warm and dry in a conference room somewhere in Chicago.

  I know you’re stuck in the storm. I want to know where exactly you are.

  She frowned, wondering how he could possibly know. Now that the deluge had abruptly begun to slow, she scooped up her blade with cold fingers and returned it to the sheath inside her boot.

  Tell me where you are; I’ll come for you.

  Hearing another groan, she looked down at Sparky. He was shivering even worse than before. And Harper… yeah, she still wasn’t feeling bad for him. It’s sweet that you’d offer to pyroport all the way from Chicago, but it’s not necessary. Right now, she wouldn’t mind having that ability herself – traveling by fire would at least warm her up.

  I’m at your studio, I’ve been waiting for you.

  Well, then it would seem that he’d cut his business trip short. But why? Uneasy, she asked, Is something wrong?

  Harper, where are you?

  She narrowed her eyes. You avoided my question.

  You avoided mine.

  Well, yeah. The storm is actually easing off. The rumble of pellets had slowed to light individual pings. You don’t have to come for me.

  Harper, he growled.

  Okay, but you have to promise not to lose your shit. But considering she had bite marks on her cheek, a goose-egg on her head, and the buttons of her fly had been ripped off, there was little chance of that. She wasn’t averse to seeing the sick-ass motherfucker on the ground die a painful death, but it was never a good thing for Knox Thorne to lose control.

  Only a handful of people – including Harper – knew what breed of demon he was. Still, he was both feared and respected within the demon world since he was rumored to be the most powerful in existence; a demon that could call on the flames of hell. It was a rumor that very few knew to be true. And since nothing was impervious to the flames of hell, he could, literally, destroy the freaking world.

  A vibe of anxiety touched her mind. Harper, where the fuck are you?

  Sighing in resignation, she lowered her soaking wet jacket. The alley between the ATM and the deli. An alley that was now dotted with icy pellets. Well, at least it smelled better; ozone and water beat pigeon shit and grime any day of the week.

  Fire roared to life a few feet away, causing Sparky to cry out in terror. The fire hissed and spat until the flames quickly calmed. And there was Knox. Piercing, deep-set ebony eyes locked on her, and the intense potency of his natural sex appeal swept over her, causing her body to hum. Well over six feet of danger, power, solid muscle, and a raw sexual magnetism, Knox Thorne was both a mouthwatering and intimidating sight.

  As always, he looked like something out of GQ with his black tailored suit, sexily confident stance, and his short, dark stylishly cut hair. He exuded an aura of self-assurance that said he could handle any situation with total ease. At that moment, he was also radiating a fury that thickened the air. Crap.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  “Nothing about this situation is fine,” said Knox, stalking toward her. He sounded completely calm. Composed. Casual. But she knew he was none of those things.