by Melody Raven
Angie frowned at the men. “You’re probably right. One or two crazy hot guys in a group is the standard, I believe. But four of them is too much. Think they’re gay?”
Muriel stifled a laugh and a couple of the demons stiffened. Unbeknownst to Angie, the demons could hear every word they were saying.
Angie smiled at Muriel’s attempts to hold in her laughter. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she pointed out. “I’m a married woman.”
That would do nothing but encourage the demons. They loved all sin, and with their good looks and skills in the art of seduction, adultery was second nature to them.
Muriel studied the demons. The one who had forced his blood on her was obviously the alpha of the group. Through her research, she had discovered his name. Kier.
She didn’t like to think of him as that. To her, he was still the beast that had taken everything from her. He didn’t deserve a name.
He was the demon she was going to make beg for his life.
It took all of Kier’s concentration to avoid looking behind him at the fallen angel. Her name whispered through his mind. Muriel. Fucking angels, he thought.
There was a good reason that demons didn’t go around sharing their blood with angels, and he had learned the hard way.
Angels and demons did not mix. As if they didn’t naturally hate each other enough, too much time spent in the other species’ presence would taint the souls of both.
Most species didn’t pay much attention to their souls, but for celestial beings, souls were their most important asset and were to be protected above all else. An angel’s white soul was their key to Heaven and a demon’s black soul was their key to Hell. If a soul was too gray, there was a chance that the being would be locked out of both realms. Until they could do enough good or evil deeds to earn entry back in, that being would be grounded on Earth.
When he made Muriel drink his blood, her soul had turned irreparably gray. Not completely evil, but not redeemable either.
Though he was still cashing in on the benefits of besting an angel, he had underestimated the cost to himself. He knew that the intimate act of feeding his blood to Muriel would damage his soul, but at least he was still allowed to enter the gates of Hell at will. It was the other side effects that left him reeling.
It was his conscience. He’d lived centuries without giving a damn or feeling a twinge of guilt, but ever since the night he met Muriel, it had subtly lurked in the back of his mind.
He might not be volunteering at the local food bank any time soon, but he had grown an aversion to the harder sins. He couldn’t even remember the last time he enticed a really juicy murder.
All he could bring himself to convince the mortals to dirty their souls with was the light stuff, like adultery and drug addictions. No other demons had noticed yet, but it was only a matter of time before the power he gained from corrupting a fallen angel wore off and everyone realized that he wasn’t pulling his weight anymore.
The conscience wasn’t the only side effect. Muriel was the other one. She was always with him in some way. The night she drank his blood, her anger and despair filled him. All he wanted to do was stalk out into the night and cut down as many of his own demons as he could. Not that it would make him feel any better. It was him Muriel was raging at.
Empathy wasn’t a good trait for a soul-sucking demon. Luckily it had faded with time, though it never completely diminished. Every once in a while, he would feel a foreign twinge of happiness or sadness and know that somewhere on Earth, it was what Muriel was feeling.
He had been tempted to track her down thousands of times but was convinced that the more time he spent away from her, the weaker her pull on him would be. He kept himself from her every day for the last five years. This time, he gave in.
He blamed the low-level demons with him. Haskel, Roth, and Eli had brought up the idea of tracking down and tormenting the angel he had ruined. It was a perfectly normal and evil thing for a demon to do. They had no way of knowing how many times in the past Kier had fought his urge to find her.
He didn’t have sufficient willpower to refuse them, nor could he muster up an excuse as to why he didn’t want to torment her without hurting his badass image. Now he was just feet from her.
She was different from what he remembered. More human. She had only just fallen when he had tainted her. Her hair still held the shine of Heaven; her body still held the glow of immortality.
Now he wasn’t sure whether he would even know she was fallen if he hadn’t seen her before. Her hair was the same dark brown with streaks of red and gold that shone under the lights, and it still fell well below her shoulders, but the cut of it was blunt now. Less natural looking. Her skin, although still holding the youthful appearance of a female in her twenties, had aged.
Mortal or not, she looked just like sin to Kier. The standard outfits these waitresses wore had the strange effect of covering everything necessary, yet leaving little to the imagination. The tight black t-shirt was high necked but hugged all of her curves just enough to show exactly how generous Muriel’s breasts were.
An apron, with pockets to hold a small order pad and pens, covered the front of her hips and hung down about an inch below where the short, but not indecent, black shorts stopped, revealing the tanned and muscular legs of a woman who took care of herself.
Fallen angels tended toward the extreme, either preserving their mortal bodies as well as possible or else abusing every vice they could to speed their damnation. Obviously Muriel was protective of her mortal body and wanted to keep it around for a while.
Kier had to admit he approved of her body. His cock was especially pleased with it, uncomfortably straining against his trousers at the thought of just how strong those legs would be, and how tightly they would squeeze him if wrapped around his waist.
He shifted, willing the erection away. The three demons with him couldn’t know of his thoughts. Demons didn’t want to fuck angels, fallen or otherwise.
A shift in the air told him she was approaching the table. He couldn’t prevent his muscles from stiffening in anticipation as he savored her scent. Despite the greasy food served at the diner, she still managed to smell like a forest at the beginning of spring.
As she came into his view, he was impressed with her poise under pressure. Hell, he couldn’t even feel any fear coming from her. “Hi boys,” she said in a low, sultry tone.
Kier realized that even though he felt as if he knew her from his one-sided connection, he had never heard her speak before. Her voice wrapped around him and pulled him deeper into the trance she unintentionally put him in.
Her light blue gaze swept the table, studying each demon, spending extra time on Kier but refusing to meet his gaze. “Are you having fun observing a fallen in her adopted habitat? I hope so, but unfortunately I can’t entertain you tonight. So why don’t we make this whole thing go by quickly and I’ll get started by grabbing you all some waters,” she said in a pleasant voice. She turned to walk away, as if there weren’t four demons staring at her.
Not one to be ignored and unwilling to let her go so quickly, Kier shot out a hand and grabbed her wrist. She gasped and he wondered whether she felt the same electricity that he did. At first, it was as if his palm had been burned, but then the burn melted into a dull heat that tingled up his arm.
He wanted to touch her with other parts of his body to see whether it had the same effect.
“If you don’t serve us, we’re going to kill every single person in here,” he said in just as pleasant voice as she had used.
She slowly turned and this time did meet his eyes. “You know what you want, or did you need a couple more minutes to look over the menu?” She smiled, still showing no trace of fear.
Kier knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to bend her over the nearest table, one fist in her hair and one pushing down those teasing shorts as he shoved his entire length into her scalding warmth in one fierce stroke. She would scream, but it would be a sc
ream of pleasure because in this fantasy, she wanted it just as much as he did.
“I’ll have a burger,” was all he managed to say, struggling to appear unfazed by her presence.
“Did you want fries with that?” she asked, her irritation now audible.
“What about what you want, Muriel? Do you even know?” He didn’t know what he was doing. What he was saying. He just knew that he wanted her and wanted her to want him back. He wanted her to want more.
Her calm façade slipped, and, though he couldn’t see it, he felt a mix of fear and anger swirl within her. She pulled her wrist free and he let her go without a fight. “Fries it is.” She walked back to the relative safety of the kitchen.
Two hours later, Muriel discreetly spied on the table of demons from the kitchen. All other patrons had left long ago, when the diner should have closed. She didn’t know what the demons were still doing there and didn’t want to guess.
Angie put on her jacket and Muriel was relieved that she was getting herself to relative safety. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” asked Angie.
Muriel shook her head, wishing Angie would hurry. “It’s just a table of four. I can handle it.”
Angie looked over at them uneasily. “You looked kind of, I don’t know, off-kilter around them. And that one guy grabbed at you. I can just call Scott and tell him that I’m working an extra hour,” she offered.
Muriel blushed at the memory of Kier’s large hand wrapped around her wrist. She hadn’t thought anyone had seen him do it. “He’s probably used to women loving it when he touches them. It’s no big deal.” She knew he’d been trying to make her uncomfortable with his touch. Hell, he’d grabbed her to tell her that he had no problem killing everyone in the restaurant, so uncomfortableness had been accomplished.
At least, now that Angie was leaving, there was only Muriel and one cook left for the night. Even if they wanted to close on time, the boss would flip a lid when he found out they had kicked out customers before they were ready.
“Let me walk you to the door.” She followed Angie out, careful to keep herself between her friend and the demons. She didn’t look at them as she walked past, but felt their eyes boring into her back.
Angie got into her car, and Muriel didn’t take her eyes away from the old Ford until it had turned out of the parking lot and the lights were no longer visible.
The demons’ presence made her nervous, but, in all truth, she wasn’t upset. Them showing up was a stroke of good luck. She had waited patiently for her vengeance for five years. Physically being able to corner Kier in a somewhat safe location was the complicated part.
Even with the three other demons around, she was sure she could trap him if she could just get him alone for a few minutes.
Nerves caused her heart to beat fast within her chest, reminding her once again of her mortality. She approached the table, doing her best to hide her uneasiness, though she knew they could hear her heartbeat. Demons existed to take advantage of mortals, and they could read all the signs of weakness.
She ignored the three leeches and focused her gaze on Kier, scowling at his beauty. He sat up straight at her approach, and if she didn’t know better, she would have thought her presence made him tense.
“I need to see you outside.” As if it was completely normal for fallen angels to order demons around.
Expecting laughter or protest, she was surprised when he stood. This brought him within inches of her and she instinctively stepped back. One side of his mouth curled, and she grimaced at her own jumpiness.
“Where to?”
“Out back.” She started to lead him out of the restaurant. He motioned to the leeches to stay at the table, and Muriel sent up a quick prayer, thanking God for her good luck. The demon walked behind her and she fought the urge to look over her shoulder.
Opening the door, she braced herself against the cool Arkansas spring air. At least Kier had a warm-looking leather jacket to protect himself from the wind. All Muriel had was her shorts and t-shirt. He looked at her expectantly.
“I need you to undo it,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Undo what?”
“Whatever your blood did to me. I need this black mark on my soul gone so I can get back into Heaven.”
He had the nerve to smile. “You know that there is no way to take back what my blood did. We both just have to live with it.”
Muriel scoffed. “No. We both don’t have to live with it. I’m the one who has to live with it and die with it.”
She reached inside her apron pockets, as if trying to keep her hands warm. Her fingers wrapped around the cold steel that was her only weapon.
“There has to be some way that we can reverse this. Some connection you have that you could at least ask.” She even added a pleading note to her voice.
She had no illusions. She knew that, as a demon, Kier was inherently selfish, and ruining her had probably been the best career move of his life. There was no reason for him to help her, but she figured that before she ruined him, she would give him one last chance to redeem himself.
As expected, he laughed in her face. He stepped closer and leaned in until his face was inches away. She wanted to move away but needed to be close to him for her plan to work.
His breath caressed her cheek and a shiver snaked down her spine. “I would have thought that after five years of humanity eating away at you, you would be used to your orders being ignored,” he whispered before he took a step back.
Muriel grabbed his wrist, much like he had done to her just hours before. His gaze jerked down at the contact as he took in a deep breath. His eyes remained fixed on the spot where her hand touched his skin. She didn’t overanalyze his reaction. She needed to get him to raise his eyes.
“Please,” she begged. “I haven’t seen any angels in five years and I don’t know who I could even ask. You owe me this.”
“Lady, I destroyed your soul for shits and giggles. Why would I ever help you?” he asked, obviously starting to be less amused and more annoyed.
The small distraction was all she needed as her right hand slipped unnoticed out of her apron and the loud click of the handcuff locking around his wrist filled the silence of the night.
Kier’s wrist was unnaturally cold once Muriel removed her hand. At the sight of the silver, he grimaced in annoyance. “What game are you playing, angel?”
She had snapped a pair of handcuffs on him. Well, half a pair. The other cuff was attached to her own wrist.
His ears filled with the sound of her heart beating frantically, muffling her muttered, “Oh shit.”
He didn’t have time to humor her anymore. He looked to a spot ten feet away and focused on transporting himself, sans handcuffs.
To his frustration, he stayed exactly where he was. What the hell? The last time he had failed at a transport had been centuries ago, and ten feet was easy enough for a juvenile demon to perform. “What did you do to me?”
Muriel leaned away but didn’t step back. She couldn’t as long as she was cuffed to him. “Nothing you don’t deserve.” She sounded braver than she looked.
Anger filled Kier. He was not about to be trapped by some mortal. He stormed off to the side of the restaurant, dragging her along behind him. As he reached the brick corner of the building, he slammed the chain links connecting the cuffs against the brick corner with all of his considerable demon strength.
Pain shot through his wrist as Muriel gasped at the sting that must be traveling up her own arm. Undaunted, he slammed the metal to stone three more times, only succeeding in causing huge chunks of bricks to fly everywhere. The chain links that connected the cuffs didn’t even have a scratch on them.
“It’s no use,” taunted Muriel through clenched teeth.
Kier had to stop his attempts to break the cuffs due to the increasing pain in his own wrist. He glared at the offending steel. He normally was not this affected by pain.
He turned his glacial gaze to Muriel,
who at least had the grace to look intimidated. “They won’t break,” she said. “They’re enchanted. Only the key can release you.”
Now he was truly pissed off. His free hand wrapped around her slender throat as he pushed her against the side of the building and slammed her shoulders into the brick. A sudden throbbing sensation shot through his own back and a sickening realization filled him.
Testing a theory, his hand squeezed brutally around her throat, and Muriel’s face turned a shade of reddish-purple. Within seconds, debilitating pain possessed his throat. He tried to gasp for air, but his throat was being held closed by some invisible force.
He immediately released Muriel and caught his breath. Her knees must have given out because she started to sink to the ground, gasping for air. Her free hand gently rubbed her throat where he had mercilessly squeezed.
”You bitch,” he shouted, voice still hoarse. “What did you do to me?”
Her eyes held unveiled hatred. “Simple revenge,” she answered. “You destroyed my soul and now I’m destroying yours.”
“How are magical handcuffs supposed to do that?” He shouldn’t have asked. He already knew the answer.
“You might have tainted my soul, but I’m still pretty pure, especially compared to you. You are stuck with me until your soul is just as pretty as mine,” she threatened.
Muriel could see that Kier’s brain furiously searched for a way out of this mess, but she had worked hard to ensure that there wasn’t. The one way out of the cuffs was a key that only she knew the location to. Any pain she felt he would experience just as bad, if not worse, so he had no way to torture the information out of her.
“You will release me, or, so help me, I will cut everyone you care about limb from limb while you are still attached to me.”
“Really? Well, the joke is on you because there’s no one I care about here. Not sure if you know this, but it’s tough to make mortal friends when you have spent over ten centuries as an angel. Makes it hard to open up to coworkers and neighbors.” She was partially lying. She didn’t have any close friends, but she was fond of her neighbors and had a special spot in her heart for Angie.
