Apocalypse: The Lords of Deliverance Compendium

by Larissa Ione

  Even the animals in your stories have strong personalities. Why is that?

  Because I’ve never met an animal that didn’t have a unique, strong personality. I grew up on a farm, and I learned that even animals like cows and chickens are individuals in their own ways. People think a cow is a cow is a cow, but the more time I spent with them, the more I saw the personality differences in each one. And in many ways, what I learned growing up on a farm helped me understand the demons in my Demonica world better. Just as humans tend to see cows as just cows, so do demons see humans as just humans—to many demons, we not only all look alike, but we act alike.

  What inspired you to write about alpha demons and give them the noble, loving personalities and sex appeal that we all drool over? Most writers make them a bunch of nasty beasties. Why did you choose a different route?

  I went a different route for exactly the reason you just mentioned: because most writers make them a bunch of nasty beasties. Yep, I wanted to do something different. Of course, I was a little behind the curve, because by the time Pleasure Unbound came out, there were these other amazing authors, like Gena Showalter and Kresley Cole, writing these loving, cuddly demons. Okay, “cuddly” is probably more accurately stated as “hot as hell,” but you know what I mean!

  How do you come up with the types of demons from your series? Their names and the way they look? Are they from your imagination?

  I’d say that 40 percent come from mythology—demons from various cultural and religious backgrounds. The rest are from my imagination. My scary, scary imagination…

  How do you go about picking, or making up names for your characters and is there a meaning, or purpose behind the names you choose for them?

  The names I choose for the main characters usually have some sort of meaning or purpose. When the names aren’t made up, there’s generally something behind them that makes them special. For example, Eidolon, Shade, and Wraith are all linked by the fact that their names are real terms that identify some sort of ghost or spirit. I tend to do a ton of research when it comes to names, demon species, and terms like Maleconcieo, which is an organization representing every demon species… basically, the U.N. of the demon world. The word combines malus (Old French mal based on Latin for “bad”) with concieo (Latin for “incite, assemble”). I’m very picky when inventing a term or name, and although they may be made up, they must still have a basis in something, be it a language like Latin, a place, or a historical event.

  Are you ever going to make the Demonica series into a movie or TV show?

  I would love that! Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources. It takes a Hollywood-type person to express interest in order to get something like that going.

  How can I find out about appearances and book signings?

  You can check my website. I list all upcoming events in the right sidebar of my blog at LarissaIone.com/Blog/Blog-Home.

  Will Sin and Con finally bond the way male Seminus demons do, and will they have kids?

  Sin isn’t even sure she can bond the same way male Sems do, but she and Con might try someday. Right now, after being enslaved by and bonded to others for so long, she and Con are both content to take things slow, which includes having kids. When and if these things happen, I’ll be sure to write scenes for inclusion in Demonica: Overkill, which is where I update readers on the lives of the Demonica cast and crew: LarissaIone.com/Blog/Books/Demonica-Overkill

  Will the Sem brothers come through for Lore and Idess as sperm donors, and how will that be possible?

  Yes! And I even know whose little sperm is going to be the winner! As for how it would be possible, given that Seminus demons not only must have a partner to climax, but once mated, they can only be with that partner, well, let’s just say that our boys and their mates will have to be a little… creative in collecting the samples. And if all else fails, there are always medical methods.

  Where do you get your ideas?

  Everywhere! Sometimes things just pop into my head. Other times they’ll come from the news or from a movie or book or TV documentary. For example, the Demonica series came to me when I was watching an episode of Angel, and Angel got hurt. He needed a hospital, but as a vampire, he couldn’t just head to the nearest emergency room. Clearly, there was a need for an underworld hospital, and UGH was born!

  What’s next after the last Lords of Deliverance book?

  After Reseph’s book, we’re heading back to the Demonica world. Rogue Rider will kick off a book for Reaver, which I’m super excited about. For updates about what’s coming next, please feel free to sign up for my newsletter at LarissaIone.com/Blog/News.

  The Legend

  So this is what the legend, immortalized through thousands of years of storytelling, says about the origins of the Four Horsemen:

  Her name was Lilith, and she was an evil succubus. His name was Yenrieth, and he was a good angel.

  After hundreds of years of seducing humans, Lilith got bored. So she set her sights on Yenrieth, the ultimate challenge. He resisted. She pursued. He resisted some more. This went on for decades, until the inevitable happened. She was, after all, beautiful, and he liked his wine a little too much.

  No one knows what happened to Yenrieth after their night of passion, but nine months later, Lilith gave birth to four children, three boys and a girl. She named them Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos. Lilith kept the girl, Limos, with her in Sheoul, and she planted the males in the human world, switching them out with the infants of wealthy, powerful families.

  The boys grew into men, never suspecting the truth about their origins. At least, not until demons rose up, spreading terror and seeking to use Lilith’s sons against the humans. Limos escaped from Sheoul, found her brothers, and revealed the truth about their parentage.

  By this time, the brothers had seen their lands and families destroyed by demons and, blinded by hatred and the need for revenge, Lilith’s children encouraged (manipulatively and forcibly, sometimes) humans to help them fight violent, never-ending battles against the underworld abominations.

  This didn’t go over well in the heavenly realm.

  Zachariel, an Angel of the Apocalypse, led a legion of angels to Earth, where they met in battle with demon hordes. When the earth and waters ran red with blood, and humans could no longer survive on the poisoned land, Zachariel struck a deal with the devil.

  Lilith’s children were to be punished for slinging mankind to the brink of doom in their selfish bid for revenge. Because they had nearly brought about the end of days, they were charged as the keepers of Armageddon. Defenders or instigators; the choice would fall on their shoulders.

  Each of them was given a Seal, and with each Seal came two prophecies. Should they protect their Seals from breaking until the prophecy laid out by the Bible came to pass, they would save their souls—and mankind.

  But should they allow the Seals to be broken prematurely, as written in the Daemonica, the demon bible, they would turn evil, and would forever be known by the names Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death.

  And thus were born the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  Awesome, right? Lilith was bored… humans are so vanilla… and Yenrieth resisted for centuries until she caught him one night all shitfaced on some crappy wine. Well, not so fast. Read on, dear reader, because here’s what really happened…

  Eternal Damnation

  Lilith was horny.

  As a succubus, horny was her default state, but there had been something different about her level of need lately. She’d been edgy, achy, and oddly picky about her partners. She’d shunned females, ugly males, and any male with fur. Or scales.

  Well, scales had always been a deal-breaker anyway.

  Now she found herself seeking specific qualities in a male. She wanted beauty. Ruthlessness. And wings. Definitely wings.

  She shivered in lustful anticipation. She loved wings. Leather ones, feathery ones, even the ones that were nothing but skeletal frames. A good, strong set o
f wings on a male stirred her like nothing else, except maybe a huge cock.

  So that was how she found herself perched on a boulder and covertly watching an angel bathe in a sparkling crystal pool.

  The male was… magnificent. He’d disappeared below the surface a few seconds ago, and she held her breath as she waited, her body tightening, her tongue dry. The waterfall on the far side of the pool churned the water into a froth and when he surfaced, the bubbles swirled around him, caressing his perfect skin and driving her mad with envy.

  He rose up out of the water like a god, his flaxen mane cascading over the broad expanse of his shoulders, glistening water droplets streaming in the valleys between slabs of thick muscle. His thick arms flexed as he looked up at the heavens and slicked back his hair. When his tongue flicked out to catch a shimmering bead of water on his lower lip, Lilith breathlessly licked her own lips.

  Closing his eyes, he turned his face to the sun, which bathed him in a golden glow. And then, to her utter wet-between-the-legs joy, he flared his wings high. They were as white and flawless as virgin snow, spanning wider than he was tall. They hadn’t developed color yet, which meant he was young. Virile. Full of stamina.

  Now if he would just move to the shallow end of the pool, she could see what he had going on below his trim waist.

  Not that she hadn’t already seen it. This was the third day in a row she’d spied on Yenrieth, and today, she’d decided, would be the day she approached him. Today was the first time he’d been here without the female angel who doted on him like a groveling cur. Yenrieth seemed to be oblivious, but to Lilith it was blatantly clear that the stupid bitch was both in lust and in love with him. She was just too shy or uppity or just plain daft to do anything about it.

  Lilith wasn’t any of those things, and she was definitely going to do something about it. No, not the love part. The sex part. Yenrieth didn’t know it yet, but he was going to help her relieve the deep-down ache that had been driving her mad.

  Oh, yes, this demon was going to finally get a little angel in her.

  Someone was watching him.

  Yenrieth grinned as he eased toward the shore, moving slowly to give whoever was watching a show they wouldn’t soon forget. Verrine would cluck her tongue at him and tell him he was too vain for his own good.

  That was probably true.

  He looked around for his fellow angel, wondering where she was. They’d been assigned the most tedious duty any angel could be given, and for two years they’d spent their nights patrolling the nearby forests for hellrats.

  Hellrats.

  The assignment was supposed to be some sort of training to teach them to develop their skills with holy fire. Hunting hellrats was fledgling work, and Yenrieth had progressed beyond that a decade ago. Unfortunately, his superiors didn’t agree.

  He strode up onto the bank and donned the plain white robe that was standard issue for all novice angels. As he slipped into his calfskin boots, a rustling from the forest caught his attention. He waited for a sense of evil to alert him about the nature of whatever was skittering through the underbrush, but nothing struck him as odd.

  But then, sensing evil was Yenrieth’s weakness, even though he didn’t admit that to anyone. His skills with holy fire couldn’t be topped, so did it matter if he was a few seconds slow when it came to identifying evil?

  A gray shape flickered in his peripheral vision, and he whirled, catching sight of the spiny hellrat as it darted toward the pool for a drink. In a flap of an angel’s wings Yenrieth summoned a hot stream of holy fire and turned the demon rodent into a pile of ashes.

  “Impressive.”

  Yenrieth whirled, his hand burning in preparation for hurling another blast of fire at whoever had snuck up on him. Instead, when he saw the black-haired, violet-eyed female standing at the edge of the water, her curvy body wrapped in a sheer purple sheath, his palm cooled and his body heated.

  He reached out with his angelic senses for a telltale vibration that would alert him to evil inside her, but he didn’t get as much as a tingle. She must be human.

  “Who are you?”

  Her gaze dropped, taking a long, slow ride over his body before she met his eyes again. “I’m Lilith.”

  He had to tread carefully. He wasn’t getting a malevolent vibe off her, but if she was human, she didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the fact that he’d just ashed a rat with fire from his hand. It was possible that she belonged to The Aegis, a ragtag group of humans who had recently banded together to fight demons. Or she could be some sort of priestess who practiced mystical arts.

  Yenrieth was going to lay odds on the latter.

  “You’ve been spying on me, Lilith.” He returned the measuring look—measuring her for a hole in the ground if she was an enemy, or a bed if she wasn’t. “Why?”

  Lilith shrugged and padded on bare feet to the pool. “I find you to be… intriguing.”

  Casting a sultry look over her shoulder, she waded into the water. He swallowed a sudden lump in his throat as she went deeper, until tiny ripples were lapping at her chin. Her lustrous raven hair spread out on the water’s surface, and when she started to emerge, it molded to her shoulders and back, draping her in a mantle of silk. Her purple wrap, now soaked, was completely transparent and skintight, revealing high, round breasts tipped with firm nipples, rolling abs, rounded, wide hips, and a shadowy V between slim, endless legs.

  “That wasn’t much of a swim,” he said, for lack of anything cleverer to say. This female had scrambled his brain.

  “I needed to cool off,” she purred. “It has been far too hot for comfort.”

  Yenrieth casually dropped his hand and shifted to hide his rebellious manhood.

  She took her lower lip between her teeth, and he swore she undulated as if under a male, engaging in sensual foreplay. “What about you? Have you been… hot?”

  Hot? He was on fire. Steam coursed through his veins instead of blood and his skin had practically melted to his muscles. With effort, he pushed aside his lust long enough to regard her with a critical, if not appreciative, eye. She was clearly a sexual woman, perhaps a kept consort for one of the local royals. Kept or… paid.

  “Are you a whore?”

  Her deep, throaty laughter rolled through him in another wave of lust. “Some may say so.” She smiled wryly. “But they don’t say it twice.” A breeze rustled the bushes near the spot where he’d incinerated the hellrat, and Lilith’s smile widened, as if she approved of what he’d done.

  “How is it that you weren’t surprised by what you saw me do?”

  One dainty shoulder rolled in a shrug. “I have bedded men who have shown me many things.”

  A vague answer, but one that made sense. She very well could have bedded someone versed in magic, or an Aegis warrior, or even a demon.

  He nearly curled his lip at the thought of bedding a vile spawn of Sheoul. Not only was sex with a demon a violation of heavenly law, but there were always consequences. No, as an angel, he was required to limit his intimate play to angels and humans, and even then, there were strict rules.

  “Are you married?” he asked, and once again, she laughed.

  “Never.” She moved toward him, her hips swaying hypnotically. “Do you want me?”

  More than he’d ever wanted anything. “No.”

  “Truly,” she murmured, reaching out to trail her finger along his jaw and down his neck. Pleasure blazed along the path she drew. “Then I’ll leave you with this.”

  She went up on her toes, and without thinking, he dipped his head to meet her welcoming mouth. In an instant, the fire inside him turned into an inferno, scorching him. This female was lightning wrapped in shimmering skin.

  He dragged in a ragged breath, taking in her scent, seeking a sign that she might be fertile, because it was forbidden for an angel to breed with a human. But all he got was a rich, spicy aroma, as if a flower had bloomed in a field of cardamom.

  Her lips were velvet against
his, her tongue silk. She arched, pressing the length of her remarkable body into his. Her breasts flattened against his chest, her nipples rubbing, and he wondered how they’d taste. Her core met his hard staff, and he hissed at the contact. He felt her smile, and then she stepped back, breaking away from him so abruptly he nearly lost his balance.

  Which only made sense, since this female had him off balance since she’d arrived.

  “Farewell,” she murmured. “I’ll return on the morrow, if you’d care to join me.”

  With that, she strolled into the forest, disappearing before he could so much as catch his breath.

  Tomorrow. Maybe once his head cleared, he’d decide it was a bad idea to meet her, but right now he was wondering how to make the sun rise faster.

  Lilith was in dire need of sex by the time she arrived at the shack she shared with her sister, Sabbet. She hated living in the human realm, but until a succubus of her species became pregnant, she couldn’t make a proper home in Sheoul. And the bitch of it was that her species wasn’t fertile until somewhere between their five hundredth and one thousandth year.

  She found Sabbet midcoitus with a half-demon male who had serviced them for decades when they were too lazy to find a human male to fuck. Sabbet continued to ride the male, Ashan, who was on his back on her pallet, as Lilith entered the shack. The scent of sex drove Lilith mad with want, and she clenched her teeth against the desire to either shove Sabbet off the demon or go back to the pool to see if Yenrieth was still there.