by AJ Mullican
Hell's Rejects
Hell on Earth Book 2
AJ Mullican
Copyright © 2021 AJ Mullican
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Art Painter
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
This is dedicated to my amazing readers, who keep me motivated to write what I love. To my “writer wifey” Angelique, who tolerates my copious straight sex scenes. To my BFF Crystal, who supports me 100%. To my husband, who puts up with my sleepless mornings in front of the computer. To my mom, who always reads everything I write—no matter how kinky. Y’all all light a fire under me and give me hope for the future.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About The Author
Books By This Author
Chapter 1
“So there we were, doing our, um, thing, and all of a sudden this Arab dude with glowing yellow eyes and sex appeal for miles is in our bedroom! It was the weirdest shit, man.” I take a sip of the coffee my friend Cherry Hunter brewed, lip ring clinking on the mug, and sigh. “He laid it all down and offered to get Kalen, Oren, and Finn’s magic back for us if we helped. We agreed, we showed up at the address He gave us, and that’s that.” With my story finished, I set the mug down and survey the looks on everyone’s faces.
Elena Galley, the pregnant witch I just met last night, narrows her blue eyes. “How, exactly, did Asmodeus convince the fucking Queen of the Fae to just give them their powers back?” She smirks, then shakes her head. “You know what, Molli? Don’t answer that. I probably already know.”
Her younger sister Callie snickers. “Uncle Azzie be gettin’ it on!”
More than a few eyerolls follow from the crowd in Cherry’s living room. I guess Callie’s not as funny as she thinks. As the second youngest here, though, I feel the need to kind of stand up for her a bit, so I reach over and fist bump her.
Not that I’m, like, super young. I mean, I turned twenty-one shortly after I got back from Faerie, so old enough to legally Irish up this coffee I’m drinking. If Cherry had any Irish cream handy, that is. Holden says they’re bone dry in the liquor department, but I see a couple of his brothers drinking beers with their breakfast, so I suspect they’re lying to keep Callie out of the cabinets.
Sometimes I hate being so damn short. People assume I’m younger than I am, so they treat me with kid gloves or ignore me altogether. I’d mention that I had my twenty-first birthday party at Bob’s Bar, where Cherry and Holden used to work, but maybe that’s a battle for a different day.
We’ve got real battles to deal with now.
Real, live, demon-beheading battles.
Holy shit, that was amazing. Scary as fuck, but amazing. I haven’t gotten to kick ass like that since Oren, Kalen, Finn, and I got back from the Faerie Realm. A dojo just isn’t the same as the streets, man. It’s not the same as Fae Queen Una’s arena in Her crystal castle, either, and unlike the arena I couldn’t kiss my attackers to bring them out of the spell they were under. Not that I want to be kissing up on half-rotten possessed people. Or on demons. No, thank you.
“I had no idea your boyfriends were fae folk, Molli.” Cherry reaches for the coffee pot to refill her mug, but Holden stops her with an admonition to watch how much caffeine she’s taking in. Cherry rolls her eyes and flicks him off, then kisses him.
It’s so weird that his brother knocked her up, but he’ll still kiss her.
I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d gotten pregnant while in Faerie. Would any of my guys have gotten jealous over one of the others being the dad?
“Molli saw no point in bringing it up when we weren’t technically fae at the time.” Oren shrugs from his seat on the floor and leans back against Finn’s chair. Oren’s blue hair and Finn’s purple stick out in this group of mostly blondes and brunettes, but I totally dig their natural fae-punk vibe. Their eternally-young, smoking-hot, pale-skinned gorgeousness turns me on, too. Oren’s lilting Irish accent hasn’t faded a bit since we got to the States from our adventure in Faerie. “When Una took our powers, she took everything that made us fae. We were as mortal as any of you Hunters.”
Then I remember what I learned about Cherry and her boyfriends—her “pack mates”—last night, and I blurt out the burning question on my mind. “You are mortal, right? Like, Kalen, Finn, Oren, and the incubi are the only immortals in the room right now?” Only? Geez. As if seven immortals is, like, a small amount.
Cherry holds a hand over her chest with a smile. “Cross my heart. One hundred percent mortal. Just a little more towards the supernatural side of things.”
That just reminds me that I’m the only one hundred percent human in the room.
It’s a little intimidating.
Cherry and the five Hunter brothers, all wolf shifters. Lena and her sister, both “carnal witches,” whatever that means—not sure I want to know. Lena’s four dark-skinned, exotically-gorgeous sex-demon lovers. And my guys, three formerly excommunicated fae, now restored to their magical glory.
Then there’s little old me, Molli Brighton, token human of the group.
The token human who kicked some serious demon ass last night!
Kalen, whose lap I’m sitting on due to the lack of available chairs, gives me a squeeze and runs a hand through his berry-red hair, opal eyes sparkling. “It is nice to have my magic back. Though I would give it up a hundred times over to be with Molli, I admit I had missed it.”
“Indeed. Without my magic, I felt as though a part of me was missing. I met with no end of frustration every time Molli was injured during a sparring session or one of us fell ill with a cold.” Oren pats my knee and gazes up at me, and my heart aches for him. Poor guy. I never considered what it must be like for him as a natural-born healer to be unable to heal someone he cares about.
A twinge of guilt nestles in the pit of my stomach because they’d given up their magics to be with me. I fall into a sullen silence as one of the incubi, Arman, starts up an animated discussion with Oren about healing magics and the differences between fae healing and infernal healing. Geiger, one of Cherry’s mates and the resident Hunter baby daddy, pipes in with some facts about wolf shifter Alpha healing, and with that I tune out completely, chewing on my lip ring and staring into space.
Feeling smaller than normal with all the attention drawn to things I know nothing about, I excuse myself to go use the bathroom. I’m not needed for this part of the conversation.
&nbs
p; Lena waits outside the bathroom door when I come out, and I figure she’s just got a mad case of baby-on-the-bladder until she grabs my arm as I pass by.
“Hey, you’re what, twenty, twenty-one?”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “Twenty-one. Why?”
She nods, as though I just confirmed something for her. “It’s pretty cool how you stood up to Queen Una and her army. Shit, man, just going off on your own to Ireland was pretty gutsy. Farthest I’ve ever been from my family—farthest I’ve ever gone on my own—is Hell, and that’s just across town, so I don’t even know if it counts.”
She doesn’t know if going to fucking Hell on her own counts?
“Look, sorry we got off on a tangent in there. I kind of get the feeling you’re not totally digging the convo.”
I shrug and look down at my feet. “I mean, it’s nobody’s fault, I guess. I just don’t exactly have anything to contribute to a discussion on magical stuff.”
“Because you’re the lone wolf, so to speak, in a room full of wolves and demons and witches and fae?”
I shoot finger guns at her and click my tongue. “Bingo.”
“C’mon.” Lena puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me around the edge of the crowded living room towards the kitchen. When Kamran, another incubus, turns and asks where we’re going, she waves him off. “Girl stuff, babe. Cal, why don’t you come with?”
Callie abandons her video game and jumps up from her seat on the couch between Rick and Billy, two more of Cherry’s guys. Lena leads us out the back door, and the three of us squint into the morning sun as we step onto the back porch.
“So what kind of girl stuff are we talkin’ about, Lena?” Callie perches on a wooden railing and kicks her sneakered feet back and forth.
“One sec.” Callie and I exchange confused glances as she disappears back into the kitchen. When she returns, she has some drinks in hand: two beers and a diet soda. She hands a beer each to Callie and me before popping the tab on her drink. When I raise a brow and gesture at her fourteen-year-old sister, who twists the cap off the beer and takes a swig, Lena just chuckles. “Oh, please, don’t tell me you never drank underage before.”
“Not with my family’s permission, no.”
The older witch shrugs. “She was older than me for a brief time, so I figure she’s earned the occasional brewski. Besides, since I’m not allowed to drink right now, at least one of us Galleys might as well live it up.”
“Older than you?” What is Lena talking about?
Callie giggles and lets out a cute little-kid belch. “Rukhsana, the demon who started this whole uprising, kidnapped me and aged me through magic, and then she had Lilith put inside me. That’s when I got all this ink.” She points at the inverted pentagram on her chest. I’d wondered how a teenager got all tatted up, but far be it from me to judge how Lena and Callie’s parents chose to raise their kids. I’ve got a few tats of my own, after all, and Cherry and all the Hunter brothers have tattoos. My fae have markings that look like tats, and I got my own tattoos to match some of theirs when we got back to North Carolina. “So, for a little while at least, I was physically older than Lena.”
Great. So Lena brought me out here to point out that I’m the only non-magic user and kind of the youngest of the group? Not sure how that’s supposed to make me feel more included…
“Anyway.” Lena lets out a much longer, deeper burp after chugging her soda in one fell swoop. “You spent a month in Faerie and singlehandedly outsmarted the Fae Queen, and you fucking decapitated a demon during your first-ever demonic encounter. You might not be magical like we are, but that doesn’t mean you’re not special, Molli. Everyone’s got something; yours just happens to be a more mundane something.”
“Yeah.” Callie perks up and salutes me with her beer. “You’re kick-ass! I totally wanna go learn mixed martial arts now!”
“I can teach you some stuff,” I offer, and Lena’s eyes go wide in a look that tells me I just put my foot in it, big time. I scramble to backtrack before I’ve gone and overstepped my boundaries. “That is, if Lena’s okay with it.”
“Can I, Lena? I want to learn how to kick some ass!”
Lena sighs. “I’ve watched some MMA on TV, kiddo. Wherever she learned that shit with the swords, it wasn’t from that. Besides, you can kick plenty of ass once you’re eighteen, and trust me, it’s much more fun to learn our kind of ass-kickery.”
Oh, yeah, the swords … I kind of picked up some new stuff from my boyfriends. I guess I’ve just trained so much during my downtime—which is entirely too plentiful since I got back from Ireland—I forgot what’s new and what I learned in the dojo and at the gym growing up. “The guys can teach her the sword work. They were some of Queen Una’s best soldiers back in Faerie.”
Lena gives me a “you’re-so-not-helping” look, so I snap my mouth shut, focusing on my beer.
Too late, though. Callie’s eyes flash with whatever rebellious thoughts and daydreams now occupy her pretty head, and I suspect she’ll seek me out later, in secret, to try to convince me to teach her what I know.
Sorry, Cal, but Lena scares me more than the demon army did. You’ll have to ask someone else.
Chapter 2
When we get back to the living room, Kalen stands in the center of the room with a sword in hand, demonstrating some different moves to Holden while Samsher, one of Lena’s incubi, watches from the side and nods his approval.
Callie squeals and runs to join the lesson, Lena groans and pinches the bridge of her nose, and I cringe.
Oops.
Guess the conversation shifted from healing to combat while we were outside. Great.
I exchange a glance with Lena as Oren stands and offers a sword for Callie to try out, and I shrug and mouth “Sorry.”
“Cal, if you decapitate one of our friends, you’re in deep shit, missy!” Lena’s words, though sharp, are tinged with humor, and I realize it’s out of concern more than control that she doesn’t want Callie playing with swords and learning hand-to-hand combat. “Where are they even getting the swords from?”
“We brought ours with after last night’s battle, as well as a selection of the demons’ blades and weapons that we collected from the battleground outside your house.” Kalen’s broad grin, though cute, is not helping matters. “There are blades stashed in every common room in the event of attack, and we have more in our borrowed bedroom should you desire some of your own.”
I’d wager they have a couple in the kitchen, even, just in case.
Oren nods. “Yes, and Samsher informs us that the demonsteel has no iron in it. Look, Molli!” He demonstrates its safety to the fae by holding the blade. “I can touch it without burning myself.”
I decide to step in and reel back the danger level by taking the sharp objects out of the equation, swiping the blade in Callie’s hand with a quick disarm before she even knows what I’ve done. “Here, Oren. Let me teach her some basics first, before we give her the deadly weapon.” I hand the borrowed sword back to Oren, much to Callie’s dismay, and take her by the arm. “C’mon. We’re going outside for this, in the back yard, because there are too many people in here. Someone’s gonna get walloped if we start training in the damn living room.”
To my surprise, Cherry joins us in the impromptu training session, as well as the “younger” Hunter brothers, Rick and Billy. Are they really younger if they’re all quints? I mean, what’s a few minutes in the grand scheme of things?
“You guys really want to watch? I mean, you all kick some serious ass on your own as wolves; why bother with this? Plus, Cherry’s pregnant; should she do this?” The questions bubble from my lips as my nerves start to get the better of me. This just went from an activity to occupy the resident kid in the group to full-on combat training.
Cherry secures her long red locks into a topknot and cracks her neck. “I’m not even a week along. Besides, we can’t always shift. We got lucky last night because the adrenaline allowed for nea
r back-to-back shifts, but if we’re ‘stuck’ in human form, it’s better to know some of this, too.”
Rick and Billy nod and start to stretch. Good. Better to start limber.
I stand up to my full five feet three inches—shorter even than Callie, but I try to put some authority in my posture. I am, after all, the resident expert in this group. For the first time since we beat back the demon army last night, I don’t feel like a useless third wheel. Fourth wheel? I do a quick mental count. Sixteenth wheel, I guess, is what I’d be. There’s a crapton of people here.
Though I stand with my back to the porch, I feel the eyes of everyone else on me as I start to lead my students through a series of stretches. Callie gives a dramatic sigh and complains about wanting to get to the fun part, but I shut her up by rushing her, twisting her arm into a careful lock, and forcing her to her knees.
“Ow!”
“Lesson one: Stretch. Every day. Start off with some stretches or even a little yoga routine right when you get up, and your muscles and joints won’t fucking ache like they do right now when someone pulls this on you.”
Callie grumbles but yields, rubbing her sore arm when she stands back up.
I go back to my spot at the front and continue with the class. Callie, to my relief, follows my every word from here on out, even starting to get into it when we go through some of the katas I learned way back when I was little.
One thing I always thank my parents for, despite their disapproval of my recent life choices, is the training I received growing up. Since I’ve always been a shrimp, Dad ensured that I took as many martial arts classes as I could here in our small North Carolina town, even taking me on weekend trips to Charlotte when I’d absorbed all I could in Nowhere. My old room back at Mom and Dad’s house still has my karate, jiu jitsu, and MMA trophies lining the walls and filling the bookshelves, and Dad even kept my original gi and had it professionally mounted in a fancy shadowbox.
