by Raven Steele
The Devil's Fool
A Paranormal Vampire Romance 1
Raven Steele
The Devil’s Fool
A Paranormal Vampire Romance 1
* * *
A novel by
Raven Steele
www.RavenSteele.net
* * *
This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
* * *
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission of the Publisher. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
* * *
Cover design by Covers by Juan
Printed in the United States of America
* * *
Copyright © 2018 by Raven Steele
All rights reserved
Contents
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
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Books by Raven Steele:
Newsletter Sign Up
About the Author
“The Devil whispered in my ear, “You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.”
* * *
Today I whispered in the Devil’s ear, “I am the storm.”
Chapter 1
I always knew my father was a monster, but watching him torture someone other than me made me all kinds of ill.
A girl dangled before him, her pale hands clinging to the rope around her neck while her naked toes struggled to touch the ground.
I leaned over, high on my perch in a Scots pine tree, and drew in the crisp night air. Normally the smell of our home’s dense woodlands, a rich earthiness laced with the aroma of an approaching storm, would’ve soothed my nerves, but nothing could calm the growing turmoil in my gut, or my racing pulse. The scene below wouldn’t allow it.
The towering full moon shined into the forest’s wide clearing, spotlighting four figures as if they were actors in a play. My father stood at the center, pacing near the young girl. I’d seen her once from the window of our home, but she had been just a child then. We resembled each other with our honey-blonde hair, though she was several years younger than me. Sixteen, maybe.
Her mother, Madelyn, kneeled to the right, hands clasped together and tears pouring from her eyes. She was wearing only her nightgown. I knew Madelyn well. She had been my nanny and tutor growing up, but I had thought of her as so much more. She had given me all the love and nurturing my own mother never had until she was let go when I turned eighteen. It had been a couple of years since I’d last seen her, but none of those warm feelings had left me.
I clutched the material of my shirt just above my heart. It killed me seeing Madelyn like this, begging for her daughter’s life. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but when I’d heard my parents curse her name earlier that night, I knew I had to follow them, especially when they slipped out of the house well after midnight. By the looks of Madelyn and her daughter, someone had taken them from their beds and dumped them in our woods at my parent’s command.
Madelyn turned toward my mother, wiping at her eyes. “Sable, please. I’m begging you. I love Eve and would never do anything to harm her or you.”
Hearing her profess her love for me after all this time made the pain in my chest grow. I had to do something to stop this but what? My parents were far more powerful than me.
“But you already have.” My mother didn’t look up from her spot on a blanket spread out along the grass. Her long black gown had gathered up and exposed her thin legs all the way to her thighs. Even the chill in the air didn’t seem to faze her. The only thing holding her attention was a jasmine plant resting in her lap, which she repeatedly plucked leaves from and tucked into a leather pouch.
“Please, stop.” The young girl coughed, and her hands tugged on the rope.
“You’re begging the wrong person,” my father said, his gaze focusing on Madelyn. “You have your mother to blame for this.”
The rope tightened, and the girl’s legs kicked harder. Strangling her wasn’t enough for him. He had her feet only a blade of grass away from the ground, as though her false hope was some sort of sick tease.
But that’s all this was, right? A tease? A threat to get Madelyn to comply to whatever my parents wanted. That’s what they did. Threatened and intimated. They wouldn’t actually kill her.
Even though I thought the words, I found myself slowly climbing back down the tree, my hands trembling. I wasn’t sure how I was going to stop this, but I had to try, no matter the consequences.
The girl tried to speak again, but the noose tightened further, silencing her. For a moment, it sounded as though she’d been trying to say, “Mama.”
“Please, Erik,” Madelyn pleaded, her voice louder and arms outstretched. “I’ll take back everything I said to social services and to the police about Eve.”
I froze several feet from the ground and looked over. Madelyn had been trying to save me?
“This isn’t the first time, Madelyn,” Erik said, “but it will be your last. We showed you mercy before because of all the years of service you gave us, but then you betray us again?”
Madelyn lowered her head. More tears spilled onto her cheeks, and her shoulders trembled. “I only wanted to help Eve. I thought she would be free by now, but you still have her trapped inside this house. It’s not right.”
“Eve is none of your concern,” my mother said to her. “You should’ve been more worried for your own daughter.”
Madelyn’s head jerked up. “I am. I’m so very sorry. Please just let her go. She’s done nothing wrong.”
Erik crossed the clearing and stopped in front of her. “You almost cost us our daughter. You need to know what that feels like.”
I reached the bottom of the tree, my legs shaking beneath me. If I held still, unmoving within these dark shadows, my parents would never know I was here. I might still escape their wrath, but if I did nothing, Madelyn’s daughter might die.
I clutched at my stomach and pinched my skin hard. I’d never stood up to my parents before, not in all my twenty years for fear of what they might do to me. I partly had Madelyn to thank for that. She
gave me skills to endure their harsh training sessions, believing one day I’d be free.
“I understand now,” Madelyn said. “It was wrong for me to interfere. I’ll tell everyone I was wrong. That you and your wife are good parents.”
My father wasn’t listening. He had returned his attention to the girl, using the power of his gaze to tighten and release the rope around her slender neck. The noose itself was just as disturbing to look upon as the dangling girl. It hung from the air as if tied to an invisible tree limb.
“Please,” Madelyn begged again. “I’ll say whatever you want. I can make this right!”
“You damaged our reputation. Humans questioned us.” He finally turned to her. “Us! Beings far more superior than them, but we had to pretend to be at their mercy, as if we were nothing more than weak humans.”
This had me moving. If it was one thing my father hated, it was being thought of as weak.
“That’s a good point, Erik,” my mother said. “So what are we going to do about it?”
I was thirty yards away but moving quickly, trying to be as quiet as possible as I picked my way through fallen debris. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but there wasn’t time to figure it out.
His head held high, my father tugged on the sleeves of his tuxedo, lengthening them around his wrists. “We need to make sure Madelyn never says another word again.”
“I won’t!” she cried. “I promise! I’ll move away. Take my daughter and go wherever you want us to.”
He laughed at his. “Oh, you’re definitely going where we want you to go. Starting right now.”
“Stop!” I burst into the clearing, gasping for air. Not because I was tired but because I was scared shitless.
Everyone slowly turned to me.
My mother’s eyebrows lifted. “Isn’t this a surprise. Snooping, Eve?”
Madelyn cried harder at the sight of me.
“Let her daughter go,” I said, looking back and forth at each of my parents.
“And what if we don’t?” The tone of my father’s voice was one of shock, like he really wanted to know what I’d do.
I lifted my hands and summoned magic to my mind, just like my parents had taught me since I was a child. The power responded, and it crackled between my fingers, making the air smell strangely like chlorine.
Magic was something that came easily to me, but I’d always held back its power, advice Madelyn had given me when she’d seen it first hand: “Never let them know what you’re truly capable of. Your gift is yours, and yours alone. Don’t let them control it.”
And so I’d held back, but I didn’t think I could do that now.
My mother laughed. The sound rattled my nerves.
“Isn’t this rich?” She paused, looking from my father and back to me. “Eve, dear, I’m truly impressed, thinking you can take us both on.”
My father also chuckled, like he was proud of me. Their reaction worried me.
“Oh, Eve,” Madelyn said. She was only one who looked sad and fearful. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“But I have to help you! Your daughter!”
“Let’s see what you’re made of,” my mother said, smiling wickedly. She rose up from her blanket like a ghost from its grave. There was no bending of the knees, no pushing off the ground. Her body just lifted until she was upright. The motion made Madelyn gasp in horror and me shiver.
Focus, I reminded myself. My whole body tingled with magic just waiting to be released, but it was dark in nature and fueled by my anger.
“Are you sure this is wise?” my father asked my mother. His eyes darted back and forth between us.
My mother squared her shoulders and stared me down. “I don’t see why not. We haven’t been training her for all these years for nothing. Let’s see what she can do when she’s really pissed off.”
“You want me to fight you?” My voice wavered.
“We want to see your full power.”
My gaze flickered to Madelyn, and she shook her head rapidly, quietly begging me not to use my magic, but what choice did I have?
“Let Madelyn and her daughter go, and I will show you everything.”
My parents looked at each other, and my mother nodded. The girl fell to the ground, gasping for air and clutching at her throat. Madelyn rushed to her and scooped her into her arms.
“Get out of here,” I whispered to them. “Quickly.”
Madelyn helped her daughter to her feet, and with her arm under the girl’s shoulders, limped across the grass.
“Show us,” my mother snapped. She lifted her hands and swirled them into the air. The air shifted in front of her as if she were somehow grabbing onto sections of it and rolling it together. Dirt and small sticks got sucked up into the vortex, and electricity zapped within the rotating gusts of wind.
I lifted my arms higher, preparing to fend off her attack. We’d fought in the past but not like this. Not with so much power. I could feel the strength behind it even though I was over two dozen feet away. I glanced at my father to see what he might do, but he was tracking Madalyn and her daughter across the clearing.
“I can’t let her go unpunished,” he said, his voice quiet.
My mother’s green eyes flickered his direction. “Leave it alone, Erik.”
By the ticking of his jaw, an expression I knew too well, he wouldn’t be able to.
I swung my body to face him, prepared to send a wall of electric energy his direction if he even blinked wrong, when my mother’s wind storm slammed into me. The bits of debris cut into my bare arms and face, and I dropped to the ground, covering my head.
Madelyn’s scream tore through the night. I looked up, thinking she was yelling for me, but she was staring down at her daughter’s lifeless body at her feet. My head snapped to my father.
He smirked, but when he glanced at my mother, the smile changed to a scowl. “What?”
“Was that necessary?”
Madelyn dropped to her knees at her daughter’s body, her eyes wide in horror. “What have you done?”
I covered my mouth and shook my head, tears stinging my eyes. I didn’t think he’d actually do it, kill someone. I knew my parents were cruel, manipulative and power hungry, but murder?
“I meant what I said,” he answered her. “There would be consequences. And if you say another word to anyone about us or our family, you will be next.”
I rose from the ground, fiery anger burning through my veins. Dark energy crackled around me, electrically charging the air. I breathed it in and expelled even more out. Black tendrils of magic worked its way through me, squeezing into my bones and between the spaces of my vital organs. Nothing was left untouched. Never had I felt such rage.
“Are you quite finished?” my mother asked him in an exasperated voice. “Your daughter was just about to show us what she could do.”
With tear-stained cheeks, Madelyn turned away from her daughter. “Don’t do it, Eve. This is what they want, to draw out your dark powers.”
“Shut up!” both my mother and father snapped at her.
Madelyn’s nostrils flared, and she came to her feet. “You evil, horrible people!”
She pursed her lips like she wanted to say more, but she saved her words for me. “Don’t give in. You’re not like them. You’re better, stronger.”
My mother groaned and rolled her eyes. “I really didn’t want to have to do this.”
She raised her hand to use magic against Madelyn, but I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice and underestimate what my parents were capable of.
“You will not hurt her,” I yelled and moved to shoot her with everything I had.
Before I could, Madelyn said in a voice so quiet I barely heard it, “I won’t lose another daughter.”
She rushed my mother at full speed, her hands curled into claws. My mother snorted, then laughed, and with a simple flick of her wrist, Madelyn’s head snapped to the side at an awkward angle. The crack of her bone snapping sh
attered my nerves. I gasped and watched as Madelyn fell to the ground dead.
“Thank God!” my father drawled. “I thought she’d never shut up.”
“You killed her,” I breathed. I tried to inhale my next breath, but my lungs had seized.
“She was going to kill me,” my mother said simply.
I didn’t know I was moving until I dropped next to Madelyn. I reached up and closed her eyelids over wide, dead eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Whatever fight I felt moments ago bled out of me. I was too stunned, too shocked. My body had gone numb. I couldn’t even feel my magic anymore.
“Get up, Eve,” my mother ordered. “We’re not finished.”
I ignored her and smoothed back Madelyn’s long dark hair, my chin quivering. Regret and longing burned so thoroughly into my chest, I cried out in anguish. I should’ve reached out to her sooner. Should’ve found a way to leave this place. I guess I always thought there’d be time to rekindle our friendship.
I clutched at my shirt, fisting the material between my fingers, and pulled away as if I might tear the pain from me. I’d never felt anything like it. The one person who I could say truly loved me in this world, and my parents had killed her.
“Your mother told you to get up, Eve,” my father said, his tone threatening. I could feel his towering presence behind me.
