Damned if You Don't Read online

  DAMNED IF YOU DON'T

  Pure Souls Complete Series

  Copyright 2020

  Authored by Killian McRae

  Cover Design by http://www.StunningBookCovers.com

  a note from the author:

  c-sharp.

  but seriously.

  i want to take a moment and put out this disclaimer. the romantic hero of this little tale is a catholic priest. no, that’s not a spoiler. you’re going to pick up on that in the first twenty pages. because of this fact, there are certain passages which include mentions of church dogma or regulations/expectations placed by the church on its clergy. please note that nothing in the following work is meant to be a commentary on the author’s view of religion, catholicism, or the church’s policy or history. it is not my intention to demean this faith in any way or to call into question its practices. it is merely a story of an individual for whom these considerations have an effect, both in his own life and in the life of those around him.

  please don’t burn me in effigy.

  sincerely,

  k.

  Chapter 1

  A priest, a witch and a demigod walk into a bar.

  No joke.

  In fact, laughter’s chances of scoring an appearance were slim, though the probability of hysterics stood at fifty-fifty. Riona Dade was as prepared as a box of uncooked spaghetti for something like this. Every corpuscle-ridden, wart-covered, Hell-born head in Dante’s Inferno swiveled in her direction as the door swung shut behind her, sealing out the daylight, city noises and any option to bail.

  Oh, yeah, they knew who she was. There were more bared teeth and threatening glares thrown her way than if she’d been a biker walking into a ballet class. Which meant, there was a good chance they knew why she was here.

  She inhaled deeply, hoping to cleanse her thoughts and focus her mind. Their acidic and yet sickly-sweet odor burned her nostrils. Demon stench could give Sudafed a run for its money any day of the week. Her stomach turned. Her body and mind almost followed. If not for the two men flanking her, she’d have been out that door quicker than a jackrabbit on speed. Riona knew, however, that Dee would use his muscular mass to manhandle her back the moment he saw her lunge.

  Only the warm, gentle squeeze of the demigod’s hand on her shoulder gave her the courage and patience to remain and shattered the feeling of ice that had crept over her skin from the demons.

  Running wouldn’t have been a bad option, though. After all, the odds weren’t pretty. In her non-magical, it’s not your job to save the world from paranormal scum, you cannot wield the powers of the universe life, Riona earned a paycheck as a statistician. She knew numbers. The 8-to-1 ratio of demons to Pure Souls hardly encouraged her. While not a wet noodle, neither she, Dee, nor the priest that rounded out their demon-hunting trio, Father Marcello Angeletti, had the collective destructive potential of this bunch of Suicide Squad wannabees on steroids. Brawn would not win this fight, however; victory lay in the ability to flex magical muscle. That part didn’t concern her so much. She knew the spells, knew the hexes and counter-hexes. She never would have been sent on this mission if their appointed adviser from the Council of Seven, Archangel Ramiel, didn’t think she was ready.

  Unless this little tete-a-fret was another of his practical jokes, that was. In which case, he was so off her Christmas card list.

  Despite being an equal-opportunity vanquisher of scum, Riona kept on the lookout for the VIP floating somewhere in the crowd. Her eyes found his Mediterranean blue peepers likewise fixed on her, one corner of his devilish mouth curled in a malicious grin.

  “Didn’t know it was ladies’ night,” he grumbled.

  Riona flexed her hand, cracking her knuckles. “If there’s one thing I’ve never been accused of, it’s being a lady.”

  Even without his bronzed-skinned and brawny-shouldered glamor, Riona recognized Jerry from twenty paces. He wore smugness like a well-tailored shirt, and, oh, how she wanted to rip that from him and toss it to the floor. This green-skinned, yellow-freckled, damned-soul-incarnate sipping a pint of Bavarian brew was the reason she was here, after all, and the sooner she toasted his ass and sent his soul “disembodied” back to Hell and into the unloving embrace of Papa Satan, the better.

  He gave her one pulse-spiking wink, then turned back to the bar. A demon who drank with one raised pinky off the stein would have gotten his ass kicked if he’d been any other evil minion. Not Jerry. As one of Lucifer’s top agents, she’d recently come to learn, Mr. Romani had been spreading evil since before the calendar flipped to A.D. The unprecedented longevity and ability to outmaneuver demon slayers made him a bit of a legend in these circles. Such reverence gave him airs. Of course, he wouldn’t run away. Why should he? After all, he’d already beaten her once. Damned near killed her, in fact. Which wasn’t the worst break-up she’d ever had sadly, but pretty damned close.

  Recalling those happier days had Riona’s pulse racing, remembering his fervent, robust, speak-in-tongues and curl-your-toes demonstrations of lust and pleasure.

  But that was before all this. Before she’d known he’d been a demon. Before she knew she was a witch. Back then, he had presented himself to her as a black-haired, blue-eyed, Italian-American underwear model, sleek, shiny and sinfully lustable. The glamor, and their ensuing hot and heavy relationship, all amounted to an ingenious scam. Jerry was on a mission, and it wasn’t to win her heart. Lucifer had somehow gotten a heads up that Riona was next up on the roster to be vested as the Keystone Witch of the Pure Souls. Hell dispatched Jerry to assess her corruptibility, and feel her out. Feeling her up had just a work perk. At some point, the need for the game evaporated, and it nearly cost Riona her life. No one could have predicted that it would be at that particular moment that her powers would manifest, allowing her to walk through a solid wall and escape. It had to be a one in a million chance, right?

  Riona actually knew. The chances stood at 3,456,783 to 1. She had been the Powerball winner in the supernatural lottery.

  Jerry chuckled from across the silent, tension-locked room. “Of all the bars in all the netherworld, she has to come walking into mine.”

  Riona put up a false front of confidence. “Wasn’t hard to find you. I just cross-referenced all the bars in Boston known to welcome demons and that serve Zima. Turns out, short list.”

  He took another swig before gently placing the drink on the counter and pushing himself off his barstool. His swagger still warmed her wooly; she still remembered the delectable ways in which those hips of his could swing. He made each step golden as he crossed the room. When they stood face to face, that unique mixture of anticipation and disgust only he could instill took up residency among the butterflies in her stomach. Despite the fact that his demon physiognomy was now clear as day, those azure discs that undid her so often during their short-term fling excited her in ways that weren’t proper for a Sunday.

  “I can only assume this is that long overdue booty call you know you’ve been hankering for.”

  Her breath went jagged as his scaly hand reached up and stroked the flushed alabaster of her cheek. She closed her eyes and tried to regain the locus of control. She would not, could not, let him get the better of her.

  “What can I say?” she bantered back, opening her eyes, now brimming with code orange vigilance. “Once you go demon, it’s them that you’re needin’.”

  “Cute. We should print that up on t-shirts. Look, I know why you’re here, Ree,” Jerry declared as he pulled back and sauntered a few steps. Marc and Dee took advantage of his retreat to tighten their formation behind her. “It’s a sort of a rite of passage for you, isn’t it? Your first demon slaughter.”

  “How do you know it’s my first?” The self-effacing admission escaped her lips before she could recall it.

  “Because you’re making small talk. I’m not Oprah, sweetheart. Despite what you’ve seen in every Joss Whedon production, we’re not exactly the speechifying type. If you had come through those doors and I wasn’t here, you can bet legal money that they’d have you chicken-wired to a mattress out back by now. Probably Thing One and Thing Two, too, because your pillar Pure Souls do happen to be some fine specimens of men...” He shrugged dismissively. “... you know, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  A rustle of cloth made her hope Dee was getting ready to land one squarely on Jerry’s jaw. When she looked back, however, she saw the boiling pot about to blow was actually the not-so-good Father. The very man who had made this whole having-magic thing a pain in the sarcastic ass.

  Jerry continued, unfazed. “How exciting for you! Slow down, savor it. I can already picture you at home later, making up the latest addition to your scrapbook, plastering a severed incubus horn in with silver-foiled borders and fluffy poodle stickers on the side. Tell you what, for old time’s sake, I’ll make the chicken wire optional. I know you prefer to be restrained with leather straps, but I’m negotiable.”

  Jerry gave that lustful smirk he had mastered so well during their liaison, the one that always bypassed her brain, shot down her spine, and landed squarely in her hoo-haw.

  And damn, he knew how to tie up a woman proper, achieving just the right balance of tension and slack.

  Marc leaned in and whispered into her ear, breaking her from her wicked reverie. “Watch yourself. Remember, he’s sampled your flesh, he knows your thoughts.”

  The proximity and concern both disturbed and surprised her, leaving her more confused than a Republican at a Pride Parade. When he added
a reassuring squeeze of her elbow, embarrassment engulfed her at the way her cheeks flushed. Usually, the good priest was a conceited ass. Things must look really bad from his vantage point if he was ministering to her.

  “He’s sampled a lot more than just my flesh.”

  A familiar frustration tugged at her again. How was she supposed to know that lying with a demon gave him the ability to read a human’s mind? No wonder he had been so good in bed, though. He could anticipate her every desire the moment she felt it.

  “You can block him, you have the power,” Dionysus reminded her. “You just have to decide to do it. Resist your urges. Use your strength as the Keystone.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes again, momentarily blocking out the hum of the chattering demon crowd, the clinking of glasses at the bar, and clanking of bottles on the tables. Pulling her self-control together, she recalled the facts of the matter.

  Fact: she was a Pure Soul, one of the trinity entrusted by the Council of Archangels to ferret out and fight the minions working on Lucifer’s behalf to corrupt men’s souls and spread evil and hate. She’d also heard that they moonlighted at the DMV. Fact: demons were the souls of mortal men damned to Hell for their sins, given new bodies to house those corrupt souls. A demon’s physical body could only be destroyed by magic, which released his soul back to Hell. Fact: Riona as the Keystone could wield this power to its full extent, assisted by Marc and Dionysus. Both her partners, her pillars, had spent years learning the ways of magic through perilous training and dedicated study. Riona had been given a Red Bull, a few months, a Cliffs Notes version of the standard book of spells.

  Fact: she had once loved Jerry Romani, and he had betrayed her. Now, she had a chance to make this right.

  Her mind lightened, as though someone had been gently massaging her temples and now withdrew. Jerry was no longer in her head. Which, given the way he growled, showing each of his pearly whites, really must have ticked him off.

  She leaned to the side, angling her hip and crossing her arms over her chest. “If you know why I’m here, why all the chitchat, Jer-Bear? Lie down like a nice little scumbag and go peacefully.”

  “So desperate to get me horizontal, Riona? That can easily be arranged.”

  Without warning, a pig-headed behemoth barreled in their direction at full force. Jerry, easily outranking all the other riffraff in the joint, made no movement to recall the banger demon that jumped into the fray without order. Riona reached out her hand and invoked a lower-tiered vanquishing charm.

  “Fornox tierna!”

  With a huff and a puff, she blew his house down, making a nice little pile of demon dust as the banger disintegrated. The others witnessing the scene felt their grog-filled bellies turn in fear, but Jerry only smiled wryly.

  “Impressive,” he commented, adding a round of mock clapping. “See? I was right about you. Chuck, there,” he pointed to the heap of purple-black Rorschach on the floor, “thought you were just another Willow Wannabe. But me? I saw you for what you really are.”

  “Smokin’ hot and way too good for you?” Riona returned. “Thanks, but I didn’t need you to tell me that.”

  In a dazzling blur of speed, Riona found herself pinned to the wall, a good twelve feet away, at the back of the bar, leaving a sea of demonkind between her pillars and her.

  Marc and Dionysus gawked as they witnessed their favorite witch scared broomless, her demon ex-lover choking the life from her, her feet dangling dangerously above the floor. Demon magic, properly wielded, could destroy a witch of Riona’s caliber, but the old-fashioned, mortal methods still worked just as well.

  Luckily, that bus stopped on both sides of the street, and Riona had not forgotten how sensitive Jerry’s giblets were. She swung her boot point blank into his demonic assets, sending him on an impromptu one-on-one with the floor. A sound akin to a teenage girl being told “yes, that dress does make your butt look big,” filtered through the room, mixed equally with Riona’s coughing and the other demons’ jeering as she tried to reclaim the air her lungs so desperately needed.

  MARC WATCHED AS RIONA struggled to form words. Meanwhile, a twenty-demon variety pack, seeing a chance to pounce, closed in. If Riona couldn’t verbalize, she couldn’t focus her magic through a spell. Her self-defense instinct might kick in and manage to pull something off, but in that circumstance, she was as likely to take out her teammates as well as her enemies.

  “We’ve got to do something,” the priest shot at the demigod.

  Dionysus turned to him, one eyebrow raised, a “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” expression on his face. “We don’t stand a chance against a gaggle of goblins this big. Riona? Yes. Us?” He shrugged, “Toast.”

  Marc indexed their options. True, with the pillar’s lower magic, they could maybe dish out a few a bad cases of PMS, or perhaps athlete’s foot (or was it athlete’s hooves with this crowd? He’d have to check on that later), but banishment would require some extreme passions or stupid luck. In general, banishment was a Keystone’s job. Always the resourceful one, however, Marc widened his vision and surveyed the room. Not much to work with, and quite a bit more to work against. It would be easier to flee than fight. Seeing this out to its end, however, was critical for Riona. Having a demon on the loose with the ability to read her mind and wreak havoc was too dangerous. Especially since Marc wasn’t yet convinced the Keystone was completely over her former fling.

  Also, there was the fact that he didn’t like the way that asshole looked at her. Jerry had to be dealt with. Now.

  The tips of Marc’s ears went crimson. “Damn it all to hell!”

  “And this from a priest,” Dee quipped.

  Marc knew Dionysus registered as their resident pragmatist. No doubt, they were both surfing the same wave on this one, trying to find a solution. As a demigod, Dionysus’s muscles could whip any mortal born to the ranks of man, and he was nearly as strong as any demon divo in this joint. But could they really take on a horde of this fortitude?

  Seemed the demigod concluded they could. Without another word, Marc watched as his best friend picked up a nearby chair and turned it over, making a weapon from whatever was available.

  “You know what they say, Father.” Three measured steps and a swing landed the lounger over the head of a warthog demon, who then passed out cold. “God helps those who help themselves.”

  Marc made his standard preemptive sign of the cross before lunging for a barstool and joining the action.

  At the back of the bar, Jerry regained his composure before Riona could even gain her feet, despite being kicked in his favorite body part—next to his hair, of course.

  “That’s going to cost you, witch.

  “Infuita permuter!”

  She nearly flatlined in fear. Nearly. She hadn’t a clue what an infuita permuter charm did, but if it was demon magic, probably nothing good. The smug look on Jerry’s face confirmed she was in a heap of trouble. Her fight or flight instincts kicked in and ratcheted her into high gear. She needed to know what she was up against. She needed Dionysus and Marc. Without another moment’s hesitation, she leaped to the left, spanning a distance that would have made a bullfrog jealous. Despite the circle of demons savoring every lame quip Jerry spouted, she thought there was enough of a gap between two in that direction to break through.

  But when her body slammed into some sort of invisible brick wall, the answer to “What does infuita permuter do?” was all too clear. And painful as a bitch. Trapped. In every direction she ran, the barrier bounced her like a ball. Confirming her suspicions, Jerry made no effort to stop her attempts to escape. Her battle with him would be mano a mucus.

  Riona turned back around, trying to manufacture some confidence in her features. “Looks like you got me all alone now. So I guess we’re not doing the group thing today?”

  Jerry froze. “Would you have... gone for that? Damn, talk about a missed opportunity.”

  She nearly choked on her own words. “Come on, Jerry. You know me better than that. I’m much too greedy to share something so good.”

  “You did think I was good.”

  It didn’t come out as a question, more of an affirmation of what was undoubtedly true. In fact, his attitude gutted her, and Riona worked hard to keep her mounting anger from making her irrational.