Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) Read online

  Marc flushed. Each word that followed filtered through gnashing teeth. “Riona is not a whore.”

  The flap of a double chin bounced as Hermosa barked out his repute. “You’re a priest, damn it! You’re supposed to serve as an example that others can look up to. And this is how you act when you think no one’s looking? And with nothing separating you from two classrooms of innocent children but a brick wall? Have you no shame, Marcello? Or is the lure of this Jezebel stronger than your vows to the church and to Christ?”

  “But there was no one in the hall,” Riona muttered confusedly.

  Neither Hermosa nor Marc took any notice of her comment. Their gazes were locked like they were getting ready to call each other out and draw guns in the rectory at high noon.

  “If you dare say one more thing about Riona, I’ll…” Marc somehow managed to crack his knuckles by simply rolling his fingers. “Don’t mess with me, Hector. I’m not always as nice as I seem, and I’m not someone you want to trifle with.”

  The threat was growing too obvious, both by virtue of Marc’s tone, and by the fact that a low rumble could be detected in the background. Possibly a big truck passing by, or a low flying plane. Dee knew, more than likely, it was the building starting to shake as Marc subconsciously began to coalesce power, preparing to strike. He knew what it was like to lose control and lash out over the woman you loved. This scene was all too familiar.

  Dee leapt to his feet and attempted to push back his friend before it was too late. “He’s not worth all the problems it would cause, Marc. Let it go.”

  Hermosa’s nostrils flared. “No, bring it on, lover boy. Let’s take a tumble. Just because I’m old and I’m ordained, doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass.”

  Marc jolted, but Dee was able—barely—to hold him back. The air grew heavy with power. The pane of glass in the door cracked. A vibration accompanied the snare drumming, and the sound was getting closer by the moment.

  “Let me go, Dee!” Marc struggled against the iron-bar restraint that was the demigod’s embrace. “Let me teach this prick a lesson.”

  Riona, quiet for a few moments, suddenly pounded her fist on the edge of the oak desk between the faceoff.

  “There was no one in the hall!” she shouted.

  Marc, Dee and Hermosa froze, gawking at her.

  “And the students, while as annoying as all get out, didn’t turn evil until you visited!”

  She thrust her finger accusingly in Hermosa’s direction. As he stared at it, Dee instead focused in on Riona’s expression. The look was almost mischievous, like she was the sole owner of a hidden joke.

  “Well, well, would you look at that. Father Hermosa, my finger is suddenly all tingly. Guess that means your glamour’s cracking and I must be onto something, huh?” With a rush, she drew back before, a moment later, thrusting both hands, palm out, across the table and shouting, “Corbelum frotai nokturna fiente!”

  There were a million and one reasons Riona would accept someone not liking her. Her hair, her ideas about art, her insistence to own a car in a town with a highly-efficient public commuter system…

  But you didn’t dare blame anything on the fact that she was a woman and live.

  It was only her second official demon vanquishing. The first had been a little on the entrails-heavy and garish side. She half-expected that was the norm. So, when instead, Hermosa’s glamour melted off to reveal green skin and red eyes beneath a façade of humanity, eyes which quickly went blank as their owner fell face first, dead to the desk, it was more than a bit of a relief.

  After all, she really liked the blouse she was wearing.

  But where Hermosa went red, Marc had gone white. The younger priest’s hands were still clenched in fists as his sides. His frame quivered in its rigidity. His eyes still burned with anger.

  Magic still spotted his aura.

  “Let it go, Marc!” Dee tried to massage out the tension from the priest’s shoulders. “See, no problem. Riona took care of it.”

  The witch moved in to help, putting her arms around Marc’s shoulders. “Sorry I didn’t say anything. I just acted. It all came together too fast, and I was afraid you were about to explode.”

  If she was expecting him to melt under her attention, she was sorely mistaken. With a flex of his arms and shrug of his shoulders, Marc cursed beneath his breath and threw off both Riona and Dee. He didn’t bother with formalities. He was out the door and busting down the hall before either of the other two could have a chance to stop him.

  “What’s his deal?” Riona spat out, looking both cross and confused.

  Dee pointed at the dead demon in a collar. “That’s an Ubago Demon. Their specialty is pinpointing a person’s suppressed shame and bringing it to the forefront. After that, it turns to guilt to anger, and it feeds off the violence that results.” Then he added sarcastically, “Who would think the Catholic Church would be a good shelter for something that specializes in culling guilt, huh?”

  “Good thing I toasted it then, before Marc started lashing out. I’m sure magical violence would have been like an ice cream sundae for it.” Riona squinted, whipping her head towards Dee. “Wait, so, what is Marc ashamed of?”

  Dee’s eyes bore deeply into Riona’s questioning gaze. “His feelings for you.”

  Chapter 12

  The knock on the door came as a surprise. Usually whenever Ramiel wanted a word, he popped in unannounced, sometimes right into Dee’s lap. Angels, as a rule, had a sick sense of humor, and Ramiel had a reputation as being the most tactless member of the Council of Seven. He didn’t see the problem with public embarrassment, and the ass’s security in his masculinity made Chuck Norris look like Adam Lambert in drag. Therefore, qualms were not to be had, making crass or a touchy-touchy round of joshing par for the course. Shortly after Dee was initiated as a Pure Soul, he’d even pulled a stunt that landed the demigod in an Italian jail for three weeks. Once in a while, Ramiel would still go red-faced as he looked at Dee and laughed, “And you tried to convince her it was a sausage on her plate!”

  Today, however, even the archangel was somber. Dee looked up and learned for the first time what expression an angel wore when overwhelmed with the presence of the ominous.

  “Body all taken care of?” Dee tried to sound matter-of-fact.

  Ramiel nodded as he passed through the door and took a seat opposite. “Got Gabriel to transfigure the body. Would take a pretty damned good coroner now to tell that the poser priest wasn’t actually human to start with.”

  “Transfigured?” Dee asked. Ramiel nodded. “I thought angels were forbidden to perform permanent-body altering magic in the earthly realm?”

  “Only on humans,” Ramiel clarified. “And even then, there have been a few exceptions through the eons. Anyways, we wiped the students’ memories of Riona’s unfortunate misfire, and we let the vice-principal find Hermosa’s body about twenty minutes after you left. Unless the church sends some super high-level Vatican official who’s been trained with our peeps to see traces of magic, everything should go just kosherly.”

  Dee kept his focus on the stack of papers before him. Just because Pure Souls could use kick-ass powers to take down the sources of evil like those at St. Cecilia’s didn’t mean his bills magically paid themselves. There were still accounts to review, credit card statements to reconcile. Besides, he needed to keep his mind occupied. He so didn’t want to think right now about…

  “Dee, can we talk about what’s going on with Riona and Marc?”

  The angel just had to look the elephant in the room straight in the eye and throw him a party, didn’t he?

  With a sigh, Dee leaned back in his chair and let the pen drop on top of the desk. “Do we have to?”

  “Yeah, we have to. For your sake, if not theirs.”

  Dee groaned, then lau
ghed. “My sake? What the fuck do I care if one of them goes to Hell? He falls or she falls, another Pure Soul gets called to take their place. Just like…” Suddenly, he felt like someone was wrapping icy hands around his throat and trying to choke him, only from the inside out. “Like last time,” he managed to get out at last.

  That whole “angel of compassion and mercy” persona was someone else’s shtick. Ramiel didn’t play that way. No, instead of a comforting pat on the shoulder, or divine proclamation of everything happening for a reason, and that one must have faith in God’s greater plan, the bastard stood up, leaned across the desk, and open-handedly smacked Dee’s face using Biblical proportions.

  “What the Jim Dandy fuck, Angel?”

  A sly grin filled Ramiel’s features as he resumed his seat and pulled out a pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket. “Oh, so you did feel that?”

  “Hell, yeah, I felt it! You just tried to introduce my jaw to the wall. And put your damned cancer sticks away. This is a smoke-free facility.”

  Ramiel pulled a long, satisfying drag off his lit cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a continual stream until it was long enough to hang laundry on. “It’s just for a moment there you looked like an arrogant, unfeeling prick that was going to let the past repeat itself needlessly.”

  “This is nothing like me and Clare. Nothing.”

  “It’s not yet, but they’re going to end up the same way if we don’t take action now.” He leaned in across the desk. “Think you can take on the forces of darkness with a Keystone who’s barely broken in, and train a new pillar simultaneously? I don’t think so. After all, you’re only human.” Ramiel took another drag, then let the smoke filter through his clenched teeth. “Half-human, anyhow.”

  The pounding fist on the desk came down hard enough to make the windows shake. Dee’s chair went crashing into the pock-marked wall as he shot to his feet. “What the hell do you want me to do? Castrate Marc so he doesn’t want her? Seduce Riona myself to distract her?”

  “Well, seducing her yourself would put our pickle into an entirely different, though no less dangerous jar, so no.” Ramiel kept silent a moment as he sat in contemplation. “The castration thing, however…”

  Dee’s eyes went wide. “He’s not a dog, he can control his urges.”

  “But he’s falling in love with her.”

  And there it was: the cursed, fucked-up truth that no one yet had the balls to say aloud.

  Dee’s mouth did the dummy-with-laryngitis routine for a moment, but he just couldn’t find the words to argue what was so obvious to everyone. Except to Marc and Riona, that was. Finally, he slipped out, “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” Ramiel shouted back, complimenting the outburst with an eye roll. “How can you say that? You, of all people?”

  Dee shook his head. “Marc understands what would happen if he gave into temptation and slept with her. He can give his heart to whomever or whatever he likes, but he’s already turned over the deed on his soul to the church. If he breaks his vows by committing one of their cardinal sins, and given the fact that he’s a Pure Soul, he goes straight to Hell and becomes a demon. A demon who will have slept with our Keystone, to top it all off. And if Riona does love him, there’s no way she’ll vanquish him once he’s reincarnated in demon flesh. Hell, she ended up hating Jerry in the end, and even then she’s still so fucking compassionate, she was barely able to pull off his return-to-sender ceremony.”

  “You’re missing the bigger danger here, chief.”

  Dee’s eyebrow arched. “Don’t fucking call me chief, flyboy.”

  The angel ignored the jab. “Yeah, it’s pretty clear-cut where Marc’s morality lines are drawn. If he does try the old in-and-out with Riona, he’s doomed. Thing is though, Riona’s lines aren’t as clearly cut. She’s not stupid, she knows that priests are forbidden to indulge in physical love. But if she falls for him too, and they both get caught up in a moment of weakness that she takes advantage of… Well, let’s just say it’s two birds with one stone for my dear fallen brother, Lucifer.”

  Dee turned over the scenario in his mind. It wasn’t that hard to imagine. After all, someone who had as much in the way of indulging in the flesh as he had knew how a little ember could grow into a raging inferno in no time flat. Dee had never been much of a fan of the male-squared type of lovin’, despite his Grecian heritage, but he couldn’t deny that, to the interested eye, Marc came across as one fine cut of a man. And Riona… Hell, even he had experienced a few dimly lit moments in the privacy of his bedroom where his imagination had come in handy, in the literal sense, when they first met. History had taught him the dangers of actually pursuing, let alone loving, another Pure Soul, and he wasn’t about to volunteer for that kind of suicide mission again. Then, if you added actual, passionate, romantic emotions to it…

  “Shit, Ramiel, we’re doomed.” His face fell into his hand as he rubbed his eyes, realizing just what he was up against. “What was that castration thing again?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “What?”

  Ramiel took another drag off his cigarette. His words came out as huffs of smoke. “Believe it or not, every so often we still get prophetic messages direct from the big guy. Most prophecies are done freelance now, you know. Since the crash of the euro, the Oracles work cheap. But when y’all found Riona, we were told, and I quote, ‘Upon Keystone’s altar shall one born of Hell be laid, and in her embrace he will be reborn to her world, cleansed of his evil. And having brought Hell to Earth, she will pull Heaven to Hell and circumscribe creation.’”

  Dee balled up the financial statement he was reviewing and sent it on its merry way into the recycling bin in the corner. “What the hell is all that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, as usual, His messages aren’t given to transparency, but what we think it means is that a Keystone’s going to hook up with a demon, free him from Lucifer’s service, and their kid is going to lead the next generation. Since the message was revealed when Riona’s mantle was laid upon her, we assume it refers to her.”

  “So, Marc and Riona...” he let the words dance off the end of his cycling hand.

  “Not going to happen in the long term, according to our intel. But that doesn’t mean shit, frankly, and we could be wrong. And more, it still doesn’t mean they both couldn’t screw around and damn themselves, in which case, later Riona somehow finds herself living out the prophecy. You know how complex these things can get, especially when glamour and all sorts of magic are involved.”

  Yup, a quick study of Dee’s own father’s dalliances could make an episode of Jerry Springer look like the Christian News Network. Some philanderers got around, but Zeus got around, in, under, between… The god held patents on every sexually deviant act that men had the balls to think they came up with first.

  Dee began to realize this was something that shouldn’t be left on its own. “So what do you propose, exactly?”

  “A big boy talk,” Ramiel suggested. He rose, using the corner of Dee’s desk to stub out his butt. “Sit Marc down and put it plain. Nip the passion of the Father Angeletti right in the rosary.”

  Chapter 13

  “So then I put the fish in my mouth and bit its head off.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s nice. Ow, what the devil?”

  A bright red spot on Riona’s arm suspiciously matched the exact size and shape of Lucy’s balled up fist. The twin glares from each side of the table would have been taken for a bad mime practicing session to a random observer.

  “What was that for?”

  Lucy’s chin dipped as she mustered her best you got to be kidding eye roll. “Have you heard a single word I’ve said?”

  “Yeah, you were talking about how one of your workers was mouthing off at you.”

  “Well, yes, I was.” Lu
cy crossed her arms over her chest. “Five minutes ago. Riona, what’s up? You’ve been distracted all evening. Are you… Didn’t you want to go out?”

  Riona bit her lip, and the hesitation to answer sent both of Lucy’s hands shooting up.

  “Fine. I get it. You’re not that into me. It’s cool. Just, please, be honest about it and don’t sit there patronizing me with your company.”

  The guilt plowed over her like a steam roller, making Riona feel as shallow as a mud puddle. “No, Lucy, please. I do want to be here with you. It’s just… I haven’t been sleeping well, and work is… demanding and a little hard to handle right now.” She reached across the table and pulled Lucy’s right hand from where it was resting on the edge and rubbed it between her own. “I’m sorry I seem disconnected. I am though. Into you, I mean.”

  The bewitching, black-haired beauty seemed incredulous. One eyebrow perked up. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Lucy leaned forward, flipping Riona’s hands over and running her fingers teasingly over the softness of her inner wrist. “Good, ‘cause I ‘m really into you, too. In fact, I’d like to be really into you right now, if you get my drift.”

  She was much too young to have hot flashes, but Riona would place a hopeful wager that the heat passing through her was hormonally-based.

  Lucy licked her lips as her finger began rubbing suggestively against the slight rise at the edges of Riona’s wrists. “Interested in seeing how into you I can get?”

  Heavy-lidded eyes looked so fucking good on Lucy, Riona thought. Oh, to have that smoldering stare looking up at her from a little further distance down… “Yeah.”