Brimstone Prince. Barbara Hancock J.

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place and reappearing in another. He laid the woman on a smooth patch of ground and shrugged out of his jacket to roll it up and cushion her head. Then he forced himself away to start a fire beneath the rising moon and sleepy stars winking awake in the night sky. The desert sky wasn’t black. It was a midnight blue so deep and lush it reminded him of velvet. But the night would grow cold and the young woman, no matter how ferociously she’d fought, didn’t have Brimstone in her blood to keep her warm.

      The fire kindled easily while she murmured in her sleep.

      He approached her after the fire was built. She drew him with a powerful pull—like the moon to his sea—and damned if he didn’t feel like waves crested and crashed inside of his chest with every heartbeat. She didn’t seem hurt, only drained. Sleep was probably what she needed to recover. She was petite, but athletic, and obviously used to fighting daemons. He touched her face when a particularly loud whimper escaped from her rosy lips. It was a mistake. The scars that tracked along his arms flared to life with a red glow. The sudden ignition startled him into stumbling backwards to cradle his tingling fingers against his chest.

      The tempest in his chest was shocked into stillness.

      Her affinity was stronger than any he’d felt before. And it called the Brimstone in his blood to roaring life in spite of a lifetime of practice at tamping it down. After that touch, he took a seat well away from the young woman. He put the fire between them. Not because the flare had hurt him. It hadn’t.

      It had been a pure pleasurable jolt of heat akin to desire.

      Where had this woman gotten an affinity so strong that it tempted him to loose his Brimstone burn? He had inherited affinity from his own mother, Victoria D’Arcy. Affinity for daemons had been passed to his grandmother, Elizabeth, by a monk named Samuel. She had passed it to her daughters and, in turn, it had come to him. But each passing had diluted the affinity’s strength.

      He was used to its almost musical call. He wasn’t used to this. The woman’s affinity was nearly pure and so powerful that he could feel it calling the Brimstone blood he’d inherited from his biological father even though he had a lifetime of experience guarding against it.

      He hadn’t trusted his daemon blood since it had almost killed him as a child.

      He hunted daemons. He refused to accept that he was nearly one himself. But hunting Rogue daemons wasn’t the only family business and the daemon king wasn’t their only concern.

      The Turov estate was one of the largest in Sonoma, California with thousands of acres of vines. His stepfather had established it right after the Russian Revolution when he’d brought his parents to America and he’d had many years to bring it to lush, thriving success.

      Brimstone wasn’t all bad. It had extended Adam Turov’s life and allowed him to help Michael’s mother after Michael’s real father had died. Turov had helped Victoria defeat the Order of Samuel when they’d kidnapped Michael as a small child. Then, Turov had married Victoria and raised Michael as his own.

      The Brimstone in Michael’s blood had almost killed him when it had first flamed high during his rescue. He’d never trusted it since.

      He reached for his guitar to keep himself from standing and going to the woman again. Her restless murmurs drew him as much as her affinity. She was distressed. What worried this amazing woman who had used her affinity and her dolls to call Fire, Water, Wind and Earth to defeat the Rogues that stalked her? Were more daemons on their way? He could see Grim silhouetted on a rise just outside of the fire’s light. The hellhound was alert and watching for trouble, but Michael still felt every protective instinct he possessed on high alert as well.

      The fire’s glow was gentle in comparison to the glare that had come from his scars. It helped to filter the woman’s murmurs and sounds through a soft haze of smoke. By all accounts, his grandmother had been a remarkable woman, too. She’d loved the daemon king before he was a king. He’d loved her as well. So much so that he’d “adopted” her human children after her death. Unfortunately, his devotion to the D’Arcy family shadowed Michael’s future.

      And now it would shadow this woman’s future as well.

      He was in the fight of his life against more than the Brimstone in his veins. He fought against the daemon king’s expectations. Ezekiel had proclaimed Michael the heir to the throne of hell. But Michael’s scars were a constant reminder why that could never happen. They didn’t glow anymore. He’d succeeded in extinguishing the flare. He always would. He refused to acknowledge his daemon heritage, now or ever. He’d seen the harm his own blood could do. He’d grown up knowing that daemons couldn’t be trusted. He refused to accept a position that might make it impossible for him to protect others from the power in his blood.

      His guitar came to life in his hands as the elements had come to life for the woman. She’d used a flute and the dolls to channel her affinity. He used the guitar’s strings. But he wasn’t calling anything. He played to drown out her affinity’s call. He played to control the Brimstone in his veins. If he also soothed her distress, so be it. He would give her peace before he shattered her peace completely.

      Because in spite of needing to keep his distance from the woman who obviously tempted his burn, he needed her help to find the one thing his “grandfather” the daemon king wanted more than Michael—Lucifer’s wings.

      * * *

      Guitar music woke her. Classical Spanish guitar expertly played and accompanied by flawless singing. It was a song about a desert flower she’d heard before, but for some reason the lyrics romanticizing a woman as a beautiful, hardy bloom made her flush. She hadn’t told him her name. If he asked now she might say “Jane.” Anything but allow him to see that the sound of her name from his lips as he sang caused a rush of response she’d never felt before.

      “You have a powerful gift. I’ve never seen anything like that...and I’ve seen more than most.” He stopped singing to speak, but he continued to play.

      She had blinked open her eyes and lifted her torso from the ground. From her propped position, she could see his fingers deftly flying over the strings. The calluses she’d felt on each digit were explained by his swift, experienced manipulations. He wasn’t a casual player. He played often and long, enough to cause permanent ridges. He plucked, strummed and slid his hand on the neck as easily as another man would breathe.

      The guitar was a rockabilly beauty complete with inlaid turquoise and silver panels. The color was brilliant against his black t-shirt and faded denim.

      Nearby, a tiny fire crackled. It had been built with the kind of foraging only an experienced desert camper could accomplish—brush, twigs, dung—all patiently scavenged from the barren landscape. The fire held back the night with a soft wavering circle of light, which only served to make the vast expanse of blue-black sky above them seem limitless and cold. There, bright diamond bits of stars twinkled while down below a daemon prince bent over his strings and the flash of glimmering polished maple. A vintage motorcycle was parked near the outer reaches of the light. Farther out still, her dusty SUV was exactly where she’d left it before night fell.

      She didn’t believe in coincidence. A ward of the daemon king learned early and well to notice every tweak, every manipulation to the universe around them. The daemon king hadn’t retrieved her and now his grandson appeared. What trickery was this?

      “The kachinas. I need to pack them properly,” Lily said, suddenly appalled that she hadn’t thought of the sacred dolls right away. She was light-headed, but she rose to her feet and made for the pack that had been placed near the fire.

      “Easy

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