Awakened by a Demoness Read online

  “I was here first. You leave mine.” She turned and waved a hand across the air. “This whole town is mine… so get out. Shoo.”

  She turned back towards him, an expectant look on her face.

  “I said shoo.”

  He shook his head. “I said no.”

  She canted her head again, and when she spoke, the venom and other disturbing thing that had been in her voice was gone, leaving it sober, and laced with curiosity. “Why are you here?”

  “It is none of your business.” He went to turn away from her. She reached for him and he whirled on her, his right hand rising to slap her one away, and she staggered back, blinking hard. It seemed the powerful little demoness wasn’t as fearless as she pretended to be. He narrowed his eyes on her. “Why are you here?”

  She backed off a step and scowled at him. “I’ve had enough of angels looking at me like that over the past two days… as if they want to nail my entrails on their wall like art… one far stronger than you… so do not think for a second that you can intimidate me.”

  But he had.

  He did.

  He intimidated her and she had done a good job of concealing it, but then her mask had slipped and she had revealed her fear to him.

  He frowned at what she had said.

  An angel far stronger than him.

  The Devil?

  She preened her small black horns with trembling fingers, stroking them from the root behind the pointed tips of her ears to the sharp ends near her lobes, and her obvious attempt to calm herself failed. Her face blackened.

  She swept her right hand through the air between them and glared at him, her eyes growing black and pupils becoming elliptical and beginning to burn gold.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what business you have here but you better stay out of my way.” She flashed vicious fangs at him, turned on her heel and stormed away.

  He watched her go, cocked his head to his right as he tried to make sense of her. He had felt her darkness, she oozed it the same way as he apparently oozed goodness, and yes, it made him want to vomit too, but there was something different about her.

  Something off.

  She sauntered through the crowd, ridiculously tiny pleated black skirt threatening to flash her underwear as it swayed side to side and her long fall of black hair brushing across her lower back and shoulders.

  He thought about turning away and searching for his target elsewhere, but ended up skirting the packed square, slowly moving towards the side of it where the demoness had hopped back up onto the wall and was talking with her group of slavering males again.

  He pushed her out of his mind, but for some damn reason, his gaze kept drifting back to her and his mind would follow it, replaying their conversation. She had been flirting with him. As much as that disturbed him, it confused him too. He idly rubbed the cross on his right inside wrist as he studied her, putting her subtle nuances to memory while his mind traversed back over everything she had done. She feared him, but she was curious about him too. Why?

  He had never met a demon who had openly approached him before, seeking him out. She hadn’t known he wouldn’t strike her down, so what had possessed her to come to him and provoke him?

  She was either braver than he believed or foolish.

  He edged closer to her and leaned his back against the stone wall of the building joined to the steps that led up to the raised pathway where she sat, swinging her legs and almost taking out the eyes of several of her suitors with the spiked heels of her black leather knee-high boots. One of the males offered another pewter mug to her, and she took it with a wide smile and winked at him. The wolf shifter practically panted in response, and he was surprised the male didn’t howl in victory, sure he would be the one to bed the female.

  Dear lord, she would probably bed them all at once if she had her way.

  She seemed a virile, wicked little creature. Wicked enough to offer her body to an angel.

  He reminded himself that she had merely been teasing him, but it didn’t stop a disturbing ache from starting inside him, a dangerous sort of hunger that he fought to suppress, putting it down to her teasing ways and her irritating him until his guard had dropped, allowing that teasing to affect him.

  He jammed his right hand back into the pocket of his black jeans and ran his left over his unruly blond hair, brushing the finger-length strands back from his face. It was getting too long, but he had been too caught up in his hunt to find the time to have it trimmed.

  The demoness flicked a glance his way over her left shoulder, one that she had no doubt meant to be covert but had been blatantly obvious. She toyed with her silvery tankard and went back to flirting with her brood of males.

  He focused on her, centred himself and purged all emotion as he allowed calm to sweep into his mind and his soul, emptying them both. When he had found his balance in amidst the silence, he called on his other gift, the one that was rare among angels now.

  The ability to read intentions.

  It was slow to come as always, steadily building inside him as he focused on the target he wanted to read. The demoness.

  He wanted to see if she had come to this place to merely enjoy the festivities or whether she had a different agenda.

  His gift triggered.

  Nothing.

  He frowned, put it down to distance, and moved a few steps closer. He focused on her again, called on his gift and let it wash through him.

  Again, nothing.

  His frown grew deeper, and he tried again. And again. Every time, he couldn’t pick up anything from her, but he could read the males at her feet like open books. They were thinking about being the one who would take her back home, or to a nearby room or alley.

  One seemed rather intent on seeing all of her tattoo, and that desire drew his gaze back to her legs. He couldn’t see her right one from this angle, with her slightly in front of him on the raised stone platform beyond the steps to his right, but he could catch the red tips of the swirls that arced over her right hip to the small of her back.

  The black cross on his wrist burned. He idly rubbed his thumb over it, trying to soothe the mark. He knew there was a demon present, it didn’t have to keep reminding him. He wasn’t here to hunt her though. He was here on a mission.

  A mission he was ignoring while he tried to figure out a demon of all creatures.

  He pushed away from the wall and turned to leave.

  “Can you do me a little favour?” The demoness’s voice curled above the crowd, soft and gentle, a flirtatious edge to her English. “I need some info.”

  That arrested his steps and he frowned as he listened hard, struggling to hear her over the noise of the chatter of those in the busy square and the music. What was she up to?

  He turned his head slightly towards his right, enough that he could see her out of the corner of his eye.

  “Have you seen a female in town… a young woman,” she said.

  His blood dropped a degree.

  She couldn’t be.

  “She’s a friend. Around five-seven, with short brown hair and matching brown eyes. I’ve heard she runs with a coven… one called Cruyssen, I think.”

  He spat out a curse, his only vice.

  Cruyssen.

  He had the sinking feeling that his mission had just become a lot more complicated at the critical moment, and that he knew the reason the demoness was in town.

  She was after the half-breed too.

  CHAPTER 3

  Asteria didn’t like the way the angel was eyeing her. She wanted to say that she doubted he would attack her in such a public place, but angels were a pain in the arse like that and didn’t normally give a fuck about pulling innocents into their battles if it meant another demon bit the dust.

  She kept an eye on him as she drank her tankard of brew, enjoying the buzz that tripped through her with each sip.

  When the males loitering around her feet began to look as if they were losing interest, she flashed the
m another flirty smile and flicked her black hair over her shoulder, revealing her cleavage and pulling them back under her spell. They weren’t difficult to manipulate. It wasn’t even taking all of her wiles to keep them firmly under her control and thinking they had a shot with her.

  As if.

  She shuddered at just the thought. None of the fae and immortals below her were worthy of her attention. They certainly weren’t the type of male she would bang.

  Her eyes betrayed her and slid towards the angel where he casually leaned against a stone building to her left, stunning pale green eyes scanning the busy square. He folded his muscular arms across his broad chest, causing his black t-shirt to stretch tight, and frowned as he blinked. When his eyes opened again, they were locked on her. She shivered, a hot bolt of lightning zinging through her bones.

  She pulled down a breath to steady herself and glared at him for good measure, until he looked away from her.

  She had a problem with him.

  Mostly based on the fact he was too bloody handsome.

  The sort of handsome that had her eyes gravitating towards him all the time and seemed to turn the sensible part of her brain to mush because she kept forgetting that he wasn’t just eye candy.

  He was angelic eye candy.

  He was all good, and bright, and holier-than-thou and shit that got her back up. But by the Devil, he was gorgeous.

  She didn’t have to work hard to imagine just how chiselled and perfect his body was beneath the damned clothes that concealed it. If the toned sinewy muscles of his bare arms were anything to go by, the delicious corded perfection of his deltoids and those bulging biceps, and sexy toned forearms, then he was a god beneath the irritating black t-shirt and jeans.

  She wanted to tear them off him to see if she was right.

  With her teeth.

  She could just imagine how he would react to that too, and what sort of punishment would await her if anyone back home found out she had banged an angel.

  Although, if she screwed him and he fell from grace, she would probably get a promotion and a hefty reward from the Devil. He liked to reward that sort of thing. Another fallen angel for his ranks would certainly go a long way towards scrubbing the black stain off her name.

  She shook her head, dislodging that idea.

  She had been stupid enough to approach the angel when she had spotted him across the square, placing herself in grave danger. Seducing him to the dark side was not going to happen. She wasn’t even sure why she had confronted him. She wasn’t the sort to do something so reckless, not under normal circumstances. The sight of the angel had panicked her though, and she put it down to fear of what her dark lord would do to her if she failed this mission. That fear had made her attempt to drive the angel off her turf.

  She was still surprised he hadn’t killed her.

  Asteria dragged her eyes away from him, dropped them back to her drooling band of idiots, and smiled at all of them.

  “So, about this coven,” she said and they all spoke at once, a cacophony that made her want to scream as she tried to understand what they were rushing to tell her.

  She picked out a few juicy titbits about the coven she was meant to locate, the most annoying one being that they had moved on and were travelling south.

  Damn it.

  Another hot shiver tripped through her and she tensed in response to the feel of the angel’s eyes on her again. She tried to ignore him, but it wasn’t long before her eyes had gravitated back to him.

  Why had she confronted him, placing herself in the firing line of his wrath?

  It had been an urge at the time and she had followed it, but now that she was questioning it, she wasn’t sure what the urge had really been or where it had come from. She had set eyes on him, had known instinctively that he was an angel, and the next thing she had known, she had been storming across the square towards him, her best you-know-you-want-this strut in place.

  She had flirted with him.

  What the ever living Hell was wrong with her?

  Flirted.

  She had convinced herself that it had been to rile him and get his back up, because irritating an angel had been fun, but there was a part of her that had to work pretty damn hard to pretend that some of it hadn’t been real. She hadn’t really flirted with him. She hadn’t really imagined just how hot it might be to lure him over to the dark side. She really hadn’t lost herself in a fantasy about just how incredible he might be as a lover, with all that power and strength, and his wicked good looks.

  It had all been an act on her part.

  Totally an act.

  Those stunning peridot eyes slid her way again, sending white-hot lightning arcing through her as they landed on her, and she couldn’t drag her gaze away from his.

  She felt weak.

  Trembled.

  It was being away from Hell. It messed with her powers and left her vulnerable, and that was why he affected her so badly. Here, he was stronger than she was, a threat to her. She didn’t need an angel sniffing around when she was on such an important mission, one where her life was on the line, and he was doing just that. The bastard was listening in on her conversation.

  She was starting to feel that the Devil had left out some details, like the fact there was a fucking Echelon after the same target and now tall-blond-and-holy was going to be chasing her tail.

  Asteria scowled at him and flipped him the bird.

  He arched a pale eyebrow at that and sighed.

  He annoyed the hell out of her. He was so damned haughty and self-righteous, just like all the angels. She could feel it from here. He was dripping with goodness and it sickened her. That was it. That was why she found it impossible to keep her eyes off him and ignore him. He affected her because he was sickeningly good... and hot.

  He was undeniably hot.

  Incredibly hot.

  She glared at him and both of his eyebrows rose high on his forehead, a confused look entering his eyes before they emptied of emotion again.

  Angels shouldn’t be hot.

  Okay, the Devil was a fallen angel and he was a beautiful bastard, but for some reason, it rubbed her the wrong way with this guy. It made her skin itchy, but at the same time it filled her with a twisted need.

  She was awfully tempted to try and break his shiny metaphorical halo in half and stick it up his arse, but she was equally tempted to seduce the bastard.

  Maybe it would knock him down a peg or three.

  Asteria dismissed it. Her dark lord might love a present of a corrupted angel, but there was a tiny part of her that wasn’t sure pleasing him would be the reason she did it. She refused to look too closely at that part, afraid of what she might find.

  “Do you know where the Cruyssen coven were heading?” She smiled sweetly at a young scrawny cat shifter and leaned over, giving him a view of her cleavage as she stroked her hand under his chin.

  His eyes slid shut as she lightly raked her claws through the messy scruff on his jaw and he practically purred.

  The sensation of the angel’s eyes on her grew fiercer, as if he was glaring at her now. She ignored the bastard and kept with her stroking, until the cat shifter was putty in her hands.

  “London… t-the fae town near it,” he stammered and looked wounded when she removed her hand and leaned back, turning her attention on the nymph male as he cleared his throat.

  Out of all the men gathered at her feet, he was the most tempting, his thick black hair and vivid cerulean eyes setting off his natural good looks. His ripped bare torso didn’t hurt either, giving her something nice to look at as she smiled down at him.

  Not as nice as the angel.

  Asteria shoved that voice out of her head and kept her focus on the nymph. “You know where this town is?”

  He nodded. “At a mansion in the countryside. I can take you there.”

  Tempting, but she didn’t need an escort.

  Her gaze flicked to the angel again. Although, if he was going to tail
her, an escort might be useful. She shook that thought away and shifted her focus back to her boys. She was strong enough to deal with her Echelon friend and she preferred to roll alone.

  The sensation of his eyes on her disappeared and the instinct that constantly warned her of danger faded. She resisted the temptation to look to her left and see whether he was still watching her.

  “It’s popular with witches,” the wolf shifter put in, his eagerness pleasing her as he stepped closer. She did love the way he panted over her, hunger in his brown eyes. She leaned over and tunnelled her fingers through his mousy hair, clutched it and pulled him closer still. “It’s run by the Rozengard coven.”

  “Another coven?” She frowned down at him as she patted him on the head, brushed her palm over his hair and down the side of his face to under his chin. She tipped it up and gripped his jaw.

  “A male one. Look for loose white shirts and brown trousers. Their uniform.” He looked as if he wanted a treat for being such a good boy.

  She pressed a kiss to her other fingers and touched them to his lips. The poor male almost fainted. Such easy prey.

  She slipped into flirting on autopilot with them as she mulled over everything they had told her, flashing them teasing smiles. The angel might be a problem.

  Her gaze sought him.

  He was gone.

  She scanned the throng in the square, covering every inch of it, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Asteria smiled as she realised he had left before he had heard the best part from her informants, one that had given her a solid lead in the form of the Rozengard coven.

  This was going to be easier than she had expected.

  CHAPTER 4

  The new fae town was quieter than the one he had left in Fort William, situated in a cavern beneath a country estate outside London. He strolled through it, scanning the faces of everyone in the witches’ district. This fae town stood apart from the others he had visited around the world, the districts bearing huge ornate arched signs across the street at their entrances and each looking slightly different from the others.

  The witches’ district was near the main entrance of the cavern, below the steps that led down from the tunnel into it, and consisted of square flat-roofed white-washed buildings of different heights tightly packed together. Narrow cobbled arteries ran between them, and on the main shopping streets, the colourful canvas canopies that reached out from each store almost touched in the centre of the road.