Brolach (Demon #1) Read online

  “Fuck them all, my demon breeder.”

  Lucas stepped over the unconscious Fred then turned his back on the female so he would not be bothered with her screaming.

  A nasty business, that.

  Fred paid the price for letting the half-breed female and the traitorous Brolach slip between his fingers. They let their fear at his alien blood rule them. Lucas glanced at Fred as he snored his pain and humiliation away and the other half-breeds encroached on the demon breeder.

  Mia needed humbling. She'd become too complacent as his concubine. He would see that she served the lesser demons. And the especially cruel master of them: Damon.

  Lucas strode swiftly to his chamber, his thoughts already on the next conquest.

  Brolach.

  Chapter 2

  Constantine watched the demonspawn back away from the large demon who held the part-Mer breeder and was glad that he would not have that fun assortment to kill. Or not. It all took so much time- dispatching the supernaturals. Con sighed, his hands going to his hips in clear irritation as his eyes came to rest on the demon and Ruby, who was both Mer and demon.

  If she were not, the large fire lord would not be interested. Or whatever the trumped up fuck he was. Constantine's vampire vision trained on those great black wings, like an ebony cloud. Only the texture served to show him where they lay, so closely they mimicked the backdrop of the night.

  Oh how they would stand out in the light of day! Like a turd in a punchbowl. Most obvious.

  Con took an exploratory breath and felt his ribs bleat protest like a stabbed sheep. That demon warrior fuck had put the word on his body. Con noted the chunk gone from the demon's tail and smiled. They'd both taken pieces out of the other.

  It was all good as the human cattle loved to say.

  “All right.” Constantine lifted an inky brow, the Mer warriors collecting behind him in a loose circle. Which, to Con's mind, wasn't a good thing. For he had killed Desmond, their fish leader, or, Mer prince... whatever. Constantine dismissed them all as only important insomuch as he may need to engage them in fighting in the next few minutes. The issue at hand was the demon bastard sprouting angel's wings and the part-Mer breeder who clung to him.

  If that didn't beat all. Of course, Con mused, he had mentioned he'd tasted of her and found that she would breed true. The demon would still bow to Con's demands. “Listen here, demon,” his eyes flicked to the wings that brushed the dirt at his feet, “or fallen angel?”

  The demon did not answer but pushed the breeder behind him. “I accept your challenge.”

  Well that was fast, Con thought.

  “No Brolach,” Ruby said from behind him.

  Constantine's head cocked to the side like a bird spying a fat worm. “Brolach?” Con asked and laughed. “The Brolach. Ah... you're much more than a fire dick as I so aptly named you.”

  Brolach smirked. “You would know nothing about my dick, mongrel.”

  Con smiled, dismissing the dig at his own mixed lineage. “True, but if you did not have one, we would not speak on it, eh?”

  Brolach frowned and Con motioned to the Mer behind him to come forward and Madden is the one who stepped up beside him. “Why don't you put out Flame boy's demon mojo,” Con waved his hand around, “so that we might be done with him and gain another breeder.” Con felt that she could be fitted somewhere within one of the groups and stifled a snicker.

  Oh my yes she could. Con smiled, loving his internal monologue and smiled. He never spared himself double entendre. Constantine was nothing if equal opportunity. He stood waiting but then Madden said the words he'd hoped not to hear, “We know that it was you who murdered Desmond so that you might keep the breeder to yourself.”

  Well hell, Constantine thought, swinging Ember around behind him as he faced the Mer. He had killed the mermaid prince and now the princess would naturally be reclaimed by the Mer.

  Not that Con would allow that. The dim fucks.

  Con's eyes shifted through the tight contingent like a spread deck of cards. Before the battle began he had time to think how interesting it would all be.

  Their deaths. Not his. For Con was schooled in surviving.

  He found he had something to live for.

  The irony did not escape him.

  *

  Brolach

  Brolach stepped backward as the half-breed Druid vampire faced off with the Mer and was glad of the distraction. Only one of the Mer noticed his departure with an expression that spoke of pursuit. However, the half-breed was so engaging in battle that he offered his warring as a perfect diversion to what Brolach had planned. It was nothing very complicated.

  Escape.

  Brolach was not naïve enough to think he would escape being tracked by the bloodhounds of Hades when word reached Lucas' ears that he possessed the blood of Heaven's host. He folded his wings flat against his back and took Ruby's arm. She allowed herself to be hauled away, behaving like a docile female he knew there was no way she could be. Ruby had survived the direct attention of a part-demon father who aimed to mate her to whoever he could. Including himself. It was his right, though a grotesque abuse of the few females they possessed. Brolach loathed that Lucas would hand over the rare female demon as reward to whoever did his bidding. Brolach had been careful to shield his emotions on the subject, his angelic blood lending itself to that thread of goodness that always kept the cruelty of his demon side in check. For the most part.

  He could never be so perfect as to deny his nature against the orgasm from the sight of his leader taking a female in the cruelest way possible. Nor could he turn down a fiery rut with his own kind. But his mixed heritage was never more obvious then when his seed left his body, binding with the pain of their kind and carrying it away into neutrality. A mating with Brolach would be equal parts pain and inexplicable pleasure. He was fortunate that more of the female demon breeders had not noted this and brought it to the attention of Lucas.

  Of course, Lucas would not have liked being told their preference was for Brolach. That would have brought on a sexual onslaught that might have cost their unholy lives.

  “Please... Brolach,” Ruby, her hand on her side, pleaded-- “Please, can we rest?”

  “There is not time to rest,” he replied logically. They needed to make haste to a place that was safe. Or at least safe for the moment.

  Brolach glanced at her pinched face, gone pale with something he could not place. He stopped, the city surrounding them on all sides with the sea a distant and shining black smear behind them. He turned Ruby, giving her the weight of his gaze. It moved from the crown of her pale hair to the tips of her toes, which were bare, he noted. Of course! Brolach recognized, she was cold to the touch, a scrap of some costume from her decadent job still clung to her curves. His eyes hit on something, a black set of dots on her lower back, circles of evil shadows marred the surface of her lovely pale skin. He brushed his hand over the marks and a slight shock struck him as he did.

  He pulled his hand away from the strange sensation. “What is this?” Brolach asked softly, the concern over a safe place lost to that hurt look in her eyes, the coolness of her skin. She was part-demon and should not be cool to the touch, even with the Mer she also held within her genetics. His eyes stayed on that wound and gradually a horrible idea began to form in his mind and his hands reflexively tightened on her arms and she gasped, her large dark eyes widening to saucers inside her small face. “Who has vested this injury upon you, breeder?”

  Ruby lowered her face, ashamed of her life, of having no defense but avoiding her psycho dad. Who obviously, was like Brolach. But... wasn't. “It was that man that was with... my father,” she finally said. She didn't bother saying Fred's name. It was another F word as far as she was concerned.

  Brolach didn't care for the wounded sound of her voice and lifted her chin, the touch of it heating her face. “Do not feel shame for your ties to that renegade.”

  Her eyes met his. “He killed my mother.”


  Brolach's brows rose high on his forehead, the red of his skin contrasting with the inky darkness of his hair. Ruby searched for the horns on his head but they were gone. He let her stare at him, her eyes roving over his body in shocked uncertainty. Brolach needed to remind himself that Ruby did not know of her origins, had been part of a battle of supernaturals she had no prior knowledge of. And had now been intimate with what her human mind no doubt told her was the devil. It was all new. Rawly so.

  Not a fine place to be well met.

  Brolach only meant to give a little comfort, an ointment of his body to cover hers, to show that he understood secrecy and hiding. But before he received his answer on who had struck her, before he could utter his empathy for her semi-orphaned status, his hand wrapped her body. His palm landed on the crescent-shaped bead of bruises that laced the side of her. As soon as his hand touched the tender area Ruby hissed in pain and his palm spread, convulsing on the area.

  When the tingling began anew, Brolach would have released Ruby but her head tipped back and he instinctively caught it with his other hand, her fragile skull perfectly filling the cup of his palm and he felt himself grow hard.

  How Brolach wanted her. It was not a fleeting bit of pain, passing over his atmosphere like a cloud across the sun but true pain. His body bowed with it, his hand pressing harder against her flesh as he arched tighter into her body and Ruby melded to his.

  He tried to move away from her before she shared in his agony but she said, “No... don't stop, Brolach.” Ruby's dark eyes found his, the pupil lost to all that chocolate brown and the hand that remained at her back pulsed with power, a glow beginning that lit the dark street they found themselves in.

  They had not traveled far enough to forgive a supernatural event in the middle of a crowded city. But he could no more remove his hand than stop breathing. Brolach's skin grew hot, then the pain burst from it and he moaned, involuntarily jerking against Ruby and she gasped, her arms instinctively twining around his neck. The hand that held her head pushed it to his mouth. It was all so smooth, so natural, Brolach did not think to fight it.

  Stop it.

  Their lips touched and the ground shook beneath them, the pain shivered for an unbearable moment more that felt stretched and infinitely long but ceased almost at once. He broke the kiss, the taste of her on his lips, inside his mouth. Burning a pathway to the soul Brolach knew he had, a clear nod to his angelic ties.

  Brolach took a shaky step backward and slowly lifted his palm from her flesh.

  Ruby sighed, letting her hands fall to his chest where they were warmer than moments before. “Thank you, Brolach.”

  His brow wrinkled in confusion.

  She turned, showing him her back. The perfection was only broken by a new design, the vicious injury now absent.

  A metallic tattoo of wings glittered in its stead.

  *

  Ruby

  Ruby felt energized- amazing. Every breath she took was better than the last, her spirit light. She opened her eyes and said the first thing she thought out loud: She thanked Brolach.

  Somehow, he had healed the wound that horrible dick nozzle Fred had viciously stamped with his fist. She'd had to perform her exotic dance set through the agony of the fresh injury, then survive an attack by humans that were actually demons, meet dear old dad in some supernatural war she stumbled into and now she'd been stolen by a demon stud.

  Ruby should be terrified.

  But all she could think about was since she'd been with Brolach, she'd seen terrible brutality, but not against her; against those that would hurt her. Or... take Ruby from him.

  From Brolach.

  He stepped away and that left her cold to the bone. Ruby let her hands fall on his heated chest, the muscles clenching underneath her palms and she turned, so he'd get the full affect of his help on her.

  Brolach's intake of breath caused Ruby to look at him and she gasped at his shocked expression. Taking in all that luscious red skin, deep eyes and dark hair, his surprised expression let her know something was wrong.

  Ruby turned her body awkwardly to try and see what was on her back to make him look at her like that. She could just make out the tinsely wings that swept over where the bruises Fred had put there. They'd disappeared. Only the beautiful wings remained. She slowly raised her eyes to him. “What does this mean?” she whispered in awe.

  She watched his Adam's apple bob. “It means that I can heal others.”

  Ruby faced him, taking his hands and he pulled away and she frowned, feeling a flutter of panic inside her, like a moth trying to escape the confines of a prison. Her heart began to speed with the expression on his face.

  “What...” she asked.

  “I have angel blood as well, Ruby.”

  She shrugged, with all the nightmare revelations tonight, him having a bit of angel in the woodpile didn't really faze her. The night couldn't get any more weird. It was just one more thing to add to the surreal turn her life had taken. Ruby voiced her thoughts, “And that's a bad thing how?”

  Brolach sighed. “I know that you are but a babe in this life. That the supernaturals,” he made a motion with one hand like it was diving beneath the other, “have been living underneath the water of the humans, hidden, so to speak.”

  Ruby blinked. “Okay. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe that there were,” Ruby thought about it, then continued, regardless of how ridiculous it all sounded, “demons, mermaids and...”

  “Vampire,” Brolach said in a bland voice.

  Ruby exhaled, blowing a pale strand of hair out of her face and Brolach's eyes tracked the shimmering piece and she was sure he wanted to touch it, but he didn't. “Right... okay.” Her eyes swept to his. “So what's the problem with you having a dollop of angel. Aren't they like... good?” She asked while her memories of him kissing her down low crowded her head, making her pulse race.

  Brolach could scent her lust and it made his own rise in response. He groaned and she moved closer. “Please,” Ruby said, tipping her face to his.

  “Please what, Ruby?” Brolach asked, though he knew, his body was more certain than his mind.

  “Use me,” she whispered.

  His breath caught and he let go of his misgivings over healing a demon female who knew so little of her lineage. She might not want to mate with a fallen one who also had a slice of heaven running in his veins.

  It was a sacrilegious combination.

  Dangerous.

  Dangerous for Ruby and Brolach, as there were those who sought all that possessed even a fraction of the angelic.

  And those that sought to exterminate them for the same reason.

  Even now they searched for those lost from above.

  Brolach's camouflage he had used so expertly was now gone forever.

  Chapter 3

  Braedan

  Braedan looked into the swirling mist that swarmed the interior of the crystal sphere he gazed inside. It began to part and he made the two figures easily. A frown formed between his eyes when he saw the wings on the mixed-blood angel warrior.

  Who was also of the devil.

  Braedan's eyes moved to the woman who clung to him and there, on her back was the mark of a healer.

  Of course, any fool would know that angelic blood could only heal itself and no other.

  The female was angel enough to be made well by the touch of the one who held her, Braedan didn't need angelic discernment to tell him that.

  He straightened, moving his hand to hover over the sphere and made a wiping motion above its surface and the vision blanked.

  “What did you witness, seer?” Nolen asked, his wings unfurling to their full expanse inside the Room of Visions.

  Braedan's crystalline eyes narrowed on his friend and fellow angel warrior. “Much.”

  Nolen strode to where Braedan stood, his wings as black as his body was white. Coal black hair lay unrevealed against that pale back, a streak of white leading from his widow's
peak to a point that became lost in a mane that spun to his knees like a cloud of black cotton candy. Angel's hair was beautiful. Yet it also served as a rudder of sorts while flying. Nolen's face wore his typical expression of indifference but Braedan knew better. If a female of angelic blood had been sighted, it was a good mission indeed. A mission that would prove fruitful and worthy of their efforts.

  That she was currently held by a part-demon would complicate things. For the male also possessed angelic ties.

  Warrior ties. The black wings were proof of that.

  Braedan looked into eyes so pale a gray they nearly matched the icy whiteness of his skin. “I have seen a female...”

  Nolen's typically stern face broke out in a grin. “That is excellent news.” He searched Braedan's expression and the smile faded to neutrality. “What is it?”

  “She accompanies a part-demon.”

  Nolen's light gray brows arched. “What of it? We shall slay him and take the horns as trophies, my liege.”

  “But that we could be so neat with it, Nolen... that we only could.”

  Nolen's chin jerked back as understanding flooded his expression, a low whistle escaping his ruby lips. “No...”

  Braedan nodded. “Oh yes.”

  “He has blood of the warrior class,” Nolen guessed, then sighed. “So not a straight kill.” His face was still hopeful.

  “No,” Braedan answered in a short voice.

  That hope fled from Nolen's expression. “Then we must convince him.”

  A surprised burst of laughter broke free of Braedan. “Yes, let us convince the demon to join the ranks of heaven, Nolen.”

  Nolen paced, the upper curve of his wings bouncing as he moved, the tips floating above the heavily veined white marble floor. He stopped suddenly, turning to the captain of Heaven's guard. “Perhaps, if he has warrior's blood, he has already felt the Calling?”

  Braedan palmed his chin, his own eyes like piercing multi-faceted diamonds, reflecting either the moon or sun. They caught the light that weighed heavy in the Room of Visions, tossing it at Nolen and piercing a prism of rainbows from his chest to his eyes. “Braedan! Your gaze,” Nolen began, squinting against the brightness.