Brimstone Prince. Barbara Hancock J.

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       Chapter 3

      Michael instinctively headed to the nearest redoubt he knew. Lily needed a protected place to perform her ritual and he would need to switch the motorcycle for a vehicle that could hold supplies for two. When he’d started touring the Southwest, he’d decided to travel light, but he’d also wanted safe places to crash in between gigs and inevitable clashes with Rogues. He’d found the perfect place already built by a wealthy survivalist with an environmentalist streak outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

      He pulled the motorcycle into a drive that had been created with packed earth and crushed gravel as reddish brown as the surrounding sand. He felt Lily become more alert behind him after the mind-numbing miles they’d traveled. The sun was rising, but the earth-sheltered home built into the ground of the Sonoran Desert would be a cool respite. Especially if they went to separate rooms. A glittering expanse of glass greeted them, but between the layers of glass were blinds that automatically opened and closed when necessary to keep the temperature of the home consistent. The thick cement construction was hidden by earth and the roof was covered with desert grass with only strategically placed skylights to indicate the home beneath the ground.

      Like an ordinary dog, his beloved Grim waited at the sliding glass front door. The hellhound could have morphed through in a swirl of smoky shadow. Instead, he watched and waited for them to climb off the motorcycle and walk to his side. Michael watched as Lily approached the massive, ugly creature carefully, but without trepidation. Hellhounds were rare. He wasn’t surprised she’d never seen one. He only knew of one other in existence besides Grim. His cousin, Sam, had been given a hellhound puppy when he was a baby. There was much to admire in Lily’s attitude toward the beast that was as tall as her chest. When she actually reached to place her hand lightly on the top of Grim’s head as if a hell-spawned dog was nothing to fear, Michael stopped and stared.

      She was petite. Her jeans were dusty and torn at the knee. Her pack had seen better days. But as the sun rose it glinted off her hair the way the lantern light had the night before. It created a halo effect that caused him to blink and look away.

      He clenched his jaw against the burn in his blood. Samuel’s daughter. Had the affinity in her blood been so powerful that it affected her aging the way Brimstone did with daemons? He’d heard of Samuel’s Kiss his whole life. It had changed the course of his family’s history. His mother never would have fallen in love with his daemon father if it hadn’t been for the affinity Samuel had bequeathed to her. He had mixed feelings about that.

      The door opened with a whoosh of displaced air. The passive solar home was always a perfect, comfortable temperature. It was his inner heat that caused perspiration to dot his upper lip.

      “Make yourself comfortable. There should be food, drink, towels...anything you need,” Michael offered. He was already retreating to the master bedroom, where hopefully a cold shower would help him regain control of the lava in his veins.

      * * *

      Lily showered and put on a fresh change of clothes from her backpack. She washed out the clothes she’d been wearing and hung them in the spare bathroom to dry. She found canned fruit in the kitchen and sat down to eat a bowl of peaches while water ran in a nearby room. She needed calories to deal with elemental spirits, and eating redirected some of the tension from resisting Michael’s Brimstone pull.

      Had the daemon king meant to throw them together? Would he spell out what he expected from her or was she supposed to play this by ear? The debt she owed him would have its price. She’d always known that.

      Once the water had been turned off for a long while, Lily went in search of her host. She didn’t want to set up her mother’s kachinas and play her flute without warning the daemon prince to brace himself against her affinity’s call.

      She found him bare chested and tending several minor wounds in the master bedroom in front of a full-length mirror. He’d pulled on a pair of slim-cut jeans after his shower, but they rode loose and low on his hips. So loose and so low that she could see the muscular plane of his abdomen and the dusting of golden hair that disappeared into the waistband of his pants. He was lean, hard, beautiful...and scarred.

      Lily stopped in the doorway with an inadvertent gasp on her lips.

      His body was amazing. Muscular and obviously toned for something besides strumming the guitar. No wonder he’d been able to fight the Rogue daemons with his bare hands. His arms bulged and rippled as he moved to place a bandage on a cut on his side. But there were other ripples, too. Burn marks dimpled his skin on his chest and back. Similar marks lightly streaked his arms and his abdomen.

      “From a time when I didn’t know how to control the burn. It almost consumed me,” Michael said. He answered a question she never would have asked. “My father was a daemon. I’m not. I never will be,” he continued. “The Brimstone doesn’t rule me.”

      “Daemons aren’t inherently evil, you know. They’re not human, but Brimstone doesn’t actually signify damnation...” Lily began.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ