Brimstone Prince. Barbara Hancock J.

4

      Her bag was a trusty familiar tool she approached with more caution than she’d used before. Michael’s presence and the daemon king’s possible manipulations were added elements that caused her previous work with the elemental spirits to seem like child’s play. A child who had no idea she had been playing with fire.

      This time she dug deep into her pack to draw out the oldest kachina first. She’d never dared to use it in a ritual and she certainly wouldn’t now that she’d met its living, breathing embodiment. But she couldn’t resist unwrapping its familiar shape and tilting its face toward the light. Sun beamed into the room, softened by the tinted glass of the skylight above her. The kachina’s carved features were barely illuminated. She’d memorized them long ago, but now she’d seen the sharp angles of cheek and jaw in real life. The tightening of anger and concern. The softening of humor...and desire.

      She’d tasted Michael’s lips. She’d craved the heat of his tongue. Lily had grown up in a palace in hell. She called on Earth, Wind, Fire and Water and they answered her call. But this tiny figure come to life had shaken the fabric of her reality until it seemed the very shadows whispered with secrets she could almost hear for the first time. The recessed skylight was framed by several feet of packed earth encased in adobe that had been painted rich, deep ocher. Desert grass moved in an outside breeze she couldn’t feel and its swaying created a dance of shadows across the kachina’s face.

      A warrior angel. A daemon prince. Its black wings boldly arched over its muscular back. Lily closed her fist around the doll, feeling its weight and shape in her hand. Every curve, every angle fit perfectly into the soft crevices of her palm as if the lines and indentations had been made to hold it.

      She had no time for this reverie.

      Sunlight wavered, painted dark by grass shadows and passing clouds. She quickly rewrapped the kachina and vowed not to take him out again. Instead, she reached for the wrapped dolls that represented Earth, Wind and Water. She imagined she could feel heat rising from the wrapped form that represented Fire as her hand hovered over it. Her fingers were a hairsbreadth away when she fisted them and pulled them away.

      She would leave Fire in her pack, unsummoned. She’d had enough heat for one day. Her lips still tingled and no amount of moistening kept her from feeling a parched ache for a forbidden sweetness she suspected only a daemon prince’s kiss could satisfy.

      Her flute was cool to her touch when she slid it from its pouch. The dolls were easily placed in position. Dancing shadows painted their blocky features with darkness and light. The earth-bermed home surrounded on the top and three sides by packed desert dirt was ideal for the ceremony she would initiate to call for the spirits’ guidance. It wasn’t a kiva, but the earth embraced it. Lily dropped her pack on the bed and sank down on a woven rug that was only the thinnest of barriers between her and the packed-earth floor.

      This time she softly trilled an ironic measure of a classic tune about stairs to heaven. Spirits were playful. They wouldn’t mind. And she needed to settle her nerves. Affinity took the tune from there, quickly morphing her wry beginning into a complexity of air and vibration that claimed her entire body from blood to breath to bone. She communed with the universe by sound. Her music was a prayer. She combined the teachings of her mother with the power gifted to her by her father to come to a deeper connection with the spirits than others had achieved before. Her ability was unique, but that meant it was a challenge to navigate. She felt her way through every possibility as she went along.

      Hair began to move around her face, tossed by a breeze that was both as natural as could be and eerily impossible in the closed room. Beneath her the earthen floor trembled, and moisture began to coalesce in the air around her until her parched lips were dampened and her lashes sparkled with what felt like unshed tears.

      Lily paused in her playing. She held her breath. The last note faded and she carefully lowered her flute from her lips.

      “Lucifer’s wings,” she whispered into the silence that seemed heavy with humidity from an approaching storm. The complex challenges she faced made the words seem more curse than request. The wings had to be meant for Michael Turov. They wouldn’t be a means of escape or a bargaining chip he could use to barter his way out of hell. They would seal his fate. Michael Turov’s rejection of his daemon legacy was well-known in the hell dimension. He’d visited. He’d walked away. No one expected him to return for good...except the daemon king.

      “L-L-Lucifer’s wings,” she said again. Her hair whipped around her cheeks now. It had grown damp and stung her eyes and skin like a thousand tiny lashes. The earth rumbled. A crackle of electricity charged the air as if lightning was seconds away. A wash of ozone rode the elemental breeze.

      Her pack at the edge of the bed behind her tumbled to the floor and landed open beside her. The two dolls she’d tried to leave wrapped and hidden rolled out. The warrior angel figure stopped against her shoe, still wrapped, still unsummoned. But the doll that represented Fire was loosened. Its burlap wrap was scorched and blackened. Smoke curled from it into the air.

      Lily grabbed for the smoking doll, but it was too late. She cried out and pulled back burned fingers as the wrappings burst into flame. More smoke than the fuel justified billowed upand rose into the spirit-tossed air, but Wind and Water didn’t touch the rolling gray smoke. It had a life of its own and it was soon evident exactly what...or whom...the smoke would become.

      Lily stumbled to her feet and backed away as rain began to fall. Her wind-whipped hair was plastered against her face, but she saw the smoke come together to form a familiar figure. The grumble of the earth seemed a herald of sorts, more powerful than a plague of angels’ trumpets as the smoky form became solid walking toward her.

      He moved like a king before he was any more than ashy smoke. As his muscular body solidified, he conquered the room by right and by the price he’d paid evidenced by every scar he bore—both seen and unseen. Lily knew Ezekiel’s heart was as craggy as the battle-marked planes of his chest and cheeks.

      She had summoned the daemon king. Or had she? She doubted if her guardian had to be called. He’d arrived at his own appointed time.

      “Sir,” Lily said. If her earlier “Lucifer’s wings” had been a curse, this was a prayer. Because she dreaded the price of the protection he’d given her these last fifteen years.

      “You are well. Your mother’s request might have been lethal,” Ezekiel said. His voice was deep and rich, warm with an interest that could be terrifying if you weren’t braced for it. Lily had the practice of years behind her, but she still blanched. Her cheeks chilled and her head went light. Her mother had wanted to preserve the old Hopi sites from daemon destruction. But mostly Sophia had wanted to help Ezekiel against the Rogue threat. It had been a last gesture of unrequited love. Lily had agreed because she owed her guardian everything, even though Ezekiel’s distant devotion was difficult to bear. Hadn’t she seen her mother suffer for years because she had fallen in love with a “man” who merely cared for her as a means to an end?

      “She wanted me to help you, but she also dreamed that one day I’d be free,” Lily said.

      Her guardian was fully formed now and his worn leather armor told much about his mood. He was perfectly capable of manifesting ordinary, everyday clothes. He didn’t always dress like he sat on a medieval throne.

      “The only way you will ever be free is to die. I’ve promised to prevent that for as long as I’m able,” Ezekiel said. “But your affinity is your jailer. Not I.” His scent was familiar. Wood smoke tinged with a hint of sulfur, ancient leather, and a metallic hint of blood. Yes, her childhood had been interesting. The daemon king smelled like home.

      “So you haven’t come to punish me for running away?” Lily half joked. She feared his devotion to the D’Arcy family he’d adopted because of his love for Elizabeth. Its ferocity. Its fire. She feared his expectations would consume her as she burned herself out trying to repay him. Never did she fear he would purposefully harm a single hair on her head. But he might inadvertently scorch her and everyone else on the earth to protect and promote those he truly loved.

      “I