Bound by Love Read online

  "I love you, Bel."

  Bel smiled and stretched out beside his sleepy angel. "I love you too, my light."

  Eden rolled over and pressed his body close to Bel and Bel never felt happier than he did with the angel at his side.

  Chapter Three

  "Hello?" Bel listened but not only didn't get an answer; he didn't hear a sound in the apartment. "Eden?" He peeked into the living room, but the dark television and empty reading chair gave no hints as to Eden's whereabouts.

  He carried the pizza box to the dark kitchen and tucked it into the oven to keep it warm. When he turned, planning to take the back staircase up to the bedroom, he spotted Eden sitting in the corner behind the round kitchen table.

  "Eden?" Bel's heart trembled and raced and his voice caught in his throat. The light that always called to Bel no longer shone in Eden's innocent, smooth face. "What happened?" Bel's claws lengthened, his fangs descended and, as he took a deep breath in a desperate attempt to control the fury at whoever or whatever had bred despondency in his beautiful angel, he felt the piercing pain shoot through his forehead. His horns rarely sprouted, even in anger, but Eden, his love, his light, shouldn't be cloaked in shadows.

  He reached for the switch. Eden's voice broke and trembled. "Don't. Please."

  With a guttural growl, three candles in the center of the table flared to action. Eden flinched from their flame, tucking his chin to his chest. His wings trembled and, even in the weak light, Bel saw the ruffled feathers and, worse, those that weren't there. Eden's right wing sported a bald spot that meant at least a dozen or more feathers had been ripped out of his flesh.

  Bel rushed to his side and crouched at his feet. With a comforting hand on Eden's knee and another brushing back tangled locks of hair, he asked, "Who did this?"

  Eden's lower lip trembled until he sucked it between his teeth. He shook his head and refused to look at Bel.

  "Talk to me, my light. Let me be your strength, as you have been for me so often."

  Eden turned his hand palm up and Bel gasped at the ruined flesh.

  "Andaras," Bel hissed. Only his father would claim his angel with a summoning rune carved into the skin.

  Eden nodded. His lip broke free from his teeth, swollen from the effort of restraining his emotions. A sob shook his thin chest and then another chased through his body. His torn wings trembled and drooped, stuck between their full beauty and a neat indiscreet place along Eden's back.

  "I won't let him. He can't have you."

  "It's too late. He's marked me and…" Fat tears fell from his eyes. "He saw the ring you gave me. I'm sorry. I took it, Bel, because I wanted to…" He took a deep breath but sobbed out the exhale. "He has it. He said you don't own me until you put it on my finger." His shimmering eyes shifted up to meet Bel's gaze at last. "I know you didn't mean it that way, Bel. That's why I had it. I was ready to wear it, but the magic didn't work."

  "Because I didn't put it on you," Bel finished. "I know." Bel covered both of Eden's hands with his own, touching lightly to avoid causing more pain to Eden's injuries. "I didn't mean it as ownership, Eden. I wanted to protect you."

  "I know." Eden huffed out an exasperated sob. "I knew then, too, but I wasn't ready to be that important to someone. I… fucked it up."

  Bel laughed, but despite his hope of calming the angel, he heard the tension in his own voice. "Did my innocent angel just swear?"

  Eden's eyes reflected anger and pain, but shadows of amusement flickered in the background. "He said if you don't return to your duties as his son, he'd come for me. Bel, it's okay. I know how much you hate what he made you do. All angels are taught to endure suffering and I will go when he calls me."

  "Oh, fuck no." Eden winced at Bel's words, making the demon laugh. "You said it first," Bel said. He sobered and shook his head. "You're not going with him. There is no way in Hell you're leaving me."

  Bel stood. Eden's eyes widened. He knew the answer before he asked the question. "Where are you going?"

  "I'm going to get my ring back. He had no right to take it. Or you."

  Eden shook his head. "No. No, don't, Bel. He'll hurt you. He'll make you return to his side." The angel shot to his feet, his ruined wings trembling. "That's if you're lucky. It's impossible for even full demons to find their way out of Hell without permission."

  Pulling the angel into his arms, Bel nuzzled his warm neck. "I'll find a way."

  Eden trembled in his arms. "Don't. Please."

  "Shh…" Bel brushed his lips over Eden's. "I'll come back to you. Remember, you're my guiding light, Eden. I'll find my way back to you, always."

  Chapter Four

  After Bel left, Eden sank back into the kitchen chair, folded his arms on the table, and sobbed into his hands. His wings curved around him, shrouding him in his misery. He did not move until the dawn slipped past the thin white curtains guarding the window over the kitchen sink.

  When the sun became too bright and cheery, Eden rose to his feet, shaky, scared, and empty. He dragged himself up the narrow staircase at the back of the house, the tips of his wings dusting each step. He took a long shower, dwelling on Bel fighting for him in the depths of Hell. Bel had always said Eden's light and strength helped him find his human half and live a life they both enjoyed, but Eden thought he exaggerated, using sweet talk, as the mortals called it, to convey his love. Now, faced with the possibility of Bel's eternal damnation, Eden found the strength to give his lover the faith that only angels were capable of.

  He dried his body with a big, fluffy towel and then climbed out onto a small roof balcony to stretch his wings. The wind blowing down from the heavens ruffled his feathers, chasing the moisture from them. He tilted his head up, letting the sun heat his face. Dressed in nothing but warm rays from Heaven, Eden stretched his wings as far as he could and then flapped them slowly downward, once, twice, and then took flight, leaping off of the roof and catching the air just right to glide down to the backyard. The missing feathers meant he couldn't fly, but so did his missing lover.

  "Be safe, Bel," he whispered. He wings fluttered and glowed softly with his simple prayer.

  Eden returned to the house, dressed, and then opened the knee-high safe in the back of the bedroom closet. From within its protective walls, he removed an item he had brought from Heaven, but had used infrequently since his Fall. A dagger with an S-curve and a wicked edge gleamed with a black sheen though the metal was white. He lifted it from a velvet-lined box, remembering the day he met Bel at the end of that very blade.

  * * * *

  Eden's fall had been temporary at first. He had been part of a small squadron of low rank angels that fell for the sole purpose of thinning out demon clutches on Earth. They had orders: kill demons, and allow no mortal to bear witness to the destruction.

  Five angels, each armed with a curved blade enchanted by divine magic, dropped from Heaven as one squadron. Each wore his hair long and uncut, and each glided down to earth on color-tipped wings. Eden dropped to the concrete ground and quickly picked up the scent of a succubus on the prowl. The pheromones that baited humans burned the sensitive noses of the angels, and like faithful hounds, they tracked the demon to a pocket of whores in cheap Spandex mini-dresses and stilettos in which none but the working women could balance, let alone walk.

  "No witnesses," whispered the angel with hunter green hair and wings. "We wait."

  The angels spread out around the block, one stalking along a rooftop and four, Eden included, at each cardinal point, hanging back in the shadows, watching girls come and go, servicing customers that knew to drive by their corner for a good time. With infinite patience, the squadron waited. With perfect precision, when the succubus climbed in the car of a john, the angels followed, staying far enough back to not be noticed by the nervous mortal man with a sinful need and close enough to spring into action when they were far enough away from the other whores to confront their evil prey.

  Eden had been in charge of clearing the mortal from
the area and then wiping his mind of their presence. When his squadron swarmed the vehicle, Eden pulled open the driver's side door, ignoring the man's open pants, to pull him to safety. He shielded the human from the scene with his wings, wrapping them around the man as they ran. Once they ducked around a corner, Eden hunkered down, pushing the man to the ground so that Eden's wings protected the man and pinned him against the wall of a deserted building.

  "Forget," Eden whispered in the ancient language of the angels.

  The man stood, blinked twice, and then walked briskly to his car. By the time the vehicle was in his sight, the angels had already dragged the succubus out of the street and slammed a divine blade through her heart. The angels met Eden at the corner where he'd brought the man and, as one, they took flight, their wings shimmering to absorb the color of the sky and camouflage their travel. One demon had been sent back to Hell, but the city hid thousands more.

  * * * *

  Eden pushed the coffee table up against the couch. In the center of the floor, he knelt. He sat back on his heels and laid the blade in front of him, hilt out. He caressed the blade with one finger and then lowered his head to the floor so that his body —his heart— hovered over the handle of the divine dagger.

  Forehead to the hardwood floor, Eden prayed. He focused on Bel and his love for the demon. He called out in the ancient tongue, seeking the demon's scent, summoning his human half in hopes of giving Bel a trail to follow home.

  Chapter Five

  "Andaras! Give me back what's mine!"

  Beliaz stood at the base of his father's dais in full demon form. Scrawny horns the color of dead, dried autumn leaves stretched down his forehead towards his temples like the roots of a tree too close to the surface to gain purchase. His flesh had hardened, taking on a shade of spilled Chianti from his two-toed feet, to his double-jointed legs, to the smooth skull with thick, subtly pointed ears. His tail whipped around his legs in vicious arcs that scraped his skin but also scattered his father's smaller followers. Half-human by birth, he still knew how to fight like a demon; the tail, a valuable weapon.

  Andaras lounged sideways on a black granite throne. He picked his teeth with the tip of his barbed tail. "What would that be, my son?"

  "You know damn well what. Return the ring. You have no right—"

  "Silence child!" Andaras sent a violent chill through the room with just his voice. His body still appeared as relaxed as a drunken football fan on the verge of passing out after a Super Bowl celebration. Bel knew better. He knew the power of the demon firsthand, and so he kept his distance, while keeping up the front of bravery and strength, else one of Andaras's minions might decide he'd make a good challenge.

  "The ring is mine," he said evenly. "It was forged by my hand, with my magic."

  "And created to claim the love of an angel."

  A hushed whisper flowed and ebbed through the room. Beliaz narrowed his eyes and stretched and flexed his claws. "Ownership. I claim ownership of the angel. I wish the ring so that it will remain bound to me."

  "It?" Andaras laughed. "You are slack in your deceit, son of mine. You say the words but you do not mean them. I saw the flinch in your lips. It pains you to refer to the angel as anything but lover."

  Gasps and growls emanated from the shadows around the cavern.

  "Show the ring," Bel shouted. He moved to the first step and waved his hand around the room. "Show them. It has the shadowfire of the binding ritual in it. That will prove my intent."

  Andaras snorted. "It proves nothing."

  "Everything. The ring is mine. The angel is mine. What do you want with some low ranked Fallen of His anyway? The beast has little magic left and no fight."

  More murmurs and Bel felt confident they were in his favor. Everyone knew that Beliaz and Andaras had their differences. There were no familial relationships within the circles of Hell that didn't struggle for power. Andaras's lack of control over his own flesh had never sat right among the denizens of the underworld. To resort to childish stealing of possessions did not bode well for Andaras, unless he proved he had a purpose.

  "You want it, then come take it."

  There it was. Beliaz wavered on that first step. He couldn't best his father, a full-blood demon; no half breed could hope to challenge him successfully. Andaras waved his hand and a tall female strode forward from the darkness. She took the dozen stairs two at a time and landed at the top in a genuflection before Andaras.

  "Come now, son of mine. Meet your half-sister. Kimi-Ari is another bastard child half-breed, but she's smart enough to know which side to stand on."

  Kimi-Ari stood and turned to face Beliaz. Her double rows of fangs glistened with blood from her own torn lip. She grinned down at him with all the malice of their father, but it wasn't her expression that hardened Bel's resolve, for he had no reason to care about her. The ring he'd given to his cherished angel, hanging from a leather thong around her neck, inspired more violence than his father ever did.

  He strode up the stairs and snarled at Kimi-Ari on the way past. In front of his father, Beliaz knelt, keeping his eyes cast to the floor. He focused on Eden, his love for the angel giving him the strength he would've previously drawn from the shadowfires of Hell. The night he met Eden, he'd turned his back on his demon heritage and embraced what he had left, his mother's humanity.

  * * * *

  The night he met Eden, Beliaz had been prowling across a city rooftop. He'd heard a rumor that a drunk slept up there. Easy prey. Fresh blood tainted with alcohol would give him a buzz and settle his hunger. He approached a lean-to crafted out of an old blue tarp strung between a corner of the roof and a couple of sturdy pipes. The makeshift home stunk of human loss and sickness, but nothing breathed within its confines. Beliaz backtracked towards the stairwell that would let him back down to the street for more risky, but bountiful hunting options.

  A low whistling, almost but not quite like a breeze, darted overhead. Beliaz looked up just as three angels, flying low, passed within two feet of his head. Beliaz scrambled up an air conditioning exhaust vent. As two more angels flew by, Beliaz set his sights on the second. As they passed, he leapt, latching wicked claws into the beast's calves and dragged him out of the sky. The demon spread his wings to slow their fall but the squirming angel made it impossible to fly properly. They tumbled to the rooftop, the impact forcing Beliaz to lose his hold on it.

  He rolled to his feet in a low crouch and looked around. He couldn't see the angel anywhere. He stood straight and sighed. The beast must've taken flight again. As he turned to head for the stairs, like a bullet, the force of the angel slammed into his chest, knocking him on his ass. His head bounced off of the cement. Sparks flew behind his eyes almost blocking his view of the dagger slicing down towards his heart. With a roar and a blast of shadowfire, he struck out, blocking the blade with his right forearm. It bit through his flesh with shocking speed, like a heated blade cutting through softened butter.

  Howling in pain, he flung the angel away and then clambered after him, slamming the beast down on its back and pinning its wild and dangerous wings to the cement beneath its body. The dagger gleamed just out of its reach. Beliaz pinched its thin wrists together and leaned over the beast, drool dripping from his fangs as he sniffed the beast's hair. So beautiful. Where the hell had that come from?

  The angel chanted something in the ancient language. Beliaz caught part of it, the words spoken too quickly to translate easily. He flinched back as the holy magic swelled in the beast's body and then exploded, throwing him away. White light blinded him and pain shot through his body. For the first time since he'd heard the angels flying above his head, Beliaz thought he should not have picked a fight with another supernatural creature.

  * * * *

  For a brief moment, Beliaz felt that same holy glow wrapped around his heart. Eden. He pushed thoughts of his angel to the back of his mind. He had to be the demon he hated to survive.

  Beliaz stood and faced Kimi-Ari. "Give me the
ring and I'll spare you," Bel growled.

  Kimi-Ari laughed and lunged at him. Bel danced to the side. He kicked out at her as she stumbled past. She rolled with his kick. Correcting her exposure, she approached him slower on the second pass. Kimi-Ari charged with horned head down. Bel spun away, avoiding being gored. Her left horn skipped across his ribs. Bel hissed and tumbled away from her, buying some precious seconds with distance. As she came around, she circled to one side. To keep her in his sights, he turned slowly, following her movement.

  Too late. He recognized her tactic, but not soon enough. She'd backed him into a corner. The wall of the cavern blocked him on his right side. Steps descended into the pit on his left. She charged him. At the last moment, she veered, hooking him away from the wall. His reflexes were good, but he had nowhere to go. Bel stumbled down two of steps and tried to dance back up. His ankle twisted. He tumbled backwards feet over ass down the remaining steps. His landing, in a sloppy, unbalanced crouch, made the room spin. A clutch of two-foot tall imps with flames of Hell in their hair and the poison of the pits in their fangs and claws fanned out around him. Before they could circle him, Andaras ordered them back. Without hesitation, the imps clustered together and backed into the shadows.

  With a roar bearable only to the denizens of Hell, Kimi-Ari launched herself from the top of the dais. Bel scrambled back, but she landed on him, knocking the air from his lungs. She drove her claws into his thighs, dragging him back, tugging him closer to her gnashing, sharp teeth and wicked barbed wings thrashing over her head, beating blindly against the air, reaching for his face. She had a short wingspan, but deadly, with poison oozing out of thorns sprouting from each joint of her leathery reach.