Brimstone Bride. Barbara J. Hancock

       Chapter 1

      Playground sounds made the danger beside Victoria so much worse. High-pitched laughter and conversations about make-believe seemed surreal. Across the mulched expanse, her sister, Katherine D’Arcy Severne, pushed Victoria’s toddler, Michael, and her own baby, Sam, on the swings. She glanced toward Victoria and waved. Vic waved back.

      Pay no attention to the madman beside me, Kat. Keep my Michael and your Sam safe.

      The monk sitting beside Victoria on the park bench was in a businessman’s suit, as if he’d dropped by the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, playground during his lunch break. He crossed his legs gracefully like a civilized man. Kat probably thought he was a father watching his child play instead of an evil man come to threaten their own. Victoria had been resting in the sun when he’d approached. She’d actually smiled at him when he’d joined her on the bench.

      And then he’d revealed his true purpose.

      “The Order of Samuel has proven time and time again that you cannot run. You cannot hide. You will learn this lesson or your child will join us. A half daemon brother would be unusual, but I’m sure we could train him, put him to good use for Father Reynard’s cause.”

      “Stay. Away. From. Michael,” Victoria said. Her voice cracked with emotion. Her baby was only two. Katherine pushed her nephew higher and he squealed.

      Victoria’s throat had yet to recover from the injuries she’d sustained in the opera house fire set by Father Reynard. They’d blamed it on an obsessive fan. He’d been obsessive all right. But not a fan. He was a daemon hunter and she and Katherine had been his reluctant bloodhounds. They’d been born with an affinity for Brimstone blood that inevitably led them to the daemons Reynard hunted. Violence. Blood. Pain. No rest. No peace. He had dogged their steps for as long as they could walk.

      He’d died in the fire, but apparently his cause hadn’t.

      “I will leave your daemon spawn alone, only if you set my brethren free. This man is our greatest enemy. He must be stopped,” the monk in disguise said.

      He held a magazine in his hands and tilted the cover so she could see the man who graced it.

      Michael’s laughter floated to her ears as his doting aunt pushed him on the swing. Victoria had fallen in love with a daemon. Her affinity for the Brimstone in his blood had drawn them together, but it had been more than that. He’d been a stop to running. He’d been hope. He had died trying to protect her and Michael. The Order of Samuel said they were warriors for heaven. They lied. The members of the D’Arcy family were tools used by one faction of daemons to hunt another.

      Politics.

      The D’Arcy ability to draw and be drawn to daemon blood had placed them in the middle of an otherworldly civil war.

      Love wasn’t allowed.

      Ironic that her favorite role to play had always been Juliet. She’d traveled around the world to sing the part of a tragic romance again and again.

      “What do you want me to do?” Victoria asked.

      The man on the cover of the magazine was a beautiful stranger in a designer suit. Behind him, a vineyard stretched in seemingly endless verdant rows. He stood with one foot on the threshold of a historic stone building, a massive wooden door with iron hinges looking rough-hewn and craggy in sharp contrast to his polished clothes. There was a gleam to the black waves of his hair, but those waves and his sun-kissed skin seemed more in keeping with the door than his suit. Victoria had grown up in the dramatic world of the opera. She knew a costume when she saw one. The man’s civilized suit was a lie.

      “You will gain his trust. You will learn his secrets. Once you discover where he keeps his prisoners, you will free them,” the monk said. “Once they are freed, they will use their combined strength to kill him. In this way, you will guarantee your son’s safety.”

      Children laughed and ran and played all around them. Tears burned behind her eyes. But she forced them to dry. She waved again and this time Michael waved back, still laughing. Katherine was looking at Victoria closely now. As if she sensed something wrong. But the monk had already risen, prepared to walk away. He didn’t need her answer. He could sense her defeat in her slumped shoulders and her trembling wave of reassurance to her child.

      “I’m not a spy. How will I do this?” she asked his back. He paused and halfway turned back to reply.

      “He has Brimstone in his blood. He’s damned. Your affinity is the perfect weapon. His home is a fortress. You will penetrate his defenses. Seduce his secrets from him. Free our brothers. Capture him. Then, you and your family will be left in peace.”

      He lied.

      She would never know peace.

      “Who knows? You might even enjoy yourself. You have proven you have a taste for damnation,” the monk said. His knowing laughter didn’t blend with the innocent laughter of the children around them. It jarred. It condemned. Her cheeks burned. Not because she was ashamed of loving Michael’s father, but because this man didn’t deserve to pollute what they’d shared by mentioning it. Daemons were nearly immortal beings who lived in the hell dimension. They were different but, like men, they were only damned by their actions, not by their blood. Michael’s father had been heroic in the end, sacrificing himself for his child even though he’d been a daemon.

      The children on the playground seemed to sense the evil in their midst. They parted as the monk passed as if a snake slithered among them. One little girl began to cry without obvious cause and a kind woman ran to see what she could do to help.

      The monk had left the magazine beside her on the bench. She picked it up. The man on the cover hadn’t looked at the camera. The photographer had caught him in a moment of reflection, with dark shadows from the vine-covered building on his face. The photograph drew her as if the Brimstone in the man’s blood could already sense her affinity. Yes. He had secrets. She could see them in his shadowed eyes.

      A single tear did fall then. The monk had already walked away. His laughter drifted back to her on the humid Louisiana breeze. She had loved and lost, but she wouldn’t lose again. Only one tear fell. It rolled down her cheek to fall on the back of her hand. It glistened there, useless.

      She would do what she had to do to protect her son.

      She willed the unshed tears to dry as she widened her eyes and clenched her jaw. The magazine crinkled in her ferocious grip.

      Her son’s vigilant protector, the hellhound Grim, wasn’t allowed to materialize in the playground, but Victoria saw a shimmer of shadows near the swings, too dark to be cast by the blossoming grove of cherry trees that surrounded the park.

      The wind blew and petals fell like pale pink rain. They settled on Katherine’s dark hair and the children laughed. They raised their hands to the sky to try to catch the drifting blossoms. Near the shadow of Grim, the petals shied away in puffs of disturbed silk as the giant dog shook his sooty coat to maintain his disguise. She could imagine his movements because she knew he was there. No one else noticed. Just as no one else had heard the monk’s threats.

      During the fire, Katherine’s husband, John Severne, had risked his life to give Grim to Victoria’s son. His sacrifice had saved Michael. The fearsome beast had been Severne’s companion for two hundred years. Now, he watched over her son.

      But Grim wouldn’t be enough.

      Victoria had to do more.

      Even if it meant continuing to be a servant to madmen whose evil requests damned her as if she’d sold her soul.

      As the playground full of children continued to laugh and play, fear burned hotly inside her chest,