Page 9 of Brimstone and Broomsticks
Chapter 4
Lucien
Awitch. My blood quickened at the thought and it was all I could do to keep from reaching through the bars and touching her. It had been nearly three thousand years since I’d seen a witch, but even taking that into consideration, my reaction to her was far from normal.
Beautiful. Smart. Confident. And her energy called to me with the strength of a siren’s song.
No wonder my infernal powers were blunted. A witch. A real witch. A powerful witch. No doubt that weird electric feel I’d had as Charon and I had entered the town limits had been some sort of wards. We were particularly susceptible to witch magic. It all made sense now why I hadn’t been able to fry that werewolf, or instantly heal these wounds, or break out of this jail cell and go home. This explained everything.
Well, except for my coin not working. I had a feeling that had something to do with Charon, that rat bastard. I might not kill him when I got back, because thiswasturning into an interesting sort of vacation, but I did intend on making him suffer mightily for ignoring my call.
When I got back. I eyed the gorgeous witch and thought that I might just want to stay here for a few more days. Hell, I just might want to stay here forever.
As soon as I got out of this stupid cell, I was going to…
Going to what? I hadn’t seen a witch in three thousand years. How did one go about wooing a witch in these times? I doubted bringing her a dozen goats and the head of her enemy would work. Or maybe it would. We didn’t often have to do the wooing. Usually it was the witches who summoned us and told us what they wanted in exchange for whatwewanted.
I just had to find out what she wanted, then propose a deal—a deal that also involved her naked in a bed with me.
The policeman who’d locked me in this cell came in, jangling keys in his hand. He proceeded to have an argument with the witch, insisting the handcuffs go back on before he opened the door. His eyes had glowed like the werewolves, but I got the feeling he wasn’t a wolf. Maybe a rat from the way his nose twitched at me, but I wasn’t one to judge.
This town was so fascinating. I’d been all over the world, but never had I seen such a concentration of non-humans, boldly walking around in their natural forms. Yeah, there was something weird here blocking my powers. Yeah, my bruises and cuts hurt, and seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to heal. Yeah, I was pretty sure Charon had set me up as payback for something I’d done in the past. But I was still having the time of my life here.
Especially now that I’d met this witch.
I eyed the woman in front of me. Cassandra, she’d said her name was. Cassandra. It was a powerful name for a powerful woman, and it made me wonder if she had any of the prophetic ability of her namesake.
That dark red hair, the way she bit her lip as she thought. The flush that rose on her cheeks when her eyes met mine. I wondered about that slim body under the suit, followed the v of her shirt neckline to the faint hint of cleavage. She was gorgeous.
But my attraction to her wasn’t just that she was a witch or that she was beautiful. She treated me with the sort of confident authority I’d only experienced from two of hell’s denizens—my father and my mother. Although outside of that confidence, she seemed to be nothing like the two that had given me life. Lucifer was…well, Lucifer. My mother, Lilith, was the demon equivalent of a praying mantis. She was vicious, violent, and she liked to kill those she had sex with. My father was the only exception and that wasn’t through any lack of trying on her part. Actually, this witch reminded me a bit of the angels I’d encountered here and there in my life. She was sharp, single-minded, with a biting sort of humor that normally made me want to start slicing wings. Except in her, it was a bit of a turn-on.
Okay, it was a lot of a turn-on.
The police-rat must have been convincing because the cuffs went back on before he opened the metal jail cell door. He gripped my arm with white-knuckled nervousness as we followed Cassandra down a hallway and into a room. Rat-cop pushed me into a chair and Cassandra took the seat beside me.
“Did you check him?” The bald man seated behind the desk asked.
I decided to be silent and let her talk, as she’d requested—less because she’d demanded it of me and more because I was curious where all this was going. Well, and I really wanted out of that cell, and for someone to take these damned handcuffs off me. My call to Charon clearly wasn’t getting through, and he was just the sort of asshole who wouldn’t come look for me if I failed to call him. No, I would end up rotting in that horrible cell for a few years before someone needed my input on something and tracked me down. Best to keep my mouth shut and be smart about this whole thing until I figured out how things worked in this town.
And figured out how to convince this witch I was the demon she wanted to spend her life with.
“Check him?” Her voice rose and she touched her necklace. “No. Why would I check him?”
“Because…” the bald man looked at the file. “He says he’s the son of the devil.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in a dramatic move that had me biting back a grin. “You’re kidding me, Aaron. One of the Dickskins beat the crap out of him. Does that sound like the son of Satan to you? He looks like he got run over by a truck, and he’s spent the night locked behind iron bars. At best he’s drunk or high. At worst, he’s off his meds.”
The bald guy snorted, then looked up at me. “What’s your last name, son?”
Son? I choked back a laugh. “I don’t have one,dad. I was given the name Lucien.”
He glared at me. “Where do you live?”
“Hell.”
“And your parents are…?”
“Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, the Morning Star, the Infernal Master of Hell and All Who Reside There, and Lilith, the Dark Mother.”
