Ruby Shadows

  You’ll have to read Cardinal Sins to find out. Coming soon in the Born to Darkness series…

  EXCERPT:

  “That’s it girl, one more for the road before I go.” I pulled another shiny red apple out of my pocket and held it out to Jenny.

  The pregnant mare snorted and lipped the apple out of my palm eagerly before messily crunching it in half. A good chunk flew wide and landed in the straw of her stable and she went for it at once, moving pretty fast despite how big she was getting.

  I eyed her critically—she was going to drop that foal any time now. In the next week or so I’d have to start sleeping in the stable to be sure I was here in case she needed help. Maybe even tonight?

  I put a hand on her rounded side and felt the foal push back against me. Little guy was eager to get out and about—he was probably feeling pretty cramped up inside his mamma right about now. But just feeling him wasn’t going to give me an idea.

  Closing my eyes, I let myself go and reached out with my magic. Witches use a lot of paraphernalia and chanting and rites and rituals to do their magic. With warlocks, it’s different. We can do the rites and rituals and often as not I do them for clients who want things to look all officially magical. But they aren’t really necessary—not for someone who knows what he’s doing. And I did—after all, I’d been doing magic since the age of fourteen.

  What my magic sense was telling me now was that the foal was still a good week off, at least. So I could relax and sleep in my own bed tonight.

  Or at least I thought I was going to get to relax. Little did I know I was in for a surprise—a big feathery surprise. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  I gave Jenny one last pat and went back to the house, whistling a little as I went. It had been a long day but a good one—filled with what my Granddaddy would have called “honest work.” Doing chores around the house… mending one of my barbed wire fences around the edge of my property—a forty acre ranch just north of Austin, Texas—mucking out the stables and making sure Jenny was settled well. All of it good, hard manual labor that makes a man sweat. And aside from checking on my pregnant mare just now, I hadn’t had to use my magic once. Like I said, a good day.

  Inside I stripped off and got in the shower, letting the steaming water wash over my sore muscles. I wished I could end every day this way—I much preferred honest work to making a living with my magic. Unfortunately, ranching wasn’t very profitable unless you had a thousand head of cattle or you wanted to run one of those tourist orientated “dude ranches” that caters to idiots who want to come play cowboy for a week at a time. Either of those options required working with people—something I generally tried to avoid if I could help it.

  Of course I dealt with people when I went out on a job—couldn’t help that. But I liked to keep my home private, which is something I couldn’t do if I had to keep a bunch of ranch hands to run cattle or a staff to cater to whiney tourists. And since the ranch wouldn’t pay for itself, magic was my only option.

  You’d think I’d be glad to use my gifts to make a living but you’d be wrong. It hadn’t used to bother me but lately I’d been rethinking things a little. The last job I had taken, down in Tampa, Florida, had been a bad one. It involved working for a Three Star Vampire who wanted me to help sacrifice another vampire in order to steal her powers.

  I didn’t think the job would bother me. After all, I’d had to do some dark things in my day. Not only that but I’d gained a certain reputation for doing them well and thoroughly. It also didn’t hurt that I was the strongest warlock in the southern US—maybe the entire US, depending on what you wanted done. My reputation drew clients like honey draws flies and some of them were willing to pay a hell of a lot—like the vampire I mentioned—Celeste was her name.

  Anyway, Celeste wanted to drain the blood and power from one of the vamps she’d spawned which sounded like a pretty straightforward deal to me. Of course, she hadn’t told me that the vamp she was looking to drain was a female. I don’t take jobs that involve hurting women—for personal reasons. By the time I found out who the victim was, it was too late to back out and I was bound by the magical contract we had signed. I tried to get out of it early but Celeste was having none of it. Still, I figured one vamp killing another was no big deal. Hell, it’s like one snake swallowing another, or one spider draining another one dry, right? The bloodsuckers are vermin—who the hell cares what they do?

  But I found myself feeling sorry for the victim—a pretty little gal by the name of Taylor. She wasn’t your usual vamp, all hard, cold corners and nasty sharp edges. She seemed like a pretty decent person which made what I had to do even harder.

  Plus my client, Celeste, was a real bitch and I’m not saying that to be sexist. I mean she was a piece of work—a cold as ice and cruel as they come. You pull up a rock and look under it and you’d find nicer critters crawling there in the mud—she was that bad. I couldn’t say I was sorry when the spell went south and she wound up getting ripped apart by a cursed werewolf.

  I still wondered about Taylor, though. The last I’d see there was a witch—one of the strongest I’d ever felt—working on her and trying to bring her back. Whether she succeeded or not, I wasn’t sure but she’d been damn foolish to try what she had—opening a door into the Abyss. That part of the Underworld or Hell, as most people call it, is a place that goes beyond dark and into pretty damn scary. I couldn’t help thinking at the time that the witch, whoever she was, must have cared a hell of a lot for Taylor to try something so risky to bring her back.

  I tried and tried to put the whole experience out of my head but the job continued to bother me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the part I’d played and thinking that my Nana—who was a full fledged witch—would have been ashamed of me for playing it.

  Should have checked it more carefully before I agreed. Should never have taken a job from a vamp in the first place. I normally avoid vamps like a plague but this one had offered so much I’d let the dollar signs in my eyes overshadow my good judgment. Well, never again, I vowed to myself, but the promise didn’t make me feel one bit better. I kept feeling like it wasn’t over yet—like the rash decision I’d made to get involved with a vampire was going to come back and bite me in the ass. Maybe there were consequences coming…consequences that I couldn’t see yet but would be damn hard to pay when they finally caught up to me…

  I tried to shake off the dark thoughts as I toweled off and threw on a pair of jeans and an old black t-shirt. There was a T-bone in the fridge calling my name and I fixed it just like my Grandaddy had taught me, on a flat iron pan over the gas stove.

  The steak hit the spot and I paired it with a salad, more because I knew I ought to eat a few greens than because I liked rabbit food. After dinner I had a glass of whiskey—just one, to aid digestion as Granddaddy would say—put on a pair of worn but comfortable cotton pajama pants and settled in bed with an old Louis L’Amour novel.

  It was the perfect end to a perfect day and if my conscious hadn’t still been nagging me about the job in Florida, I would have drifted off to sleep with no problem. Funny how that works—you probably don’t want to know all the awful things I’ve done—but not a one of them had ever bothered me before. No many how many men I’d killed, I never lost a wink of sleep. But that night I tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position.

  About an hour past midnight I was just closing my eyes and getting comfortable when suddenly a door opened in my ceiling.

  Of course, I didn’t know it was a door or what the hell was going on. All I knew was that a brilliant light was suddenly shining down from above and I could hear voices talking to each other—or more like yelling at each other. Several of the voices were light and high—female. But one was deep and angry and not human—not human at all. Maybe demonic? The thought made my jaw clench. I didn’t know how I could tell it was the voice of a demon I was hearing, but even half asleep, I knew it, right enough.

  Then something big and wh
ite fell out of the window directly on top of me.

  I was still barely awake—just registering the light from above and the shouting voices. I hadn’t even gotten around to moving yet so the thing hit me square in the chest, nearly knocking the wind out of me. It gave out a startled cry as it landed.

  “Oh!”

  I was pretty damn startled myself, not to mention surprised that anything could get at me while I lay in my bed at night. My entire house and ranch are warded against intruders but that didn’t seem to matter to the something—or someone—who was struggling in my lap.

  “What the hell?” I exploded, sitting straight up in bed. I was determined to get the upper hand so I wrapped my arms around the intruder and held on tight, hoping to throw them off balance.

  “Oh! Oh, please! Please don’t—my wings!” gasped a frightened, female voice.

  I suddenly became aware that the intruder in my lap was extremely soft and curvy. It was a she and she was struggling frantically against my hands which I had planted firmly on her back to hold her in place.

  Then I heard that deep, demonic voice shouting through the still open doorway, “Stop—I command you!” There was a sound of scuffling and then door slammed shut as abruptly as it had opened. For a moment I could still hear the demon’s voice shouting, “She’s mine! Mine, I tell you!”

  Then even the faint outlines of the door faded from my ceiling and I was alone in the dark with a strange woman in my arms. A woman who was still struggling and fighting me as though she was desperate to be free.

  “Please, my wings,” she begged again.

  “What the hell?” I growled again, frowning at her. “Who are you and how did you get here?”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want, only please stop touching my wings. It’s not right for a male to have his hands on me there. Please!”

  “What are you talking about?” I was utterly bewildered. True, I had my hands on her back but I couldn’t see or feel any kind of wings.

  I turned her roughly, putting her into a shaft of moonlight coming from the window so I could examine her shoulders more closely and see what she was talking about. She was wearing a thin white dress with tiny string straps that went quite low—almost down to the small of her back. I brushed her long, white-blonde hair out of the way—it smelled like flowers—and examined her more closely. There were no real wings that I could see but the moonlight showed glowing golden lines etched on her pale skin—lines that looked like feathers tattooed on her flesh.

  “I’ll be damned,” I murmured, stroking the glowing golden lines on one shoulder with the tips of my fingers.

  “Ah!” she gasped and would have jumped away from me if I hadn’t held her firmly by the waist. “Oh, please—please don’t! I don’t even know you!”

  “I don’t know you either, sweetheart,” I pointed out roughly as I pulled my hand away from the mesmerizing golden tattoos. “Didn’t stop you from opening a door in my ceiling and diving down into my bed. Where I come from some men would take that as an invitation to touch a hell of a lot more than your shoulder.”

  “Are…are you going to despoil me, then?” she whispered in a quivering voice, turning to face me again.

  “Despoil you?” I frowned at her. “You mean am I gonna rape you?”

  “Please don’t.” By the moonlight shining in through the window, I could see silvery tear-tracks on her cheeks. She was crying. Who the hell was this girl with the glowing, golden tattoos? And more to the point, what she doing in my bed?

  “Of course I’m not gonna rape you,” I said roughly, frowning at her. “But you need to come up with some answers right quick, sweetheart. Like who are you and how did you get here? How did you get past my wards?”

  “I didn’t know anything about any wards,” she protested. “Gwendolyn sent me here. Druaga was after me so she did a spell of protection and—”

  “Wait a minute—Gwendolyn?” I interrupted her. The name rang a bell. I’d wanted to know about my competition after that debacle down in Florida so I’d checked around to see who the witch on the other side was. “Gwendolyn LaRoux?” I asked, looking at the girl.

  “Yes—that’s her.” She nodded eagerly. “Do you know her?”

  “I know of her,” I muttered, thinking of the strange dream I’d had of her. It had been a few nights back and I was looking at her through some kind of mirror. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time—the mess down in Florida had been on my mind a lot and I chalked the weird dream up to that. Now I wondered if it had a deeper meaning.

  “Gwendolyn’s wonderful,” the girl said. “I rode on her shoulder through five of the seven circles of Hell.”

  “You did?” I looked at her doubtfully. Even in the dark room it was easy to see she wasn’t exactly stick thin. Which was good—I like a girl with some meat on her bones. But I didn’t see how she could have ridden on the witch’s shoulder all the way through the Underworld.

  “I was in my moth form at the time, of course,” she said a little impatiently.

  “Oh, excuse me—your moth form. Well why didn’t you just say so?” I said dryly. “So I guess you’re some kind of a shape shifter?”

  “Of course not,” she said primly, smoothly back her long platinum hair. “I’m an angel. Gwendolyn sent me here so you could protect me.”

  Well, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather, as my Granddaddy would have said.

  “Protect you?” I repeated stupidly. “How in the Hell am I supposed to do that? And who am I protecting you from?”

  “Druaga. He’s a demon.” She shivered and a look of real fear came over her delicate features. “He captured me in a spelled box from the fields outside Heaven and dragged me down to Hell. He…he wanted to…”

  “To despoil you?” I guessed, using her word, which sounded nicer than “rape.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide. “But he couldn’t touch me—no one without purity and goodness in his heart can touch an angel. He was working on a way though—a way to get to me when I escaped. I changed into my moth form and hid myself away on Gwendolyn’s shoulder. She carried me all through Hell and didn’t know who I was.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her?” I asked, frowning.

  “Because, I got stuck in my moth form,” she explained. “I was stuck in it so long I even lost my name. But Gwendolyn gave me a new one—I’m Eryn.”

  “Jake,” I said, giving her my real name without even thinking about it. “Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand.

  She looked at my hand uncertainly for a moment, then slipped her own cool little palm into mine. I felt a little tingle run up my arm and Eryn smiled and seemed to relax a little bit.

  “Ah, you are pure of heart, then,” she said, smiling.

  “Pure of heart?” I snorted. “Darlin’, I’m a warlock which means I’m not pure of anything. I’m not exactly a nice guy.”

  “But you must have some goodness in your heart—I can feel it,” she objected “At first I was worried that you might have some dark magic that allowed you to touch me—the kind of thing Druaga was working on. But when you took my hand, I knew what you truly are.”

  “Look,” I said flatly, “If you’re trying to butter me up to get me to protect you from this Druaga guy—”

  “Demon—he’s a demon,” she corrected me quickly. “And he’s just awful.”

  “Is this a problem all the time—demons capturing angels?” I asked. “Was he looking to get you in particular or would any angel do?”

  “I…I think he just wanted me,” she admitted, looking down at her hands which were twisting in her lap. “Because, well…I’m different from the other angels. The female ones, anyway.”

  “And how are you different, Darlin’?” I asked, frowning at her. “Clue me in here—I’ve never seen a real live angel in the flesh besides you.”

  “I’m different because I have…well, these.” She was pointing to her full, ripe breasts and it was hard to tell in the dim light of the room but I
thought she might be blushing.

  “Because you have a, a-hem, a big chest?” I asked. I was trying not to look but she’d practically invited me to so it was hard to help it.

  She nodded. “Most of the other angels—the female angels—are flat and thin. I’m…well, I’m not.” She sounded as though the fact made her sad or self-conscious and I suddenly wondered if angels had body issues or teased each other about looking different.

  “So this demon—this Druaga—just wanted you because you had big breasts?” I asked bluntly.

  “I have…other differences too.” She was very definitely blushing now. “But I’d rather not go into them. Not now. It’s enough to let you know that he captured me and dragged me down to Hell to despoil me.”

  “Well, I admit that sounds bad,” I conceded, wondering what the “other differences” might be. “But I still don’t see what it has to do with me.”

  Eryn shook her head.

  “I don’t either, Jake. I only know this is where Gwendolyn’s magic sent me. She told me when she did the spell that she didn’t know exactly what it would do but that it would protect me. I trust her—if her magic sent me here, it must be for a reason.”

  “A reason, huh?” I muttered thoughtfully.

  I had a suddenly idea—maybe the magic had sent me the angel to protect as a kind of karmic payback for helping Celeste try to kill the little vampire gal. It seemed like something that would happen with white magic. Witches go by the rule of three—that is, whatever energy you put out into the world, you get it back threefold. In which case, I was going to be in serious trouble at some point, considering my checkered past. Maybe this was the Goddess telling me I needed to make amends—if she even wanted to talk to me that was. I’d been on a dark path since the age of fourteen—could it be she still wanted anything to do with me after almost twenty years of bad behavior and black magic?