Samhain Publishing

Lust trapped them in darkness…only love can free them…

A Captive Souls story.

Petra Pedersen has lived as a recluse all her life thanks to a genetic double whammy—a strange deformity and, passed down from the father she will never know, a shameful power. The power to incite lust in men and women with just a touch.

Exploring the garden of the mansion she’s just inherited, she comes across a fascinating stone gargoyle whose raw, passionate expression draws her to caress its broad chest. Her imagination follows her fluttering fingers. As she closes her eyes and gives herself up to the arousal, something shifts beneath her touch.

Long ago, failure to stop a demon battle trapped Octavius in a prison of stone. Freed by the woman’s incendiary touch, he doesn’t hesitate to unleash his pent-up rage and desire in a blistering fury. Yet once the haze of lust clears, he discovers he isn’t really free after all.

They are both trapped in another realm where he must choose between his last chance for redemption or returning Petra home…

Copyright © 2009 Delilah Devlin
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication

Chapter One

Louisiana 1909

Octavius rammed his shoulder against the heavy oak door. The lock and hinges gave and the door crashed backward with a satisfying thud, raising dust that sifted through the air like silver-gilt fireflies in the moonlight. Wary, he stepped across the threshold. Inside, the house was dark, the air thick—too heavy to be natural.

He knew, without reeling in the psychic tether that kept him chained to the Grigori, that Bacclum was here. That the bastard had found the demon. He prayed he wasn’t too late to save Bacclum from his own insatiable lust for power. The consequences of his failure would mean his own end.

He should have known that Bacclum planned mischief that night. The mixed-blood angel had been too eager to see Octavius take a rare walk among humans, encouraging him to attend a masked ball at a wealthy residence inside the French Quarter.

While Octavius had enjoyed the rare opportunity to mingle among sweet-smelling women, secretly laughing as he pretended a lever inside his vest controlled the movement of his wings and thrilling to the many strokes of soft hands along his ribbed folds, Bacclum had snuck away. But not before he’d assured himself that his watcher’s vigilance had been dulled by the herbs stirred into his drink. If Octavius hadn’t noted the uneasy glances of the sloe-eyed woman who’d gulled him, he might have drunk the full measure. As it was, his head still swam and his loins throbbed with unabated lust.

The sound of crashing furniture and the low rumble of a masculine voice drew him up the staircase and down a hallway toward the sliver of golden light, fanning outward from a partially opened doorway. Sliding his back close to the wall, he gently pushed open the door and peered around the corner into a room lined with shelves of books.

Bacclum’s dark head was bent toward his chest, his thighs braced around the demon, his hands wrapped around a straining throat.

I’m not too late, thank the gods. “Let go, Bacclum!” Octavius growled as he stalked toward the Grigori steadily strangling the demon he clasped.

“Not until he gives me what I want.” Bacclum grunted, his face screwing into a fierce grimace. “I want all of it.”

Octavius stepped deeper into the library then felt a slight, telltale rumbling beneath his feet.

Bacclum seemed unaware of the heightening danger, so intent was he on murdering the demon and claiming his power for his own.

Octavius cursed beneath his breath. He should have suspected what Bacclum had intended when he’d entered this demon’s realm. The angel’s thirst for power was unquenchable. The council had warned Octavius long ago of Bacclum’s unrelenting quest, but he’d believed the core of the creature squeezing the life force from the demon was good and honorable. He’d believed that Bacclum understood the uneasy balance that had to be maintained between the forces of light and darkness. In the end, he’d misjudged him, underestimating his need for vengeance. Now it was up to him alone to set this right.

Octavius folded his wings forward, scraping the leathery tips against Bacclum’s slick, hot skin, intending to wrap his wings around Bacclum’s face and smother him into unconsciousness. The rumbling increased, fed by the faint chanting echoing inside his head. The demon was far from vanquished.

“Let go, Bacclum,” he roared, leaning closer to pull Bacclum back, but something lashed around his own wrists. Invisible bonds tightened then jerked him off his feet.

He landed on the floor on his knees and growled. The air around them grew dank and humid like a demon’s breath, and the voice chanting in an ancient tongue inside his head grew louder and stronger.

The house shivered violently. The wood flooring creaked. Windows rattled then shattered. Glass shards, like silvery projectiles, peppered his wings and back and shredded his clothing, drawing blood from hundreds of cuts.

Bacclum’s head jerked back and canted to the side. At last, he’d caught the chanting voice and had to know he’d awakened the demon’s inner fire.

The breeze sweeping through the shattered window intensified and swirled around the room, tightening into a devil wind that picked up more slivers of glass and jagged bits of shattered furniture that pinged against the paneled walls but sank into tender flesh.

Octavius’s chest, back and wings were flayed, scraped raw. He reared back, fighting the phantom manacles holding him. Suddenly he was wrenched from the ground and held still inside the fulcrum of the whirlwind.

With only a moment to suck in a deep breath, he was flung forward, forced to ride the arc of an invisible whip, then shot backward like a cannonball through the gaping window onto fragrant grass.

Frogs croaked. Crickets chirped. Moonlight silvered the damp grass. He shook his head clear and ripped off the ragged clothing hanging from the belt at his waist.

Freed at last, he knelt, breathing deeply and gathering strength. He flared his wings and dug his knuckles into the turf. He pushed upward—but his feet never left the ground. His wings never caught the wind beneath their leathery folds.

Frozen, first by horror, then irreversibly by magic, he could only stand there, his terrified gaze watching as his body was slowly consumed, inch by inch, by stone.

The letter had arrived only a week ago accompanied by a bank draft to cover the expense of her journey. Petra Pedersen’s father was dead and his house was to be divided among three sisters.

Sisters Petra hadn’t known about but was intensely curious to meet. Would they share more than a father’s claim on a birth certificate?

Her mother had spilled what little she did know about Jean-Paul’s past in an effort to dissuade her from coming. Beatrice had been aware of the first child, Dominique, who’d been born to a witch. It was her birth that had instigated Jean-Paul’s flight to Europe because, until that moment, he hadn’t believed the curse a Haitian priest had put on him when he’d refused to impregnate the priest’s disfigured daughter. Jean-Paul was cursed to father only females and each girl would bear the priest’s mark.

The evidence clear in his first daughter’s dark, mutated gaze had frightened him.

Determined to break the curse, he’d traveled, seeking a healer’s magic. He’d found her mother.

Beatrice hadn’t been able to resist the handsome stranger’s allure. She’d been raised in a good Christian in a small village. Magic didn’t exist except in fairytales. Never mind she’d been born with her own magical gift. A healer in a long line of healers, she’d assumed the gift came from God.

When her own daughter was born, despite the evidence of her daughter’s deformity staring back at her every day of her life, she’d still believed Petra’s gifts would be like her own. Jean-Paul had known better, fleeing shortly after the birth.

But her mother had clung to her belief—until she’d taken Petra along to tutor her as she plied her craft, laying on hands to heal. She’d been horrified to discover that Jean-Paul’s curse had changed her gift from something good into something dark and twisted.

Petra had been sheltered ever since. Kept away from others to prevent a chance touch—worn a contact to hide her evil eye. But the whispers surrounding her hadn’t stopped.

Women in their village eyed Petra as though she were a demon come to steal their men. The men’s gazes followed her everywhere she went as they wondered whether the stories were true—if her touch could enflame a man beyond control. They didn’t seem to fear the curse, and instead, sought excuses to rub up against her in the market or at church.

Her touch incited men to lose their minds to lust. To rape. Inevitably, she and her mother had been forced to move and start again. She’d donned gloves to prevent accidental touches.

Now, she stared down at her hands and wondered if her sisters would be immune and whether they’d inherited a different sort of curse.