Page 4 of Prince of Ruin
Not everyone could be sunning themselves on a sunny beach with supermodels. If Raphael was the best recruitment the forces of Heaven had to offer, the banner boy for signing up to fight for #TeamSaveYourSoul, then she was part of the team that worked in the shadows. The invisible hand of glory.
The cambion bouncer took a drag of his cigarette, glaring at the screen across the square, and then he unclipped the rope and gestured her forward. “Fucking golden boy. Invitation?”
Sera tugged her clutch open and withdrew the slim slip of parchment.
This was the moment.
She held her breath as he scanned the invitation. The bouncer’s eyes narrowed and he fingered the expensive piece of parchment.
“You don’t look like our usual sort,” he told her flatly, eyeing the wings she’d strapped on.
Sera gave a winsome shrug and bit her lip. “Maybe I want to be corrupted. A good girl who wants to playbadgames.”
A hand caught her face and then she was staring into snake-slit eyes as the cambion rifled through her surface memories like a card shark flicking through a pack.
A hotel room appeared.
A man retched in the bathroom.
And Sera slipped naked from his bed, shooting a glance toward the mirrored bathroom door as she rifled through the man’s possessions, finally coming up with the invitation.
He let her go, staring at her for a long moment. And then a smile curled over his mouth, hard and lethal. “You’re in,” he said. “I think they’re going to like you.”
Relief felt like the post-rush of an orgasm.
“Nice work, Tay,” she whispered under her breath as she slipped past the red velvet rope. Implanting fake memories like that had taken the technowitch a solid thirty-six hours. Though she was going to have words about the tattoo Tayla had painstakingly added to her ass in the vision.
A sign appeared as she pushed through the double doors, the wave of music and the humid blanket of pure lust hitting her like a train.
‘Welcome to the Ninth Circle’ it said.
Sera took a deep breath as the demonspawn attendant came forward to check her.
She was here for a reason.
And unlike everyone else in this fucking building, it wasn’t to beg a demon for the precious gift of an immortal life.
It was to take something from him.
2
The club pulsed with noise.
The reaping nights happened once a quarter and every desperate wannabe vampire in the city threw their hat into the ring.
Immortality.
More heady than any drug….
All it cost you was your soul.
If Raphael was the lure Heaven used to draw others to their cause, then this was the bait Hell offered.
No prizes for guessing who was winning the recruitment battle. The demons’ propaganda—that Heaven was no longer open for business—was a crushing blow. Who wanted to save their soul when there was no guarantee of a peaceful forever?
There was no Heaven anymore.
There was no ever-after….
