Nearly half a year has passed since Asmodeus opened the gateway allowing an unknown number of demons to spill onto our plane of existence.
A fatal standoff has left Dez on her own to hunt the stray demons down and send them back to Hell where they belong. Her life has become a never-ending cycle of violence and bloodshed, further tainted by a deepening depression and a longing for the person she had to leave behind.
When Dez receives an unexpected phone call, she makes her way to the northern Arizona desert to see an old friend. Upon arrival, there is a message waiting for her from beyond the grave, and she realizes before she can go any further, she must face the one thing she’s been dreading for months.
To make matters worse, the message is meant to help her mission, but it forces Dez into an impossible choice. Only Dez can decide which road to take, but will she be able to handle the consequences of her decision?
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Speak of the Devil
by J.M. Gregoire
Series:
Demon Legacy #2
Genre:
Urban Fantasy
Paranormal Romance
Publisher:
J.M. Gregoire Books
Publication Date:
January 27, 2015
Prologue
Michael
Michael reached over to the cool
leather of the passenger seat and grabbed his phone without taking his eyes off
the vagabond shuffling his way across the darkened parking lot. He watched the homeless man for a few more
minutes, thumbing the power button on the side of the phone. Once the man was out of sight, he pressed the
button, and, just as it had a thousand times before, the prospect of hearing
from Dez lit a spark of hope deep in his core.
The screen beamed to life.
No text
messages.
No emails.
No missed calls.
Another press of the power button
left the broad interior of the 1971 Chevy Nova SS once again draped in
shadows. Disappointment and worry
replaced any good feelings he may have had when he picked up the phone. It had been almost five months since she had
literally vanished into thin air right in front of him, leaving him stunned and
a little confused.
Then the covens had slipped into
a state of utter chaos.
They were pissed.
They wanted retribution.
They demanded her head.
After many hours of talking himself
blue in the face, he finally made a good number of them understand that Dez was
not the bad guy in the situation, but it did not sate them all. The majority of the covens wanted Dez to come
back and stand before them to give her account of what had transpired, to
explain what led her to choose ending Cassandra’s life. But most likely to
explain her newfound abilities.
Of course, justice was what they
were all yelling about, and that’s the story they stuck to. Representatives for some of the covens couldn’t
believe that Cassandra, their leader and trusted advisor for centuries, had
been behind the events of previous weeks.
In a desperate attempt to get
ahead of the apocalyptic curve, she had taken it upon herself to align the
coven with a demon. Not just any demon,
but a prince in the hierarchy of Hell, one of the original fallen angels. After going on a blind hunt for the demon to
stop him from opening the gateway to Hell, they killed him, but not before an
unknown number of lesser demons escaped, and several lives were lost on the
side of the white hats, his brother Lucas included.
Shortly after the gateway was
closed, Dez made the connection between the demon and Cassandra. They had dropped everything and flown back to
Italy, and Dez faced off with Cassandra in front of the entire Council. The whole scene ended with Cassandra reduced
to a pile of ash, and Dez…
she just vanished.
Michael knew why, of course. Dez had used her newfound ability to
manipulate Hellfire to execute Cassandra for her crimes. He felt, deep down, Cassandra got exactly
what was coming to her, but in the eyes of the Council, the death sentence was
not Dez’s to hand down.
They were wrong.
Dez was the only one who could
have stopped her. Cassandra was much too
old, much too powerful, for anyone else to handle. An extraordinarily powerful witch and vampire
with more than a few centuries under her belt, she would have wiped the floor
with any Council member who decided to step to her. There really was no other way.
He wished Dez had stuck around to
stand behind her actions; it didn’t do her case any favors when she fled. All it accomplished was making her look
guilty of some wrongdoing. He could
easily track her down, but she had left for a reason. Whatever the reason, she would come back to
him when she was ready. He was giving
her the time she needed.
Sighing with frustration and no
small amount of defeat, Michael pulled the black leather briefcase up from the
passenger floor and opened it on the crimson red seat. He removed the Desert Eagle and its suppressor
from the case, careful to keep both low and out of sight. As he screwed the silencer into the barrel of
the gun, he took one last look around the parking lot of the vacant
warehouse. Tucking the gun inside his
leather jacket, Michael climbed out of the car, closing the door quietly.
He made his way across the
parking lot and slipped between the two decrepit concrete buildings. Of the benefits which came with being a
vampire, flawless eyesight in complete darkness was Michael’s favorite. It gave him a distinct advantage when he
needed to fulfill a contract at night.
His mission this night had nothing to do with a contract. Since the night at the gateway off the coast
of South America, all of Michael’s time was taken up with worrying about Dez
and tracking down the demons who had escaped.
If he was right, tonight would be his forty-ninth and fiftieth
kill.
Michael crept around the
building, careful to stay quiet and out of sight. As he rounded the back corner of the decaying
buildings, he stopped to make sure there were no vagrants hanging around. Sure the coast was clear, he continued on to
the crumbling loading dock on the backside of the building on the right. The metal stairs leading up to the
dilapidated concrete pad were falling apart, the railing long since having
fallen off. Shards of broken glass
littered the ground, making every step Michael took far louder than he would
have preferred. When he reached the top
of the stairs, he pulled his gun out and checked the chamber one last time, careful
to make sure the cool slide didn’t click too loudly when he gingerly moved it
back into place. He was pretty sure
there were only two of them in the building, but in the event there were more,
the key to getting the jump on them was to be as stealthy as possible.
Michael entered the building,
mindful of where he was stepping, never stilling his eyes from scanning his
surroundings. He listened intently for
any betrayal of the demons’ presence, but heard nothing. The wide open room was void of any furniture
or machinery. Nothing remained on the
expansive floor but pieces of the falling walls and more shards of dust-covered
glass.
Satisfied there was no one near
the loading dock, Michael made his way to the large metal staircase leading to
the upper levels of the building. He
moved silently and swiftly, confident he wasn’t alone in the structure. He just needed to find where the demons were
squatting. The two he was after had
taken possession of some of the local homeless, but he had seen and killed
enough of their kind to know them on sight.
He worked his way up the rusted
stairs, always listening. He reached the
second floor of the building, and stepped onto yet another empty floor, dirt
and refuse the only occupants. He turned
back and continued up the stairs. The
third level was also silent. He reached
the fourth and final floor, and his ears were greeted with silence. Rather than an open floor like the previous
three, there was a maze of hallways and rooms.
He stepped off the stairs and started down the center hallway. As he passed each room along the hallway, he
strained, listening for the tiniest noise.
Nothing.
He knew they were here, and given
the absolute quiet he was greeted with, they knew he was here as well. He glided down the hallway, stepping
lightly. He was about to give up, nearly
convinced he had been wrong, when the terrified scream of a woman ripped through
the air from somewhere on the same level, closer to the interior stairwell.
He turned and ran, following the
pained sounds of the woman’s terror.
Down the main corridor.
Turn left.
Turn right.
Another right, and the screaming
stopped. Michael moved quickly,
searching each room in the area.
Suddenly, there was a crashing sound from somewhere at the end of the
hallway. Michael ran down the hallway,
slowing right before he reached the door.
He took one quick clearing breath, and turned the corner, gun raised.
The two men stood over the body
of a girl in a torn grey sweater, her faded blue jeans and ripped red panties
scrunched down around her ankles. They
looked up at Michael, their black eyes gleaming in the minimal light, and
released a loud combination of a sick, feral growl and blood-curdling scream, a
horrific ear-piercing noise, like giant fingernails scraping down the world’s
biggest chalkboard. Without hesitation,
Michael fired one shot in the dead center of the demon’s forehead, and immediately
did the same to the second. Both demons
dropped to the floor with no sign of life.
Just to be sure, Michael walked over and shot each one in the head a few
more times.
Michael’s attention turned to the
girl. He listened but heard no
pulse. Kneeling down, he checked her
neck to be sure, and still found no heartbeat. Given the odd angle of her head,
it appeared one of the demons had snapped her neck. Probably
to stop the screaming. He shook his
head and walked away. There was nothing
else he could do here. He didn’t bother
burning the bodies to dispose of the evidence.
Chances were pretty good no one was going to find them until much later
anyway, and by that time, he’d be long gone.
Bestselling author J.M. Gregoire was born and raised in New Hampshire, USA and despite her abhorrence for any season that dares to drop to a temperature below seventy degrees, she still currently resides there with her two children and her two cats. Always a passionate reader, her love of urban fantasy books eventually morphed into a love of writing them. She is currently working on the Demon Legacy series and has a Demon Legacy spinoff series, the Killer Instinct series, coming soon.
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