Mysteria Nights

image of her moaning and naked, submitting to his every desire. His dark eyes flashed with sudden awareness. It was done.

Away from the circus, she’d barely breezed into her tent when he came striding after her, stripping her out of her clothes before she reached the bed. He threw her on her back, impaling her with his body, pumping with sweaty, dusty, postvictory vigor. Mentally, she took control, making him believe it was the best sex he’d ever had, and that she was first in his heart. You’ll love me to the end of time, Aquila.

“To the end of time . . .” he breathed in her ear.

Stupid mortal.

The tent flap eased open, and a woman stepped in. A babe on her hip, she took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the shade and to the sight of Aquila’s pumping bottom. Then she met Shay’s amused gaze.

He loves me. Shay planted the realization in the woman’s mind. One startled sob, and the wife was gone.

Shay vanished herself—at the very moment of Aquila’s release. He spilled his seed on an empty bed, not knowing what had happened to her, to him—or to his little wife when he returned to an empty house later.

Love, Shay thought with disdain. It was her mission to destroy it. It was her entire reason for existence. When all was said and done, she had to say she was very, very good at her job.

One

Wanted: Loving, live-in nanny to care for working couple’s only child. Must be willing to relocate to Mysteria. Private bedroom in home. Call for salary and details.

“Demon!” Lucifer bellowed loud enough to shake the depths of Hell. Molten rocks fell from the walls, sending shrieking banshees into the shadows and waking every manner of dark creature.

Head bowed, her hands clasped in submission, Shay scurried forward to answer her master’s bidding.

“You’re late!” Lucifer tugged on his black goatee. “What’s your excuse this time?”

“This demon offers exquisite apologies, my lord. This demon had a raft full of orphans to set adrift in shark- infested waters.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, Master.” She chanced a peek at him. “Is something amiss, Master?”

His horns pulsed as he sank his pitchfork into solid rock and bellowed once more in rage. It was clear that something had made him very, very angry. Shay hoped it wasn’t anything she’d done. How quickly he could change her back into what she was at the beginning of time: nothing. “I will never surrender to the spawn of a demon whose ass I fired for committing random acts of kindness!” He jerked a claw at the cave wall. The stones shimmered and opened up to a view of a charming town.

A tall man of dark good looks strode down a road leading to a cottage and a small church. “Damon of Mysteria . . .” Shay narrowed her eyes, scanning the scene with slitted pupils. She was starting to understand the reason for her summons. For ten centuries Damon had served as Lucifer’s Demon High Lord of Self-Doubt and Second Thoughts . . . until he was caught, red-handed, committing random acts of kindness. After a couple of hundred years of torture, Lucifer made him mortal, sentencing him to live out his days in Mysteria, the very town he’d saved hundreds of years before. Such a mundane, pitiful existence was every demon’s worst nightmare.

Except that Damon didn’t seem to be suffering at all. He’d fallen in love, not only with his sorry life but with a human woman. A woman of God, no less: Harmony Faithfull, who presided over Mysteria’s silly little house of worship.

Not that Lucifer had taken it sitting down. Rumors circulating around the lava pools reported that the Devil had been acting downright petulant about Damon’s—dare she say it?—contentment. The Dark Lord had sent wave after wave of subdemons and other obnoxious creatures up through the gates of Hell to torment Damon and his new wife, along with the residents of Mysteria, many of whom were undead themselves. Each time, the town fought back. No one was quite sure how or even why they could, but the matter was being investigated.

Now the couple was married. Harmony was said to adore the former demon beyond all reason. Shay snorted. No man was worth that kind of dreamy, addle-brained worship. If that wasn’t bad enough, they’d spawned a child.

It was all so revolting! Shay made a face. Clearly, Lucifer wanted the family broken apart. “I’ll bed him as soon as I arrive there, Master. Or, perhaps, her. I can do them both.”

“No, you stupid creature!” He hoisted her off her feet. “I do not want you to bed them. I want you to destroy their child!”

Shay hung, trembling, from her master’s clawed hands. His crimson eyes were whirlpools of lava, threatening to suck her in, luring her deeper and deeper. If she lost herself in those eyes, she’d be trapped, unable to free herself. She would . . . end.

A slow smile revealed his glittering fangs. “You fear the end of your existence.”

He knows.

Of course, he did. Did she think she could keep her deepest fears secret? “Answer me, Demon!” He shook her hard. Goblins and gargoyles somersaulted through the shadows, fleeing the chamber and Lucifer’s wrath.

“Yes,” she wheezed in his grip. “This humble demon fears being no more.”

His fanged smile widened. His glowing eyes sparked with malice. “Then you will not fail me.”

“No, Master.”

“Win their trust so they let you near the child.”

“Yes, Master.”

“And stay away from the fountain,” he growled.

“What fountain?”

“What fountain?” He shook her, fire erupting in his eyes. “If only you were as smart as you are evil! Mysteria’s fountain, stupid demon. The wishing fountain. Do not go near it.”

“Why?” Even as she asked, she knew it was a mistake to do so.

He shook her so hard that her ears rang. “My word is law! It is not to be questioned. Go earthward and win the trust of the family. Then kill the child and bring its bones back to me. Fail and . . .” He brought her face-to-face with him. “I will erase you, eradicate you, stamp you out—for all eternity!” His roar shook the entire cave. “No matter where you run, no matter where you hide, I will find you, and end you. You will never escape your fate.”

Sputtering, he threw her to the ground. She scrabbled backward to her feet, stumbling away from his threat: “I will find you, and end you.” Humans had their Heaven (or Hell). Angels, also, could look forward to Heaven. As well, all matter of undead creatures had a future ahead of them, whether they were vampires, shape-shifters, or even ghosts. But for a ruined demon, eternity meant nothing, zero, zilch. She simply would no longer be.

The prospect frightened Shay more than anything else. She would find the child and kill it. There was no other choice. Failure was simply not an option.

* * *

Damon, new father and ex-demon, climbed the porch stairs to the home he shared with his wife, Harmony, Mysteria’s minister. Their black Lab Bubba bounced around his heels, barking happily. Before Damon reached the top of the stairs, Dr. Fogg burst out, juggling his black medical bag and his ever-present BlackBerry as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

Damon’s heart rolled over. His wife, his babe—he couldn’t bear the thought of any harm coming to them. “Is everything all right, Doctor?”

“In your house, yes. My visit with your wife was interrupted. They need me at the high school. Fighting Fairies practice was a little rougher than usual today.”

“I do like American football,” Damon admitted.

“Football? It was the cheerleaders.” Fogg ran a finger around the inside of his collar as he trotted the rest of the way down the stairs.