A Demon in Waiting (Sons of Gulielmus Book 1) Read online

  THE SONS OF GULIELMUS SERIES

  A Demon in Waiting

  Daughter on the Run (novella)

  Cupid in Love

  A Demon Found (novella)

  A Witch Enraptured

  An Angel Fallen (novella)

  SUMMARY

  Ariel Thomas has never been prone to reckless behavior, so picking up a gorgeous man from the roadside during her cross-country drive is totally out of character. She's usually the kind of woman who keeps her doors locked and mace at the ready, but something about the stranger gives her the kind of goosebumps she doesn’t want to go away.

  Incubus John Tate is new on the job and totally out of his element. Secluded for twenty-eight years in a desert cult, he never knew his true father, Gulielmus, was a demon. When Gulielmus offers John freedom, John follows. Tainting souls seems a small price to pay in exchange. But when his first target turns out to be a sweet, quirky woman who’s as open-minded as he is inquisitive, his plans fall to the wayside.

  John doesn’t want to corrupt Ariel—he wants to be kept by her.

  John knows that having his father for a direct supervisor means there could be harsh penalties for insubordination, and Gulielmus wants him to seal the deal with Ariel’s soul or else move on to the next victim.

  But how can John do that when she’s managed to entrance him even more than he has captivated her?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gulielmus crept through the dark hallway with all the stealth of a tap-dancing elephant. It didn’t matter how gently he set his socked feet onto the carpet. The hardwood floor creaked and groaned beneath his weight. At over seven feet tall and well over two-hundred-fifty pounds, he’d never pass an entrance exam for a ninja training school.

  Didn’t matter, anyway. As a fallen angel, he generally didn’t need to concern himself with discretion. He could vanish and rematerialize as needed.

  This was a special situation.

  “I know better now than to fuck a polygamist’s wife,” he mumbled, wrapping his fingers around the next doorknob he encountered. He let himself into the bedroom, ever so similar to the last room he’d investigated with its spartan furnishings, white paint, and boring hand-quilted bedspread. Always floral prints.

  How quaint.

  Pausing in the doorway, he sighed inwardly.

  How did I end up here, of all places, that first time, anyway?

  The compound wasn’t his usual sort of haunt.

  His nostrils contracted at the renewed bombardment of sweet heat.

  Oh.

  He inhaled deeply once again and shrugged.

  Oh, yes. The estrogen. Acres of estrogen.

  It had called to him like nectar to a hummingbird.

  At the time, he hadn’t expected to find a treasure amongst it—something worth returning to time and time again.

  Leaning over the bed, he studied the face of the woman in the satin-ribboned nightcap. He squinted. Still couldn’t tell. They all looked alike to some extent.

  Leaning in closer, he inhaled deeper, mentally separating her scent from all the others.

  Nope. Not her. She’d have his taint if she were her.

  He slipped out into the hallway again and closed the door quietly behind him. On to the next room. He hoped it wouldn’t belong to the shepherd or whatever the hell those cult types called the man of the house. So far, he’d checked six rooms and hadn’t found him, so he’d run out of options soon.

  The sound of gentle snoring met his ears before his eyes landed on the singular lump beneath the covers.

  Oh.

  He could tell from the door. That was her.

  “Jackpot,” he whispered.

  After engaging the lock, he crept nearer to the bed. He whispered her name as he leaned over her. “Darla.”

  She stirred, eyelids fluttering.

  Is that the right name?

  He scoured his memory banks. He was as older than the human reckoning than time, so there were too damned many names for him to be mindful of.

  Yes, I’m fairly sure Darla is right.

  “Darla!” he whispered.

  She opened gray eyes wide and he clamped his hand over her mouth before she could scream.

  She narrowed her eyes at him, and growled, tickling his palm with the trapped air from her throat.

  “I like it when you growl,” he cooed, drawing the hand away.

  She sat up and swatted him. “What do you want? You can’t be here. No more! You tryin’ to get me kicked out? Folks get real suspicious when I get knocked up. We track our cycles, you know. And I keep getting pregnant when it’s not my turn.”

  He patted her head. “Shhhh.”

  Maybe she had a point, though.

  How many kids do we have now? Four

  They’d certainly had more together than Gulielmus had with any other woman he shared offspring with.

  Darla was…different from the others. He’d probably encounter another woman like her again.

  And in his estimation, he was doing supernatural wonders for the shallow gene pool.

  Shoving his hands into the pockets of his Italian slacks, he shrugged. “Where is he?”

  She puffed up her chest and crossed her arms over it as she scowled. “What kind of woman do you think I am? Popping in and out of here like this is some kind of bank? Making deposits, and now this is your first withdrawal, huh?”

  “You’re so funny to be so daft. Stop toying with me.” He cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face upward so her gaze met his. “Now, where is he? He’d better be here, Darla. You better not have turned him out. You remember what I told you?”

  She rolled bleary eyes. “Yeah, yeah. That I was free if I didn’t fight you.”

  “That’s right.” He stroked her hair, lovingly. Or at least as lovingly as an incubus could manage. Affection was often a chore of effort for him. He couldn’t help that. He was what he was.

  He’d been a creature of love and light once upon a time.

  He tried not to remember those days.

  She swallowed and tilted her head toward the calico-covered window. “There’s a hunting cabin about two miles east of here, birds-eye. That’s where I sent him when the leader tried to send him away. He’s too handsome, you know. They don’t like him.”

  “Of course they don’t. Thank his superior DNA for that.”

  He clamped his lips against hers in the same way he always did to approximate a kiss and tangoed with her tongue until she moaned and pressed herself against him. He drew back. “Now, now,” he scolded. “You’re a married woman.”

  She shrugged and fiddled with the buttons of her nightgown. “Not legally.”

  He allowed himself the wanton indulgence of watching her unfasten the row of tiny buttons leading down to her full breasts. Few things appealed to his basest sensibilities like a pair of double-Ds, but he managed to get a hold of himself.

  He stood and shifted the shoes he’d been carrying to the floor. “Sorry. I don’t have time to pleasure you tonight. I’m on a tight timeline. Making the rounds, you know.”

  She flopped back and blew a raspberry.

  “Goodnight, love,” he said as he pushed his feet into his brogues.

  “Well, bye, then, Bill,” she responded in a grumble as he disappeared from her sight.

  ___

  John Tate bolted upright on the hard cot he’d been tossing and turning on and reached for the gun he kept at the bedside. He fired off a shot without warning when the intruder took a step forward.

  The intruder should have fallen. His chest should have been a bloody ruin, but the massive blond pillar stood there like a statue…and a bored
one, at that.

  The man yawned and stared in an assessing manner at his buckshot-shredded button-up shirt. “Fuck.” He flicked some shrapnel off his apparently bulletproof chest and growled. “That was a two-hundred-dollar shirt, son.”

  “S-son?”

  There was something about that word that didn’t land quite right in John’s brain.

  Slowly, realization settled into John like bad chili on an empty stomach.

  Even without a formal introduction, he knew this man. He was programmed to, in a way.

  “You’re…him.”

  “What gave it away?” The blond pillar reached out and ruffled John’s hair, an odd gesture toward a man who was nearly thirty.

  John flinched away.

  “Was it my invincibility or my unworldly good looks?” The big man wriggled his brows.

  Perplexed, John took a moment to take him in.

  He had the same yellow-blond hair as John that’d always made people at the compound whisper. His mother’s hair was nearly black, and his father-of-record had brown hair. And there were those same startlingly blue eyes and the square chin. The only thing keeping the man from being an exact replica of a Ken doll was his bulk.

  And John looked like him. There was no way to pretend coincidence was in play. The resemblance was too uncanny.

  Huh.

  John put down the gun. “I was hoping Ma was lying all these years,” he said in a breathy whisper. “Fallen angel? Come on. Who’d believe that?”

  His father shrugged. Even with the destroyed shirt, he was elegant.

  It didn’t make sense to John—that he was an offspring of that.

  He hadn’t even been able to walk without slouching until he was around twenty-two, and that man stood tall and regal like gravity had no impact on him.

  Maybe it didn’t.

  How the hell was John supposed to know? His upbringing had been extraordinarily sheltered.

  “Perhaps I’d be skeptical as well,” his father said.

  “You could have given me some warning you were coming,” John croaked because he didn’t know else to say. There was no guidebook for meeting one’s dangerous, demonic parent for the first time. “I…woulda cleaned up, you know?” He swept an arm demonstrably, indicating the dilapidated cabin’s dusty, drafty interior.

  His father didn’t look anywhere except at John. “You don’t seem scared enough of me,” he said, cocking his head.

  “Should I be?” John shrugged, suspecting his jerky shoulder movement wasn’t anything near as refined as his father’s. “I try to think stuff through, you know? And I think maybe you want something that only I’ve got, so what do I have to be afraid of?”

  The so-called demon lifted a brow and quirked one corner of his mouth into a lazy smirk—the same one John wore in every one of the few photographs that existed of him. “Hmm.” He extended a perfectly manicured hand to John to shake. “Gulielmus, no last name. Most people call me William or Bill. You can call me Dad.”

  “No thanks. I’m twenty-eight. I think that ship has sailed. Why don’t you tell me what you want?” He patted the nearby chair for the overalls he thought he’d left there, suddenly hyperaware of his underdressed state.

  He’d always imagined that if ever met his father, at the very least, he’d have his better jeans on.

  “Not one for making chit-chat, are you?” Gulielmus asked.

  “I guess I never really learned how to. Not a useful skill around here.” John gestured widely again, indicating his lonesome surroundings and the cult distantly beyond it. “I’m expendable. An extra body.”

  He didn’t wait for his father to refute that.

  The big man blinked. His nostrils flared. He seemed to grow even taller in that ominous posture of his. “How unfortunate.”

  John snorted.

  That guy wasn’t going to win any prizes for empathy anytime soon, that was for sure. John had no idea why he was expecting any. His mother had never led him believe that there anything gentle about the creature.

  But he had to have some sort of redeeming quality, John figured. Why else would she keep letting him return to her?

  “It’s time to go to work, son.”

  “Work, huh?” Laughing, John gave up on finding the overalls and slipped on a pair of dirty jeans instead. “Work, you call it. My mother was always kind of vague about what you do. Why do I get the feeling the family business will suck the life out of me?”

  Gulielmus flashed a wealth of white teeth. Surprisingly, none were excessively pointy. His tongue probably wasn’t forked, either, but John couldn’t tell for sure. His mother might have exaggerated some things.

  “No, no,” Gulielmus said. “We do all the life-sucking. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

  “She told me a lot of strange things. I thought maybe she’d gotten into some bad apple juice.”

  “You’re charming. I’m glad I kept you in my back pocket for so long because I really need you.” He held out his hand once more. “Might I see your palm?”

  Something about the insistence in his tone, despite how smooth and cultured the voice was, gave John pause.

  John clenched his hands into fists and held them at his sides. “Why do you need my hand?”

  Gulielmus’s gamine grin receded in a flash. “Because I said so. I’m asking because I’m that kind of father. I’d prefer not to just take it.”

  And he would take it.

  John didn’t doubt that.

  If he’d learned anything in nearly thirty years of living in a cult, it was to always choose the path of least resistance. He had to conserve his energy for things that mattered, and he didn’t think he was in any danger.

  Not yet, anyway.

  He extended his left hand.

  Gulielmus took it in his and used the index finger of his other hand to trace some complex symbol onto John’s palm. The movement was too for John to make out the shape, and the drawing felt like nothing more than a disorganized tickle.

  He tried to draw his hand back, but Gulielmus was already done.

  John’s palm went numb, followed by his fingers and wrist. He squeezed the hand into a loose fist and gave his sire a querying stare until the numbness moved up his arm to his torso and radiated out like a starburst.

  And then, as quickly as it started, the tingling went away.

  “What…was that?” John murmured, raising his hand to the light and staring between the fingers.

  He felt the same as before, but different in a way—more energized. It was as if every cell in his body had a keen awareness of its existence. They called out for action. For movement. For…food?

  “What did you do to me?” he asked, resting a hand over his stomach, but realizing that that urgency wasn’t emanating from there. It was deep inside, someplace he couldn’t quite touch.

  Gulielmus looked on dispassionately. “Woke you up. Normally, I claim you kids right after birth and get you online but getting into that compound poses some problems for me. Too many old religious symbols hidden out of sight, I think. Kept me from easily teleporting. Amazing how much power things people have forgotten about can hold.” He shrugged as if it was all so inconsequential. “I had to resort to more pedestrian means to get in. Anyway, I’m so glad you survived childhood. Are you even vaccinated? Oh, don’t answer. Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter? Am I damned?”

  Gulielmus shrugged. “Define damned.”

  “Is there really more than one meaning? I’m asking you if I’m going to burn in hell forever.”

  “No, unless that’s what your idea of hell is.” Gulielmus made a waffling gesture and paced. “It’s an amorphous thing. Human beings design their own hells without knowing they are, and for some, hell is their worst fear. I suggest you pick a different fear if fire isn’t your thing. Perhaps being cuddled eternally by giant bunnies or something.” Again, he shrugged. “Regardless, you’re gonna live a long, long time. Fringe benefit of being a demon.”
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  Repulsed by the word—and at the idea that he might be such a thing—John shuddered. “I’m…not that.” Even if you are.

  “Fine, fine.” His father let out a frustration-tinged breath. “You’re a cambion, technically, which is an offspring of an incubus, but let’s not quibble, hmm? Nitpicking verbiage bores me. Now, why don’t you pack up that charming bag of yours so you can start your assignment?”

  John didn’t like that word, “assignment.” It was a word that men in the cult used to make their lessers feel obligated to serve them.

  “I’ve got your territory all carved out,” Gulielmus continued, obviously not needing conversational input from John. “Wouldn’t want to overlap with one of your siblings, but I think you’ve got it in you to be far more productive than that lot. You’ve got the look.”

  “The look, huh?”

  “You’re a cambion,” Gulielmus repeated as though that was supposed to explain all.

  Maybe to Gulielmus, it did.

  Taking his sweet time, John zipped his bag closed and tightened the laces of his boots. Path of least resistance.

  He didn’t know what being a cambion meant or what his father wanted him to do, but anything had to be better than where he was.

  In twenty-eight years, he’d never been anywhere except the compound, into town, and out on a few overnight trips on behalf of their illustrious leader. And in town was just more of the same—more diehard sheep who believed their leader’s preaching.

  His eyes rolled, even thinking the lectures and sermons. He’d been born a skeptic, but it wasn’t until he was around twelve that he realized he lived in a cult.

  The members thought when they died, their spirits would join their family members on “the other side” and adhere themselves into one giant, shapeless, spiraling ball of energy. The bigger the ball, the more energy. The more energy, the more eternal swagger.

  Or something.

  John had once asked the leader what all that disembodied energy was good for. Did the energy blobs return to Earth to do good deeds or were they just like jewelry? Something people strove for, but that had no actual purpose beyond exhibiting one’s wealth?