Mysteria Nights, Page 5

  One dunk was all it’d take to silence the despicable creature forever.

  Frantic yellow eyes searched his face. Damon knew he looked fearsome to the goblin, what with the rage he felt glowing in his gut. Sensing its demise, the goblin went very still. “I’ll do anything, Master, anything.”

  Damon lowered the goblin until its bare feet hung inches from the water. Fear trembled through its thin frame. “Mercy,” the goblin wailed. “Oh, please. Mercy!”

  Damon went very still. Mercy . . .

  Harmony’s words echoed in his memory. “You’re a true man of mercy.”

  But was he? Damon swallowed, frozen to the spot, almost forgetting about the struggling goblin that was so far too panicked to sense Damon’s hesitation, his weakness.

  Nay, not weakness! Mercy was not a weakness. Mercy was never wrong!

  ’Twas it not time to prove he believed it?

  Damon turned his attention to his prisoner. “Give me your prize, goblin. Give it to me and I will let you live.”

  The goblin’s little hand unfurled. “Here, Master. Here, here. You take—please take.”

  Damon snatched the curly black strand and slipped it into his trousers pocket. Then he brought his nose very close to the little creature’s maw. The goblin’s breath was fetid and warm. Wisely, the creature chose silence, or Damon might not have trusted himself to maintain his compassion. “Never come here again—you or your cohorts. For if you do return here, ’twill not go well for you the next time.” He lowered the creature, slowly, until its heels just barely brushed the water. A sizzle and a scream brought a smile of satisfaction to Damon’s face. “Not well at all . . .”

  He threw the goblin to the ground. “Go! Return here and ye will perish.”

  “Don’t want to perish. No, no, I will go, go.” Gasping, the goblin scrabbled, limping, across the hay-strewn floor and disappeared into a small Hell hole that opened only wide enough to allow the creature to disappear.

  Sniffing the air one more time to check for subdemons, goblins, and other dark creatures, Damon had almost convinced himself there were none close by when another dark form came barreling into the barn, snorting and snuffling. A breath away from flinging the creature into the wall, Damon saw that the intruder was Harmony’s dog.

  Bubba leaped up on him, black eyes shining: a wriggling, roiling mass of pure eagerness—eagerness to see him, to smell him, and above all to please. Damon scratched him behind the ears. “Aye, I’m glad to see ye, too.”

  Next, Harmony swept through the door, her arms filled with bundles. She’d changed clothes from earlier. Her blouse was pink and form-fitting, worn over faded blue pants that hugged every inch of her long, firm legs. The flesh of her ankles peeked out between the pants and pink-and-white rubber-soled shoes.

  “Down, Bubba!” Harmony’s hair bounced in a mass of dark ringlets around her shoulders. “Damon does not want to be mauled.”

  Mauled by the dog, no, Damon thought. But mauled by you, lass, well, that would be an experience to be savored, indeed.

  “I’m sorry, Damon. He’s all over you.”

  “’Tis not a bother.” Damon took the pup’s head in his broad palms and held eye contact with the squirming animal. Be still, boy. Be still.

  The dog immediately sat on its rump. Only its tongue fluttered.

  Harmony laughed. “How do you do that? It’s amazing. I’m going to start calling you the dog whisperer.”

  “’Tis a lot like whispering,” he conceded, sorry that the talent to communicate with animals would soon leave him. With one last affectionate rub behind Bubba’s floppy ears, he turned his full attention to Harmony. His heart gave a little leap at the answering spark of interest he saw in her eyes.

  She was full of life. She filled him with life.

  Harmony smiled and reached for him, and his breath caught as he waited for her touch, but all she did was pluck a piece of straw from his shirt. “I thought you were going to rest.”

  He glanced at the portion of the floor where the Hell hole had opened. It was gone. Only displaced straw indicated where the struggle had taken place. His shoulders sagged as he dashed an unsteady hand across his forehead. He hadn’t been weary before, but he was now. Battle, he’d overheard many a mortal warrior state, exhausted a man.

  But his weariness was more a mental matter than a physical one. After tonight he might no longer be able to detect such monsters before it was too late. How then, will you protect Harmony? Hopelessness threatened to swamp him. Like the tumultuous sensations coursing through him in Harmony’s presence, he did not know quite how to quench such emotions. You must fight to control them, then. Aye, fight as he’d earlier fought to control his desire to take Harmony to the kitchen floor and make wild love to her. A shudder ran through Damon at the thought. In the silence of his mind, he tried to pray, though he knew not how. Who would listen to a prayer from a soulless demon? Certainly not God. As for the angels, he’d made enemies of most of them. Instead he simply made a plea: Help me to keep the lass safe. Give me the strength.

  “You’re exhausted,” he heard Harmony say.

  “I’ve rested long enough, lass. It’s time to put me to work. You name the task, anything at all, and I will devote myself to its thorough completion.”

  Another contemplative spark flashed in her brown eyes, quickly quenched, but not before he felt the answering heat in his loins.

  Hell’s bells, living in her presence was going to be torture. Lucifer, you have truly crafted the ultimate punishment.

  Rather hoarsely, Damon said, “Show me where I might find the tools of my labors.”

  Harmony’s gaze dropped. Then the red patches on her cheeks flared and she cleared her throat. “Oh, tools. Right. Everything’s over here.” She walked away very fast, but somehow he knew she wanted him to follow. “Everything you need. Thanks to my brothers and Home Depot.”

  “The men in your family have chosen well for you.” Damon selected a shovel, hefting it into his hand, and heard the tear of fabric. He glanced down with dread at the same time Harmony made a small sound. His shirt had split, exposing much of his chest and torso.

  Harmony ran off. For an instant he wondered if he’d scared her off for good, but she hurried back to him with the bundles she’d carried into the barn. “These are for you, and none too soon.” She shoved the packages into his hands, her attention shifting somewhere else, as if she were both tempted and afraid to look at the strips of fabric hanging from the ruined shirt. “New work clothes—and in your size, too. Now you don’t have to worry about them coming off until they’re taken off!” Her eyes squeezed shut, as if the comment about taking off clothing had embarrassed her.

  “Lass, you’ve given me too much as it is—”

  Her hands came up to stop his protest. “Don’t worry about the cost. We’ll work it out.”

  “Aye. That we will.”

  She met his eyes and blushed deeply, and he wasn’t sure why. Again, Damon tasted the air, trying to gather more information to help understand her baffling reactions—and his. She desired him, as he desired her. She could not hide the fact. It hung in the air, it permeated his senses.

  Harmony’s attraction to him, combined with his for her, was sharp and powerful, fueling passionate thoughts of sliding his hands under the garments she wore to feel the heat of her bare skin, which only exacerbated the sexual hunger building with each breath he took. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he reacted physically with the thought, growing rock hard with a new-to-him ache that left him barely able to breathe. It reminded him of the sensation when Lucifer set fires so intense that they sucked all the air from the chambers of Hell. Only this was nothing close to suffocation!

  Damon clutched the bundle of clothes to his lower abdomen, sharply relieved at having a way to cover up as sexual desire, a cataclysm of need, boiled up inside him. Never before had he been forced to face his reactions to a mortal. To a woman. To anyone.

  But ye will have to behave. You
’re a man now. A good man.

  Good, good, good, good. If he chanted it, it might sink in. Good men did not drag women like Harmony to their mouths to kiss deeply as they fell, clothes scattering, to the ground, where he’d kiss her everywhere else—

  Damon made a sound in the back of his throat. Good, good, good . . .

  A chiming little tune rang out from Harmony’s pants, startling Damon as much as it did the lass.

  She tore her eyes from his, mumbling something about taking a “call” on her “cell phone” as she pulled a little silver rectangle from her pocket. “I should have guessed,” she said, reading the glowing numbers. “What is it about fathers and timing?” She pushed a button and spoke into the phone. “Hi, Daddy!”

  While Harmony was otherwise distracted, Damon, trying with all his might to block the distraction of her scent, grabbed a pickax off a hook on the wall.

  She had a family, he thought, and then wondered at his surprise. Of course she had a family. All humans did. Unlike him, they weren’t born of shadows and darkness, the Devil’s spawn.

  “I’m doing great. How are you and Mama? And Great-grandma?” Harmony nodded, smiling as she listened. Then her grin faltered. “What did Great-grandma say?” Harmony’s gaze shifted to Damon and darted away. The red patches were back, one on each cheek. “No, I haven’t had much time for a social life. No, really! I’ve been too busy—yes, busy with the church. Oh, yes, the people here are wonderful. Just great. I’m so happy—you’re what?” She almost dropped the cell phone. “You’re coming here? In August?” she squeaked. “No, it’ll be no trouble. I can’t wait to see you, Daddy. Look, I gotta run. Church business. Give my love to Mama and everyone else. Miss you.”

  Harmony sighed as she wedged the cell phone into her pocket. “Why did I do that?”

  Damon shook his head. “Do what, lass?”

  “My father’s coming for a visit, in less than two months. With the entire family!” She pressed her fingertips into her temples, muttering, “And they’re dying to see the thriving church community I just told him about.”

  “You dinna tell him that,” Damon pointed out tactfully. “I was listening.”

  “My father made a guess based on what I told him, and I didn’t deny it. That’s just as bad! I lied to a pastor—and I am a pastor!” She glanced heavenward, appearing truly repentant as she murmured a prayer. Then she wiped her hands on her pants. “Well, there’s only one thing to do, Damon, and that’s to make what I told my father true. Somehow, I’m going to come up with a way to reel in the townspeople to this church on Sundays—and fast.” She started walking to the door. “When all else fails, cook on it.”

  “Cook on it?” he asked and she laughed from where she stood near the open door encircled by sunshine streaming around her like a halo.

  “When I have problems to solve, I head to the kitchen. I think the best when I’m cooking things. Always have, always will. Since this is a big problem, you’ll have a big dinner to look forward to.”

  Damon remembered the food from the midday meal and salivated. His stomach grumbled so loudly that he was surprised she didn’t hear it.

  “Home-made fried chicken,” she muttered as she walked away, already deep in thought. “Mashed potatoes and gravy . . . buttered corn . . . peach cobbler for dessert . . .”

  He watched her go. Well, lass, ye are not in this alone, no matter what ye think. This was his chance to help her, to prove himself worthy of her generosity. If his fair maiden needed a knight in shining armor, then that was what she’d get. While he worked at his assigned labors, he’d come up with a way to help her, though he knew not how a former demon could help fill a church with the faithful.

  Aye, but he’d figure it out. Yes, he would, and quickly.

  There was no time to change into his new clothing. In his new and very mortal life, there wasn’t a moment to waste. Not having eternity before him cast everything in a different light, in fact. Although he’d developed a certain respect for humans when he’d committed his crimes—no, his deeds—of mercy, only now that he was one of them did he fully appreciate the humans’ courage in facing a finite life. With the puppy trotting after him, he strode out into the sunshine with the promise that he, too, would brave his mortality like the man he was—or at least like the man he hoped one day to be.

  And so it was that Damon of Mysteria officially began his new life as a mortal: by digging postholes to shore up a weakened section of the front fence.

  Seven

  After an hour of working outside, the weather grew so hot that sweat soaked through his ruined shirt. Tossing aside the tattered garment, he continued bare-chested.

  After a dozen more strikes of the pickax, he scented something new and different in the air—something far more pleasant than his sweat. Damon looked up, the ax held in midair. Three women stood across the fence, staring at him.

  Their sexual interest washed over him in pheromone-laden waves. There was the aura of the dark arts about them but not evil, nay, none of that, but sorcery and magic. And their brilliant hazel eyes were afire with a light all of their own. For one panicked moment, he thought they’d figured out what he was; then he realized they were more interested in what he was now. Or at least what of him existed below his neck.

  Bubba didn’t growl, which told Damon that Harmony knew these women even if he did not.

  Slowly, Damon lowered the pickax. “And who might you pretties be?”

  The wench with long dark hair stepped closer to the fence. Her face was serious, but her sensuality smoldered. “Genevieve Tawdry. And these are my sisters—Glory and Godiva.”

  “Hello, stranger.” Glory twirled a finger in her red hair as she licked her lips. Her bosom was ample, would make many a man happy, and she eyed him with the kind of come-hither smile that had remained unchanged down through the ages. Mortal men would take it as an invitation to share in the bounty of her body. You are now mortal, too, Damon, are you not?

  Aye, he was. But as much as he found all three wenches attractive, it was only Harmony he desired.

  The wench named Godiva observed him with perceptive eyes. She had a powerful magic about her, this silver-haired witch. Could she tell his origins? He hoped not. If Harmony were to find out through her friends that he’d come from the depths of Hell, she’d banish him from her church for good. He wouldn’t lie to her, when that time came, but the longer he could put off the truth, the better. “If I’d bumped into you before,” Godiva said, “I’d have remembered. You’re new here.”

  “Aye, I am.”’Twas not really a lie. It had been three hundred years since he was last here; it was almost like being new in town all over again. He stood proudly, the ax resting on his shoulder. “I’m the new church groundskeeper.”

  “Really.” Glory exchanged a speculative glance with her sisters. “We didn’t know there’d been an old groundskeeper.”

  “There wasn’t. I’m the first.” Damon folded his hands on the tip of the shovel handle and three pairs of hungry eyes shifted to his bare chest. Their sexual interest thickened the air.

  The trio paused to whisper among themselves, glancing at him often, sometimes even his face, but mostly from his neck down. Damon noticed the shopping bags they carried. They’d been on their way home from shopping when they’d spotted him and stopped dead in their tracks. If townsfolk regularly passed this close to the church, why then couldn’t they spare a few moments more and visit on Sundays?

  An idea began to form. A magnificent idea. Harmony needed a way to lure the townsfolk inside the church. Perhaps he was the answer to that problem.

  His body had been put to far worse uses, certainly. And he’d spent ten thousand years planting doubts and fears. Could he not do the same with the women in the town, but planting interest to attend Harmony’s church instead? He wouldn’t be able to convince them in his typical fashion, for he’d lost the ability to circumvent free will when he was banished from Hell, but he could influence others, especially fem
ale others, in a much more primitive way. Aye, an age-old way.

  Damon’s mouth curved in a slow smile he was sure all three women felt to the very tips of their toes. Then, stretching his arms over his head, he worked a kink out of his back. The women looked faint as he hefted his pickax. “Alas, I cannot dally any longer. I am behind in my labors. Reverend Faithfull will beat me if I dinna get back to work.”

  Glory’s lush mouth fell open. “Harmony beats you?”

  “Only if I misbehave,” he confided in a deep and sexy burr.

  One of the witches made a small, soft sound.

  “But I’ll be doing maintenance on the church on Sunday—Sunday morning.”

  “What time?” Glory whispered.

  “A quarter to nine.” Damon winked at her, picked up the pickax, and went back to work. When he next glanced up, the sisters had walked away, but as they disappeared around the bend in the road, he saw them murmuring and giggling among themselves.

  Aye, he’d planted his seeds of interest. If things went as he hoped they would, by next Sunday, Harmony would be reaping what he’d sown.

  Eight

  On Sunday, Harmony stood on the front lawn of the church, watching in happy amazement as woman after woman filed in for the nine A.M. service. Smiling and shaking hands, she welcomed the women she’d previously seen only at the One-Stop, the gas station, or on the streets of the town.

  In uniform, Jeanie Tortellini walked up to her. Harmony couldn’t help thinking of Legolas. In fact, the other day when she’d visited the sheriff, the jail cell had been empty. Although she often wondered what had happened to the sexy elf, she hadn’t come up with a tactful way to ask the question.

  “You’ve got yourself a nice crowd this morning, Harmony,” Jeanie said.

  “I do.” Harmony tried to keep the bewilderment from her voice. It was only 8:45 and the pews were already one-third filled. With eager women. “And you’re here, too, Jeanie. I thought you had to work Sunday mornings.”