Hellacious Box Set-Excerpt 2 (PG13)
Sly, Slick, and Wicked, just like their father, three chips off the block. Their mother, Josette, was human so her sons can live on earth if they so desire. Makes for not only an exciting Halloween–every day is an adventure with these guys!
Slick, Book 2
Slick Sathariel is Satan’s third born, the youngest triplet. He keeps the peace and makes everyone happy but himself. Not anymore. Slick can’t tell the woman he desires his family may be responsible for her lover’s disappearance, or that he’s the devil’s son. But when he sets out to capture her for himself, his family’s prying just might cause Slick to lose the one thing on Earth he truly wants.
Marcia Carter spent an hour in a handsome stranger’s arms and she’s regretted it every day since. She had been in the process of extricating herself from an unhappy affair when jealousy made her ex attempt rekindling their long-dead relationship. Now she’s available, and the blue-eyed devil is pursuing her, but Marci is not about to share her millions, or her body, with another poor bastard. Yet getting him out of her mind won’t be easy. Maybe one more time, one night…
Available at Changeling Press, Amazon, B&N, Kobo
EXCERPT:
Slick’s feet remained frozen where he stood in the elevator. “Enough already,” he cried. Marci had uttered the words “cold day in hell.” She may as well have said “till hell freezes over.” The way his day was going, he knew the backlash would strike him.
And it had.
His father kept his feet planted to the floor, cold seeping through his bones and bringing with it stabs of pain. “Father, you can’t keep me rooted here for the hour or so it’ll take to thaw there.”
I should drag your ass down here to suffer as we are.
“It’s Wick’s fault.”
Control the young woman, or leave her alone.
That wasn’t going to happen.
His body plunged out of the elevator doors, and they slammed shut. The young demon at the desk looked up in surprise. “Sir?”
“I’m good.” Trying to appear in control, he walked to the stairway where he yanked the door open, and vanished to his apartment.
“You’re back so soon?” Wick held a beer, and Sly sat across from him in Slick’s favorite chair in front of the window.
“You motherfuckers have lost your minds.” The seat Sly rested in violently tilted, tossing his brother across the room and into the wall. Turning to Wicked, he mentally flipped the beer Wick held upside down, pouring the frosty liquid into his lap.
He jumped up, glared at Slick, and burst out laughing. “Well, I’ll be damned. You do have a set of balls.” Waving his hand, he donned another pair of slacks. He turned to watch Sly right the chair. He wore a smile. “Can you believe little bro?”
“Love does funny shit to a person.”
Wicked twisted toward him. “Just don’t let this show of power go to your head.”
Slick huffed out a lungful of air. “Why, man? Why?”
“Why what?”
“Don’t play with me. This is the wrong time.”
“You think you have a chance with her?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And if he comes back?”
“She says she’s over him.” Damn, when he’d asked if she was sure, Marcia had changed the subject.
“And don’t be like Sly, making a promise to stay out of her mind.”
“I won’t need to read her mind. I can win her without that bullshit.”
“Right, right.” Wick’s laughter dripped with sarcasm.
“I’m not going to delve into her psyche and root around like you would.”
“What the fuck is it with you two?” He shook his head. “Women are most adept at telling lies.”
“Whoa, man, don’t bundle all women in a group like that. Wave would never lie.” Sly glared at their eldest brother.
Wick pulled another frosty beer out of thin air, and sat back down in the same, magically dry, spot. “Your woman is different. She has,” he glanced skyward, “ties above. She can’t lie.”
“She wouldn’t lie if she didn’t have a heavenly connection.”
Slick needed to stop this before it got out of hand. After the last altercation between his two older brothers he’d spent more time than he cared to fixing his place. “Could you two take this somewhere else?”
Wicked spun on him. “Fuck off.”
“Fuck off? This is my place. Skedaddle your ass to the fourteenth floor where you can do as you please.”
“Skedaddle. What the hell kind of word is that?” Sly laughed.
Wick wasn’t done. “You really think Waverly wouldn’t lie to you if she could get away with it?”
“Hell’s sake, Wick, let it go.” Slick was thrown against the wall, and held pinned there. “What the…”
“Answer me, Sly.”
“Bro, I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s not with Slick. Let him go.”
“You gonna make me?”
Heat in the apartment blossomed a hundred degrees, and they groaned in unison, knowing what was coming. Slick fell to the floor as it split open. The flames licked through the space followed by Lucifer’s forked tail. Flapping around, it destroyed every piece of furniture in the room before it wrapped around the triplets and yanked them through the flaming abyss, and below.
Slick brushed at the embers on his pants. “I didn’t start this shit. Wick was in my apartment playing games.”
“What is happening to each of you?”
“Each of you?” Wick flopped into a chair and eyed Sly. “I’m not the one pussy-whipped.” Turning toward Slick, he added, “Or the one trying to wrangle a piece of ass.”
“Wicked, what did crawl up your ass and die?”
Slick thought, for a change, he might come out of this unscathed.
“What the fuck do you mean?”
Holy shit! Slick watched as his brother’s lips snapped shut forming a solid line, and his cheeks puffed out. His older brother’s eyes turned red with fury, and horns sprouted only to melt into his hair.
“Don’t you dare come into my house and act like you own it. I’m not your brother, and I will whip your ass from here to kingdom come and back.” He and Sly watched silently as Satan’s horns pulled back in his head, followed by the talons disappearing, and the tail flipping out of sight. He twisted and dropped onto his throne. “Christ, I’m tired.”
A bolt of lightning blasted through the wall and wedged there. All eyes watched it wage war with the stone holding it. The shaft shook left, right, and then slid forward another foot.
Josette appeared from a white mist and stood, her back to the jagged bolt. “Lucifer, say you’re sorry.”
“The hell I will.”
“Lucifer…”
Growl and roar-it’s okay to let the beast out.- J. Hali Steele