The damned, p.1
The Damned, page 1
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For those who weren’t believed
TRIGGER WARNINGS
The Damned is a dark paranormal romance that takes place in Hell between a witch and an archdemon, and due to the nature of that dynamic, features content that may be triggering for some readers. Most importantly, our heroine, Margot, is a survivor of childhood sexual assault and the story centers around her emotional and physical journey to healing her trauma. Please read at your own discretion.
Triggers include:
Dubious consent
Force-feeding
Graphic on-page violence and torture
Rough and explicit sexual content
Forced proximity and captive scenarios
Betrayal
References to past abuse and traumatic reactions to triggering stimuli
Knife violence
Graphic depictions of blood
Physical harm inflicted upon the main character
Ritualistic murder
Rape of a minor by an adult (off-page, historical context)
Self-harm / cutting for magical purposes
Blood magic
LEGACIES OF CRYSTAL HOLLOW
CRYSTAL WITCHES (also known as Whites)
House Petra
House Beltran
COSMIC WITCHES (also known as Purples)
House Realta
House Amar
EARTH WITCHES (also known as Greens)
House Madizza
House Bray
AIR WITCHES (also known as Grays)
House Aurai
House Devoe
WATER WITCHES (also known as Blues)
House Tethys
House Hawthorne
SEX/DESIRE WITCHES (also known as Reds)
House Erotes
House Peabody
FIRE WITCHES (also known as Yellows)
House Collins
House Madlock
NECROMANCY WITCHES (also known as Blacks)
House Hecate
PART I
1
BEELZEBUB
Before
It was fucking cold.
Lucifer had promised us a haven, and we’d gotten a half-frozen tundra where frost covered the grass in the morning. I’d never thought to miss the heat of Helfyre lingering nearby, but would it kill them to have the fireplaces lit in a place this cold and damp?
My black leather wings brushed against the archway as I crossed through one of the narrower hallways, forcing me to tuck them in tight and duck my head down low so I could fit through. Scraping my wings against the stone walls might not have caused any damage, but it sure as fuck would serve a single purpose.
Pissing me the Hell off.
Lucifer was out of His mind giving that much of His blood to His consort, and I’d left them at the boundary of the woods, feeling entirely unsettled, after she’d clearly attempted to escape. I didn’t know how she’d managed to wrap Him around her finger so efficiently; it wasn’t like she was a Red witch and had corrupted Him with the addictive nature of sex.
She was nothing special, just another human. He’d seen countless others who would have been willing to warm His bed and been far less complicated in the end.
I’d seen demons and lost souls fawn over Him in Hell, and I could only imagine the way they went for Him in the plane of the living, especially at a time when they hadn’t known how dangerous He truly was.
I strode through the hallways, heading toward the rooms Lucifer had given to the archangels in the meantime. It was a tiny, secluded hallway just off the Tribunal rooms and the courtyard that was crawling with plants that practically writhed with life.
Whatever the witches had done, that part of the world oozed with power in a way that the rest of Hollow’s Grove didn’t.
I’d spent the rest of my day after leaving them tending to the business that Lucifer should have been handling Himself. Keeping the archdemons in line, teaching them not to eat the witches for their lunch.
To keep their hands off until Lucifer worked out how He saw all this going down. Ruling over them had always been His intent, and where our visions for this world differed. He saw them as wayward children, as beings He could bring to heel and live alongside.
I saw them as the reason Lucifer had abandoned us in Hell, and it stood to reason that they should know how that solitude felt for themselves. They didn’t seem to appreciate having Him walk among them for all these centuries, not the way His faithful demons would have been overjoyed to have Him return to us.
To choose us.
Him having a witch for a wife—a complication none of the archdemons had seen coming—wasn’t part of the plan.
I faltered in my steps, hearing the soft sound of an innocent melody ringing through the night as I went about my patrols. All the witches had retreated to bed before dark, as if they feared what the archdemons might do to them if they were caught out of their rooms at night. It was a wholly foolish endeavor. They should have known, as well as anyone could, that evil wasn’t relegated to darkness.
We could kill them just as easily under the shining sun of day.
The plants in the courtyard swayed in place in tune with the soft melody. The woman’s voice was husky and low. I glided forward on steady, sure feet, unable to resist the call of that tone. I couldn’t see her, not with the way the plants shielded her from view.
Muffling her song, I realized. Keeping it private in an area that might have otherwise been occupied if not for the witches’ fear of us. The very notion that one of them was brave enough to come out alone when the others weren’t would have been enough to pique my curiosity as it was. But the heartbreaking beauty in that song tugged at the place a heart would have been, had I believed myself to have one.
A smarter male would have turned away for that reason. While I’d never heard the song of a witch before, I knew of the power they held for all who heard them—the way some witches used them to ensnare their victims so they could feed from the lust they crafted.
I moved forward anyway, drawn to that sound in ways I couldn’t otherwise explain, enraptured like a moth to the flame. I approached the stone wall at the side of the courtyard, stepping over it with ease to approach my captor. The roses formed an archway in the center of the garden, almost like a walkway that was created for me, leading me down the path to temptation.
A woman lingered at the end of the tunnel they formed, her back to me. Wavy blond hair fell to just above her shoulders in layers, making it look fluffy and softer than anything I’d ever felt. The sudden need to touch it overcame me, making me take another step as my gaze trailed down over the smooth expanse of her shoulders. Her deep red top dipped low in the back, revealing the curve of her spine. She’d tattooed music notes up the center, the ink billowing out into wisps as it met the defined lines of muscle that ran down either side.
Her plaid skirt was short, and the white thigh-high stockings hugged her long legs and the smooth definition of them. There wasn’t a lump in sight where the top of the stocking met her thigh. I could already imagine the strength I would find in those legs if I ran my fingers up the length of them, immediately making me want to know more about her vice of choice—the exercise she used to gain such obsessive control over her body.
There wasn’t a hair out of place on her head, not a speck of dirt or lint anywhere to be found on her clothing.
She was careful and meticulous about her appearance, but something in it felt more forced than natural, the tattoo up her spine the only hint of the real woman who lingered beneath that careful external control.
I took another step, wincing at the sound of a stick cracking beneath my boot. The plants ceased to move as they sensed my presence, the swaying roses and vines of ivy stilling in a way that only made my misstep feel louder in the silence that followed.
The woman spun suddenly, her song stopping as her hair flipped to reveal her pretty, shocked face.
No, pretty wasn’t a strong enough word.
She was an angel, her mahogany eyes wide and her perfect bowed lips parted in shock. Her eyes drifted closed as she took in the sight of me and sighed, and I couldn’t stop the growl that rumbled in my chest.
Didn’t she recognize the predator in her midst?
I stalked forward, pausing only when she stumbled back a step in fear. Her cheekbones were high, cut like glass, and her nose the perfect button at the center of her face. Her uniform revealed a line of cleavage, showing breasts ample enoug h to fill my hands.
“I didn’t mean for anyone to hear me,” she said, her voice a husky melody tinged with apology. There was a roughness to it that reminded me of passion on a hot summer’s night, that made me think of balmy air and sweat-slicked bodies.
“I heard you, songbird,” I said, taking another step forward.
The woman winced as if I’d physically struck her. “You’ll unhear me soon enough,” she said, stepping around me. She kept her head down as she tried to pass me by, her entire body scrambling frantically when I reached for her and my fingers brushed her arm.
I retreated from the touch immediately, unable to understand why I cared enough to respect her wish for space. She was a witch, the very creature I had spent centuries of life despising and plotting for the day I could punish them as I’d been punished. They deserved to know every bit of pain that came with being left behind, to have a life without hope in the darkest of all places.
So why did the very idea that she’d already known such pain fill me with rage I thought myself incapable of after all these years?
My brow furrowed, narrowing down on the look of panic on her face. There was no mistaking the caution there. The fear of being touched.
Who?
I didn’t voice the question, shoving my hands into my pants pockets to appease her. She was already so jumpy. She tracked my every movement, her body tense as if waiting for me to attack.
Her feet were shoulder-width apart, braced to fight just as much as to flee. That alone earned my respect, knowing that she would do whatever it took to navigate her way out of danger—that she’d likely vowed to take any would-be attacker down with her.
The muscle tone in her delicate body only confirmed it.
“What’s your name?” I asked, watching as she ran her tongue over her lip to wet it. My entire world narrowed down to the movement, my body tensing with the need to feel that wet heat on my lips. I knew it had to be a consequence of her song, this attraction that was so potent and unnatural it could be nothing less than her magic working its way through my body, attempting to twist me into her willing servant.
“My name doesn’t matter. You’ll forget all about me soon enough,” she said, turning on one of her high heels. She moved like a professional in them despite the dirt beneath her feet, easing her way over the stone half-wall border that surrounded the flourishing courtyard. Her heels clicked against the stone floors as she fled quickly, but she didn’t run. She didn’t give me the privilege of that fear.
Leaving me staring after the mystery woman, wondering how anyone could ever forget her.
2
MARGOT
The weight of my mother’s gaze never left me during the class that had long ago become the bane of my existence. Growing up under the thumb of my aunt, the Erotes Tribunal member, was no easy task, but it meant that I already knew all the theology surrounding our magic and the ways that it worked. While my aunt was the Erotes Tribunal member, she hadn’t had children of her own so she and my mother had taken it upon themselves to work in tandem when it came to my education.
That was knowledge she often used to her advantage, asking me for answers that she knew I had when others wouldn’t. While the Reds as a whole were more sexually liberated than many of the families within the Coven, that didn’t mean that all of them were quite as encouraging as my mother had been.
She’d known even from a young age that I wasn’t like the rest, that my magic had a darker nature than many of the others’. They could control the pull in their songs, having to expend effort and magic in order to allow that magic to seep beneath someone’s skin and claim them from the inside, until their body was only an instrument to be used.
I’d never had a choice, never had the option to reject the magic that so easily pulsed at my fingertips. It was in everything I touched, in everything I did, and in every word I sang.
It was the reason I refused all invitations to join the choir that occupied most of the Reds’ free time, the reason I often kept to myself in the library instead of spending time with my peers. They didn’t understand the weight of that magic and what it meant for me.
They didn’t understand how it had come to be my curse.
“Are you even listening, Margot?” my mother asked, forsaking the general understanding that even when teaching their own offspring, they are meant to keep a certain level of distance from their progeny.
Here, I wasn’t supposed to be Fritha Erotes’s eldest daughter, daughter of the next heir to the Erotes Tribunal seat, as my aunt who currently occupied that seat had no children of her own. Here, I was supposed to be a cool, collected Miss Erotes, like so many of the others who occupied the class alongside me—cousins and second cousins and family members who descended from the same line but had merged far enough back that it became impossible to keep track.
The Peabody legacies sat on the other side of the classroom, the divide between the two more evident than ever.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, giving a meek nod of my head as I looked down at the book in front of me. A quick glance to my cousin Belva beside me confirmed that I was six pages behind, lost to my own thoughts. Even before I’d noticed my mother staring at me, it had been a certain red-eyed archdemon who occupied my mind.
Seeing him in the courtyard the night before had kept me awake all night, and I knew half my mother’s anger was probably for what she saw as my lackluster appearance in the wake of that. The first rule of Reds was that appearance was everything, and one couldn’t use magic to replace a good night’s sleep and a few extra moments of care in the morning.
“Then explain to me the exact functioning of the cone of power and the ways that we use that for the ultimate power manifestation,” she said, making my cheeks flush with heat as all eyes turned to me.
Goddess, sometimes I wished I had a normal relationship with my mother where discussing these things was uncomfortable for all involved and not just me.
“When utilizing the cone of power, a witch stores all the magic that she has accumulated during sex, from both her and her partner’s desire, within her body until the point of climax is reached. At that point, she uses her body as a conduit and sends it into the universe, making her intentions clear as she does and using it to fuel the spell so that her desired outcome can come to pass,” I said, the words almost verbatim from the textbook in front of me.
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t even turned to the proper page, not when those words had been drilled into my brain from the time I turned eighteen and my mother expressed her disappointment that I wasn’t showing signs of interest in any of the extracurricular activities my peers had already begun to engage in.
My mother nodded, turning away from me and continuing on about her lesson that I’d already heard countless times. I heaved a sigh of relief the moment her attention was elsewhere, my thoughts immediately returning to the danger waiting for me.
I didn’t know how long it would take for the archdemon to show his face in my life, but I knew the song would demand it of him. He wouldn’t be able to stay away, and that was the consequence of my taking a moment to sing.
I’d been too afraid to venture out to the outskirts of the school, to run along the edge of the woods until I was far enough from listening ears that I could sing freely. I’d thought the witches had all gone to bed and that maybe I would be safe in that abandoned courtyard so late at night.
Instead, I’d managed to entrap one of the greatest dangers to my well-being. I didn’t even know which archdemon he was, having never paid as much attention to my schooling when it came to the history of the Coven. If it had been a few days prior, I might have turned to Willow for advice.
But my friend had enough to worry about with the devil claiming to be her husband. The last thing she needed was to worry about my safety.
The bell rang, sounding the end of the last class of the day. It seemed stupid to continue with our education like our entire world hadn’t just turned upside down, like the devil and His archdemons didn’t walk the earth for the first time in history.
