Bound by Love Read Free Page B

dagger.
    Forehead to the hardwood floor, Eden prayed. He focused on Bel and his love for the demon. He called out in the ancient tongue, seeking the demon's scent, summoning his human half in hopes of giving Bel a trail to follow home.

Chapter Five
     
    "Andaras! Give me back what's mine!"
    Beliaz stood at the base of his father's dais in full demon form. Scrawny horns the color of dead, dried autumn leaves stretched down his forehead towards his temples like the roots of a tree too close to the surface to gain purchase. His flesh had hardened, taking on a shade of spilled Chianti from his two-toed feet, to his double-jointed legs, to the smooth skull with thick, subtly pointed ears. His tail whipped around his legs in vicious arcs that scraped his skin but also scattered his father's smaller followers. Half-human by birth, he still knew how to fight like a demon; the tail, a valuable weapon.
    Andaras lounged sideways on a black granite throne. He picked his teeth with the tip of his barbed tail. "What would that be, my son?"
    "You know damn well what. Return the ring. You have no right—"
    "Silence child!" Andaras sent a violent chill through the room with just his voice. His body still appeared as relaxed as a drunken football fan on the verge of passing out after a Super Bowl celebration. Bel knew better. He knew the power of the demon firsthand, and so he kept his distance, while keeping up the front of bravery and strength, else one of Andaras's minions might decide he'd make a good challenge.
    "The ring is mine," he said evenly. "It was forged by my hand, with my magic."
    "And created to claim the love of an angel."
    A hushed whisper flowed and ebbed through the room. Beliaz narrowed his eyes and stretched and flexed his claws. "Ownership. I claim ownership of the angel. I wish the ring so that it will remain bound to me."
    "It?" Andaras laughed. "You are slack in your deceit, son of mine. You say the words but you do not mean them. I saw the flinch in your lips. It pains you to refer to the angel as anything but lover."
    Gasps and growls emanated from the shadows around the cavern.
    "Show the ring," Bel shouted. He moved to the first step and waved his hand around the room. "Show them. It has the shadowfire of the binding ritual in it. That will prove my intent."
    Andaras snorted. "It proves nothing."
    "Everything. The ring is mine. The angel is mine. What do you want with some low ranked Fallen of His anyway? The beast has little magic left and no fight."
    More murmurs and Bel felt confident they were in his favor. Everyone knew that Beliaz and Andaras had their differences. There were no familial relationships within the circles of Hell that didn't struggle for power. Andaras's lack of control over his own flesh had never sat right among the denizens of the underworld. To resort to childish stealing of possessions did not bode well for Andaras, unless he proved he had a purpose.
    "You want it, then come take it."
    There it was. Beliaz wavered on that first step. He couldn't best his father, a full-blood demon; no half breed could hope to challenge him successfully. Andaras waved his hand and a tall female strode forward from the darkness. She took the dozen stairs two at a time and landed at the top in a genuflection before Andaras.
    "Come now, son of mine. Meet your half-sister. Kimi-Ari is another bastard child half-breed, but she's smart enough to know which side to stand on."
    Kimi-Ari stood and turned to face Beliaz. Her double rows of fangs glistened with blood from her own torn lip. She grinned down at him with all the malice of their father, but it wasn't her expression that hardened Bel's resolve, for he had no reason to care about her. The ring he'd given to his cherished angel, hanging from a leather thong around her neck, inspired more violence than his father ever did.
    He strode up the stairs and snarled at Kimi-Ari on the way past. In front of his father, Beliaz knelt, keeping his eyes cast to the