Chapter 1
The blood of the demon boiled, its carcass covering Lucian in gore.
The CEO of Iron Entertainment, the world’s top music producer, and hottest rock record label, with roots in jazz from the 20s, took his oak leaf loafer and stomped his assailant demon’s chest, spattering it’s heart onto his ivory Armani three piece suit, red tie, and coattails.
Lucian grinned, checking his Rolex, and red flashed in his amber eyes, his black stylish hair glimmering like horns. His skin shone like cinnamon, and the gold highlights in his spiky cut made him look like a telenovela star.
“Susanna Ponderosa. We meet again. To what do I owe the pleasure of my spy, finding me at such a dangerous time as this?” Lucian De Vine purred, delicately tracing his platinum Dior serpent cuff links and smelling of Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille perfume, with a musk of blood orange underneath the ambergris cigar notes of his favorite scent.
I frowned at the corpse of the incubus that had exploded in a Meat District warehouse, abandoned for ten years. “Were you aware this Goetic’s assassin was hot on your trail? What were you doing, Tez?” I narrowed my cinnamon bark eyes, quirking my coral painted lip as the hilt of my Colt Revolver glinted in the moonlight, outside the dim, shuttered windows that only let anemic light through.
“Well, you seem to have murdered this leech before it got to my toenail... despite causing quite the mess. Suzie, work on your shot.”
I gritted my teeth. “Boss –”
“Just Tez.”
I took my Louboutin and ground some salt powder into the ceremonial circle I had trapped the would be, low level killer in. “You know I’ve been busy, entertaining clientele, gathering little whispers so you can plot your next move. I’ve only been away from the range in the Adirondacks for a week.”
He lit a Cuban cigar with a gold Renswick lighter carved with crossing polo players. Lucian winked, his amber eyelashes hazing in the cigar smoke. It reminded me of my father in Tijuana, when he would sit long on the porch with a Cuban cigar, reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez on our farm with a Corona, before the embargo went up.
I flashed back to the present. “What would you have me do, boss?”
Lucian’s lips curled at my use of his formal title. “The New Jersey Devil Range. The one Itzpapalotl trains at. Accompany my sister Itziqua, learn a few tricks from her... so this all is less... carnal.”
He snapped his finger, and the mess on our clothes and floor vanished. My pantsuit from Chanel, a navy blue with gold buttons and white hem against my black hair that smelled of rose oil and my favorite bodega perfume, was good as new. Good, because it was my only one. Lucian De Vine was Prince of this World, the Black Sun Jaguar, but that didn’t mean he paid me. Anything at all, for that matter.
What I owed him was my life. Boss gave me power, a small flat in the Bronx, and enough spare change for gas, simple things, and all the Underworld as my clientele. I was his bodyguard, spy, and personal courtesan, hired for my keen intellect at 12, raised by his sisters and brothers in the finest of boarding schools in the underground of Manhattan, wanting for nothing –
And missing everything.
“Alright boss, I will.”
We took his limo back to Upper Manhattan, to his four story penthouse atop Central Park.
He fixed us rum spiked with sherry, an odd taste for a powerful man, and we gazed out the window at Manhattan’s glimmering lights. He had shucked off his suit, dressed in charcoal slacks and an elegant, flowing Egyptian cotton top, buttoned halfway open to expose the thick black hair on his chest.
I held a Chesterton on the porch – I was addicted to the things – and swilled his eclectic drink. Buzzed, I put the empty glass on the outdoor bar, as the marble stone and quartz firepit flushed its glowing gas flame, warming us on this December night. Stars sparkled in the sky, and I swore I could hear La Llorona weep by the Hudson, mourning the deaths of my three siblings – Lucia, Eduardo, and Petra.
I knew Abuela Rosanna was at home, making birria tacos... but somehow, I couldn’t leave the perfectly classic, perfectly expensive, perfectly sterile, dead penthouse of Tezcatlipoca.
He borrowed a Chesterton, his long, thin brass hands leaning on the hem of my skirt. He traced my ass, running a thumb on the line of my thong. It was black. All my undergarments, black – to deal with the blood.
Angel blood. Vampire blood. Cyclops blood. Aswang blood. Fey blood. Gumiho blood.
Blood filled all my dreams, and to me
Tez tasted
Like blood.
He smiled gently at me, putting his roaming hand over my shoulder. “You did good, Ponderosa. You’re seeing the Don of the Lupa Tribe tomorrow at midnight. Take the day off tomorrow. Try to discover a hobby. I heard wine and paint classes were the thing single thirtysomethings do.”
I scowled. “I have no interest in marriage, Tez. Marriage is the dominion of Aslot, and I and abuela are brujas – daughters of Lailah, not Eva. I’ll have Marquez back you up tomorrow with our competitors Tome Imalia. They’re trying to offer to Celsus Magnus blood money to switch to their contract, saying he’s pressing charges against Iron Entertainment for intellectual property theft.”
“Bullcrap,” my god spat, his hard, bulking muscles glimmering under the designer shirt. His shapely thighs and ass, hardened by clean eating, weights, and running – constantly running as if he had lost his soul – distracted me. “Celsus signed exclusively. We treat his reinvention of prog rock like a king. Where does Tome Imalia think they can even understand Celsus Magnus’ genius? Or, are they after him for his alchemy?”
I smirked. “Capture, brainwashing, and torture with lamia poison is what they’re thinking of doing to poor Celsus, so he leaves the King of Music.”
Lucian De Vine smiled like sin. “Alright, I lied. You solve this with me tomorrow... and take me along for the ride in your crusty Fix Me Fiat. Electric Yellow, is it.”
“If you want me to have a nice car, pay me a living wage,” I gritted, desperately unbuttoning his top. “You’re a bastard, boss.”
His cock was pink, girthy, large, and veiny and erect as I unzipped and unbuttoned his fly.
“Better a bastard than a saint of Aslot. At least I don’t eat small children’s hearts, or roam the world as a lion, expunging “filth” from the world with holy fire. We will get the Ponderosa siblings back – even if it takes a godsdamned bargain with Huehuecoyotl,” he breathed, moaning as I mouthed his cock.
Deepthroating boss, enticement buzzed in my loins, and I fingered my wet, pink clit as he pulled my long black curls, pumping into me.
I clutched the wooden rosary on my throat, the scapular under it clapping against my breast.
Islot and his hosts, foreign gods that ruled America.
This was not the land I knew.
When Lucian De Vine came, his cum smelled of champagne, and tasted of cherries and Gautreau wine.
He looked at me in hunger.
“Time to eat you, little Susanna...” he purred, quickly sweeping me off to bed
Bride over church door style
And slamming the cherrywood door to his palacial, ornate bedroom
Behind.
Eating me
Like one
Of his
Hearts.
