Demon’s Heart Trilogy

Book One: Dangerous to a Demon’s Heart

Chapter one

            Adriana stepped from the cover of a skeletal, leaf-stripped tree and looked over her shoulder. She had walked for hours but even this far from Pandemonium she could still hear the explosions and see flames leap into the sky above the capital city of Hades. Demons were at war. She didn’t want to return to Earth, not really, not like this anyway – without her mother. But she was out of options and had no choice but to flee. Earth did hold many interesting things though like… well, like men for instance and love. A thunderous explosion mushroomed into the dark sky. She could think about love later, right now she had to stay focused and keep the promise she made to her mother – to hide on earth.

            Adriana sidestepped broken bones and crushed skulls and walked through the darkness. High above her a flying demon shrieked. She could hear heavy wings beat the air as something or someone flew in a rush above her. Adriana wished she could take to the sky, but she had not yet experienced her unfolding, that momentous event when her wings emerged and marked the transition from nymphet to succubus. She wasn’t there yet. As things stood right now, she was the daughter of Burnabella, queen of the succubus. She was nymphet whose wings had not unfolded and who had never lain with a demon or a man. And oh yeah, she was alone and on the run. All of that made her a target for every trophy hunting, perverted, power-seeking demon in hell. Literally every demon in existence. If she could just find the portal to Earth her mother had hidden for her, she could leave the danger behind and wait safely on earth until her mother came for her.

            After walking another mile, Adriana stopped to get her bearings. She stood on a hard, glass-smooth slab of obsidian, her body wrapped in a human dress and clutching a valise in her hand. To any human she would appear like she was waiting for a train, to the demon who had followed her since she left the city she looked like the answer to his war. Adriana stared into the darkness a little lost. The portal had to be near here. Had she passed it? Maybe it was a little further east? Adriana started walking, stopped, turned around took two steps in the other direction and stopped again.  

            “Are you lost, little sweetling?” A dry voice cracked in the darkness.

            Adriana hid her surprise with a practiced control. It was too late to be scared. She turned to face the demon who now loomed and leered above her. The ancient and powerful demon stood six feet away, tall, thin and draped in black cloth. She recognized the white skin on his face, peeled and cracked like a dry river bed.

            “Darlinhilius. You’re a long way from home,” Adriana said boldly. “Don’t you have a war to fight, or have you lost sooner than everyone predicted?”

            “I should say you’re the one a long way from home,” he suddenly vanished and reappeared with his long white fingers around Adriana’s neck, “and all alone too.”  

            Adriana fought to keep her balance as Darlinhilius lifted her to her toes. The hand around her neck choked her scream. Her life was about to end and before she had even started to live. There was so much she wanted to do: kiss under the full moon, soar through the sky with her wings unfolded, lay with a man, fall in love. A resolve to live steeled in her bones. She would not go easily nor give him the pleas for mercy he so craved to hear. She would fight. At once, a drop of blood blotted from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek in a red rivulet to her lips. She tasted blood in her mouth. For a moment Adriana thought Darlinhilius had squeezed the life from her but then a scarlet heat began to spread across her skin and flood her vision with hues of crimson. Two distinct lines of pain began to slice along her spine. Sharp talons pushed through her fingertips. No, she thought. Not now. Not like this. This was not how she dreamed her unfolding would take place. She fought against the demon’s fatal grip around her neck.       

            “Put. Her. Down,” a deep voice swallowed the darkness as the Imperator of hell appeared. His skin burned with hell’s flames. Horns twisted from his skull at vicious angles. Every muscle rippled full of anger and rage. He waved his hand in the air like swatting a fly and something unseen struck Darlinhilius in the chest sending him backward in a crumpled bundle of black cloth. The Imperator of Hell stepped over Adriana staring down the white-faced demon.

            “Belakus,” Darlinhilius scrambled to his feet, “you honor me with your presence.”

            “You dare attempt this?”

            Adriana struggled to understand why the very demon who, just hours before, had banished her mother and destroyed their home was now protecting her. She rolled to her side in renewed agony. Her body seemed to be in revolt. Why now? Why, alone, here of all places, would her unfolding take place? The air around her began to thin and a wind pulled at her dress and her tresses of hair. She couldn’t hear what the Imperator was saying. Suddenly, the pain along her spine sharpened and Adriana screamed as two wings forced their way through her skin then slid back in. She should be with her mother for the unfolding. Damn these demons and their war. Adriana tried to stand, tried to find the energy to fight and rage and curse and scream. Then behind her, ribbons of blue energy appeared. An unseen hand wrapped around Adriana’s body and threw her through a swirling portal.   

Rain bounced off dirty cobblestones and spattered mud on Adriana’s cheek. Rivulets of water filled gaps in broken brick and stone and ran around and under her body. Painfully, she pushed herself to her hands and knees. Palms flat on wet stone, knees bare and scraped, she let her head hang. A cold rain fell through the back of her torn dress but did nothing to ease the burning double lacerations along her spine.

The sudden laughter of nearby humans echoed down the empty alley. The sound startled her. Wings exploded into the air, tore through bleeding wounds, ripped flesh anew. Her scream cut into the dying light of day then fell to the ground with the rain. Oblivious to the rain, or the pain or the danger of being seen, Adriana’s black wings perched defiantly in the air like two disobedient dragons.

I am going to die.

Adriana lifted one palm from the cobblestone street and pulled wet strands of hair from her mouth. She winced. Pain squeezed her ribs together. Each breath of air compressed into a short gasp. Her wings stretched and flapped above her, testing their strength, enjoying their freedom. Each flutter spasmed her muscles and wrenched her spine. She drew a deep, painful breath, pushed herself to her knees and sat back on her heels. Her wings flapped, adjusting to the new position. The tip of her right wing caught the near wall. Brick and mortar crumbled. Adriana winced as the vibration carried along her wing and down each vertebra. She had seen her mother’s wings appear and disappear effortlessly. Adriana willed her wings to disappear. Nothing. Instead, they flapped enough to lift her off the ground.

“Enough.” She snapped. “From the both of you.”

They didn’t disappear but they stopped flapping. Adriana fell to the ground. Her sore scraped knees drove hard into the broken cobblestone. Before the pain could register, Adriana sensed danger. Her eyes stopped blinking. Threatened with death, the smallest detail missed could mean your end. The laughter that had startled her came from humans. They were close. Their energies mingled and twisted and floated towards her. Adriana’s wings instantly receded. Thick, black skin and hard bone folded and rushed through raw open flesh. The pain took her breath, racked every muscle, tortured her body. She fell forward to her hands and vomited.   

With her eyes closed she knew there were two women and two men. She didn’t need to be able to read energy to know they had stopped to stare. The women’s thoughts appeared in her mind like green smoke: vindictive, personal hate without reason, a level of scorn and contempt that should be impossible between strangers. Adriana ignored the two women and their unfounded contempt. Human women think that way about other women. Adriana’s mother had taught her that much.

“Women will never know or understand our true nature,” Burnabella had explained.

The two men staring at her now had a mixture of thoughts, none of them decent. They had each paid for the time and services of the girls on their arms. One of them was cheating, he had a girl at home with child. The other was lonely and had not been with a woman for some time. They both looked at Adriana with lust and longing. Their grips loosened on the girls they had paid for. They each gazed lasciviously at her ripped dress and the way wet fabric clung to her breasts. The first man, however, the cheater, went further. Adriana watched thoughts play out in his mind. He would take the paid girl to a room and be quick. He would feed her more cheap drink and steal the coin he had already given her. Then he would leave her and make his way back to the alley. There, in the dark, he would choke, force, and violently take Adriana in the gutter.

“Come on,” one of the trollops whined, “get me outta here.”

“Yeah,” echoed the other, “that hussy will probably be dead soon. We aint want tuh be here for that.”

Adriana didn’t move or look at them as they started to walk away. The turn of a tin flask cap. The scuff of a shoe on wet cobblestone. The acrid stench of hard, cheap liquor and even cheaper perfume. The dismissive thoughts of trollops happy to be on their way with paying customers. The eagerness of the lonely man to push his palm-worn penis into the well-used slit of the girl on his arm. The disgusting arousal of the cheating man planning to return and defile her dead or alive. Adriana began to understand why her mother killed men.

            The rain slowed as darkness descended. A lamplighter whistled as he carried his ladder and readied the streets for the night. Adriana pushed herself to her knees and then to her feet, fighting pain and nausea. She had to get up and keep moving.

            “Promise me you will wait at Westington.”

Adriana could still hear her mother’s words. She remembered how her mother had grabbed her by the shoulders as the walls of their tiny house in Pandemonium shook.

“I promise Mother.”

            “Stay hidden. Your wings should not unfold for at least another year. I will come for you by then.”

            Alone, Adriana took a step in the increasing darkness.

 A year mother? My wings are here now.

            Adriana clutched the valise she had packed in a rush as she fled Pandemonium and walked to the end of the street hoping to find a more main thoroughfare. There was only more of the same: narrow, broken cobblestone streets buckled and heaved as though squeezed by the buildings alongside them. She had no idea which street to take. They all looked the same, especially in the darkness. In truth, she didn’t know if she would be any safer at Westington Manor than out on the street. Nobles and lords have hidden intentions and secret agendas that are much more subtle and complex than the plebeian on the street who only looked for beer, pussy and a game of dice.

            The lamplighter’s ladder rattled against a lamppost a street away. Adriana could feel his quiet, satiated thoughts as he lit each wick with a boyhood fascination for the flame. She looked at his memories, his dreams, his secrets. His father was a lamplighter before him. He had carried on the tradition. It is what he did, who he was. He had never considered anything else. He was a simple man. He was a family man. The kind of man that wouldn’t be so happy to see a full-blown succubus rise from the shadows. His simple-minded screams would bring the entire neighborhood to their windows. Adriana left him to his work and moved in the opposite direction.

            She had walked three blocks, maybe four, when she felt the cheating man searching for her. She saw his mind and memory clearly; how he pushed the paid girl away leaving her to a ménage-de-trios with the lonely man and the trollop on his arm, how he rushed back through the streets his lips and mouth dry with expectation, how his penis jutted hard and violent in his pants, how his blood raced and pulsed at the thought of her ripped dress and limp, defenseless body lying in the street. He would lift her dress and have a good close look at what was under there. He would touch her with his fingers, position her body with his hands just as he desired then push into her because she couldn’t say no. 

            Adriana stopped moving. He stood now where she had lain in the gutter. From blocks away she could read his every thought, conscious and subconscious. Lust and anger fuelled his blood as he saw her body was gone. He would find her and make sure she stayed on the ground, make sure she didn’t move. The sense of danger brought a pulse to the corner of Adriana’s eyes. She stopped blinking. There were few streets between them, and it wouldn’t take him long to find her. Sharp talons pushed toward her fingertips itching for the chance to curve into the world and taste the flesh of a man for the first time. “It’s ok,” she whispered to her talons, “be still.”

            The cheating man looked down the darkened street. Driven by blind lust and a singular, salacious need, he began to run. His penis sniffed the air and led him towards her like a bloodhound. Adriana stood her ground. She sensed his movements, read his thoughts, knew his intentions. Scarlet heat spread from the corner of her eyes and across her skin. He would not find her broken, cowed or afraid. Her wings pushed against unhealed wounds. “Shhhhhh,” she hushed them gently. “I can handle this.” Warm, fresh blood trickled down her lower back. If her wings exploded now the pain would leave her helpless. Adriana sensed the diminishing space between them.

He came around the corner at full speed stopping abruptly at the sight of Adriana standing tall in the middle of the cobblestone street. Anger coiled in his stomach. Why was she standing? She should be on the ground and not moving. Her ripped, wet dress should be high on her leg and clinging to her breasts. She should be face down and ass up in the rain. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what he wanted. She should be still, letting him have his way.

Eyes wild and open, the last light of day illuminated his singular, frenzied, intention. Adriana read his mind. There was nothing but his need to force her, to take her, to hurt her. His rapacious lust obliterated all thought, all memory, all identity: his job, his dreams, his girl at home with child. There was no fear of any consequences for what he wanted to do.

“You’re a whore,” the cheating man snarled. “Built for only one thing.”

 Adriana said nothing. She looked the man straight in the eyes and kept her mind focused on his thoughts. As simple and as base as he was, she experienced the complexity of his state; the short, hungry breaths, the tension in his legs as he contemplated rushing her, the promise of penetration and release filling his emptiness,  a hatred and resentment, caged and fed for years, now unleashed and directed at her, the fear and hesitation because she did not cower before him, the inability to stop his campaign down the road he had chosen this dark, rainy evening.

He took a step forward.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said, “a lot. And it won’t be quick. You’re going to love it though. Every inch of it.”

Adriana saw it before it happened, like lightning before thunder. She knew he would go for her neck even before he began his charge toward her. She sensed his confusion as he closed the distance between them. Why did she not move or run or beg for him to stop? She saw his inability to change course. Anger, lust and rage ruled his thoughts. There was nothing else. Adriana pitied him for a brief moment before his hands gripped her neck. She saw a lonely, insecure, unhappy, beaten down, struggling man. Then she saw the cold rapist wanting her demure and fettered and limp so he could plunge his small angry erection between her legs. Any sympathy vanished.

His breath reeked of cheap alcohol and poor hygiene. His hands, hardened and rough with labor, circled her neck. An inch apart she saw the blind rage in his eyes, then the shock – pupils widening with horror and realization – then the emptiness as his life slipped away. He slumped to the ground. Blood gushed from a ragged hole in his chest. Adriana stood still,  human, except for a long, scarlet tail – beautiful in its viciousness – the fishhook tip stained with blood and hanging from it the flesh of a male human heart.       

            “My first kill,” she whispered, “where are you, mother?”

            Her question was answered with the rattle of a yoke and the crunch of carriage wheels on loose cobblestone. Adriana had no intention of being found standing over a dead body. She stepped over the heartless cheating man and scrambled for somewhere to hide.

Thank you!

Thank you for reading chapter one of Dangerous to a Demon’s Heart. Book One is complete and scheduled for release in Spring of 2026. If you would like to be a part of the Advance Readers Copy Group please email me and let me know. I would love some early feedback on the entire novel. I am currently working on book two as well as working on a few other projects. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date with my writing. If you have any other feedback please reach out, I would love to hear it. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my words.

OMH