Demon Desire: Book 4 of the Venandi Chronicles ( An Urban Paranormal Romance Series) Read online

  Demon Desire

  Book 4 of the Venandi Chronicles

  Sara Snow

  Contents

  1. Georgia

  2. Georgia

  3. Georgia

  4. Eli

  5. Eli

  6. Jose

  7. Olympia

  8. Eli

  9. Georgia

  10. Jacob

  11. Carter

  12. Georgia

  13. Carter

  14. Georgia

  15. Carter

  16. Georgia

  17. Georgia

  18. Georgia

  19. Eli

  20. Georgia

  21. Olympia

  22. Jose

  23. Georgia

  The Venandi Chronicles Continue…

  Also By Sara Snow

  Have you read the Luna Rising Prequel?

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  About the Author

  © Copyright 2021 - All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  1

  Georgia

  Everything seemed to stop all at once. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. Time stood still. I could hardly even hear Carter as he called my name; what had just been pleading whispers were now full-blown shouts that didn’t seem to register with me no matter how loud he got. All I could think about was Jacob; I kept running over the events of the past few minutes in my mind, hardly believing they were real.

  Just moments ago, Jacob was right next to me. After fighting off a good three-quarters of the demon king Bebal’s army, it looked like we were free to escape, but Jacob had gone after Bebal head-on and been injured. After healing most of the mortal wound dealt to him by the demon king, Carter and I had hefted the still-weak Jacob up and started to run. We’d jumped over the hellish pit in the ground that Bebal had opened up beneath us to prevent us from getting away. Next thing I knew, Jacob was clinging to the side of the fissure before it crumbled beneath him, and he fell into its reaches.

  “Jacob!!” I screamed, nearly going hoarse. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t help it. The enormous fissure that had split the ground just moments ago had already been sealed up again just as easily as it’d broken apart. Jacob was still inside when it closed.

  When I found out that I was the only one capable of killing the three demon kings of Hell—my father, King Paimon, being the worst of them—I wasn’t sure I could do it. I finally thought that I’d gotten the hang of this life and of fighting these demons after successfully sneaking into my father’s palace and escaping with a piece of the weapon that could kill him. Now, faced with the second casualty in this war, the uncertainty was rearing its ugly head again.

  “Georgia! Snap out of it, let’s go!” Carter called out to me. He sounded miles away.

  When I came back to my senses, I realized that demons were frenzied around us. They were gnashing their teeth, stretching their claws as they set back in for the fight. Weapons were held aloft in their hands, waved back and forth in rageful excitement. We had only just fought them back far enough to make our escape from Bebal, but they had already recovered their stability and were descending on us once again. Our window to get to Jacob’s car narrowed further and further with every moment I stood frozen in place, unable to move. Eli, Jose, and Olympia stood wide-eyed at what had just happened. The demon king Bebal stood just a ways off, consumed by laughter as the shock of Jacob’s fatal fall ran across all of our faces.

  My eyes were drawn to Bebal’s grotesque animal-skull head. His horns, jutting out harshly over him, cast long shadows across the debris-laden property where the warehouse had been standing just fifteen minutes ago before it was destroyed by the earthquake he created. I couldn’t pull my eyes from him. The pure, unadulterated pleasure that was painted on his face made my stomach twist into a knot. I was suddenly dragged back to that same lurching sickness that I felt when my friend Kingston, who was like a father to our group, was impaled by Abalam’s sword in El Paso, Texas.

  The fight to stop the three demon kings from destroying the world had taken another one of my friends right in front of me.

  “Georgia!” With one final, more insistent tug, Carter snapped me out of my own head, the severity of the situation at hand rushing back to me in a flood.

  I finally turned to face Carter, his eyes flickering between me and Bebal as he ushered me toward the car. He let me go just long enough to thrust his stake into the chest of an attacking demon, its claws outstretched toward us in violent slashes before being stopped.

  I could only see red then as I willed all the demons in my vicinity away from me, thrusting them harshly backward in an explosion of power. My heart was racing, adrenaline rushing through my body as all I could think of was avenging my friend, blinding rage building inside me. I rushed forward toward Bebal, a sharp blast of my telekinetic power hitting him right in the chest, forcing him back a good twenty yards. He didn’t fall, managing to keep his footing, deep ruts dragged into the ground where his feet had tried to find purchase. The new distance between us gave me room to charge forward, drawing steel beams from the wreckage of the warehouse to hurtle at Bebal with all the telekinetic strength I could manage. I thought I heard Carter’s voice calling me, telling me to stop. I ignored it, unable to operate on anything but pure instinct, readying myself to attack.

  He quickly dodged each piece of debris I threw at him, much more nimble on his feet than I had been expecting. It didn’t matter. The closer I got, the harder I threw. Finally, I managed to land a hit with a smaller metal pipe, though in my haste I was only able to secure a blow to the shoulder. I could hear what started as a growl escalate into a roar as he exploded in anger, drawing his sword.

  “I offer you another chance at a seat with your father and this is how you repay me?” Bebal hissed.

  “You didn’t offer me shit! You threatened me with imprisonment and killed my friend. What kind of a deal does that sound like to you?” I shouted back, my voice wavering with shock and anger no matter how much I tried to control it.

  “You’re lucky King Paimon is your father and you’re necessary for our plans, or else I’d teach you what happens when you speak with such irreverence myself!” Bebal snarled.

  His threats would ordinarily have scared me, but with my quest for vengeance at the forefront of my mind, I didn’t have time to be afraid. The noise of my friends and the demons clashing behind me faded away as Bebal and I zeroed in on each other. I blocked out everything else but the menace in front of me. Bebal stood his ground, brandishing his weapon in my direction as I approached, lowering himself into a fighting stance. With my mind, I thrust him backward again as hard as I could, his back colliding hard with the pile of rubble. I could see him temporarily falter, but before I could throw another piece of wreckage his way, a demon was on me, its weapon coming straight for my head from just behind me as I began to turn to face it.

  I heard the thud of contact just before I saw what had made the noise—the demon’s sword embedded in the wooden stake in Carter’s hand that held it off wi
th Carter wedged between myself and the attacker. Carter’s arm shook as he pushed upward against the blade, giving me enough time to slip out from beneath the danger and deal a strong kick to the demon’s chest, sending him tumbling backward before Carter leapt atop him and impaled him with the spike.

  “Watch your back, Georgia, they’re coming out in even bigger numbers now!” Carter called.

  He didn’t need to tell me twice, another demon lunging for me. I pushed it back with a blast of telekinesis before taking off in Bebal’s direction again, leaving the minions in Carter’s capable hands.

  “What are you doing? Forget Bebal, we have to get out of here!” Carter shouted.

  “Just focus on the rest of the demons,” I called back.

  Carter made a move in my direction, but we were quickly separated by an onslaught of demons that leapt on him. I was worried for a moment, but Carter quickly shook them off and I returned my attention to Bebal. He seemed more intense than before, the playful cockiness fading away to make room for sheer hatred seeping into his gaze as his eyes tracked my movements.

  When I was close enough to spot a relatively long and thin, yet seemingly lightweight metal sheet in the rubble, I paused, lifting it with my mind to slash at Bebal. He dodged my first swipe, and as I whipped it downward to try again, his sword swept up and met it with a loud clang. I pushed as hard as I could, focusing all my energy on that piece as I let him swipe it away before returning with a harsh sweep to the side that just barely grazed his chest as he leapt backward.

  As I guided my makeshift weapon with my mind, I could feel my body begin to shake. The heavy telekinetic lifting and the nimble movements of the metal sheet had taken so much out of me, and on top of that, the number of demons that I’d already taken out with my powers was only making it worse. That wasn’t even counting all of my physical attacks and movements. I was exhausted, and it was starting to become apparent. As I heard rushing footsteps approaching from behind, I swiftly turned to meet my attacker. With my concentration broken, Bebal managed to knock it aside with his sword, sending it flying back into the pile of rubble. I didn’t have time to concern myself with that as I quickly faced the demon in front of me, managing to thrust it backward with another sharp blast of telekinetic force before wrestling it to the ground and staking the screeching creature.

  I nearly tripped as I sidestepped to dodge another attack, feeling all the weight of the fight coming down on me heavily. When I glimpsed my friends as they tried to fight their way toward the car, I could tell that they weren’t faring much better. Olympia’s shield was still vivid and strong, but she moved much slower than normal as she tried to help defend Jose and Eli, who were still fighting but were stained with blood, their clothes torn. Jose, for all the preparation he’d put in recently, was hampered by a limp, seeming to rely on the other two more heavily than before. Even Carter with his supernatural strength and stamina was beginning to slow, his movements becoming sloppy as he was nicked by a demon’s blade before he managed to regain the upper hand.

  “For a second there, I thought this was going to be fun,” Bebal rumbled, his piercing eyes unsettling me to my core. “Shame for you all to give up so quickly.”

  “Shame for you to count us out so quickly!” I spat back, frantically searching for anything to help in the fight.

  This was becoming a losing fight fast, and if we didn’t do something drastic, I was going to lose even more of my friends. More and more of Bebal’s soldiers began to crawl over the wreckage of the warehouse like a scourge of quickly creeping shadows, my heart beating wildly.

  Think, Georgia, think!

  I could try to put them off with more telekinesis so that we could make our escape, but I was completely drained, unable to conjure up as much force as I needed to take on an entire army. Even if I could stop a few of them that way, they’d easily follow us, even if we managed to get to the car. I couldn’t throw fireballs at them without risking blowing us all sky high, and I was sure that I didn’t have enough strength to create enough fire to douse the entire army.

  Our options were running low when the stink of leaking gas from the ruins of the warehouse put an idea into my head, and though it was incredibly dangerous, I had to take it. If I figured right, with an accelerant like gas creating the force of a blast instead of me, I could create an explosion much larger and more powerful than I’d be able to achieve on my own, and all it would take was a flicker of flame. That would free me up to focus my remaining energy on blocking the flames from the pipeline, ensuring I didn’t ignite the entirety of Chicago’s natural gas line or incinerate myself and my friends.

  At least, that’s what I told myself would happen. It had to be what would happen or we were all done for, and I didn’t have much time to consider an alternate plan.

  The time to act was now or never.

  It was almost instantaneous. As soon as I created the tiniest flame over the warehouse, the air erupted with clouds of flame hurtling outward with a resounding boom. Bebal was thrown to the ground by the blast and before the flames could reach us, I summoned all of my strength in that moment to guide the flames upward and away from the ground, and a wall of scorching fire formed just feet from Carter and me.

  I was sure I could see a decent number of Bebal’s minions in the blast radius turn to ash with cursing hisses and roars, their anguished sounds giving me just enough confidence in this plan to relax just a bit. I didn’t let the fire rage on for too long, feeling my strength drain rapidly as I struggled to control it. Before I was unable to continue, I pushed one final time to extinguish the flames, the sound of the roaring fire replaced instantaneously with the pained howls of the demon army.

  “Hang on, Georgia!” Carter called to me as I collapsed to the ground.

  My limbs were weak, and I let myself fall, my arms barely able to hold my body upright. I felt Carter’s arms wrap around me, and before I could wonder why he wasn’t fighting off the demons that would surely come for me, I saw a swarm of darkness rushing to where Bebal laid, whirling around him in protection. The ground around him began to rumble, and though his horde of minions had surrounded him, I caught glimpses of his hateful glare burning into me. It sent a shiver through me, but I began to feel relief when he didn’t get up to attack. Instead, the flat plane of ground around him began to descend beneath the surface until Bebal was no longer in sight, the earth closing up the hole behind him, just as he had done to the fissure that had swallowed Jacob, until finally the rumbling faded away into nothing and the demon king was gone, leaving us broken and battered in his wake.

  2

  Georgia

  The silence that followed was deafening. We beat Bebal, but at what cost? I felt the ache in my chest almost immediately. It was real—Jacob had fallen and he wasn’t coming back up. He was gone. My arms shook beneath me, my fingers caked in dirt as they tightened into fists against the ground.

  Carter’s hold on me tightened. “Are you alright? Georgia, hey… Are you with me?”

  It took a moment for me to process his words, the exhaustion leaving my brain in a fog. “Yeah. I’m ok. As much as I can be.”

  I looked around to survey my surroundings. All of the demons that had been engaged with the Venandi had disappeared into the ground with Bebal, leaving just us behind. Olympia and Eli supported Jose, the three of them making their way over to us as quickly as they could.

  “Are you guys okay?” I asked. I could see the blood on Jose’s leg, his pants torn where a nasty gash ran across his thigh.

  “As okay as we can be,” Eli replied, lowering Jose to the ground.

  I moved to crawl toward him, but my shaky knees wouldn’t support me. Carter caught me when I momentarily lost balance.

  “Wait, let go, Carter. I need to heal him,” I muttered, my throat hoarse.

  “I think you need to rest before you exert yourself anymore. You heal fast, but you’re drained,” Carter said, his eyes trained on me with concern. “Don’t push yourself too h
ard.”

  “Don’t worry, Georgia. I’ll be good,” Jose said, keeping up his ordinarily cheerful attitude, even though I could see how he shied away from putting any pressure on that leg, sucking in air through his teeth as Eli began to wrap the wound with a torn piece of his shirt to staunch the bleeding.

  I felt terrible. All of this was my fault. I was the one who brought the piece of that weapon back to the warehouse, and now it was gone. I lead the kings right to us. I never even thought about the consequences of taking the telum. And now, the place we had all called home—where we had all become a family—was gone, and Jacob was dead. I was so angry at myself for not having thought things through more. I did everything I could think of to stop the kings, but it still wasn’t enough, and the feeling wrenched my heart. My friends were hurt, and Jacob was dead.

  Carter’s arms tightened around me, keeping me steady. Tears welled in my eyes as Olympia suggested a healing potion to heal Jose before quickly pointing out that she no longer had anywhere to brew it or any supplies with which to brew it without the warehouse. Carter’s gaze was drawn back to the wreckage, his eyebrows drawn together in the quiet, contemplative sort of anger that seemed to suit him in that moment. Eli was quiet, tending to Jose, only muttering soft encouragements every so often, seeming to possess a similar stoic ire to Carter. It was hard to feel anything besides lost.

  “What do we do now?” Olympia asked, pacing back and forth.