Devouring Flame Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author | By E.J. Russell

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  Copyright

  Devouring Flame

  By E.J. Russell

  An Enchanted Occasions Story

  While cutting through the Interstices—the post-creation gap between realms—Smith, half-demon tech specialist for Enchanted Occasions Event Planning, spies the person he yearns for daily but dreads seeing again: the ifrit, Hashim of the Windrider clan.

  On their one literally smoldering night together, Smith, stupidly besotted, revealed his true name—a demon’s greatest vulnerability. When Hashim didn’t return the favor, then split the next morning with no word? Message received, loud and clear: Thanks but no, thanks.

  Although Hashim had burned to return Smith’s trust, it was impossible. The wizard who conjured him holds his true name in secret, and unless Hashim discovers it, he’ll never be free.

  When their attraction sparks once more, the two unite to search for Hashim’s hidden name—which would be a hell of a lot easier if they didn’t have to contend with a convention full of food-crazed vampires on the one day out of the century they can consume something other than blood.

  But if they fail, Hashim will be doomed to eternal slavery, and their reignited love will collapse in the ashes.

  Luckily Smith is the guy who gets shit done. And Hashim is never afraid to heat things up.

  “Hints would be good.” Smith’s voice disappeared in the middle of the last word.

  “How about his one?” Hashim tilted his head, stroking Smith’s cheek with his own, until their lips were a breath apart. “Or this one?” Then Hashim’s glorious mouth was on Smith’s, his lips warmer by an order of magnitude beyond any of Smith’s past lovers.

  Then Hashim parted his lips, his tongue flicking into Smith’s mouth. Heat roared through Smith’s veins and out his fingers and toes, as if his hair sizzled, as if his skin were living fire.

  He threaded his fingers through Hashim’s hair, angling his head to bring them closer until they might as well be fused into one molten ball of flame. He’s right. It’s fucking impossible to think like this.

  Acknowledgments

  I’M so grateful to Tricia Kristufek and the Dreamspinner editorial team (including Kelly, Lee, and Andrea) for their help and guidance on this story. Kelly Jensen, thank you for your friendship and advice, and for encouraging me to take the gloves off about a certain outcome—I suspect you know the one I mean!

  And to Aaron Anderson for the lovely cover.

  As ever, mega-thanks to my family—Jim, Hana, Ross, Nick, and Billy—for your support (including putting up with my sheepish release-day text messages). You’re the best, guys. Love you.

  Chapter One

  PLAYING poker with the Faerie gang was like taking candy from a unicorn. Smith chuckled as he stepped into the chaotic swirl of the Interstitial portal, his pockets chinking with gold, silver, and the odd jewel or two. He’d been having such a run of luck that he’d delayed leaving until the last moment. As a result, to get to work on time, he had to cut through the Vegas Interstices, one of his least favorite places in all the realms.

  Vegas was an Interstitial hub—gates opened from all the realms directly into it, probably because, like its Earthside counterpart, the Vegas Interstices catered to every self-gratification, amusement, and vice that any entity could desire, regardless of their supernatural roots.

  Smith hated the damned place even worse than he hated the demon realm where his mother still lived.

  Before he’d signed on as Enchanted Occasions’ tech guru, he’d worked as a dealer in a casino here. The ILE—Interdimensional Law Enforcement—had a real stick up their collective ass about what they allowed demons to do, and the Vegas Interstices was one of the few places they relaxed their uptight rules.

  The hours had suited him, anyway. Smith was not a morning person, and mornings weren’t any more popular here than in Earthside Las Vegas. Plus the endless buffet meant that he was never without the overdone meat that he needed to sustain his defective inner flame. But the edge of desperation that clung to everyone who stopped at his blackjack table was more than he could take.

  And since the casino was demon owned and operated, the bets at his table weren’t cash, precious metals, or gemstones. They were pieces of the players’ souls.

  The pit boss had called him on the carpet when Smith refused to collect the last soul crumb from an elderly satyr. During their argument, the guy found out Smith wasn’t a full demon: he was a HAH—a half-and-half, aka aitcher, someone who was a mixture of human and one or more supernatural races. The boss’s lip had curled in disgust, and he’d fired Smith on the spot.

  It wasn’t until Smith signed on with Enchanted Occasions that he was judged not for his heritage, but for his skills and character. For that, he owed Mikos, EO’s owner, anything he cared to ask.

  Even when that meant showing up for a gods-forsaken 6:00 a.m. meeting in the Athens Interstices.

  The Athens Intergate was on the opposite side from the Faerie portal, so Smith cut through the grounds of the Twilight Carnival, a sprawling amusement park in the heart of the Interstices. The crowds were sparse enough at this hour that he could see the place was seedier than the last time he’d visited. Apparently the Carnival management didn’t share EO’s dedication to turning out a superior customer experience.

  Along the midway the barkers made only a cursory attempt to lure him in to their games of chance. Half the light bulbs chasing around the painted sign over the ring toss game were burned out. The banners over the sideshow tents sagged on their guy ropes, their lurid pictures faded and grimy, and the door of the laser tag labyrinth tilted crazily on broken hinges.

  Smith wondered how long it would be before the Interstices copied the Earthside Las Vegas pattern and wiped the whole thing out to start fresh.

  A lackluster fanfare announced a sideshow bally, a teaser meant to draw the sparse crowd into the main tent. The talker, a hulking guy in an overdecorated red tailcoat, had a reasonable patter, but he needed to tone down his glare if he didn’t want to scare all the rubes away.

  Still, as an exotic, seductive flute melody drifted over the substandard public address spell, Smith found himself swerving from his intended path. Would the act be as uninspired as the surroundings? Too often the performers ended up being aitchers, those who couldn’t find more self-respecting work elsewhere. Smith knew all about that—that’s why he’d been working in the damned casino.

  As he approached, the curtains at the back of the bally platform parted, and someone stepped out. The shallow stage wasn’t very high, so the performer’s head was the only thing visible over the onlookers who had gathered to watch.

  Smith got the impression of wavy, shoulder-length dark hair before the performer thrust a muscled arm into the air. A man, then. His smooth brown skin was encircled at the wrist by the gem-encrusted metal gauntlets that all the Carnival workers sported, and he held a flaming torch in his fist.

  Fire. Totally my thing. Smith quickened
his pace and shouldered his way to the middle of the audience. The performer was facing the rear of the stage. He wore loose white pants gathered at the ankle and held up by a wide maroon sash. He wasn’t wearing a shirt—just a short, heavily embroidered vest that fell several inches above his waist, exposing a wide swath of more smooth skin, just a shade lighter than Smith’s own. The music tempo increased as the performer tipped his head back, his hair rippling in the artificial breeze.

  Smith’s neck prickled, and he clenched his fists in the pockets of his jeans. Something about that hair, the set of the shoulders, the texture of the skin—no, it couldn’t be. His hair was dark red, not black.

  The performer slowly twirled the torch, then lowered it toward his opened mouth with excruciating slowness. Any human fire-eater depended on speed to avoid being burned. That this man could go so slowly… slowly… Lucifer’s balls, when would he extinguish the flame?

  He’s got to be a fire demon.

  When he finally closed his lips around the flame, red streaks shot through his hair.

  Smith tensed, and he ground his teeth together. Not a fire demon. An ifrit.

  He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the alarm skating up his spine. There are other ifrits in the realms. It doesn’t have to be him. Despite the need to get to Athens on time, Smith could no more have torn himself away than he could dive for pearls.

  The barker handed the fire-eater two more torches, one for each hand, and this time, he danced with them first, drawing patterns in the air, undulating his body in a sinuous wave, keeping his back to the audience.

  Then he twirled, flame flowing around him like a living scarf, and stopped in profile.

  That nose, those cheekbones. His hair might be longer and the wrong color, but it’s him. Hashim.

  Heat burned through Smith’s belly, chest, and throat as though he’d been the one swallowing flames, anger and hurt and resentment building at the sight of the man who’d betrayed him. The man he’d trusted enough to whisper his true name.

  The man who’d left him.

  Hashim continued his dance, his performance, his act. Yeah, he was good at acting. He’d had Smith fooled, hadn’t he? Poor beleaguered Hashim, forced against his will into the Consort Race, the competition for the hand of Prince Reyner of Faerie. Smith had comforted him as he would any distressed client, because hells, it was his fucking job, wasn’t it?

  But with Hashim nestled in his arms, Smith’s impersonal pats had turned into way personal strokes, the buried fire in Hashim’s body lighting Smith up in a way he’d never experienced with any other lover. Usually he avoided any but the most necessary skin-to-skin contact—and forget kissing—because hookups with any partner who didn’t have a core of fire were too dangerous for the other guy.

  With Hashim he hadn’t had to worry about that.

  Like all fire-based races, if Smith’s inner flame died, he would too. His human genes prevented him from recharging it himself, but his body needed it, craved it, demanded it. And Hashim’s fire, the warmth of his skin, the heat of his mouth, the molten perfection of his spend, had filled the missing piece of Smith’s demon nature.

  That night, for the first time, he’d been whole.

  So like an idiot, he’d let himself hope, and fallen head over horns for a Pure.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Smith was supposed to be the smart one. The problem-solver. The go-to guy. He wasn’t supposed to sleep with a client, for Lucifer’s sake, no matter how incendiary their chemistry.

  And now here he was, just as mesmerized by Hashim as he’d been six months ago when they’d spent the best night of Smith’s centuries-old life together.

  Only to have Hashim betray him in the worst possible way for a demon, then abandon him without another word.

  Chapter Two

  HASHIM had performed this bloody fire dance so often—ten times a day, seven days a week, for the last six months—that it had become habit. It was reduced to muscle memory, his body executing the motions without his conscious thought.

  Which was both an advantage and a disadvantage. An advantage because he didn’t want to give Ringmaster the satisfaction of believing this was difficult—nothing pleased that bastard more than the notion that he was getting his money’s worth from his unwilling workers. A disadvantage because with Hashim’s brain disengaged from his actions, he found it far too easy to think about the disaster his life had become.

  One more day. That’s all I have to endure. One more day and my indenture to Ringmaster is over. Not that he would be free even then. Yashar, his clan sheikh, would arrive to take Hashim home until the next time Yashar decided to use Hashim’s abilities—or lately, his person—in another underhanded scheme in his quest for power and riches. Yashar’s justification had always been that Hashim owed him, owed the clan, for the bad luck he’d brought on them.

  As if that was my fault. I didn’t ask to be conjured out of the djinn crèche.

  Though as much as he despised Yashar’s avarice and weakness of character, he loathed Ringmaster even more. Yashar was greedy and ambitious, but he wasn’t cruel. Not like Ringmaster.

  Another spin. A pose. Raise the torch and prepare to swallow the fire. This was the point in the act where he scanned the crowd. “Seduce them, damn it,” Ringmaster had told him time and again. “Pull them into the tent. Get them to open their damned wallets like they’d want to you to open your mouth or bare your ass for them.”

  Ringmaster had taken the job of outside talker this morning, although he wasn’t nearly as good at enticing the crowd—called the “tip,” as Hashim had learned in his months as a carny—into the tent. Apparently he wanted to make Hashim’s last day as annoying as possible. It’s working.

  Ringmaster glared at him, turning his back so the marks wouldn’t see him snarl. “Look at them, you worthless piece of shit. Make ’em think they’ll get you if they shell out their gold. It’s what you’re here for.”

  Like the Carnival itself, that was a trick, a trap, an illusion. As the bally act, the sideshow preview, Hashim never performed inside the tent.

  Ringmaster was probably afraid he’d set the place—or one of the marks—on fire. Not that I could. The binding spell in Hashim’s wrist cuffs throttled down his power to the minimum required for his fire-eating act. When he’d agreed to the indenture to pay Yashar back for his failure in the Consort Race, he hadn’t realized how painful and crippling the binding spell would be.

  He knew now. But it’s almost over.

  Hashim rearranged his hands on the torches so both his middle fingers were pointing at Ringmaster, then turned with a flourish, allowing a practiced—and completely false—smile to curve his lips. That’s right. Believe the lie. You and you and—

  His arms went boneless, weak, falling to his sides, the fire dying now that he wasn’t actively maintaining it. The familiar music faded away because there in the crowd was the one face he’d longed to see again, and the one face he’d never wanted to see in this place.

  Smith. Here. Why? Why now?

  In another day, Hashim would be gone and Smith would never have had to know about this humiliation, this degradation, how far Hashim had fallen since that one night when the two of them had nearly set the resort—and my heart—on fire.

  But when Smith had stormed out without waiting for Hashim’s explanation, leaving him to face Yashar’s fury—which was always so much greater when money was involved—alone? Well, Hashim had let his heart-fire die too, one more smoldering ruin like the smoking torches that dropped from his nerveless hands to clatter onto the stage at his feet.

  For an endless moment, he gazed into Smith’s eyes, so dark and deep. Then the embers buried in their depths flashed to life.

  But not with desire.

  Smith’s lip lifted in a sneer and he turned, shouldering his way through the murmuring crowd.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Ringmaster’s furious whisper cut through Hashim’s trance. “Use your flames, or I’ll throttle t
hem down even more. Remember.” He bared his teeth—suspiciously even and white in such an enormous mouth. “I own you.”

  Only for one more day. And because he had less than twenty-four hours to endure, Hashim lifted an eyebrow and pivoted smartly with one glance over his shoulder at Smith’s retreating back.

  Judging by the prick of tears in his eyes, his supercilious smile probably slipped into something pathetic and heartbroken, so he whisked into the tent where the other acts were steeling themselves to face another tip who sometimes wanted more than what was being offered.

  Since Ringmaster would have to keep up his patter if he wanted to pull any of that minuscule crowd into the tent, Hashim had time to escape before the inevitable explosion. He skirted the edge of the tent and ducked out the back, ignoring the questions called by his fellow workers.

  It’s my last day. What can he do? Hashim might be a virtual slave, like all the other indentured carnies, but even indenture had regulations. They weren’t official regulations since indentured servitude was ranked along with actual slavery as a proscribed practice in all the Interstices and most realms. But when powerful, unscrupulous people wanted something, they found a way to work around the rules. And bound “employees” were something that far too many powerful people found convenient.

  Hashim sprinted down the narrow aisle in back of the sideshow tent, leaping over guy ropes and dodging other carnies on their way to or from their assignments. He reached the carnies’ mess tent and ducked inside, intending to simply rush through on his way to his dorm room. Not that that would be any safer—Ringmaster had access to everywhere on the Carnival grounds, even the carnies’ personal quarters.

  “Hashim? What are you doing here? Isn’t it time for the bally?”

  Hashim slowed at the question from his friend Rion, a minotaur who’d been indentured at nearly the same time as Hashim. As usual, Rion was sitting alone in the corner, his massive head and upper body dwarfing the cheap table, his horns nearly brushing the tent roof.