Kissing Demons by Jen WintersI’ve been a Guardian for 800 years, and sometimes, even us immortals need a vacation. So when my big sister calls and tells me I’m off for two weeks, I take the opportunity to visit my favorite place: The Hunter’s Moon, a bar for supernaturals only. There’s a few things I want to accomplish while I’m not working: get a grimoire, find a little temporary fun, and make a friend. I did not want to find my soul mate, nearly die, watch a sister give up this life, and see my city in the throes of mass destruction.
What am I supposed to do now? My vacations over, my soul mate’s been kidnapped by a demon I’m not powerful enough to defeat, and Fort Worth, one of the cities I love, is in pieces. If I help the city, I will lose my soul mate; if I help my Alex, I will lose the city. What kind of Guardian would I be if I didn’t do everything in my power to defeat Yuruch? Am I even sure I want to be a Guardian anymore?
Guardian Geneva Archer might be more infamous than famous among the supernaturals in Ft. Worth, but when a sexy werewolf enters her territory, she finds herself face to face with her worst fear: save humanity or save her soulmate?
After 800 years of guarding humanity from the things that make your hair stand on end in the dead of night, Geneva Archer is given a two-week vacation to work out her feelings of loneliness and refresh her spirit. With time on her hands, she goes to her favorite club: a place for supernaturals to gather without worrying about human interference. While there, she meets Alex, a compelling werewolf with a demonic side. But instead of blasting him back to hell like her instincts would normally tell her to do, Geneva falls head over heels.
For Alex, Geneva is an answer to prayer. She can free him from the most notorious demon walking the earth—his father. Yuruch isn’t interested in his offspring’s life, just his body—the perfect body for a demon to inhabit. With Alex’s body and powers, Yuruch will become nearly invincible, able to wreak his hellish destruction on humanity from an impenetrable fortress.
In order to get his hands on Alex, Yuruch kidnaps one of Geneva’s sisters, luring both her and Alex into an ambush. After the botched rescue mission, Alex is possessed by Yuruch, leaving Geneva with a dead sister, a destroyed city and no way to get her soulmate back without giving Yuruch everything he desires.
Can Geneva figure out a way to defeat Yuruch and save Alex without sacrificing the very best of humanity in the process? Does she even want to?
Sneak Peek:
I looked down at the park in this little West Texas town. The trees clawed at the sky with their naked branches, and the lifeless brown grass crunched under the feet of the roughly twenty families milling about beneath me. Watching them from my vantage point in the tallest tree, I wondered vaguely if they would have any recollection of me left in their subconscious after what I was about to do for them. The deal I made stated that no human could remember me for more than a few seconds after I left them, but I still always wondered about that. Certainly no one in the seven hundred and eighty-three years since I’d made my deal had ever consciously recalled who I was after I left them. I knew things would not change today just because I was bored.
I heard the sound of the coming evil before I saw it. Evil has a thrum that the neighborhood dogs and I can hear. As I looked down the street toward the thrumming, pulsing sound, all of the dogs began barking; none of the people in the park noticed, of course. I jumped to the ground from my perch, startling a couple of young boys playing with a toad, and ran toward the problem at hand.
The thrumming came from a middle-aged man with a gun in his hand. He had a distinct twitch in his left eye and he kept shrugging his shoulders as if something were bothering him. He was shaking his head and mumbling to himself, but not even my super-human hearing could decipher his words. I blinked, switching to my evil eye, and saw the demon riding the man’s back like a black cowboy at a rodeo. The man was trying to buck the demon off with his shrugs, but his own doubt and insecurity gave the demon power to ride him all the way to hell. I was here to make certain that didn’t happen. The man, I discerned, was an accountant with a good home life, two teenage boys and a lovely little wife with enough spunk for the both of them. He needed to live so that those boys would have their mother at home the day their best friend died. If this seemingly inconsequential man died, his wife would have to find a job. She would not be there to explain life and death to her boys when their friend died. If they heard their mother’s explanation, the boys would one day save the life of a young girl who would in turn save the lives of millions of children. If they didn’t, that girl would die, and those millions of children with their abundant potential for our world would die. The consequences of one small event, one individual person, are greater than the world imagines.
I had often reflected on how this country and this world were becoming more and more violent every day. There were riots breaking out almost daily on the coasts because of the poor quality of life people faced there. It tore at my heart to see the world this way, but I knew it was necessary for people to reach a breaking point. My job was to save the people who would change this world for the better—when the world was ready for that change. I had been through this cycle several times in my life. This was not the most violent century I’d ever faced, but it certainly was the most frightening. I sometimes doubted whether this generation would manage to drag itself out of the muck of war and violence. The constant fear of terror attacks and the successes that terrorists had gained in the last few years made hope seem ridiculous. The country had been through hell and back a decade ago with a violent attack that was both bold and surprising. A terrorist group, calling themselves the Freedom, had managed to coordinate an attack in which Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami were all bombed on the same day at the very same minute. Each city lost around 8 city blocks—mainly tall office buildings full of workers—to the destruction of the bombs. Tens of thousands of people died that day. And for a time, this country was united. But that unity was fleeting and a decade later, this culture was so much worse than it was before the attack. The violence was never-ending and it made for a hard workload for women like me, Guardians working toward the goal of peace and unity. I was only one Guardian, but I worked with thousands of sisters toward the goal of a golden age of peace on this planet. I’d lived in Texas for the better part of the last century working on improving my corner of the nation for a better future. I could see bits and pieces of that future, especially when I came across someone like this accountant, whose life was specifically linked to that golden age of peace. Had I been unable to see the possible future I was working toward, I know I would never have bothered coming here to save this tiny little man.
But here I was, because he was important.
As I neared the man and the demon, I finally caught the demon’s eye. It laughed at me. “Here to save another one of these worthless water bags, Geneva?”
“Mockery will not save you, demon.” This was a spiritual battle—the demon had no physical form. The worst it could do was what it was already doing, plaguing a man to the point of death. I was using my spiritual eyes to see the demon and I used my spiritual power to help the man. I sent out my aura to protect him and consume the demon.
“Nothing will save you!” the demon screeched as my aura began to consume it. “The Lord of Flies will send out his hordes to pervert and consume you!”
“I’m sure he’ll try,” I murmured as the last of the wretched thing was dispatched and I directed my aura to begin to clean the black foulness of the demon’s residual aura from the accountant. This simple act sent the foul creature back to hell, destroying it from the inside out. Cleansing this man’s aura would lift his spirits, clear his head, and give him control of his life back. He would be confused and disoriented, but only for a few moments. The human mind was an amazing thing, and it would soon reject any remnants from the demon with only a tiny nudge from me to help it along.
When I finished, the man’s eyes cleared and he started in surprise at the gun in his hand.
“Here, let me have that. You won’t ever need it again,” I said with a comforting tone of authority.
He looked again at the gun and handed it over. “What am I doing here?” he asked, confusion settling on his features.
“You’re just taking a walk to get your mind off losing your job. I guess you got lost in thought and didn’t realize you’d come so far.”
The man’s confusion visibly cleared as my words became fact in his mind. “Oh, well I should get home,” he decided. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied quietly as he turned and walked away. Three, two, one…I’m forgotten. Just like that.
