Hell's Chapel (Shapeshifter Urban Fantasy) (Caith Morningstar Book 1) Read online

  Hell’s

  Chapel

  The Orlando mouse’s house is filled with demons and she’s just the bitch to keep ’em in line…

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 2016 Celia Kyle.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  She’s Caith Morningstar: bar owner, leather wearer, shoe worshipper, werewolf, Orlando’s resident ass kicker and… Satan’s niece.

  In the tween—between On High and Hell—Caith has three rules: order, secrecy, and if you can’t manage that at least have a little discretion. Wait, make that four: no one screws with Caith or her stuff. Orlando—land of that famous mouse—is her home and people are either gonna get in line or get the fuc- heck out.

  Except someone didn’t get that memo. Or, they have a death wish. Either way, she’s gonna bust out her bat and smash some heads. She’s got zombies demolishing her home, vamps chasing her, and on top of the normal violence in her life, she’s quickly falling for an angel. Satan’s niece and a goody-two-shoes angel! And don’t even get her started on corralling her five fathers while trying to keep them from interfering with her life.

  Caith can handle the blood, gore, and frustration, but can she deal with the pain of loving the angel Samkiel? Probably not, but she’s gonna try anyway.

  Chapter One

  Caith shoulda bought a bigger bat. Maybe one of those aluminum jobs. Or steel if they made those. She bet she could get one on the internet. You could get anything on the ’net. Right then, something a little stronger would be appreciated. Metal wouldn’t leave such a big mess for the brownies to clean up once the dust settled.

  She cradled the wood, familiar weight settling in her palm, melding with her like an extension of her arm. Louisville Slugger, a classic, a good friend no matter how recently she had snagged him from the sports store.

  “Batter up,” she mumbled under her breath. Then again, she could have screamed the words and not a single being in the bar would have noticed. “Fucking thelac warriors,” she grumbled. “They should know better than to drink themselves stupid.”

  “Incoming!” Jezebeth, Hell’s Chapel’s resident bar bitch, and best young witch in the city (her words, not Caith’s), shouted and then covered her ears. She sank beneath the counter, hiding, while Caith handled things.

  Caith ducked, missing a flying beer bottle. She gritted her teeth when it crashed into the mirror behind her, shattering it into a million small pieces. Custom cut mirrors were expensive. Dammit.

  The general betweeners, called tweens, fled at the first sight of trouble, scrambling toward Jezebeth to settle up and scurry home to their mommas. The remaining patrons stuck around to see how the night would unfold. Demons and angels—dems and gels—slumped in their chairs, watching the melee, picking up their glasses when someone needed a table to throw.

  She climbed on top of the bar, black soled calf-high Fluevog boots leaving smudges on the polished cherry surface. She’d have to remember to give the brownies a little extra cash to clean up the mess.

  Caith kicked bottles and glasses aside, traveling along the wood toward her prey. Pretty boy had to poke the thelacs and now he was learning what it meant to tangle with something more powerful than himself. Thelacs were seven feet tall, heavily muscled, black-skinned, ageless warriors and they were no one to mess with. They had all the time in the world to become the baddest of the bad.

  On High and Hell, save her from idiots. Since she had a few gels in the vicinity, she hoped someone was listening.

  Her leather pants moved with her, a layer of skin on skin, tight and hugging her curves. It was like being naked while dressed. The black hue let her blend in with the night, become one with the darkness when it enveloped Orlando, Florida. Home of that famous mouse and… Hell. Well, a tiny bit of it, anyway.

  Right now, the clothing moved with her while she flipped from the bar, ass over head, and around again until she landed in a crouch in front of the asshole who started the violence. Thelacs had never heard of sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. They tended to simply focus on the sticks and stones half of the saying. She faced off against the warrior, bat still gripped in one hand.

  “Aw, Caith…” The warrior pulled his punch and she ducked, his fist missing her by a hairsbreadth. The scent of his charred skin filled her nose. The males must have been training inside Mount St. Helens again. There was a reason true thelac warriors were darker than night. There was no better place to train than in the bowels of an active volcano. At least, in their opinion.

  Still facing the warrior, she straightened once the danger slipped past and met the demon’s red-eyed gaze. “Don’t Aw, Caith me, Drek. This is my bar and you and your friends are tearing it to shit because some pretty-boy punk troll is an idiot.”

  Said troll must not have liked being referred to as a punk. Though it could have been the “idiot” portion of her comment.

  The shift of air, a delicate wind brushing her back in a caress, alerted her of his movement. She spun on the ball of her foot, stepping to the side and shifting her weight as she twirled around to crack him on the back of the head with her bat. Wood splintered on connection, showering the bar floor.

  Which… was why she really wanted a metal one.

  Caith dropped what remained of her weapon with a frown and poked out her lower lip. She’d had him the longest of all her bats. Three whole days. “Sorry, Louis.”

  “Heads up!” Caith didn’t take her gaze from the now unconscious troll but raised her hand over her head. Another hunk of wood flipped through the air to land in her palm. She so loved Jezebeth in a non-lesbian way.

  One of Drek’s friends shuffled toward her, boot scraping the concrete as he eased forward. She swung, the world blurring with the rapid movement, and shoved the end of the wood against the stranger’s chest. “Don’t test me.”

  He snorted, rolling his eyes and looking to his friends. They snickered along with him as the idiot took another step forward, pushing against her hold. She really hated baby warriors. “You had to bring the babies, huh, Drek?”

  Caith readily admitted she wasn’t much to look at. At five-foot-four inches, she seemed short compared to half the beings that crossed her threshold. Her curves made most doubt her strength, even though her frame hid rock solid muscle beneath her layer of jiggle. And while she may have the face of a pixie and the hair of a goth chick who spent too much time dying her strands with Kool-Aid, she was the ultimate Hell’s spawn with a capital Bitch.

  She smiled, showing her pearly whites, shaking her head as she pulled her weapon from his chest and turned toward the incapacitated troll. The surrounding dems chuckled, making Caith smile even wider. They knew her, even if the warrior-in-training didn’t.

  She dropped into a crouch next to the unconscious punk, and fingered the splinters at her feet. To the thelac, she probably looked like she was checking the man for injuries. Yeah, she totally
wasn’t.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, she was at the warrior’s throat. She used his body against him, climbing and clinging to his massive frame. She scaled him like a spider monkey and shoved the remainder of the bat’s handle against his skin with one hand. The other fisted his strands and ripped his head back, forcing him to focus on her. And only her.

  Drek held the rest of his guys back while she dealt with the asshole. “Now, what part of ‘don’t test me’ did you have trouble with?”

  She dug the wood deeper, just short of breaking skin. Evidence of his recent volcano training flaked and fluttered to the ground. At only six feet, he was a younger male, but the cracking of his flesh showed her he was very young. Perhaps only two hundred years.

  He swallowed, Adam’s apple sliding beneath the stake. “N-nothing.” His voice was barely a whisper but everyone heard him.

  Caith released him, shoving him away by his head as she hopped to the ground. Yeah, she got a little hint of joy from watching him stumble. That joy fell flat when he came at her. She looked to Drek and he nodded as if giving her permission to set the idiot on his ass.

  She snapped her head from side to side, listening as the joints cracked and loosened for a little fun.

  Dems had different levels of power, from the lowliest of the low who could barely start a fire, to those just a hint beneath the High Lord himself. Caith’s mother was the Dark Lord’s sister which put Mom into the latter group. That meant, as the High Lord’s niece, she had a damn big dose as well.

  Her fingers burned, snippets of hellfire rising to bubble beneath her skin and she embraced the heat. It’d been a long time since she’d tapped into that side. The warmth coursing through her veins felt good.

  She took one stomp toward him, and then two. The third brought him within range, but she waited for the fourth and then struck him in the chest, palm open, dead center, over his heart. She hit him with every ounce of power she’d managed to grab.

  The big ass motherfucker flew backward, torso leading the rest until he whacked one of the building’s support posts. His head cracked against the wood and concrete before he slid to the ground in a boneless heap. Idiot wasn’t waking anytime soon.

  Brushing her hands together as if to rid herself of his stench, she turned toward Drek, leader of this band of troublemakers. “Get the little puppy and leave.”

  No one ever said Caith was nice.

  “Caith…” the warrior wheedled.

  She shook her head. “No. Don’t make excuses. It doesn’t take training to be polite. Actually, you know what? Gimme a sec.”

  Caith strolled forward, moving toward the fallen warrior. The crowd immediately parted, giving her a wide berth. She squatted and licked the pad of her thumb before reaching for his forehead.

  A large hand grasped her forearm. She followed the hand to the wrist, up the arm to stare right into Drek’s eyes. “Don’t, Caith. He’s young. This is a good place. He’s learned his lesson…”

  She glared at him. Drek was a good guy. Well, as good as any demon could be. “I swear to Hell, Drek, he pulls another stunt, fucks up my place or looks at me funny, he’ll get marked and banned.”

  He released her, backing up, giving her space, his expression pleading. “You know what a mark means in this place.”

  “Of course I do.” Caith nodded. “I made the rules in this city when the first brick was laid. Order. Secrecy. Fuck, if you can’t do that, at least discretion. And above all, don’t fuck with me and mine.” She held out her arms, encompassing her bar, Hell’s Chapel. “Does this look orderly? Or unfucked with?” A shake of her head and she spit on the ground before the unconscious warrior. If she couldn’t mark him, she could at least curse him for a little while. “Get ’em out. Both your warrior and the troll. If I see either within six months, I’ll feed ‘em to Jezebeth’s gators. Alive.”

  Jezebeth’s bright orange head poked above the crowd, letting her know the witch had finally made it to the top of the bar to watch the proceedings. “Are you sure they can’t have ’em now? I mean, a troll and a thelac warrior… the babies would be so happy.”

  Men went into action then, knowing how much Caith tended to indulge the bar bitch. The warriors grabbed their fallen comrade along with the troll that’d been involved in the whole mess and hauled ’em out by their feet. Both men groaned as they passed her but she didn’t really have any fucks to give.

  The crowd dispersed, patrons righting their tables and chairs. Well, what was left of them. Half the customers waved to get a waiter’s attention, ordering another round while others worked on polishing off what they had in hand.

  Caith returned to her spot behind the bar as everything mellowed once again. She automatically reached for a glass, mixing the next order without missing a beat while Jezebeth pouted at the other end of the counter. She hated seeing her best friend sad. “Aw, Jezze, buck up. I’m sure someone will eventually piss me off enough.”

  The bar bitch perked up, zeroing in on her. “You think so? What if we invite…”

  Caith rolled her eyes. “We are not inviting people here with the hope they’ll mess up so bad they get sent to the gators.”

  Jezebeth glared at her but returned to her station, glasses clinking as she mixed and poured drinks.

  The night wore on, quiet and calm, just the way Caith liked it. She enjoyed running her bar, Hell’s Chapel. Giving dems, gels, and tweens a safe-ish place to congregate, interact, and get a fucking beer at the end of a long day.

  It was just… Sometimes it was a fuck-ton of trouble.

  “Night, Caith.” Jezebeth flitted toward the door. Funny how a woman wearing a pair of combat boots managed to flit. Like an orange-haired, scary bitch fairy.

  With a shake of her head, she went back to wiping down the wood, performing busy work before she went back to her quiet home. She’d been living there for more years than she could count, and even after all this time, it still seemed empty and cold. She slept there. That was it.

  A creak of the front door let her know some idiot obviously didn’t know the rules. The whole town knew the rules. Even the humans who knew of tweens knew the rules.

  She sighed, rolling her shoulders, pushing the tension of the day away. She couldn’t kill anyone. Uncle Luc was really pissed after the last soul she sent along had annoyed him so much that On High had taken the ghost off his hands. On High literally made a deal with the devil. “We’re closed.”

  The feet kept moving toward her, but it wasn’t the shuffle of a zombie. At least she’d gotten the priestesses to quit trying that one for a while. Apparently it was hilarious to send a brain-craving body into Hell’s Chapel at the end of the night. Though, they were typically hidden in the utility closet in an effort to scare her and they never stumbled through the front.

  Naw, this was strong, full of something akin to life. Dems sounded different, the thump of their feet against the ground. Heavy, almost down trodden as if Hell pulled on them constantly. This one was lighter.

  The scent of tween didn’t reach her. In general they tended to cause her gut to twist a little. Not painfully, the goodness simply tweaked something inside her that made her a little twitchy. Not all of them, but a few races…

  This, however, was more than a happy tween. It more than twisted her gut, it shoved at something else within her.

  She raised her head, knowledge of what stood before her already tumbling through her mind. “You’re a fucking gel.”

  Of all the bars, in all the cities, a damned pure angel had to walk into her place. He wasn’t like other gels who frequented Hell’s Chapel. Ones who were the result of tween and fallen-gel matings. Those men and women were more like tweens with goody-goody wings despite one of their parents’ fallen status. They came and went to On High with ease, but spent most of their time in the tween.

  The man, the angel, tilted his head in acknowledgment and then stared at her, crystal blue eyes boring into hers. His sho
rt black hair seemed to sparkle in the dimmed bar lighting and she tried to ignore his strong jaw, broad shoulders, and obviously chiseled abs. He wore a leather coat that fell to his knees with a tight shirt underneath and pants that molded to his body. She wondered what kind of package those pants hid from view. She was a dem—sorta—not a saint. Besides, a hot man—gel, dem, or tween—was a hot man.

  He wore all black and not a hint of traditional white in sight, which meant he had to be hiding from something. She sure as shit didn’t want that “On High flavored something” coming into her place.

  She growled low. A fucking nod wasn’t enough. Not nearly. “So, gel, what do you want?”

  “Bourbon, two fingers, two cubes.”

  Caith snorted. “You have to be fucking kidding me. Gels don’t drink.”

  Among other deliciously pleasurable things.

  He quirked a brow. “So, dems know everything about angels?”

  “Everyone knows enough to know that angels were banned from drinking by On High. Care to tell me prohibition has ended?” She propped her chin on her palm, elbow on the bar. She wanted to appear relaxed, at ease. He didn’t need to know she was fighting her desire for him, trembling with need. Even her inner-wolf, the beast typically happy to let her demon side run things, was whining over the man.

  He strolled forward, muscles flexing as he walked, sliding beneath the leather, and his boots thumped against the concrete. “No, it hasn’t. Then again, I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an angel at the moment either.” He moved an arm, encompassing the room. “I am in the tween, after all.”

  He wasn’t just in the tween. He was in Hell’s Chapel.

  “What would that make you, then?”

  He smiled. “Half way to fallen.”

  Caith tucked the information away, too taken by his dimple, the way his eyes danced in the light, and the width of his shoulders. She bet he could bench press a few hundred without On High’s help.