Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) - By Killian McRae Page 0,37

I was afraid you were about to explode.”

If she was expecting him to melt under her attention, she was sorely mistaken. With a flex of his arms and shrug of his shoulders, Marc cursed beneath his breath and threw off both Riona and Dee. He didn’t bother with formalities. He was out the door and busting down the hall before either of the other two could have a chance to stop him.

“What’s his deal?” Riona spat out, looking both cross and confused.

Dee pointed at the dead demon in a collar. “That’s an Ubago Demon. Their specialty is pinpointing a person’s suppressed shame and bringing it to the forefront. After that, it turns to guilt to anger, and it feeds off the violence that results.” Then he added sarcastically, “Who would think the Catholic Church would be a good shelter for something that specializes in culling guilt, huh?”

“Good thing I toasted it then, before Marc started lashing out. I’m sure magical violence would have been like an ice cream sundae for it.” Riona squinted, whipping her head towards Dee. “Wait, so, what is Marc ashamed of?”

Dee’s eyes bore deeply into Riona’s questioning gaze. “His feelings for you.”

Chapter 12

The knock on the door came as a surprise. Usually whenever Ramiel wanted a word, he popped in unannounced, sometimes right into Dee’s lap. Angels, as a rule, had a sick sense of humor, and Ramiel had a reputation as being the most tactless member of the Council of Seven. He didn’t see the problem with public embarrassment, and the ass’s security in his masculinity made Chuck Norris look like Adam Lambert in drag. Therefore, qualms were not to be had, making crass or a touchy-touchy round of joshing par for the course. Shortly after Dee was initiated as a Pure Soul, he’d even pulled a stunt that landed the demigod in an Italian jail for three weeks. Once in a while, Ramiel would still go red-faced as he looked at Dee and laughed, “And you tried to convince her it was a sausage on her plate!”

Today, however, even the archangel was somber. Dee looked up and learned for the first time what expression an angel wore when overwhelmed with the presence of the ominous.

“Body all taken care of?” Dee tried to sound matter-of-fact.

Ramiel nodded as he passed through the door and took a seat opposite. “Got Gabriel to transfigure the body. Would take a pretty damned good coroner now to tell that the poser priest wasn’t actually human to start with.”

“Transfigured?” Dee asked. Ramiel nodded. “I thought angels were forbidden to perform permanent-body altering magic in the earthly realm?”

“Only on humans,” Ramiel clarified. “And even then, there have been a few exceptions through the eons. Anyways, we wiped the students’ memories of Riona’s unfortunate misfire, and we let the vice-principal find Hermosa’s body about twenty minutes after you left. Unless the church sends some super high-level Vatican official who’s been trained with our peeps to see traces of magic, everything should go just kosherly.”

Dee kept his focus on the stack of papers before him. Just because Pure Souls could use kick-ass powers to take down the sources of evil like those at St. Cecilia’s didn’t mean his bills magically paid themselves. There were still accounts to review, credit card statements to reconcile. Besides, he needed to keep his mind occupied. He so didn’t want to think right now about…

“Dee, can we talk about what’s going on with Riona and Marc?”

The angel just had to look the elephant in the room straight in the eye and throw him a party, didn’t he?

With a sigh, Dee leaned back in his chair and let the pen drop on top of the desk. “Do we have to?”

“Yeah, we have to. For your sake, if not theirs.”

Dee groaned, then laughed. “My sake? What the fuck do I care if one of them goes to Hell? He falls or she falls, another Pure Soul gets called to take their place. Just like…” Suddenly, he felt like someone was wrapping icy hands around his throat and trying to choke him, only from the inside out. “Like last time,” he managed to get out at last.

That whole “angel of compassion and mercy” persona was someone else’s shtick. Ramiel didn’t play that way. No, instead of a comforting pat on the shoulder, or divine proclamation of everything happening for a reason, and that one must have faith in God’s greater plan, the bastard stood up, leaned across the desk, and open-handedly smacked