The Motion of the Potion

Riona Dade's taste in men has never been great. Example 1: Her ex, Jerry, who turned out to be a demon stalking her on behalf of the devil. You can't get much worse than that, right? Unless you're a witch who's falling in love with a priest, probably not.

Father Marc Angeletti, a smooth-talking piece of forbidden fruit with onyx eyes and a razor wit, may as well start packing his luggage for damnation now. Unless he's able to keep to his vows and keep both his heads in check, he's totally going to screw up the mission.

Come Hell or... well, Hell, he, Riona, and demigod Dee Zitka must vanquish Lucifer's minion scum from the face of the Earth, protect humanity from evil, and - oh, yes! - not get seduced into sin themselves. Seems a fallen Pure Soul is one of Lucifer's biggest turn-ons. Sick bastard. Oh, well, as long as Riona and Marc can keep things professional and north of the sheets, no problem.

Yeah, because that's how it always goes...

A priest, a witch and a demigod walk into a bar.
No joke.
In fact, laughter’s chances of scoring an appearance were slim, though the probability of hysterics stood at fifty-fifty. Riona Dade was as prepared as a box of uncooked spaghetti for something like this. Every corpuscle-ridden, wart-covered, Hell-born head in Dante’s Inferno swiveled in her direction as the door swung shut behind her, sealing out the daylight, city noises and any option to bail.
Oh, yeah, they knew who she was. There were more bared teeth and threatening glares thrown her way than if she’d been a biker walking into a ballet class. Which meant, there was a good chance they knew why she was here.
She inhaled deeply, hoping to cleanse her thoughts and focus her mind. Their acidic and yet sickly-sweet odor burned her nostrils. Demon stench could give Sudafed a run for its money any day of the week. She felt her stomach turn. Her body and mind almost followed. If not for the two men flanking her, she’d have been out that door quicker than a jackrabbit on speed. Riona knew, however, that Dee would use his muscular mass to manhandle her back the moment he saw her lunge.
Only the warm, gentle squeeze of the demigod’s hand on her shoulder gave her the courage and patience to remain and shattered the feeling of ice that had crept over her skin from the demons.
Running wouldn’t have been a bad option, though. After all, the odds weren’t pretty. In her non-magical, it’s not your job to save the world from paranormal scum, you cannot wield the powers of the universe life, Riona earned a paycheck as a statistician. She knew numbers. The 8-to-1 ratio of demons to Pure Souls hardly encouraged her. While not a wet noodle, neither she, Dee, nor the priest that rounded out their demon-hunting trio, Father Marcello Angeletti, had the collective destructive potential of this bunch of Suicide Squad wannabees on steroids. Brawn would not win this fight, however; victory lay in the ability to flex magical muscle. That part didn’t concern her so much. She knew the spells, knew the hexes and counter-hexes. She never would have been sent on this mission if their appointed adviser from the Council of Seven, Archangel Ramiel, didn’t think she was ready.
Unless this little tete-a-fret was another of his practical jokes, that was. In which case, he was so off her Christmas card list.
Despite being an equal-opportunity vanquisher of scum, Riona kept on the lookout for the VIP floating somewhere in the crowd. Her eyes found his Mediterranean blue peepers likewise fixed on her, one corner of his devilish mouth curled in a malicious grin.
“Didn’t know it was ladies’ night,” he grumbled.
Riona flexed her hand, cracking her knuckles. “If there’s one thing I’ve never been accused of, it’s being a lady.”
Even without his bronzed-skinned and brawny-shouldered glamor, Riona recognized Jerry from twenty paces. He wore smugness like a well-tailored shirt, and, oh, how she wanted to rip that from him and toss it to the floor. This green-skinned, yellow-freckled, damned-soul-incarnate sipping a pint of Bavarian brew was the reason she was here, after all, and the sooner she toasted his ass and sent his soul “disembodied” back to Hell and into the unloving embrace of Papa Satan, the better.
He gave her one pulse-spiking wink, then turned back to the bar. A demon who drank with one raised pinky off the stein would have gotten his ass kicked if he’d been any other evil minion. Not Jerry. As one of Lucifer’s top agents, she’d recently come to learn, Mr. Romani had been spreading evil since before the calendar flipped to A.D. The unprecedented longevity and ability to outmaneuver demon slayers made him a bit of a legend in these circles. Such reverence gave him airs. Of course, he wouldn’t run away. Why should he? After all, he’d already beaten her once. Damned near killed her, in fact. Which wasn’t the worst break-up she’d ever had sadly, but pretty damned close.
Recalling those happier days had Riona’s pulse racing, remembering his fervent, robust, speak-in-tongues and curl-your-toes demonstrations of lust and pleasure.
But that was before all this. Before she’d known he’d been a demon. Before she knew she was a witch. Back then, he had presented himself to her as a black-haired, blue-eyed, Italian-American underwear model, sleek, shiny and sinfully lustable. The glamor, and their ensuing hot and heavy relationship, all amounted to an ingenious scam. Jerry was on a mission, and it wasn’t to win her heart. Lucifer had somehow gotten a heads up that Riona was next up on the roster to be vested as the Keystone Witch of the Pure Souls. Hell dispatched Jerry to assess her corruptibility, and feel her out. Feeling her up had just a work perk. At some point, the need for the game evaporated, and it nearly cost Riona her life. No one could have predicted that it would be at that particular moment that her powers would manifest, allowing her to walk through a solid wall and escape. It had to be a one in a million chance, right?
Riona actually knew. The chances stood at 3,456,783 to 1. She had been the Powerball winner in the supernatural lottery.
Jerry chuckled from across the silent, tension-locked room. “Of all the bars in all the netherworld, she has to come walking into mine.”
Riona put up a false front of confidence. “Wasn’t hard to find you. I just cross-referenced all the bars in Boston known to welcome demons and that serve Zima. Turns out, short list.”