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    Fate on Fire Book One
    Fate on Fire Book One
    Fate on Fire Book One
    Ebook188 pages3 hours

    Fate on Fire Book One

    By Odette C. Bell

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Rita White is an exorcist. You can tell by her last name.
    But that’s all you can tell. Even she doesn’t know where she came from. 5 years ago, after recovering from amnesia, the Church recruited her. Ever since, she’s plied the trade of the Light, hunting dark things in the night.
    When one day her work takes her to the hottest club in town, she has no clue it will deliver her straight into the arms of its owner, Liam. There’s a reason he runs the hottest establishment around – and it isn’t just his smoldering looks. Liam is Satan’s fourth son, and his club is a front to resettle lost souls running from the Grim Reaper.
    When Rita blasts in one night, guns blazing, he tries to defeat her. Destiny has other plans. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s bound to protect her with his father’s ring.
    The two of them are soon forced to work together, whether they like it or not. And, whether they like it or not, they’ll remain tied to one another’s sides until the city is saved, every soul is resettled, and two warring hearts have become one.
    ...
    Fate on Fire follows the Fourth Son of Satan and a chaos witch battling to save eternal love. If you crave your contemporary fantasies with action, humor, romance, and fun, grab Fate on Fire Book One today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
    Fate on Fire is the fourth My Better Devil Series. A witty, action-packed, light romance world where Satan’s sons must find love, but only after it sticks a ring on their finger. If you like your urban fantasies packed full of charming smiles, arrogant demons, and sprinkles of romance, dive in today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOdette C. Bell
    Release dateAug 30, 2023
    ISBN9798215938188
    Fate on Fire Book One

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      Book preview

      Fate on Fire Book One - Odette C. Bell

      Prologue

      Liam

      She snarled in my face, threw herself at me, and shoved the gun against my stomach, all faster than I could say boo.

      But a Devil boy like me never says boo. Not when he’s got a flaming tail and a point to prove.

      Long before Ms. White could squeeze the trigger of her gun and fire one of her custom-made exorcist bullets into my stomach, I flung her to the side. With a crackle of flames, my tail lanced into her face. It threw her matted black locks over her eyes.

      Really, black hair? Wasn’t she an exorcist? Shouldn’t the Church have peroxided her hair by now? They took any chance to make it clear who worked for them, even if they had to cover them in white from head to foot and rename them.

      She should have been glowing from head to toe. But I was the Fourth Son of Satan, and if there was one thing I knew, it was this – the Church was just as dirty as the rest of us. They were simply more likely to slap a coat of paint on their exorcists, give them fancy new last names, shove a gun in their hands, and get them to ply their dirty work far away from the closest steeple and cross.

      Ms. White was quick. Nimble, too. She knew how to use that lithe body of hers. As she tumbled through the air, she flipped at the last moment, planted her heels down against the wall, and threw herself forward into a roll. It was agile, it was well-timed, and it brought her up right beside me.

      There wasn’t room between me and my desk. So I made some. With my back.

      Before she could get close enough to either punch me with her spell-encased fingers or shoot my stomach – and the sacred mandala beneath – I voluntarily broke my antique desk with my shoulders. I flopped backward into it as if this was a pool and I was having fun. Only one of those statements was true.

      A snide smile marked my lips. It'd been a long time since an exorcist had gotten this close to me.

      Her finger squeezed the trigger of her gun, and I heard the intricate mechanisms within twist into gear. The whole thing shuddered, and it started to pull on sacred energy from above. If I’d had the time and the correct equipment, I could’ve watched as a practically imperceptible white string tied itself to the gun from the clouds above. A string that could part through any matter, regardless of its solidity, and one that brought with it the ultimate holy power of the Church.

      They called it light. What did I call it?

      Another kind of flame.

      We Hell boys knew that in this world, there were multiple different kinds of flame. You didn’t get to pass Hell school until you could recite the recipes for over a thousand of them.

      The Church would go pink if they realized their so-called sacred light was just another kind of hellfire, but they could go pink later. Right now they needed to go sickly white from a swift punch to the face.

      At least that was the idea. But Ms. White was too fast. She ducked back. She squeezed off a shot, but I was already far away from it by the time it lanced into the window behind my desk. I might’ve technically only been on the second floor of this fine establishment, but my window gave me a bird’s-eye view of the city. If you’d been paying keen attention and you knew your geography, you would’ve realized it gave me a bird’s-eye view over multiple different cities. Because my activities required a global approach.

      Activities Ms. White was here to quash.

      Your hellish sins will end today, she proclaimed.

      I would give her one thing. She sure did have a shaking voice. She knew when to stress her syllables, knew when to simply scream at the end to ensure she had enough volume that her shout ripped across the room.

      It would’ve helped for her to be right, though. I wasn’t sinning here. Not unless you considered resettling refugees to be the worst thing the three realms had ever seen.

      I could try reasoning with her. One look into her eyes, and it was clear she didn’t know reason. She knew loyalty.

      The Church would’ve demanded it from her.

      Who knew if she’d been a foundling – if the Church had locked their greedy hands around her at a young age or if they’d recruited her later. Maybe she’d found them. It was the latter, wasn’t it? All you required was one look into her eyes, and it was easy enough to tell she wanted to do this.

      Some people need a sense of righteousness, even if they have to borrow it from someone else.

      That got my goat.

      I was already angry. She’d taken advantage of a zombie attack to trash my club. The Grim Reaper might’ve heard. The same Grim Reaper I was hiding these souls from. She’d made my already complicated situation all the worse. And I’d be sure to thank her – with a flame ball to her chest.

      Speaking of which, as she ducked back and squeezed off another bullet, I launched into the air. My office wasn’t massive. I could’ve taken more magic and time to expand it, but that would’ve taken magic and time from my primary operation.

      My father had seven sons. Six other sons just like me. All right, none of the rest of them were like me. But every one of us seven sons had seven different tasks.

      Nobody gets a free lunch, even in Hell. If you want to live, if you want to be special, you’ve got to give. And I gave back by resettling the unfortunately damned.

      Ms. White would only take one point from that sentence – the word damned. To her, as soon as someone threw you out and labeled you a sinner, it was time to burn you in the fiery pits of damnation forever. But mistakes are always made. And if the three realms were here to teach you anything, it was that nothing was truly fair. The weak get kicked down, not the strong. But I was here to teach you all a different kind of lesson. Rely on me, and justice would prevail.

      Speaking of justice, as I pushed into the air, as I showed my wings, though it was sometimes a sensitive subject for demons, I clenched my left hand into a fist. As my fingers squeezed down against my palm, I felt my own special magic rising.

      It was a kind of flame – one of the aforementioned infinite numbers we Hell boys needed to learn before being let out into the second realm, Earth.

      My fire was different. My fire was personal. None of the rest of my brothers – not even my father – could produce this.

      As a yellow, hot-white light flickered across my knuckles, it produced the flames of justice.

      You might pause, scratch your chin, and point out justice is an abstract concept. Such things make for very poor fuel sources. There’s nothing to burn, surely? You’d be wrong. Injustice is one of the greatest ignition forces out there. And as I settled the injustice of this situation in my heart, I let it lead me.

      I roared, one of the first true screams I’d indulged in all day. So what did Ms. White do? Oh, she just roared back.

      Roared back and flung herself forward.

      I’d been operating on the assumption she only had one gun. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out she had two. Somehow she’d tucked one into the back of her pants. She was wearing slim-fitting jeans, so that was impossible. It meant she’d tucked one into a pocket of magical space instead.

      The exact fabric mechanics aside, as she shoved her gun around, I pushed my knuckles forward.

      We had one second to look into each other’s eyes, one second to face the fact this could only end one way.

      It would be Ms. White or me, but one of us would die. Trust me. It would be destiny.

      And nobody, nobody can get in the way of a fate on fire.

      Chapter 1

      Rita White

      I snapped a salute as hard as I could, really putting my wrist into it and meaning it. Meaning it right down from the bottom of my heart. In fact, it was pretty easy for me to say I’d never meant anything like it.

      When people say that, when they pretend that some experience is more significant than any that has ever come before, you can usually assume it’s hyperbole. If someone has lived a really long life, statistically, they will have forgotten most of its details. Me? I had precisely five years to draw on. Five years since I’d woken up in the hospital with amnesia that wouldn’t shift. Five years since the Church had recruited me into their exorcist program. Five years of training in the light. So my short life helped me snap that salute harder.

      It even helped a small smile spread across my lips. Thank you, sir, I said, and I meant it.

      Cardinal Leslie clenched his hands, steepled his fingers, leaned forward against his desk, his chair’s casters squeaking, and appeared to consider me. He used long sweeps of his gaze. It was like his eyes were a ruler, never deviating off a set path. They swept up from my standard-issue brown exorcist boots to my equally simple jeans, blue shirt, and plain gold cross tucked underneath my collar.

      If you looked at me, you wouldn’t look at me twice. I appeared to be a normal woman. But inside? I was anything but.

      Do they hurt? he asked conversationally.

      He didn’t glance toward any specific injury site, because there were none.

      I frowned, stared to the side, and soon shrugged. No, I said honestly.

      This brought a curious smile to his lips. He leaned back. He had an old body. But not an old mind. He might be 85 on the outside, but on the inside, the Cardinal was as fresh as a 20-year-old recruit. Nothing ever slipped past him.

      But I wasn’t lying, a fact he soon figured out. It brought a gruff laugh to his lips. It shook through the small room.

      It hadn’t always been small, but it was so decked out with shelves that you could barely spin with your arms out wide. Paper covered every single surface. It spilled off the edges of the small school-style desk, and I stood in the only section free from it.

      You might accuse the Cardinal of not being capable of finishing his paperwork. That was the wrong accusation. When you accuse somebody, you accuse the sinner, not the person desperately trying to make up for every single one of the sinner’s mistakes.

      You wanted to know why the Cardinal’s desk was such a mess? Because his work never stopped. Every day, Hell did new devious things. Every day, men like the Cardinal had to make up for those atrocious actions.

      You know, he said conversationally, his hard voice becoming momentarily soft, if you were any other of my exorcists, I would’ve assumed you were lying. The process of carving exorcist wards onto your bones is known to be one of the most violent and nasty experiences an exorcist will ever go through – this side of Hell, anyway, he added as he whipped his glasses off his face and started to clean them with a dusty microfiber cloth. He stared down at them as he made quick but efficient sweeps of his rag over the polished lenses. But you’re being honest, aren’t you? He fixed his glasses back on his face and peered at me as if I was a specimen in a lab.

      I just stared back, not bothering to straighten my shoulders, not bothering to fix a different expression on my face.

      He knew the truth. Everyone who’d ever trained with me knew the truth. I didn’t lie – I simply couldn’t.

      Maybe back in my past I’d lied. Who knew? The doctors, after my terrible accident, had told me one day I’d regain my memory. They’d said it would come back in pieces. Said I might even start remembering something that very day. For the past five years I’d recalled nothing.

      It was like the memories weren’t there anymore, like someone had burnt them up.

      Good. Let them go.

      I was a new person now. I didn’t care who I’d once been. This was who I would always be from this point on.

      I snapped another salute, and from my stiff fingers to my equally stiff expression, I meant it.

      The Cardinal settled back in his seat, the old leather creaking under his weight. He placed his microfiber cloth down then neatly tucked it into one of his drawers – the only neat thing about this messy office. He nodded at me once. He groped behind something in the drawer and pulled out two guns. Pearly white, they looked as if they had been carved from alabaster. They had yellow crosses inlaid with actual gold in their butts, and the muzzles shone with reinforced magical silver.

      He placed them on the desk and pushed them over to me. A few pieces of paper fluttered off onto the carpet. Neither of us made a move to pick them up. I didn’t snatch up the guns, either, even though pride swelled in my chest. This was like a police officer getting their badge.

      He considered the guns then looked up at me. I have a feeling there isn’t going to be another exorcist like you, Rita. I have a feeling, his voice deepened, that you’re going to be able to go after targets no one else would even dare to touch.

      And I have a feeling I won’t let you down, I said clearly, meaning every emphatically spat word.

      He leaned back, and I thought his old chair would break. Others would’ve just bought a new chair. Others didn’t have the same kind of passion he did. Everything he did, he did for the Church, for the people out there who relied on us to keep them safe from Hell.

      I knew very well one day he’d likely die at his desk from overwork. It would be a good death.

      I snapped yet another needless salute. He finally snapped one back and gestured at the guns.

      Without looking at me, somehow understanding exactly where the right piece of paper was, he reached over, pulled out a small yellow parchment, and handed it to me.

      I grabbed it up. As soon as my fingers touched it, ink began to scratch itself across the porous surface of the paper.

      The words ‘your first mission’ appeared as the header. My stomach clenched, but not too hard – just enough to tell me this was significant. It might be

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