Binding Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys of the Underworld Book 3) by Mallory Crowe Read Free Book Online Page B

noise must have reminded Jackson of all he still had to lose because he started to talk again. “The girl wasn’t normal. She was special. I can’t put my finger on how I know this, but I know she used to be an angel.”
    “A fallen angel is going to walk into Hell and kill me?” Azazel couldn’t hide the shock from his voice. Fallen angels just didn’t enter Hell. They couldn’t.
    “She’s more than that. In my vision, she was brokenhearted, and that pain was what gave her the power to kill you.”
    Azazel considered the prophet before him. He had volunteered the last bit of information without any prodding from him. Maybe he could be trained after all. Prophets were scarce and all he needed was one. Every prophet saw the same visions at the same time. Azazel had heard rumors of his forthcoming demise and demanded that a prophet be found as soon as possible.
    He used to have one of his own, but the visions were so few and far between that it was exhausting to keep the prophets alive and contained. His last one died of starvation when Azazel forgot to send someone to feed him.
    They might have the gift of sight, but they were just as fragile as any human.
    “Is there anything else you can remember seeing?”
    “That’s all. I promise!” The sobs had stopped by now, and the prophet answered all Azazel’s questions with resignation.
    Azazel turned to his guards. “Have you located Lilith yet?” As the words came out, a pounding started on the outside door. “Bring her in.”
    Within moments, a small and unassuming brunette walked in. She wore oversized glasses with messy shoulder-length hair obscuring her features. Azazel grimaced at the sight. “This is your body?”
    “I take what I can get,” said the demoness. Azazel liked her better in tall blondes. Anyone who more closely resembled the demon she used to be before Lucifer cast her out. Now she had to possess mortals to stay alive, and the mortals never lived too long.
    “What did you call me here for?”
    He frowned at her tone. She used to jump for joy at the sight of him, but now she talked in short, clipped sentences. “Are you not happy to see me?”
    Lilith eyed Samantha. “It looks like you were having plenty of fun without me.”
    Azazel shook his head in denial. “There’s a baby for you in the back room. I saved him for you.”
    Lilith arched one untrimmed eyebrow and he knew he had her hooked. “The prophet over there is the father. I need to know if he was lying about his vision.”
    The prospect of asking for help grated Azazel. The damned souls churning away in Hell gave him almost limitless power, but he couldn’t force the truth from a prophet.
    Luckily for him, out-of-body demons were perfect for digging around in a prophet’s mind. “I had to interrogate him since you weren’t here. I need to verify his story.”
    She said nothing, but Azazel saw her look of annoyance. She was unable to transport anywhere in a human host.
    “The girl is going to run,” said Lilith just before she threw her head back. The host gasped in a deep breath and started to cough profusely. Jackson jerked to the side as though he was hit with an invisible baseball bat.
    Just as Lilith warned, the human host bolted for the door the second she regained her faculties. Azazel transported to just behind her, wrapped his muscled arm around her neck and squeezed until the human turned a unique shade of purple.
    He wouldn’t kill her, but he really wasn’t in the mood to deal with more screaming.
    Jackson thrashed on the ground as Lilith made her way through the dark corners of his mind. His status as a prophet protected him from possession, but Lilith could dig around while his mind was in the process of evicting her.
    The timing for this couldn’t have been worse, but Azazel wasn’t surprised. His plan to destroy the barrier between Hell and Earth was not popular among the demons who liked the idea of easy prey who didn’t know that their souls were