Bound By Lucifer by Aiden Pierce

Chapter One

Jess

The fluorescent tube lighting of the sign that hung over the converted church’s door buzzed audibly, bathing the wet Seattle sidewalk in a red sheen of flickering light.

“Siren’s Supernatural Strip Club for Damned Gentleman,” the letteringread, the bottom of the last N stretched out and tipped to look like a devil’s tail. Beneath that sign was another shaped like a pinup girl with horns, wings, and boobs so big they could only belong on a fantasy pinup girl, or maybe a special plastic surgery episode of TLC’s My Strange Addiction.

I shivered from the cold, pulling my jacket tight over my scrubs. When I had spoken to my best friend on the phone earlier, she was on the verge of tears. And tonight was her birthday of all nights. Something had happened. So, as is the bestie policy, I rushed to meet her at her place of choosing, no questions asked. Siren’s Supernatural Club for Damned Gentleman.

I wasn’t damned—let’s hope—and I lacked the kind of equipment that would qualify me as a “gentleman,” but ever since this club had opened, I’d been burning to go. But I couldn’t go by myself.

Normally, I wasn’t intimidated by shady bars, but Siren’s was in a whole new category when it came to dangerous places where young women shouldn’t be wandering around by themselves. My best friend, Mel, was more cautious than I could ever be. So when she picked this place, of all the places to drink in downtown Seattle, I knew something was up.

My guess was that Mel was just trying to get under Gabriel’s skin, a guy she’d been in love with since they were little kids. Coming here, of all places, would piss him off. That or she’d been abducted by aliens. Those were the only two reasonable explanations as to why she’d brave coming here.

Not that I was complaining. I was dying to see inside the place. With all the rumors flying around, curiosity was practically killing me.

Nudie bars were pretty common in downtown Seattle. But Siren’s wasn’t like any other cabaret in town, or anywhere for that matter, for two reasons.

The first thing that made Siren’s completely unique was that it was located in an old Catholic church. The telltale landmarks of a strip club looked completely misplaced against the church’s stone facade, gothic peeks, and stained glass windows. The flashing “GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS” sign mounted right beneath the scene depicting the holy mother had rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, which was no doubt what the club’s owner had intended.

And that led to the second reason Siren’s was “special.” Rumor had it that the supernatural strip club’s exotically promiscuous owner was none other than the devil himself.

Two years ago, the existence of shifters—people who could turn into animals⁠—came into the public eye. At first, everyone went nuts over the news. Especially when supernatural creatures came into the light, one by one. Witches, fae… There were even rumors flying around that vampires were a thing.

I didn’t believe that one until I saw a guy come into the ER with his throat ripped out. I wasn’t a doctor. But working as an ER nurse, I’d seen some shit. And that guy hadn’t been attacked by anything animal or human.

The world was a scary place these days. But I mean…the devil? That was a stretch for anyone to believe, save for the kind of people who stood on street corners wearing sandwich boards demanding repentance because the end was near.

My guess was that the rumors about the devil being in town were the result of some salty members of the local Catholic community. That or it was just some PR stunt pulled by the owner himself.

If it was a stunt, it hadn’t exactly gone well for him. While everyone was in a buzz over the newly opened club, no one seemed to possess the nads to actually go inside, making it a playground exclusively for the supernatural right smack in the city.

As an all-around responsible adult with a sick parent at home and traumatic wounds to take care of on the daily, life as an ER nurse was taxing. I was put through the wringer during the week, physically and emotionally, so when Friday finally rolled around, it was pretty much essential for my sanity to let my hair down and do something stupid. And having a drink in a titty bar run by some self-absorbed rich asshole who had the gumption to call himself the devil, surrounded by werewolves, vampires, and who knew what else, sounded like the perfect stupid thing for tonight.

“You gonna stand there all night shaking in your boots, little human, or are you gonna scrape up your courage from the sidewalk and come in for a dance?” a guttural voice, as dark as night and as deep as Hell, called to me from Siren’s front door.

Another shiver rattled my spine, but this one had nothing to do with the cold. I turned my attention to the owner of the voice, who leaned beside the front entrance like a guard dog, his thick, tattooed arms folded over his chest.

Siren’s bouncer was a huge man, with a neck the girth of a tree stump, covered in faded ink, depicting all sorts of hellish monsters, flames, and some strange lettering that I felt pretty damn comfortable pegging as satanic runes. He had a broad jaw, a wide nose, and bushy brows tipped with a silver ring on each side. His brown hair was slightly long on top, with the sides shaved close to his skull, exposing more dark ink. He wore burgundy slacks, polished shoes, and a collared shirt rolled up at the elbows, the fabric struggling to cover his slabs of toned muscles.

This guy looked like the love child of a My Chemical Romance member and a cave troll.

And the bizarre look was…working for him. I hated to admit, even if just to myself, that it was almost sexy, in a scary sort of way. Really scary.

My stomach prickled with unease the second my gaze settled on him. Despite how intimidating this thug was, I rolled my eyes at his comment. “I’m not scared. I’m just cold,” I lied. “Not all of us have three hundred pounds of muscle to insulate us.”

“Really,” he scoffed through a snide grin that was all teeth. “If only there was some kind of enclosed space that protected against the elements.”

My eyes turned to slits, any foreboding sensation fizzling instantly to irritation. “Do you talk this way to all your customers? Maybe if you were a little friendlier, more humans would come to play inside your creepy boob church.”

At that, the bouncer almost cracked a smile but resumed his scowl in a blink of an eye. “I’m not here to be friendly.” His gaze scrapped over me, taking his time to rove over my stained scrubs and bomber jacket. For a second, I thought he was going to tell me I couldn’t come in dressed like I was, but instead, he chewed his bottom lip in what looked to be contemplation. “Have we met before?”

I let out a dry laugh and shuffled beneath the awning to get out of the rain. “Absolutely not. I would remember someone like you.” I leaned against the church’s brick siding and fished out a pack of cigarettes from my purse. Leaning against the building beside the bouncer, I pulled out a lighter and lit a cigarette. He watched through narrowed eyes, his ocean blue depths glimmering with thinly veiled curiosity.

“Someone like me?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Big, scary. Looks like he just busted out of Azkaban.”

His pierced brows arched. “Azkaban?”

“It— Nevermind. Silly me thinking you’re the kind of guy that reads.”

Normally I wasn’t so standoffish when it came to guys, but this one just rubbed me the wrong way. And stupid Reckless Jess—what I called the part of me that liked to do stupid things on the weekend—wanted me to hang around him for whatever reason. Maybe to figure out why he rattled me so much when I’d never actually met the guy.

That part of me didn’t make sense most of the time. A doctor at the hospital where I worked had diagnosed me as bipolar. Although, I wasn’t so sure. Reckless Jess was more like a bundle of instincts that seemed to focus on getting me in trouble rather than keeping me alive.

Typically, I fought her on things. Like not wanting to go to work or not opening bills. But on the weekends, I let her loose a bit. She was a thrill-seeker and an excellent counterbalance to my other side. Sane Jessica was responsible. She went to work, had a hard time saying no to double shifts, took care of her ailing father…

In a way, Reckless Jess kept Sane Jess, well…sane.

“Stop staring at me,” I snapped at the bouncer, who was still looking me over like I had something growing out of my forehead.

“Then go inside,” he countered through an off-putting grin.

“I’m waiting for a friend.” I put the cigarette to my lips and inhaled, its cherry-tip reflecting in the bouncer’s blue eyes, like an erupting volcano buried beneath the ocean surface.

He was an interesting creature. Not human, that was for damn sure. There was some kind of energy rolling off him, something that made Sane Jess nudge me to go find a normal bar, for humans. Someplace safe.

I ignored her. To hell with that, this was more interesting.

“So, what are you supposed to be? Some kind of troll who guards the bridge, collecting fares?”

He snorted. “There’s no cover charge to get in if that’s what you’re asking.”

He knew damn well that wasn’t what I was asking. “Fine, don’t tell me what you are.” I shrugged, exhaling a puff of smoke and watching its tendrils dissipate in the rain.

His gaze scraped over me, his brows pulling together in confusion like I was the weird one. “And what are you? You look like you got lost on the way to a costume party.”

“I’m an actual nurse, asshole.”

The corner of his mouth pulled up with a smirk. “A nurse who smokes. That’s—”

My indignant snort cut him off. “Spare me the speech, will you? I get enough of that from the asshole doctors I work with.”

It’s not like I was stupid. I knew how dangerous cigarettes could be. I was a nurse for crying out loud. But lately, life was smothering. I was working impossible shifts at the hospital, all so I could not just support myself but my dad as well. This was Seattle; rent wasn’t cheap. The duplex I rented out for us was bleeding me dry. And dad’s social security checks were a joke. Cigarettes were a way to take the edge off the constant stress weighing on me. And I was getting pretty damn tired of people telling me things I already knew, like they knew what was best for me.

The bouncer let out an irritated snort. “What I was going to say that it makes sense now.”

I blinked at him. “What makes sense?”

“You being here. Humans don’t come here. Not because they don’t love the idea of a strip club filled with succubi, run by Satan himself. You mortals love the idea of danger. But when it’s placed on a silver platter smack in front of them, it becomes too real. They all listen to those ancient survival instincts, that little voice that tells them they have no place among the supernatural creatures inside. But among the sheep, there is always a moth.”

I wrinkled my nose in confusion. He was completely losing me. “A moth?”

He leaned over and plucked the cigarette from my hand, his smirk turning cruel and mocking as he took a deep inhale and blew the smoke in my face. Asshole.

“Yeah, a moth. A tiny little insect, so easily destroyed yet it flocks to its destruction all the same because it craves the light.”

I frowned, unable to come up with a response. What was I supposed to say to that?

The bouncer chuckled, smoke spraying from his flaring nostrils like a bull. He moved to open the door for me. Red, hazy light sliced through the Seattle night, a low, pulsating bass rattling my spine. It was like he’d just opened the door to another dimension, a dangerous, exotic world, and he was right.

I was drawn to it. Something inside beckoned me.

“Don’t worry, Little Moth.” He said through a sinister smirk. My stolen cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips, wobbling with his words. “You’ll find the destruction you crave inside.”