Hot Angels and Cool Demons Blog Tour - A Questionable Hero

Usually when I write, I start with a story line. My novella, A Questionable Hero, was different. For this story I knew only that I was itching to write an angel and demon story. The idea of it just sent my imagination reeling with a demon hero as the epitome of the bad boy. So, I began asking myself a bunch of questions. When your hero and heroine are polar opposites of each other, the inquiry can be quite interesting.

The first thing that came to me though was this battle scene with multitudes of angels and demons fighting each other. This seemed obvious, so I wanted more. It was then that it struck me how I wanted my hero and heroine to meet. I wanted my demon to save my angel's life. I imagined her shock, her horror, and her lust.

I enjoyed coming up with the answer to the next obvious question - what would an angel warrior do if the demon that was supposed to kill her saved her instead (and here came my next twist) and got hurt in the process? Would the angel then help the demon? As you can see, my creative process involves asking myself a lot of questions.

So now, I had my questionable hero, hence my title was born :) Of course, my angel would feel some moral obligation to save her hero, but then I imagined her anxiety when needing to unclothe the demon to clean the wound on the man's hip. Add to that the fact that the demon was in the form of a man, one she found quite attractive. Things were heating up at this point!

Yet, even with those complications established, I keep asking myself, "What would make this even more of a problematic situation?" I didn't have any idea how the romance would go or how I even wanted the story to end at that point, but once I started writing it the characters took care of that for me. It was one of those stories that takes on a life of its own, the characters so real and vibrant to me, that it was written in a very short amount of time.

I joked for days that I was working really hard, I mean I was trying to figure out how to get a demon into Heaven after all in many ways! I enjoyed playing with the demon's moral dilemmas. What a concept, but he was a Hafling, his whole life his whole being a war of good versus evil within himself.

Also, I had the angel attracted to the bad boy, one who may or may not have a redeemable side. There was just so much going on around them that they couldn't control and so much inside them that they had to figure out - so many elements to untangle - but how utterly romantic to write. I can't say more about the story without giving too much away, other than that I have the best job ever!

 Blurb:

Born of a mortal woman but raised in Hell by the demon that sired him, Abdamas is a Halfling-proof incarnate of the war between good and evil that exists in each of us. Shaebiel is an angel warrior earning her ultimate salvation in Heaven by fighting demons like Abdamas who are in search of human souls on Earth.

In the heat of a raging battle , Abdamas sees Shaebiel and wants her. When the blade of another demon aims for her, Abdamas is injured himself trying to save her. Shaebiel can't believe a demon has rescued her from certain death and takes her questionable hero home with her to heal him.

As they both fight and surrender to their desires, the conflict around them continues, and there is Heaven and Hell to pay for their actions. Through divine intervention they are offered a gift. But Hell is nowhere near finished with either of them, and the stakes are getting higher and higher.

Can a questionable hero sacrifice enough to redeem himself in the eyes of Heaven so that he may claim the love of an angel?

Genres: Urban Fantasy (Angels and Demons), Erotic Romance

Adult Content Warnings: Explicit Graphic Language and Violence

from kNight Romance Publishing

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Excerpt:

A divine proclivity to perceive imminent danger made Shaebiel turn in time to glimpse the sterling glint of a demon's sword only inches away from slashing into her flesh. As her body tensed for the pain, a sharp metallic clash rang in her ears succeeded by the shrill grate of metal against metal. Two long daggers crossed beside her, and moments later a human form was reduced to smoky ash on the blacktop. Her gaze traveled the length of the sword that had saved her. To her utter shock and dismay, she discovered it was held by a demon-a devilish being with magnetic silver eyes.

Those eyes, lighter than the inky black of most of his kind, bored into hers, searched hers. As an angel warrior gifted with empathic abilities she could feel lust rising over the flood of his more erratic feelings of fear, bewilderment, and shame. It could have been a minute or an hour they had stood there, because time seemed to stand still, wrapped in the embrace of this man's stare. Her sword of light remained down beside her instead of being jabbed into the cavity of his chest to kill him. At the same time, he slowly sheathed his weapon rather than coming for her. They were opposing combatants of the war in a shocked stalemate, entranced by each other, out of sync with the natural order of events.

Before she could figure out a plan of action, a sword of light wielded by another angel warrior seared through the demon's hip. His cry cut through the background noise of the fighting, causing her rapid breathing to pause. He grabbed at the singed flesh, and his sooty hair fell over his face. Another angel, seeing the demon who had saved her as an obvious threat given his proximity, had come to her rescue as well. Shaebiel stood there frozen as if she had never been trained for such a battle.

The attacking angel warrior to her right was still in a duel with his own demon. With one light sword he had stopped a metal dagger in mid-air. Metal forged with evil intent could not cut through the light produced by heavenly beings. Seconds later, his other sword stabbed again at the demon before her, searing his thigh. His cry was cut off, and he heaved in a breath as if he had been punched in the stomach. Then her demon-savior fell between two trash cans adorning the asphalt land. She had to hand it to the other angel for trying to fight two demons at once. The angel warrior's aim may not have been exact, but his mission had been successful. He had unknowingly saved her from her questionable hero. The warring emotions of this evil incarnation now at her feet struck her with the impact of a bludgeon.

Could that be something similar to love among his desperate hate? Surely, I am too overwhelmed by the many around me to clearly decipher his mental state. I thought such an emotion was impossible for an immortal without a true heart, a spawn of the underworld. Is that really more than carnal lust wishing to desecrate me, but a desire to be near me? Could that explain his rash actions? And if so, what does he want from me?

It was too much to take in as the angels and demons continued to clash. Even through the din of war cries and the emotions which prevailed along with them, his feelings surged over her and through her, scorching deep into her body, conjuring her desire to heal him. Something familiar rang true about him, too. She had crossed paths with his aura before, but she could not find him in any memory as she searched her mind.

Working at an urban university in New York she had encountered a lot of people and a lot of demons masquerading as mortals. And yet, his face was not one she thought she could forget. Despite the forced peace of his semi-conscious state, his face looked strained, full of angst along its angular planes. It matched his mental state in her field of awareness.

As if by grace, her thoughts were momentarily distracted by the receding sounds around her. The black smoke, all that was left of the extinguished demons, lay over the ground, like a plague spreading over the earth, analogous to the demons themselves. Meanwhile the white lights of the murdered angel warriors lit the sky, resembling shooting stars moving in the wrong direction.

A warm hand grasped her jeans at the ankle redirecting her errant attentions once again. She saw one quick spark of the silver anomaly that was the demon's eyes just before his lids closed over them, his haunted face made more poignant by the frame of rusting, dented garbage cans. Her breath caught as she registered his thought, a plea for her to care for him.

With the battle over, only the two of them remained. A human walked the deserted city streets, the footfalls sounding the same as an alarm which was probably the reason for the abrupt end to the fighting. She knew she had to go as well. Angel warrior in a human body or not, the inner city streets were no place for her to be alone at three o'clock in the morning, not for fear of her safety, but because she risked being exposed if she was called upon to protect herself. She had to remain sensible, streetwise not stupid, and above all, fit in.

Seeing his chest rise and fall erratically along with the thick black blood oozing from his wounds, she could not just leave him for the police to find nor could she bring herself to kill him. He had for some inexplicable reason saved her from a demon, the one meant to kill her on this night.

She knew the implications of interfering with the order of things all too well, and found herself waiting for some wrath to befall them both for deviating from long established ways.