Demon Tales

A desperate professor. An ancient demon. Seventeen thousand corpses between them.

Marcus Whitmore is a joke. Adjunct professor, laughingstock of medieval studies, living in a basement that smells like failure. His thesis on demonic influence in the Crusades? Dismissed as crackpot fantasy by everyone who matters.

Then he bleeds on the wrong artifact.

Lilith appears in his apartment-furious, ancient, impossibly beautiful. She's been summoned by accident, bound by blood to a pathetic human who doesn't even know what he's done.

But Marcus wants something she's never encountered before: the truth.

So she tells him about Jerusalem. About Baldwin IV, the Leper King who died at twenty-four. About two men so obsessed with possessing her that they marched armies to slaughter. About the fall of a kingdom and the seventeen thousand corpses left behind.

And as the weeks pass, something changes.

Marcus transforms-physically, professionally, emotionally. No longer the desperate failure who summoned her, but someone who sees her clearly and chooses to stay anyway.

Lilith, who has watched civilizations crumble for millennia without feeling, starts to feel. Starts to care. Starts to wonder if staying with something mortal is worth the inevitable heartbreak.

She's carried guilt for eight hundred years. He's the first person who's offered to help her carry it.

Their intimacy is unique-wanting without having, truth without armor, connection without the final line that would bond them soul-deep. Because some demons are terrified of permanent. Because everyone she's ever loved has died.

From the brutal heat of Hattin to the domestic peace of midnight conversations, from historical catastrophe to hope neither expected-this is the story of transformation. His and hers.

A demon learning to stay. A human learning to wait. Both learning that love doesn't require perfection-just honesty.

For readers who crave dark romance with substance, historical detail that breathes, and characters complicated enough to feel real. Book 2 in the Demon Tales series-complete standalone with series continuation.