A note from me (EMM): Welcome back 💙 I hope you enjoy this post by author Loren Rhoads. Want to know my thoughts over Lost Angels and Angelus Rose? Check out my review!

Book Blurb

Angelus Rose: As Above, So Below #2

by Loren Rhoads & Brian Thomas 

If Romeo had wings and Juliet a barbed tail, could they find happiness in the City of Angels?

After their escape from the ashes of Lost Angels, the succubus Lorelei and the angel Azaziel want nothing more than to enjoy each other's company. Unfortunately, Asmodeus, the Demon Prince of LA, has threatened to devour Lorelei's new-grown soul if she doesn't bring about Azaziel's downfall. Meanwhile, Aza is keeping secrets of his own that threaten the tenuous peace between Heaven and Hell.

Three archangels come to town to try to set things right, but friendships are fracturing. The demon in charge of fallen angels is sniffing around. And Los Angeles is about to be caught between a devil and the deep blue sea.

Bosses from Hell

by Loren Rhoads

My first real "adult" job was working as the private secretary for one of the main lecturers at the Dental School at University of Michigan. Bradley was an intimidating man, large, with a booming voice when he lost his temper. He got angry at his lab assistants a lot. He didn't shout at me, because my work was strictly a prestige thing for him. He didn't have enough filing or typing for a full-time secretary, but he liked to have someone around to jump when he called.

Sounds pretty much like any secretarial job, doesn't it? What made this one traumatic was that we all worked in an animal testing lab. The lab assistants were vivisecting rats and lambs, mapping the connections between their taste buds and brains. I wrote in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues about what pushed me to quit that job, but I'd never written about it in fiction...until I started exploring the relationship between the succubus Lorelei and Asmodeus, the demon in charge of running Los Angeles.

Asmodeus, like my former boss, could make things really fun. Bradley would spontaneously take all of us out for a lavish Indian feast or invite us to his beautiful home for Christmas dinner. Those invitations weren't optional. He could be incredibly generous and he loved to teach, but I developed bursitis in both shoulders while trying to file things in his massive, heavy cabinets. I was too young to know I could complain about the conditions. Everyone else had made a devil's bargain for the boost they could get in their graduate studies and eventual careers.

When I set out to create the character of Asmodeus, I wasn't thinking about Bradley at all. Instead, I had in mind Omar Shariff, especially in Lawrence of Arabia: darkly handsome, on the edge of violence, quick as a snake. 

Asmodeus is a Persian devil, mentioned in the Bible as a false god worshipped by the Syrians. In the Book of Tobit, Asmodeus slew the seven bridegrooms of Sarah before they could consummate their marriages. The demon was eventually outwitted by the angel Rafael and banished to Egypt. Brian and I worked that mythology into our book Angelus Rose.

By the Middle Ages, Asmodeus was considered one of Seven Princes of Hell, each a personification of a deadly vice. Asmodeus served as the demon of lust, credited eventually with inventing carousels, dancing, drama, and music. He commanded 72 legions of demons and oversaw the gambling houses in Hell.

Traditionally he's represented as having three heads, but I prefer the 18th-century French description of him as the limping devil. It's said he was lamed when he fell from Heaven.

In the As Above, So Below books, Lorelei talks about Asmodeus as a boss who knew how to make it fun to serve him. She sasses him, but she doesn't forget that once he punished her by piercing the bone spurs atop her wings and locking them together for months. He plays on the jealousy between Lorelei and her sister succubus Floria -- and the competition both succubi feel toward the temptress Yasmina. He never makes it any secret that all of them are expendable, if it advances his power in this world.

In my short story "Never Bargained for You," Asmodeus appears to be an entertainment agent with a mansion above Laurel Canyon. Lorelei works as a talent scout, using sex to lure bands into signing over their souls for fame and fortune. (The story is available to read for free at Bookfunnel. Here's the link: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/5tecny8c9j) (EDIT 9/2: The link was broken, but it’s now fixed!)

By the start of the book Lost Angels, Asmodeus has staged a coup and overthrown Beelzebub to become the Prince of LA. He has minions running talent agencies and horse tracks. He owns dance clubs and restaurants. His organization has tendrils throughout the entertainment industries of LA. Lorelei is happily working amidst them, capturing souls for the glory of her boss and Hell...until she sees the angel Azaziel drinking at her master's bar one night and follows him home.

It was really fun to write for Asmodeus. I hope he comes off as frightening and capricious as my boss Bradley used to be.

Excerpt

Asmodeus, Prince of Los Angeles

excerpt from Lost Angels by Loren Rhoads & Brian Thomas

A section of the alley wall wavered. First the cinderblocks were solid, then oily blackness swallowed them. Out of this darkness stepped Asmodeus, trailed by two fiends in the form of large men, angular to the point of being misshapen.

Probing the refuse with his ebony walking stick, Asmodeus picked his way through the alley. Near the passage’s mouth, he halted. At his feet lay a crumple of shadow: Lorelei’s cast-off dress. The demon gestured down toward it.

 Recognizing its master, the dress stirred, lifting a sleeve flirtatiously. When it brushed his hand, the cloth hurried upward into his grasp. 

The demon rolled the fabric between his fingertips. Lycra had definitely been one of his engineering staff’s most useful inventions. He considered how tasty Lorelei had looked poured into this pinnacle of the art. What a shame the angel cast it away so maliciously.

Asmodeus raised the torn fabric to his face and breathed deep. Beneath the dark fragrance of Lorelei’s musk—wound amongst it—was the scent of the angel’s longing. He’d lain beside the succubus, kissed and caressed her, but his desire didn’t end there.

Unsmiling, the demon prince crushed the dress in his fist and let it dissolve.