The Repentant Demon Trilogy Book 1: The Demon Calumnius: The Repentant Demon Trilogy, #1

By Samantha Johns

This is Book 1 of The Repentant Demon Trilogy (an Epic Fantasy)

In a world that no longer believed in demons, his prey is an easy catch to snare. Fallen angel Calumnius’ only joy has been to destroy the good, ravish the honorable, and tempt those not easily tempted. Glorying in the destruction of good, he seeks to deprive God of His followers and has for a millennium of time.

Now, he’s chosen a new prize; a woman of strong faith, with a pure soul and spirit. He sees her as his ultimate prize. But what happens when all efforts fail to attain that prize?

In Book 1, demon Calumnius stalks beautiful red-headed archaeologist, Abigail into the dangers of ever war-ridden Iraq where she and her handsome companion travel in search for answers to biblical mysteries at a renowned excavation site. Romance starts to blossom, but a mystery unfolds involving them in dangerous evil forces that end in disaster. The demon who witnesses everything devises his own plan to change his existence, but his plan relies exclusively upon the very woman he has invested much time and energy into seducing into hell.

Will his ultimate prize, the woman he is attempting to destroy be his only salvation?

This is an epic fantasy tale you will not soon forget.

Warning... this book contains some dark and graphic representation of evil. Mature audience only.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samantha Johns
• Release date: Aug 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501448645

Book preview

Chapter 1. The Demon Watches

In the shadows, Calumnius watched. He roared, turning his huge horned head and showing his sharp fangs. Standing eight feet tall, no earth shadows could hide him; instead, he lurked rather in a shadow world, unseen by humans. Another like him was near. Burnt sulfur filled his nostrils even before he heard his steps approaching. This was his catch, Calumnius warned, growling. Go away.

Zechaniah appeared from nowhere. This one, though bull-like in his head and curving horns, was darker in color and more human in his body parts. He had no fur like Calumnius covering his lower limbs and groin; therefore, he wore a loincloth and leather boots.

The earth is abundant with victims tonight, he said, making small talk as if assuring Calumnius that he was not after his victim.  It's been like that for ages now. The fields are teeming with prey, more so even than in the Middle Ages. Good hunting, friend.

Good hunting to you, also, said Calumnius, glad that he was leaving.

Yes, there were ample souls to snare. It was easy now that the humans so universally did not believe in demons. Such fools they were, it was like slaughtering sheep—so easy that it no longer even seemed a sport. The time for the final battle would come, and we are winning, he thought.

The Church fights back in vain, increasing the numbers of exorcist priests dramatically. But it will not help them. We demons have infiltrated their numbers, as well as rising to high positions in the governments around the world. These are the humans who have succumbed to possession willingly, to reap earthly rewards beyond belief. They live among the ordinary, only recognizable to a few very accomplished exorcists. But even those elite clergy will make no attempt to expel them from their hosts. Entrenched, willing servants of the Lord of Evil, these poor souls work for Satan's cause behind the scenes in the human world. Many such people of the earth have with their own free will sought us out, wanting riches, power, and luxuries more than they care for their eternal fates. These humans are so easy to capture, so weak and worthless. I have turned to seeking prey that would challenge me—I seek a true believer.

He had been watching this one for weeks, stalking her, trying to decide what her fate should be, if she was the one, and how to attack her. It had been taking him longer and longer to choose a victim, and with every effort, he sought to appease the demons that drove him mad with their taunting. The others would come down hard on him if he returned without a tremendous tale to tell about seduction and shame or torture and cruelty. For the past hundred years, Calumnius had been cheating on his colleagues—taking the easy path because his heart was no longer in the pursuit of souls for the cause of evil. They were evil enough on their own, he’d surmised. It had become no challenge to tempt them.

Often he lurked unseen in dark alleys in the worst places on earth, sensing the evil in the air, especially loving New York City, London, and Moscow. Calumnius looked for despicable human beings about to commit horrendous crimes and lurched at their very souls, taking credit as the final instigator before the killings, rapes, child molestations, and brutal crimes of humanity against humanity. This practice of his, in this realm where cheating and defrauding were virtues, would not have been so acceptable if it involved cheating or defrauding Satan's cause. What he had been doing was to steal the credit for evil he himself had not produced. Calumnius had been receiving great grief from demons who demanded he return to his former glory—lead them with vigor as one of the powerful ones as in days of old.

He had once been ambitious like them, dwelling in convents and monasteries to snare the ones who presented a challenge, ones not so easily tempted. He looked for prominent people admired by others for their qualities of generosity, compassion, and piety. Their destruction had felt good to him, depriving God of His followers and wounding Him. It had once been easy, given his opinion of these beings was so low and his anger so intense. They were unworthy of life and breath. Calumnius enjoyed watching their tortured souls writhing in the fiery abyss. They deserved to suffer, not only for what they had taken from his race, but for their own lowly nature mired in weakness and wretchedness. All anyone need do is look at them to see justification for hate and disgust. They were like insects thrown into fire for the fun of hearing their bodies crackle and sizzle as their flesh burned without ceasing into eternity.

Abigail Rayetta Fitzgerald unknowingly drew him to her by the color of her aura—white, a hue seldom seen in these days. It marked her as having tested goodness. More commonly, one would see blue—the innocents, born that way only to change as their characters developed. Few remained either color for long in this world. The children of the earth were losing their innocence at younger and younger ages.

This woman he watched intrigued him by the words she said in the classes she taught; the story of human culture over vast epochs of time. Her understanding of ancient history was immense, though flawed. Often he wished he could join in on some of those class discussions. He had lingered so at the feet of Socrates and Plato. Yet for all their intelligence, their civilizations had met with ruination—because of evil ones like himself. No matter how brilliant their minds, no matter how noble their cause, they had fallen. All of them.

He carefully watched and listened for many weeks before deciding if she were the one he would choose. What amazed him was that she knew all this horrid history of man, yet she remained moral and seemed to love, even to admire humanity. She helped people when able, attended church, and had remained chaste through the thirty-one years of her existence. Throughout all of this, she remained pleasant, even cheerful. And her energy was boundless in her never-ending pursuit of knowledge and truth, which was remarkable. This was truly a specimen worthy of his attention.

She studied at Washington University in Saint Louis where she taught Anthropology courses to supplement the grants and her meager investment savings, which enabled her to travel and pursue her dream of unearthing some spectacular archaeological discovery. Her interest lay mainly in uncovering sites from the biblical era between 6,000 B.C. and 100 A.D. It was her ambition to help prove the stories in the Bible as fact. Some historical evidence had already been found, and she longed to make even a small contribution that would add to the body of knowledge.

This woman was firm in her faith and confident that no discovery awaited anywhere in the world that would do anything but bolster her belief in God. Such sentiments did not come from the mind but from the heart. She had the gift of faith, given by God to her, marking her as one of his own. This is the very kind of soul Calumnius sought to bring down, to turn evil.

Calumnius studied her, not only because he enjoyed doing so, nor to confirm the wisdom of his choice, but mostly to learn her weakness, so that he would know how to attack. She presented more of a challenge than he had experienced in many earth ages. He often would face her, eye to eye; his breath inches from her face, challenging her to feel his presence. Staring intently into her eyes, as they looked past and through him, as he waited for the signals of discomfort in her demeanor. Such fun this was for him, seeing her react, with some involuntary response of irritation, some feeling of bodily discomfort as humans do when they sense they're being watched.

Although he had done this several times, she did not run screaming into the night for help as many had been prone to do. Some had actually sought psychiatric help after their bouts with him. And even more humorous were the ones who sought the help of ghost hunters. There were those who felt tortured enough to even commit suicide. And for those that sought the help of a priest, but most would not intervene to help them. Many priests themselves no longer believed in evil, or worse, they did believe and were afraid due to their guilt or sense of unworthiness. 

Abigail Rayetta Fitzgerald, as he had always called her in his mind because he enjoyed the beauty and flow of the name, had offered a new challenge for Calumnius as he indulged in this game with her. Once, it shocked him when it was he who turned away first. He who felt a moment of discomfort. She stared directly into his eyes, as if she saw him, which was impossible. He knew that. But he saw, for a brief moment, something that startled him. It only took a brief time to realize that it was her soul that he saw. It was stronger than he had imagined. This brief glimpse confirmed for him that he had wisely chosen his next victim.

Calumnius had once enjoyed his work, so he began to hope that perhaps he would again when the sweetness of success healed his ailing spirit. He had taken great pleasure in bringing down holy ones in the olden days. He had conquered popes, hermits, nuns, and monks over the centuries and had basked in the glory of hell over these victories. He reveled listening to the moans of human souls agonizing and regretting their sins, longing to see the face of God, which was forever denied to them. To Calumnius, the fate these miserable creatures deserved for the sin of their very existence in the universe, a universe that would have been perfect without them was this. He considered them ugly beings, mistakes of God.

Lowly creatures though they were, humans were not the root of his problem. God was. He hated these creatures of God because they could obtain His forgiveness—something he could never do. It had taken a long time to acknowledge that he, Calumnius, actually wanted to be with God. To be one of His holy angels, as he once had been at the dawn of time before Lucifer rebelled. But even to want such a thing was theoretically impossible as he had always assumed—until it happened to him, until he looked into the very face of forgiveness itself.

His view of the nature of this virtue akin to mercy had changed irrevocably about a hundred years ago during his temptation of Alessandro Serenelli in the earth year of 1902. This was a nineteen-year-old boy. What an easy job it should have been. All of them were naturally filled with lust. The other six deadly sins were virtually unneeded where they were concerned. Calumnius planted a seed of desire in the boy, planted it deep in the fertile ground of a physical body raging with emerging male hormones.

You want to have sex with that young girl who just moved with her widowed mother to your parents' farm. She is a beauty, he’d whispered to him. She has a sweet luscious body, and she is right for you—small so she could not overpower you like the girls your own age, and so innocent she cannot possibly compare your inadequacies with other males.

Maria Goretti was twelve years old and unaware of the feelings boys had for her. She dressed modestly and covered her hair with a shawl. Still her beauty showed—her lovely dark eyes fringed with heavy lashes, her full mouth sensuous and soft, and her form overdeveloped and evident beneath her simple dress.

Alessandro saw her and coveted her every day. When she smiled at him in innocence, it roused him to uncontrollable passion. He exposed this to her on more than one occasion, and although she scolded him and averted her eyes, she did not tell anyone. Alessandro interpreted that as a sign of her

Reviews for The Repentant Demon Trilogy Book 1

[alexprosp · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved the first book in this series, and Book 2 was even better. The former-demon Cal has a tough time learning to use his human body and starting his human life, which made for fun reading and also makes you think about how complex we've made the modern world. Fortunately he has lots of help from Abigail, and some of the keen skills he had from a long life as a demon, including a proficiency with language and keen observation skills, now make him incredibly useful in a high-stakes situation. Seeing his character develop is a great exploration in faith as he confronts how to be of value, how to honor his chance at forgiveness and how to make his short time as a human matter. I liked seeing how he was inspired by others who he in turn inspired, and how he pushed himself and ultimately had human emotions bloom.I also loved the romance that developed between Abigail and Cal, and felt like it contributed to the strength of the book. It's like with Abigail recovering from grief and Cal essentially a newborn, the author created an incubator for their love that acknowledged their faith and allowed them to grow together. I like how the author explored the relationship of marriage in this context.The end of the story in Book 2 emphasized the action and intrigue and this part was really exciting, making me wonder what is in store for the next book. I loved the character development and plot turns in Book 2, so I'm looking forward to it!