As Above, So Below by Loren Rhoads and Brian Thomas 💕 Guest Post, Series Tour & Gift Card Giveaway 💕 (Paranormal Romance)

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When the succubus Lorelei sees Azaziel across Lost Angels, she knows he’s been kicked out of Heaven, but is not yet Fallen. She resolves to do whatever it takes to bring the angel down.

Unfortunately, Lorelei doesn’t realize that Azaziel has an agenda of his own. Taking her back to a burned-out church, he forces a mortal girl’s soul into the devil girl’s flesh. Then the succubus needs to find an exorcist who can cast the ghost out of her.

With all the supernatural warriors of Los Angeles looking on, neither the angel nor the succubus can imagine how love will derail their plans…

Lorelei and Aza meet

excerpt from Lost Angels by Loren Rhoads & Brian Thomas

Lorelei licked the last traces of soul from her lips, then smoothed the knee-length hobble dress over her thighs. The black lycra snuggled around her like a living creature. The barbed tip of her tail twitched as she scanned the dance club, seeking more prey.

Her violet eyes locked on the creature seated at the end of the zinc bar, dressed in a rumpled khaki trench coat. Through the smoke and flashing lights of the dance club, she saw him for what he was: an angel of melancholy. Hers. His wings weren’t manifest, but the unmistakable glow of his halo enforced a margin of emptiness around him. Shoulders hunched over his glass, he was doing his best to ignore what was going on around the club. Clearly not having fun, which was a damned shame, considering that fun was what Lost Angels was all about. Lorelei wondered what it would take to put a smile on his face.

She patted hair over the nubs of her horns and adjusted the dress’s zipper to be demure as could be, only the pale white column of her throat revealed. Once she’d made certain that the seams on her stockings were straight and her mortal glamour was flawless, she stepped out of the shadows. Let’s see if this one could be won without a fight.

The angel ignored her when she leaned across the bar at his elbow, straining the lycra dress just so. Lorelei waved the bartender over. “My usual,” she shouted above the music, “and whatever he’s drinking. On my tab.”

When another Crown Royal appeared in front of him, the angel made no move toward it. Lorelei breathed into his ear, “Say thank you.”

Vaguely in the bartender’s direction, the angel repeated, “Thank you.”

Lorelei touched her glass against the angel’s, then downed a good mouthful of her drink. More Absolut than cranberry, just the way she liked it. However, the angel continued to ignore her, tense and miserable, wanting his whiskey but apparently afraid to touch it.

“Thank you, Lorelei,” she prompted. She leaned against the angel, nestling his shoulder between her breasts. She reached around his waist to hold him close. He could escape her, certainly, if he wanted to cause a scene. She licked her lips, so close to his ear that he quivered at the sound. “What’s your name, Angel?”

He sipped his drink before answering, “Aza.”

There should be an ‘el’ on there somewhere. Amused by the dropped honorific, she echoed, “Just Aza?”

“Aza will do.”

The nickname made him sound accessible. Not fallen yet, but unimaginably lonely. Lorelei asked, “Looking for company, Aza?”

The angel put his glass down very precisely on the bar. She was unprepared when his stormy green eyes turned to her. “Maybe I came looking for you, Lorelei.”

The timbre of his voice shivered through her like lightning.

When she was sure of her composure, she purred, “Here I am, Angel.” She planted a kiss between his blond eyebrows. Rather than strike out at her, as she expected, he drew a shuddering breath. Deep down in her hips, the succubus felt a connection made. Not fallen yet, but hers. Her lipstick looked like the mark of Cain on his ivory skin.

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.

Azaziel says goodbye
excerpt from Angelus Rose by Loren Rhoads & Brian Thomas

At the sound of a footfall beside the hotel bed, Aza jolted out of his meditation. Even as he summoned his sword to his hand, he moved to shield Lorelei. Instead of Muriel, as he expected, he found his sister Barbelo standing inside the room. She remained far enough from the bed to appear unthreatening. Barbelo’s warm hazel eyes twinkled as she offered folded clothing in her outstretched arms.

“Rise and shine, Big Brother,” she encouraged quietly.

Aza lifted the blankets and stepped to the floor, but Lorelei didn’t stir. He reached out, gentle as a breeze, and lifted a lock of her shadowy dark hair away from her throat. Her luscious, slightly parted lips invited him to leave a kiss, but he knew one kiss would lead to others. His sister waited.

He tore his gaze away and turned toward Barbelo to accept the clean—if not new—clothing. Relieved not to have to put his bloodied battle gear back on, Aza stepped into a comfortably worn pair of jeans. As he buttoned on a clean chambray shirt, Barbelo collected the torn clothing he’d worn to the nightclub, along with the blazer Lorelei had borrowed, and put everything into the bathtub. Barbelo burned the lot with a brief, bright flame.

Standing at the bedside to gaze down at the sleeping succubus, Aza knew—as clearly as he’d ever known anything—that he had to leave Lorelei. There were mortals in need, souls in torment. Aza knew at his core that he had been created to serve them. Still, he hated to leave Lorelei like this, without a goodbye.

As she’d anticipated his need of fresh clothing, his sister had also foreseen his difficulty in bidding the succubus adieu. Barbelo appeared at Aza’s elbow to offer him a single long-stemmed red rose.

Aza lifted the bud to his lips. Its petals were as warm and soft as Lorelei’s skin, without the electric musk of her perfume. He left a kiss on the rose for Lorelei to find later. The flower shimmered from crimson to a deeper, more passionate hue. He laid it on his pillow.

Then, without looking back, he followed Barbelo from the room. If he gave in to second thoughts, the succubus’s gravity would trap him. He set his shoulders and fought it.

How I became an author:

My mom was a firm believer in naps. When I was 5, I didn’t really need to nap, but my 3-year-old brother walked in his sleep and the doctor suggested maybe he was overtired. So my mother brought us both into her big bed and laid down with one of us on either side of her. She’d fling an arm across my brother and a leg over me to hold us still until naptime was over.

Unable to sleep or even to wiggle, I told myself stories to pass the hours. My favorite book at the time was Peter Pan. I hated Wendy, who sucked the fun out of everything, but I idolized Princess Tiger Lily, who would rather be tied to a rock and drowned than betray her friends. In the stories I told myself, I was Tiger Lily's best friend, standing up to Captain Hook and flying off on adventures with Peter. I still like those strong female characters.

Something quirky about me:

I love to visit cemeteries. In addition to my novels, I've written two books about visiting cemeteries around the world: 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. Brian Thomas (my co-author) and I managed to write 3 cemeteries into Angelus Rose: Forest Lawn, where they have a huge stained glass replica of Da Vinci's The Last Supper; Westwood Memorial Park, where Marilyn Monroe is buried; and Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, which served as a backdrop for the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

If I knew I would die tomorrow:

If I knew I would die tomorrow, I would go out to breakfast at Louis' Restaurant overlooking the ocean. I'd get a table by the window, where I could watch for whales swimming by. I'd order waffles drowning in syrup and get all hopped up on coffee, then I'd walk along the Land's End trail to the Palace of the Legion of Honor, which stands on the grounds of the former City Cemetery. The headstones were removed in the 1920s, but most of the bodies still lie under the grass. I'd sit on the bench in the sunlight and gaze over the mouth of the San Francisco Bay at the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd just enjoy the beauty with my husband and kid. That would be the perfect day, whether I was going to die soon or not.

What can we expect in the future:

My first novel, still unpublished, was about a young witch named Alondra DeCourval. I've written a bunch of stories about her traveling around the world and encountering magical creatures from a siren in Venice to a fox spirit in Tokyo to the monster that lives under the Golden Gate Bridge. I've collected the stories into a couple of short ebooks on Amazon, but I would like to publish some novels about Alondra's adventures. I've got 3 books in various states of done, but I'd like to settle down and finally tell her story.

About the characters in the As Above, So Below books:

The hero is an angel named Azaziel, although he prefers to be called Aza. The succubus who falls in love with him teases him about his name. She thinks there ought to be an 'El" in there somewhere. He's missing the honorific that denotes his Heavenly origin.

Azaziel's backstory in our novels was inspired by a play by Lord Byron called Heaven and Earth: A Mystery. In that story, Azaziel falls in love with Anah, one of Cain's granddaughters. When God sends the Flood, Azaziel tucks Anah under his wings and flies away to another plane.

My co-writer Brian Thomas asked what would happen if Azaziel outlived Anah but wasn't forgiven -- not necessarily for loving her, but for stepping away from his duties to be with her. Basically, Aza was faced with a no-win situation: save the woman he loved or let her drown. He's never forgiven himself for making a choice. It gave us some juicy stuff to play with.

Our heroine, the succubus Lorelei, was inspired by a woman I knew at university. Kimmy lived across the hall from me in the dorm. She was beautiful: large very dark eyes, long mahogany hair, heart-shaped face. She wasn’t very tall, but she was seriously curvy. I wasn’t surprised to find she’d done catalog modeling in high school.

Mostly what I remember about Kimmy was her presence. She made everything more fun. When she came into a room, every head turned toward her, but she wasn’t obnoxious about it. She didn’t seem to crave attention; she just accepted it as normal.

Kimmy was always ready for anything. When Playboy came to town, looking to photograph Girls of the Big 10, she considered it. When she met another girl who had been contacted by a Greek millionaire who was looking for pretty girls to come lounge around on his yacht in their bikinis, she considered it. I think her curiosity about that lifestyle was matched by a small-town naivety that didn’t really guess what that kind of deal would demand in return. In consequence, I felt protective of Kimmy. I didn’t want her trusting nature to lead her into a situation she couldn’t charm her way out of.

Lorelei came directly out of that feeling. I wanted to explore the possibilities laid out in front of Kimmy, but know that Lorelei would survive them. I wanted to give Kimmy a happy ending and a boyfriend she wanted just as much as he wanted her. And I wanted to guarantee she’d never lose her fearlessness or sense of fun.

How did we come up with the title:

The working title of the original book was Hex Vex Sex. I had a long-sleeved black t-shirt that I'd bought on Haight Street with the slogan written down its sleeve. Brian thought the phrase summed up our story, from Lorelei's initial seduction of Aza, to Aza's possessing Lorelei with a mortal girl's ghost, then their eventual Happy For Now ending.

Along the way, the book's title changed to As Above, So Below, which we took from the old magical texts. In fact, the first novel was originally published under that title in 2013. When we got the rights back, we changed that novel's title to Lost Angels, which is the name of the bar where Lorelei works in Los Angeles.

The second book is called Angelus Rose. We talked about changing it a couple of times, but never came up with anything we liked better.

Loren Rhoads is the co-author (with Brian Thomas) of the novel Lost Angels about a succubus who sets her sights on an angel and ends up possessed by a mortal girl's soul. The sequel, Angelus Rose, came out in February 2020.

Loren is the author of The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes, a space opera trilogy set after a galactic war has wiped out much of humanity.

She is also the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. She blogs about graveyards as travel destinations at CemeteryTravel.com.

You won't be surprised to know that she likes long walks in the moonlight and old graveyards.