DEMON SLAVE TOUR (Rebel Rose Interview and Giveaway)

Welcome to the Official Demon's Slave Blog Tour

It's with great honour that I introduce you to Rebel Rose

 

                                                 

A CHAT WITH THE REBEL ROSE

I was thrilled when I received a request to interview Rose, the heroine of my notorious cult-followed Black Dog and Rebel Rose Series, on her own for the first time. Please welcome her and make her feel at home.

DANI: Welcome, Rose. Does it feel strange to be here without Skriker?

ROSE (smiling a little shyly): Yeah, it does. I’m so used to us doing these things together.

DANI: I can understand that! You two are pretty much attached at the hip these days. Okay, to start, we may have some new readers joining us today, so can you give us a bit of background info?

ROSE: Sure. It’s a long and complicated story, so I’ll try and give you the nutshell version. My mother was an artist, and my father was an angel. Not in the figurative sense—I’m talking about a real angel, a soldier of Heaven. Long story short, he was banished from Paradise for disobeying a direct order millennia ago and spent a good number of centuries just walking the earth. He was eventually offered an assignment that would let him earn back his wings—kill my mother to stop her from taking a commission from a demon. Well, that didn’t turn out the way his bosses Upstairs expected. He fell in love with her. There was a whole mess of hoops that they had to jump through in order to be together, and in the end they had me. I’m what they call a Nephil—a half-angel. Some of the old tales say that the Flood spoken of in the Bible was actually sent to kill off the first wave of the Nephilim, who were destroying the earth. Couldn’t keep their powers in their pants.

DANI: Who fathered those Nephilim?

ROSE: The Watchers. Angels sent by the Divine to teach humans a variety of skills and oversee mankind’s advancement. They ended up falling for—and fucking—human women, and were banished by the Maker as punishment. Their offspring were the Nephilim. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only Nephil alive on earth these days.

DANI: How do you know for sure? Not to doubt you, or anything.

ROSE (chuckling bitterly): Because angels are notorious gossips. I would have heard something through the earthbound grapevine if there were other things like me running around.

DANI: Your parents’ romance sounds both heart-wrenching and achingly beautiful.

ROSE: It was. My father is this big badass—well over six feet tall, all hard muscle and angelic fire. And then there was my mom. I think she was about five feet tall, maybe an inch taller at most. She probably weighed all of ninety five pounds. To look at me, you’d never know it. I’m 5’ 11”—I would tower over her if she were still alive. She was a pretty girl, but nothing stunning—kind of a girl-next-door type. I think it was her spirit that my father fell so deeply in love with. She was small, but she could be fierce. She fought so hard to keep me safe, even when her life was in danger. They were an amazing couple.

DANI: Was your father a Watcher, like the angels who created the first wave of Nephilim?

ROSE: Nope. My father is a Warrior…specifically, a Power. He was ranked third in command under the Seraph Michael himself before he was kicked out of Heaven. He’s about as big and bad as they come. The Watchers were essentially the douchebags of the angelic world. (She rolls her eyes.) I should know…I had a relationship with one for a while.

DANI: No way. You mean, you dated a Watcher?

ROSE: Um…yeah. And “dated” is a mild word. I actually lost my virginity to him. His name was Sariel. He was sent to teach mankind about the courses of the moon…something lame like that. I ran into him when I was seventeen. I was hunting in Jerusalem and he had been living there for God knows how long. Going by his behavior, he would have been better off in Tel Aviv, where all the Israeli strip clubs are. (She laughs harshly.) Anyway, I stayed with him for around three months. He was a total douchebag.

DANI: Was he good in bed?

ROSE: He was good for a seventeen-year-old girl who had never fucked before. He thought he was something special, though. I won’t say that it was all bad—he was pretty hot at times—but looking back he was nothing really extraordinary.

DANI: So he wasn’t as good in bed as Skriker.

ROSE (cracking up): Oh, hell, no! Skriker could run rings around Sariel—make that every man I have ever been with. Skrike is a fucking god in bed.

DANI (grinning): That’s a blasphemous statement, Rose.

ROSE (winking): That’s why I said it.

DANI: Think we’ll ever hear the full story about your adventures in Israel with that Watcher?

ROSE: You might one of these days.

DANI: Why are you known as the Rebel Rose?

ROSE (cracking up): HA! Probably because I tell my father to go suck it more often than I should. I may be half-angel, but I sure as hell don’t know how to obey.

DANI: Tell us about your relationship with Skriker. How did it feel to hook up with a half-demon?

ROSE: Honestly? I felt guilty as hell, no pun intended. It was a point-blank betrayal of my lineage. But I could care less about all that now. Skriker is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I can’t picture my life without him. I felt like I had known him all my life from the start, as much as I didn’t want to admit it at first. (She laughs.) He treats me like a princess. I think he’d kiss my feet if I’d let him. Of all people, of all beings, Skriker has been the kindest to me.

DANI: You are a powerful being, but you have admitted to feeling very fragile at times. When in life have you felt most alone?

ROSE (bowing her head and averting her eyes): When I was five years old, hiding in my mother’s closet with my face torn open, listening to my mom scream as demons ripped her apart. 

DANI: Jesus, babe. I’m sorry.

ROSE: It’s okay. You’d think that memory would make me hate Skrike, right? But it doesn’t. It doesn’t.

DANI: How are you different now than you were before you lost Psyche, your mother?

ROSE: I was very young when I lost my mother. But I think that I was sweeter, more innocent, before I witnessed her death. After she died, I refused to speak for over three months. Scared the hell out of my dad. After I began to speak again, I became more hard-edged, even as a kid. Something like that really changes you.

DANI: Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?

ROSE: My father, naturally. He made me what I am. After my mother died, he took me and honed me like a blade. He taught me to seek out the enemy with relentless passion, and to always keep my aim true. I am as focused as they come because of him.

DANI: What was the happiest moment of your life? I take it that the saddest was hiding in that closet…

ROSE: No, surprisingly that isn’t my saddest memory. The saddest memory would be of lying in my new bed in the attic of the Great Mother, Asherah, and listening to my father crouch in the corner and cry. I was supposed to be sleeping. My father made it his habit to squat on the floor, or on a chair, and just stare out the window as he guarded me while I slept. If he thought I was asleep he would just dissolve into tears and rock back and forth, moaning my mother’s name. Saddest thing I can remember to this day.

My happiest memory…well, that would have to be a toss up between one of my mom and one that involved Skrike. I recall the last Christmas with my mother, when I was little. She put up our Christmas tree, and when she went to stick the fluffy angel at the top, I told her in my haughtiest five-year-old voice that I didn’t like it because it didn’t look like a real angel. And you know what she did? She made a new topper for me that looked like my father! I hugged that funny little doll so tight before she put it on the tree.

DANI: That’s so sweet, Rose. And what about the memory with Skriker?

ROSE: It was my birthday, which I usually hate—my mother was killed the night before I turned six. Anyway, Skriker always tries to spoil me on my birthday, to make me forget all the bad shit. Last year, he took me for a ride on his Harley into this really gnarly part of town with all these abandoned houses. I asked him why, and he wouldn’t tell. He ended up pulling up to this old Victorian that had been abandoned for years and years. He told me he used to squat in it when he was a homeless kid, that it was a “good place”. Anyway, he takes me up to the top floor and into this old ballroom. Totally blows my mind: he’s set up this big air mattress bed for us there, with satin sheets and silk pillows and candles and about ten vases of roses. He’s got sweet wine chilling…the whole nine yards. Needless to say, that night blew my mind and left me breathless. I never knew that making love in a musty old house under a dusty crystal chandelier could be so fucking hot…but it was. (She sighs.) I still get warm n’ fuzzy inside when I remember that night. I get a little wet, too.

DANI: Um, yeah, I think that about 95% of the female population reading this interview just got wet hearing that story. And that was a great way for us to end this interview. Give that bad boy of yours a smooch for me.

ROSE: I will. You know he told me to blow everyone a kiss…so here you go. (She blows a kiss into the ether and laughs.) He’s better at doing that than I am.

DANI: There’s a shock.

CONTEST

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