by Mark Cain
“Your little horns. I’ve never seen a devil or demon that had cute horns.”
A slight frown briefly marred her otherwise perfect features. “Who,” she said.
“Beg pardon.”
“A devil or demon ‘who’ had cute horns, not ‘that’ had cute horns. I’m a person, you know, not a piece of furniture.”
“Sorry,” I said, genuinely contrite. “I didn’t mean to objectify you.”
Lilith inhaled, and her swelling breasts almost made the top of her dress explode. “I don’t mind that, at least sexually. You know, ‘what a piece of ass!’ ‘great tits!’ ‘what a tight … ’”
“I get it!” I said hurriedly.
“Okay. Just remember though, I’m a person, like you, with feelings and everything.”
“I’m sorry, Lilith. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”
The frown faded, and she gave me a smooch on the lips. “That’s okay. All is forgiven. Now, what was that about my horns?”
My face burned with embarrassment from my faux pas, but I managed to look her in the eyes. “I…I said they’re cute.”
“Thanks. Would you like to touch them?”
“May I?”
She smiled, and I noticed her dimples for the first time. “Why sure. Here.” Lilith took my hands and placed them on her horns, where they poked from her fair skin just below her hairline.
They were very soft. I was expecting something hard, but they were as soft as the nipples of her breasts. “Nice,” I exhaled softly then found myself stroking her auburn hair.
Lilith was practically purring at my touch. “No,” she protested, as I forced myself to remove my hand. “Don’t stop.”
“Have to,” I said with a gulp. “While I still can. Uh, Lilith, could I ask you something?”
“Sure, Steve,” she said huskily. “Anything.”
“Would you … would you,” I paused, not sure this was what I wanted to ask. “Would you check something for me on Asmodeus’s calendar?” I said with a rush.
“Oh,” she said, a little crestfallen. I doubt that was what she had been expecting. “I don’t know. I’m not supposed to. I’m his assistant, and I try to respect his privacy.” She chewed on her lower lip for a second then looked at me. “But you’re doing a job for Lord Satan himself, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then I suppose I have to. Besides, I said I’d help, and I’m a succubus of my word. What do you want to know?”
“I need to find out what Asmodeus has been up to the past couple of days.” Motive, means, opportunity. Perhaps with his calendar, I could see if he had an alibi.
Lilith took out an iPhone. “I haven’t seen much of my boss recently, but let me check his Outlook calendar.”
“You actually can get a signal down here?” I’d never been able to get a cell signal I could depend on, which was why Orson and I had to do so much via the pneumatic tubes or the landline phone system.
“Sure. I have four bars. Don’t you?”
I ground my teeth. “No, but I’m one of the damned, remember.”
“Does that affect cell service? Well, never mind. Now let me see.” Lilith frowned at her phone. Yep, she was adorable and sexy at the same time. “Well, there’s not much here. A couple of days ago, he had a few appointments in the office, but all of yesterday and some of today, there was a big block of time set aside. It was marked private.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means he made his own appointment and set it to private. He probably didn't want anyone to know what he was doing then.”
Hmm. If the HVAC system was indeed sabotaged, and I was pretty sure at this point that was exactly what happened, Asmodeus could have done it during that private appointment. This prince of Hell had no alibi, or at least, his calendar didn’t give him one.
“And you have no idea what he was doing during that period?”
“No, but I can take a guess.”
“What?”
Lilith shrugged, and I was again lost for a moment in the wonder of her jiggling breasts. When I came out of the spell, I heard her say, “He is the Lord of Lust, you know. Being in the sack with someone is what he does with most of his private appointments.”
“Makes sense.”
“He’s a real rake. Just loves the ladies, and he’s made a conquest out of almost every female down here.”
I looked at Lilith. “In … including you?” I said, hoping the question didn’t offend her.
“Well, sure. I’m a succubus. Besides, how do you think I got my job?” She grinned, but she also blushed a little.
“He’s the Lord of Lust,” I said, trying to change the focus of the conversation. “I know he specializes in lust, but is it just sexual lust?”
Lilith took another sip of her crackhead slammer. “What do you mean?”
“Well, is lust for power a part of his job portfolio?”
“Yeah, he likes that too. But many of the Princes have a piece of that, Mammon for instance. Sexual lust, though, is the main focus of my boss, so he was probably with a skirt yesterday.”
I scratched my chin in thought. Just because Lilith didn’t know where Asmodeus had been yesterday didn’t necessarily mean he had no alibi. “I really have to talk with your boss in person.”
“That will be hard to do. It sometimes takes me a week or two to get someone in to see him. Wait!” she said, brightening. “I know! In a little while, Asmodeus is going to hold a cocktail party in his penthouse above the office. You can be my date!”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “You’d do that for me?”
“Yes, but only on one condition. Wait, make that two.”
“Ah.” I had a bad feeling, like I was being trapped into something, but I really needed to talk to him. “What are they?”
“Well, one, find a nicer outfit, like a tuxedo or something. This is a black tie affair, and I can’t take you in there looking like that, no matter how much I like your legs.”
“That won’t be easy, but I’ll find a way. Okay. What’s the second condition?”
She dimpled again. “I want a kiss.”
“What?”
“You do know what a kiss is, don’t you?”
“Well, of course I do.” I thought about Flo, and felt a pang of guilt. Still, a job was a job. “Okay, but not here.”
Lilith tossed back the rest of her drink, left some bills on the bar and slipped off her barstool.
The succubus took me by the hand. “Outside, then.”
“But … ”
“No buts. That’s the deal,” she said and, still holding my hand, led me outside.
The streets were dark and deserted. We walked a few yards down the sidewalk then Lilith turned to me. “Well?”
I gulped, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek.
She frowned. “Not like that. I meant a kiss. A real kiss. Like this.”
Lilith pulled my head down to her level and planted a big one on me. At first, I struggled, but I found my lips yielding to hers. As her tongue entered my mouth, followed with scant hesitation by mine into hers, I noticed that her breath was very sweet, with a faint taste of cinnamon.
It was a great kiss. Lilith took my hand and placed it on one of her breasts, and my fingers were once again off exploring her mountains and the valley between. I felt her own hand seek and find the great white whale.
Help! I think I’m drowning! But another part of my brain, the primal part was screaming, Do it!
One thought saved me. Unbidden, an image of Flo entered my mind. Beautiful, kind Flo, who currently wouldn’t give me the time of day. Yet I loved her. I knew that.
It took all my will to pull away from Lilith’s embrace. I even kissed her once more, but it was tender instead of passionate. “That was … that was wonderful, but I have to go now.”
Lilith gasped. “Steve! I haven’t been kissed like that in a long time. Please stay,” she said, putting my hand on her breas
t again. I gave it a tender squeeze and let go.
“I really have to leave, but, but I’ll see you soon.”
She looked at me in astonishment. “No one has ever said no to me before.”
“Well,” I said with a gentle smile. “You’re not easy to say no to.”
“I … I’m impressed,” she said. “Maybe even a little stunned.”
“I’m a bit surprised myself,” though I knew it had been the right thing to do. “Listen, Lilith, I had a wonderful time, but I have some work I must do before the reception.”
Lilith nodded and started to walk back to the bar. Then she turned. “You know you don’t have to act with me Steve. You don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything.”
“Lilith … ”
“Oh, maybe just whistle,” Lilith said. “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?”
“Don’t.”
“You just put your lips together and … blow.”
“Jeez! Does everyone in Hell know ‘To Have and Have Not?’” I frowned.
Lilith reacted as if I'd slapped her. “I … I thought it was your favorite movie!” A discouraged succubus, all five feet two inches of her, looked at me with a pout. “You're just toying with me. You probably don't even like me.” Her lower lip began to quiver.
Oh no! I’ve made her cry. I stepped closer and embraced her warmly. Lilith clung to me like a little child. She really seemed sweet, and I kissed her on one of her horns. “Don't worry about the movie. It’s fine. And … and I like you a lot.”
“You do?” she sniffed, turning blue Bambi eyes on me.
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “I don’t just pretend to like people. I either do or I don't, and I never learned how to flirt or be coy or anything like that. I’m just not a love ‘em and leave ‘em sort.”
“You don’t? You aren’t?”
“No, and I promise to whistle for you, at you, and use any other conjunction concerning you, as appropriate, if I need you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, kid,” I said giving her a final hug. “Run on inside. Now, when and where shall I meet you for the reception?”
“How about the lobby of Corporate? Three hours?”
“Fine. Here’s looking at you, kid,” I said, thinking of another Bogart film I loved.
“See you in a while, Steve.” She sniffed a final time, smiled demurely and slipped back inside the Kit Kat Club.
As soon as she disappeared, a winged giant dropped to the ground beside me. BOOH stood on the pavement, his shoulders moving up and down convulsively, a rapid exhalation of fetid breath accompanying his silent laughter.
“Don’t. Don’t say a word,” I grumbled, as I climbed on his shoulders. “Just take me down to see Mammon on Four. And stop laughing at me!”
Chapter 14
Usually when BOOH and I flew through one of the orifices separating one level of Hell from another, I was aware of the heat coming from the molten mass of a Circle’s interior. The supernatural swiftness of my friend’s beating wings, though, kept the air temperature more than tolerable. Besides, we were usually through in the blink of an eye, and intense heat experienced over the course of a single second could be borne by anyone, especially a damned soul. To get to Mammon’s domain on Four, we had to pass through two levels, so that would be two blinks, but still not very important.
You would think, also, with the progressive cooling of Hades, due to the failure of the HVAC system, that even the interiors of the circles in Hell would be a little cooler than normal. Yet despite the rapidly dropping temperatures, despite the ceiling fan effect of BOOH’s wings, I felt hot, really hot.
I suspected it had nothing to do with the ambient temperature of the Netherworld, but instead with the voluptuous redhead I’d just left. The burning between my legs was predictable, if troubling, but even my skin felt all prickly with heat. I was sweating, unusual for one in my circumstances (Down here, we dead folks are usually not accorded the luxury of the body’s natural cooling system, unless it results in uncomfortably wet clothes and objectionable body odor.) I also felt a bit lightheaded.
Never had I experienced such animal attraction for a woman. Not even for Florence Nightingale, I had to admit, who was the most beautiful woman, physically and spiritually, I’d ever known. I knew in my heart that my feelings for Flo were profound, that they were true love, and much more meaningful than the raw lust I felt for Lilith.
Yet that lust was pretty damn powerful too. What’s more, I actually liked Lilith. My reflexive cynicism was screaming at me that I was being set up, that Lilith wasn’t really attracted to me. This was all caused by my stupid “cold day in Hell” comment, I was sure. She probably wouldn’t give me the time of day otherwise. Besides, she was the consummate sexual being; she was a professional. It’s what she did for a living, probably many times a day.
And yet … she seemed genuinely troubled when I pulled away from her. That could simply have been her pride. I doubted a succubus was used to being rejected. On the other hand, there could have been more to it than that.
What’s that line from “Macbeth?” Oh, yeah, “fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
I glanced down at the giant critter who was carrying me. BOOH was certainly foul, foul looking and foul smelling, but he was beautiful on the inside. And Satan, in his Lucifer aspect, was undeniably fair on the outside, while masking the most evil soul in the universe. Hell was the realm of deception, but at least in the case of Flo, the external and the internal matched. She looked like a saint, well, a really sexy one, on the outside, and she was even more beautiful on the inside.
What, then, to make of Lilith, the offspring of a demon and an archangel? Outside: pretty obvious. But what about under the sheets? I decided that was a bad though appropriate metaphor in this case. Still, I wondered if she was as nice beneath the surface as she seemed to be.
This was all very confusing. I needed some time to pull myself together, so I asked BOOH to fly around Level Four for a bit. He gave me a quick grand tour, soaring high above the major landmarks of the Circle.
Most of Level Four is a high plain, dry, deserted. It’s where people who are afraid of the great outdoors spend Eternity. Four, as I’ve said before, also has its share of fire pits, but they were burning so low as we flew above them that they barely illuminated the distant Sea of Thorns.
We soared over a smoldering volcano. This one wasn’t as dependable as Old Dependable, but it was pretty dependable. In fact, that was its name: Pretty Dependable. Usually you could count on it erupting, but right now, the volcano wasn’t living up to its moniker. A bit of dark smoke floated ominously from the summit, but Pretty Dependable looked more like a burnt-out stogie than a dispenser of molten lava. We left the mountain and headed back to the Plains.
The High Plains of Level Four seemed to stretch to infinity, a dusty brown sea of anonymity. While agoraphobics and raging extroverts were down there somewhere, you couldn’t see them from my vantage point. Personally, I had never been afraid of the great outdoors. I wasn’t much of a people person either. Don’t get me wrong. People were fine, but like most academics, I’d always been a bit of an introvert. For these reasons, the Plains struck me as serene, and they tended to have a calming effect on me, even now.
BOOH seemed to instinctively understand this - perhaps he could feel my grip loosening on the tufts of fur beneath his ears - so he just hovered above the Plains, letting me get my fill of the landscape’s arid desolation. I took a deep breath and exhaled deeply, felt the tension and heat leave my body. In another minute, I was back to normal.
Good old BOOH. What a friend.
Shoving thoughts of Lilith - and Flo - from my brain, I directed BOOH to the heart of Greed in Hell.
Far from the Great Plains flowed a muddy river. To the north of the river was a shining city, built atop seven hills. Unlike most of the architecture in Hell, which looked like cast-off scenery from the back lot at Universal, the City of M
ammon was resplendent in classical architecture.
The home of Greed was, to my mind, what classical Rome must have looked like around 100 AD, or CE to be politically correct. I’d been to Rome once in my lifetime and seen the ruined husks of its Classical period, such as the Coliseum and the Domus Augustana on the Palatine Hill. Full-sized replicas of them were below me now, and these were no ruins, but complete structures made entirely of gold.
In fact, everything in this dead ringer for Classical Rome was created out of gold. That’s, presumably, what made it a shining city.
I directed BOOH toward what, on Earth, would have been called the Pantheon. Here, it was Mammon’s center of power.
The original Pantheon was first built and dedicated in 27 BC/BCE. A fire took it out in 80 AD/CE, so the Romans had to rebuild it in the year 126. Originally, the building was dedicated to the worship of the Roman Pantheon of gods, which was a knockoff of the Greek one, as I’m sure you know, but as Christianity pushed out the old deities, the structure became a Catholic Church. The Pantheon was something of an engineering marvel. At the time of my death, the huge structure still had the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, an astonishing 142 feet in diameter.
Like the rest of the city, Hell’s version of the Pantheon was made entirely of gold. This defied the physical laws of the universe. No gold dome 142 feet in diameter could possibly exist, but since Hell’s management didn’t give a crap about the physical laws of the universe, the span was gold. This Pantheon, like the original back on Earth, was in a way also a house of worship. And the god worshipped here was very old: Mammon.
I don’t know what’s been around the longest, lust or greed or gluttony. Probably gluttony, because the early humans must have chowed down mightily whenever they were lucky enough to take down a mastodon or something. I can easily picture in my mind an overstuffed caveman, with a bellyful of beastie, groaning in the corner of his cave. Lust, like gluttony, is probably older than greed. A man’s gotta eat, but after that, he’s going to be looking for something to screw. And money didn’t come along until tens of thousands of years later; I think they had to invent pockets first. On the other hand, greed isn’t just about money. You can be greedy about lots of things. Hoarders, for example, can hang onto old magazines or rocks or any stupid thing you can imagine, so avarice has probably been around for longer than I’m giving it credit. So the jury’s still out on which of the three is the oldest, but certainly Mammon has been around for a long time.