Hell Raising and Other Pastimes

by Jayce Carter

  “So what do you want? If you planned this all, it has to be important.”

  “Indeed, it is. It has been a long while since I’ve had to do this much work to get my hands on a mortal. Then again, we both know there is more to you than meets the eye.”

  “You use a lot of words to say nothing.”

  “And you have a death wish with the way you speak to those who could kill you.”

  “News flash. Everyone could kill me, so if I was only mouthy to people who were weaker than me, I’d never talk again. Besides, if you wanted to kill me, you could have done it already. Whatever you need from me, I’d guess you need me alive for it. I doubt you’ll murder me over a little sass. What sort of king of hell keeps that position if he can’t stand up against some snark?”

  Lucifer rolled his eyes and the gesture felt like a win. How many could claim to manage to annoy the devil enough to make him act like a teenage girl?

  He set his drink down, then picked up a box from a side table against the wall.

  He placed it in front of me, and I backed up. “The last time I opened a box from you, I got sucked into hell.”

  “And since you are already here, what are you worried about?” He leaned down and flipped open the lid, but instead of that horribly smoke that had escaped the last time, only a dark interior sat. He reached in and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. After jotting something down, he handed it to me.

  There were words, but like the sign on that bar, I couldn’t read them at first. It took a minute for them to shift and form something coherent. ‘“Wear more appropriate clothing next time.’”

  “So you can read it.”

  “Yes, and did you really invite me here to insult my outfit?”

  “No. It just seemed a worthwhile message.”

  I handed the piece of paper back. “Grant said that language is thought to thought which is why I can understand.”

  Lucifer shook his head. “Verbal language is like that, not written. This has happened before?”

  “A sign in one of the little towns. I saw the weird scribbles, then they sort of shifted before my eyes and I could read it. What language is that?”

  “An old demon tongue, one of the basic written languages used in hell. You shouldn’t be able to read it.” He frowned, then nearly whispered, “I wonder…” He wrote something else, then handed the page back.

  Again, the letters were foreign, meaning nothing to me at first. They were written differently from the other language, with more flowing strokes that reminded me of cursive. Finally, they also shifted and when I could read them, I sighed. “‘You are an adult and should dress like one.’ Who knew the devil had such bad jokes?”

  Except, when I looked at him, he didn’t look amused. There was a light there, in his dark eyes, one that said he was far too interested in the fact that I could do that.

  “What language is this?”

  “An exceedingly old one, one before there were men, before demons, the uniting language of the first. There are few who can read it.”

  “So why can I?”

  “What happened in that field?”

  The question caught me off guard. “What?”

  “You lost your corporeal form. What happened, exactly?”

  I wanted to ask how he even knew about that, but his answer wouldn’t be useful. He’d just tell me that he knew everything that happened in his realm. I’d be annoyed and no better off, so I kept the question to myself. “If you know that, you know as much as I do.”

  “What happened in the shack? How did you do that? What did it feel like? What were you thinking?” He rattled off the questions as if he had a list already prepared.

  “A crazy man tried to cut me up, I have no idea how I did it, it felt uncomfortable and I was thinking that I really didn’t want to die.” Each answer I gave was full of ‘you idiot’ attitude. What did he think a person who was going to be killed by a machete-wielding maniac would think?

  “So it was a reflex? A useful one, at that.” He met my gaze. “So do it now.”

  “Do what?”

  “Turn incorporeal again.”

  “I can’t. Don’t you think I’ve tried since then?”

  “I could try to kill you. It worked the last time.”

  I held my hands up. “Whoa, now, let’s leave that to plan B.”

  “You agreed to submit to me,” Lucifer pointed out.

  “And I will, but you’re asking me to do something I don’t know how to do. I think you picked the wrong person for whatever it is you’re looking for.”

  “I am an excellent judge of character. I have followed you since the night you tried to contact that spirit, when you reached somewhere you shouldn’t have, have seen glimpses of what you’ve done, of what you’re capable of. I have no doubt you can do exactly what I want.”

  “Well, unless you have a how-to guide for it, I’m open to suggestions.”

  Lucifer sat back. “I would normally suggest relaxing. Often fear and other emotions can keep a person from accessing powers they have.” He said emotions as if it were an entirely inconvenient fact he was above.

  “Are you telling me it’s performance anxiety?”

  Ah, there was that wonderful annoyance in his expression again. “Ambrosia can help when a person is unable to control their feelings.”

  “There is no way I’m having any of that.”

  “I believe you offered compliance.”

  “I didn’t realize that meant ingesting that disgusting substance.”

  “You argued less when you thought I might demand you sleep with me.”

  “Sex is sex. I can get through that no matter how gross I find the partner. Consuming weird corpse plants is something else.”

  “I don’t think I appreciate the way you refer to sex with me.”

  “Typical man. Even the king of hell can’t let it go if someone doesn’t want to sleep with him.”

  He reached into the box one last time and pulled a small metal orb. “Our deal requires your submission to my requests. Since you are unwilling to do as I ask, the next step is to use ambrosia to relax you and try again.”

  My stomach churned because I couldn’t stop thinking about those plants, about the way that hand, buried under the dirt, had moved. The thought of consuming that in any way made me sick. “I’m going to be honest and say I don’t think I could even swallow that if I wanted to.”

  “Lucky for you, swallowing isn’t necessary.”

  I went to make a joke back, but he took that moment to hold the orb in front of me and twist his thumb across the edge. It clicked and a green powder sprayed into the air in front of me.

  I jerked backward, but he brought the orb with me. My nose burned even after I tried to snort, to clear anything from my nostrils.

  It didn’t work, and that same clouded-thoughts feeling I’d had after drinking last time came back.

  It might have been a different delivery method, but it sure as fuck was the same sensation.

  I twisted my head, and this time Lucifer allowed it.

  He tossed the orb into the box. “That will work through your system quickly. Powdered compressed ambrosia is far more potent than the sort you drank in that bar.”

  “Of course you’re the sort of a person who drugs someone against their will.”

  “I have been exceedingly patient with you. You offered me one night of submission, one night where you will do as I ask. Instead of that, you have complained and fought me. I am well within my rights to forfeit your deal. Do you understand what that means?”

  Honestly, right then I didn’t. I was pretty sure I was at the point where I was amazed by the size of my own hand, so contractual consequences weren’t something I was grasping.

  Thankfully, he didn’t require an answer. “You were given your team’s life. I can take that back should you push my patience much further.”

  That woke me up, even past the still-creeping haze from the ambrosia. I had no doubt Lucif
er could and would do exactly as he claimed.

  “I’m cooperating,” I said, dizziness swamping me. It was good I didn’t have to walk because I was pretty sure I’d end up flat on my face. “But even with your gross plant powder, I’ve got nothing for you.”

  “We will give it time to work.” He rose, grabbed a water from the bar area, then set it before me. “While we wait, I am curious…why are you trying so hard to solve this issue with the spirits?”

  “I live in the world, don’t I? It sort of is my issue.”

  “I have seen humans from the start, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that they are more than willing to sit back and let someone else take the risk. So, Ms. Harlin, what is it that makes you feel this is worth you risking yourself for?”

  My words felt liquid, as if they sloshed around in my head then poured from my lips. It seemed the ambrosia was good for more than just trying to get some power of mine to work. It also made me answer questions I had no business answering. “You ever wonder where you fit into the world?”

  “No. From the start, I have always known exactly where I belong.”

  “Well, aren’t you lucky? Most of us don’t get that.” I shifted and leaned backward, the room spinning. I’d sure had a larger dose than the last time.

  “It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  When I fell over toward Lucifer, he set a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back the other way.

  “The reality is that knowing where you belong does not mean a person is content there.” He took another drink as if watching a show. “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty damn good.” And…I was.

  It was better than the alcohol, as if it reached my bloodstream faster, as if it smoothed over edges the alcohol left sharp. “So, you going to let me in on your little plan?”

  “Why do you think I have one?”

  “Because I know your type. You always have a plan.” He reminded me of Kase—an unflattering comparison. Someone who was always a few steps ahead and playing close to the chest so no one could guess his moves.

  All I knew for sure was that he was out-maneuvering me by a long shot.

  “What do you remember about your parents?”

  “Nothing.” I frowned, then shook my head. “I saw a something, in a dream, but I don’t think it was real. I saw a woman rocking a baby, and she called it my name. She told it the spirits couldn’t hurt it.”

  “So your mother knew what you were? What you could do?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she just abandoned me like everyone else, and I just want to believe she cared at one point. Abandonment issues can play one hell of a trick on the psyche.”

  “And your father?”

  I shrugged. If Lucifer wanted information, he was barking up the wrong hell-tree. I knew less about my parents than I did about myself.

  “I heard Lilith is your daughter,” I said.

  He nodded before going to the bar to pour himself another drink. “Yes. I have many children, but she was the first.”

  “And how do you measure up as a daddy-o?”

  He paused, as if he’d never considered the question before. “Lilith was different. My other children were created, how should I say—the more traditional way. Lilith was not born but made, much like Adam.”

  I thought back to what little I had heard about such stories. “She was Adam’s first wife?”

  Lucifer nodded before taking his seat again. “Yes. As a means of balance, Adam was made by”—he hesitated, as if unsure how to phrase the next part—“you would think of him as God. Reality is always more complicated. A compromise was decided that between Adam, forged by him, and Lilith, forged by me, we would have a mix of influence. However, our children were much as we are, stubborn and difficult. Adam wished to dominate, and Lilith wished for freedom. They were incompatible.”

  “So then the whole ‘Eve from Adam’s rib’ thing happened?”

  Lucifer nodded. “Lilith was set aside for her failure, and God created Eve from Adam, a more biddable female for him. Of course, you women showed him, didn’t you? I don’t think anyone expected quite so much in the way of bite from you.”

  The joke didn’t land as I thought about the woman I’d seen, about Lilith, about how lonely that life had to have been. To be created for a single purpose and to fail in it?

  “So she was just cast out?”

  Lucifer took another drink, a slow one as if he didn’t care for the subject. “She has always yearned for freedom, has always loathed control. She was made sterile, so she could never carry on her line since she rejected what was laid out for her, but she has always been exceedingly smart. It was Lilith who created the first vampire.”

  “I thought she was sterile?”

  “She is. She could never bear children or create life on her own, so instead took dead bodies and breathed a semblance of life into them. She created the first vampire, and it was God’s anger over it that forced them into the darkness. She didn’t create all immortals, but they all have a certain amount of credit to her, because it was her work with vampires that sparked many of them into existence by that defiance. They are the children she was denied.”

  “So why don’t I know that? Why haven’t I heard that before?”

  “Because she also believed that freedom was the most important gift any could give another. She didn’t believe in raising or taking any part in their lives because she saw that as a sort of control. I think she finds solace in their presence whether or not she has a connection with them personally.”

  I blew out a slow breath, the story harder and harder to follow as the ambrosia lessened my focus. “And your other kids?”

  “Many have positions of power here in the afterlife. Some have chosen to live on earth. Some are mortal, some immortal. Many take after whatever their mother was and thus live the life she had. Countless I don’t even know about.”

  “Father of the year, huh?”

  “Live as long as I have, bury as many offspring as I have and you will realize that they matter little.” He caught my chin, turning my head as he stared into my eyes. “You’re ready.”

  “You care to tell me for what?”

  Lucifer went to the door and spoke to someone outside. Afterward, another person followed him back in.

  The man was dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a shirt, making him completely out of place. “This is her?”

  Lucifer nodded.

  “How deep should I go?”

  “As far as you have to. I need to know if I’m right.”

  And boy did that sound like something I was not going to enjoy with these two…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The man who sat on the table in front of me had a thick red beard and bright blue eyes. He took my chin and stared into my eyes in a way that made me lean in, as if drawn to sink deeper into his gaze.

  It felt like sliding into a warm bath, as if something pulled me down and surrounded me.

  I could feel him inside my head, his metaphorical fingers slipping along the edges of my brain, not painful but not comfortable either.

  “What are you?” he asked as if to himself.

  Still, I answered. “I don’t know.”

  His eyes narrowed—not out of anger but as if concentrating—and I cried out at a sudden pain in my head, as if that gentle stroke had become a jab.

  As soon as it happened, it eased though didn’t disappear entirely. Flashes came to me, moments of my life. Different foster homes, the Christmas I spent at a friend’s house, one of my only real Christmases, the times I spent in Gran’s shop. They were tiny moments of my life, the good and the bad, and he sifted through each of them as if looking for something specific.

  “How much ambrosia did you give her?” he asked without breaking eye contact.

  “More than enough. I’m not sure she’d survive anymore.”

  “The synapses in her brain are unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” the man said, frowning befor
e digging deeper into my mind, causing another lancing pain. Even still, I couldn’t pull away.

  “Am I right?”

  “Maybe. You’re asking me to identify something that hasn’t ever existed.”

  “Force it out of her. She went incorporeal. If she takes that form here, I’ll know I’m right.”

  The man pressed his lips together and yet another sharp pain consumed me, as if he’d poured molten lava through my head. After a moment he shook his head and released me. “I can’t.”

  “Because it isn’t there or because you are unable to?”

  The man rose, rubbing at his temples. “I don’t know. I feel what you’re talking about, but I don’t know if there’s enough of it to matter.”

  Lucifer crossed his arms, looking less pleased. “I hope you don’t expect a full payment for this.”

  The man turned his eyes toward me, a resistance there. “As long as I never have to go into her head again, I’ll take no payment at all.”

  Lucifer waved him off, the man rushing away.

  It hit me as hilarious. The whole situation, how even the devil couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of me. Wasn’t that my place in life? Or in the afterlife, it seemed.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked, tone sharp.

  “Everyone wants to understand what I am, and no one can figure it out. The thing is that I’ve spent my whole life trying to be one thing—normal. Now here I am, at the other side, in hell, and it is that same question. It never goes away, never stops. What am I?” I laughed again, knowing my voice had a hysterical edge to it. “After everything I’ve seen and lived through, and I finally figured out it doesn’t fucking matter. I mean, if you and your brain melon baller there can’t figure it out, maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the end.”

  Lucifer came forward and leaned in closer, as if he could peer through my eyes, into my head that this friend had dug through, and see something he’d missed. “It matters, Ms. Harlin, because if I’m wrong, we’re all fucked.”

  Even if I’d wanted to say something back, even if I’d had something to say back, the ambrosia overpowered me at that point. The spinning room lost definition, and it was Lucifer’s dark eyes that haunted me as I passed out.