by R. J. Blain
Jonas snorted, and using his free hand, he got out his phone and checked the screen for the location of the kittens. “According to Lucifer’s helpful notes he emailed to me, the kittens have likely wandered into the sewer from a broken storm grate, and there should be an easy enough way for us to get inside to retrieve them.” Jonas eyed the street. “I am fairly certain Lucifer is lying to us, as there does not appear to be any storm drains in this area. I’m not convinced there’s a working sewer system here.”
“I am not allowing any of us to get into that car when we’re covered in shit or anything else that might be in a fucking sewer,” I grumbled. “I will call Lucifer and throw a temper tantrum of the likes he has never seen because he doesn’t have young children yet. I will revisit my childhood to throw this tantrum.”
Snickering, Jonas checked his phone again, referenced the nearby street signs, and pointed down one of the streets that had seen better days, with the residences having been either abandoned or neglected to the point of no return. “Apparently, we’re in the bad part of John’s Creek.”
“I had no idea John’s Creek had a bad part, but this does look rather sketchy.”
Jonas frowned, checked the address again, and pointed at one of the decrepit houses down the street. “The address is that place, and I’m not seeing any storm grates ahead of us.”
While I’d been able to drive without issue, I questioned the wisdom in my choice to have done so with an off prescription, although I could make out the building with minimal blur. “We need to take me to one of those one hour glasses places tomorrow, Jonas. Not today. I will not want to after dealing with literal shit.”
“I agree. Shall we go explore the run-down house on creepy street?”
“If this is Elm Street, I’m leaving, Jonas.”
“Oak Boulevard.”
I frowned. “For the record, I do not like this, and I absolutely will scream if there are any unexpected hauntings during this venture.”
“I would like to remind you that I can teleport.”
“But will you take me when you go?”
“I’m selfish and want to enjoy being fed, so yes. I’m expecting good meals from you, Sandra. You do not want to experience the disappointment of a hungry incubus. I whine, and you know you’d hate the whining. And as I’m ruthless and a little evil, I’ll crank the whining until you either attempt to kill me or you drag me to your bed to shut me up. I’m confident I can turn your attempted murder into bed buddy time.”
I grinned at his honesty. “As long as you take me when you go, you can whine while I put up a token resistance so we can get to the attempted murder transformed into bed buddy time portion of our adventure.”
“It disturbs me that I’m the one who has to remind you that you need to be patient for a while.”
“I can whine until you attempt murder, which is then transformed into bed buddy time?” I replied, furrowing my brows. “I don’t like the other options.”
“How about, should teleportation be required, we’ll console ourselves with bed warming and book reading and game playing time, which will become bed buddy time in a few weeks,” Jonas suggested.
I shrugged. “The bed buddy time is mandatory, especially if Oak Boulevard becomes the next site of some horrible horror flick.”
“I take it you don’t like horror movies?”
I wrinkled my nose and sniffed. “I’ll never tell.”
“I will learn your secrets. Our room has a television. After we triumph over Oak Boulevard, we shall venture onto Elm Street.”
Yep. Jonas had asshole tendencies. “You will pay for this, Jonas. Mark my words, you will pay for this.”
The house’s roof appeared to be one stiff breeze from caving in, the porch steps rotted away, and I eyed the disintegrating planks spanning the distance between the top step and the opened front door, which hung from a single hinge. The local wildlife had moved in, and a family of raccoons hissed and growled at us from the sitting room they had taken over. Once upon a time, likely a decade or so ago, someone had invested in a leather sofa, which clung together by mere scraps, and the foam beneath had been plundered by the animals living in the place.
On second thought, a horror movie marathon appealed a great deal more than venturing into the home. As I could have a sense of humor at times, I grabbed my new phone, turned on the video recorder, and once I had a red, blinking icon, I said, “On this episode of Death Trap on Oak Boulevard, we demonstrate we might be too stupid to live. Our first foes are the wild raccoons with a moderate chance of being rabid.”
Jonas laughed. “They’re only some raccoons, Sandra. They’re not going to do more than maybe bite you if you get too close to the babies. They’ll scream and hiss at us, though, and they can sound pretty terrifying. But they’re just some raccoons. I’m more worried about breaking an ankle getting into the house.” Jonas tested the planks, and while most broke and crumbled away, he found an intact board. Frowning, he crouched down and examined the wood. “This is newer.”
I peered over his shoulder, and sure enough, the wood seemed rather new, and someone had hidden its restored state with a panel of the rotten wood placed overtop it. “Why would somebody put rotten wood over good wood?”
“To hide that someone had done repairs to the place.” Jonas rose, used the board to cross to the doorway, and held his hand out to me.
A single peek at the filthy ground beneath the porch, which had become the home of numerous animals, convinced me to accept his help without complaint. “We are entering too stupid to live territory, Jonas. We’re going into a run-down horror house on purpose. We’re going to have to deal with its raccoon defenders. We don’t get experience points for doing this like in some game. We get diseases, injuries, and shamed for life.”
“While I agree there is a fairly high chance of contracting diseases and being injured, I’m not sure I’m willing to say we’re going to be shamed for life. We’re exploring. Didn’t you ever want to explore some abandoned place as a kid?”
“My parents wisely leashed me. I was not a free-range child. I was a contained child, as they were convinced I would destroy the entire neighborhood if I were allowed to roam. After what I did to the swing set as a kid, I can’t say I blame them for their opinion.” Shivering at the thought of landing in the horrors lurking beneath the porch, I braved the raccoons.
The entire lot of them hissed and chittered at me, and since that wasn’t bad enough, one of them issued a shrill scream, and it darted forward a few paces in what I hoped was an attempt to scare me off rather than shred my face to ribbons. It balked a few feet away from me, and as it hissed at me, I showed it my teeth and hissed back.
It bolted into the sitting room’s darkness. A musky odor filled the air, and I wrinkled my nose. “The perfume of raccoon must be an acquired taste.”
“I wouldn’t know. I generally refuse to lick raccoons,” the incubus replied. “If you want to lick a raccoon, be my guest, but don’t expect me to rescue you. If the raccoon tries to lick you without your permission, I’ll step up, but all bets are off if you approach them. And since we’re discussing ridiculous things to begin with, I don’t care what Lucifer says, these are not kittens, and we are not rescuing them.”
“I have zero interest in being attacked by angry raccoons.”
“That implies you are okay with being attacked by other types of raccoons, Sandra.”
I eyed the raccoons, who kept their distance and continued their cacophony of warning cries. The younger ones, a quarter of the size of the adults, were rather cute. “How cute does a baby animal have to be to justify being attacked by raccoons in order to pet them?”
“I would generally tolerate being attacked by raccoons of any type to rescue a baby human, a baby dog, or a baby cat of the domestic variety. I’d stop and think about it when it comes to rescuing baby cats of the non-domestic varieties. I’m quite fond of my sister, but she has one hell of a bite, and she leaves scars if she decides t
o whip her claws out. I have a few trophies on my back from having survived her wrath.”
“But baby raccoons are not cute enough to justify being mauled, right?” I pointed at them. “They’re kind of cute.”
“In a possibly rabid sort of way, I suppose. Honestly, they rank pretty high up there, but I have a sense of self-preservation. I recommend you develop one.”
I laughed. “I’m inviting an incubus over so I can be his dinner and dessert daily for an undetermined amount of time. You should recommend I develop one after this happens.”
“Ah, but I’ll leave you happy afterwards. They’ll leave you rabid, and there’s nothing fun about having a rabies treatment done. Also, I don’t want to see a rabid lycanthrope. A regular lycanthrope is dangerous enough.”
I nodded at his admirable common sense and left the raccoons alone—and took care to give their section of the sitting room a wide berth. Then, as I’d immortalized enough of our stupidity, I stopped recording our imminent demise on my phone. “I have a date request.”
“I’m listening.”
“We make that fucking brother-in-law of yours rue, lament, and regret the day he sent us here using kittens. Because I like kittens enough to deal with this shit. I don’t even want to know what I’m stepping in.”
Jonas snickered. “I’d guess raccoon shit judging from the little hissing bastards pissed that we’re in their territory. Don’t fret. We’ll get cleaned up before we get into the car.”
“Damn straight we’ll get cleaned up. I will use every single practitioner trick I know to purify us of this filth before we get anywhere near my new baby.”
“Our new baby.”
I pointed at my feet, grateful I wore proper shoes and not sandals. “Until these are spotless, and I’m not driving it but am inside the vehicle, it’s my new baby. You get to call Lucille your new baby when you are the driver.”
“Neither of us are driving, so it’s our new baby.”
I debated the benefits of allowing him to win. When I couldn’t think of anything worth justifying my loss, I asked, “What are you giving me to make it our new baby?”
“I will pay in positive physical and emotional attention once per day for joint ownership of our new baby.”
As negotiating our future relationship status beat thinking about what I stepped in, I asked, “What does it say about me that this seems like a really good deal? I am willing to concede she is our new baby when neither of us are driving or have dibs to drive next, and dibs to drive next can only be claimed twenty minutes prior to departure.”
“This is a fair arrangement.”
“Deal. We are not getting anywhere near our new baby until we’re spotless, Jonas. Absolutely spotless. Pure. Cleansed of evil and filth.”
“I don’t want to be cleansed of evil.”
Right. Incubus. “Okay, fine. Just cleansed of filth. You can cling to your evil ways if you must.”
“I must. My evil ways are sexy and sinful, and my marvelous powers as a bed buddy would be greatly diminished if I lost my evil.”
I snorted, as I hadn’t thought it was possible for someone to spout almost as much bullshit as the Devil. “Until I get a bed buddy demonstration, you are all talk, Mr. Incubus.”
“You are not supposed to be hungry for bed buddy activities until after I’ve corrected your hormones, Sandra. Simmer down.”
I didn’t want to simmer down. I wanted a bed buddy. Sighing, I shrugged. “It beats thinking about what I’m walking through. Do we really have to go deeper into this creepy horror house?”
“Lucifer’s inclusion of a time implies things I don’t want to think about, like the kittens will either leave or they’ll be eaten, possibly by the rabid raccoons.” Like me, Jonas sighed. “I am spoiled, and I don’t want to go deeper into the creepy horror house, either. This is something we must do. But considering what we’re walking through? You should have a unique assortment of diseases by the time we get out of here.”
“This is the dumbest damned errand, and if we die doing this, we deserve it. Divide and conquer, search every room except the sitting room, because there is no amount of money on this sweet Earth, in the heavens, or in the hells to convince me I need to fight the raccoons to look in their shitty little hellhole.”
I found the basement through falling through the floor, and I dodged death from hungry, angry tigers thanks to landing on top of one of the cages filling the room rather than between them. The narrow distance between the metal top and the ceiling spared me from becoming dinner, and I shrieked, scrambled away from the emaciated animals, and as I’d already thrown away my dignity, I graduated from a shriek to a full-blown scream.
The tigers had friends, and judging from what I could see of the floor, they’d already eaten a few people who’d once worn lab coats.
“These ‘kittens’ are fucking tigers and lions!”
Later, if someone asked, I would claim my exclamation had emerged as a rather stern shout rather than a word-punctuated scream.
Jonas peered down through the Sandra-shaped hole in the floor. “Well, I’ll be damned. The kittens are ligers and tigons, and they’re pretty young, too. They have eaten fairly recently.”
“You sound way too excited about this, Jonas.”
“Those fucking assholes, the ones that used to own those shredded lab coats, are surely in hell waiting to be disciplined, if my guess is right. I’m going to try to get Lucifer to let me help with them this round. Are you all right?”
“I almost got eaten by a few tigers.” The tigers in question roared at me, batting at the cage in their efforts to eat me. “I think that one, in particular, is hungry.” I pointed at the most determined of the predators.
“She, and she’s nursing her kittens, so she’s hungry and needs to produce milk for her little ones. This problem is not hard to solve. The problem is solving it without getting eaten in the process. Fortunately, I have a phone and a willingness to call Lucifer, because we are not rigged to tame a bunch of hungry predators.”
My twisted little brain decided to focus on the one predator I wanted to hunt me and needed to be hungry for the hunt to be on. Careful to keep my feet well out of the tiger’s range, I twisted around to stare up at him. “I’m rigged to tame a hungry predator.”
“I don’t know what species He made you, but I’m concerned. I haven’t seen a woman get this insistent since my sister, and I try not to think too hard about my sister’s hunts for Lucifer. If you want to avoid being eaten by a tiger, I recommend you carefully get to your feet so I can lift you out of there.”
As I needed to escape the hungry tigers and lions in order to hunt the incubus, I obeyed, holding my hands up so he could help me scramble out.
He edged closer to the hole, and the floor creaked, and more rotten wood rained down.
The lions and tigers roared at the noise, and one of the animals rammed the cage, knocking me off my feet. I hit the metal hard enough I yelped.
“I’m impressed with that cage. That tiger has to weigh at least five hundred pounds, and the cage barely moved.”
“It moved enough I landed on my ass,” I growled.
Jonas smirked at me. “It could have collapsed. As such, I say the cage barely moved. If it had collapsed, you’d be surrounded by hungry tigers and lions.” With narrowed eyes, he peered into the room, leaning over for a better view. “At least three tigers, four tigresses with kittens, six lionesses, and a lion. And a lot of lion cubs. The kittens are in good health, so there must have been enough lab workers to keep them fed for the past few days. How sad. The illegal lab workers got eaten by their test subjects. I’m so sad over this.”
I gave Jonas full points for his use of sarcasm. “Don’t we have to treat this like a crime scene or something?”
“Do you think the tigers or lions will give good testimonies? The roaring and attempts to eat the attorneys would be entertaining, but I’m not sure they’d be able to defend themselves. Personally, I’d give them t
he benefit of the doubt and let them go on self-defense, but the courts here can be a little crazy.”
“A little?” I blurted.
“Just sit tight while I call Lucifer,” Jonas ordered, pulling out his phone. He dialed a number, held it to his ear, and waited. “You’re on notice. Sandra almost got eaten by a tiger, she’s probably hungrier than Darlene is on a bad day, and I have no idea how I’m going to feed a bunch of angry, partially starved tigers and lions. I’m open to suggestions that don’t involve us being mauled or eaten. Sandra fell through the floor.”
Jonas listened for a disturbingly long time while the angry, hungry cats prowled around the cage, and every few rounds, they lunged against it and took a swipe at me. Staying away from edge kept me well out of their reach thanks to the rotting ceiling. After my nerves frayed to a dangerous degree, the incubus sighed and hung up. “You are not going to believe what that asshole told me to do.”
“Just hit me with it so I can start crying.”
“There is a freezer in the adjacent room. He wants us to bust in, get the meat, and throw it down to them. I can thaw it with a practitioner trick. But there’s no guarantee the lab’s experiments won’t be out and about. He wished us luck, laughed, and hung up.”
“I can shroud us if you can get me out of here. We can run away from the hungry lions and tigers.”
“The kittens would starve, and they’re sick. They need help.”
“They want to eat us, Jonas.”
“While they do want to eat us, they still need help.”
I glared at the incubus, who would pay even more for his various crimes. “If I get eaten by hungry lions and tigers, I’m haunting your ass for the rest of eternity. You will try to feed, and I will be there, making commentary about your performance and scaring off your next meal.”
“I see you’re already jealous, and I haven’t even gotten a chance to dine upon your delicious flesh yet.” Then, because he was a bastard of an incubus, Jonas leered at me.