by Мишель Роуэн
Val held a hand to her stinging cheek and narrowed her eyes. “I’m the bitch?” Before she realized what she was doing, she threw her fist through the air, clipping the girl across her cheekbone.
“Oooh, girl fight,” Reggie said from Val’s shoulder. “Me likey. Why don’t you put me down so no rats get inadvertently harmed in the making of this hot action.”
“Ow!” She held her face and glared at Val. “This has nothing to do with you. He needs to be punished. Mind your own business.”
“This is my business.” Val glanced at Nathaniel. “He’s with me.”
She jabbed a finger in Nathaniel’s prone direction. “You don’t know what he did. What he’s capable of.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Just let me vanquish him.”
Val considered that, but only for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Nathaniel, I’ve changed my mind. You can move and talk again.”
His hands clenched into fists, fire appearing in his furious gaze as he looked at the girl. “I don’t know who you are. I’ve never seen you before.”
She laughed and turned to Val. “He doesn’t recognize me. After what he did to me, he doesn’t recognize me. Isn’t that bloody typical of a Tempter Demon.”
Lloyd appeared at the doorway, wearing an apron and holding a plate of brownies. “Is there a problem out here?”
“I’ll say there’s a problem out here.” Lisa pointed at Nathaniel. “He’s the one responsible for sending me to Hell. He tempted me and then turned his back on me like it meant nothing to him. And now I’m back to destroy him.”
Val frowned at her. “Are you trying to tell me you’re a fallen angel?”
“Once was. Now I’m personified vengeance.”
“Is that a title or something?” Reggie asked. “Like ‘Greased Lightning’?”
“They don’t know I’ve escaped.” Lisa looked around nervously. “I don’t know how much time I have before they drag me back, but I’m going to use the time I have for revenge. And there’s only one monster I want revenge against.”
“I don’t remember you,” Nathaniel said simply.
“That doesn’t make it better. If anything, the fact that you can’t remember me . . .” She sniffed before she pulled it together again. “. . . Makes it worse. Much worse. That I meant nothing to you, not even to remember what you did to me.”
“I remember you,” Reggie said. “You used to do the nicest hospital corners on the bedsheets.
It’s really an art.”
Nathaniel glanced at Val, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She watched their exchange with growing apprehension. Lisa had escaped from Hell? She didn’t even know that was possible.
And now this girl wanted revenge on the demon who sent her there in the first place. Made sense to her, but she wouldn’t let it happen. Not today. She figured this made everything
Lloyd had told her null and void. Nathaniel had obviously succeeded in tempting before. And to think, he didn’t even remember the poor girl?
“Listen, Lisa.” Val approached her cautiously, but she didn’t make a move to attack. Lisa’s eyes were brimming with tears and Val put a hand on her shoulder. “Nathaniel’s an unforgivably heartless bastard.”
Nathaniel cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you’re helping matters.”
“Quiet,” she said over her shoulder, and then turned back to the girl and felt a huge flood of sympathy toward her. Just an innocent fallen angel who didn’t know better than to say yes to a handsome demon. She felt betrayed. Betrayed and abandoned, with eternity to regret her decisions. “I get how you’re feeling. I’m a fallen one, too.”
Lisa looked at Val skeptically. “Is that why you’re here? Is he taking you to Hell”—She glanced around their surroundings—“via the scenic route?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what are you doing together in the Underworld?”
Val sighed. “He’s sort of helping me.”
She actually laughed at that. “A Tempter Demon helping a fallen angel? That doesn’t happen.
It’s against the rules.”
“Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything. Look, like I said, what he did to you wasn’t right. But he’s a demon. That’s his job.” Val glanced at him again and he met her eyes but didn’t say anything. “He doesn’t have a choice. I could go into the whole ‘balance’ lecture
I’ve been hearing lately, but bottom line, it’s out of his control what happens to us after we’re tempted. But at the end of the day, it’s our decision. You’re the one who said yes.”
She frowned deeply. “Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not. I’m simply trying to show you things aren’t quite as black and white as you think they are.” She looked at Nathaniel. “Do you have anything you want to say?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember this woman.” At Val’s look of disbelief, “I don’t.
She must be lying.”
“And what would she have to gain by lying?” Val shook her head and turned to Lisa. “So . . . what are you going to do now?”
She sighed and looked around the street to see the neighborhood’s demons now emerging from their homes to go about their daily demon business. Dark-time was officially over. No more worries of becoming a passing Nightflyer’s tasty snack.
“I plan on getting back to the earthly realm. Before they find me. I have a plan.”
Lisa made a move to walk away. Then she stopped, turned around, and kicked Nathaniel hard in the groin. He collapsed to his knees, groaning in pain.
Lisa turned around to smile at Val. “It’s not a vanquishment, but it just felt so good. And Nathaniel, word to the wise. If you break any more rules, especially with her, you’re going to be in serious trouble. More than you already are.”
Val opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Lisa walked down the sidewalk without looking back.
“Well,” Reggie said. “Ain’t that a kick in the nuts.”
Val tried hard not to smile and waited as Nathaniel rose slowly and uncomfortably to his feet.
“You okay?”
He glared at her. “Never better.”
“You really don’t remember her?”
“No.”
“I suppose you forget a lot of the fallen ones you tempt. Kind of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing, right?”
He shook his head and looked away. “I remember each of my assignments. They’re burned into my memory, every last one.”
“From guilt?”
Nathaniel shot a look at Lloyd who stood at the doorway to his town home. “You need to keep your mouth shut about my business.”
Lloyd shrugged. “But it’s such a good story. I can’t help it.”
Val crossed her arms. “So why don’t you remember Lisa?”
He watched the fallen angel in the distance before he met her gaze again. “I have no idea.”
“So,” Lloyd said, “if you all are certain the morning violence is over, would anyone care for a brownie before you leave?”
“Mmm, brownie.” Reggie was nearly drooling.
Nathaniel and Val hadn’t stopped staring at each other. She couldn’t figure him out. He was an enigma. Everything he did, everything he said. He was like one of those fortune cookies that was so vague it could mean anything. Best thing was to forget the message and eat the cookie.
Wait a minute.
“I’m coming with you,” Nathaniel said firmly after a moment. “And no, Lloyd, I don’t want a brownie.”
“But I added chocolate chips.”
“Yum!” Reggie waved his paw. “Me, me.”
Val stared at the demon in front of her. The good-looking one, not the grayish, single-eyed one with the plate of brownies. Nathaniel was still under her power. The summoning crystal was still safely in her jeans pocket. She had to put aside her personal issues with him. It would serve her better to have him at her side when she found Julian.
“Fine. Let’s just get it over with, then.” She marched past Nathaniel to grab two brownies off the plate. She broke one in half and gave it to a very grateful Reggie.
Then she walked down the path to the sidewalk. She turned around. Nathaniel wasn’t moving.
“Are you coming or what?”
He sighed. “You commanded me not to follow you earlier. The whole ‘don’t talk, don’t move’ thing?”
“Oh.” She waved her hand, not that it did anything—but it just felt right, somehow. “You may now follow me.”
He started to trudge down the driveway, walking a little funny after the damage done to his groin. Not that it mattered. He didn’t seem to have a use for that equipment anyhow, as proven earlier in the bedroom.
She frowned as something Lloyd said earlier twigged her memory.
“There are very strict rules that must be adhered to for all Tempters—including certain conduct with their assigned fallen angels. There are limits to how far they can tempt.
Boundaries. Some Tempters have gone over that line, gotten to know their assignment too well, and they have been punished accordingly.”
Then she thought about what Lisa had just said.
“If you break any more rules, especially with her, you’re going to be in serious trouble.”
Val stared at Nathaniel for a moment until it finally clicked for her. Holy celibate monk, Batman. Was that what had happened? He wasn’t allowed to . . . go any farther with a fallen one? It was against the demon rules? Was that the real reason why he pushed her away?
“What?” He frowned at her wide-eyed expression.
“Uh . . . nothing. Nothing at all.”
Talk about irony. A Tempter who couldn’t allow himself to be tempted.
“Okay, angel, now you’re giving me the creeps. What’s with the stare-a-thon?”
“Nothing.” She looked away. It didn’t matter. Only the key mattered. If they didn’t find it today, then nothing would ever matter. “Julian’s seeing the mayor. We need to go to his mansion.”
“And that’s the sum total of your plan?”
She bit her lip. “It’s simple. Go to the mansion and get Julian to give me the key.”
He laughed. “Just when I think you’re so much more worldly than the others, you show your true naïveté. Julian will not allow you to march up to him and demand anything of him. He’s seen you before. He’ll know what you want and obviously he doesn’t want to part with this stolen key you say he has. Is that a fair assumption?”
“I guess.”
“And as for the mayor’s mansion, you have no idea what you’re walking into. I’ve been there before. Mayor Vaille has been assembling a small army of demons for his own personal use as bodyguards. Here’s my plan, since yours will do nothing but blow up in your face. We go to the mayor’s party. I have an open invitation so he’ll assume I’m also there to discuss employment opportunities. You will pretend to be my woman.”
“Your what?”
His grin widened. “My woman. An evil witch from the earthly realm who is on vacation here in the Underworld with her”—he glanced at Reggie—“familiar.”
“Evil familiar,” Reggie added. “Oh the power. I can just feel it. Being a rat is so freeing.”
“But aren’t rats supposed to be pure?” Val asked. “That’s what Barlow told me, anyhow.”
Nathaniel shrugged. “Looks like it depends on the rat. Your rodent has no effect on me.”
“You want me to pose as a witch? Why do I have to pretend to be something I’m not?”
“Because if Julian sees you he’ll immediately realize something is up. And if the mayor finds out you’re a fallen angel whom I didn’t escort directly to Hell, he’ll be suspicious, too. And you don’t want the mayor to be suspicious. It would be very detrimental to your health.”
They swiftly walked past a demon home with three demon children running through a sprinkler on the front lawn. Cute, Val thought. Sort of. “Who is this mayor guy anyhow?
What does he do?”
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Mayor Vaille is—how should I put this?—very particular with what he wants. He was once second-in-command in Hell, but he wanted too much power, got all greedy, so he was demoted. Put in charge of this desolate wasteland as a punishment.”
Val glanced around her. Palm trees waved in the warm tropical breeze. The ocean waves lapped at the shore of the white sand beach. The sun shone brightly in the perfect, cloudless sky. She could smell the salt of the ocean in the air.
“Yeah, looks like quite the desolate wasteland to me.”
He smiled, but his eyes were strangely sad. “Have you learned nothing from your trip here?
All is not as it appears. Glamours are not isolated to improving one’s personal appearance. If one has the power and the resources, as the mayor does, it can be stretched much further than that. Much, much further. The mayor enjoys beautiful things, be they real or not.”
Val looked around again. A convertible drove by that contained what looked like two bikini models in the backseat and a handsome surfer dude in the front.
“Are you trying to tell me that everything I’m looking at right now is just another glamour?
All the trees, the beach, all of this? It’s all fake?”
Nathaniel stopped walking and crossed his arms. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Me, too!” Reggie squeaked.
“Then come here.”
She hesitated for a moment, then walked to where Nathaniel stood on the sidewalk next to a beautiful, blooming crab apple tree.
“Turn around,” he told her. “I can remove the glamour for you to see what the Underworld truly is. It’s one of the few powers I can use here. You’ll see why I don’t use it very often.”
Val turned around and felt him press his body against her.
“Nathaniel, I—”
“Shh, you wanted to know the truth. Have you changed your mind?”
“No.”
He slid his hands up her arms, and, avoiding Reggie on her shoulder who’d chosen to be temporarily quiet as a mouse, he covered her eyes with his hands. He was so close that when he whispered, his lips grazed her ear. “You can’t always trust your eyes to show you the truth.”
He removed his hands and Val blinked in horror at what she saw before her.
Mile upon mile of gray, jagged rock spread out before her eyes. The sky was dark and swirling with white veins of lightning that appeared every few seconds. There was a cold, bone-chilling wind that whipped the hair off her face. Nathaniel held her waist as she stared at the true Underworld. Barren, cold, dangerous—a feeling of despair filled her as she looked at it. And emptiness.
There were gray creatures crawling along the rocks in the distance, eyeless beasts, and she could hear the flapping and distant squawking of the Nightflyers. A lump of fear formed in her chest.
“Do you see, Valerie?”
She turned around in his arms and looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears that began to streak down her cheeks. This was his true home? This is where Nathaniel had to live? This empty, cold, soulless place with only a veneer of glamour on top of it to make it bearable?
“Make it go away. Please.”
He nodded and wiped her tears gently away with his thumbs. “As you wish.”
He covered her eyes again and when his warm hands moved away, the glamour was back. The Underworld again looked like a bright, shiny, happy place full of warmth and sunshine. But now she knew it was all a lie.
“Is it over?” Reggie said from her shoulder with a tremor in his voice. “Good golly, Miss
Molly, please tell me it’s over.”
“It’s over.” She rubbed her arms to chase away the chill that filled her body. “We’re okay.
Open your eyes.”
Val looked at Nathaniel. He looked unhappy. Was he sorry he showed her the no-holds-barred truth? Showed her th
at his existence was not as glamorous as she may have believed? That underneath it all was pain and loneliness and eternal suffering, just as Lloyd had said? She reached for him but he pulled away, and instead presented her with a killer smile.
“Anyhow,” he said. “Time’s a-wasting. And the mayor’s mansion is only a few blocks away.
Let’s get going.”
Val swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“First, though, I think I need to do a little glamour on you, little angel.”
She frowned at him. “Glamour?”
He grinned. “Evil witches need to have an evil witch look, don’t you think? Not an innocent, naïve, blond angel look.”
She looked down at her jeans and tank top. She flicked away an errant chocolate chip that had attached itself to her otherwise clean clothes. She ran a hand through her slightly tangled blond hair, feeling self-conscious now.
Nathaniel stepped back from her and moved his gaze slowly down her body, much as he’d done the first time she’d met him in the alley after the mugger had attacked her. His gaze finally met her own and he raised an amused eyebrow.
She flicked her hand. “Fine. Make me look different, then, if you think it will help.”
Val felt a sudden wave of warm air touch her and then it was gone.
Nathaniel grinned. “Done.”
“Wow, Val,” Reggie breathed.
She slowly looked down at herself. She was now wearing a skin-tight leather corset over a low-cut, very low, black lace top. Her newly ample chest was pushed up to nearly her chin.
An equally tight black leather miniskirt that barely covered her butt, and thigh-high leather high-heeled boots finished the outfit. She moved a long, red fingernailed hand up to her face.
“What did you just do to me? Does my face look different?”
Nathaniel smiled. “That’s an understatement.”
She moved over to the window of a nearby store to stare at her reflection. She looked like a complete stranger. A drop-dead gorgeous stranger with a Pamela Anderson body, way too much makeup and long, long bloodred hair. She raised a high, penciled-in eyebrow at the rat on her shoulder. He was wearing a little leather biker cap.