Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  I was right, as we came around the last corner and stopped, each of us staring at the ten-foot-high wall topped with razor wire that stretched the entire block. Behind that, set back at least half an acre, was a massive building that looked like a fancy high-rise hotel. Gilded fixtures and ornate stonework were everywhere. He was lord of a dimension, so he could go as bold as he goddamn wanted to.

  “This is the back,” Aspen said. “Way less sidewalk traffic.”

  He wasn’t kidding. There was no one in sight. Probably due more to the fact that no one wanted to be anywhere near the building, not because we were in the back. The place screamed evil intent. Had to be off-putting even for the inhabitants of the dimension, who were probably used to evil vibes.

  “You know what to do?” Aspen asked me.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “You sure?” he pressed.

  “Yeah,” I insisted, making sure he heard the offense in my voice.

  My job was pretty straightforward. Make a box and get us inside to meet with Lord Beelzebub. Then I played it by ear. I had to trust that Lord Beelzebub’s temporal fluidity was correct and I somehow came out of all this with his soul in a Dim box.

  I held out my hands and created a large black box right there on the sidewalk. The amount of Dim I pulled was easily enough for everyone to step inside. Which they did. I sealed the box, and with a quick scratch of my fingernail, I had a key in my hand. Then I sent the box into the Dim, and I was all alone on the backstreet.

  All I had to do was walk around to the front entrance and go inside.

  I didn’t make it a single step. Shit . . .

  “Hey! You there!” a man shouted. “You! Human guy playing with boxes! Get your ass over here!”

  I squinted into the gloom. The street lamps didn’t do a damn thing to dispel the darkness that settled around the palace, and the whole area was layer of shadow after layer of shadow. The gloom hadn’t been so bad when there was a glowing banshee next to me. Now I couldn’t see jack.

  “I said,” the guy snarled, “get your ass over here. Now!”

  I aimed for the most likely shadow, based on where I thought his voice was coming from, crossed the street, and walked slowly up to an alcove in the stone fence that lined the huge lot.

  He was waiting there, and now that my eyes were adjusting to the deep dark, I could see he was dressed in a long overcoat with a distinct bulge underneath. He was packing something heavy. The guy lit a cigar, and I stared into the face of the devil. Pretty much, the same face I’d been seeing since arriving in the faux Detroit dimension.

  He puffed on his cigar for a minute as he looked me up and down.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked as he took the cigar out of his mouth and spat stray bits of tobacco on my shoes. “Huh? Out with it, buddy.”

  “Tommy,” I said. The name came to me because I suspected he had a Thompson submachine gun under that overcoat.

  “That so?” he asked. The end of the cigar flared bright, the orange glow turning his red skin into a shade darker than blood. “Well, Tommy, care to tell me what you are doing skulking about back here while making big black boxes disappear?”

  He didn’t mention Lassa, Harper, Aspen, or Teresa. He must have arrived after I’d sealed the box, but before I sent it into the Dim. That was goddamn lucky.

  A thousand excuses popped into my head, but every single one felt thin. So I did what I do in any situation that doesn’t lend itself to an easy lie: I told the truth.

  “I’m here to see Lord Beelzebub,” I said. “I’ve been sent to steal his soul, but I doubt he’d like that so I have a proposition for him.”

  Okay, so I told a half-truth. I had no proposition for him. I pulled that out of my ass.

  The devil raised his black eyebrows and looked me up and down again.

  “You’re here to steal Lord Beelzebub’s soul?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Daphne.”

  The cigar fell out of his mouth. He bent down to pick it up, so I took the pistol out of my pocket and slammed the grip against the back of his head.

  He grunted, but that was about the extent of his reaction. I didn’t even knock him onto one knee. Shit.

  Cigar once again in his hand, he straightened up, put the cigar in his mouth, and rubbed the back of his head.

  “Why the fuck did you do that?” he asked, honestly offended. “We were having a nice chat. What in the hell made you crack me one?”

  He stopped rubbing his head and held out his hand.

  “Give it.”

  I gave it, placing the pistol in his open palm.

  “You got any other weapons on you?” he asked. He turned the pistol over in his hand and laughed. “Jesus, this thing would hurt less if you shot me. What is this? A .38? Who the hell carries a .38 in Ekron? Buddy, you shoot anyone with this and all you’re gonna do is piss them off and get a pistol shoved up your ass.”

  He pointed the pistol at my face and cocked back the hammer.

  “You, however, would be dead with one squeeze of this trigger.”

  “Any chance that if I apologized for cracking you over the head, you might not squeeze that trigger?” I asked as I tried not to look straight into the barrel.

  “You say Daphne hired you?” he asked, pistol still aimed at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I didn’t take the job by choice. Personally, pal, I’d rather not be here at all.”

  “That’s good to know,” he said. The pistol disappeared into his overcoat pocket. “Very good to know.”

  He turned to the fence and opened a door that I hadn’t noticed was there.

  “Today is your lucky day, buddy,” he said as he gestured at the open door and the walkway that led to the building. “I’m going to take you directly to Lord Beelzebub. Then you can lay out that proposition of yours. You did say you have a proposition, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said with a light chuckle. “And I can’t wait to hear what that proposition could be. Come on. Through the gate you go, buddy.”

  Good news was my entry into the building had sorted itself out. Bad news was I’d told the truth, then created a lie that was even worse than the truth. I had a walk and an elevator ride to figure out what in the hell my proposition was. Great.

  19

  THERE WAS A distinct lack of bustle inside the building. The Fae’s intel had been correct. Once inside, making our way up thirty floors to Lord Beelzebub’s penthouse wouldn’t have been difficult. Wouldn’t have been easy, but we’d dealt with worse.

  I studied the lobby of the palace as Lord Beelzebub’s guy steered me through a short hallway and toward a large bank of elevator doors. I was surrounded by gilded gold and red velvet décor—early twentieth-century movie-theater chic. Even the few beings that milled about the lobby were dressed in that 1920s gangster style.

  But not the guy leading me around. His overcoat was solidly 1940s gumshoe. The cigar was a little out of place. I expected him to be smoking filterless cigarettes. But to each their own.

  “Who ya got, Steve?” a large devil asked. “Jesus, is that a human? What the hell is a human doing around here?”

  “He was sent to heist Lord B’s soul,” Steve, my devil, replied. “Can you believe the balls on this one?”

  The large devil whistled like he’d never heard such a crazy thing.

  “Humans, am I right?” he laughed.

  “You know you are,” Steve replied as the center elevator door opened. “Hey, Juice, you ever hear what happened to Cocky Nora’s poker nights? I haven’t had an invitation in over two months.”

  “Oh, yeah
, well, you know Cocky Nora,” Juice, the large devil, replied, his eyes averted as he shuffled his feet.

  We’d stepped into the elevator, but Steve put a hand out to stop the door from closing. He watched Juice for a good thirty seconds, neither one of them saying a word.

  “Ah, come on, Steve,” Juice said reluctantly. “Don’t make me say it.”

  “Not making you do anything, buddy,” Steve said, hand still holding the door, eyes still on Juice, making the much larger devil squirm.

  “She found out, okay?” Juice exclaimed. “She found out you . . . took care of her cousin.”

  “Her cousin?” Steve asked, looking honestly puzzled.

  I was fascinated by the interaction. These were full-on, classic-style devils talking like gangsters. Not only that, but Steve sounded hurt by the conversation. I had to wonder if the others would be hearing the same affectation or if the speech pattern was singular to my psyche. Either way, I rolled with it. When in Hell or Detroit . . .

  “You know,” Juice said, waving a hand in that universal gesture that said he was trying to remember the guy’s name. “Tex? Tix?”

  “Tox,” Steve said. “Shit. That was Cocky Nora’s cousin? Shit.”

  He shook his head, then let the elevator door go.

  “I’ll make it up to her,” Steve said. “You see her, tell her that, will ya?”

  The door closed before I could hear Juice’s response.

  Steve turned to look at me. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Don’t say nothing,” Steve insisted. “You have something to say. I can tell.”

  “No, seriously, pal, I do not have a goddamn thing to say,” I replied. “I’m gonna stand here and mind my own business.”

  “You’re well past minding your own business, Tommy,” he said.

  I sure as hell didn’t like the emphasis he put on my fake name. That wasn’t good.

  “Speak or we stop on the thirteenth floor,” Steve said.

  “That a bad thing?”

  “Has anything on a thirteenth floor ever been good?”

  “Right. Fair point,” I said. “I was noticing how you seemed regretful you took care of that Tox guy.”

  “Tox? Shit no,” Steve said and laughed. “That guy had it coming. He’ll think twice about ripping off Lord Beelzebub again if he ever gets out of the shithole I put him in.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked. “You didn’t kill him?”

  “Kill him?” Steve asked, looking perplexed. “Do you even know where you are?”

  “Ekron,” I said.

  “Yeah, Ekron,” Steve said and nodded at me like I was a small, slow child. “So do you know what I am? What we all are here in Ekron?”

  “Devils?” I asked, not really wanting to say the word.

  “What? No! Jesus Christ, you fucking humans,” Steve said and shook his head. “Always with the devil thing. Some mental patient channels a view of our world for five seconds and your entire dimension is prejudiced. You, buddy, need to get your facts straight.”

  He jabbed a finger in my chest.

  “We’re the Muscae,” he said. I stared blankly. “‘Muscae’ is Latin for flies. Lord Beelzebub is the Lord of the Flies.”

  “Like the book?”

  “No, not like the book,” Steve replied. “Listen, the point is we can’t be killed. I couldn’t kill Tox if I wanted to. He’d be reborn in twenty-four hours, anyway, like the rest of us.”

  “Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Not following.”

  “We live for twenty-four hours, then die and are reborn,” Steve said. “Looking exactly as we did when we died. Scars and all. It’s the way our kind works. So, when we say we take care of someone, that means they are tucked away in someplace nasty to think on what got them in that nasty place. If they ever figure a way out, then they are free. Otherwise, they’re stuck there for eternity.”

  He leaned in close and pointed his cigar at me.

  “I am the best at making sure no one ever finds a way out. Kinda like you, but without the hocus-pocus.”

  “Hocus-pocus?”

  He held out his hands, palms up. “I don’t need that Dim crap. I’m a professional.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he said, then turned away and watched the numbers above the elevator doors rise until they hit thirty. The doors opened, and he gestured with his cigar. “After you, Tommy.”

  I hesitated, but I’d gotten myself in this goddamn mess, so I was going to have to go get myself out. I can improv, I’d have to in my line of work, but the way the dimension was worming its way in my head, I didn’t know how much wiggle room I had. The honest truth was I didn’t exactly know what was and wasn’t real.

  And if this Steve devil knew what I could do, then he obviously knew who I was, which meant . . . what? Variables, variables, variables. My brain was churning almost as much as my guts were.

  The hallway before me was the same gilded gold and red velvet as the rest of the place and a good fifty yards long without any doors except a single one at the very end. Steve gave me a nudge in the back with his elbow. I stepped off the elevator and started walking. Nothing else I could do.

  “Any specific way I should address Lord Beelzebub?” I asked. “You’ve pointed out my ignorance of your dimension, so I’d rather not make things worse.”

  “You came here planning to steal Lord Beelzebub’s soul, Tommy,” Steve said from behind me. “Then you whacked me on the head with your pistol and spilled the beans on your ill-advised heist. How much worse do you think this will get?”

  “Dead-worse. I’m human. I don’t regenerate after twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay, good point,” he said. “I tell you what. You answer all of his questions honestly and I’ll personally vouch for you. That’ll keep you from the dead-worse. And I do mean honestly. He’s Lord of the Flies, but he’s also Lord of Lies. If you are anything less than honest, he’ll know. Which means I’ll know, which means dead-worse is back on the table. You get what I’m saying, buddy?”

  “I get what you’re saying,” I said.

  “Good.”

  We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  “Hold on, you didn’t tell me what to call—” I shut my mouth instantly as Steve pushed me into the huge penthouse.

  You ever see that old movie with Tom Cruise where Tim Curry plays the Devil? That’s who greeted me as Steve’s hand in my back kept me moving even though my feet did not want to comply.

  “Chase Lawter!” Lord Beelzebub exclaimed as he clomped his massive cloven-footed way over to me. His feet left smoldering foot prints, but they were temporary and gone after a second or two. That was some goddamn special carpet. “What a pleasure to finally meet the defiler of dimensions!”

  He offered a huge, black-nailed red hand.

  I shook the hand without hesitation. If a guy that looks like Tim Curry in Devil drag offers to shake hands, you goddamn shake hands.

  “I, uh. . . . You know my name?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at Steve.

  He was stripping off his overcoat and putting it on a coatrack. Then he set a Thompson submachine gun next to the coatrack. I was right. He gave me a smarmy smile and walked off to an elegant wood bar off to the side of the room.

  “Chase, Chase, Chase, no one walks into my dimension without me knowing,” Lord Beelzebub said. “Especially not the defiler of dimensions. I gotta say, I’m a big fan, Chase.” He wiggled his fingers at me. “That thing you do with the Dim? Brilliant! Steve?”

  “Yeah, boss?” Steve asked as he stepped behind the bar and started mixing drinks.

  “Get Chase a drink,” Lord Beelzebub said. “What’ll you have?”

 
“Uh . . . You got any stout?” I asked. “I could go for a cold stout.”

  “Steve! We got any stout back there?” Lord Beelzebub asked.

  I was about to lose my damn mind. A nine-foot-tall devil was asking a shorter devil if there was any stout. I was having a hard time keeping my shit together at that moment.

  “I think we’ve got something back here,” Steve said and bent over. I heard a fridge open and the clanking of bottles. “Here we go. Ain’t from the Earth dimension, but I’ve heard good things.”