Hell on Earth 1 - Hell's Belles

by Jackie Kessler

  Fuuuuuck. This was really, really bad.

  Purple blossomed in the corner of my vision, lilacs creeping up to the irises in my eyes. Gasping, I batted at Jemma's hand. A boneless kitten would have had more strength than me.

  In Jemma's body, Lillith smiled. "You've been a very bad girl, Jezebel. He's been asking for you. The price on your head is enough to turn any demon into a Coveter."

  Her fingers pressed into my throat. Now black flowers joined the lilacs.

  No choice.

  Feebly, I reached for the peridot stone—the cold peridot stone—ready to use the last of my strength to yank it off my neck. Between being a hunted demon and a dead human, the former had a slightly better life expectancy.

  As I touched the shieldstone, Goth Girl smashed something against Jemma's blond head, making a thick, mushy sound.

  Jemma's hand snapped open, and I fell against the wall and slid to the floor, wheezing and gasping for breath. Blood roared in my ears, drowning all other sound in a frantic thump! thump! thump! My throat was raw, and each gulp of air seared like a kiss from the Lake of Fire. Tears stung my eyes and trebled my vision. Hands shaking, my fingers tap-danced against my neck, trembling delicately over my bruised flesh.

  Oh, air—bless me, I could breathe again.

  Jemma lay sprawled on the floor, the back of her head a tangled mass of red. I frowned. Slicing her had done nothing. Then how… ?

  Standing over her, Goth Girl cradled one of her boots, wielding it like a bat. Blinking, I stared at the bloody work-boot. The steel-tipped bloody workboot.

  Iron.

  Some of the nefarious are very sensitive to certain metals. Apparently, Lillith's personal allergy was of ferric origin.

  Looking up at Goth Girl, I whispered, "Thanks."

  "No problem." She glanced down. "Except I fucking wet myself."

  Aurora came charging through the door, Momma and Joey on her heels. Apparently, she'd run out for reinforcements when Lillith was gloating and Goth Girl was gearing up for batting practice.

  Joey sank to my side. "Shit! Jez, you okay?" His strong hands fluttered by my neck, afraid to touch.

  "Been. Better." I dropped my hands from my throat, wincing as I swallowed. Fuuuuuuck. That hurt!

  Gingerly, Joey probed my throat. "Looks like you'll have some pretty colors on your neck. You able to breathe okay?"

  "Think. So."

  "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," Aurora intoned, wobbling in her heels. "Oh my God, oh my God."

  "Fucking crazy bitch," Candy muttered, picking herself up from the floor. "Why she hate you so much?"

  Because she was a deranged malefic entity with an inferiority complex the size of Texas. "Thought. I was. Someone else."

  On the ground, Jemma's body began to flop like a landed fish. Momma turned the blond head to the side. "Aurora, get me your eyebrow pencil."

  "My… ?"

  "Eyebrow pencil. If you please."

  Aurora did as she was told. Pencil in hand, Momma pried open Jemma's mouth and stuck the pencil between her teeth. Jemma's body jitterbugged faster, her arms and feet drumming against the bare floor like a machine gun's tatatatat.

  "Seizure?" Joey asked, glancing at the fallen dancer.

  "Based on the track marks on her arm," Momma said, "probably more like a bad drug reaction."

  They were both wrong. Jemma's body was reacting to the sudden flight of her host. Lillith was gone. For now. I rubbed my throat, staring at Jemma's flailing arm. The drugs explained how Lillith could have possessed Jemma; narcotics weakened a human's will, made them susceptible. Jemma'd been an easy mark. And now she was paying the price.

  Aurora asked, "What's the pencil for?"

  "In case she is having a fit, this way she won't bite off her tongue."

  "Crazy fucking bitch deserves it," Candy spat. "Must be doped up on something. She barely touched me, sent me flying."

  "Her eyes," Aurora said. "They were red."

  "Bloodshot," Momma said. "Drugs."

  Jemma's thrashes turned to erratic jerks. The red stain looked horribly dark in her tangled blond hair.

  Momma sighed. "Doesn't this just blow monkey chunks. Candy, you okay?"

  "Hip hurts like a bitch."

  "But you'll live?"

  "Hell yeah."

  "Okay." Glancing at Goth Girl, Momma said, "What about you, honey? You all right?"

  "My fucking pants are goddamn soaked. And my boot's dinged up."

  "Joey here's going to get you a couple drinks on the house. Warm you right up." Momma's eyes met mine. "You okay, Jezebel?"

  Tears streaming down my face, I nodded. Even that made my throat burn.

  "You want a doctor?"

  I whispered, "No." Just because I was human didn't mean that I wanted someone to take a close look at what made me tick. For all I knew, a doctor might be able to see hints of the demon I really was. I couldn't risk it.

  Grimacing, Momma's face made it clear what she thought of my decision. But what she said was, "You should go home. Get some rest. Me, I'll take the drug queen here to the emergency room. If it's okay with you ladies, I'd like to keep the police out of this. Okay?"

  Wincing, Candy rubbed her hip. "Last thing I need's some cop poking his nose where it don't belong."

  Aurora and Goth Girl agreed that the police were the enemy. Me, I just nodded—and I barely had the energy to do that. Bless me, I was absolutely exhausted. I felt like I could sleep for a year.

  "Joey, can you help me get Jemma to my car? Then take care of our guest here. Get her whatever she wants, for the rest of the night."

  "I want a dry fucking pair of pants."

  "Get her almost whatever she wants."

  Joey helped me to my feet, then he and Momma carted Jemma away.

  "Just look at this shit, my makeup's all over the place," Candy muttered, hobbling as she gathered up her things from the floor. "This jar cost me ten bucks, and now it's cracked and moisturizing the floor. That fucking psycho bitch from hell."

  She had no idea how right she was.

  As I changed into a regular bra, my hands shaking so bad that Aurora had to work the clasp, I realized I was screwed six ways to Salvation. Lillith had made me. It wouldn't be long before she returned.

  And she'd said it herself—she wasn't a creature of Evil. Residing in Hell had altered her, but at her core, she was still a human.

  The shieldstone wouldn't protect me from her.

  I quickly got dressed exchanged my stilettos for sneakers, and gathered my belongings. Candy let me borrow a bright green scarf to hide the damage to my neck. When Joey came back, drinks in hand for me, Aurora, Candy, and Goth Girl, I pounded mine back without bothering to ask what it was. I barely felt the liquid slide down my throat. It must have done something, though, because my nostrils pinched and my eyes watered.

  I thanked him and the girls, then I headed out, meaning to duck quietly past the showroom and hoof it to the hotel, where I'd pack my few possessions and bust a move like there was a hellhound on my trail. Because there was—the biggest bitch of the Underworld was on the case. Which meant that I was no longer a target only for creatures of Avarice. Now I was Number One on Hell's Most Wanted list. And that meant only one thing. I had to run.

  PART FIVE

  PAUL

  Chapter 20

  Hotel New York

  "I still want to know why you were slinking away."

  Sighing, I opened the door to my hotel room, Paul in tow. He'd caught me as I did the tiptoe thing across the showroom floor. Burly Cabin Boy-Slash-Gardener that he was, he insisted on escorting me back to Hotel New York, claiming there were evil people out there who could hurt me if I walked alone at night.

  Evil people I could handle. Evil entities that ate said people for lunch? Not so much. My confidence in the shieldstone was greatly lacking at the moment.

  And Paul made chivalry so damn appealing. It helped that I wanted to fuck his brains out. So I reluctantly agreed to let hi
m play bodyguard. I hadn't counted on him yammering at me the entire time to find out why I'd been sneaking away.

  I flipped on the lights as Paul shut and latched the door. In my absence, the bed had been turned down. Why did mortals bother with such trivial things? I'd just mess up the covers when I slept in the bed, so why make it look neat at all? A small item rested on the overly large pillow.

  "Jesse? Are you going to answer me?"

  "For the millionth time, I wasn't slinking away. I was sneaking. That's why I was in sneakers. To, you know, sneak. Otherwise they'd be called slinkers."

  I strode over to the bed and picked up the tiny foil-wrapped square. What was this supposed to be, something to make the pillow smell nice? I put the item to my nose and took a whiff.

  My salivary glands imploded in ecstasy. Mouth tingling with anticipated pleasure, I tore off the silver foil and popped the brown square into my mouth.

  Oh, the feeling of it on my tongue—bliss! I pressed the treat against the roof of my mouth, delighting at the taste as it slowly melted. Swallowing, I shivered as thick, liquid sweetness coated my throat. Unable to restrain myself, I set my teeth into it and chewed, chewed, chewed until it was nothing but a pulverized mass of disintegrating confection. Its aftertaste thick on my tongue, I searched my pillow to see if there were any more foil-wrapped squares. Finding none, I pouted. Only one? Greedy bastards.

  I blew out a frustrated sigh, lifting stray curls from my forehead. I had a new understanding for creatures of Gluttony.

  "Let me guess," Paul said. "You've never had chocolate before now."

  "Is that what that was?" My toes curled in pleasure. "Now Valentine's Day makes a lot more sense."

  "How could you never have tried chocolate before?"

  "There's a lot I've never tried before." I flopped down spread-eagled on the bed, feeling like I'd screwed an entire pro-football team. At one shot. Okay, I'd rest for a moment, get Paul out of the room, and then grab my things and go.

  Somewhere.

  Paul sat next to me, his fingers slowly tracing the curve from my hip to my shoulder, and back down to my hip. "You're a mystery."

  "Wrapped in an enigma." By my waist, Paul's fingers did this flutter-thing—oooh! "That tickles."

  "Sorry," he murmured, his eyes telling me he wasn't sorry in the least. His hand slid over my stomach, inching upward. He gently traced the mound of my left breast, then moved his hand to the side, sliding over the bumps of my ribcage. "Better?"

  His fingers progressed upward, brushing my shoulder. Wrong direction, I wanted to say, go back down and touch me properly. Caress the full swell of my breast. Rub my nipple with your palm. Make my back arch with pleasure. Instead, his hand pressed gently against my shoulder, kneading the muscle.

  "Mmmm." I closed my eyes, smiling as his fingers drummed against my skin. Ohhh, that felt good. Feeling tension melt with his touch, I turned my head away from Paul, giving him more room to work.

  His hand pressed, pressed… and trailed a path to my borrowed scarf. Too late, I realized he was pushing aside the material. Opening my eyes, I swatted his hand away and rolled away from him.

  "Who did that?" His voice was flat, empty. "Who did that to you?"

  Crap. "Sweetie, come on, it's nothing."

  "It's not nothing! You tell me who did that to you!"

  Flinching from his anger, words fell from my lips before I could catch them. "At the club. Jemma. But it wasn't her fault, she wasn't herself." Literally.

  "Jemma." He said the name like it was a disease. "That's the blonde who one of the managers and the bouncer helped out at the club. Said she'd passed out, too much booze before the show. What the hell happened, Jesse?"

  I sat up on the other side of the bed, my fingers tracing the flesh beneath the scarf, where Lillith had nearly strangled me. Even the soft touch of my fingertips was enough to make me hiss under my breath. Fuck me, that was tender. Swallowing, tasting the remnant of chocolate coating my tongue, I thought about what answer I could give him.

  "Jesse." In that one word, I sensed Paul's building fury, a whirlpool thickening into a maelstrom. "Tell me."

  On top of everything else, my little voice whispered, don't anger the one human you have yearnings for. Angry Cabin Boys tend to piss in the pool.

  I licked my lips before I spoke, carefully choosing my words. "Jemma was doing drugs."

  "Drugs? Snorting lines before the show?"

  Shaking my head, I said, "I don't know; Momma said she had track marks. I never saw her do anything. But today she'd been acting sick. I tried to get her to go home, even gave her some cash so she wouldn't go home empty-handed. After I saw you, I went back to the dressing room. She was holed up in the bathroom, and I made a joke. I must've said the wrong thing, because she burst out of the bathroom and grabbed me. Started choking me."

  Gooseflesh dotted my skin, and I rubbed my arms, trying to work some warmth into them. I could still feel her hand pressing against my windpipe, her fingers digging into my neck.

  "One of the girls got her off of me, and then she went crazy, like she was pitching a fit. That's when Momma and Joey came in, and they took her to Momma's car, to bring her to the emergency room. Momma thought she was having a bad drug reaction."

  I felt Paul's gaze pierce my back. Stiffening, I clutched my arms tighter.

  "That's what happened?"

  "Yes."

  "Jemma just freaked out?"

  "Yes."

  "So why were you slinking out of the club?"

  Sighing, I looked up at the ceiling—for what, I didn't know. I'd seen countless mortals perform that gesture, rolling their eyes Heavenward as if God could see them.

  As if God cared about them.

  Tearing my eyes away, I turned my head toward the wall, away from Paul. "I told you before, I wasn't—"

  "Fine. Sneaking. Whatever." His hand on my shoulder made me jump. "Jesse, what are you hiding from?"

  I closed my eyes and said nothing.

  "Earlier today, you said you learned something back home, something that upset you. You mentioned someone, some guy who said terrible things about you."

  His words, cold as winter's breath: You are too soft.

  "Is that guy trying to find you?"

  My lower lip started to tremble. Even though my eyes were screwed shut, tears managed to squeeze through the closed lids. Unholy Hell, how much moisture could this one body hold?

  "What did he do to you?"

  "Nothing!" I realized I'd said it too fast, that he wouldn't believe me. "Nothing. It's not like that. He just… wants me to go home. But I can't. I won't."

  Paul's hand pressed against my shoulder, its weight comforting, reassuring. "Did he do something bad?"

  The absurdity of the question brought nervous laughter to my lips. Smothering my giggles, I shook my head, but that made me cry harder. When I could finally speak, I said, "It's not like that. He didn't do anything wrong. He just turned my life inside out."

  Taking a shuddering breath, I faced Paul. Lightning flashed in his eyes, a storm at sea. Waiting, he said nothing.

  I asked, "Have you ever learned something that was so devastating that you didn't know how you could go on?"

  His face hardened, and he dropped his hand from my shoulder. "I buried my fiancee. So yeah. I understand."

  Heat flushed my cheeks, but I kept talking, even over my embarrassment of forgetting Tracy's death. "He didn't kill anyone, but He may as well have killed me. Everything I'd ever known, ever believed in, gone with His words."

  Thoughts flitted behind Paul's stormy eyes. "What did he tell you?"

  "That's not important," I said, shaking my head.

  "Yes it is."

  Ignoring him, I spoke quicker. "I tried. I really tried to accept the way things were going to be from now on. But I just couldn't."

  Remembering the sound of Paul's shrieks, I darted my gaze to the floor. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't pretend to be something I'm not." Clenching my teeth,
my breathing came in ragged gasps. My heart felt too tight in my chest.

  "Jesse—"

  I let the words spill out of me, as if that action would give my heart the room it needed to keep beating. "I was good at what I did! And I loved it! I loved making them feel so good, loved reeling them in and making my catch. But I loved them, too, and I didn't know it. It was supposed to be just business, but I started caring about them, started having feelings, bless me, feelings for them. Like I was supposed to be an angel."

  Please help me, I heard my lover's voice plead as he reached up to me, supplicating. Grimacing, I shoved the memory away. "And then He came and ruined everything! And now I'm supposed to hurt them, make them scream. And I can't, I won't, I won't do it!"

  Just like that, my words died. I had no more to say. Instead of feeling tight, now my heart seemed hollow, like I'd lost something in the rush of words that escaped my lips like water gushing from a broken dam.

  "Jesse," Paul said, his voice soft, "were you a prostitute?"

  A wan smile flitted across my face. "Not exactly."

  "'Not exactly.' What, is that like being a little bit pregnant?"

  I sighed, feeling my entire body deflate like a balloon. "I've slept with a lot of men, Paul. I've done things that would make you squirm. But until I worked at Belles as a dancer, I never took money from my customers." Their souls, yes. But never money.

  "What about at Belles? You doing more than dance there?"

  "Not that it hasn't been suggested to me, but no."

  Paul stared at me hard, absorbing my words. "This guy. From back home. He make you sleep around?"

  "I keep telling you, it's not like that," I said, anger bubbling in my gut. Paul's nobility rubbed me raw—he was like those holier-than-thou angels with their halos of gold and purity in their eyes. Who was he to judge me?

  "Answer me. He make you do that? Did he pimp you out?"

  "No. In fact, He made me stop."

  "What?" Surprise was so clearly stamped on his features, the word may as well have been etched onto his forehead. "But—"

  "What the fuck am I doing? I don't have time for this. I've got to go." I scrambled to my feet, but Paul grabbed my arm, pinning me to the bed. "Let go."