Okay, Jesse. Play dumb. Most mortals can't see the nefarious. Ignore the obscenely huge—and hello, very turned on—demonic entity. Hmm. Actually, there was one place where he wasn't so huge. Must be the infernal equivalent of steroids.
"Circe? Sweetie, you okay?"
"Ignore her," Mister Gorgeous said, casting me a long look. "She couldn't possibly understand the pain he's caused you. He doesn't love you."
Circe said, "He doesn't love me." Her voice cracked, shattered into a thousand pieces.
"Who doesn't?" Right keep your voice steady. Don't look at Mister Gorgeous. You don't see him, la la la…
"Larry." Circe said his name with a sob.
Pasting a smile on my face, I did something very brave, and completely stupid. I walked over to her, sat in the chair next to her, within spitting distance of the hulking demon. Pay no attention to the Evil creature behind the curtain. The stench emanating from him was strong enough to make my eyes water. Now I recognized it for what it was: Brimstone.
I said, "Larry? You mean the skinny blond guy? Sweetie, you can do better than him."
"You gave him your heart," the demon said. "He chewed it up and spat it at your feet. Show him how much he hurt you, how you can't live without his love."
Circe's breath was coming in hitches. I reached over to pat her hand, and that's when I saw the bottle of prescription pills she was holding in a death grip by her chest. "Whatcha got there, sweetie?"
"He doesn't love me," she said again. "I gave him my heart, and he chewed it up and spat it at my feet."
Uh oh. Cyrano de Bergerac, infernal style. Very bad news.
"Sweetie, there are other guys out there."
"I can't live without his love." Her voice faded as if someone had turned the volume way down, and something went dead in her eyes. She unscrewed the bottle cap. In a tiny voice she said, "I'll show him."
I grabbed her arm, but she wrenched it away. Fuck, she was strong. Massaging my sore hand, I darted a glance over her shoulder. Yup, the demon still had his hands clamped onto her shoulder. Not quite possession, but definitely influencing her actions.
The cheating bastard.
"Show him you still have your pride," Mister Gorgeous said. "Swallow the pills. All of them."
"I still have my pride," she said, her voice a monotone. She took off the cap.
I touched her elbow. "Circe, listen to me. Unrequited love is a bitch, but it's not worth dying over. Come on, girl, this is stupid."
She spilled some blue pills into her palm.
Fuck. Okay, let's try some shock therapy. I slapped her, hard. The crack echoed in the room.
Blinking, she turned away from the mirror to look at me. My handprint stained her cheek an angry red. "Jesse… ?"
"Forget about the skinny blond asshole," I said. "He's not worth it."
"She doesn't understand how he hurt you," Mister Gorgeous said.
Circe echoed, "He hurt me…"
"Sweetie, he has no idea what he's missing out on. You're a sexy, funny, wonderful girl. And if he doesn't want a part of that, he's an imbecile."
She looked down at the bottle, at the pills in her hand. "You think so?"
"Probably impotent, too."
That brought a faint smile to her lips. "Yeah?"
I said, "I read it somewhere, in one of those business magazines, that it's been proven that the higher the level of imbecileness, the higher the likelihood of impotence."
"'Imbecileness'?"
"What, it's a word."
Her smile slipped. "I really loved him. Why doesn't he want me?"
"Because he's an imbecile. I thought we covered this. It's not even his fault. Imbecileness runs rampant in the male sex. Comes with all the testosterone."
"Think so?"
"Yup." I held out my hand. "Care if I hold your pharmaceuticals for you?"
In her ear, the demon roared: "Swallow the pills!"
Circe frowned, turned her head. "You hear something?"
"Just the hum of the flourescents. Know what you need?"
She shook her head.
"A glass of wine and a good vibrator."
Circe barked out a surprised laugh. "Jesse!"
"I'm telling you, it's a surefire cure-all to everything that ails you, from a broken heart to the common cold."
"I thought that was chicken soup."
"I have never heard of pleasuring yourself with chicken soup," I said. "But I'm willing to give it a shot." I made a gimme gesture. "Fork it over."
With a sigh, she plopped the bottle into my hand, then the loose pills.
Behind her, Mister Gorgeous said nothing, radiated pure rage. Gleep.
"Come on, sweetie," I said, doing my best not to eye the invisible demon. "Let's cut out early. First round's on me."
Circe stood, looking vulnerable and beautiful, like a sculpture of flowers. "You sure?"
"I'll go tell Jerry to move us off the stage lineup, then I'll tip out." The D.J. was a real prick about dancers missing their rotation; I'd have to slip him an extra twenty to mollify him.
"Okay." She smiled at me. "Thanks Jesse. I…Jesus, I don't know what I was thinking. Suicide's a sin."
"Keep forgetting you're so damn religious."
"I'll find Joey, tell him we're cutting out. Meet you back here to change?"
No freaking way was I staying in a bathroom with an angry demon. I started to get up when I felt a crushing weight press down on my shoulder, my neck. The demon squeezed, and suddenly I couldn't breathe.
I wanted to shriek at the top of my lungs. What I said in a hoarse whisper was, "You bet."
Circe took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and sauntered out of the ladies' room.
As soon as the door closed, something tangled in my hair and yanked my head back. I dropped the bottle, and the pills spilled from my hand, bounced on the tile floor. Over the nauseating odor of sulfur, the ripe stink of my fear clung to my nostrils. Blood roared in my ears, pounded my head, and my heart jackhammered like it wanted to break free from my chest. My arms were leaden, dead things; my feet were rooted on the floor. I couldn't run, even if the demon released me.
But as I stared up into his face, I had a sinking suspicion that the last thing Mister Gorgeous wanted to do was let me go.
"I know you," he said, his face twisting into a leer. "You're the slut from the Courtyard."
Even through my overwhelming fear, I heard the capital C in Courtyard… and I placed him.
Tell us, is it true that all Seducers are pox-infested carriers of disease?
Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Mister Gorgeous was a demon of Pride—and he had a personal grudge against me. Granted, most creatures of Arrogance had a chip on their shoulders when it came to one of my kind… former kind. Pride and Lust rarely work well together, unless there's seriously strong drink involved. But he had a reason to despise me: I'd embarrassed him in front of his buddies. To one of the Arrogant, there's no worse crime.
Licking my lips, I tried for the Dumb Blonde approach, ignoring the fact that my hair was a curly brunette. "Never saw you before." I even spoke with the right balance of Pants-Pissing Terror and Indignant New Yorker. Maybe he'd think I was just one of those rare mortals who were able to see the supernatural. "Let me go."
"You're lying. You smell of sex, slut."
"Last customer got too happy, got his splooge on me."
"That's not a lie." His grip on my scalp tightened, and I felt clumps of hair tearing at the roots. Between the shriek of agony atop my head and the flare of pain from me biting my lip to keep from screaming, I was one raw nerve. "But you do know me," he said. "Oh yes, slut. And I know you."
Fuck.
He grinned, and my breath strangled in my throat. Icy fingers tripped up my spine, reached out to grip my heart. The demon bent down until his mouth was inches away from mine. "Once a fifth-level succubus, now a flesh puppet with a soul. How appropriate. The only thing lower than your type of trash is humans."
"You entice humans with thoughts of Lust. Your work is in the name of Sin."
Yeah, well, old habits die hard. After four thousand years as a Seducer, what was I going to do, be a telemarketer? "Not Sin. Entertainment."
"A fine line."
"Maybe. Still a line. You can't claim me."
He growled, deep and low in his chest. "You talk tough for a mortal slut. You don't have your Fury friend with you to keep you safe this time."
My throat constricted as I remembered the softest brush of lips on my own. Just thinking of Meg brought angry tears to my eyes. "Don't need her protection."
"You think not?"
"You can't claim me for Hell. My soul's clean." Benefit of being only thirty days old in mortal years: that's not a lot of time to wreak havoc.
His eyes narrowed, and for a moment I glimpsed his true form swimming beneath his false human shell—charred black flesh, white holes for eyes, a maw crammed with razor-blade teeth. Then he pulled my head up until I was sitting up straight in the chair. He spun me around to face him, his hand still tangled in my hair.
"Old rules are bending, breaking."
"I got that," I said, far calmer than I had any right to be. "Seems the nefarious are encouraging mortals to kill themselves. What, business is too slow?"
"Business is booming." His dark gaze held me, explored me. "You mortals make excuses for your sins, think you can talk your way out of damnation. As if understanding why you commit certain actions, you forgive the action itself."
A demonic therapy session. Spare me. "The ends don't exactly justify the means. I know that."
"The mortal coil is steeped in Evil. Murder because of disrespect. Genocide because of disgust." He leered. "Lust because of entertainment."
My heart, already careening at marathon speed, started rocketing at a pace just short of cardiac arrest. Bless me, I hated being afraid. I really preferred causing fear—which is hard to do when you're short, cute, and human. Maybe I should start carrying a big gun. "You know what they say. The world's going to Hell in a handbasket."
"The trip is taking too long. No more sitting back, waiting for humans to die before collecting their souls for the Pit. We're encouraging them along."
I pushed aside my fear to sniff my disdain. Even an ex-demon has Sin standards. "You assholes are cheating."
"Time are changing, slut." For a moment, his eyes closed in on themselves, faded to something old, worn. He released my hair. "We can't let the world be more Evil than the Abyss."
I heard the implication behind his words, and I shivered. People think that the King of Hell is the Devil. They're wrong. The Devil—the Nameless antithesis of the Almighty—has been around way, way longer than the celestials or the nefarious. The only thing keeping It from destroying all of humanity, and the world itself, is Hell. Torturing souls amuses the fuck out of the Devil.
At least, it used to.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I said, "So your King is changing the rules. Keeping things lively."
"You have no idea just how much has changed." He shook himself like a dog, regained his malefic ire as he smiled a shark's grin, all teeth and appetite. "And that means, slut, we can influence your actions more so than ever before. To put it in language even you could understand, we can seduce you."
Arrogant prick. "You really have to work on your pickup lines."
"What's that pithy saying the mortals like to throw around? Oh yes. 'The devil made me do it.' Quaint." His eyes gleamed. "And now, rather accurate."
I swallowed thickly. If the infernal really were going to be actively influencing people, encouraging them to live fast and die young, life was about to get much more interesting. Mental note: Start thinking pure thoughts.
Oh, puke, who was I kidding?
"I say with supreme confidence that I'll see you in Hell, slut. But you know," he added, "the Pit is a better place without you and your Fury friend."
I frowned, wondering what he meant by that. Of course Meg was in Hell. That's where the Furies hung their hats, like most creatures who weren't inherently Good. If not in Hell, where else could she be?
Stop. Don't think about her. She betrayed you, left you to die.
Her voice, like a kiss, in my mind: We all do what we must.
"Until next time, slut." Grinning like he'd eaten all the kids in a candy shop, the Arrogant disappeared in a puff of sulfur.
There's nothing worse than a demon with a grudge. And a little dick.
Jackie Kessler lives in upstate New York, with her husband, two sons, two cats, and 9,000 comic books. For more about Jackie, please visit her website: www.jackiekessler.com.
Hell on Earth 1 - Hell's Belles Page 26