The Devil's Wife

by Holly Hunt

  I started to climb the pipes again, like a cat myself, though one hand was occupied holding Aspen's body. I wrinkled my nose as the smell of it hit me—burned fur, charred meat, and decaying blood.

  I reached a stairwell and followed it up, staying among the pipes, avoiding the stairs themselves. I would not let myself get cornered. I had to find a way to escape. Hopefully Aspen was well on his way to Lucifer, and Jayce and I would be rescued soon. I just had to stay hidden until Lucifer turned up.

  My foot slipped on a wet pipe and someone on the stairwell grabbed my ankle, pulling me down. I fought him as hard as I could, kicking, scratching and dropping Aspen's body far below us, but the hand pulled me from the pipes. I hit my head on a large copper pipe on the way down, and I felt no more for a long time.

  Nineteen

  Lucifer Morningstar

  I shot across the sky faster than a missile, heading for the Portal. Now, more than ever, I wished that I could just be like the humans I watched over, able to enter and exit Hell anywhere in the world.

  I shot out of the far end of the tunnel and circled the Kingdom, landing stoically on top of the Frozen Lake. It remained frozen beneath my feet, not daring to swallow me up. I stamped on the ice, feeling the shudder as the noise echoed through the ground.

  "Leviathan! I need Jason!" I shouted, directing my voice downwards.

  I waited a couple of seconds, then the surface of the Frozen Lake rippled, the ice shifting and rolling around a shape. Jason shot up out of the ice and I caught him by the collar of his shirt as he fell.

  "If you tell me where your friends would have taken Jayce, I shall let you go," I bargained, placing him on his feet on the ice.

  "You mean, I can go to Heaven or something?" he asked, pathetically hopeful.

  "I don't have that power. But you can spend your time above the Lake rather than down there with Leviathan."

  He didn't even think about it. "Done. They have a warehouse in the Hudson docks that they use to house the people they're playing—"

  "Lucifer!"

  I turned automatically at the sound of my name, to

  find a figure from my long-ago past racing across the red sands of Hell towards me. His hair was bright ginger, streaming to his shoulders, and he had a cat-like grace that had me wondering how I had ever thought my rogue brother-in-law a mongrel dog.

  Aspen shot across the Lake's surface as fast as he could run, panting madly, though, from the look of the blood staining his neck, he wasn't alive anymore. He raced across the flexible ice, leaving little ripples from his footsteps in the calm surface.

  "Aspen?" I asked, frowning slightly. "Don't tell me you—"

  "They got her! They snuck up on us, they got Clarissa, and they threw me in a sack and crushed me with their fat feet!"

  "Where did they take her?"

  "A dock somewhere. One of the warehouses! You have to hurry!"

  He reached me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me back to the shore, though why we were going that way I had no idea—we were directly under the Portal in the middle of the Lake. I felt my heart stop then kick itself into beating again. I looked to Jason.

  "Which warehouse is it?"

  "Third from the southern end of the port."

  I nodded at him and grabbed him by the collar, flapping my wings. I shoved him downward, back under the ice, ignoring his protests and screams of rage. I took off toward the roof, dragging Aspen behind me, the ex-cat screaming—I'd forgotten that, even as an Angel, Aspen hated flying.

  ~ * ~

  "You do know that this means you're going to have to be nice to me from now on, don't you, Aspen?" I snapped at him as I landed on the warehouse roof.

  "Yeah, yeah," he said sarcastically, his voice thin and hollow-sounding in the air. "I'll worship the ground you walk on if you can save Clarissa without her getting hurt. I completely accept fucking up royally on this one."

  "Hey," I snapped, offended, "I negotiated with God to get you your current job, don't forget! Don't press me into doing something, Aspen. You've used up your favors for today."

  "Doing what?" he demanded. "Coming with you?"

  I opened the small roof access point that I'd seen from the air. I turned to glare at him. "You're a liability far more than an advantage now, Aspen. It's not like you can hit anyone or shoot anything now."

  I gently pulled the trap door back onto the roof and dropped inside the building, using my wings to stop myself falling. Unfortunately, Aspen was now a ghost. And that meant that he could sidle through anything or spontaneously appear anywhere. I almost landed in him as I settled on a small balcony. Aspen had his chin in his hand as he watched something on the ground, looking bored, though there was anger burning in his eyes.

  I gagged silently on the scents in the room. Solder, honeycomb and grease oozed into my sinuses, making my head pound. Underneath the sins was a scent I knew well. Clarissa.

  "Oh, oh."

  Aspen's hollow voice made me jump and breathe in deeply, which made me gag on the stench of the sins' combined stink. I glared at him, then looked to the ground, where I could see two men torturing Jayce with a hot poker and a pair of scissors.

  I went to leap down to save her, but there was something holding me back—and it wasn't something I could stop, either. Aspen was holding my wing in a grip that threatened to break the hollow bone.

  "What?" I hissed. "Do you want to see Jayce suffer?"

  Aspen glared at me. "No, but if you want to know where Clarissa is, you're going to want to listen."

  "She's in the freezer down there," I growled at him. "Obviously your mind's been fried by your return to Angel form, Aspen."

  Aspen hit me over the back of the head, his hand strangely able to make contact with me. "Don't be an idiot, Lucifer. If you go in there, guns blazing, and she isn't in that freezer, she might get hit. Then, ghost or not, I will kill you."

  I frowned at him, but huffed in frustration. "Fine. Go be ghostly or something and distract them so I can check to

  see if she's in the freezer."

  Aspen rolled his eyes but vanished, and I saw him appear behind the leader of the Hellraisers.

  "Congratulations," Aspen said, his voice echoing around the room. "You're all going to die a long, slow and painful death."

  The leader whirled around and the poker went right through the ghost's stomach. Aspen frowned and rubbed at his stomach, as though it vaguely tickled.

  "Don't do that again," he warned the man.

  The leader dropped the poker, pulling out a gun. I rolled my eyes and put my wings away, creeping down behind the leader, using the pipes, and heading for the freezer.

  I jumped as someone shot at Aspen, and whirled to look at him. He rubbed at his forehead, and I could tell that the men were wary of him, as he hadn't fallen to the bullet through his skull. There was a hole in a pipe behind him, where the bullet had gone through.

  "What are you?" one of the Hellraisers demanded, his voice quivering. I could see an array of knives hanging from him, so he was obviously one of the Cutters.

  "I am Clarissa's brother," Aspen lied, frowning at them. "You killed me."

  "I did not!" the Cutter cried, clutching one of his knives. "I never killed no one!"

  "You killed me," Aspen said in the airy, shaky way of horror-flick ghosts everywhere. He flew at the men, and I could see his wings glowing very, very faintly in the darkness. He was the ghost of an Angel, rather than a human, and would now be able to use all of the Angels' powers. Including flight.

  The humans yelled and ducked, and Jayce curled up into a ball. She didn't know who Aspen was, knowing as she did that Clarissa had no living family, and I could see she was terrified, her eyes wide as she shuddered. I crept to the door of the freezer and dropped, sneaking in. I looked around the room quickly to find it empty.

  Curse you and your common sense, Aspen, I thought, and darted out into the room, ready to grab Jayce and run.

  Aspen and Jayce were nowhere to be seen, an
d the

  men were staring around with wide eyes. I growled, the gorilla-like sound echoing in the large room, attracting their attention. The human shot at me, and I took the bullets, walking up to one of the men and stealing a knife from his pocket. I knocked the gun aside and held the knife to the Cutter's throat.

  "Where is my Clarissa?" I snapped, glaring at the humans.

  The leader shot me between the eyes, and my head whipped back. My knife dug into the man's neck, and I cursed as he dropped. I hit my temple to try to fix my unfocussed right eye. I glared at the humans, feeling blood drip sluggishly from the bullet hole in the bridge of my nose. The bullet had passed through my head, leaving a lot of damage. I could feel it healing as I stared at the Hellraisers.

  "Do that again and I will kill you all, as slowly and as painfully as I can manage."

  The men stopped shooting, their hands shaking wildly on their guns. I shook my head at the man holding the only steady gun on me, and slid the knife across my throat.

  "I am already dead," I gurgled as my throat healed. "You cannot do me any lasting damage." I grabbed the closest man, pulling him into my arms and holding the knife to his throat so he was too afraid to do anything. "What have you done with my Clarissa?"

  "She—she's not here." The man gulped, and I felt revulsion for him. He was a weak little bully, playing with knives.

  "Then where is she?" I demanded, slicing the knife down his arm and smiling as blood dripped to the floor.

  "We don't know!" one of the other men yelled, breaking the spell that they were under.

  Something above us shifted lightly, making a pipe groan. The humans jumped, and I grinned.

  "Then you will find out for me, and you will bring her back to me," I ordered, throwing the man—a boy, really—at him.

  He caught his blood-stained friend and they fell to the ground. The men ran and I laughed after them. I snapped my wings open and leaped up into the maze of pipes. There was something above me, and I could only hope it was

  Clarissa.

  ~ * ~

  My search of the pipes wasn't very fruitful. At most, the Hellraisers were quietly rebellious, though my revelation as a Demon—if not the Devil—had quelled most of them into searching for Clarissa. As they understood it, they were working for me, trying to find Clarissa in this maze.

  As I understood it, I was going to kill them all as soon as I found Clarissa.

  I spent hours crawling through pipes, but I could tell I wasn't as graceful at it as the person I was following. I slipped occasionally, hitting my head often, and I was forced to admit that my longer body and heavier weight was the reason I wasn't so nimble in the maze of pipes.

  "Clarissa!" I hissed, standing on a set of stairs I'd come across. "Come on, Clarissa, show yourself. I've got Jayce!"

  Someone whimpered and I cursed, looking around me. I spotted a pair of familiar blue eyes watching me, and I turned to look at her, holding out my hand.

  "Come on, Clarissa," I murmured, as though to a frightened animal. "Let's get you out of here so I can destroy these people for what they did to you and Jayce."

  Clarissa blinked, then slithered out from between the pipes. I took in her appearance and stopped breathing. I couldn't see a single part of her body that wasn't bruised. She had slices over every inch of her body, the most concentrated around her breasts, and I gently touched the burn on the side of her face—one of the men had branded her with his mark.

  I growled in the back of my throat, releasing my wings, and she skittered back. I realized my mistake and relaxed, putting my extra limbs away.

  "It's okay, Clarissa," I murmured, "I'm not going to hurt you. The Hellraisers will pay for what they've done to you and Jayce. She'll be okay, Issa-honey."

  "Where is she?" she whispered, her voice cracking.

  She must have screamed her throat out at the hands of the Hellraisers. I felt my ire rise again, and fought it down. Not yet. I cannot kill them yet. I must get Clarissa safe first.

  "Aspen's looking after her." I gently rested a hand on

  her arm, being careful of the bruises. "Let me heal you, Clarissa."

  She whimpered and collapsed into my arms, hugging me tightly. I was wary, unsure of where to put my hands, and whether I was hugging her too hard. She pulled me closer to her, and I melted to her, my hands around her waist and my chin on the top of her head.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered, kissing the top of her head. "I shouldn't have let you go off on your own with only Aspen to help."

  She turned her head to look up at me. "Aspen's dead."

  "I know." I hugged her a little tighter, and she frowned as I closed my eyes, using some of my magic to heal her as best I could. I could help her with the bruises, and I could magically sew the cuts together so they could heal.

  "How is he looking after Jayce?"

  I didn't answer, and she didn't ask again. I was frowning slightly, lifting my hand to her burned cheek as I concentrated all my limited healing magic on it. I wasn't very good at burns.

  After a second, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. Clarissa moved one arm around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss, and I relaxed. For now, my Clarissa was safe, and that was all I cared about.

  It wasn't an urgent kiss, but it was passionate all the same. I returned her energy and force, using my magic to heal her raw throat until she pulled back.

  "I love you, Lucifer. Thank you," she said quietly, clinging to me and resting her head on my chest.

  I rested my forehead against hers, looking into her blue eyes. "You're welcome. I love you, too." I lifted her up into my arms and she snuggled against my chest, tucking her head into the hollow between my shoulder and my neck.

  "Hold on, my love," I said, releasing my wings and springing from the landing, out into the air. "I'm taking you somewhere safe while I deal with these… these… humans." I spat the last word like it was the worst thing I could think of to call them.

  I felt her kiss the side of my neck, then she lapsed into unconsciousness, her body going completely limp. I didn't allow her to slip from my grip, shielding her with my wings as I smashed through the glass windows in the roof. I felt the dull ache of pain lacing my head, but I was all right. I was far more worried for Clarissa than for myself.

  I spiraled through the air, heading north, towards the Portal. I could trust Bee and Levi to look after my lover and Jayce while I went hunting.

  Levi would have the last three members of the Hellraisers to play with for the rest of eternity in the Frozen Lake.

  Twenty

  Aspen Grigori

  I don't know how I managed to get Jayce down to Hell. As a ghost, I shouldn't have been able to so much as touch her, let alone carry her through nothing and end up in Hell. I could only surmise that it was one of the many Mysteries of the Universe, and leave it there—I wasn't going to waste time and brain power working it out when the humans could do it for me, eventually.

  "Oi, look, guys," a familiar Demon called out as I appeared beside him, Jayce in my arms. "It's an Angel!"

  "Thanks," I muttered, walking away from him and heading for Lucifer's chair.

  "Not you, you idiot," another, considerably drunker, Demon sniffed. My twin, Azazel. "The woman."

  I ignored the drunk and gently placed Jayce down in Lucifer's chair so that she was resting her head gently on one arm of the chair and her legs were thrown over the other one. She was still unconscious, her body covered in cuts, grazes, marks, bruises and burns. The heaviest bruises and burns were around her wrists and her ankles, where she'd been tied up.

  "Is that Clarissa?" the first Demon asked.

  "Nah, that can't be Clarissa, Bee," the drunk said, staggering over with a bottle of absinthe swinging from his hand. "Luce said Clarissa is light-skinned, not nearly as dark as any of us used to be."

  I smirked at the Demons. "My, you two have gotten stupid in five thousand years. This is Jayce, Clarissa and

  Lucifer's housemate."

&nbs
p; Beelzebub glared at me. "Still haven't changed in five thousand years, Aspen?"

  "Neither have you, so we should get on like a house on fire—burning and pissed." I frowned at Beelzebub, who was looking at Jayce again. "Do you have something to put over her?"

  Azazel shrugged the shirt off his arms and held it out. I laid it across Jayce's body and turned to my twin.