Yeah, yeah we’ve already established I noticed. Every time.
“So we’re going to go down there and get in line for the boat to…” I squinted in disbelief as the far shore came into focus.
Yeah, I’d always thought the place was called Hell too, but the giant billboard flashing a blinding sequence of lights on the opposite side of the river said otherwise.
Apparently, the basement of the afterlife was known in these parts as Sin City South. Catchy, right? Beyond the billboard stretched a conglomeration of garishly lit buildings gaudy enough to rival the Vegas strip. Not a pile of smoking brimstone or a single lake of fire anywhere in sight. I suppose at this point, it should not have come as a surprise.
“You have got to be kidding!”
Kane reached back and pried my resisting fingers away from his ass. Then he pulled me around in front of him. Cupping my jaw, he buried his fingers in my hair and tilted my face up to his. His lips brushed over mine like a spring breeze, light, warm, and filled with promise.
He lifted his mouth from mine, and while I clung to the front of his shirt and tried to remember how to breathe, he stared over my head with narrowed eyes. His voice had an edge to it as he continued. “I’ve waited a long time for you, Logan, and I’d really hoped to avoid a meet and greet with my family. They don’t make the best first impression.”
“And I do? Anyway, I’ve met your sister and she’s a lovely girl. In fact, I was even prepared to forgo my deeply ingrained cats-only convictions and take her on as a pet.” His brows drew together in a dark frown. “Well, that was before I knew she wasn’t actually a homeless dog,” I added in a rush.
Wait a second… he’d been waiting for me?
“Alia is good kid who, thankfully, is nothing like our mother.” He rested his hand at the small of my back and gave me a gentle shove in the direction of the river. “Whatever happens over there, try not to hold it against me. Just remember, you can’t pick your relatives.”
Chapter 17
As we descended a small rise and traversed the flat open field of high waving grasses, I spied a boat pulling away from the opposite shore on a slow return trip in our direction. Kane grabbed my hand and began to walk faster, apparently in a hurry to board. The terrain was uneven, sloped toward the water, and the grass came nearly to my knees. It seemed almost alive the way it kept tangling around my feet and causing me to stumble. Of course, considering our location, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that it actually was.
“Sheesh, could you maybe slow down? Short person, stumpy legs back here, remember?” I panted, clinging desperately to his hand while being dragged along. “What’s the rush? I don’t know about you, but I’m not in any great hurry to cross the river to Hell, er…Sin City South.”
“Sorry.” He immediately shortened his stride, allowing me to catch up. I released his hand and bent double, gripping my knees and sucking in air. “Since my original plan to sneak in and steal Buddy hit the skids the moment you arrived and made nice with Fluffy, I’m going to have to go through official channels to get him out. The sooner I do that, the sooner we can get out of here.”
“I’m totally on board with the getting out of here part.” I straightened and stretched. Then I drew in a deep breath and reached for his hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Who do we have to petition to get Buddy released? And please don’t tell me it’s your bigger, nastier cousin, because I suspect he won’t be especially receptive to the idea.”
“Wayne Newton.” His fingers curled around mine, and he tugged me forward, then wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tucked me into his side as we continued walking toward the pier at a more sedate pace in deference to my vertically challenged stature and well-known lack of coordination.
“Wayne Newton is in Hell? Well, shoot! I didn’t even know he died.” I looked up at him in confusion.
“He didn’t.” He flashed a brief smile that didn’t linger as he kept his attention firmly fixed on our destination. “But illusion is everything here, and it’s the second Sunday in March. Vegas Week.”
“Gee, I wish you’d mentioned it sooner. Vegas Week in Hell and me without a G-string to call my own.” I decided I wouldn’t even ask.
See? I can show restraint.
Though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally I make an executive decision to play ostrich. Besides, deep down I knew ignorance was a temporary reprieve. No matter what I did, eventually I was going to get the whole story anyway.
“Well, I’ve still got a few connections. If you play your cards right, maybe we can rustle you up some pasties with tassels,” he shot back. “And as pleasantly distracting as I find the idea of you prancing around in a G-string, the boat’s almost here. We need to step on it.”
We attached ourselves to the end of the line just as the ferry chugged into the boat slip alongside the pier. The excitement in the waiting crowd was palpable. I wondered why anyone would giddily anticipate a damned eternity filled with every sin imaginable, then realized the fact that these souls were here in the first place was its own answer. Mostly. As the narrow gangplank was lowered, the condemned souls surged forward, laughing, chattering, and jostling for position. Clenching my teeth, I secured my fingers in the belt loop of Kane’s jeans and let myself be caught up in the wave.
The line moved quickly and before I knew it we were front and center. Kane shoved a hand in his pocket for the viaticum that would guarantee us a ride. The action tugged his jeans down just low enough to afford me a tantalizing glimpse of his rock hard abs, and one side of the nameless cord of muscle guaranteed to make smart girls stupid that traced along his hip and disappeared into his waistband. My mouth went dry. Apparently, even the prospect of petitioning Wayne Newton for the Zombie King’s release during Vegas Week in Sin City South was insufficient distraction when it came to my contemplation of the Grim Reaper’s physique.
Don’t judge me.
“Charon.” Morgan greeted the boatman in a neutral tone.
“Hey, Morgan, been a while. Your mother expecting you?”
“She wasn’t. Probably knows I’m coming by now, though.” Kane’s voice was drier than the Mojave and there was a curious tension to his posture. Thinking perhaps the Dread Captain Charon was the reason, I risked a peek up at the boat pilot who was hanging over the side as the Grim Reaper stretched an arm over my head to pay the fare. Okay, I freely admit I was nervously anticipating the stereotypical Charon of myth and legend. Perhaps a skeletal old man clad in foul rags with haggard cheeks and an unkempt beard or maybe even Michelangelo’s Last Judgment interpretation of a chunky muscular demon with sharp teeth, pointed ears, and an oar at the ready to beat the crap out of any soul foolish enough to tarry and screw with his schedule. What I was not expecting was an overweight man in white twill pants, a blue polo shirt with matching sneakers, and a jaunty nautical cap.
“Seriously? Let me guess…a hold out from Sixties Sitcom Week? Will we be sharing a cabin with the redhead and the brunette?”
“Yes, no, and behave.” Kane’s hot breath tickled my ear, and I shivered before he straightened and gripped my upper arm to steady me as I awkwardly navigated the narrow plank from the dock to the deck. “Charon’s beef has always been that no matter what week Satan celebrates, the character opportunities for boat captains are limited, so he just paddles to his own current regardless of what’s happening on the mainland.” Feeling the heat of his palm like a brand even through my clothes, I once again wondered if Hellhounds ran a naturally hotter basal body temperature than humans. I do know the closer Kane was, the hotter I felt.
Though I wasn’t ordinarily prone to claustrophobia, something about being crammed like a metal head in a mosh pit with a gang of condemned souls on a bobbing barge to damnation made my knees wobbly and my stomach churn. As if sensing my distress, Kane shouldered us a path through the tightly packed crowd and across the rocking deck to the rail. Breathing required less effort once we were facing out over the
water, and I probably would have felt moderately less anxious, too, if not for two things—Kane’s hard body pressed against my back and the crowd gathering on the far shore with diaphanous black shadows that looked like big creepy worms cavorting around them. If the Seekers were present among the waiting throng, I was fairly certain I knew the identity of the giant in black leather standing with the main group. At his side, front and center, stood a tall, broad shouldered man wearing what appeared to be a bedazzled tuxedo on his back and a shapely blonde showgirl on his arm.
“So,” I drawled in what was intended to be a casual tone but somehow came out all shaky and breathless. Yeah, that. “Does the welcoming committee always gather to greet the new arrivals?”
“Nope.” His arms came around me from behind, pulling me back against him as the boat lurched forward. “All that lovin’ is just for us.”
“Wucking fonderful.” I shivered and his arms tightened. Sure, I was all about rescuing Buddy and saving the world, but somehow I’d managed to conveniently overlook the fact that I might run into anyone unsavory in the course of the mission. Sometimes my own worst enemy is the empty space right between my ears. “So what’s the plan?”
“The plan was for me to sneak in and snatch Buddy from under my cousin’s nose. Your unexpected arrival and subsequent twerking session with Toad kind of put the skids to that.”
“Excuse me? I do not twerk. Well, maybe in the privacy of my own home. And okay, there was that one ill-advised demonstration in the Supersave parking lot when Denise dared me. But I did absolutely nothing to encourage that mangy mutt, and I can’t help it if that he was overcome by the hotness of my leather attire. While I’ll admit, his method of expressing his appreciation left something to be desired—I mean, you know, eww—he probably couldn’t help himself, so there’s no reason to resort to name-calling.”
“I wasn’t resorting to anything. Toad is his name.”
“Oh.”
I expected the crossing would take a while. Okay, I hoped the crossing would take a while, say a month, but we seemed to be racing toward the opposite shore at lightning speed. I could now clearly see Cerberus’ smug expression, though Wayne Newton’s face remained unreadable. The smile on the face of the showgirl, however, grew exponentially wider the closer we got.
“So you’re saying we don’t have a plan? No, wait, you’re saying I screwed up the plan. Given my track record, that shouldn’t surprise you, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m working on it, okay?”
Kane turned me in his arms, away from my nervous contemplation of the knot of people waiting on the shore. I tilted my head back and rested my chin on his chest. His broad, muscular chest.
Hey, the situation was not yet so dire that I could overlook the obvious.
He squinted over my head at the welcoming committee, and there was a tense tic doing a sporadic jig in his cheek.
“I originally had no intention of bringing you along at all,” he ground out at last through tightly clenched teeth. “I planned to snatch the kid and stash him at the Timekeeper’s where no one could touch him, and bring you over afterwards just to get him out. But then I saw you again last night and…well, let’s just say I was selfish. This is my fault, not yours, Logan.”
Wrapping my arms around his trim waist, I wrinkled my nose and looked up at him. “Well, if that bridesmaid dress didn’t scare you into the second Tuesday of next week, maybe it isn’t a question of fault, but a matter of fate. However we got here, here we are. Now we just have to decide how we’re going to play it.”
“I have to admit it was a Herculean feat to overlook that dress.” He continued to stare out over the water, but his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Well, there isn’t any point in trying to reason with Cerberus. He’ll refuse to surrender the kid just for spite. I’m going to have to go over his head, and Satan never grants a petition without getting something in return.”
“Satan?” I squeaked. “I’m going to meet Satan?”
“Well, this is Hell regardless of what they’re calling it at the moment. Don’t sweat it. He’s bearable as long as he doesn’t start singing. He can rock the rhinestones, but the pipes are sadly lacking.”
“Wayne Newton is Satan?” My childhood Catechism teacher, Sister Mary Eloise, better known among the Sunday school set as Sister Myrtle Elephant, would have kittens if she knew how totally off base she’d been with the whole cloven-hooved, pitchfork packing demon description she’d been selling all these years. My mood improved considerably as I pictured the look on her face if I ever had the opportunity to tell her the truth.
“Of course not, and I doubt Mr. Newton would appreciate the comparison. Still, he is the undisputed King of the Strip. Told you, it’s Vegas Week.” The Grim Reaper held me steady as the boat bumped up against the pier.
Because we’d moved to the far side of the boat for the crossing, we were the last to disembark, which was fine with me, because I wasn’t in any big hurry to, you know…meet the Devil. The condemned souls streamed down the gangplank ahead of us. White coated ushers waited to the left of the pier and directed the arriving guests to an idling line of minivans.
Yes, minivans.
The organized chaos was ignored for the most part by the Leader of the Banned and his entourage whose undivided attention appeared to be reserved solely for Kane and me.
Isn’t that special?
Our turn to disembark arrived. Morgan jumped to the pier, and then he held out a hand to lead me down the ramp.
“See ya, Morgan,” the Skipper impersonator called out, tipping his cap in Kane’s direction. The Grim Reaper raised his hand in a careless wave and then steered me in the direction of dry land. As soon as we began moving, the blond showgirl detached herself from Wayne’s—er, Satan’s—arm, and hurried forward with tiny mincing steps, necessitated no doubt, by a pair of stilettos so high, they put even Denise’s most extreme pair on a par with ballet flats. The woman’s feathered headpiece and bejeweled boobs bounced rhythmically as she approached. Despite the brevity of her attire, she was wearing so many colors she looked as though she’d been gang banged by a box of crayons. Sometimes you just want to ask people if they own a mirror.
When she was a few feet away, she threw open her arms, and Morgan slowly dropped my hand and stepped forward stiffly to greet her. Okay, so maybe her fashion sense was even more questionable than mine, but wardrobe choices aside, I couldn’t deny she was absolutely gorgeous. She had a thick mane of golden blonde hair, sparkling green eyes, and smooth porcelain skin sheathing a figure guaranteed to make men drool. I’ll admit, the green-eyed monster tiptoed up behind me and nibbled away at my butt as the woman threw herself at the Grim Reaper, even though it was clear to anyone observing that her excitement far eclipsed Morgan’s.
“Darling! It’s been far too long,” she gushed, wrapping her lily white arms around Kane’s neck and pulling his head down to plant a smacking kiss on each cheek. While he didn’t resist, neither did he share her enthusiasm. I welcomed a tiny niggle of relief. Okay, so maybe Kane thought I had a pretty head and admittedly appreciated my leather-clad butt, but I was well aware I couldn’t compete with this chick on any level of physical attraction, and it did my heart good to see he was not impressed.
The blonde pulled back slightly and fixed her stare on me where I stood quietly behind Kane. Her smile dimmed, and her perfectly manicured brows drew together as her gaze swept up and down my leather-clad form from head to toe. I lifted my chin and stared right back, though I was unable to control the warmth suffusing my cheeks as her expression screamed I’d been assessed and found lacking.
Biotch.
“That is not your sister.” Kane reached back for my hand and dragged me forward to his side. No small feat since Miss Las Vegas was still wrapped around him like a well-endowed octopus.
“You know very well Alia is away at school. This is Max Logan. She’s the new Retriever for the Northeast Region,” Kane announced, giving my fingers an encouraging
squeeze. “Logan, I’d like you to meet my mother, Celina Kane.”
“Holy crap! Your mother is Satan’s girlfriend?” Two sets of brows flew toward the swirling red sky.
Oops, did I say that out loud? Open mouth, insert fugly foot. My bad.
“Wife actually.” Kane appeared to be in danger of choking on the smile he was fighting to suppress. Don’t judge me, he mouthed.
“I’m, uh, so sorry,” I stammered, holding out a hand. “I was just surprised. Occasionally my mouth operates completely independently from my brain. Morgan never mentioned your, ah, marriage.”
Staring me down with an expression I was certain she reserved for particularly offensive insects, she touched her hand to mine briefly, and nodded a regal acknowledgment of my apology. Then she stepped away from Kane and turned back toward the knot of people waiting at the end of the pier.
“Come along, dear. As soon as we heard you were coming, Luc reserved you a suite. I’m sure you and your, ah, Retriever will want to freshen up before the show.” Her heels clicked a rapid staccato of annoyance as she preceded us to shore. No matter what I thought of her choice in bedmates, I couldn’t help but be impressed at her ability to stomp off in those shoes without breaking an ankle.
“We won’t be staying that long,” Kane said to her retreating back. She seemed not to hear. Or maybe she chose not to hear. Or maybe I’d finally lost my freakin’ mind. I mean, c’mon, I was in Hell with the Grim Reaper whose mother was the Bride of Satan, an apparent closet Wayne Newton impersonator. At this point, anything was possible.
“Satan is your father?” I tugged Kane down to my level and hissed in his ear. “Don’t you think you could have mentioned that a little sooner?”
“Stepfather. Told you, you can’t pick your relatives.”
“Oh.” So, he wasn’t directly descended from the Prince of Darkness. That was a relief, I guess. I suddenly had a new appreciation for Stepmother Gail. As stepparents go, I’d been riding the gravy train. Right then and there, I made up my mind I was going to buy her something really nice when we got back. Maybe a bigger coffee carousel. Though, frankly I doubted there was any gift that could truly express my appreciation for the fact she wasn’t evil incarnate.
Smitten With Death Page 14