by Debra Dunbar
Swivle stuffed the bunny’s ear in his mouth and sucked on it, mumbling. The rest of the Lows shifted away from him, like the waters parting.
Tasma’s smile widened. “There is no need to be afraid, little one. I will teach you to be strong and brave. What is your name?”
The question this time carried enough compulsion to send a shudder through the rest of the room. The rabbit ear popped out of Swivle’s mouth, bedraggled and soggy with spit.
“Swivle.” His voice was hushed. Then I felt the power from Tasma shift, and the Low got to his feet, walking as if transfixed over to the doorway. The others sighed, obviously relieved that they were not the ones being selected this time. Tasma beckoned, that creepy smile still on his face.
“Let him go.” I stood, and now the Lows edged away from me. I saw the purple one try to hide behind a toy fire truck.
“It’s a good little Low who is concerned about her friends,” Tasma told me. “And I admire both your courage, and that you’re using your words. Our friend Swivle will not be hurt. He wants to come with me, don’t you?”
“Yes.” The word was hard and jagged, as if it had been forced from the Low’s lips. He began to shake, and with a whimper, stuck the rabbit’s ear back into his mouth.
I took a step forward, then another, feeling as if I were walking against a hurricane gale. The other Lows watched me in horror.
“Don’t be bad,” Puck told me. “Sit down and let him go.”
And be grateful it wasn’t me, was the subtext.
“I don’t know where you’re keeping the other Lows, but you need to let them go. And you need to let these ones go as well.”
I finally managed to stand before Tasma, who was regarding me with mild surprise, still smiling.
“They’re safe here with me. Out there, they are preyed upon and killed. Out there, no one loves them or takes care of them. Here with me they are safe.”
“Here with you they are prisoners. You kidnapped them, and are keeping them locked up in here, punishing them when they don’t do what you want. How is that any better than what they face out in Hel where at least they have their freedom?”
“You will soon learn that it’s better here, that we are all friends and there is nothing to be afraid of as long as you are good. Right? Aren’t you all happy?” He waved his hands outward as if he were a conductor.
There was a chorus of “yes” and “oh so happy” and “we’re good”. Swivle took another step toward the threshold, and while Tasma was distracted by his unwilling sycophants, I snatched the Low up in my arms. The stuffed bunny felt cold as the sodden fur touched my shoulder, but the Low didn’t struggle.
“Put him down,” Tasma commanded, his smile twisting into something less benign. “He’s my chosen one for the evening. And you are being a very bad Low.”
I put him down all right. I tossed him behind me into the other Lows then stepped forward, summoning my sword.
The Lows all screamed “no”, and ducked for cover as, miraculously, my sword appeared—a sword and not as a banana or a pool noodle. Tasma eyed me in surprise. I didn’t give him a chance to react as I thrust the sword through the doorway. The shock of it disrupting the magic tore through me, twisting my bones and burning the fur from my skin. I gritted my teeth and kept the sword in place, repairing my damage as quickly as it occurred.
“Why, what do we have here? The bad one has a weapon.” Tasma made a tsk noise. “We are not allowed weapons here in the playroom.”
I really didn’t give a shit what was allowed or not, but I noticed he made no move to try to take it from my hand. With a slashing motion, I felt the magic give way and the entire wall in front of me vanished. There was nothing between me and Tasma but my sword.
“Run,” I shouted to the Lows, hoping that they’d heed my words and manage to somehow find a way out of this place while I was battling this demon. There were ten Lows behind me. I saw roughly six of them tear past, each of them clutching a favorite toy. Tasma waved his hands, imploring them all to come back, to be safe before they hurt themselves. Then with the smile gone from his face, he turned to face me.
“You have been very, very bad.” The khaki pants and sweater vanished, as did the human form. With a flash of light, Tasma became a giant scorpion with the head of a bull and arms of a really hairy human. Each hand ended in six sharp blades. With a snort, he dipped his head and charged.
I dodged to the left, swinging my sword and hitting Tasma in the ass with the flat of the blade. He spun around, but I didn’t wait to engage. There was a giant opening in front of me, so I took it, and hauled ass down the weird maze of narrow hallways, hearing the demon bellow in rage behind me.
The bellow and scuttle of scorpion feet wasn’t the only thing I heard. Footsteps. And squeals of outraged Lows. Four of those fucking little bastards, the ones who hadn’t run, clearly were suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome. I wondered for a quick second if my vow to free all the kidnapped Lows included these guys, or if I could in good conscience leave them behind.
I needed to buy the other Lows time to get out of here, so when I realized I was recognizing a few hallways and might possibly know a way out, I took the opposite turn. And each time, I slowed to give my pursuers a moment to gain on me before taking off again. After I felt like I’d run a fucking marathon and given those Lows enough time to figure out how to escape, I turned to face my attackers and drew my sword once more.
It wasn’t a sword. It was a whip—a rather short whip. I wasn’t thrilled with this quirk of my weapon, but appreciated the irony of confronting a scorpion/bull with a mini bullwhip.
He charged as fast as his eight legs could go, head down, knives flashing, tail stabbing. And behind him were four Lows, like a bunch of pissed-off goblins, frothing at the mouth and ready to beat the crap out of anything left after Tasma was done with me.
Dodging horns and knives, I managed to lay a few well-placed stripes along Tasma’s back. The carapace glowed red and split, smoking with a horrible odor, and I realized that having a whip instead of a sword was wicked cool. I ducked under the jabbing stinger and flicked another three lines along the demon’s underbelly, rolling to avoid the stomping points on his eight legs. Rolling to my feet on his left, I hit him twice more with the whip, timing another duck-and-roll movement for when he spun and tried to poke me again with the stinger.
He drew the tail back. I tensed, ready to evade. That’s when I got hit upside the head with an Optimus Prime. The Transformer threw me enough off balance that the stinger ripped through my shirt and carved a line down the side of my arm.
Everything went numb in that limb. My whip fell to the ground. I grabbed for it with my left hand and was pelted by hundreds of teddy bears, Legos, and Barbie Dolls while I scrambled for my weapon.
“Bad! Bad!” the Lows chanted.
“She is bad!” Tasma roared.
I snatched my whip and rolled as his knives slammed into the floor where I’d just been. More Legos bounced off my body. I tried to hit Tasma’s underbelly while simultaneously attempting to evade eight legs, and a tail that was now jabbing blindly underneath the demon. Rolling to avoid the stinger, I miscalculated and felt a leg stab through my stomach, impaling me firmly to the ground.
“Bad!” the Lows screamed, still throwing toys at me. I struggled to free myself and saw Booty out of the corner of my eye pick something up and make his way through the crowd toward me. He’d come back. Why had he come back? He should be out of here and halfway to my home by this point.
“Bad, bad,” he chanted in time with the rest of them. Then he raised a brightly painted wooden chair and swung. Instead of me, the chair hit Tasma. His leg bent backward and he screamed, pulling the pointed end from both the floor and me in his haste to get away from Booty.
I rolled, healing my gut wound and once more summoning my sword to my hand. It was still a whip. Tasma’s tail with its barb swung toward me and I decided to try something different. Ducking, I lo
oped my whip around the Ancient’s tail and went for a ride.
He realized I was on his tail, and began to thrash around, smashing me into the walls and the floors as I scrambled to get on top of the tail. Gripping the scales and struggling to keep from being dislodged, I pulled myself up and inadvertently touched the stinger.
Everything went numb from wrist to shoulder and I nearly fell off his tail. My whip dropped to the ground and vanished. I held on frantically with one arm looped around the tail and tried to swing my leg up over the top, all the while being beat into the walls and floor, toy projectiles still whizzing past my head. I slipped and fell, hitting the floor hard. The stinger came down toward my middle and I rolled.
I didn’t roll fast enough. The stinger jabbed me in the chest and everything in my body seized. My lungs stopped. My heart stopped. My muscles froze. I stared out from eyes that wouldn’t move. I’d been in a dead body enough that I was starting to be able to animate it somewhat—not enough to walk around like a zombie, but enough to seriously freak the people at the morgue out. This was tricky, because whatever Tasma had in his stinger had this body locked down tight. My spirit-self was in no danger. Once he removed the fucking stinger from me, I could recreate my body, but he didn’t know that and I’d rather do the zombie thing because it tended to surprise demons, and angels, as well as humans.
Tasma was no idiot. He held the stinger in place long enough to ensure that I was truly dead. If I’d been a demon, a run of the mill imp, I would have been dead. Existing inside a non-living form was something very few angels knew how to do. None of the demons I knew could do it, and I wasn’t even sure these Ancients had the skill.
He finally yanked the stinger out of my chest. I heard the Lows cheer, saw Booty’s face peering down at me with concern before the little guy was yanked away.
“And now I need to do something about this other bad boy, the one who hit me with a chair,” Tasma announced. “Bad boys must be punished.”
I heard Booty squeal in alarm, heard the other Lows begin their chant of “bad, bad” once more. As quietly as possible, I purged myself of the poison, and sat up, rising from the dead.
“I’m the only one who punishes the bad,” I announced. “And right now, the only bad demon I see in this room is you, Tasma.”
I reached out to grab his spirit-self, and found him unguarded and open. With a yank, I began to spool him into me, just enough to let him know what I was about to do, but not enough to truly devour him.
He shouted and tried to pull away, but I held fast, tackling his physical form just to make sure he didn’t get out of range. The Ancient squirmed frantically, stabbing at me with pincers and that fucking stinger. With my free hand I reached out and grabbed it, using my energy to snap it off his tail.
“Yield?” I snarled at him. “Do you fucking yield?”
“To a Low?” His eyes narrowed. “An imp! You’re not a Low. You deceived me, you nasty imp. You bad, bad, imp.”
“Bad, bad,” one of the Lows whispered, but they all held back, their eyes wide with fear.
“Yield,” I snarled, spooling a bit more of his spirit-self into me, just to show him I was really fucking serious.
“I will not yield to an imp,” he announced.
Oh well. Guess I’d just kill him then. It had been a while since I’d devoured anyone. Gregory didn’t like me to do it as he was always worried I’d lose control and eat all of creation, like a demon black hole. But Gregory wasn’t here, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Or me. Or anyone besides this Ancient that I was about to absorb as if he were a spilled glass of wine and I was a really super-absorbent paper towel.
“Don’t kill him,” the Lows squealed. The one closest to me began to cry.
Damn it all. Suddenly they were all crying. Swivle was clutching his rabbit, sobbing at me not to kill Mister Tasma, to be a good demon and eat my carrots and not kill Mister Tasma.
What the fuck was I going to do now? I could kill Tasma and free however many Lows he’d managed to mind-fuck into being his little minions only to find these minions determined to kill me and avenge Tasma. Slaughtering all the Lows with the Ancient didn’t seem like a great choice either. There were some demons who would give that kind of slaughter a resounding thumbs-up, but would the street cred be worth the future distrust on the part of the Low members of my household? Or the amount of gore I’d have to deal with?
They were crying. Begging me not to kill Tasma, to be a good demon.
Fuck. Fuck. I couldn’t bear the thought of the look in Snip’s eyes once he heard about this. Or Nyalla’s. The girl was bound to find out, and my heart hurt at the thought of how upset she’d be with me.
And who was I kidding? Gregory would find out that I devoured this Ancient, and he’d be furious. Or worse, disappointed. Fuck. Fuck!
“Yield,” I told him, hoping that he’d take this chance I was giving him. Then inspiration hit me. “Please.”
Something flickered in the Ancient’s eyes. He glanced over at the sobbing Lows, at Swivle who had half the stuffed rabbit in his mouth at this point. Then he looked back at me.
“Since you asked so politely, yes I will yield.”
I eased his spirit-self back into his body and climbed off him, dropping the severed stinger on the floor. This was big. I’d killed high-level demons before, I’d even killed an Ancient, but I’d never had one yield to me. We had very few rules in Hel, but this was one of them. We’d fought. I’d prevailed. He’d basically given himself and his household to me instead of accepting death. Now it was my turn to make sure this worked, because he was still a powerful Ancient. If I pushed this too far, he’d challenge me to the demon equivalent of a duel to the death, and I really didn’t want to have to go through this again. I’d won this time, but now that Tasma knew my tricks, he wouldn’t be so easy to beat.
Not that this had been easy. And not that he assumed he knew all my tricks. The key would be to come to an agreement where it wasn’t so humiliating he’d decide that combat was the better choice.
I shed the demon Low form and assumed my human one, somehow managing to keep the tattered remains of my clothing in place. Then I revealed my wings, shredding the back of my shirt. And because overkill is always an acceptable practice in Hel, I summoned my sword, which thankfully this time appeared as a mighty, sentient sword.
“You will no longer take any Lows by force,” I told Tasma. “Neither you, nor your household members, nor anyone you hire are to take Lows by force. The only Lows you can have and keep are those who voluntarily come to you and stay with you. Any Lows who choose to remain with you have the same privileges as the other demons in your household. They can leave at any time and break their household bonds. You are to provide for them, ensure their physical, mental, and emotional well-being, and they are to serve you with their lives if need be.”
Tasma looked up at me in surprise. “They can stay? My little friends can stay?”
“Only if they want to,” I reminded him. “I find out you’re forcing them, or blackmailing them, or that you’re grabbing them off the street again, then I will kill you. Lows are demons, and they are to have the same rights as any other demon, including blood-price if you kill one, accidently or not. Got it?”
He wrinkled his nose. “What kind of blood-price would a Low have?”
“More than you can afford.” In reality the blood-price wouldn’t be much of a deterrent, but I’d have to make sure there was more than a financial penalty attached.
“I am the Iblis,” I announced, raising my sword and spreading my wings as far as they could in this narrow room. “I am the ruler of Hel, and while I don’t intend on putting in place a bunch of boring rules and shit like that, you need to obey me and do as I say. You have the independence of your household, but you owe fealty to me, and if called upon, you will provide the services I request.”
I heard a whispered “bad”. A rubber duck bounced off my head. Which didn’t exactly lend power to
my statement.
Tasma set his jaw and eyed my sword. I could feel him hovering on the edge of rebellion. An imp. I knew he was thinking that it would be humiliating to bow down before an imp. To give him that extra little push, I pulled my wings in tight, then snapped them out again. My wings. My beautiful matte-black feathered wings. I knocked a few Lows over in the process, but I still knew what impact those appendages had when it came to the demons in Hel—even the Ancients. For added measure, I brought all my considerable stores of energy to the surface, blurring my form and causing my corporeal self to glow with a squint-worthy light.
“I recognize you as the Iblis and promise my fealty and service.” Tasma’s eyes watered, but they stayed locked on mine. “But can we keep this quiet? If you call on me, then everyone is going to know, but in the meantime, maybe we can keep this arrangement just between you and me.”
And a dozen or so Lows. They might be brainwashed, but they were still Lows. I gave it four hours and it would be all over Dis. Which would be a good thing. The more powerful demons and Ancients that were known to be allied with me, the easier time I’d have of this sort of thing in the future. Maybe.
“I have no plans on bragging about the arrangement to anyone,” I told him. “I do need to speak with Lash, Sinew, and Booty, though. They have the option to return to my household with me, or to remain with you, but I want to hear their decision directly from them. And every Low and other demon in your household must know of your fealty to me. I don’t care what kind of public secrecy you impose on that, but they need to respect me as the Iblis.”
He nodded. “I vow on all the souls I Own that it will be so, Iblis.”
I stepped back, slipping a bit in my own blood as I allowed him to rise. Then I dismissed the sword because I no longer needed it, and dismissed my wings, because they were a pain in the ass to have out in confined spaces, and pulled my energy back down inside so I didn’t blind everyone with the light.
Another rubber duck hit me in the shoulder. “Hey,” I shouted. “Respect, guys. That means no throwing toys at me.”