by Sating, Paul
Someone shoved me from the side, not hard, but forcibly. I turned to face my assaulter and stared into the eyes of a beauty. She was shorter than me by a few inches, meaning she was a good foot shorter than Ralrek, with almond eyes and long, flowing blond hair—bleached—that fell past her shoulders. She smelled of vanilla. She had full lips and dressed to draw attention. She definitely had mine.
"Oh, excuse me," the stunner said with a wide smile that showed three-fourths of her teeth. Those pearly whites sparkled. Everything about her was perfect.
"Was I in your way?" I said, trying to be charming. Bilba and Ralrek smiled behind their glasses, angling themselves away just enough to make it appear they weren't listening. I knew better; I would have done it to either of them.
She rocked her head back and forth as if indecisive. "Oh, you know how it is. Trying to get a drink in this place is an absolute nightmare."
I nodded, trying to ignore my heart kick-starting a gallop. "That, it can be. Here," I said, sliding into Bilba and Ralrek's space, "let me give you some room."
"Hey!" Bilba protested when I almost bumped him.
I shot him a glance that told him to be quiet, returning my attention to the succubus who deserved it. My mouth was suddenly very dry. "Do you come here often?"
She smiled and pulled her hair behind her ear. The room grew hotter until the bartender interrupted my reverie by taking her order. "I enjoy coming out here," she said when he moved away, "but it's so hard to get to. I live across the Circle, so it takes most of the night."
"That would be tough," I responded as if I knew what I was talking about. "Well, I'm glad you made it out."
She adjusted, leaning her elbow on the bar and facing me. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"
Careful, Zeke, my rational self shouted, knowing I was approaching dangerous territory where I typically make a banal comment … or accidentally said something inappropriate.
I didn't let myself down. "I just meant that … well, that everyone needs time to relax and get out. You look like you could use it. I mean, not that you look exhausted or anything, just that … oh, Lucifer."
The stunner threw her head back and laughed. "Wow, you really are terrible at this."
Just then, the bartender was back, smiling flirtatiously and sliding her drink across the waxed wood bar. Apparently, serving her was a priority. She took it and gave him a slow wink that nearly stopped my heart; how that incubus remained standing was beyond me. "Thank you, Erebos," she said before turning away and returning to her life without even saying farewell to me.
This time it was Ralrek who shoved me. "For Lucifer's sake, Zeke, are you trying to check off some list of every way possible to bore succubi?"
I shrugged. Rejection was a staple of my dating diet. "At least I succeeded at something."
"That you did. That you did." Bilba turned to the bartender who hadn't moved too far away and ordered another round of drinks. "That exquisite failure deserves to be celebrated."
And we drank to my inability to know how to talk to the female persuasion. Six thousand years and still no clue.
"But this is it for me, guys. I can't afford another drink after this," Bilba said with a grimace.
Ralrek and I glanced at each other, me warning him to not preach right now.
"Flat broke?" Ralrek asked carefully.
Bilba rolled his thick bottom lip over his top. "Yep. But hey, my father said I can stay as long as I need, so that'll help cut down on expenses. Now I need to sell my stuff."
"Really? Is it that bad?" Bilba's money troubles weren't a secret. For him to sell his personal things showed the precariousness of his situation. Bilba never had money growing up in a single parent household, so when he was hired by the Council and received their bounty, he'd enjoyed his earnings. Nothing lavish by any means. Coin burned holes in his purse because he expected the Council jobs to continue and had a soft heart for his frigid mother. Still, a creeping thought pestered me; if I hadn't been so confrontational with the Council, maybe we'd have received a few assignments and my best friend would not be in this predicament. "I'm so sorry, Bilba."
"It's okay guys, it really is," he said. It wasn't. "It's just junk I don't need, anyway. My fault for buying it in the first place. Sort of got carried away with those nice paydays." Bilba said it in the way demons do when they're checking to see if others thought they were insane or not. He wasn't. Deprived of the luxury of financial security throughout his life, seeing his father struggle daily, desperately trying to buy a mother's love, his behaviors were understandable. Reckless, but understandable.
"And it's not like I was smart with the rest of my money," Bilba continued as if he needed to fill the silence. "Most of it went to my mother."
"How so?" Ralrek asked.
I pulled Bilba out of the way before three university-aged demons stumbled through us to the bar, shouting at each other with bravado only young incubi can create. One apologized, but I was less interested in that physical disruption than how they stemmed the flow of our conversation.
"Didn't see them. Thanks, Zeke," my friend said, eyes locked on his glass.
"No worries, I'm all over it," I replied, more worried about him than trying to stem the flow of stimulus in the room. Bilba had looked on the verge of sharing his troubles until the invasion of the drunk idiots gave him second thoughts. Rough scratching raced down my arms. Fire magic being conjured drew my attention to our tall friend. "Plus, it stopped him from starting a fight." I pointed at Ralrek, whose fingers burned with small flames.
The flames blinked out when we caught him. "What? It was only going to be a small spell. Just to light their asses on fire for a second, nothing major."
"I don't think I need to see their asses," Bilba chuckled.
We were getting off topic. "Come on. Open up." I jerked a thumb toward Ralrek. "We're your friends. That means we're supposed to be here for you, for each other. But we can't help you if you don't give us an idea of what's going on."
Bilba looked apprehensive, blinking shyly.
"Zeke is wrong about a lot, but he's right about that," Ralrek said, throwing an toned arm around Bilba, who didn't move away. "We're your friends and if you can't open up and let us help, who can you open up to?"
Bilba shrugged. Even in the strobing violet nightclub light, I could see the tips of Bilba's ears darken with blood flood. Moving myself next to him, I wrapped my arm around the opposite shoulder, sandwiching Bilba.
He smiled at the group love. "Thanks guys. It's just been a little scary, you know? We were doing so well with the Council and I thought it would be a long-term thing. Who expected them to leave us out like this because …" He paused and gave us an apologetic shrug, which I promptly waved away. Of anyone, Bilba had nothing to apologize for. His voice lowered, undiscernible under the thumping bass of the nightclub music. He was still shouting, just shouting at the quietest level possible. "Things got bad for her."
"Your mom?" Ralrek interjected.
Bilba gave a stiff, cautious nod. "Yeah, the flower shop … it started going downhill when there was a rift of crimes in the neighborhood. You all know what the Eighth is like."
Ralrek and I agreed. That Circle, where Bilba tripped across his mother while we were on a Council mission, was notorious for distrust, dishonesty, and general scummery of our species. It's a gross place full of gross demons. Bilba's mother owned a flower shop, which seemed to be healthy, as healthy as any business in the Circle, when we met her.
"I tried to help, I really did," he said, casting his eyes at his empty glass. "At first she didn't appreciate me coming around, but then, when I started helping with getting things for the shop, she slowly opened up."
I'll bet she did. I kept that thought to myself.
Bilba turned his glass counterclockwise in his open palm. "It was stupid, I know. But I figured if I could just get her to open up, she would. And she did … but not until things started getting worse in the neighborhood." His head suddenly snapped up. "D
id I tell you guys that I had to install a security system in my apartment? Fully furnished, so I only had a few things there, but that's where I kept my coin and it was getting so bad around the building, even inside, that I paid way too much to get a system installed to protect the little I had. Crazy stuff."
"What happened?" Ralrek pulled back, crossing his arms, the sinews flexing like thin snakes rippled underneath his skin. And he didn't even have to work out to look like that, the jerk.
"I don't know if it was gang activity or what, but it was like a wave. Crime crept closer and closer all the time. My mother said she knew it would always hit the neighborhood, you'd have to be blind to miss it. She hoped the authorities would do something before it swept through the sector. That didn't happen. Whoever runs the Eighth now that Taurus is … gone, they didn't care. Or, if they did, they didn't bother stopping it. The robberies started a few weeks after you left. And once those dirtbags knew how vulnerable she was, they kept coming back. Over and over."
"Couldn't you do anything? I mean, you're a heaven of a caster," Ralrek said. The comment was supposed to be encouraging.
"That's the thing," Bilba shook his head, his thoughts shifting back to that horrible place, "they hit at random times. Not always when we were in the shop. I don't know if they thought we kept coin there overnight or not. It didn't seem to matter. Every few days, they'd conduct these random break-ins and robberies. At first, she tried to keep up with the repairs. But profit margins in a flower shop aren't that high, and having to replace windows and locks all the time exhausted her funds."
"And that's where you came in," I said, filling in the remaining detail. I knew this; we had talked about it a few days after he returned. The first time was over drinks and it was short, scant details. The next time was at my Old Towne apartment over pizza and video games. The distraction of competition on the screen was always a safe way for us to open up to each other, and it had been for Bilba then. I'd known for a long time he had rescued her shop, or at least tried to, I just did not realize how drained the experience left him.
Bilba confirmed that with another stiff head nod.
I wasn't going to kick him when he was down, even though that was standard protocol for our small group. Good-natured and loving as it might be intended, it wouldn't be helpful. "Everything? All of your coin is gone?"
The humiliation was plain on his face. Red blotches sprang on his puffy cheeks. "Everything. Every last coin."
"I'm sorry. I knew you were struggling, but I had no idea it was that bad."
The corners of Bilba's mouth curled up in a flat, disconsolate smirk. "Not something I exactly wanted to share, if you know what I mean. It's embarrassing. Especially since she was done with me as soon as the coin was gone."
Fellia Ravenous was officially a dirt-bag in my book. If I could make a covert trip to the Eighth Circle, I would stop by Fellia's Flowers, or whatever was left of it, and ask Creed to torch it—okay, I wouldn't really do that, but I was pissed off for my best friend, probably because he looked too heartbroken to be pissed off for himself.
Without a word, Ralrek and I moved in on him, squeezing him in our bro-sandwich. It was subtle and over as fast as it started, but it was enough to convey that we cared and he wasn't alone.
"There's got to be something we can do?" Ralrek said.
"I appreciate it guys, but this is my struggle to face. It was my decisions that got me into it in the first place. So it's my responsibility to get myself out of it."
I shook my head. "Nonsense. We can come up with something."
"No, no. I already have a plan."
"What?" Ralrek and I said simultaneously.
"I'm considering volunteering," Bilba said, a slight frown wiped away his faux smile.
"For what?" I asked.
"Lucifer's Army," he answered.
I snickered. "I don't think it'd have you, buddy. No offense."
"Why?"
I poked his belly, still squishy, but nearly flat. Bilba was fitter now than in any of his previous six thousand years, but he abused himself for too long to be army-healthy after a single year of taking care of himself.
"I can work on that," he said defensively, looking to Ralrek for support. "You'd help me work out, right?"
I slapped his shoulder. "Hey, why didn't you ask me? I'm in great shape and Ralrek hasn't seen the gym since they fired that one personal trainer. What was his name?"
"Oh, Asdar," Ralrek bobbed his head. "Man, he was smoking. That ass. No reason to go back after that. When he used to spot me on the bench press—"
"Oh, Lucifer," I interrupted, trying to blot the visual out. "My point was, I could help too."
"Yeah, but you're not in Ralrek-type shape."
"Ouch."
"I would," Ralrek broke up the fun. "But I'm sure you can't just volunteer for the Army. There's a whole process you have to go through."
"I know. I'm not a complete idiot."
"Even if they accepted you, why would you volunteer?" It was a fair question. Military service wasn't a big draw for most demons because it was a tough, unrewarding life, attractive to only the most gung–ho of thrill seekers who couldn't get enough danger. In fairness, when you live as long as we do, life can get extremely boring. Still, I didn't see the sense in rushing along one's own demise, especially since volunteering often led demons into service in the Overworld, where we are physically susceptible to actual death.
Bilba held up his empty glass. "Because I'm tired of not going out with you guys and being able to afford drinks … or lying about being able to pay for them. The Army pays decently. Better than nothing, and it's consistent. I could serve for a few years and at least get back on my feet, financially."
"If you don't die first." I didn't like making a habit of raining on his parade, but Bilba was my responsibility as much is anyone's and I wasn't about to let him make foolhardy decisions.
"Well, we might not have a choice, so I'd rather volunteer first instead of being drafted. I heard they take it easier on you if you're a volunteer."
Ralrek turned to the bartender, lifting three fingers and shrugging. Before his gesture reminded me that Bilba had ordered another round, Erebos was sliding the three drinks to my tall friend. Ah, the privilege of beautiful demons. We snagged our glasses from the bar. This moment called for male bonding through alcohol consumption.
Drinks in hand, we raised a toast.
"To Bilba, Lucifer's next general!" Ralrek shouted, drawing the attention of a group of succubi. Sadly, for them and me and Bilba, their eyes fell on the tall, dark, and handsome incubus who never gave a second glance to any of their sex.
We laughed and toasted.
"To Bilba!"
"To me!"
After wincing from the burning traveling down my throat, I said through a grimace, "Fat chance of there being a draft, buddy. Are you sure you want to do this?"
Bilba looked between us. "You guys haven't heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Wow, I thought everybody had. Bet it's why half these demons are in here drinking their brains away. Everyone has been talking about it for hours. Haven't you been watching the news?"
"Some of us were busy at our jobs." When Bilba frowned, accompanied by Ralrek, I added with a smirk, "Too soon?"
"Besides Zeke being an asshole, I was out with Torlan today. We didn't get back to my place until just before I needed to leave to head here. He was being so clingy. Anyway, what did I miss?"
"The mortal war," Bilba said in a serious tone. "It's escalating. Getting bad from the way I understand it. Lucifer's Army has been activated, and they announced a ramping up of troop recruitment by twenty thousand just next month!"
Ralrek whistled.
I groaned. "You can't be serious."
"I am. It's all over the news. I've been thinking about it all afternoon and evening. If they're recruiting that many, what's the chances we can avoid being drafted? We're the prime demographic."
Ralrek squin
ted and smirked. "Well, I am. I'm not so sure about you."
Bilba smiled because he always did when Ralrek picked on him. I used to think it was because he was intimidated or bullied by our tall friend, but ever since our trip to the Overworld to find Gemini, I realized Ralrek had a deeper story that explained why he was brash with almost everyone he encountered. Bilba had simply seen that side of the tall incubus long before I did.
"I'm being serious, guys. And you should be too. At least think about it. I would hate to see you drafted and sent into the infantry or something."
"Oh, I'm not going into the military. No way." I shook my head for added emphasis.
"Ralrek?" Bilba pleaded.
His gaze drifted toward the ceiling, far away in thought. "Hmmm, interesting. Being drafted sounds unappealing and I don't have much going on. My job sucks. Torlan is alright, but we're not serious or anything. Seeing what the military is like could be interesting. If nothing else, it would get us out of the Fifth for a little while. And," he said, smirking and leaning down to whisper, "I heard there are a lot of hot incubi in the service. Talk about an effective recruitment policy."
I had leaned in too, thinking Ralrek was going to share some inside word he'd somehow received. At his flippant comment, I shot straight, duped. "You're disgusting," I said between laughs.
"Please, like you wouldn't if it was an all–female force."
I dipped my empty glass to him, conceding the point. "Well played, sir. Well played." Then I turned serious. "You'd actually think about this?"