by Dante King
She was right, I realized. It was amazing how quickly my standards had changed. But with a glance at my three core girls, I knew I’d made the right choice with each of them.
“Whatever my car is, it knows way more about all of this than it’s letting on,” I said, stepping into the parking circle. “If it doesn’t know where Lilith and Judyth have run off to, then it should at least have a good idea how to start looking. Now where the hell is that valet?”
As if summoned by my voice, the valet stepped out from beneath the awning of a nearby building. I recognized her as the same demoness who’d parked my car upon our arrival at the Infernal Academy—an officious-looking woman in a close-fitting maroon uniform. Her name was on the tip of my tongue.
“Desdemona!” I said, throwing an arm in the air. That was it! “Hey, how are you doing?”
The last time I’d seen the Infernal Academy’s valet, I’d accidentally sent all the demons on the green into a feeding frenzy in their lust to eat Maddie. Desdemona looked as if she still hadn’t fully recovered from the experience. Of course, there wasn’t a hair out of place in her appearance or her manner of dress, but from the look in her eyes, I could tell she’d probably been chugging a couple extra energy drinks a day after that experience.
“Hello sir,” the valet said with a quick bow. “Will you be needing your automobile?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling sheepishly at her. “Sorry about what happened last time, by the way. I promise next time I put a familiar in my car, I’ll give you a head’s up.”
“It’s alright, sir,” Desdemona said blandly. “Happens all the time. If you could just show me your ticket, I’ll be more than happy to summon your ride.”
My ticket? I felt in my robes, looking for anything I could use to claim the enchanted automobile. I didn’t remember being given any kind of claim form or ticket for the car—and if I had, I’d surely lost it ages ago. It was probably on the floor of the Wrath school after Christina and I had fought with Aztomund and Bryan, or it slipped out of my pocket somewhere in Karl’s subspace and wound up getting burnt to a crisp by lava.
Shit.
“I don’t, ah, have my ticket,” I said, glancing at the rest of my group as if they might produce it at any moment. “You remember my face, though, right? Come on, it’s me, Luke! I just need to speak with my car.”
Desdemona looked at me as if I’d misspoken—or like she hoped I’d misspoken. “Speak with your car, sir?”
Damn it. If this was her way of getting back at me for almost getting killed, well... I supposed I couldn’t blame her. But I needed my car back, damn it! Ticket or no ticket.
“Look, it’s an emergency,” I said, flashing the smile that had melted the hearts of so many gorgeous demon girls. “You know how the Headmistress has gone missing? This is part of that. We need to get to her immediately, and I’m going to need my car in order to do that.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Desdemona’s shrug was merciless. “If you don’t have your valet ticket, I’m afraid I can’t procure your vehicle. You can go the Transportation offices any time between Thorsday and Sinday, between first and last bell, and file a claim form for your car. Once your ownership is confirmed, the automobile will be returned to you.”
My temper slipped. “I don’t have time for that!” I snapped.
Christina sized the valet attendant demon up, frowning. “You know,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, “I don’t remember you giving Luke a ‘claim ticket’ when he dropped the car off here to begin with.”
“My apologies,” the valet said in a small, pleasant voice. “I’ve dropped off and picked up a number of automobiles since your arrival. All demons who use the valet service are given claim tickets, which they use to pick up their vehicles once they need them.”
A maddening itch erupted between my shoulder blades. The urge to lose my cool was strong; I was inches away from going full-on demon and forcing Desdemona to bring my car, ticket or no. How could this officious little brat keep us from finding the Headmistress?
I could feel my tendrils just begging to be unleashed, but before I could erupt, a pair of hands on my shoulders gently pushed me to the side. Maddie stepped into the gap, matching the valet’s customer service ready smile with one of her own.
“The ticket!” Maddie said, as if she’d just thought of the name of a song that had been running around her head all day. “I think I remember it. It’s white with black symbols around the edges, right? And a big pentagram with the claim number written in runes?”
Huh? I didn’t remember that at all.
“Exactly,” Desdemona said quickly. Too quickly, I realized a beat later. “If you can find it and bring it to me, wonderful. Otherwise, the Transportation office is that way—”
“That’s really interesting,” Maddie said, her smile never wavering. “Because I totally just made that up.”
Desdemona stared at my girlfriend for a moment, the words refusing to sink in. Then all the color drained out of the demon valet’s face.
“Just like I think you made up the claim ticket to have an excuse not to help Luke,” Maddie said in a gentle voice. She put a hand on the valet’s shoulder, her face filled with sympathy. “Didn’t you?”
“That bitch,” Mareth said, only now realizing we’d been tricked. “I ought to rip you apart limb from limb!”
The shutters went down over the valet’s expression. Maddie had almost gotten through to her with kindness, but Mareth’s anger ruined it. “Your aunt just about fired me for that whole incident in the student commons,” the valet growled, matching Mareth’s hateful stare without breaking a sweat. “I’m on probation and my pay got docked. All because Lucifer’s special boy couldn’t tell me in advance that he packed a snack for his trip to Hell…”
Everyone tried to speak at once. Maddie threw up a hand, silencing us all.
“That’s not what happened,” the angel said simply. “And I’m sorry, Desdemona. You’re absolutely right—you shouldn’t have been punished for what we did. You didn’t smuggle me into Hell, I made that decision on my own. If you should be angry at anyone, it should be me, not Luke. He had no idea I was down here.”
“You’re not a human anymore,” Desdemona said, furrowing her brow. “Definitely not a human. Something else.”
“That’s right,” Maddie said with a flash of her bright white teeth.
“Hmm. . . I should really be killing you for what you did, but now that I know Luke is not really responsible, all I want to do is clock-out for the day.” Desdemona looked at me with new eyes, cringing back a bit with self-directed guilt. “Fuck it,” she said. “Let me summon your car.”
As the valet opened up a portal to the parking garage and stepped through, Maddie sidled up beside me. “I think you should talk to Lilith once we deal with this emergency,” my angelic girlfriend whispered, “and have her restore Desdemona’s pay.”
Mareth and Christina gave her identical looks of shock. “Are you kidding?” Christina asked, glancing at the portal first to make sure Desdemona couldn’t hear. “That girl’s a total bitch!”
I shook my head. “No, Maddie’s right,” I said, startling them both. “I didn’t know someone else got punished for what we did. That’s no good. Desdemona’s got a right to be angry with us for that.”
Christina stared at me blankly. “Dude, what are they teaching you up in angel school?”
“You’re actually going to forgive someone who wronged you?” Mareth added, incredulous. “Instead of smashing them into the ground?”
I couldn’t help it—a laugh broke from my throat. “Yeah,” I said, grinning at my two demon girls. Both were fierce as hell and a real treat in the bedroom, but some of the subtleties of social niceness had clearly eluded them. Or in Christina’s case, maybe she’d been hanging out with enough demons to forget how utterly horrible the customer service experience is for most workers.
I decided to take another tack. “All part of the plan,�
�� I assured both girls, pulling them close. “We get Desdemona out of trouble, she’ll love us. And she’ll owe us a major favor. Who else sees everyone who comes and goes in the school?”
Christina began to nod. “You brilliant bastard,” she said, giving me a playful punch in the shoulder. “I knew you weren’t going soft!”
“I never go soft,” I growled, pulling her against me. In fact, something between my legs had been hard through our entire conversation—I pushed it between Christina’s thighs, letting her feel its girth and heat. “You of all people should know that…”
“And you of all people should know I like to give head while you’re driving,” Christina giggled, letting her long tongue dangle down to her chin. “So I hope wherever your magic car is taking us is going to take a long time to get there…”
I was still thinking about all the things Christina could do with that tongue when the sound of an engine reached my ears. The noise turned into a roar as my sleek black car tore ass into the parking circle. Desdemona sat behind the wheel, but she hardly had to do a thing—the car made its way through Hell as if it truly had a mind of its own. It rolled to a stop just in front of our group, the golden rims on its oversized tires spinning for a few moments after the car had come to a rest.
It was my vehicle, alright. A few touches of the beat-up van it had been before Lucifer’s magic transformed it still remained, but otherwise it was all muscle car. Bigger than an SUV, it could fit my entire harem and then some inside. Desdemona adjusted the ram’s horn gear shift and slipped out of the driver’s seat, making a note of the mileage on a pad. 666, of course—the car belonging to a Lord of Hell would forever be stuck on that number.
“Thanks,” I told the valet. “You can leave us now.”
Desdemona nodded and stepped through another portal. She hadn’t stayed to press the point of my guilt any further, which I appreciated. Let’s hope it comes as a nice surprise when I get her situation sorted out, I told myself, turning my attention to the car. It sat there like a dormant lion, silent but prepared to turn lethal at any moment.
I walked around to the front and put both hands on the hood. The metal was too hot to the touch, super heated to the point where it would have burned an ordinary human. I swore I could hear a rumble inside that had nothing to do with engines.
It knows I know, I thought, clearing my throat.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, giving the hood a smart little rap. “It’s important.”
The car said nothing. As cars do.
I rolled my eyes. “The Headmistress of the Infernal Academy and the Headmistress of the Celestial Academy have gone missing,” I said, leaning in closer. If any demons could see me talking to my car from the green, they wisely kept their mouths shut. “I need to know where they are, before they get into trouble. I have this feeling that whatever they’re doing, they’re going to need my help.”
The engine gave an unexpected rumble. The driver’s side door opened on its own, like a beckoning finger.
I stared at it, wide-eyed. “Just me?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder. “Or can I bring the girls, too?”
All four doors swung open. Well, I thought, that’s a clear sign.
“You heard the car,” I said, giving Christina, Mareth ,and Maddie an ‘isn’t this crazy?’ smile. “Climb on in.”
God, I’d forgotten what real luxury felt like. The driver’s seat of my new car hugged me like it was welcoming me home, the plush leather molding itself around my body. An array of dials and arcane buttons awaited me, along with a steering wheel with the face of a skull in the middle and strange symbols all over the rim. The moment all four of us were inside, the doors closed and the air conditioner switched on.
The outside world had gone completely silent. “I’m assuming no one else can hear us while we’re inside of you,” I said, trying not to think of how strange that last part sounded. “Even if they’re using magic to try and peek. Is that right?”
The engine gave a prolonged rumble. At first, I thought something was wrong—then I realized that as the sound climbed higher and higher, it was forming into the shape of a human voice.
“You are correct,” it rumbled, its tone somehow stately despite being composed of the booming noises of my engine. “We can converse freely here, Master.”
Christina was halfway through unbuttoning my pants and taking out my cock when she froze at the sound of that voice. “Holy shit,” she murmured. “Your car can talk!”
“And it calls him Master,” Mareth said petulantly, crossing her arms. “That’s my thing!”
“My apologies,” the automobile said, forming the engine noise into words. “If it comforts you, I mean it in a totally different context than what you mean when you call Luke your Master. I am merely Luke’s servant, not his lover. Besides, I am male.”
“I didn’t know a car could have a gender,” Maddie purred from the backseat, leaning forward. “That’s the voice, Luke! The one I heard outside the diner, telling me to get into the trunk…”
“Indeed it was me, my Lady,” the car rumbled. The longer it went on talking, the more it sounded for all the world like some stuffy English butler. Even the engine noise couldn’t hide the poise and sophistication of my car’s natural voice. “I sensed your angelic potential and realized that my Master would have need of you. Also, if I may be permitted to be bold, I didn’t like the idea of him letting such a good thing slip through his fingers.”
Maddie laughed. I felt color rise to my cheeks. Called out by my own car!
“Who are you?” Maddie asked. “What are you?”
The car cleared what could generally be considered its throat. “My name is Godfrey,” the car said proudly. “And I am Luke’s Guardian Angel.”
Silence reigned in the car for a moment.
“You’re an angel,” Mareth said, her claws digging into the headrest of Christina’s seat. “But you’re in a demonic car? How’s that work?”
A plume of smoke billowed from the sides of the car’s hood. It took me a second to realize this was the car’s equivalent of a chuckle.
“With all due respect to my Master and his harem,” Godfrey said, “that is an extremely long story. One that involves not only the Infernal and the Celestial schools, but Lucifer’s seemingly endless quest to secure an heir capable of fulfilling his peculiar duties with regards to the universe’s firmament. But if I were to explain all of that to you, it would take all day!”
Christina looked keenly interested. I didn’t need to glance in the rear-view mirror to know that I did, too. “Why not?” I asked. “We’ve got time, right?”
“Unfortunately, we do not.” Godfrey made another one of those throat-clearing engine noises. “By the time I finish telling the story, the Fae will have succeeded in establishing a foothold in our world. If that happens, there’ll be no point in telling any stories, as we’ll all be dead.”
Mareth gasped. “Oh. My. Satan.”
This time I did look in the rear-view mirror. Sitting in the passenger side of the back seat, Mareth’s normally cherry skin had gone as white as a sheet.
“The Fae are not the kind you want to tangle with,” Mareth sputtered, like someone who’d been assured that there’d be no clowns at a birthday party happening at the circus. “This is bad. Very, very bad.”
“You should tell your Aunt that sometime,” Godfrey countered, more steam rising from the sides of his hood. “Lilith would probably get a kick out of it.”
I started. “You know Lilith?”
“Yes. I know Headmistress Judyth as well,” the car said, pausing. “Like I said, Master, it’s a very long story.”
Mareth was half out of her seat, perched in the space between Christina’s chair and mine like a gargoyle. “You can’t listen to this guy, Luke,” she said, shaking her head like she didn’t want to believe a word of what she heard. “He’s bullshitting you. Lucifer must have fed him this story as a laugh, or to fuck with you. The Fae can’t esta
blish a foothold outside of their Realm. It’s like, a natural law or something.”
“We live in a world of magic,” I said. “That’s supernatural. Contravenes natural law.”
“Would someone explain what’s going on?” Christina asked. “What are the Fae meant to be?”
Mareth swallowed hard. I sensed a sudden anxiety in her expression, as if she didn’t like talking about this. “The Fae are pure evil,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “Their realm isn’t like either of ours—it’s a beautiful fantasy kingdom, only everything there wants to kill and eat you. Or trick you into giving up your soul. The Fae are big on that—tricking people into contracts they don’t understand.”
“Sounds kind of like demons,” I said, turning back to the dashboard. “I thought the minions of Hell were supposed to be the evil ones?”
“We’re just misunderstood,” Mareth protested, rolling her eyes. “We’re demonic, sure, but we’re not evil evil. We have an understanding with the other side—the angels stay on their turf, and we stay on ours. We keep our fights in agreed-upon spaces, with rules.”
I thought about the tiny wars I’d seen back on Earth as I drove around in my van—the demon perched on a man’s left shoulder and the angel on the right, the people possessed by imps with angels trying to fight the creatures off their human host’s backs. Those contests had been fierce, but they were just that—contests. I understood what Mareth meant.
“The Fae don’t have rules,” she finished, her nails digging into my shoulder. “If they got the chance, they’d burn down Heaven and Hell. Turn the Earth into a barren wasteland for their own amusement. They’re bad news, Luke.”
I digested Mareth’s words, trying to sift out the truth from the myth. Then I realized I had a knowledgeable source right in front of me—and behind me, and on both sides of me. I was literally inside the knowledgeable source, which wigged me out more than a bit.
“Godfrey,” I said, putting my hands on the wheel. “How much of what Mareth’s saying is true?”