bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled Read online

  The last thing I saw as I began the descent down six flights was Emo’s red, angry face at the window. Then I closed my eyes and prepared to die.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Angel Highs and Devil Take It

  ’Tween Heaven and Hell the spirits play and dance their dance of death.

  ’Tween Heaven and Hell the Devil smiles and inhales your last breath.

  I counted floors as I plunged toward my death. I was surprisingly calm for somebody who was gonna be a fuzzy splat on the sidewalk in a few seconds. I suddenly realized I was still holding the cross in my hands and cursed myself for my stupidity. Pressing it to my forehead, I said her name in my mind just about two seconds before I hit the ground.

  About six inches short of a deadly concrete kiss, my downward spiral stopped suddenly on a whoosh of fragrant air. The sweet scent of spring flowers enveloped me. I turned my head and placed a gentle kiss on Myra’s pink, angelic cheek and said, “What took you so long?”

  She narrowed impossibly large, blue eyes at me and shook her blonde head. “You’re damned lucky I was in the neighborhood.”

  I grinned at her. “Tsk, tsk, Myra. Angels aren’t supposed to swear.”

  “Bite me.” Despite this less than angelic discourse, Myra held me firmly in her heavenly arms and lifted me back toward my shattered window with loving care.

  As we entered the torn window and hovered over the center of the room, Emo frowned up at us and began to pace in anger. “What the Hades did you think you were doing, Astra? You could have been killed. Why did you wait so long to call Myra? I was screaming at her but she ignored me as usual.” He followed this statement with a glare toward the aforementioned angel that would have curled the quills on a porcupine. Myra was unimpressed.

  She dumped me on my butt in the middle of the floor without ceremony and pointed her finely chiseled, divine nose into the air, looking down on Emo with disdain. “I don’t answer to devils. Especially crass, disgusting ones.” Having thus dismissed my devil, Myra smoothed out her long, white dress and fluffed the full sleeves of her sheer white and gold over-robe with a sniff.

  Emo took a menacing step toward my angel and I stood up quickly to get between them. “Whoa boy. Myra, why must you always goad him?”

  She grinned in a totally non-angelic way and brushed her hands together like she’d just completed a dirty job. “He asks for it, Astra. Just look at him.”

  I looked at my naked, fiery-faced partner and shrugged. He looked okay to me.

  Myra sighed her frustration and started to shimmer as if she would go. I grabbed at her arm. “No, wait.”

  She stopped shimmering with an impatient look. “What is it now, I was in the middle of something.”

  I shrugged, suddenly feeling like the small child I’d been the first time Myra had stepped in to save my life. “I just wanted to thank you for saving my life. Again.”

  Myra shrugged, flicked a long, slender hand in my direction and shimmered off.

  Emo stopped his angry pacing to yell at me. “Why the Hades did you have to get such a cranky angel?”

  I had often wondered that myself. “Did you see the thing that threw me out the window?”

  Emo’s angry face cleared a little. “What thing? I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  I looked at him long and hard. He was usually pretty trustworthy, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to work together. But he was at least half devil. “You wouldn’t lie to me would you?”

  “Of course not! I heard the window break and I ran in here, but you were already sailing through the air.”

  I shivered, but this time it was just with remembered dread. The room was warm again. Even overly warm. “This thing, whatever it was, wasn’t visible. It seemed to be some kind of invisible power force with electrical components. Just before it hit me I felt a charge along my arms.”

  Emo’s face clouded over and he turned away quickly, moving over to the shattered window to examine the damage with a little too much interest.

  I knew my devil too well to be fooled into thinking he was considering a new career as a handyman. “What? Emo? What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

  He turned to me with a frown. “I don’t know anything.” At a look from me he raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Really. I just don’t like the sound of this new enemy of yours. You do have a way of picking up trouble, Astra. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  As he’d intended, that succeeded in distracting me. I was very thin skinned on the subject of my apparent magnetism where evil was concerned. “Oh, so now this is all my fault?”

  Emo grinned and turned to leave. “I’ll call around and try to find somebody to come fix the window.”

  As I watched his rotten, scaly, red carcass leave the room still smiling at my indignant anger, I thought maybe I did see what Myra had seen. The dirty devil...!

  I stormed out of the office without another word to Emo except to tell him to put on some clothes. A sour look crossed his scarlet features and it made me feel a little better.

  Stepping into the flash elevator outside my office door, I slid the Level bar to select the basement, where my carriage awaited me. Two blinks later I exited into the poorly lighted sub-street level parking area. I stepped out of the flash and moved quickly past the dozens of tightly packed, bullet shaped vehicles that waited, hovering on wings of air, down both sides of the wide parking aisle. With the new anti-color law that had been enacted because of pressure by ultra-green environmentalists, six out of ten of the vehicles in the parking garage were a paintless silver. I moved to my own, sleekly made Viper air model and punched a code into the keypad on the fire-engine red exterior.

  I’d purchased the vehicle just before the anti-color law was passed and I was damned if I was gonna buckle to pressure and buy a silver vehicle. I would run this one into the ground and then buy one on the black market if necessary. Politically correct I was not.

  The door of my Viper whispered open and I stepped in, pulling my long, leather coat inside just as the door swung shut from the pressure of my butt in the seat. “Home,” I stated in an exhausted voice and the Viper lifted from the floor and swung toward the exit. As my sexy red vehicle rose into the cool night sky, I leaned my head back on the black, buttery leather seat, which was also politically incorrect, and closed my eyes in exhaustion. I’d been going since five that morning, when I’d been pulled from sleep to vanquish a minor demon for a regular client and I wasn’t done. I still had work to do.

  I set my mind to determining how I was going to handle the meeting that evening with my new and as yet unseen client. I’d taken a call the previous week on my office televisual, from a Mx. Deaver, who claimed to have a devil’s advocate after him. According to Mx. Deaver, who was a cult preacher, the advocate was pissed off at him in a major way for running his devil out of the ancient building where Mx. Deaver had set up his new church. Apparently the devil had been living there for several centuries and hadn’t been keen on relocating.

  Devil’s advocates, in case you’re not up on devildom’s career designations, are kind of like lawyers for devils, except that they don’t follow the same rules that human lawyers follow and they’re harder to get rid of. A devil’s advocate generally wins a case for his client by killing off anybody who disagrees with his legal opinion. And the only way to fire him, or defeat him, is to turn him into atmospheric gas.

  I was meeting Mx. Deaver at the Church of the Twined Hands that night at nine o’clock. Suffice it to say I was not looking forward to it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Between a Devil and His Hard Place

  When I was very little, I used to hide from monsters,

  Now I am very big, the monsters hide from me...

  As the Viper dropped through the roof of my transpo shelter at home, I opened my weary eyes and gathered up my bag and briefcase. “Exiting.” The driver’s side door of the Viper opened and I stepped out. “Secure area.” The door in th
e roof of the shelter hissed shut and locked into place and the driver’s side door on the Viper closed and locked. I moved around the vehicle and punched my code into the keypad on the wall. The entrance to my living quarters slid back into the wall as I approached it, then slid shut behind me, locking.

  Evenings were the only time I wished I had a pet or something that could greet me at the door after a tough day at the office. I’d often considered getting a pigmy gargoyle or something. But decided my inability to take care of myself most days, let alone something or someone else, would probably spell disaster for any poor creature I took under my wing.

  I heaved a weary sigh and dropped my bag and case on the table beside the entry door. “All lights, full.” As lights blinked on throughout the space, I moved into the kitchen to see what I could scrounge up to fill the empty, aching hole in my stomach. The motley assortment in the refrigeration unit was totally uninspiring, but I managed to snag a dehydrated meal and a slightly flat bottle of fizzy water. I placed the meal into the rehydrator and went to change for the meeting with my new client, sucking down the bad tasting water as I went.

  I tugged the snug, black turtleneck sweater I was wearing off over my head and removed my caramel-colored simulated leather thigh skirt. I headed for the personal hygiene room, pulling black tights off my legs as I went. My message center on the televisual bleeped to life when it sensed movement in the room.

  “You have four new calls,” a sexy, male voice informed me as I got tangled in my tights and nearly fell on my head. “Shit.” I quickly righted myself. “Play one, full volume,” I responded before continuing into the personal hygiene room.

  The center beeped to announce my first message and my friend Kayla’s bright, breathless voice followed me into the personal hygiene room. “Hey girl. Where ya been? Call me, I need to tell you about this crashin’ guy I met.”

  I smiled. Kayla was always meeting “crashin’” guys. Which was a good term for the kind of guys she met. To Kayla, men were like a serious drug and when they dumped her because she was oh so needy, she always crashed and burned for two weeks.

  Message two was from my sister, who basically just wanted me to get married and settle down, take a safe, boring job selling environmentally and politically correct items, and give her ten nieces and nephews. The third message was from a longtime client who wanted me to kill a murderous demon that was torturing his customers.

  Just a typical day in my life.

  I programmed the water valet to emit warm, soapy water and quickly washed my face, leaning into the warm air of the drying disc on the wall with a sigh. Not for the first time that day, I wished I could put my soft, warm jammies on and climb into bed with a good palm screen novel.

  As I left the personal hygiene room I grabbed a tooth-cleaning lozenge and popped it into my mouth. It exploded gently as it mixed with my saliva and began fizzing away the day’s scum as the final message beeped into my consciousness.

  “Mx. Phelps,” said a heavily accented, baritone voice. “I need to see you tonight. I know you are meeting a client at the Church of the Twined Hands and I must see you before you go there. Please call me back immediately.”

  I pulled a soft, black dress over my head and said, “Bite me.” I was getting pretty sick of everybody needing everything last week. With a sigh that said, Astra, you’re an adult now and you have a business to nurture and you are subject to the every whim of all of your clients, even ones you don’t know you have yet, I said, “Return last call.” The phone barely finished ringing through before the same, deeply masculine voice answered it.

  “Mx. Phelps?”

  “That’s me, who’s this?” I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled tall black boots with no heels over my bare legs. The politically incorrect leather of the boots melted around my calves and held them gently but firmly. No matter how hard it tried, humankind would never make a fake leather that rivaled the real, God-made stuff. I rubbed my hand up my right boot to smooth it and then shoved a long, thin stiletto type knife into the side, leaving just the top ridge of the handle exposed so I could grab it quickly if I needed to.

  “That isn’t important right now, I need to meet with you.”

  Frowning, I responded in as calm a manner as I could...which was way far from calm. “I’m sorry. I can’t meet with you if I don’t know who you are and why I’m meeting you. I’m sure you can understand how foolhardy that would be in my line of work.”

  When silence met my resistance, I briefly considered turning on the visual so I could glare at Mr. Elusive and snotty, but decided against it. I generally resisted using visual at home because I had a habit of forgetting it was on and embarrassing myself by answering naked.

  The silence grew longer as I waited for my sexy sounding antagonist to respond. I was damned if I was gonna talk again before he did. I used the time to put a vial of holy water into my purse and clasp a belt of gold crosses around my waist. A platinum dagger tipped with angel blood slid neatly into the sheath I strapped to one of my thighs and, though the dress was soft and draped nicely around my curves, the sheath hid the dagger nicely. I stood in front of my mirrored wall and made a few adjustments until everything was properly hidden.

  Just as I was about to think he’d hung up without my knowing it the voice said, “I guess you could call me Mx. Deaver’s problem. I need to talk to you before he fills your head with his lies and nonsense.”

  “You’re the advocate?”

  “I’m sending someone to pick you up.” And he was just...gone.

  “Shit!”

  I knew I couldn’t wait around and allow myself to get dragged to a meeting with some evil advocate before I knew what I was getting myself into. I grabbed my bag and left my living space.

  The Viper rose into the cool, clear night on nearly silent feet of air and tore away from home. I programmed in the location of the Church of the Twined Hands and heaved a sigh. I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d felt a stab of fear and dread as I’d spoken to Deaver’s Advocate, but I’d learned long ago to trust my instincts. They were almost always right on the mark.

  The televisual unit on the Viper’s control panel chirped twice and Emo’s devilish face filled the eight inch square screen. “Hey Astra, I just wanted to let you know you got a call from some scary sounding guy, I think it might have been your new client, that cultist, what was his name?”

  “Deaver?”

  “Yeah, him. I had a really weird feeling talking to him. He had visual blacked out and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. I don’t want you to meet with this guy alone.”

  “Yeah, I think I already talked to him, he called at my place. He was pretty pushy but I can handle him. Did you get somebody to fix the glass?”

  He frowned and opened his mouth but before he could speak his image wavered with some kind of weird interference and, as I was playing with the controls to bring him back into focus I suddenly realized that the Viper’s interior had grown much too cool. A prickle of fear sprung up between my shoulder blades and I cursed silently as the hair on my arms stood at attention again. The Viper jerked to a sudden stop as if someone had tied a rope to it. My ears picked up the remembered moaning noise outside my stalled vehicle.

  “Sonofabitch! I grabbed the cross I’d clasped around my neck as the Viper started to vibrate against the sucking power of the thing outside. I took the Viper off auto control and plunged it into hyperforward, feeling it strain against the grasping monster. The Viper bucked and swung violently from side to side before giving up with a gasp and letting itself be sucked into the night.

  I fought to control the helpless terror that gripped me as the Viper shot off in the opposite direction from where I’d been heading. What was especially disconcerting was the fact that my protective screens had come up without my telling them to, completely blocking my view.

  So to take stock of my situation... I was blinded, flying somewhere at about light speed, under the control of something I couldn’t see and had e
very reason to fear. To make things worse, my armpits were beginning to sweat onto my nice, black dress.

  Definitely one for the shitty day book.

  The Viper whizzed north, for about twenty minutes. At the current speed, which was about four hundred mph, I estimated that I should be well into Wisconsin, unless we were going the opposite direction, in which case I didn’t know where the Hades I was.

  I prayed for the Viper to stop and then when it did, I suddenly wished it would keep going. As I felt my vehicle slow and begin its descent, I checked all of my weapons and cursed myself for not bringing my ultraviolet light laser with me. Then, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I tried to prepare my mind for whatever battle lay ahead.

  The Viper settled silently into hover and I clutched the cross, which was secure on a chain around my neck to help me hold onto it in case the sucking thing was out there when I disembarked.

  My pulse pounding against my temples, I said, “Exiting.” The driver’s side door swung open and I forced myself to step out of the Viper. Looking around, I realized I was inside what looked like a large, empty warehouse. I flared my nostrils and closed my eyes, putting all of my energies into sensing the space for auras, but there appeared to be nothing, or no one, else in that room with me.

  “Well that’s just great! What the Hades am I doing here?” My voice echoed off the bare, concrete walls and came back to me as a rumble of deep laughter. I narrowed my eyes and plunged my hand into my coat pocket, where I’d stashed the holy water during my lovely, relaxing flight to my current destination.

  I really didn’t think my voice was that deep. “Who’s there?”

  The laughter stopped and something shimmered just on the periphery of my vision. I turned to meet it head on and my eyes landed on the most devastatingly gorgeous hunk of he-devil I’d ever seen.