bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled Read online

  I glared up at him, finally realizing that he must be one of the royals. I didn’t remember seeing him the night before, when I went for my little unplanned visit to Hades on Earth, but he obviously knew who I was. “No. Actually, Torre, it’s much warmer in here than I would like. All these mashed together bodies and demon flesh. It’s not only stuffy, the heat in here feels like hot, burning, tongues of fire on my skin.” I offered him my bad girl smile, “you ever feel that way?”

  His gaze burned into me. “More than you would care to know, Mx. Phelps. Now, what can I get for you?”

  “An audience with Abrine.”

  His beautiful, black eyes widened just enough to tell me I’d surprised him. “What would a pretty little thing like yourself want with a big, bad demon king?”

  I shrugged and smiled. “I think you might have some idea, if you use your imagination.” Hating myself, I ran my tongue over my suddenly very dry lips and leaned across the bar toward the handsome devil. He grinned back and met me halfway, pushing his face close enough to mine so that we were both breathing the same small pocket of air. The effect wasn’t really that awful, his breath smelled minty and was very warm on my face. I forced myself not to pull away, instead I parted my lips just a notch and drew his aura into me, under the pretense of being taken over by physical rapture because of his nearness, I closed my eyes and held his essence inside my head, where I could roll it around and measure it.

  He was fairly powerful, which made me wonder what he was doing working behind a bar in a demon club. He didn’t seem to be powerful enough to climb into my head, however, which I had come to recognize as a definite plus when dealing with devils. As I rolled him around in my mind something flared, something I didn’t really recognize but which wasn’t entirely foreign to me either. Whatever it was, it made me gasp and push his aura away in panic.

  Because I was focusing so hard on that surge of something, I barely noticed when his hot tongue flicked out and touched my lips, probing just inside my mouth for the barest second before the spell was broken and my eyes flew open. He jerked away from me as a sudden cold enveloped us both. I could tell he’d felt it too because he eyed me carefully as he backed away. The electric current I was beginning to recognize so well flew up my arms, bringing every tiny, little hair I owned to attention.

  I followed his black gaze to a spot just behind my left shoulder and, despite my best efforts, gasped just a little as I turned and my eyes met the frosty, entirely colorless, eyes of the demon king, Abrine.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Evil Snow King Meets Little Red Demon Killer Hood

  Never had she seen a face, so well devoid of tint,

  And never had she seen such eyes, that speared her with their icy glint.

  It really doesn’t matter how many times you look upon the devil, it still gives your system a shock when you see him. And so it is with demon kings. What was particularly alarming about Abrine, aside from the fact that he was as evil a package as ever God did allow to be compiled, was the fact that he was entirely devoid of color. I mean entirely. Oh, I know, you’re thinking about albinos. Yes, there are human beings and other animals that, through some weird stroke of fate are arranged around a genetic cocktail that is missing the color ingredient, but that isn’t what I’m talking about here. Even albinos have pink eyes. Abrine’s eyes are starkly, coldly, frostily white, just like the rest of him.

  I stared into those frosty eyes now and rubbed at my arms as I tried to decide how best to begin. Fortunately Torre saved me the trouble.

  The bartending devil’s voice jerked me out of my horrified trance and I turned to look at him as he spoke. “Master, this halfling wishes an audience with you.” Torre said this, not only with a straight face, but also with a bowed head.

  My eyes drifted reluctantly back to the ghostly apparition that stood just a couple of feet away from me. Abrine merely nodded and turned away. I looked at Torre and he smiled, motioning for me to follow his boss. I blew him a kiss and followed, marveling at the way the path cleared for Abrine as he moved through the crowd. Though no one seemed to stare.

  The air around me still felt cold and charged with electricity. I decided I had found the source of my mysterious force. How strange that it had come to me, the second time at least, apparently at the bidding of the royals, when it appeared to be tied to Abrine.

  I gave a mental shrug and concentrated on staying in the space just behind my frosty host because if I got even five feet away from him the human wall tended to close off. Somehow, without their even realizing it, the humans made way for the monster, without even really seeing him.

  Abrine disappeared through a narrow archway that opened up into another pitch-black space. Somehow I doubted the lightless space had been created for the pleasure of the club’s patrons. Maybe it was the nine foot tall demon with a black scowl on his gray face that convinced me. I doubted anyone visited that part of the club uninvited.

  Edging around the scowling, building sized demon, I took a deep breath before plunging down the pitch-black staircase beyond the archway. As I descended, I closed my useless eyes and allowed my power to cover me like a softly vibrating blanket. I carefully reached into the space with it. Almost immediately, I could sense several auras. Most of them were pure evil, but they were muted as if they were hibernating or somehow contained.

  Overriding the total sense of evil, I could feel a thick, bone crunching cold that I assumed was Abrine. There was also a very unpleasant stench that, unfortunately, I’d smelled before, even as recently as yesterday, in Deaver’s office. It was the smell of violent death.

  My eyes flew open and I took stock of my surroundings, surprised to find myself in a softly lighted room at the bottom of the stairs. My gaze was drawn to Abrine, who stood just a couple of feet away from me, staring, apparently, into my face. It was really hard to tell because he had no pupils or anything to tell me where he was pointing his gaze. He was smiling in a way that didn’t make me warm and fuzzy.

  When he spoke the air around me seemed, conversely, to boil and shift. His voice was what you’d expect from the original iceman, brittle and scratchy and strangely high-pitched. His hand swept around the room, causing me to check out my fellow inhabitants for the first time.

  “Welcome to my world, halfling Phelps. I’ve been expecting you.”

  My carefully controlled, “I’m a professional so I know how to throw a poker face” expression must have slipped a little because he laughed at me. “Yes, you were brought here deliberately. I need to speak with you.”

  To buy myself some time to think, I checked out the inhabitants of the various chairs and divans that were placed in an approximate semi-circle around the room. Along with several demons of high rank, recognizable by their flashy, black uniforms, which were decorated on the chest and shoulders with heavy silver braid, I was surprised to recognize at least one of the royals from my “audience” with the devilish Dialle and his dangerous darling.

  My eyes widened a bit as they encountered a large, slavering gargoyle that was crouched just inside the shadows at the far side of the room. The thing was eating something that I was sure I didn’t want to identify. It squatted over the cold stone floor, hunched down on tree-like legs. Its long, narrow feet and hands ended in evil looking yellow claws that curved under in a way that made it impossible for its three, thick toes to lie against the ground. Its head was wide at the top and became narrower as it flowed into a short, dense muzzle that was held ajar by an impossibly large set of gore-coated teeth. Two long fangs curved toward each other from the corners of the wide mouth, nearly meeting in the middle about an inch below its chin. The ’goyle’s mutated dog face was slathered with blood and other, best not investigated, substances. I nodded my head toward the disgusting creature. “Why isn’t that sleeping?”

  Abrine didn’t even glance at the ’goyle. He simply smiled his frosty smile, revealing, you guessed it, startlingly white teeth set into colorless gums. “My pets somet
imes awaken on their own. I simply haven’t had the time to lie him down again.”

  I glared at him. “Seems an awful lot of your pets were on the prowl last night, your majesty. They created quite a stir, killing and maiming humans. Why do you suppose that is?”

  If Abrine were human he would have shrugged. But since he wasn’t he simply stared at me with that same smile. It was as if he knew he couldn’t look innocent no matter what he did or said so he didn’t even try. “I wonder where you got your information, halfling Phelps, my pets have slept soundly atop their buildings for the last thirty years, since the culmination of the Great Wars.”

  “Uh huh.” I ignored the implied question. The demon king and I, along with everyone else in that foul-smelling dungeon room, knew that I was tied to the angels. His lie to me was stupid and useless. But for some reason we were all going to play make believe. Since I was surrounded by evil creatures and didn’t really feel like it was in my best interests to admit my complicity with the other side right at the moment, I decided I could go along with the game for the time being. “So...” I said, changing the subject nicely, “what did you want from me?”

  Abrine sat down on a chair that looked suspiciously like a throne and motioned a paper-white hand toward an empty chair beside him.

  I stood there a moment, turning over my options and weighing the consequences of pissing him off so early in the game. If I sat down in that chair, my back would be fair game to the gargoyle with the blood covered face and two inch long teeth. The sound of the thing slavering and crunching its poor victim was almost enough to make me turn and run screaming from the room. I certainly didn’t want to turn my back on it.

  Abrine noticed my hesitation and accurately assessed the cause. He turned toward the gargoyle and spoke a few words in a language I couldn’t understand but did recognize. It was the language of the demons, which was the native language of Hades, spoken first by the Big Red Guy, who, when he’d been thrown out of Heaven, had been commanded never to speak in the language of the angels again. I liked to call it speaking in tongues of fire.

  From the shadows beyond the gargoyle, a very large demon stepped forward into the light. He was holding a leash made from a mesh of some kind of sturdy looking black metal in his basketball sized fist. The other end of the leash seemed to be attached to the ’goyle.

  Abrine spoke again and the demon yanked on the leash. The gargoyle gave a deep growl but kept on eating. The handler pulled a little harder on the leash and the thing sprang. It leapt off the ground and seemed, almost before my eyes could register movement, to attach itself to its handler’s broad chest with all four sets of two inch long claws.

  The demon handler cried out as the claws sunk home and grabbed at the gargoyle’s tick-like body to try to pull it off his chest. The gargoyle held on with incredible strength and opened its snarling mouth wider, all the while keeping up a blood-freezing growl that seemed to vibrate the stone walls around us. Just as the gargoyle’s teeth flashed toward the helpless handler’s throat, Abrine moved a hand and the thing flew away from its hapless handler and slammed against the hard, cold stone of the nearest wall with a sickly crunching sound. It slid to the ground and lay there twitching.

  Abrine spoke again to the handler, who was bleeding green all over the place from the ’goyle’s claws. The demon, rather reluctantly I thought, moved to dispose of the body.

  As Abrine’s gaze returned to me, I gave myself a mental shake and took the seat he’d indicated earlier. Mostly because my knees had gone all wobbly on me and it was good cover. “I guess you won’t need to put it back to sleep after all.” My voice was stronger than I would have expected under the circumstances.

  Abrine chuckled. “Do not be too sure of its death. I’ve seen gargoyles survive much worse. They have been likened to the cockroach of the human world. They are difficult to kill and they just seem to get larger and stronger each time you try. Nasty creatures.”

  On that point at least we could agree. I nodded, frowning.

  Abrine tilted his head. “I do find them useful, however. And, although I cannot trust them completely, as you have seen, I can control them.”

  I wondered if the demon handler would completely agree with that last statement.

  He smiled at me. “I have heard from the demons and lesser devils that you are a force to be reckoned with, halfling Phelps.” He cocked a snowy eyebrow at me, “somehow I expected someone a little more...shall we say, imposing?”

  I nodded, “Me too. I’m always a little surprised when I look in a mirror. I feel so much bigger and meaner to myself.”

  Abrine laughed. “I will not make the mistake of underestimating you, halfling Phelps. I know you have the ear of the angels. It is known that you have been protected by them from the time you were a very small child. But it is also known that your blood is devil-tainted. Some have said that you have powers you even now don’t know exist within you. Does that not frighten you?”

  Yeah, it scared the shit out of me. However, I gave my best bad-ass shrug and kept my face disinterested. “If I had such powers I would know it. Your sources obviously have too much time on their...claws.”

  He cocked his snowy head again. I decided he’d developed the affectation because he’d learned long ago that it was hard to project attitude or feeling from a face that was basically a permanently blank canvas. “I wonder if you don’t know, but are unwilling to face that side of yourself.”

  I suddenly lost the last little bit of my patience, which was never all that abundant to start with. “Look, I’m sure you didn’t lure me here so that you could psychoanalyze me. I’m really not all that interesting. I have a job and I’m just trying to do it.” I stood up and Abrine’s blank face rose with me. “You have a lesser demon called Timmon, who is pursuing the fair-haired daughter of one of my clients. I have been hired to vaporize him. Do you wish to stand for him or will you allow me to do my job?”

  Abrine stared at me for a long moment and then motioned to the royal I’d recognized earlier. The devil stood and moved toward us with that rolling, sexy walk I all too readily recognized. He stopped in front of Abrine and bowed just slightly, though I thought it galled him to do it. “Your majesty?”

  “Benoir, bring the demon Timmon to me.”

  Benoir glided away, leaving me to wonder what Abrine had in mind. It didn’t take long to find out. And it wasn’t a pleasant discovery.

  Timmon was particularly revolting. No surprise there. In the demon and devil worlds, the lower in the caste system the creature was, the uglier. The reality fits nicely with the human concept of evil being ugly. The only problem was that, with demons, they could mask their ugliness behind pretty masks that humans accepted without question and with devils, the vilest of them were the royals and they were by far the prettiest.

  The demon was covered in black, grainy looking leather skin that seemed to ooze some kind of oily substance which made him look all shiny and wet. His flat, wide head was about eighty percent forehead. The rest of his facial geography was squashed into the remaining twenty percent. The eyes under the protruding, squarish brow were so tiny and deep set that they might as well not have been there. The nose was bulbous, with huge nostrils that flared in fear as Benoir pulled him across the room. Thick, clear fluid ran from the demon’s nostrils and dripped off his tiny, pointed chin. Demon snot. They tended to leak when they were scared. On top of Timmon’s head, set widely apart, were two thick, black horns, which curved away from each other like bug antennae. Between the horns, hair, sparse and wiry looking like an elephant’s, sprouted from his leathery skin.

  Benoir had Timmon by one fat, scaly arm and was dragging the eight-foot-tall demon forward with apparent ease. I made a mental note to myself. Apparently, along with their ability to get into your mind, the royals were also extremely strong. Demons, as you’ve probably figured out by now, are generally very tall and very large. Their physical strength exceeds even their size. Despite this, however, Benoir, who
was well built but not very tall and looked to be on the lean side, easily controlled the slavering, writhing, struggling, demon.

  Benoir shoved the demon and Timmon fell to the ground at the demon king’s bare white feet. Abrine gave a slight nod to Benoir and that royal turned, rather sharply I thought, on his finely made heel and returned to his seat. Where he flopped gracefully, crossing his slender legs in preparation of the show to come.

  I was still standing where I’d landed when I lost my very limited patience and brought up the subject of Timmon in the first place. Sensing that something horrendous was about to happen, I did not sit back down like Benoir to enjoy the show.

  With his head lowered so that he appeared to be staring at the stones beneath his broad, white feet, Abrine slowly raised his arms over his head, clenching his fists so that the long white nails, which were at least an inch long and curved inward like talons, began to cut into the white flesh of his palms and produce bright, green droplets of demon blood. I watched those droplets of blood with fascination. They were all the more startling against Abrine’s completely colorless form.

  Closing his white eyes, Abrine began to chant in the language of Hades. As he chanted, the demon Timmon, still prostrate before Abrine on the floor, began to writhe and cry out. He didn’t try to get up off the floor and run away. He just put his hands over his face and screamed.