"Yeah we don't do that, bucko. We kill people. We don't snatch 'em," Blitz, the leader of this madhouse, said. Sam answered him by pulling out a slug of Seraphic Steel and setting it onto the table that they were sitting at. "Okay, that's nice, but..." Sam pulled out another one and set it beside the first. The ingot hadn't been needed in its entirety. There was plenty left to bribe with. "Y'know what? Rules are made to be broken. Where's this ass-munch hiding out?"
"City on the ocean, in a particularly shitty neighborhood near the docks," Sam said. "Vanderkleuw as well, in a collection of hovels that by rights should never pass building inspections. Marquis is up-town, ordinarily, but he works the slums."
"Three targets for one mission's a bit of a reach," Blitz said, rubbing at his chin. "We're probably gonna have to split up if we wanna get this shit done before people start to panic."
"I figured as much," Sam said with a nod. "Who here has human disguises?"
The hellhound raised a hand idly, otherwise giving no sign that she was paying any attention to the conversation at all. After a moment, the dainty imp raised hers as well. "Millie? When did you get one?" Moxie, her husband, asked.
"When this craziness started," she answered, sounding somewhat guilty about it. "I got you one too!"
"Where is it?"
"It's your anniversary present," she said. Sam could tell at a glance that her love for the thespian imp at her side would have filled the room to the point where it knocked down the walls. It was surprising when he came in to see something so stereotypically heavenly coming out of one of the native-born residents of hell. And her husband's love for her was every bit as intense as hers for him. But for the temerity of an uncaring God did these two find themselves in a realm that didn't value such things as their bond. Moxie gave a wistful smile at that, for a moment, then remembered that they were engaged in business at the moment.
"May I see them?" Sam asked. The hellhound rolled her eyes, then transformed at a blink her canine features were gone, replaced by hominid ones. She was lithe, pale, and a portrait of the transition between goth and emo, with the kind of dismissal wafting off of her that people who thought themselves powerful found as enticing as catnip. Millie's conversely, was just herself but without her horns, with her red skin rendered a dusky olive, and what markings she hosted changed into slightly faded tattoos. "That'll work."
"Work for what?" Moxie asked.
"Dufresne will follow her," pointing a finger at the now transformed hellhound, "to wherever she wants to take him. And you," a finger pointed at Millie, "will be in a perfect position to cut his hamstrings the moment he gets twitchy. And he will get twitchy."
"Now just hold on one fuckin' second there, asshole! I am not sending my daughter into harm's way for a slug of angel-metal," Blitz said.
"You are not, correct. I'm asking if she's willing to," Sam said, he moved to the window, looking out over Imp City. It was strange seeing it the way that its residents would. The last time he was here, he was working for the Goat of the Apocalypse, so he was treated as anything but ordinary.
"Well, tell 'im Loonie!"
"I think I'm gonna do it," Loona said. Sam gave a nod. Blitz immediately went into a fit of apoplexy, which was loud, profane, and very carefully sculpted to exclude Loona from being a target of it. Sam let it wash over him. It was no skin off of his back. "Blitz, shut the fuck up and listen to me. I'm not going to huddle here like a terrified pup when there's shit I can do. And having that metal means we can make bullets to kill Birch with."
And there was that name again. Every single person that Sam looked into in this office had an explosive hatred of or an unimpeded terror at the thought of him. Blitz had a particular ambition to try to murder the man. And even a superficial look at the reason why made Sam want to help them. Nathan Birch was the worst qualities of all three of the people he was hiring I.M.P. to kill, inflated to the point of absurdity.
"Fine. Fuckin' FINE!" Blitz snapped. "Alright. Loonie, you an' Mills Pied Piper this motherfucker through a portal. Mox, you kill the cop. I'll off the slumlord."
"Are you sure it's wise to spread us so thin, sir?" Moxie asked.
"Well what other option do we got if we wanna get our full payday?" Blitz asked.
"I can take one of them," Sam said.
"It's cute that you think that, but naw," Blitz said. "Your kind can't go through portals that lead anywhere outside Pride."
"Betcha I can," Sam said with a lazy smile.
"As long as you pay up front, I'll take that bet," Blitz answered. Sam shook his head and produced a contract. The thing was a bit lop-sided and hardly the calligraphic work of artistry that Apoc's usual fare showcased, because it was the first one that Sam had actually drafted himself.
"They'll be held in escrow. Completion of the job will release them into your care, whether or not I'm alive to do so," Sam said. Moxie turned a confused look at him, and then took the contract. Slipping on a pair of reading glasses, he scanned down it.
"This is a valid contract, sir," Moxie said. He then handed it to Blitz.
"I keep my bargains. Do the job, get paid. Simple as," Sam said.
"And what's to stop you from bitching out at the end sayin' we didn't kill him fast enough, or messy enough, or any other kinda bullshit?" Blitz demanded, flapping the contract as he did. Sam just pointed at it, at the print which said that 'dead is the result required, and the method is immaterial. Only confirmation of expiration is needed.' "Yeah well, there's still..."
"I am not a Dealmaker in the traditional sense. But I do know that I've got to protect myself from predation. Even from you," Sam said.
"Well shit, if it's gonna be that simple, why the fuck not?" Blitz said. "So it's two on one, and one Sinner flambe as his ass walks through a portal."
"Betcha I won't," Sam's smile returned.
"He's probably thinks that he's got some sort of Elemental bullshit protecting him," Loona said, a look of dismissal obvious even though she had a hound's face. "It's not gonna do you a lot of good against Lucifer's Law."
"You worry about Dufresne, I'll worry about Lucifer," Sam said. "And you know what, I'd like to make it an actual bet. I bet I'll go topside and come back down without so much as a singe. Name your wager."
"We can't collect from an incinerated corpse, boss," Millie said. Sam pulled out another form, one that he'd made in the outside chance that they were the wagering sort. He really was picking up a lot of bad habits from the Goat of the Apocalypse.
"You just got an answer for everything, don'tcha?" Blitz asked.
"I try to," Sam said. He paused, looking down at their parking lot. "Tell me something; is there anybody in this building you don't particularly like?"
Chapter 11
The Dead Shall Not Walk The Earth
Part 1
Blitz was starting to wonder if he was losing his passion for his work.
Sure, he was making more money now than he ever had in his life, he wasn't a whipping boy for some over-priced, under-talented fuck-bot, had somebody he could reliably call upon to catch dick at any time of Blitz's demand, and killing fuckheads still gave him every bit of the thrill it had when he was doing it completely on the sly that first month before Stolas made that deal with him, but something was lacking.
Blitz ripped his knife out of the dark-blue-suited dickhead's neck and dragged him into the back alley, the trail of blood already starting to dissolve in the pissing rain. Just as well, wee hours of the morning that they were, nobody would have noticed even if it were bone dry.
"Sir, is it wise to keep killing uninvolved civilians?" Moxie asked through the earpiece that Blitz had foist onto he and Mills so they wouldn't get split up like they did in Tulsa. Fuckin Tulsa...
"You know a better way to off a particular cop in this shithole?" Blitz demanded, finally peeling the black tape off and reading what was written on the man's badge. "Oh godDAMNit! How many fucking cops are there in this town?"
"Five less than an hour ago?" Moxie offered. Blitz cast a middle finger in what he presumed was the right direction, and then returned to the shadows.
Honestly, this was a big refresher from all the planning that they'd been doing. Never in Blitz's life had he put so much effort into one piece of delayed gratification. If he kept this up, he might end up as a fuckin' monk, he'd delayed so hard. With that thought rattling unpleasantly in his mind, he pulled out his Hellphone, and hit the quickdial.
"Well hello~ my sweet little Blitzie..." Stolas answered immediately, not even letting the first ring end.
"Say my name right god damn it! You know what, never FUCKIN' mind; clear your schedule tonight, I'm comin' over," he said.
"Is this really happening right now?" another voice came through the phone. Female. Angry.
"Why it's not even close to the full moon. And you've already been over twice this month. Are you feeling frisky for some reason?" the thirsty owl-demon purred.
"Why don't you do me a big favor and put the ball gag in now? I'm kinda in the middle of something."
"So am I, actually," Stolas said brightly.
"Oh for FUCK'S SAKE! We scheduled this! I put aside time from my busy schedule for the first time in HALF A FUCKING YEAR! AND YOU'RE TALKING ON THE PHONE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT!" her horrible screeching cut in. "Is that your disgusting little imp? Tell him that if I ever see him, I'm going to rip his dick off, AND FUCK HIM WITH IT!"
"Stella says hello!" Stolas added. "We were thinking about having another–"
"Yeah, hey bitch. How's it feel getting second-hand dick from an imp? Hmm?" Blitz interrupted him, extra loud so that she could hear it. Stella devolved into inarticulate howling, followed by the sound of wood breaking, claws ripping through flesh, somebody dying, and then the distinct sound of a hellphone being broken. "Yeah, that won't come back to bite me in the ass," he said, believing it.
Maybe he was just having an off couple of weeks. After all, he was only a month back in Hell. A month back in the old groove, a month being the guy he was before. Honestly, he wasn't sure how the fuck he'd managed to pull off surviving for a decade and change in the Human World, with angels no-doubt hunting for him, humans trying to shoot him every time they saw him, and nine years worth of gastrointestinal damage from subsisting on vodka, half-rotten sausage, rancid soup, and no water whatsoever. Why would he drink water? That's what fish fucked in.
But he remembered. She called him Dad.
Had to be when she thought he was going to fuckin' die, but he wasn't gonna say no to small embers of hope in a buttfucker of a universe. Come to think of it, even Blitz wasn't entirely sure how he survived the Radio Demon's death-throes. Only that it got really fuckin' bad, and he woke up in a storm-gutter with homeless people screaming 'Jersey Devil! Jersey Devil!' at him. And to think, he once considered hobos a source of amusement and nothing else. Now he was their king. Well, he had been their king, for a brief window in 1933 through 1934, before he got deposed. One day, he was going to have to hunt down Jasper, because that motherfucker certainly ended up in Hell. And the hard bastard that he was, he could certainly have survived a century of Purges.
"I have an idea," Moxie cut in on his memories of the bloody nights of the Hobo Wars of San Fransisco, which annoyed Blitz to no end. He'd done some of his best work out there.
"Then spit it out! I ain't got all night! Well actually I do, but I don't want to have to be here all goddamned night."
"Why don't we... ask one of the police officers where Officer Marquis is?" Moxie prompted.
"Think it'll be that simple, eh? Figure they'll just roll over on each other like Sallos' Peacekeepers?"
"What other choice do we have? We can't kill several hundred uninvolved officers just to find one target. Think of what it'd do to our image as assassins!" Moxie bemoaned, as he was wont to do.
"That we'll go to any lengths to off the fucker you hired us to?" Blitz offered.
"That we bring a sledge-hammer to brain surgery," Moxie said.
"Gotta pop that skull open somehow," Blitz said.
"That's not the point, sir..."
Thing was, Moxie wasn't wrong. While there were a few cops who would throw themselves onto the wire for their buddies, for the most part, they were just as incompetent, corrupt, and short-sighted as the morons that Sallos managed to gather unto him. He just need to find the right knowledgeable moron.
Most of a year as an assassin in Hell had made him pretty good at getting around unseen. Twelve years stranded in the human world made him a goddamned expert. And he had the current advantage of darkness, clouds, and rain, making him as inaudible as he was invisible.
"Don't take it! That's how they getcha! Don't take it, that's how they getcha!" somebody rambled in Blitz's path. He was a walking pile of rags, stringy hair, and filth, stinking so bad that you could probably smell him all the way to the Pride Wall in Hell.
"Shift ass, buddy, I've got cops to kill."
"Kill cops, kill cops," the filthy vagrant said. "Just don't take it."
"'Cause that's how they getcha?" Blitz said. The vagrant stared at him with an insane intensity, then thrust a finger out at him.
"You know too much," he said, then shambled away. Hopefully into a puddle where he could get some of that taint-stink off of him. Whatever the case, that left Blitz in a spot where he could see another dumbass human wearing that dark blue uniform. Shorter than the last guy, not as fat. Might mean he was weaker, or stronger, or slower or faster. So basically Blitz didn't know shit, but still, nobody seemed to be paying attention to him, so through the shadows he went, until he was in what would have been the cop's shadow, if there were any sources of light to throw it.
"I've got overwatch on the potential," Moxie's voice was quiet in Blitz's ear. He tightened his calves, and then launched himself up and at the cop's head, wrapping his legs under the pig's armpits and wrapping around their mouth with his tail. Instantly, the cop began to careen away from their spot, just in time for a gunshot to go off. GodDAMNit Mox! Get your shit together! But even as his cop flailed, Blitz realized that the gunshot hadn't been fired from the roofs, but from ground-level, and was a pistol round, not a rifle bullet. As Blitz's mount turned him, he spotted somebody else in dark blue flinching and then re-aiming a handgun. Blitz was faster; in a blink, he pulled out his Luger and put a penny sized hole through the fucker's forehead. With that done, he used his other hand to press a knife against the lower-eyelid of the one he was riding's left eye.
"Might wanna calm down there, monkey-fluffer," Blitz coached. The human threw themselves straight back, slamming Blitz against the ground with a portion of a human's body weight. Because Blitz saw it coming, he was able to grit his teeth and endure. It still knocked him loose enough that the cop could grab under his tail and wrench their way free. They stumbled back a couple steps, fumbling to get a gun out of their holster. Only the gun was made of plastic for some fuckin' reason. Before they even had it properly pointed at Blitz, there came that proper rifle-shot from up in the rooftops, and the thing exploded into shards of plastic and battery-bits. "Alright you don't suck as bad as most of your type. So I'll give you the option I didn't give them..."
"That fucker!" the cop declared, tapping their chest and causing a beam of light to emit from the flashlight embedded in their vest. Her vest, as it turned out. And hers was the only badge so far tonight that didn't have that dumb black tape over it. "I fucking knew it! Why the fuck else would he send me to goddamned Tuft's Cove! So what, you're gonna kill me too? Well I'm not going down without a fight you scum-sucking shitlord!"
Blitz's posture loosened a bit. He pulled out his own flashlight and shone it at her. She was a beefy bitch, brown skinned and with a dumptruck of an ass, but she had a look of righteous fury etched into her features. "We ain't here to kill you, sugar-tits. We're here to kill another cop."
"Yeah, I bet," the woman cop said, fists still white-knuckle clenched. For the moment, she still seemed too angry to process what she was seeing. "And while I'm distracted your buddy can... can... What the fuck are you?"
"A professional, bitch," Blitz said. "You feel like telling me where – the fuck was his name – Casper Marquis is? He's the shit-sicle we're here to deep-six."
"You're here for Marquis?" she asked. She then loosened as much as Blitz did. "Well Jesus Christ Almighty, maybe there is a god."
"What just happened, sir?" Moxie asked from on high.
"I think we found our informant," Blitz said.
He'd flipped a coin, and lost, giving Blitz the freedom to choose to go after Marquis. Thus, Sam was descending into the shithole that was Notting Park. The rain drenched him, but didn't cool him. In fact, it wafted off of him in waves of steam.
They'd waited on him, telling him to go through first, if only because they wanted to have a laugh if he burst into flame and died trying to pass through the portal. Predicting that it'd be like the first time he walked through the Pride Wall, he steeled himself, and walked through deliberately and slowly. And the realm clung to him far harder than it had at the border between Pride and Greed, struggling with all of its might to hold him in his Hellish prison. And with a tearing sensation that somehow felt like sunburn across the fronts of shoulders, he stumbled to a halt in the rain, amidst the smell of sea-brine and the stench of garbage.
Moxie had lapsed into the most befuddled rambling that Sam had ever borne witness to, as he tried to convince himself that there was some way just outside of his understanding that this was possible, until Millie distracted him by pressing his head against her chest. Blitz merely snapped his fingers in dismay and shook his head. 'Well, I guess I owe you a cigar after all', said he. Whatever else they had to say on the matter was cut off, though, when the portal closed and left him in what, until the day of his death, was his home.
It was so strange. When he emerged from the alleyway in the blackness, it was onto a street that he used to walk, at this time of night, to get to Alle's place. If nothing else, Alle always had good food. Better than Sam could cook, at any rate. Alle's squad of other misfits and weirdos – of which Sam graciously accepted membership within – formed something like a family, here in this shithole of a city, a group of people trying their best to make something of a life that didn't want them.
And then Dufresne gave hir a lobectomy with a meat-tenderizer and some tin snips.
It would have been kinder if he'd just kept smashing with that hammer, if he caved in Alle's skull and let hir die there. Instead, Dufresne ripped the chunk of bone out, and with it a bit of hir brain. Just because he could. Just because nobody would stop him.
Alle never cooked again. Alle couldn't even dress hirself anymore.
The haze of steam drifting off of Sam's shoulders grew denser as he thought of the monster that had been permitted absolute carte blanche to terrorize. The buildings were short and separate here, not the sort of claustrophobic press of concrete that one would have expected of an urban hellscape. But the suburban appearance hid what was foul to its core. He knew no less than three buildings within eyeshot that were owned by narcotic suppliers or organized crime. And the yards, postage-stamp large though they were, were always ill-kept. Either overgrown to the point that they looked like a thin strip of pastureland beside a single-wide trailer home, or burnt brown and dead from things being dumped carelessly into it.
Nobody tried to be better here. Nobody was allowed to win, so nobody cared.
Sam left that patch of deceiving suburbia behind, and moved toward the built up section of this rotting corpse of a city. He pulled the hood of his hoodie down, but he could barely contain the golden light that he emitted. The hoodie belonged to the I.M.P. people, and it showcased the fourth-season – and thus second lead actor – of My Worst Angels on its chest. People around here would be confused, but that didn't matter to him. What mattered was that his head couldn't set it on fire, and it would hide his inhuman nature more or less well enough. Not that anybody around here seemed to care.
Homeless people shuffled around in the dark spaces between buildings, eyes glassy as they silently endured the rain. They had no other choice. Most anything that a homeless person could do to better their immediate condition was made illegal by a bunch of rich assholes on the city council decades ago. So they would endure. Maybe they would get pneumonia, and get the release of death. Otherwise, they would be stuck here. Just looking at it again made Sam's teeth grind, and his light grow brighter.
There, ahead, was his building. Well, Vanderkleuw's building, make no mistake about it, but he'd lived there for almost three years, before he died in it. Sam diverted off of the road, intercepting a path he'd walked countless times before his demise. The path between work and home. It cut through innumerable back-yards of people too tired or too drunk or too high to care about his passage, sheltered him from the cutting wind of winter and protected from having to walk headlong into waves of sleet. Now, though, it was just a rut in the dirt. Sam stared down at that rut, cut by his feet amongst quite a few others. The only mark in the Mortal World that he had ever been here at all, was a strip of mud wending between a few shitty buildings in this shitty town.
He turned, and saw the spot where his demise began.
"Hey, fuckhead!" the call had come, turning Sam from his lethargic, practically zombie-like lurch back home. He'd turned so slowly, dreading what Dufresne wanted from him now. It was always painful. There was no fighting back against him, because the manchild was simply too fucking crazy to register pain, let alone accept defeat. He looked Dufresne in the eye, lit then by a full moon, unlike the near black of today under its suffocating blanket of clouds. "Stand still!"
"What?" Sam had asked, back then.
Then, what he didn't know killed him. Dufresne had been holding a gun. Dufresne never used a gun before. They didn't exactly hand out pistols like pretzels in this town. The first shot made him flinch. The second shot hit him in the chest. The third one, perhaps fired in a spate of eagerness, ground along his forearm's bones before whistling out the other side. But the damage? Already done.
"Man that's the shit! I gotta get more bullets!" Dufresne giggled as he left, not even caring enough to see how badly Sam had been hurt. And so Sam, left alone on his back in his own blood, had been forced to a stand. To stagger. He was so close to home. To where he'd left his phone, for reasons of being too groggy that morning to take it with him. He couldn't speak, let alone shout for help. And three gunshots would have done a lot to make anybody nearby lock their doors and pretend that they weren't there. Sam knew the numbers then. He knew them better now. Thus, with steam roiling off of him in blankets, Sam followed the path he'd walked in the day of his death.
There, the back door. His apartment was right in the corner, next to the entrance nobody used because it was where the garbage was piled. Even with the rain washing the filth and foetor away, it still lingered in the air, sweet and foul. The bags were piled just as high today as they had been on his last day. The bins filled past the points where they could close. Food waste where there should be plastic. Plastic where there should be food waste. Why should the people here care? They had no stakes in waste management, because they reaped no reward and suffered no additional penalty beyond the hell of living in this building. He ran his fingers along the rusty pipe that served as a hand-rail up the three steps preventing wheelchair bound people from getting in. And he found the little rod that he inserted into a rust hole. It stood to reason that nobody would remove it. They wouldn't even think about what it was for.
Sam took that little rod and shoved it into a hole in the lock, and the thing unlatched. He wasn't in the habit of losing his keys, but knowing that this shitty lock had a simple override was a life-saver when he and Toby had one of their rare drinking nights. The moment he was inside, the steam faded, no longer being actively moistened and his clothes quickly becoming dry. There was nobody in the hall. Why would there be? Even in the height of the day, there was no reason to leave an apartment unless you were going somewhere. Sam closed his eyes, walking with his fingers trailing the wall. Nine steps, and then the doorframe. A walk he'd made countless times, almost unconscious from exhaustion.
The door was locked at a test. And since Sam was not in possession of his old body and its personal effects, that meant he didn't have his key. But just like how the outer door had a workaround, so did his own. He grabbed the deadbolt and the handle, and jiggled both as hard as he could. After a few seconds, and a bit of rattling, the door popped open. A trick he learned on those days where his key simply would not unlock his door. He leaned forward, resting his brow against the door for more than a few seconds. Was he really going to do this? Was he going to discover his own unremoved corpse? Or had they done the sensible thing and removed in in the month since his demise? He didn't know which one would upset him more. But at this point, fuck it. No direction left but forward.
His doormat was rolled up next to the door. Sam tilted his head at that. He'd certainly not had the wherewithal to do that on his dying day. He gave it a nudge, allowing it to flop open, showcasing the fat flakes of dried blood soaked throughout it. The floors were concrete with shitty linoleum tile stretched over them. The trail of his blood, which he'd held into his wound until he reached this point, ought have been obvious, leading toward his chair. But instead, the trail was... almost gone. Just spots of it in those impossible to clean nooks in badly designed 1980's plastic tiles. It returned, however, in the 'living room', a grandly named edifice playing host to a chair and a heavy-as-shit CRT television that sat on the floor next to an outlet. The blood here showed his passage.
There, he had fallen. Red mixed in with carpet that looked like somebody made a pattern out of vomited-up corned-beef and cabbage, turning swathes of it black. He bled here for some time. A pool, not quite circular. Then, he got up, to crawl. If the lack of the stink of meat-rot hadn't informed Sam, his hazy memories of that dying moment confirmed. His corpse was gone. Ahead, to the larger pool of blood, a meter away from his ratty-ass chair, and to the phone which... yup... was still plugged in, and sitting on its armrest. There, Sam had fallen. He didn't remember anything after falling, so that was where he died. Slowly, painfully, as the last of his blood emptied onto the horrendous carpet.
He picked up his phone, delightfully showcasing that it was at 100% charge. And that he should unplug it so as not to waste energy. He flipped the thing open, because Sam in life had been poor as shit and thus couldn't afford a smartphone until after he died. Thirty missed calls. Sam frowned at that. Who the hell had called him?
He started to arduously thumb through them. Lulu. His brother. Lulu again. His brother again. And again. Then eleven from an unlisted number, one after another. All beginning the day after he bled out on the carpet. He wasn't sure what to think about that. He'd been certain that nobody would even notice if he died. And according to this, not only did people absolutely notice... they may have even cared.
"I guess I..." Sam began.
He was interrupted by a baseball bat smashing into his temple. The impact, unexpected as it was, sent him flying to the floor, but it didn't actually hurt that bad, and it didn't have that sickening quality to it that most blows to the head he'd suffered did. After he blinked away the shock, he back-rolled to his feet, barely getting out of the way of another, downward swing that would have been perhaps a bit more stunning. He hurled his phone at the bludgeoner, catching them square in the face. They recoiled back, biting off furious profanities as they did. Sam's eyes narrowed, beaming a spotlight of golden light that framed his would-be assailant.
Lulu.
"You picked the wrong apartment to burgle you grave-robbing COCKSUCKER!" Lulu screamed at him. Sam leaned back, pulling the hood from his head and allowing his hair to bathe the entire room in gold, as though a cheerful bonfire had been lit in the space where 'living room' became 'kitchen'. She looked... drawn. Lulu had always had a hunted-animal look about her, which came part in parcel with being incredibly attractive and incredibly economically disadvantaged, and then having severe mental illness dumped onto the two to make a deadly stew that she would fight her entire life to hold at bay. She didn't even trust herself to know that what she was looking at was even there, in the best of times. And yet when she looked at him... Sam blinked, pulling his stare from her eyes. So he could do it on the living as well as the Damned? Good to know.
"Don't be afraid, I'm not here to hurt you," Sam blurted out.
"Wait... Wait," Lulu said, her brow furrowing, her lips trembling. She spent an hour each day 'uglying' herself so she would avoid attention, and still people found her, and used her. Disgust at herself and shame roiled under her wounded surface. She wanted to die, but was too afraid to kill herself. Stop looking inside her head, Sam.
"I'm not here to rob anybody in this building. I need to find B..."
"Sam?" she asked.
Sam was caught silent. He had no human disguise. She saw the demon he currently was.
She saw a demon, and knew it was Sam.
Tears welled her in her eyes, and the bat fell from her hands. Before he could say another word, she ran at him, and tackled him with a hug as she began to weep.
Usually, being king was spectacular. Then there were days like this that it got on his nerves, and made him wish he had the freedom to burn everything down and walk away.
The alarms had sounded in the Hall of Bells, that one of the Most Ancient Laws had been broken. It infuriated him to no end that there were only so many bells, and thus only so many Laws he could keep track of, but this one was a big one. If it became known that his ship was getting this leaky, the rest of his brothers would be down here in a heartbeat, and he'd never get another chance to do something fun for years, if not centuries.
"Do you remember when I told you I wanted to rule Hell, my sweet?" Lucifer asked, as he glared at the Breach Notice in his hands, as though his outrage could make it un-exist.
"You were in a particular state of ruinous anger, if my memory serves," Lilith answered him, sprawled as she was across his desk wearing something that more suggested an outfit than was one in actuality. She loved to tease him. Mostly because she knew if she really got under his skin, she would richly enjoy the punishment he meted out for doing it. Again, it was one of the many perks of being king. Nobody could say fuck-all about what he did with his queen.
"I'm starting to think I might not think clearly when I'm angry," Lucifer noted. His usually grinning face had a strained expression. One of the Damned had escaped from Hell. His brothers were going to tear his toys apart out of sheer outrage at the thought. The last time a human got out of Hell, they made stories about him, until Lucifer chained his ass to a rock and told him to start pushing it up a hill. Now, it was a cautionary tale.
Had it really been twenty one hundred years since he killed Zeus and massacred Olympus? How time flew.
"And even if that wasn't all I needed right now, my Proxy keeps throwing status reports and other petty bullshit at me, as though I need to know anything about his day-to-day goings on. What am I? His nurse? Go out there and do your fucking job, Birch! It's probably the same fucking Sinner that got out of Pride! But no, he's got to keep throwing paperwork at me. FUCK!"
Lucifer slammed his fists down on the table so hard that it tore two fist sized chunks out of it, despite the fact that it was made of burnished sladestone, which was as much harder than diamond as diamond was to talc. With that fit of pique out of his system, he let out a snarling breath and picked up the report Birch foist on him.
"Is it really that bad?" Lilith asked, not in the least bit concerned despite the fact that she was inches away from a blow that would have clipped short a mountaintop.
"There are rules. Rules against fraternization amidst classes. It gives the smallfolk ideas. Ideas I don't want to have to deal with them having," Lucifer said, now actually reading the thing instead of skimming over it and immediately lapsing into a glorious venting of fury. The Prince of Flowers fucking an imp. Or more accurately, an imp fucking the Prince of Flowers. Damn it all, Stolas, why couldn't you have been fucking discrete about all this bullshit? It's the way of Nobles to fuck their staff, either figuratively through wage-theft and cruel treatment, or literally as Stella did with her legions' Legate Damnatio. As long as you keep it behind closed doors and out of the news, put your cock wherever you want. Put it in an electrical-socket if you want, just don't let people see you doing it.
Stolas seemed to be quite taken with the imp, if nothing else. Speaking of him in such sweet terms at the Harvest Moon festival in Wrath, taking calls from him in the middle of meetings with others in the Ars Goetia. And then – AND THEN – Lucifer turned on the television one night and saw Stolas' Grimoire in the hands of some clown with a murder-streak in a commercial. This was not how subtlety was done, people.
"What do you think I should do to him to teach him how things are done in Hell, my sweet? Maybe I should spill his daughter's blood to correct his behavior?" Lucifer asked.
"Perhaps," she said, trailing a finger down his face as she lazed. "But if you do, who are you going to replace Buer with?"
"Stolas, my sweet, not Buer," Lucifer said.
"Oh I am aware," Lilith said, twisting so that she could loom over him with that irresistible smile on her lips. "I am aware that if you do what I know you're thinking of doing, it'll be ten times the work you think it'll be. A chain reaction that you're too angry to see the fuse of right now."
"Explain," Lucifer said, forcing his anger back a bit. Because for all he was King... Lilith didn't sit at his side simply because she was the finest piece of ass in Hell.
"If you harm so much as a feather of down on Octavia of Goetia's head, you will lose the loyalty and service of the Prince of Flowers forever. If you kill her, then he will instantly raise his banner in open rebellion against you. And a third of all of Hell will join him, including the Pontifex Vermiculii. You can't win a second war against Satan with half of the army you used to fight him now on his side. And especially if your brothers are going to keep sticking their noses where they don't belong. It wouldn't be the end of your rule, far from it... but would you like to be able to sleep at night for the next few centuries?" Lilith ended by tipping his chin up so that the two of them were nose-to-nose by the end.
"Satan would never join Stolas, after all the Prince of Flowers did to break his armies during the Invasion," Lucifer hissed, breathing deep the smell of her.
"He wouldn't do it for Stolas. You know how Satan is with children. He is rather fond of Octavia. Many of the Ars Goetia are as well," she said at a throaty whisper, eyes lidded and locked onto his own.
"You always did know how to see the way of things. I knew you were more than just a great set of tits and ass," Lucifer said, his hand curling around the back of her neck.
"If you really want Stolas to suffer, find a way to reduce his power base, not galvanize it," she whispered in a singularly seductive tone. As though she were actively trying to get a bit of his dick rather than direct his internal policy. "His relationship with his wife is strained. If you want to put an irrevocable breach between them... order her to throw one of her Angel Satin dresses into the Abyss. She's got two of them, from all those Exorcists the two of them killed when they were still THE power couple in Hell. So if she is told why she must throw away her most valued pieces of attire..."
"I love the way you ruin marriages," Lucifer said, dragging his bride into a lip-lock that was just this side of pornographic. The worries of the day melted away against warm flesh and cold blooded realpolitik, and he had almost forgotten about the shit-storm which was a Sinner in the Mortal World and started to dig into his wife when the doors to his office were unceremoniously kicked open. Standing at the doorway was the last person he wanted to see in this or any other lifetime. Despite the fact that it took the form of two people, there was a Weight to them, as though all that walked these halls was merely a fraction of their truer, larger selves. The only other being in all of Hell who showcased that state of being was Lucifer himself.
He thought about ignoring his stick-in-the-ass counterpart and simply starting to fuck his wife on his desk despite him.
But Michael had to go and clear his throat, as another angel clad in heavy ballistic plate armor entered the room, casting cold white light around him when he did.
"Oh, Michael! I didn't see you there? Were you just going to stand there like a lump as I create another Nephilim? Or is this a matter of your business instead of my pleasure?" Lucifer said, idly pushing Lilith out of the way so that she didn't stand between the two archangels. Potentially three, depending on who was inside that armor. Lilith had the Old Magic, and was personally cursed by God, but that was nothing compared to the power of the Archangels. Let this stay in the family. Keep her out of this.
Michael didn't rise to his provocations. He looked... drawn. For all he had the same alabaster skin as Lucifer himself, and was supposed to be the Most Glorious of the Archangels that remained at the Father's side and bearer of the vaunted Gift of Glory, he looked so very very worn down. As though somebody had taken a harsh sandpaper to him and ground down that glory, leaving exhaustion in its wake. His pallor was closer to grey than it was to white. His hair, not shining golden, was faded like dry straw.
"I don't have time for your petty games, Lucifer. You know why I'm here," he said. Even his voice had changed. Where was his bombastic righteousness as he ripped the wings from the back of Lucifer's lieutenants? Where was his explosive wrath when he kicked Lucifer out of the brilliant fields of Heaven? Now he sounded... well... tired. Still, Lucifer tightened the control of his shit-eating grin.
"Do I? Maybe I've been a bit busier down here than you have, standing with your mouths open at the tip of God's dick as he has a wank. I have a realm to rule. If you would kindly go fuck yourself somewhere else, I have work to do."
"I am reminded why I hated you so much," the one in the heavy armor said. It was patterned in ornate hexagons. Raguel. Probably Raguel. It wasn't like Lucifer kept a library of his asshole brothers' voices to remind himself of which each one was, eons after the Fall.
"I'm not that bad when you get to know me," Lucifer said. "I'm worse."
"Oh for God's sake..." Michael muttered, tweezing his brow as he did. "Raguel, don't refight a war we already know he's lost. We have a job to do."
"Killing the Heresiarch is a job," Raguel prompted.
"As satisfying as that would be, it's not why we're here," Michael said, his eyes drilling into Lucifer. And those eyes had changed, too. Before, they might as well be glass, full of God's Purpose and not much brains. Now, they burned with a tightly controlled anger which seemed entirely Michael's own. Something was going on up there. Something which forced Michael to stop being such a prig. But Lucifer didn't have the time nor the freely available brain power to figure it out. He would have to trust Lilith to give him the play-by-play when these two idiots left. For now, he needed to mollify them before they got pissy about a Sinner walking the World. "Hand it over, Lucifer. We know it's down here."
And at that, Lucifer's worries slammed into a tree and died. So this wasn't about the Sinner in the mortal world? If anything, Lucifer's grin grew wider.
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you mean," he said, and might have even been honest about it. Oh, this was going to be fun.
Of course, it had to be fucking raining.
It didn't make it harder for Loona to track the target. She could literally track him through a mile of solid stone if she had to. As soon as she had a target, she could find it. Was this because she was a Hellhound in general, or was it specific to her, she couldn't say. But damn it it was convenient to not have to casting around to find your target. And doubly in this case, because the target wasn't doing much to conceal himself. But still, it was raining. And that meant she was cold, wet, and on the verge of voiding the contract and just killing the shit-stain when she saw him.
"I never get used to the weather up here," Millie said. "Why's the rain so cold?"
Loona had no answer to give her. She just followed her nose. Even if that nose was, at this moment concealed under an essentially bulletproof glamour. The path they walked was through another shitty human town filled with shitty human people. It probably didn't help that Loona was dressed for Hell and not for a rainy podunk, so she showed more skin than most. Every now and again, drunk or otherwise miscellaneously idiotic people tried to catch her attention, cat-call her, or get in her way. A glare was enough to set them walking again.
Tiff was right, it turned out; a harsh glare can turn away stupid.
The bar that they sauntered into was very quiet for a bar in the small hours of the morning. And the instant that she saw the target, she could see why. Everybody had their heads down, practically stooped over their drinks, forcefully ignoring the boomalope in the room. Which was fucking stupid, because if you ignored a boomalope and it tripped the wrong way, it'd blow up and kill you. Still, these mortal morons seemed to think that ignoring a psychopath would protect them from him. It certainly didn't protect the girls he was imposing himself on.
Just as the client said, Dufresne was skinny, tall, and kinda ugly. His jawline came to a point, and under most circumstances his chin disappeared into his neck. His skin was pock-marked and covered in blotches, something the client called 'cystic acne'. But it was his eyes that were the worst part of him. The naked, unashamed cruelty in them was practically demonic. The last time she saw eyes that cruel, they had ordered Loona to prove to the Radio Demon that she had killed him. If there had been any hesitation in Loona's heart as to going through with this, it fucking evaporated in that instant that his eyes scanned past them as they swept the room.
Dufresne had a gun in the back of his waistband, and at least two knives. From the drug-stink wafting off of him, he was high as shit on something, and had on his person some amount of cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, as well as zolpidem, rohypnol, and GHB. This guy wasn't taking any chances when it came to getting into women's pants, whether they wanted him to or not. And it was clear and obvious from the nervous, fearful scents of the girls he was with – let alone their expressions – that they DID NOT WANT what he was offering them.
"Wow. That guy's a super-creep," Millie muttered, disgust plain on her face.
"We were told he would be," Loona said. The Grimoire hovered invisibly behind her, beyond the senses of the mortals until she actually grabbed it. She'd need it close at hand for what they were doing. How in the hell the client knew how to turn on that feature of the book, she didn't know, because the Ars Goetia did not give their secrets away to former mortals, but you know what? She'd take it. The urge to vigorously shake the rain off niggled at Loona, but right now, she had to at least basically appear human. Humans did not shake like dogs to dislodge the wet. Or at least, most of them didn't.
So valiantly ignoring the rain pressing her hair down and hoping she didn't already smell of wet-dog, she went up to the bar and thumped her fingertip against the bar. The bartender, glad to have somebody to serve who wasn't a violent sociopath, instantly put a rum-and-coke in front of her. Not what she would have ordered, but he didn't even ask for payment. Just kept glancing toward the door, and her, with a pleading expression. Like he was asking for her to turn around and leave while she still could. Loona turned a glance to Millie, who was trying to clamber up the very tall stool, and rolled her eyes. Best get this trainwreck rolling.
She knocked back the human liquor and rounded the sociopath who was their target, and grabbed one of the women by her arm. "What the fuck did I tell you about sitting in my fucking seat?" Loona demanded, and hurled the girl off of the stool. She landed with a squawk of alarm on the floor, her glass shattering next to her and spilling its contents into her hair. "That's what I thought. Get the fuck out of here before I get mad!"
"What is..." the other one, shocked into stillness, asked.
"And who the fuck said you could say one FUCKING word?" Loona grabbed that one by the back of her neck and shoved her off of her seating, taking the stool herself. The second woman, perhaps having better balance than the first, didn't fall. Without another thing said, the second picked up the first and hustled out of the bar.
"Hey! I'm not done with you yet!" the target shouted, his hand reaching for his gun.
"The fuck are you gonna use that for? Wanna fuck a corpse?" Loona chided. The target turned to her, a nearly demonic look on his ugly-ass face.
"I was half way into those cunts. Who the fuck are you?" he spewed.
"Thirsty. Tequila!" she promptly ignored him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Millie mouthing 'what are you doing?', but frankly, she was pretty sure he had the number on this one. The target stewed in stormy silence as the bartender poured a shot. The target's hand raced out, abandoning pistol for bottle.
"Leave it," he said, glaring at her. As he did, that glare took on a different kind of cruelty. "You drink on me."
"Score," Loona said, and she first slammed down the shot, then pulled hard from the neck of the bottle. She knew that humans would have gagged, choked, and sputtered to drink this garbage tequila in such a fashion, but she wasn't human. She was a member of a race which named the stars long before monkeys evolved, let alone men. "How come I never seen you around here?"
"What do you mean?" the target asked, his piggish eyes narrowing. "I'm here all the time."
"The fuck you are. This is the first time I'm seeing you. I've even seen that bitch more often than you," Loona gestured to the doors, which were still swinging with the exodus of the target's would-be-victims. As she poured another glass, she was aware that he slipped something into it.
"So what'd they do to piss you off?" she could practically hear the grinding of the gears changing in his head. A human of subtlety this guy was not. She was also aware that the other patrons were watching the strange insanity she was showing off. And Millie was one leap away from hacking his legs off. Good woman.
"You don't deserve to know," Loona put even more dismissal into her words than she ordinarily would have felt for this creature. It was a hard squeeze, but she was pretty sure a few more drops than usual came out. And it seemed to in the same moment outrage and intrigue him. This was somebody who was used to people pissing themselves when he entered their rooms. And she was the farthest thing from pissing herself. Maybe if she drank the rest of this bottle of tequila, but even then, she'd proved to Tiff that she was capable of putting away more liquor than most, even compared to other Hounds, let alone a poorly shaved ape considering what to put into her next drink. She raised her glass to where her snout was, hidden by the glamour, and took a whiff. Alcohol and MDMA.
Yeah, she was probably safe. Down it went. She then poured another, which chased the first before he could interfere with it. "You know, I was close to getting somewhere with those bitches," the target said. "And I don't like being blue-balled. Do you know what I do to people who cock-block me?"
Loona shrugged, making it clear she didn't care. Which incensed him more. Come on you dickless shit. Either reach for your gun or quit being a little bitch about this. She didn't say that part, because that would absolutely cause him to get his gun. And while her hide was tough, it was not bulletproof. Either way, she disliked being in the same room as somebody that reminded her even obliquely of Nathan Birch. The sooner she dragged this shit-sucker to hell, the better for her sanity.
"This place is boring," Loona announced, pointedly giving him a chance to roofie another one of her drinks. "You know any place better?"
"I can think of one," he said. She knew angry-horny when she saw it. It was the way Blitz was the first couple of times he went to see the DTF-ey Owl. She slammed the drink back, to a very faint warmth glowing in her belly.
"Then lead on," she said. She wagered if she were human, she would have tried to stand up from her stool, and immediately face-planted on the ground. Because she was a Hound, she was not even properly buzzed. The target motioned her ahead of him, through the back door of the building. The bar-keep cowered away, allowing this moron to pass through the building, and into the back-alley, which was suffering under another driving blanket of rain. She grumbled and held a hand up to shield her eyes from chilly water. "So where are we..."
She was cut off when she felt a prick into the back of one of her arms. She turned, and saw that the target had produced a syringe of something, sending it right past her hide and into her body. She turned a look to Jean-Pierre Dufresne, who had the biggest, cruelest smile on his face.
"Night night, bitch," he said.
To Be Continued