Kiss & Hell (39 page)

“Delaneyyyyyy! Pull the fucking plug!” Marcella screamed so harsh and frantic it made her jump.

She dove through the tangled mess, landing on her knees, yanking at anything she could get her hands on. With trembling fingers she found the thick cord that led to Clyde’s ventilator and yanked.

With everything she had in her.

Sending up a desperate prayer that Clyde’s journey would be successful.

“Jesus!” Marcella huffed, the scuffle of her feet stopping as she expelled another breath.

Delaney’s breath shuddered in and out, too, when she saw Marcella’s feet stop moving.

It was done.

Let the weeping and wailing commence.

Her hands reached for the edge of the bed, hauling herself up off the floor to come only a hairsbreadth from Clyde’s handsome face.

But the sob of agony she’d been about to wail turned to a gasp of surprise.

“Delaney, Delaney, Delaney. How goes it, sunshine? We really have to make it a point to get together more often than every fifteen years, don’tcha think?”

Satan strolled to the ventilator and flipped a switch with long, milky white fingers.

“Battery pack—every ventilator has one,” he remarked with casual nonchalance.

And then he grinned.

twenty-two

Delaney looked to Marcella, whose chest heaved from keeping Clyde away from the bed. She clung to his big hand, positioning herself in front of him, clearly taking no chances he might make a sudden break for his body.

Delaney’s hands went possessively to the shell of Clyde’s form, prepared to shield him if need be. She clamped on to his forearm while beads of terror-induced sweat popped out on her forehead.

Satan clucked his tongue, leaning over the bed and chucking Delaney under the chin. “So here we are, Goody Two-Shoes. You, me, and the souls I’d better have when this conversation ends.” He flapped his pale hands at her. The black T-shirt he wore, which said
Don’t Say No until You’ve Seen My Dungeon
, stretched over his thin chest when he spread his arms wide. “Back up, do-gooder, or you’ll force me to singe that pretty hair of yours. Vincent’s soul is mine, and I think I’ll take the rocket scientist’s, too.” He pointed at Clyde. “He did a bad, bad thing—punishment is my only option.”

Delaney’s eyes narrowed, her lips thinning. Not a fucking chance on earth she was leaving Clyde before he crossed. He’d have to tear her away from him. That meant stalling him. “The fuck I will,” she spat, curling her fingers into Clyde’s shoulder.

Satan heaved a playfully tortured sigh, his sculpted face taking on a put-upon expression. “Oh, Delaney. So righteous—so indignant—so old. Do you have any idea the shit you stir up? You’re like this big metaphoric spoon in a pot full of perfectly good waffling souls. Not that I minded all that much. Most of the time your interference was pretty harmless.
Most
of the time. If you’d just stayed out of things, Delaney Markham, if you’d just kept your Susie Sunshine crap to yourself, none of this would be happening. But no—here you are, spreading your fucking rays of sunshine everywhere. Not to mention, you made me leave a perfectly lovely vacation in the Falklands because you just couldn’t let this joker alone, and it appears my staff is incapable of collecting a simple soul. Do you have any idea the burdens I bear?”

Delaney narrowed her gaze, her eyes slits in her head. “Take Vincent, leave Clyde the hell alone,” she growled.

“Yeahhhh, I’ll get right on that,” he taunted with glee.

Marcella’s eyes captured hers for the smallest second—her lips moved soundlessly, repetitively, compelling her to read the message she was trying to send. The only thing Delaney was clear about was that she had to stall until she could figure it out. What better way than to poke at him? “Clyde’s soul isn’t yours to take, you freeloading asshole!”

Satan chuckled, thick and resonant. “Says you, princess. Besides, who’d stop me?”

Yeah. That presented a pickle. Truly, it was too bad these powers she’d been given didn’t include the gift of screaming fireballs and the ability to produce, like, locusts.

He turned his attention to the soul in question. “And you”—he pointed at Clyde, who appeared incapable of anything more than remaining frozen in place—“are in for some really deep shit. Though I will say, I admire your craftiness, Clyde Atwell. Job well done; deceiving the entire filing department was brilliance. The only trouble is, you just didn’t do it for the right reasons. If you’d just paid attention in class and taken to heart the whole ‘evil is your ruler’ message, I’d have personally planned your interdepart ment celebration for induction to level two. We’d have had cake and ice cream and all the frills.” Satan let go of a mockingly forlorn breath of air. “Sadly, now I have to drag your sorry ass back and throw you in the pit. I hate doing that. There’s always screaming and loads of whining. A real yawn.” He made an expression of supreme distaste.

Out of nowhere, Marcella hissed, “Delaney—get away from there. Get out of here
now
!” Clyde had begun to stir, pushing her forward again. Her face grew red from the effort it took to keep him at bay.

“You!” Lucifer roared, stabbing a finger in Marcella’s general direction. “Shut the bloody fuck up, hot pants. You’re next,” he threatened, letting his fingers take the shape of long, thorny claws.

Delaney couldn’t think, she only knew she had to stall the motherfucker while she tried to read the message Marcella was sending with her eyes, now nearly coal black, burning for Delaney to read the meaning in them. “Uh, question, O Horned One?”

He grinned again, innocent and boyish. “What’s that, Gan dhi?”

“Do you always wear that color? It’s so wrong for you. It says nothing about who you really are. I mean, you being the supreme-ness of evil, well, I guess I just thought you’d have a better grasp on the best color to convey that. Black is so trite and overdone, don’t you think? I’d so go red if I were you.”

Satan threw his head back and laughed. When he tilted it upward once more, he popped his lips. “Clyde’s right, Delaney. You’re a fucking riot. Now move. As in
now
.”

Delaney winced. “Wait! Just one more question, I mean, it isn’t every day you meet the devil, right? If I passed up the chance to ask you a couple of questions, I’d never forgive myself . . . I have a million, but I promise to limit them to just a couple if it’s not too much trou—”

“Ask!”

Ohhhhhh, if the twist of his mousy face was any indication, patience was wearing thin, and she still didn’t understand Marcella’s signals. “Um, who does your hair?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he narrowed his gaze, focusing on a prone Clyde.

“Wait!” she yelped, pulling the hospital bed toward her. “I swear, just one more thing, and I just know you’re going to want to give me an answer because it’s all about your maniacal genius. Honest. Why did you assign someone to—to—” Shit, she’d fumbled.

His eyebrow rose to a pointy arch. “To make you go all emo?” He drew a finger over his wrist with a lascivious wink of his red eye.

Delaney waged a battle with her flaring temper and the bile rising in her throat. “Yeah. That.”

“Because you took something from me. On the off chance you didn’t notice, I’m a horrible team player.”

“Vincent?”

“Don’t be silly, Suzy Q. Aw, sure, at first I was a wee bit angry that you’d kept Vincent’s soul from me longer than necessary—I was sad because I made an extra effort to come and collect him personally. I don’t do it often—delegation is a must when overseeing my den of iniquity—but I happened to be in the area, and it’d been far too long since I’d collected a soul. Being a hands-on kind of guy, I figured I’d roll out the red carpet for Vincent. Imagine my dismay when I found you’d ruined my grand gesture. Naturally, because you did steal from me, I was obligated to do the whole dramatic display of typical deviltry that night. You know, the one where I roared threats about your loved ones while I lobbed fireballs and screeched in my scary, outdoor voice? What kind of evil ruler would I be if I didn’t? And look at what my crazy rant that night ended up doing to you—you have no human friends. No special someone to cuddle with while you eat grass and wheat germ. I took far greater pleasure knowing you’d turned into the Crazy Dog Lady all on your own than I ever could if I’d managed to expunge you that night personally. In fact, I was almost thankful it played out like it did, because it lightened my evil workload. You have no idea the pressure living up to a label like the Prince of Darkness has, honeybuns. But as for Vincent? You silly. I knew I’d have him back one day. It was just a matter of patience.”

All these years she’d lived with that ominous threat hanging over her head had been wasted energy. Quite frankly, that burned her butt. But Marcella was still pleading with her eyes, so she kept poking him with her imaginary stick. “Ah, then it was the souls. I stole souls from you and crossed them before you could get to them. Methinks you’re just a jealous weenie. Unattractive in a Hell lover, don’t you think?” she taunted, followed by a giggle that would surely turn hysterical if she didn’t figure out what in fuck Marcella was doing.

“I like you, Delaney. Nay—I’m enraptured by you. You’re saucccyyy,” he hissed the letter
c
. “I meant exactly what I said, cookie. I could give a rich man’s dick
who
you cross. Most of the souls you cross belong to weak, pathetic losers who’d spend all of their time crying and cowering on my turf—droll, very droll. Not one of them had a contract with me either. Except this one particular soul . . .”

He was toying with her, the fucktard. It was all about the game, and she’d just have to let him poke her back because she just didn’t get what Marcella wanted of her, and she needed time to figure it out. If she reached for that switch, Satan would fry her like so much chicken. Sweat trickled between her breasts and her mouth became so dry she almost couldn’t pry her tongue from the roof of it, but she persevered. “Really? Huh. And that was whose soul?” She forced herself to sound interested while her bladder squealed its protest.

Rocking back on his heels, he shoved his hands in his loose-fitting jeans and winked at her. “Remember how delighted you were to see
Grease
on Broadway two months ago? Spectacular show, by the way. You know, all those gushes and sighs because you finally got your cute backside out of the house and spent time with real live people instead of those slobbering creatures, with any number of ailments, you’ve befriended?”

“I do.”

“And do you remember what happened afterward when you used those backstage passes Miss Puerto Rico here so graciously gave you in honor of your friendship?”

Wee doggie—did she ever. There was nothing like crossing a diva actress who just didn’t want to exit stage left. What a goddamned hassle that’d been.

Talking.

It took a whole lot of talking, coaxing, begging, and pleading to get that lovely, albeit vacant of any reason, twit to see that you couldn’t just
fix
a broken neck, and really, you have to be more careful when you step on the slippery bathroom floor of your dressing room. The only place for her to go was up—and up she’d gone as Delaney beat feet out of that dressing room before anyone could see her. Harrowing indeed. “Yep. I crossed over the actress who played the lead role.” Just as that thought flitted through her memory, Delaney knew exactly what this was all about. She’d fucked up his plans again without even trying. Suh-weet.

“Yeahhhhhh,” he rasped. “Ya did. Tsk, tsk. Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, well, Hell ensues.”

Buy time, buy time, buy time
was all she could think. “So? Big fucking deal. It’s just like you said. I do it all the time.”

“Welllll, this time that particular soul wasn’t so harmless. Don’t play stupid—you don’t wear it well. That soul got where she was on Broadway because she signed a contract with me. If you’d just left well enough alone, and the dim-witted demon I assigned the case to had shown up when he should have, she’d be greasing lighting downstairs—not up. You gave her a
choice
to go into the light—a choice she shouldn’t have been allowed to make, but at that point she hadn’t done anything so despicable she couldn’t be forgiven for it or been kept from crossing because of it. See where I’m going here? You stole from me once and it was painful”—he thumped dramatically at the place on his chest where his heart would be if he had one—“but I healed. I even therapied—I faced my fears. Like I said, Vincent never stood a chance of going anywhere but to Hell ’cause he was a bad, bad boy, and I’m a patient man. I was willing to wait it out until Clyde here bought it, freeing Vinny’s soul up. But surely you see, when you did it again, there was just no recovering. What would it say about me if I didn’t lead by example? And that brings us to Vincent here.” He cast a glowing, red glance at Clyde’s body. “You donated his heart, and that was a lovely humanitarian gesture. Bravo. But his debt is long overdue,” he remarked with offhanded dryness.

“Overdue . . .” Delaney knew exactly what was overdue, but the longer she could allow him center stage, the greater the chance she’d understand what the fuck Marcella was trying to convey to her. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary—what were her eyes burning holes in Delaney’s about? If she rolled them in the direction of Clyde’s lifeless form once more, they’d fall out of her fucking head.