The Devil's Wife (28 page)

      Beelzebub was sitting beside me, his wings hidden from sight. Unlike Lucifer, Beelzebub kept his tail and his claws when his wings vanished, and he couldn't get rid of them. His skin was lighter red than Lucifer's—all of the Demons had lighter skin than him, aside from Aspen—and his eyes were the same shade of blue as his nephew-inlaw's.

      Beelzebub shifted, moving slightly away from me. I pretended not to notice, instead grinning at the latest of Leviathan's sculptures.

      "So what sort of work did you do on Earth?" he asked.

      "Umm... I worked in an office. Entering data sets into a computer for nine hours a day. It was boring as hell, but it kept me away from my ex-boyfriend. Who Leviathan is currently tormenting, I believe."

      I was amazed to find that I wasn't worried about spending a day or so in Hell. Aspen was obviously an Angel— and had been for a while—because he saved me from the Hellraisers. I had seen his transformation into a Demon, and I was rethinking my perceptions of Hell and its occupants. As far as I could tell, Hell was a lot of fun, with torment only for those like Jason and his sadist 'friends'. The Demons had told me all about their time in Heaven, and I wasn't looking forward to getting there. I was considering renouncing God just so I could end up here.

      Beelzebub chuckled. "What did Clarissa do?" he asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

      "Hmm? Oh, Clarissa was a secretary in a large legal firm. She just answered phones and flirted with visiting lawyers and such all day. Then she met Luce, and there was no more flirting."

      "Ah."

      Something fwooped above us, and Beelzebub jumped to his feet, looking up. I followed his gaze as he helped me up, being careful of his claws.

      "Boss!" Beelzebub said loudly in a cheery voice. He saw the thunderous expression on Lucifer's face and he stepped back, shielding me behind his body. "Lucifer?"

      Lucifer landed in a crouch and he folded his wings back, his tail flicking in anger. "Beelzebub, you are to take Aspen and Leviathan to Earth and find every single member of the Hellraisers, and bring them down here. Alive. I don't care what you have to do to get them, bring the Hellraisers here alive."

      Beelzebub visibly shrank in stature, looking up at Lucifer, acting the same way I'd seen a dog do when it meets a more dominant dog on its own turf. He still managed to stand between me and Lucifer, shifting unhappily on his feet as he watched the Devil.

      "Move, Beelzebub!" Lucifer thundered, and I swear we jumped a foot in the air.

      Beelzebub moved to grab my hand, to pull me away from Lucifer and his obvious rage, but Lucifer growled.

      "Without her."

      Beelzebub swallowed and looked at me for a second. Lucifer twitched his finger and Beelzebub ran off, sprouting his wings and heading out onto the Frozen Lake.

      "Come with me, Jayce," Lucifer said, his voice less

thunderous than it had been before, as he led me off over the hill, towards his throne. "I will show you to your room. But—" He stopped, turning to look at me. I stepped back a step, and he made an obvious effort to calm down.

      "I am sorry, Jayce," he said with a sigh. He snapped his fingers, and I felt my shirt vanishing, replaced by a bikini top. Something itched between my shoulder blades and I lifted a hand to scratch my back.

      "Don't touch it."

      I stilled my hands as something seemed to land on my back, the weight of my high school backpack, pulling me backwards a bit. I looked over my shoulder to see two large, leathery red wings sprouting out of my back.

      I freaked.

      "What have you done?" I shrieked. "You've turned me into a Demon!" I almost fell backwards when the wings flapped, and Lucifer shook his head.

      "Jayce, relax. They're only temporary—they'll vanish when you're ready to leave Hell." He smiled at me, his black mood seemingly forgotten in the wake of my panic. "You'll need them to really get anywhere here, Jayce. Especially with Beelzebub on his mission for me."

      I frowned at him. "What are you going to do with the Hellraisers?"

      Lucifer's dark mood returned. "You and Clarissa will decide what to do with them. Come on."

      He pushed up into the air, and his wings snapped open, sending him flying into the air with a few flaps. I hesitantly tried to throw myself into the air, and the wings reacted as though Lucifer was controlling them, helping me. I fluttered up after him, following him to the edge of Hell.

~ * ~

      While Lucifer and Clarissa slept, I headed out into the world of Lucifer's cavern, not really aiming for anything. There was nothing for me to do, so I just headed out to nowhere, thinking of getting a drink.

      By the time I landed in the bar on the southern edge of the cavern, I was starting to feel more than a little thirsty. I ordered a drink from the bartender—a Demon introduced to me as Belial–-and took it out to the dance floor, looking to see if I could find anyone to dance with. They all felt solid while they were jostling me, so it was hard to imagine that any of them were dead.

      Someone slammed into my side, knocking my tequila out of my hand. The glass shattered on the ground and I glared up at the man who hit me, feeling my wings twitch irritably behind me.

      "Dude, you're so lucky that drink was free or I'd demand you buy me another one." My glare broke as I realized I knew the man.

      "Well, well. Jaselyn Haraford. I haven't seen you since high school. How have you been?"

      I frowned slightly. "Billy Dune? Man, what happened to you?"

      "Got rolled by a gang called the Hellraisers a few years ago. Shot me in the head." He looked around and grabbed my hand. "Follow me. I'll find us a place we can actually hear ourselves think."

      I allowed him to lead me away from the people and toward the cavern wall, where a bright light seemed to radiate from the small canyon between wall and floor. There was only one place in view where the light was broken up, and that was a small, thin-looking bridge made of rock, heading towards the Rift. It was a black precipice with the darkness seeming to begin in a solid wall at the edge of the cavern.

      "So you got hit by the Hellraisers?" I asked Billy, sitting down on the edge of the canyon and swinging my legs out. If I looked down, I could see the molten core of the Earth's center rolling away below me.

      "Yeah, down an alley on the way home from work. This red-skinned, winged guy showed up and brought me down here. Called himself Baraquiel or something." He shrugged and looked at me. "How come you have wings? I didn't peg you as the Demon type. Though the way you and that Clarissa Avario used to behave, I'm not as surprised as I think I should be. Were you two still friends?" he asked when he saw me twitch at the mention of her name.

      "Yeah. Yeah, she saved my ass from the Hellraisers. In the end."

      "What do you mean?" he asked, sitting beside me and dangling his feet over the edge. The warm breeze coming from the Earth's centre was comforting in the smoky cavern.

      "I started dating this guy who turned out to be the leader of the Hellraisers. He'd beat me, I'd run to Clarissa's, she'd beat him, be taken to jail, and I'd be dragged back to him. In the end I stopped running. Then it got really bad and I went to Clarissa, hoping for help. Lucifer was there, and he took the leader of the Hellraisers to the roof and pushed him off."

      "Wow. So, it was a deal with the Devil that got you these?" he tugged gently on the wings, rocking me lightly towards him.

      "Don't call him that."

      "The Devil?"

      "Yeah. The last person who called him that ended up drowning in his own blood before being thrown to Leviathan." I yawned lightly; the constant twilight was messing with me. "Besides, Lucifer's a good guy. Ask any of the Demons—he's saved most of them from certain death. But if you really want proof, ask to talk to Aspen. He really hated Lucifer for getting his entire family killed, but I think he's worked out that it wasn't Luce's fault."

      Billy was watching me with an odd look on his face. "Are we talking about the same Lucifer here?" he asked, watching me. "I'm talking about the Devil, Satan, the Antichrist."

      I opened my mouth to protest and suddenly Lucifer was there, sitting beside Billy.

      "Hey, Luce."

      Lucifer smiled at me, then rested his hand on Billy's shoulder. "The stories about me you learned on Earth are not real, Billy," he said, watching the twenty-year-old. "History is written by the winners, the ones in power."

      "I was never good at school and politics," Billy said, blushing a little.

      "Then allow me to enlighten you with the real story of the Fall," Lucifer said, then looked at me. "You can stay if you want, Jayce, but I'm sure you've heard it before. And you look a little tired."

      I nodded, yawning a little. "Thanks, Lucifer."

      "Not a worry. Would you mind spending time with Clarissa, in case she wakes up? She'll need someone there—"

      "It's all right, Luce," I said, smiling. "It's not my first experience with kidnapping and rape."

      He lifted an eyebrow.

      "Well, okay, I have experience with the rape, not the kidnapping." I stood up and flapped my wings a little. Lucifer pointed me in the right direction and I took off.

      From below I heard Lucifer tell Billy, "The first thing you should know is that I had a wife in Heaven, killed by God..."

~ * ~

      I woke up a while later to find myself alone in Clarissa's bed. I rubbed at my eyes, looking around in confusion. I was sure Clarissa had been there when I crept in with her.

      "Morning, Jayce."

      I rolled over, looking at the source of the voice. Clarissa was in the corner of the room, frying something. It smelled like bacon. "What're you doing up?"

      She smiled at me. "Well, I needed something to do, to keep myself from screaming." Clarissa spooned out eggs and bacon onto two plates. She came over as I sat up, getting comfortable against the headboard as she sat beside me.

      "Has Luce been back?"

      "Yeah. He's doing a tour of the cavern, looking for three Hellraisers that somehow escaped Leviathan."

      I took the plate and a fork from her and started eating. "Ah."

      We ate in silence. Clarissa broke the quiet first.

      "Luce thinks that you and I should work out the punishment for the men who kidnapped us. He told me that we can do whatever we want to them, and no one would ever know it was us. There would be no punishment for us." She looked thoughtful for a second, frowning slightly. "I think he's hoping we'll settle for grievous bodily harm and send them back to Earth."

      I was starting to think of things to do to the men that would make even the darkest Demon throw up in disgust and slink off in fear. Things that the Hellraisers had done to me, countless times.

      "What about removing their arms?"

      Clarissa laughed, though I could tell it was a dark

laugh, full of murderous, damaging potential. The last time Clarissa beat Jason, she'd laughed like this and three hours later, she was arrested for torturing the prick. She'd tied him up and was in the process of removing the skin from his right arm with a pair of hairdressing scissors when the police crashed through the door, called by one of the Hellraisers who paid them.

      She'd removed his skin to the elbow when the door opened. They'd found slices in Jason's wrists that would have killed him, had they been even a millimeter deeper. Countless burns littered his skin, bones were broken in vital places, and she'd been subjecting him to every indignity he'd given me, including stuffing things into bodily orifices.

      She pulled me back from that memory—I'd been hiding in the corner, screaming with my hands over my ears—with a question and a smile.

      "They wouldn't be able to hurt anyone then, would they? And it's not like we could ever be implicated in it."

      "Who would believe them if they told anyone that they'd kidnapped the Devil's girlfriend and he turned up to take them down to Hell? And that while they were down here, they lost their arms?"

      Clarissa laughed, snapping her fingers. "I like it!"

      A pair of pants, a shirt and some underwear appeared, folded, next to me. I gaped at her in shock.

      "How did you do that?" I demanded, staring at her.

      "Lucifer did it," she said with a grin. "He said that as I am his Queen of Hell, I should, at the very least, be able to control the Kingdom."

      "Wow."

      I picked up the underwear and started to dress. Clarissa turned her back on me so I could have some semblance of privacy, and I slipped out from underneath the sheet to do up my bra and pull on the jeans.