Chapter 6
CHAPTER6
Some days, I woke up to Azazel worshipping my body, which really was the best way to be plucked from sleep. Other days, I’d slowly come to in an empty bed, my darling demon having long gone to take care of his pressing business matters.
And then there were those days when I got startled awake by a thump on my mattress that felt like an earthquake. But it was the sight that greeted my eyes that was even worse.
I flailed awake, blinking into the light of the slowly brightening torches—they responded to my state of mind, apparently—and screamed bloody murder.
At the bloody murdered thing right next to me.
My hellhound Vengeance barked from somewhere to my left, agitated by my distress, and the hellcat on my bed let out a hiss in her direction.
You should calm your beast, Mephisto said into my mind.
I’d need to first fucking calm myself. Heart beating a million miles a minute, I scooted to the other side of the bed and pointed with a shaking hand at the scruffy, furry animal in front of Mephisto.
“What is—is that a dead hellrat?”
It is still fresh.Mephisto’s voice was positively smug. You should eat while it’s warm.
Oh my God. I buried my face in my hands, nausea churning in my stomach.
Not this again.
“You brought this for me?” I squeaked.
Obviously, he purred. The light of the torches played over his sable fur, and he extended and readjusted his bat-like wings. You are the worst hunter I have ever seen, and your demon doesn’t provide you with fresh kills.
The breakfast I hadn’t even eaten yet wanted to crawl its way back up my throat.
“You really don’t need to—”
You are clearly in need of help, the infernal feline said, his yellow eyes glowing from within. No claws, no fangs, no stealth whatsoever. I cannot watch you survive on scraps. It is pathetic.
He nudged the dead hellrat toward me with one mighty paw. My stomach lurched.
Suppressing a gag, I instead managed to smile at Mephisto. I had to handle this delicately, or else his feline ego would get bruised, and we’d all pay the price for the next few weeks.
“Thank you,” I pressed out through my forced smile. “You are so very considerate. What would I do without you?”
Starve, was the cat’s pragmatic answer.
My smile turned into a grimace.
Over the past months, Mephisto had taken a shine to me. He’d always hang out in my rooms, even though I didn’t need him as a living fire extinguisher anymore. He said it was for vermin control. I suspected he liked my company.
My suspicion proved to be correct when—after months of lurking in my presence and staring at me with an unnerving feline intensity—he started to curl up to sleep closer and closer to me. One day, he’d lain down right next to me, his furry flank in direct contact with my leg, his wings all neatly folded along his back. I’d sat paralyzed by the nearness of a lynx-sized feline with impressive fangs and claws for a good few minutes, watching his breathing turn to that of deep sleep. And then I’d surreptitiously brushed a fingertip over his shiny fur.
Just a little. Just to see if it was as soft as it looked.
He was a cat. I love cats. I’d never met a feline I didn’t want to pet, including the big ones at the zoo, even knowing I’d come out shredded to bits from that experience.
Because…if dangerous, why cute?
So, of course, I tried to pet Mephisto. I was fully prepared to lose a finger. It would have been worth it, because—0h Lord—he had the most amazing fur! So soft, so sleek, so silky.
Before I knew better, I had my whole hand pressed against him, stroking his pelt in a trance.
And instead of biting off my fingers, Mephisto purred. The deep rumble of it vibrated up my arm and let my hairs stand on end.
Ever since then, the surly hellcat had deigned to allow me to pet him every so often. Always making it clear it was the greatest gift in the history of gift giving. I’d asked Azazel, and according to him, no one else had ever been known to pet Mephisto. He’d deemed me worthy.
I felt like the Chosen One.
And then the dead vermin started showing up in my rooms. The first one, I’d almost stepped on as I swung my legs out of bed. The next one fell from the ceiling and into my lap as I sat on the couch reading, giving me an inkling of what a heart attack feels like.
Infrequently, my own personal mighty hunter would present me with killed prey, sometimes even biting it open and pulling out the guts to give me “the best bits.”
One of my proudest accomplishments in this life is not having puked right into Mephisto’s face the first time he did that.
The hellcat seemed sophisticated in some aspects—he could speak and reason, after all—but then he’d pull a stunt like that and remind me that he was very much a primitive, predatory creature in a lot of other ways. His sense of logic wasn’t always the best. And he stubbornly ignored my attempts to explain to him that I was a vegetarian.
I guess in his eyes, I was a fellow cat, and as such, I needed a good amount of blood-dripping meat and juicy intestines. He’d somehow taken me under his wing—quite literally—and took his duty to care for me seriously.
The problem was, of course, the question of how to dispose of the dead animals without him seeing it and thinking I was snubbing his efforts.
“Thank you, again,” I said as I slid out of bed, petting one of Vengeance’s three heads as she sniffed at me.
The hellhound’s tail wagged like crazy, all three of her tongues lolling out, her large body practically vibrating with excitement. She knew what was up. Smart doggo.
Now almost twice the size of a lion, the hound had grown too big to sleep in our bed, so she usually plunked down right next to it, where I’d prepared a nest of blankets for her. She’d still spend most of her time with me, either dozing in our quarters while I relaxed, or roaming the mansion at my side—deterring any critters who might consider me prey—or taking a walk outside with me. About twice a day, I’d bravely venture outside Azazel’s mansion to let Vengeance run to her heart’s content and do her business.
And on days when Mephisto graced me with one of his gifts, Vengeance would get one as well.
I threw on some clothes and then gingerly picked up the dead hellrat by its long, thick tail.
“I’ll just take this with me while I walk Vengeance, yeah?” I gestured toward the door. “As a little snacky for the way.”
Mephisto blinked those mysterious cat eyes at me. Bon appétit.
How he was able to speak all sorts of different languages but not understand how unappealing eating a rodent was to me, I’d never know.
“Thank you!” I called out over my shoulder as I made my way out of our quarters.
Vengeance followed on my heels, all excited doggie.
I waited until I’d shut the door leading from the mansion into a vast area enclosed by the black walls of the manor on one side, the humongous dark gray kennel building on the other, and open to the elements on the remaining two sides. Peering around in the ever present gloom of Hell, I decided we were safe from prying cat eyes.
Vengeance danced in a circle around me, two of her ears adorably turned inside out again. One year in, and she hadn’t really grown into her puppy ears. They simply were the floppiest bunch.
“Sit,” I ordered.
She tripped over her own feet trying to come to a stop, parked her butt on the ground and stared at me with the intense focus of a canine waiting for a treat.
“Wait,” I drawled with a raised finger.
She whined.
Still holding the hellrat by its tail, I started to spin it, faster, faster—and then I yanked back my arm and hurled the spinning rodent missile away from me.
With a yelp, Vengeance took off after it.
I coughed as the dust from her kickstart sprayed me in the face. A few yards out, Vengeance caught the flying snack right out of the air, and immediately, her heads started a growling fight about it. Even though she had one stomach, and the rat would end up there anyway, it was apparently of great importance to each of her three heads to get to chew a piece of it.
Shaking my head, I put both hands on my hips and watched her tussle with herself, which involved a few stumbles, tossing around guts and fur, and chomping sounds that made my skin crawl.
My gaze wandered to the purple lightning streaking across the dark sky, illuminating the desolate landscape in intermittent flashes. Barren, black earth stretched out in all directions, interspersed with craggy hills and strange-looking plants. Not a speck of green to be seen anywhere, though. Because where there’s no sun, there isn’t any chlorophyll to give leaves their green color.
Instead, what grew down here was closer to fungi and some strange flowers that provided the only kind of color amid the rather depressing assortment of black, red, and gray. What exactly those plants used to survive other than photosynthesis, I had no idea. Given the nature of Hell, it was probably a form of either parasitism or outright capturing and eating prey like a Venus fly trap.
They dotted the landscape with violet, white, and orange, some of them so bright, they looked like beacons in the dark. Which, considering their likely carnivorous character, was probably part of their strategy to attract prey.
I shivered despite the heat.
Far off, in the distance, fire erupted from dark, rough-hewn shapes of what I assumed were volcanoes. Clouds churned above, seemingly lit from within here and there as if obscuring a firestorm. It was actually strangely beautiful, in an apocalyptic kind of way.
And if this were one of many weather types down here, I’d truly appreciate it for its doomsday beauty. The problem was that it was the only kind of weather in Hell. It never changed. Day after day, night after night, no matter where I looked, it was gothic desolation that greeted me.
There wasn’t even a difference between day and night. No seasons, no change, ever.
My chest tightened as I scanned the bleak scenery. I missed nature. Real nature, not this horrible prop for a dystopian thriller. I missed the gentle warmth of sunlight on my skin, a fresh breeze lifting my hair. The verdant green of rolling meadows, the chirping of birds in summer trees. What I wouldn’t give to smell flowers in a park, or feel the bite in the air when winter approaches. I never thought I’d miss the cold, but my soul yearned to see even a little bit of snow.
We didn’t often get freezing temperatures in Portland where I grew up, but there were mountains close by, and if we really wanted the winter experience, we just had to drive to Mt. Hood or Mt. St. Helens.
Now, though, all I had, all day, every day, was heat and gloom and doom.
Sure, I got to see Earth’s scenery on my visits, but there was a huge catch attached to those trips—I couldn’t feel, smell or touch anything. I saw colors, I heard sounds, but that was it. The last time I’d smelled rain in the air was over a year ago, in my previous life. It had been that long since I’d felt the sun on my face.
I couldn’t even remember what it was like to feel grass under my bare feet.
There were weird-looking grassy plants down here, like brown moss crawling over stones, but I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of parasites might burrow into my feet if I stepped on that moss without shoes and socks.
Heaving a deep sigh, I rubbed over my breastbone, where an insistent ache had settled.
An eternity of this.
It wasn’t that I regretted choosing to stay with Azazel when Lucifer presented me with the chance to return to Earth. What I had gained with Azazel in my life was worth all the things I’d given up. If I had the choice again, I’d make the same decision, without hesitation.
But at the same time, I keenly felt the consequences of that choice. I’d sacrificed a lot to be here with him, and some days it weighed heavier on me than others.
A huge tongue slobbering all over my face yanked me out of my woe is me spiral. I squealed and tried to bat Vengeance away, to no avail. Now finished with her rat snacky, she was in high spirits and certainly let me know that. Her other two heads helped bathe the rest of my body in dog saliva until I was literally dripping. With tongues the size of large dinner plates, that didn’t take long.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Vengeance sat down and toppled over. Instead of getting back up, she stayed right there, presenting me her belly.
I exhaled heavily, slobber inching its way down my neck, my back, and between my breasts, dripping from my fingers, nose, and hair.
“Good thing I haven’t showered yet,” I muttered and crouched to give Vengeance a few good belly rubs. “We need to work on your licking etiquette. Yes, we do. Don’t we?”
Two of her heads grinned at me without an ounce of remorse. The third tried to catch her own tail.
“My lady,” a voice called out from behind me.
I jolted, shot to my feet and whirled around, flinging dog slobber in a huge semi-circle around me.
Paimon, one of the full-blood demons in Azazel’s service, stood just outside the side door leading back into the mansion, and when he beheld me covered in saliva, a pinched expression came over his handsome face.
I tried to right my hair a little, which ended up more like working the slobber into the strands like a hair mask. Dammit.
“Yes?” I managed.
“You, uh, have a visitor.” He grimaced. “My lady.”
A full year of living here, and I still wasn’t used to being called that, especially not by demons who could crush me with a negligent wave of their hand. It made me highly uneasy, but I just had to suck it up. I’d tried to tell them not to call me that, until Azazel had set me straight—letting them address me informally was a breach of protocol, and would reflect badly on me. It was the same damn thing again as with our honored guests. I held a high rank as Azazel’s wife, I was head of the household alongside him, and therefore all the demons in his employ ranked beneath me and needed to show respect by addressing me properly.
I was uncomfortable with that, they were uncomfortable with that, pretty much everyone was uncomfortable with that, and it annoyed me to no end.
This whole thing gave me a glimpse of what it must be like to marry into royalty as a commoner. I’d heard a few stories of regular women entering royal families, the pressure they found themselves under, the constant stress of trying to fit in and meet unreasonably high expectations born of dusty, centuries-old traditions.
Straight ticket to mental health issues, that one.
“I’ll be right in,” I said to Paimon. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “Your company is waiting in the parlor.”
And with that, he vanished back into the mansion before I could ask him who had come to see me or which of the gazillion parlors he actually meant.
I cringed realizing that I’d have to greet my guest still covered in dog spit. Making them wait while I took a shower would be impolite. Meeting my visitor looking like I just got fished out of a slime vat would be embarrassing.
Sometimes, there really were no good choices.
Cursing my fate, I trudged into the mansion and went right for the parlor closest to the entrance hall, as that one would be the most likely destination to park a guest. Vengeance trotted happily after me, the slobbering fiend.
My predicament got about a thousand times worse when I opened the door to the parlor and beheld my visitor.
Loose black curls tumbled over her shoulders, framing a face of warm, earthen beauty. Her eyes a shade darker than her light-brown skin, she regarded me with age-old poise and ancient patience. As always when I was in the presence of a Fallen, a demon from the beginning of time, I felt power pressing against my skin, the kind of humming vibration in the air of a being unfathomably old.
Even if she had once been human.
“Lilith,” I breathed.