The Road To Hell Part 20

I felt like I could fly. Which was silly; humans can't fly.

"Humans do fly," Megaera says to me before I run away from h.e.l.l. "They use marvelous machines to do so. Airplanes and helicopters and gliders and parachutes and the tike. But they do fly. They just had to leant how."

No, not like that. I felt like I could step onto air and drift away.

That's because you're dead, Jezzie.

Oh. Right.

More out of habit than anything else, I took a deep, cleansing breath. Released it. But that was it-no follow-up inhale, no automatic organic switches being flipped to tell my body, Lookit, you need to oxygenate me, p.r.o.nto. After a month of breathing, not needing to was downright weird.

No worries there, Jezzie. You're going to h.e.l.l, and you're probably going to be destroyed. You won't have to fret about not breathing for very long.

Thank you very f.u.c.king much. Get out of here, Meg.

I told you before. I'm not Meg. I'm you.

A conscience with an ident.i.ty crisis. Fine then. I'll call you Peaches.

I don't like Peaches. Peaches is for a fat poodle with a stupid haircut. Peaches is for a stripper with more silicone than brain cells. Peaches is not for the conscience of a one-time succubus.

Complain to the management and get the f.u.c.k out of here.

How about Elektra? I'd make a cool Elektra.

Scram.

Peaches scrammed. Look at that-a bright side to the afterlife.

I opened my eyes and saw the strangest thing: Daun, on his knees before me, a look on his face that flowed mercurially from horror to terror to complete adoration. Awed, I thought, staring dumbstruck at the demon who owned my soul. He's completely awed.

Of me.

Next to him, the cherub, too, was gazing at me like I'd just introduced her to the joys of c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s. She covered her mouth with a delicate hand, as if trying to catch a gasp before it escaped.

I glanced over my shoulder, but I quickly confirmed what I'd already known-they were really staring like that at me, not at some magnificent G.o.d-type hovering behind me. Turning back to the stunned supernatural pair, I said, "What? Do I have something between my teeth?"

"You," Daun said, his voice breathy, "you're-"

"Never going to blend in h.e.l.l, looking like that," Angel said, her words cutting into Daun's like a celestial blade. "Your soul is clean. You'll stand out like-"

"Like an angel among the demons," Daun murmured, still looking at me in a very unDaunish way.

Before I could say there were angels among the demons, slumming as succubi, the blonde waggled her fingers. A wave of power washed over me, scrubbed me with magic. My body tingled, tensed... and changed. A cherry-red stain worked its way over my hands, my arms, my torso. On my head, my hair rippled, receded until I was bald as a lioness. Below, my pubic hair thickened and curled, then stretched out, spreading across my hips and down my a.s.s and legs until it covered my lower limbs like a fungus. I felt my feet lengthen and harden, the toes mas.h.i.+ng together and the heels pulling up. Staring at the ground, I saw hooves at the base of my legs, gleaming, solid. I didn't have to see my face to know that my eyes had transformed into those of a cat's-filled with a luminescent green and a slit for a pupil-that my lips were a leathery black, that my teeth had sharpened into fangs.

The human shape had painlessly given way to that of a scarlet satyr, minus the goat's tail and horns. My natural form. I stared at my hands, at how my claws extended, begging to rend flesh and pick out marrow from human bones.

Something swelled in my heart, but I couldn't tell if it was relief or sadness. Gah, these mortal feelings were killing me. Did kill me. Stupid feelings.

Bless me, if I was really dead, why was I still caught up in the human touchy-feely bulls.h.i.+t of emotion? Souls didn't have feelings-sure, they reacted to pain and pleasure, but they didn't waste time contemplating how things made them react. As far as I knew, they just... were. So why was I experiencing something akin to regret?

Whether demonic or mortal, philosophy still wasn't one of my strong points.

On my left wrist, the golden Rope of Hecate winked at me. The vivid red of my skin made the gold s.h.i.+ne all the more brightly. That the jewelry was on my spirit form boded very well. Now all I had to do was get Angel to do one more teensy favor...

"There," the blonde said, sounding incredibly pleased. "Don't you look like a beautiful creature of the Pit?"

I blew her a kiss. "Isn't flattery a sin?"

She blushed.

"At least I'm rubbing off on you." I ran my hands up my torso, over my bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s, up over my head. "Bless me, I'd forgotten what it feels like to be a demon."

"You wear it well," Angel said.

Next to her, Daun shuddered like a big, malefic hound shaking off water. "Spare me. No matter what plane of reality, women are all the same. You're all about the clothing. At least you didn't ask if this shape makes you look fat."

My eyes widened. "I look fat?"

"You look juicy," Angel said.

Gah! "Juicy in a squeezable way, or in like a bless me, that girl'd better do a juice fast for a few millennia way?"

Daun's mouth quirked into a smile. "Juicy in the I'd do you way."

I beamed. Daun always knew just what to say.

"Come on, babes. Let's get the party started."

Taking a last look at the trappings of my former life, a lump formed in my throat. On the ground, my naked body lay discarded. Empty. The gold bracelet on my corpse's wrist sparkled, giving the illusion of life. Bless me, my human body looked so delicate, like a porcelain s.e.x doll. Humans die so easily-a snapped neck, a shattered spine, disease. A broken heart. Was that why their bodies could experience so much pleasure-to offset how fragile they really are, how they could be extinguished in a blink?

Angel had one hand pressed against my body's forehead; her other hand was on Paul's chest. I approached him, knelt by his side. When I tried to brush his hair away from his eyes, my fingers pa.s.sed through his brow. c.r.a.p. The only ent.i.ty I could touch now was Daun, because he was bound to my soul. To everything and everyone else, I was a whisper, a hint. Insignificant.

Mental note: Being a ghost sucked angel feathers.

I leaned down and kissed Paul, pretending I could feel his lips against mine. I'm saving you, love. I promise.

Then I rose and wrapped my arms around the angel, miming a hug. As she stammered out a good wish and (ick) a blessing, I whispered in her ear (literally in-I overshot and wound up with my mouth halfway inside her face), "When we're gone, move the bracelet from my wrist to his."

She opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to agree, but I silenced her with a vaporous kiss. When I pulled back, I thought I tasted peppermint and gold on my lips.

"Farewell," she said, with all the enthusiasm of a doctor p.r.o.nouncing a patient dead on the table.

Look at that, she was trying to cheer me up. I smiled brightly at her. "See you soon, Angel."

With one final look-at Paul, at my body, at the physical reminders of my life-I turned to Daun. "Okay, sweetie. Let's go to h.e.l.l."

"Babes," he said, caressing my cheek, "that's music to my ears."

s.h.i.+fting between planes is sort of like diving into a swimming pool filled with K-Y Jelly-it doesn't hurt, but there's a moment of utter oozishness when your form exists in both dimensions. You're covered in the slippery goo of conflicting realities, and you reek of s.e.x. (Actually, that last part is probably unique to Seducers. But whatever.) "Here we go, babes." Daun led me by the hand, helped me step through to h.e.l.l, and the heat slapped me in the face. On a cold day, the Abyss hovered around 3,000 degrees. The sensitive hairs in my nostrils curled and flaked away; the fine hairs on my face, arms and belly shriveled. Sweat beaded on my brow and around my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, only to immediately evaporate. More than the feeling of the heat was its undeniable stink: an eye-watering blend of burning sewage and spoiling meat, layered on top of dirt and rot.

I grinned. d.a.m.n, I'd missed this place.

We'd emerged in a small room, dimly lit in shades of red-the light emanating through the earthen walls, straight from the Lake of Fire that surrounded h.e.l.l like the Belt Parkway surrounded Brooklyn. Around the smell of searing heat was the cloying, graveyard scent of fresh soil-and the tang of s.e.x. We were in the mountain complex of Pandemonium, home to all the nefarious. More specifically, as my nose told me, we were in the Red Light District, which housed all creatures of l.u.s.t.

Except for a squalid sleeping mat on the loamy floor, the chamber was completely barren. Unless you were one of h.e.l.l's elite, you were privy only to the common rooms, which all lesser-ranked demons shared. No individuality allowed-personalization was frowned upon, in the if-you-disobey-you-get-your-liver-plucked-out sense.

"Home sweet home," Daun said, pulling me close. "Let's you and me celebrate."

He crushed my mouth to his, bruised my lips with a violent kiss. Down in the Abyss, my soul was as solid as his rod-which, based on how his rod was currently doing pushups on my belly, was solid indeed. I opened my mouth and rode his tongue, thrilling in how a simple kiss could make my entire body hum.

Stop, my brain shouted, flas.h.i.+ng a desperate message to my body. We're on a rescue mission! Nookie later!

Then Daun's fingers slid down my back and rubbed against the rim of my a.s.s, and my brain shorted out.

Just as I started melting against his body, something hooked into the scruff of my neck and yanked. I fell backward, then I was slammed face-first into the wall. Yeowch. Talons dug into the soft flesh on the back of my neck, shooting darts of pain up the base of my head.

Someone pressed against my back, pinned me to the hard-packed dirt of the wall. A purr of delight in my ear, and then a woman's lush voice: "I knew you'd come," Lillith said.

Chapter 15.

Pandemonium Just as it registered that I was in very deep s.h.i.+t, Lillith yanked my head back and smashed it against the wall again. A burst of white exploded behind my eyes, and for a moment everything went a lovely, numbing gray. Then my forehead shrieked that getting my face mashed against solid rock hurts like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and the numbness decided to agree-it dissipated, replaced with spikes of agony driven into my head by an invisible mallet. Squashed against the wall, my face rubbed against the soil; dirt coated my tongue, slid down my throat, and my nostrils clogged with the stench of earth and decay. I squirmed, but Lillith's body pressed hard against my back, gluing me in place.

This was really, really bad.

No, forget bad. This sucked.

Behind me, Daun's voice rang out-cold, regal, almost like one of the Arrogant: "You have no business here, Lillith. Jezebel is mine."

Testosterone at its finest. You tell her, sweetie.

"Yes," Lillith chuckled, a sound like a spastic vibrator. "I see your little bond, incubus. Very clever. But my claim supersedes yours. Your bond means nothing to me."

Uh oh.

Daun snorted. "A Nightmare overruling the claim of a Seducer? I don't think so."

"I may be a Nightmare," she said, turning the word into a disease, "but I'm still the consort of King Asmodai. You watch your tone with me, incubus, or I'll have to teach you some manners."

She slowly pulled her talons out of my flesh, first one, then another, then the third and finally the last, and I bit down on my lip as my neck screeched to high Heaven, singing its pain like gospel. Fuuuuuuck, that hurt. Through the agony, I felt a rubbing pressure on my right shoulder. It took me a moment to understand what it was.

The b.i.t.c.h was cleaning her claws on me, wiping residues of me on my own body.

I snarled, rearing back to buck her off. Lillith pushed me down, then clouted my head against the wall again.

Wow, look at all the pretty stars.

"Settle down, Jezebel," she said, "or I'll get you a collar for your neck before I break it."

This is me, settling down. Maybe I'd just watch the stars and comets dancing along my field of vision...

Daun said, "Let her go, Lillith. Or should I summon Pan to moderate?"

If my neck and face hadn't felt like they'd just met the business end of a meat grinder, I would have cheered. No one willingly agrees to a G.o.d's intervention, not even a G.o.d aligned with one's own Sin. G.o.ds have very, very warped senses of humor, especially by demonic standards. I'd met Pan a handful of times over the years. He's even more twisted than Daun.

"Oh yes, incubus," Lillith said. I could hear her grin stretching her mouth wide enough to deep-throat an elephant's c.o.c.k. "Scurry along and get your satyr G.o.d. I'm sure he'll give Jezebel to me on a silver platter. That is, after he's done shoving his d.i.c.k into every orifice on her body and severing her head from her neck so he can come in her skull."

Erk. She was insane and completely graphic. I was doomed.

"That's a chance I'm willing to take," Daun said, voice smooth as satin bedsheets. "Are you?"

A heated pause, and then: "Actually, you can give the satyr G.o.d a message from me."

I felt her s.h.i.+ft, then something moved through her-I felt it as she pushed against me, tight as a s.e.x-starved gigolo-a bubble, just beneath the surface, growing obscenely pregnant as it rose up and up, and with a cosmic birth cry, it erupted out. Over the stink of brimstone shot a flash of odor, heat lightning trapped in a forest. Then a BOOM that left my ears ringing.

And Daun was gone.

I wasn't sure how I knew this. I wasn't really a demon, so my psychic Seduction sense hadn't kicked back on, and I didn't actually see what had happened to Daun, what with Lillith doing the perp push to me against the wall. But something in the corner of my mind sort of dimmed, and I understood intuitively that Daun wasn't in the room any longer. He was... gone.

Icy tendrils wrapped around my heart, squeezed, freezing my blood. Daun was gone! The psycho b.i.t.c.h had blown him away, and it had nothing to do with f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o. s.h.i.+t!

Just as I was about to fling myself into full-fledged panic, I realized that however dim, Daun's presence still hovered in my mind, a hint of a kiss, a feeling as slippery as body lotion. At least he still existed. He may have been blasted into malefic confetti, but he hadn't been annihilated. Yay for our team.

"There now. Just us girls," Lillith said.

Oh, goodie.

"I've been waiting for this moment," Lillith whispered in my ear. Then she grabbed my shoulders, hefted me up, and threw me across the room. For about two seconds, I soared gracefully through the air as if I were flying. Then I crash-landed in an unceremonious heap on the ground, like demonic bird droppings.

Ow. Ow, ow, ow.

I slowly pulled myself up to my hands and knees, spitting the dirt from my mouth. My head still ringing from my beating and Daun's abrupt departure, I looked up and gazed upon the creature who had been my Queen for thousands of years.

For a diminutive person, she positively loomed. Her bare flesh gleamed, a metallic sheen of bronze that captured all races-amalgamous, s.h.i.+fting, now the golden tones from Asia, now the deep mocha of Africa, now s.h.i.+fting again. Bordering her broad face, plaits of thick, wiry black hair dangled, the bones woven into its strands flas.h.i.+ng like gemstones. Long lashes framed her large eyes, black as leaf rot. Her pug nose displayed her nostrils in full; her bee-stung lips would have driven Angelina Jolie insane with jealousy. The apples of her cheeks flushed like the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Her body was all curves and swells-large b.r.e.a.s.t.s that begged to be sucked, a round stomach and full hips that made her appear soft, powerful thighs that could crush a lover mounting her. Her thick swatch of pubic hair both hid and highlighted her mound, advertised her s.e.x. Delicate hands; tiny feet. A fertility G.o.ddess carved of flesh; s.e.xual aggression and dominance hidden in seductive packaging.

Lillith: the First Woman, original Bridezilla, and utter psycho b.i.t.c.h from h.e.l.l.

"You owe me, Jezebel," she said, her small fists glowing with power. "For what you did to me Above, you owe me."

Eek. Do the lying stunned thing later-she's about to blow.

I scrambled to my feet just as Lillith pointed at me. Whoops. I felt the magic blasting its way toward me before I actually saw it, and I summoned up reserves of energy I didn't know I had and leapt to the right. The bolt slammed into the wall with a mighty THOOM, sending dirt showers into the chamber.