She did, and he was telling the truth. Just smoke and the dim, red lights remained.
“Why did God let him in?” Satan asked. “Did Everett pull the forgiveness card?” He sat back in disgust.
It was truly bizarre having a heart-to-heart with this man — or what had once been a man. Emma was playing games now that were totally out of her league. She wasn’t tricky enough. All she had to offer was herself, her honest opinions.
“Everett killed my love. He tossed me from Heaven. God’s captured here. Yes, God made a mistake. He wouldn’t listen to me. I knew Everett was bad!” Emma realized she’d raised her voice. She had shouted this anger at him.
The Devil smiled. “If God would just listen once in a while,” he said, “maybe there’d be fewer mistakes.” He shrugged.
Emma had flown at God’s right hand, and here she was venting to the Devil, of all people, talking about God behind His back. She tried to remind herself of the beliefs she’d held dear for so long.
“God has a bigger plan,” she said, trying to make her voice strong. “It’s not for me to judge Him.” But saying the words didn’t make her any less angry.
Satan moved from his seat to her lounge. He flicked his cigarette into the vast, empty smoke and ran a comforting and equally sensual hand up and down her leg. “That’s a good seraph. Take your opinion and choke on it. How’re the lies going down now?” His brown eyes seemed to know everything.
“Everett got in on a technicality. ‘Ask for forgiveness and ye shall be granted access at the gates of Heaven.’ But Everett never apologized — well, he never meant it anyway. His eyes never changed, never softened. He was hate from top to the bottom. He is hate.” Emma’s eyes filled with the annoying tears that formed when she was angry.
“And your love, he’s in Heaven waiting for your return?”
His massage was so calming.
“No. Sam chose reincarnation. He chose endless life.”
Satan was so understanding. If she wasn’t handcuffed, he might even convince her she had the makings of a friend.
“So that’s how it is.” The Devil switched his positions so he could sit at her feet.
He applied his effective massaging there. Emma sighed; the mix of tight cuffs and relaxing touch were overwhelming.
“You and I have more in common than you know.” He looked over her head, either playing with her mind or, possibly, indulging in a real regret.
“Tell me your story. I’ll listen.” Emma wanted to imagine that this was part of her plan too — being generous with Satan — but the distance in his eyes called to her good soul.
He stopped massaging her feet and stood, as if she might be poisonous. “People don’t ask me about me. They want to hear themselves talk.”
Emma tucked her feet closer to her body; they were chilly without his strong hands. “Maybe I’m different. Spit it out, Satan.”
He found his floating bottle of rum and took another drink. Emma was so thirsty. When he locked his gaze on her again she saw a tiny bit of hope. Perhaps finding kindness in Hell moved him. He returned to her chaise.
“Would you like a sip?”
She nodded, hoping he would unlock her cuffs. He didn’t, but he held her head and tilted the bottle. She drank deeply, though the taste made her cringe. He took the bottle away and let it float again into the smoke.
“Not a fan of rum?” He was close again, and his power and sexiness filled her whole body. He smiled wickedly before kissing her gently. “Rum tastes better on your mouth than in my glass.”
He licked his lips. Her heart battered her chest.
“I’ll tell you, beautiful Emma, the story I share with no one but live every day in my head.” He began to pace, agitated by his old anger.
“I was a good man on Earth. A true man. I was rewarded with, as you put it ‘the pleasures of Heaven,’” he said, nodding in her direction. “I fell in love with a virginal angel. She had brown hair and fawn-colored eyes. And we would laugh. I was never so witty as I was around her. I was never as strong as I was with her. And I wanted to make love to her, desperately.”
He stopped and ran a hand through the smoke. It complied and formed the picture of his lovely paramour. But when he tried to caress it, the smoke scattered. He punched the air where she’d been.
He turned to his left and bellowed, “Can I not even touch the memory of her? You have everything!”
Emma assumed he was yelling at God. She tried her handcuffs again. They seemed a bit looser, but she still couldn’t wiggle out of them.
Satan continued. “But Gabriel had designs on her as well. He set me up and taught her what it was to despise someone — because she didn’t even know how to hate, my beautiful inamorata. She was so pure.” Satan looked at Emma again and closed the distance too quickly for a human.
He grabbed a handful of Emma’s hair and rolled it in his fingers. “I saw her tender hair first. I was there to apologize, to explain the tall tales Gabriel had fed her about me, but then I heard her moaning. I thought she was hurt. Can you imagine? I ran in there to save her. To help her! I was so stupid. No one cries in Heaven — unless they’re so fucking happy.” Satan’s eyes were wet. He was vibrating with anger, reliving his horrific discovery. “Guess what I saw, Emma? Tell me, because I want to hear you say it.” He was close again and heady lust clouded her emotions.
“He was with her,” she whispered, and the evil one began nodding.
Satan straddled Emma again, aroused. “He was with her. He was in her. She wanted him!” He clenched his fists, and Emma wasn’t sure he’d remember where he was. “So you see, angel, I did what I had to do. God asked me to forgive Gabriel.” Satan punched his own hand. He barely moved his lips when he added, “I refused.”
Satan said nothing as he ran through the old battle in his head for a moment. “And then I plotted, like the bastard I knew I was.” The smoke pulsated with his anger, like a trained pet. “So after I tore shit up, I got this lovely promotion. I get to live amongst unimaginable savageness. And I get to fuck every girl that walks in my door. I have to fuck every girl that walks in my door. They can’t resist me, nor I them. Fitting, isn’t it?”
He looked again at her face. He wasn’t seeing her anymore. “But you…you came here, and you’re fighting me like you shouldn’t. You look like her, a little tiny bit. And you’ve got that same heavenly smell. And I want to do to you, Emma, what I never got to do with her.”
He put his lips on hers. His scruffy face tickled as he poured his ardor over her like syrup. His passion tasted fantastic, like honey and spice. Emma could scarcely breathe. He was an angel, just a bad one.
Angel. Angel! Everett’s plan hit her like a bolt of lightning.
“Oh my God!” she shouted.
The Devil took her exclamation for desire. She had to shake her head violently to get him to back up. He cocked his head, puzzled.
“Is she still there? Your angel?” Emma tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her move.
He nodded and swallowed some pain.
“Satan, Everett is throwing angels from Heaven. You know that, right? Even the seraphim — destroying them one by one.” Emma watched as he came to the same conclusion she had.
“What?” He hopped up from her and stood at the foot of the couch.
Emma tried to give him the information softly. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know if she’s been among them.” Sympathy surged through her, greater even than the passion she’d felt.
“What?” He seemed to be struggling to get his mind around Claudette’s possible destruction.
She hated herself a little because this could help her, but she pointed out the obvious. “Everett could be holding on to her as a bargaining chip. Seraph Gabriel has also been thrown from Heaven. I saw him among the falling stars.”
Satan was enraged. “I’ll make him cry. I’ll kill him so many times.” He began plucking a horrible array of weapons out of the choppy smoke.
The room reflect
ed his darkening mood. The red lights grew blacker, and the smoke began churning into tiny hurricanes.
“Wait! Let God go. He’ll help you.” Emma had managed to sit up, though her hands were still above her head. The handcuffs were chained to something.
Satan stopped cold and turned his head slowly toward Emma. “You think I’d trust Him? After all He did to me? My Claudette is safer with me to protect her.”
He began strapping an ammunition belt around his waist.
“Well, at least let me come with you,” Emma said. “I don’t have my wings, but I’ll have your back. I want Everett for my own reasons.” Emma missed her wings and hated her hate, but it had come on fast, like a force of nature.
Shaking his head, Satan strode quickly to a wooden door that appeared in the smoke and locked it firmly. Then he turned and in an instant was headed out the metal door Emma had entered. He paused for a last glance at her. “God stays put because I don’t trust Him. You stay put because…” He gave her a reverent nod. “I know you’re safe here.” He waved a hand in her direction and closed the door behind him. The smoke followed him out, seeping through the cracks between the hinges.
“Gah! Damn it. Damn him!” Emma kicked and noticed the Devil had changed her outfit. She now wore a full, red-leather dominatrix get-up and a matching pair of neck-breaking stilettos.
She was useless. She yanked on her handcuffs.
“That’s just hilarious. The Devil thinks he’s protecting me.” Emma stomped her foot against the red velvet of the lounge chair. A bit of dust made a tiny cloud. “And he dressed me like a slut! Humper.”
She tried the handcuffs again. Nothing moved. She bit her lip and tried to think of a way out. She heard a crackling, like a faraway vintage radio had been turned on and tuned in. A voice drifted into the huge room.
“God, please do this for her. Where she is now I can’t even imagine…”
Emma knew his voice. It was sweet and silky. He sounded so sincere.
She shouted into the deep room. “Jason? Where are you? Can you hear me? Jason! I need help!”
“…She needs strength right now. Take mine — I have too much. Take it all…”
He wasn’t in the room, but his words were. “Jason. You remembered me.” Emma felt a lump in her throat. It took so much courage for an unbeliever to pray. She was so proud of him.
“…Amen. And thank you, Jason Parish.”
“No, thank you, Jason.” Emma smiled at the sound of his voice.
The transmission stopped, and the crackle faded away. She tried her handcuffs again, and they tumbled off in a noisy clatter. She pulled her hands in front of her, astounded. Jason’s prayers had unlocked her shackles like a key.
“Yes! Yes!” She stood on the wobbly heels and waited.
She wasn’t sure if the Devil had an alarm system. It could be anything really — a dragon, a giant spider, anything. A shiver went down her spine. She took a huge breath and hoped it contained some more of Jason’s strength as she sprinted for the metal door.
“If this is locked, I’m screwed.” Emma yanked on the handle, imagining every type of evil at her heels.
The door opened with a loud creak. She closed it behind her and looked around. In front of her was the thick void she’d fallen through to get here in the first place. To her left was a long, cement hallway. Satan had hollered in that direction when he was speaking to God.
Emma had a choice: she could try to find her way out and join the Devil in fighting Everett, or stay true to God and seek Him out to try to release Him.
Chapter 9
The Hallway had to be her choice. When would she ever be left unattended in Hell again?
The void was pierced with screaming. Was it someone coming in or the Devil getting out?
There was a loud bang and a sharp flash, and the screaming stopped. Being wingless and human made Emma feel weak. She wasn’t used to her body reacting to fear, stress, and worry. Being an angel had been the most delicious drug. It was pure good, radiating all the time.
She whispered “good luck” to the Devil, wherever he might be, and tiptoed to the Hallway’s entrance. It looked so plain — just cement walls and more metal doors, each with a window to peer into. Then she noticed the note handwritten in a hurried scrawl and tacked to the wall.
Can only open one door!
Emma could see at least thirty doors, but she could look through the window in each before making her choice. Right? The fluorescent track lighting flickered malevolently. This looks easy. Too easy.
Satan would never safeguard God behind just a door. There had to be more to it, but for now she could hope for ease. Her heels click-clocked as she took a few steps. She was busy trying to figure out where the Devil would put God strategically, and she eyed the last doors in the Hallway as the first plague hit. Nothing in the Hallway changed visibly. The cement was still cold, and the doors were still a rusty gray. But inside. Oh crap, inside.
It was hunger. The most crippling, inane need to eat. Emma lost her focus entirely. She staggered forward, dreaming of food. Perhaps a delicious hunk of cheese… She began gnawing the flesh of her arm, just to give her ravenous teeth something to chomp on, but they were unable to break the skin. Even self-destruction offered no relief.
Door. Look in the window. She tried to make her feet move, but the pain of the famine crowded her brain, short wiring it to picture apples, bread, watermelon. Feed me. Please feed me.
The searching, primitive instinct to find prey finally brought her to the door — not any reasonable plan to find God. She pressed herself against the metal and the desperate hunger eased.
Tricky bastard. She maintained contact with the door and peered in the window. The room beyond it was pitch black. There was a light switch to her left. She knew she had to turn it on. With complete ease, she flicked it into position. The inside of the cell was instantly visible, clear and sparse. There was one small, horrible-looking bed and no inhabitants.
Emma was about to turn off the light when something dropped from the ceiling. Holy crap!
She had to consciously focus on getting her now-human heart to beat again. Adrenaline lit her eyes on fire as she took in the bizarre, stringy being. It was mostly teeth and saliva. Like a nightmare set to a body, it banged its head against the glass and snarled. Emma turned off the light with a childish hope of making it go away.
The room went silent.
Emma stepped back from the door and shook her head. The hunger attacked her immediately and she staggered on down the hall. Between the doors was another respite from the hunger pangs. In the calm, Emma tried to orient herself. The relief from the hunger was likely worse for her resolve than the plague itself. Her brain and body begged her to stop, and a part of her began to doubt her devotion.
Clearing her head, Emma shook out her arms and stretched them as if preparing to run a race. With her next step, she encountered the Devil’s second challenge.
Depression overwhelmed her, smothered her. There was no escaping it, so why bother to try? It took Emma forever to convince her eyes to blink. It seemed like a waste of energy to keep them wet. Steps weren’t worth taking. She would never be able to do this anyway. Each new criticism seemed to smack her head before it took root in her body.
Stupid. She was so very stupid.
Hated. Everyone who ever saw her hated her.
Guilty. Every choice she’d ever made killed her all over again.
Unloved. No one loved her. Sam didn’t even choose to be with her.
She was stagnant. There was no primal instinct to propel her forward now. Depression had stopped her completely. Her taunting brain showed her future Jason’s selfish eyes. Demented eyes that had changed a good soul into something he’d rather die than be.
She dragged a boot forward. The other came after, but it was slow going.
Boot drag, boot drag. Slow, not steady, dull.
Her progress had no focus, but finally she collided with the second door. It
touched her instead of the other way around. Nevertheless, when her fingertips felt the metal, the wet, heavy cloud of doom lifted.
Emma now had trouble keeping her eyes open — the emotional marathon had left her exhausted. She flipped the light switch and braced herself for a jump-inducing scare. Instead she had a shock of a different kind. Her father sat on the bed in the cell. He was holding his chin, looking right at her, but he didn’t smile.
Daddy’s in Hell?
His piercing gray eyes, so like her own, showed recognition, but no pride. His face didn’t light up like it did for his sons. She could hear his voice clearly when he decided to talk.
“Emma, you won’t open this door. I can’t trust you to watch out for me. You take care of you best. Go on with you. Go open someone else’s door.” Hate emanated from him, and each word rippled from his mouth, like water after a pebble is thrown in a pond.
By the time the ripples reached Emma, the words were crashing waves. This wasn’t a Devil-manufactured emotion. She felt real disappointment that she’d let her father down, let her brothers down.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy. Everett was a bad man. I couldn’t make myself be with him after what happened to Sam.” She had trouble touching the door now; his words had made it hot. She wanted to cuddle her knees and be far, far away from her father’s judgmental eyes.
“Agh. Yeah, sure. Piss on me. Did Sam feed you? Did Sam give you clothes? Who bought your goddamn horse? Sam? No. You treat your own family like shit because you wanted to whore it out to that horny asshole.” Her father stood and swaggered to the glass.
It’s not him. Daddy loved Feisty, and he never cursed. His voice seemed too high-pitched, different than she remembered.
But she treated him as she would her father. “Daddy, I forgive you for your words, even though they hurt me now. I love you. The decisions you made were a product of the information you had then. I forgive you.”
With her forgiveness, the lifelike hologram of her father warbled and changed. He was distorted by her love. Soon his resemblance dissolved like sugar in hot water. Emma felt peace. Her father wasn’t in Hell. She wouldn’t have to choose to save him or save God.