Damned If You Do

  But that wasn’t all.

  Seth’s soul was changing as well. The brilliance that had nearly blinded Abaddon from the beginning flared and raged. It burned inside Seth’s slender chest, so bright and horrifying that Abaddon closed his eyes, hoping it would help.

  It didn’t.

  Seth let the woman go and moved quickly past her, pushing through the crowd, back to the center aisle. He made his way down it, stumbling as if he was drunk. He found a man, his lungs black and riddled with disease. Beads of sweat bloomed on Seth’s forehead, dripping past his temples to mix with blood and venom on his neck. Seth laid his hands on the man’s shoulders and stood there, not moving, forcing the man’s lungs to turn pink until they filled with oxygen in a way they hadn’t done in forty years.

  Seth stumbled on again, his face a sickly shade of gray, his soul blazing so hot Abaddon wondered that the tent didn’t ignite. Abaddon pushed through the crowd, needing to be closer. Zed did as well.

  Nobody else moved.

  Seth fell to his knees at the feet of an old woman, stooped with arthritis and pain.

  “I can help.”

  It was barely a whisper, but it carried through the silent tent. Seth took her gnarled hands in his. He lowered his head, laying his forehead on them. His bony shoulders shook. Even on his knees, it seemed it was all he could do to stay upright. But the woman’s pain receded. Her shoulders rose. Her back straightened. When Seth released her hands, her fingers were perfect, her knuckles shrunk to regular size.

  The people close enough to see gasped. This was the first healing they could see with their mortal eyes.

  Seth rose shakily, his face almost skeletal, his pallor edging toward green. His soul glowed. It pulsed. It seemed to scorch Abaddon’s flesh like a bonfire. The overwhelming sweetness was almost sickening, even to him.

  All that disease. All that pain. None of it was gone. Seth had absorbed it all, soaking it into his supernatural cells.

  Seth turned, stumbling up the aisle. The crowd parted to let him pass. He staggered straight to Abaddon and collapsed. Abaddon caught him, for all the good it did. The strength of Seth’s soul was like a fist into his solar plexus and he fell to his knees, gasping, Seth’s limp body in his arms.

  “You’re dying.” The realization made him reel. It filled him with a helplessness he’d never known. “Goddamn it, why didn’t you tell me you were dying?” He held Seth tight, letting his senses dig deeper and deeper into Seth’s body, following the path of his cells, finally seeing what he’d been too blind to see before. “That’s why you burn so bright. That’s what makes you so perfect. Goddamn it, I should have seen it. I should have known!”

  Tears clawed at his throat, warring with the rage in his heart. He’d missed it because it wasn’t any of the normal mortal illnesses. It wasn’t cancer or HIV or tuberculosis. It wasn’t even the massive amounts of snake venom pouring through Seth’s veins, although that certainly wasn’t helping. It was something humans didn’t even have a name for. Something buried in Seth’s supernatural parentage, born of the cancer and disease and pain he’d absorbed through the years. It was something that even Abaddon couldn’t cure.

  “It’s okay,” Seth whispered. He tried to reach up, to put his fingers against Abaddon’s cheeks, but he didn’t have the strength. His hand fell limp at his side. “We’re all dying. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—’”

  “Stop it! Goddamn it, no bible verses! Don’t make excuses for Him.” Because what kind of God would allow this to happen? “You have to stop healing people. You have to stop letting the snakes come. You have to—”

  “You’re scaring them, Abaddon.”

  “Wh-what?”

  He’d been so focused on Seth he hadn’t noticed the crowd gathered around them. He hadn’t heard their frightened murmurs. Zed suddenly appeared at his side. He knelt and reached for Seth. Abaddon instinctively gripped Seth tighter, pulling him out of Zed’s reach. “Get away from him!”

  “Let him go,” Zed growled back. “This isn’t your place.”

  “It’s okay,” Seth said. Abaddon wasn’t sure which one of them he was addressing. “It’s okay.”

  “He’s all right, folks!” Thaddeus said, raising his voice above the din of the crowd. “The Lord’s touch is a powerful thing. It often leaves my brother exhausted, but never fear! He has the blessings of the almighty savior! Can I get a ‘hallelujah’?”

  A few people echoed him. “Hallelujah!” It sounded more like a question than an exclamation.

  “Just give him some air, now. Let him breathe. Brother Zed and Brother Abbadon will have him sorted out in no time. The best thing we can do for him is to raise our voices in praise!”

  Abaddon hated the words, but he had to appreciate Thaddeus’s efficiency. The crowd backed up. The band began playing, the choir singing “How Great Thou Art”, and Thaddeus’s voice rose above it all, leading them in song.

  Zed edged closer, grabbing Seth’s arm as if he intended to physically wrench the boy from Abaddon’s embrace. “You have become too familiar, Brother Abaddon. Let him go and stand aside.”

  “It’s okay,” Seth said again, and this time, his blind eyes met Abaddon’s gaze. This time, his fingers found Abaddon’s cheek. “I’ll be all right. Zed knows what to do. I’m not dying yet, I promise.”

  It was true. Already, Seth’s strength was returning, his soul fading to its normal brilliance. Color was slowly returning to his cheeks. His kidney’s were damaged, and his liver too, but neither of those things were the real problem. The real problem lay buried in his inhuman genes.

  Abaddon loosened his grip, his mind a jumble, sifting through his limited options. He barely noticed as Zed pulled Seth from his arms.

  There wasn’t much time.

  And he had the entire bureaucracy of Hell to deal with.

  Chapter Eight

  Ice Cream So Bad, It’s (Not) a Sin

  Hours in Hell were hard to track, and without the sun dancing slowly across the sky, it was hard to tell one day from the next. The office was busy when Abaddon arrived, even though it felt to him like the middle of the night. He was relieved to find Baphomet still at his desk, folding forms. The chair Abaddon had stolen from a nearby cubicle on his last visit was still next to Baphomet’s desk, and Abaddon sank gratefully into it, wondering where to begin.

  “You look like hell.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Abaddon scrubbed his fingers through his hair and eyed the stack of papers on Baphomet’s desk. “Shouldn’t you be done with these?”

  “You have any idea how long it takes to fold a hundred and fifty million forms?”

  Abaddon winced, thinking how his desk must look by now. It was possible it was completely buried under paperwork. He’d have to deal with it eventually, but not yet. “I need your help.”

  “Uh-uh. No way.” Baphomet stuffed a form into another envelope. “Helping anybody in Hell is against the rules. You know that.”

  “You’ve helped me before.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “I need to know if there’s a way to file for an extension.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re already on probation! Now you want an extension too?”

  “Is it possible?”

  Baphomet shook his head, but the faraway look in his eyes told Abaddon that he was thinking about it. “Well, there are dispensations for special circumstances, like people who agree to sign over their souls once certain things are in place. It’s like they give you a promise ring rather than an actual engagement ring, even though everybody knows they mean the same thing. There are also cases where the mortal agrees to give his soul, but the devil’s part of the agreement takes extra time to fulfill. You’d have to fill out a 10-382, and a 12-685, and a 13-387, and—”

  “There’s more.” Abaddon glanced
around, making sure nobody was listening. The closest devil was two cubicles away at the copier that had come to Hell courtesy of 1985. His hands and chest were covered in toner as he cursed and pounded on the machine. He wasn’t paying Abbaddon and Baphomet a bit of attention. Abaddon turned back to Baphomet and leaned closer. “Anybody who loses their soul to one of us ends up here, right?”

  Baphomet lowered the envelope he’d been about to lick. “Right.”

  “But the Soul Acquisition Department must be thirty floors at least, and each of them several miles worth of cubicles, right?”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “Is there any way to find a specific person once they arrive? Or any way to make sure they’re stationed nearby once they do? I mean, it’d take me forever to find him going cubicle to cubicle, especially when we all work different hours, but if there’s a way to know where he’ll be—”

  “Abaddon, stop.” Baphomet set his envelope aside and leaned closer. “This is crazy. You need to forget about this kid, okay? Forget about his perfect soul and find somebody else.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re obsessed.”

  “I know!” Baphomet was right. At this point, it might be wiser to settle for a few pedestrian souls, but he couldn’t stand the thought of being without Seth. And now, maybe he wouldn’t have to. “Just answer me! I don’t have much time!”

  Baphomet sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I swear, you’re the lousiest devil I’ve ever met.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, there’s a way to file for assignment to a nearby station, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. This is Hell, not kindergarten. They don’t care that you’ve suddenly decided you want a new pet—”

  “It isn’t like that!”

  “They only care if you have some kind of grudge, like a mortal who pissed you off, and you want to be able to torture them over time. You’ll have to put on a good show to convince them that you hate him. And one more thing you haven’t thought of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He won’t even know you once he crosses over. He’ll have forgotten everything about you.”

  Talk about being sucker-punched by the fine print. Abaddon sat back, reeling. He put his hands to his head, fighting a sudden blackness that seemed to cloud his vision. How could he have forgotten about that? Just as he didn’t remember any of his mortal life, Seth wouldn’t remember him. The knowledge bent him in half, and he found himself clutching his stomach, staring at the floor, gasping for breath. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Abaddon, you’re off the deep end, man. What’s going on?”

  Abaddon shook his head, fighting tears. “I thought if I could bring him here— If I could have him nearby—”

  He felt Baphomet’s hand on his shoulder. “If you care about him so much, leave him where he is. Visit him on the mortal plane whenever you can. You wouldn’t be the first devil to do it.”

  “He’s dying.” He put a hand over his face. He was relieved to find that his eyes were dry. He sat up again, trying to reclaim his focus. “It’s part of why he burns so bright. It’s part of what makes him such a perfect catch.”

  “Ah. So if he’s going to die anyway—”

  “I thought if I could at least have him nearby…” He wasn’t ready to give up yet. “There must be a way, and you know the loopholes better than anyone.”

  Baphomet put his chin in his hand, thinking, and Abaddon waited. He didn’t have much faith in God these days, but he had faith in his friend. And sure enough, a moment later, Baphomet’s eyes went wide.

  “Wait a minute!” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a binder with a four-inch spine. Rules and Regulations of the Department of Soul Acquisitions. He began flipping through pages. “Maybe…”

  In the end, it would be nearly two dozen forms to file, all in triplicate, at three different offices: a DMV in Phoenix, another in Detroit, and a social security office in New Jersey.

  “How long will it take?” Abaddon asked, anxious for the first time ever to begin filling out paperwork.

  Baphomet scratched his chin, considering. “On your own? A couple of weeks. But with my help?” He smiled. “I think we can wrap it up in about five mortal days. That puts you over your deadline, so we’ll have to file for the extension first.”

  Relief flooded through him. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Sure. I’m sick of licking envelopes anyway. I’ll go get the forms and meet you back at your desk.” He stood and raised his voice. “Now get away from me, you rotten, no-good bastard! I hope you burn in the Lake of Fire for an eternity!”

  Abaddon shouted a few curses of his own on his way back to his desk, just for good measure, but in his heart, he rejoiced.

  There was hope after all.

  He just needed a few extra days.

  * * * * *

  Half an hour later, he and Baphomet settled at adjacent desks and got to work.

  There were forms asking for an extension of his deadline, forms promising a spectacular soul under special circumstances, forms to assign a newly acquired soul to a select region of the department in order to prolong the mortal’s torment, forms that stated only that other forms had been filed, and finally, forms to allow Seth to retain his memory after crossing into Hell. The latter required that Seth have personal knowledge that could assist him in soul acquisition. The revival provided that—a fresh crop of devout, trusting mortals who could theoretically be convinced to give their soul to Seth, even after he became a devil. Seth would never do such a thing, of course, but they’d deal with that later. A bit more paperwork down the road seemed like a small price to pay to keep Seth nearby.

  But once the paperwork was filed, Abaddon had no way out. No amount of regular mortal souls could save him now. He’d have three days to secure Seth’s soul, or be damned to some lower level of Hell. It was the Department’s version of going double-or-nothing with the boss. If he didn’t return with Seth, he’d be demoted, no explanations, apologies or excuses. There was no back-up plan. No second chances.

  Everything depended on Seth.

  Of course he’d be well and truly screwed if Seth died before he got everything in place, so he made a quick stop on his way to Detroit at the campground in Alabama.

  It was deserted.

  “Satan’s tits!” Abaddon kicked at the dirt. “Where the fuck did they go?” He spun in a circle, looking around, as if he might have somehow missed a giant revival tent and the few dozen trailers, semis, and trucks that went with it. But no. There was no sign of Seth.

  It was harder to search in mortal form, so he withdrew into the abyss and cast his mental web wide. They only had a ten to twelve hour jump on him, but which direction would they have gone? He was impatient, annoyed at having one more thing to take up his time, desperate to find Seth and know for sure that he was safe. It took five precious hours of searching, but finally, his mind snagged on the unmistakable brilliance of Seth’s soul at a campground in Georgia. He nearly wept with relief.

  The Rainbow Revival camp was dark and quiet. No revival tonight, after a day of traveling. He hesitated, his body still hidden in the abyss, his consciousness outside of Seth’s trailer. He could easily peer inside, if he wanted to. He’d never spied on Seth before, and he was reluctant to do so now, but his only other options were to knock on Seth’s door, possibly waking any light sleepers in the vicinity in the process, or wait until morning for Seth to appear.

  He sincerely hated both options.

  He cast a cautious feeler into the trailer—not quite looking, but feeling.

  Seth was definitely inside.

  Definitely asleep.

  Abaddon took a deep breath and manifested in the confines of the trailer.

  He’d never been in Seth’s living space before. It was like most travel trailers: a tin
y kitchen, with a two-burner stove, a sink, and a miniature fridge on one side, and a table between bench seats on the other. Beyond that was a narrow door that probably led to the bathroom, and a sleeping area at the back. It was an older trailer, with accents in orange and avocado green. The tabletop had started out yellow, but was now worn mostly white. A coffee cup, a fork, and a single plate sat in the drying rack. Everything else was clean and uncluttered. If Seth had ever had photos, he’d taken them down since losing his sight. A bible was the only thing visible, its cover tattered, and Abaddon stopped to wonder about that. Seth couldn’t read it. Did he still find comfort in its pages?

  Abaddon ran his finger over the frayed book. There was no shock from touching the supposed word of God. No lightning came to strike him down.

  “Abaddon?”

  He jumped, turning to find Seth in the doorway that led to the tiny space that served as a bedroom. There was no scarf around his neck. He wore only flannel pajama pants—red with a black moose print—and a faded T-shirt that had probably once been green. It was inside out, but Abaddon could see the faint outline of Snoopy’s friend Woodstock through the fabric. The effect was somehow both adorable and sexy as hell.

  Abaddon cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I know.”

  Abaddon scratched his neck, thinking. He was pretty sure he hadn’t made any noise. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. I just did.” Seth settled against the doorframe, tilting his head against it. At that moment, he was definitely leaning more toward adorable in Abaddon’s mind.

  “I didn’t think you’d pack up and go so quickly.”

  “We always leave after an event.”

  “You mean after you heal somebody?”

  “Thaddeus and Zed don’t want the media finding out. They worry people will show up with cameras. They don’t want it to become a spectacle.”

  Abaddon almost laughed. Most revivalists lived for spectacle, but he thought better of Thaddeus and Zed for their reluctance to exploit Seth’s ability.