bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Between a Devil and His Hard Place

When I was very little, I used to hide from monsters,

Now I am very big, the monsters hide from me...

As the Viper dropped through the roof of my transpo shelter at home, I opened my weary eyes and gathered up my bag and briefcase. “Exiting.” The driver’s side door of the Viper opened and I stepped out. “Secure area.” The door in the roof of the shelter hissed shut and locked into place and the driver’s side door on the Viper closed and locked. I moved around the vehicle and punched my code into the keypad on the wall. The entrance to my living quarters slid back into the wall as I approached it, then slid shut behind me, locking.

Evenings were the only time I wished I had a pet or something that could greet me at the door after a tough day at the office. I’d often considered getting a pigmy gargoyle or something. But decided my inability to take care of myself most days, let alone something or someone else, would probably spell disaster for any poor creature I took under my wing.

I heaved a weary sigh and dropped my bag and case on the table beside the entry door. “All lights, full.” As lights blinked on throughout the space, I moved into the kitchen to see what I could scrounge up to fill the empty, aching hole in my stomach. The motley assortment in the refrigeration unit was totally uninspiring, but I managed to snag a dehydrated meal and a slightly flat bottle of fizzy water. I placed the meal into the rehydrator and went to change for the meeting with my new client, sucking down the bad tasting water as I went.

I tugged the snug, black turtleneck sweater I was wearing off over my head and removed my caramel-colored simulated leather thigh skirt. I headed for the personal hygiene room, pulling black tights off my legs as I went. My message center on the televisual bleeped to life when it sensed movement in the room.

“You have four new calls,” a sexy, male voice informed me as I got tangled in my tights and nearly fell on my head. “Shit.” I quickly righted myself. “Play one, full volume,” I responded before continuing into the personal hygiene room.

The center beeped to announce my first message and my friend Kayla’s bright, breathless voice followed me into the personal hygiene room. “Hey girl. Where ya been? Call me, I need to tell you about this crashin’ guy I met.”

I smiled. Kayla was always meeting “crashin’” guys. Which was a good term for the kind of guys she met. To Kayla, men were like a serious drug and when they dumped her because she was oh so needy, she always crashed and burned for two weeks.

Message two was from my sister, who basically just wanted me to get married and settle down, take a safe, boring job selling environmentally and politically correct items, and give her ten nieces and nephews. The third message was from a longtime client who wanted me to kill a murderous demon that was torturing his customers.

Just a typical day in my life.

I programmed the water valet to emit warm, soapy water and quickly washed my face, leaning into the warm air of the drying disc on the wall with a sigh. Not for the first time that day, I wished I could put my soft, warm jammies on and climb into bed with a good palm screen novel.

As I left the personal hygiene room I grabbed a tooth-cleaning lozenge and popped it into my mouth. It exploded gently as it mixed with my saliva and began fizzing away the day’s scum as the final message beeped into my consciousness.

“Mx. Phelps,” said a heavily accented, baritone voice. “I need to see you tonight. I know you are meeting a client at the Church of the Twined Hands and I must see you before you go there. Please call me back immediately.”

I pulled a soft, black dress over my head and said, “Bite me.” I was getting pretty sick of everybody needing everything last week. With a sigh that said,
Astra, you’re an adult now and you have a business to nurture and you are subject to the every whim of all of your clients, even ones you don’t know you have yet
, I said, “Return last call.” The phone barely finished ringing through before the same, deeply masculine voice answered it.

“Mx. Phelps?”

“That’s me, who’s this?” I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled tall black boots with no heels over my bare legs. The politically incorrect leather of the boots melted around my calves and held them gently but firmly. No matter how hard it tried, humankind would never make a fake leather that rivaled the real, God-made stuff. I rubbed my hand up my right boot to smooth it and then shoved a long, thin stiletto type knife into the side, leaving just the top ridge of the handle exposed so I could grab it quickly if I needed to.

“That isn’t important right now, I need to meet with you.”

Frowning, I responded in as calm a manner as I could...which was way far from calm. “I’m sorry. I can’t meet with you if I don’t know who you are and why I’m meeting you. I’m sure you can understand how foolhardy that would be in my line of work.”

When silence met my resistance, I briefly considered turning on the visual so I could glare at Mr. Elusive and snotty, but decided against it. I generally resisted using visual at home because I had a habit of forgetting it was on and embarrassing myself by answering naked.

The silence grew longer as I waited for my sexy sounding antagonist to respond. I was damned if I was gonna talk again before he did. I used the time to put a vial of holy water into my purse and clasp a belt of gold crosses around my waist. A platinum dagger tipped with angel blood slid neatly into the sheath I strapped to one of my thighs and, though the dress was soft and draped nicely around my curves, the sheath hid the dagger nicely. I stood in front of my mirrored wall and made a few adjustments until everything was properly hidden.

Just as I was about to think he’d hung up without my knowing it the voice said, “I guess you could call me Mx. Deaver’s problem. I need to talk to you before he fills your head with his lies and nonsense.”

“You’re the advocate?”

“I’m sending someone to pick you up.” And he was just...gone.

“Shit!”

I knew I couldn’t wait around and allow myself to get dragged to a meeting with some evil advocate before I knew what I was getting myself into. I grabbed my bag and left my living space.

The Viper rose into the cool, clear night on nearly silent feet of air and tore away from home. I programmed in the location of the Church of the Twined Hands and heaved a sigh. I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d felt a stab of fear and dread as I’d spoken to Deaver’s Advocate, but I’d learned long ago to trust my instincts. They were almost always right on the mark.

The televisual unit on the Viper’s control panel chirped twice and Emo’s devilish face filled the eight inch square screen. “Hey Astra, I just wanted to let you know you got a call from some scary sounding guy, I think it might have been your new client, that cultist, what was his name?”

“Deaver?”

“Yeah, him. I had a really weird feeling talking to him. He had visual blacked out and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. I don’t want you to meet with this guy alone.”

“Yeah, I think I already talked to him, he called at my place. He was pretty pushy but I can handle him. Did you get somebody to fix the glass?”

He frowned and opened his mouth but before he could speak his image wavered with some kind of weird interference and, as I was playing with the controls to bring him back into focus I suddenly realized that the Viper’s interior had grown much too cool. A prickle of fear sprung up between my shoulder blades and I cursed silently as the hair on my arms stood at attention again. The Viper jerked to a sudden stop as if someone had tied a rope to it. My ears picked up the remembered moaning noise outside my stalled vehicle.

“Sonofabitch! I grabbed the cross I’d clasped around my neck as the Viper started to vibrate against the sucking power of the thing outside. I took the Viper off auto control and plunged it into hyperforward, feeling it strain against the grasping monster. The Viper bucked and swung violently from side to side before giving up with a gasp and letting itself be sucked into the night.

I fought to control the helpless terror that gripped me as the Viper shot off in the opposite direction from where I’d been heading. What was especially disconcerting was the fact that my protective screens had come up without my telling them to, completely blocking my view.

So to take stock of my situation... I was blinded, flying somewhere at about light speed, under the control of something I couldn’t see and had every reason to fear. To make things worse, my armpits were beginning to sweat onto my nice, black dress.

Definitely one for the shitty day book.

The Viper whizzed north, for about twenty minutes. At the current speed, which was about four hundred mph, I estimated that I should be well into Wisconsin, unless we were going the opposite direction, in which case I didn’t know where the Hades I was.

I prayed for the Viper to stop and then when it did, I suddenly wished it would keep going. As I felt my vehicle slow and begin its descent, I checked all of my weapons and cursed myself for not bringing my ultraviolet light laser with me. Then, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I tried to prepare my mind for whatever battle lay ahead.

The Viper settled silently into hover and I clutched the cross, which was secure on a chain around my neck to help me hold onto it in case the sucking thing was out there when I disembarked.

My pulse pounding against my temples, I said, “Exiting.” The driver’s side door swung open and I forced myself to step out of the Viper. Looking around, I realized I was inside what looked like a large, empty warehouse. I flared my nostrils and closed my eyes, putting all of my energies into sensing the space for auras, but there appeared to be nothing, or no one, else in that room with me.

“Well that’s just great! What the Hades am I doing here?” My voice echoed off the bare, concrete walls and came back to me as a rumble of deep laughter. I narrowed my eyes and plunged my hand into my coat pocket, where I’d stashed the holy water during my lovely, relaxing flight to my current destination.

I really didn’t think my voice was that deep. “Who’s there?”

The laughter stopped and something shimmered just on the periphery of my vision. I turned to meet it head on and my eyes landed on the most devastatingly gorgeous hunk of he-devil I’d ever seen.

CHAPTER FOUR

Advocating Evil

When evil has a pretty face, it’s often hard to fight,

When evil has a crashin’ bod, you’re Hades-bound tonight.

He moved toward me on long, straight legs that were encased in equally long, seductively tight pants of some kind of black, shimmery material. The pants climbed his legs lovingly, reaching toward an impossibly beautiful torso with tender fingers of cloth, and melted over his narrow hips before tucking themselves away a few inches below his trim waistline. His shoulders were broad and strained against the sheer white shirt he was wearing. Like a pulsating billboard hanging over Times Square, the shirt pronounced him a sexual predator. It was tucked into the shimmering pants but was left basically unbuttoned, showcasing a lean but well-sculpted chest of the most beautiful golden color I’d ever seen.

As he walked, his pecs rippled and his biceps bulged against the tissue thin fabric of the shirt. My eyes finally made it to his face as he got within five feet of me and I almost forgot to raise the cross to stop him.

His deep laughter rumbled through the room as he came to a casual stop and cocked his gorgeous head at me. “You have no reason to fear me...” the barest hesitation and then, “at the moment.” It was the deep, sexy voice from the televisual.

I blinked. “You’re the advocate?”

“I never said that.”

I blinked again. “You didn’t?” I felt as if my mind had turned to water and was flowing out of my ears. My body felt languid and warm. Very warm if you know what I mean. I had to force myself to concentrate on keeping the cross up. He just stared at me through almond shaped eyes that looked about ten miles deep. His devastatingly sensual gaze was cloaked in black velvet and ringed with pulsating rings of gold. His burnished black mane of hair fell around his square, golden jaw and touched his shoulders just where the barest, sexiest, little curl started at the ends.

“Shit.” I shook my head and pinched myself with my free hand. “Get out of my head!”

He laughed again. “But it’s nice in there.”

“Get the hell out or I’ll vaporize you. I pulled the holy water out of my pocket and started unscrewing the cap.

He raised large, square, hands in surrender and the woozy feeling began draining away from my mind. After a minute my body almost stopped tingling.

He shook his head, causing the glossy, black mane to swing away from his shoulders. No, the tingling wasn’t entirely gone, but I wasn’t going to say anything because I was afraid it was me doing it this time and I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

“It’s really too bad, I was enjoying our mating.”

Forcing myself to ignore his effect on my body I shook my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “There was no mating going on, bud, not even a little bit.”

He simply smiled at me in a way that made me doubt my own reality.

“Not of the physical kind, of course, that will come later. But you must have noticed how our minds were drawn to each other. I haven’t felt that kind of attraction for quite some time.”

To avoid thinking about what he was saying, I concentrated hard on the accent. Where had I heard it before? “Get over it, it’s not reciprocal.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Deny it if you will. It will do you no good.”

“The Royal Court!”

He cocked his dark head again. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re a member of the Devil Court.”

“That is correct.”

“And Deaver ran you out? I thought you royal devils were more powerful than that.”

His laughter rumbled up and filled the room. “Do not even think that inconsequential little nothing could overpower me. I left on my own and for my own reasons. Which is why I summoned you.”