Kiss & Hell (20 page)

Delaney was between them in a shot, backing up against the table to glare at Clyde, reaching behind her to hold off her brother. “How about we go all Neanderthal another time? I have a spirit world that needs me. The one I can’t seem to communicate with these days because everything’s all fucked up. Adding more chaos by throwing down will just piss me off. You don’t want to do that. I’m raw, boys. Fragile. Teetering even. All made worse by threats from Lucifer. Now sit—”

Kellen put a hand on her shoulder, the concern on his face clouding his eyes. “Threat? Lucifer made a direct threat?”

Delaney nodded. “Hoo, yeah. And we need to talk. So let’s go do that. Clyde? If the headless dude shows back up again, call me.”

She pulled Kellen through his living room and into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of his bed. She held out her hand to him. “Sit next to me. We have trouble. Clyde brought me a message from Hell. He just doesn’t know the depth of it.”

Kellen’s eyes grew stormy and dark with disbelief and anger. “And you know he’s telling the truth how, D? He’s a demon, for Christ’s sake! According to you, they’re all liars. Oh, except Marcella. She just got a
crappy
deal, right?” he said with a sarcastic grunt.

Her eyes began to water at the mention of Marcella’s name. Fuck. “Leave her out of this.
Please
.”

Kellen threw his hands up like white flags. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Did you two have a fight?”

“No, I sent her away.”

“What?” The surprise on his face was evident, but there was more than just the shock of hearing she’d sent her friend packing. And that only confirmed her suspicions, which would leave her pleased under any other circumstances but the one Marcella was in—doomed for eternity. “What the hell happened?”

She toyed with the line of bracelets on her arm, the jingle of them soothing her. “Listen to what I have to tell you and you’ll understand.”

While she explained what Clyde had told her and her pseudo argument with Marcella, minus what she suspected was some kind of binding spell, she kept an eye on her demon, pacing up and down the wide expanse of Kellen’s living room.

“This has to go back to Vincent,” Kellen said with a sneer and clenched fists. “That son of a fucking bitch.”

She leaned her head on Kellen’s shoulder. Recalling that night brought nothing but heartache and pure terror. All because she’d defied Satan. Because she had, she’d dragged Kellen by proxy into something he shouldn’t have ever been involved in. “I guess so. You heard what the pitchfork lover said that night as well as I did. He said he’d see me in Hell and basically said he’d take anyone I loved with him, too, and if what Clyde says is true, I guess he meant it.”

“But it’s been almost fifteen years, Delaney. And how do we know this Clyde’s telling the truth? If all demons are liars, why isn’t he?”

“Look at him.” Delaney pointed a finger out in the direction of the living room.

“He’s kind of hard to take seriously. He’s got on a fuzzy, beat-to-shit bathrobe. A pink one. So what am I looking at?”

“Look at your cats.” Kellen’s cats, Vern and Shirley, swirled their tails around Clyde’s bare ankles while he stroked their backs. It wasn’t easy to admit, but that he liked animals, and they liked him back, was a huge plus on Clyde’s scorecard of pros.

“Yeah, and . . . ?”

“They don’t hate him, do they? They don’t hate Marcella either,” she said pointedly. “As a matter of fact, they don’t like a lot of strangers, but they sure are clinging to Clyde the demon.”

The slap of his hands on his thighs made her jump. “Is this going to be the paranormal edition of Animal Planet again? You’re trusting two cats who hack up hairballs just to give me a reason to buy paper towels and who play in the toilet for amusement, Delaney. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Don’t call me ridiculous, smart-ass. I know the supernatural and I know animals. My dogs love him, Kellen. They know an evil entity, and as crazy as this all sounds, I don’t think Clyde is one, and neither do they. He’s almost too much of a dork to be one, in my opinion. But that’s neither here nor there. He’s here and I’m dealing with him. Live with it.”

A sigh of defeat, meaning she’d won this round, blew from between Kellen’s lips. “Fine. Like I could talk you out of anything anyway. You can be so damned single-minded. Someday, it may be your ass you hand over. So what’s the plan now? We wait until Lucifer sends in reinforcements? I’m supposed to wait around until something or someone hurts you? And what the fuck are you going to do with Clyde?”

She’d finally resigned herself to giving Clyde’s problem her all. It wasn’t like she could get away from him, anyway. There was a reason Clyde was here. Whatever it was, it was karmic, cosmic—something-ic—and she’d always been a firm believer in the universe’s plan. “Help him. It’s kinda what I do. I’m going to figure out how he ended up in Hell and try to cross him over—if he’s been truthful, that is. If Clyde’s the man he claims he was in life, then he should be in the biggest, baddest chem lab ever with endless resources and supplies—
upstairs
, not down.

“The rest”—she shrugged her shoulders—“what else can we do but wait it out? This is the devil we’re talking about, Kell. It’s not like we can anticipate what he’s up to, or what he’ll do when he finds out Clyde’s one-upped him in the smarts department. He’s got shit going for him we don’t. Like flaming fingertips and those freaky snakes he’s so fond of. I just want you to promise you’ll be really careful. He’ll do whatever he has to to hurt me, and if he hurt you, it would kill me. We only have each other now. Whatever’s going to happen, I need to know you’re safe. So watch your ass.”

“And wait around,” was Kellen’s dull response.

Delaney rose from the bed and pinched his cheek with a fond tweak. “Yep. That’s all we can do. We can’t control what we don’t know. When and if I figure out what’s up with Clyde, I’ll let you know. I doubt it’s related to us, but having an in, in Hell can’t hurt. And keep your mouth shut about Vincent. No one—not Marcella, not Clyde—can have that information, especially Clyde. If this turns out to be some big hoax on his part, I don’t want him taking the kind of intermittent fear I’ve experienced since that night back to Hell. I won’t give Lucifer the satisfaction. He’d definitely hurt Marcella to hurt me, and that’s not something I think I could take. That’s why I shipped her off—because if she tries to interfere, she won’t be a nobody to him anymore.”

Kellen leaned back on the bed on his elbows. His attempt was for clearly casual, but he only achieved it partially. “Is she okay?”

Her eyebrow rose and her lips blossomed into a knowing smile. “And you care why?”

His expression fought to remain impassive and nonchalant. “Because she’s your friend. I know it would upset you if anything happened to her.”

“Right. Which has absolutely nothing to do with her ass. Which you watch. Often. Every time she leaves a room, in fact. This is all just concern for me.”

“I’m a man. Demon or not, she has a sweet ass. So what?”

Delaney chuckled at him. His attraction for Marcella was so blatantly obvious, but knowing her brother and his hatred of anything smacking of Hell, he’d never act on it. On a rational level, she knew Marcella would long outlive Kellen. To become involved would be mostly insane. Her heart said something much less rational. “So nothing. I have to go. I need to get moving on this thing if I hope to help Clyde cross.”

Kellen snatched her hand in his once more, gripping it tight. “Do you really believe crossing is what he wants? Really?”

She glanced at Clyde once more. Now Vern and Shirley were in his lap, rubbing their faces against his arm and vying for his attention. “I think I do.” Without warning, she definitely did think just that. Why, when, how, was a mystery. Yet she was convinced in that moment that Clyde was for real. Though she still wasn’t ready to tell him the details of her run-in with Satan.

“Okay. I’ll shut up. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it if you think it’s the right thing to do. But call me. Call me often so I know you’re okay.”

She planted a kiss on his cheek and followed up with a quick squeeze of a hug around his wide shoulders. “Will do. Oh, and one more little favor?”

“What?”

“Can I borrow some clothes and a pair of shoes? I can’t keep dragging him around in my bathrobe. People stare, ya know?”

Kellen went to his closet and pulled out a couple of shirts and a pair of old shoes, then got some jeans from his dresser drawer. He threw the bundle at her. “Keep ’em.”

She blew him a kiss over her shoulder and went to get Clyde. Dumping the clothes on the couch next to him, she grabbed her coat from the back of the sofa. “Get dressed. Please. So people will stop staring at me like I’m the keeper of the loons.”

The grin he flashed was lopsided. “Have I told you you’re funny?”

“That makes two times now, and yeah, I’m a fucking riot. Go get dressed and we’ll go back to my place and figure this out.”

Clyde unfolded his big body, setting cats aside with careful hands and one last stroke of his palm. His eyes pinned hers, solemn and studious behind his glasses. They sent a thousand messages. Some she understood, some went without saying, and some she wasn’t able to identify. “Thank you.”

And hell if that didn’t make her stomach flop like a fish out of water. “You-you’re welcome.”

Slipping past her, he headed for the bathroom to change, passing Kellen on his way. “You fucking hurt her, and I’ll—”

He and Clyde were eye to eye when Clyde said, “You’ll what? Kill me? Afraid you missed that boat, partner. But if it’s any consolation, I promise to do whatever it takes to keep her out of harm’s way.” Clyde made the first move by offering Kellen his hand.

Kellen took it, but the tension in his bulk was apparent from the stiffness of his shoulders and the clench of his teeth. “You make sure you do that—or I’ll chase your ass into the afterlife.”

Clyde’s nod was curt when he stepped around Kellen, closing the bathroom door behind him.

Okay, so maybe chivalry hadn’t died a merciless death.

Hot.

To discover that about Clyde was unbelievably hot.

To have a man other than her brother stick up for her was just plain smokin’. And pathetically, desperately, sadly a statement that it had been far too long since she’d had a man’s attention.

Weak.

Very weak.

Clyde sipped his banana Slurpee with a blissful grin on his face. The dogs, littered in a clump at his feet, slept in peaceful silence. He tilted the large cup at her in gratitude. “Thanks for this. I really missed them. You think if I get the frig out of Hell, they’ll have these wherever I end up?”

Banana Slurpees
.

Not so profound unless you connected the beverage back to someone she’d like to erase from her memory.

It had hit her when they’d stopped at the convenience store on the way home. Not only was it an out-of-the-ordinary, disgustingly sugary drink to crave, it was a weird coincidence to run into two people in a lifetime who loved them the way Clyde did.

And Vincent had.

Vincent had loved banana Slurpees, too. The memory had made her shudder in the store, and it made her shudder again now. Vincent holding court in her head the way he was as of late made her feel dirty, but he’d had a way of making even the most innocent of things seem dirty. The kind of dirty she just couldn’t wash away. He’d lied, cheated, stolen, and eventually killed . . . even if she could soak in a vat of disinfectant, it would never wash away the stench of his filthy memory.

Delaney gritted her teeth and realigned the bottles of herbs she’d already straightened for the umpteenth time to keep her fingers busy, looking away from the beauty of Clyde. Since this afternoon at Kellen’s, the impulse to tuck fistfuls of his hair between her fingers while he kissed the living shit out of her had been impossible to shake.

Dressed in her brother’s old blue polo shirt and jeans, he was unquestionably one delish package. It’d been an effort to keep her distance. The soft glow of the storefront, where all of her beloved remedies and books were, didn’t help either. It was too cozy and their silence too comfortable.

“I’m hoping for row after row of 7-Elevens with nothing but banana Slurpees,” Clyde said on a watery chuckle, cutting into her haze of growing lust.

Her expression went into instant consolation mode. She knew this role—the role of spirit guide. It was like an old shoe. She slipped it on with ease, relishing the buttery soft, worn leather of it.

She was at her best when she was reassuring someone they were making the right choice by choosing the up button on the elevator of eternity. “I can’t say for sure. I do know that some of the things I’ve heard uttered were said with big-time awe and wonder. I can safely say I haven’t had a single customer shriek in horror when they cross. Wherever you end up, I hope it has endless banana Slurpees, if that’s what trips your trigger.” And she did—hope that for him.

Clyde’s eyes sought hers, his glasses mirroring her reflection. “Did I mention I never believed in Heaven or Hell when I was alive?”

Her hand covered her mouth to hide her snort. “You did. I guess the logical team lost a player, huh?”

Pausing, Clyde took another long draw from his Slurpee straw. “It just didn’t make any sense from a scientific point of view. The devil and angels were myths as far as I was concerned.”

“Well, the devil’s no myth. It’s good you’re clear on that now.” She checked off a box on her inventory sheet, then said, “So tell me a little about what Clyde Atwell was like when he was alive.”

Rocking back on the stool, he propped his feet on the counter by her register. Pensive was the best word she could think of to describe the set of his face. Pensive with splashes of some distant regret. “The truth is he was self-absorbed, sometimes to the point of driving people away. His mother and father were gone, and he had no siblings, but he hopes if there really is a better place, they’re there when he gets there. Clyde Atwell spent a shitload of time in a lab, tinkering with his experiments and not nearly enough time doing life stuff. He read manuals and annals and prided himself on his research. But he never took a vacation. He never saw all the things, the places, he was so good at researching. He saw them from a computer screen and history books. He liked facts and figures and everything to make perfect, logical sense. He liked order in his world and in his theories about said world. Clyde’s come a long way in just three hellish months.”