Lucas: Origins Of A Demon (3 page)

A lazy, mellow smile spreads across Janice’s wide mouth and she leans in and kisses him, taking her time, gently probing his mouth with her tongue. When she withdraws, she seems to take a moment, like she is savoring what she just tasted. “I don’t know,” she says. “But whatever it is, I want it. I want it
all
…”

After they finish fucking in Jake’s old bed, Lucas leaves Janice sprawled out while he goes to the mini-bar and fixes them both a drink.

“You are a wondrous creature, Janice,” Lucas says when he is back on the bed, the two of them sitting up, sipping vodka.

“What the hell was that?” Janice asks, looking like she is riding an Ecstasy wave, her long, lithe body seeming to undulate gently like ocean waves on the shore. Lucas knew precisely what she was feeling. It took him years of practice in ancient Egypt to learn how to ellicit this kind of response in a woman. It was closely guarded knowledge at the time, and not easy to come by. Luckily, his other skills got him there, and a whole lot farther. Too far as it turned out.

“You didn’t approve?” He knew she did, of course. It is part of the ritual for him.

“Oh, I approved alright.” She sips more of her vodka. “I just ain't never felt anything like that before. I mean…” She groped for the right words for a while, failed to find them. “
Goddamn
.”

Lucas chuckles modestly. “It’s a gift I have.”

“A gift?” She grabs his semi-erect cock and squeezes. “It’s a gift you can give me
anytime
. Seriously.”

“There will be ample opportunity for that.” Lucas drains his glass. “First we need to discuss business.”

An exaggerated frown comes over Janice’s face and she lets go of his cock. “Really?” She looks crestfallen, like a little girl who has been told it’s bed time. “What kind of business? I’m just a dancer here that dishes out the odd blowjob if the price is right.”

“Not anymore,” Lucas says. “You are now my new manager.”

“What? I don’t know how to manage this place. Besides, it already has a manager.”

“Who?”

“Jamie. He called in sick tonight.”

“Well, there is your first job as manager. Call Jamie and tell him to take the rest of his life off sick.”

Janice sits up and stares at him, her mouth agape. “Jesus Christ, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Lucas says. “One thing you will learn about me, Janice. I don’t lie.” He finds the truth to be a more effective tool these days.

“Well, you’d be the first man who didn’t.”

“I’m not like other men.”

Janice smiles. “No you ain’t.” Her hand is back on his cock. This is the problem sometimes with exposing human women to such high levels of pleasure for the first time. Once they get a taste, they just want more, usually straight away. They become like a woman with her first vibrator, wanting only to lock themselves away for hours while they delight in the new heights of pleasure they are reaching.

“I also need to know about this Dimitri guy,” Lucas says, not missing a beat. “What do you know about him?”

Janice sighs and releases her gentle grip on his cock again. “You really know how to put a dampener on things, don’t you?”

“Believe me, Janice. There will be plenty of time for fucking. If you still want a club to work in and a place to do all that fucking, you better tell me about Dimitri so I can handle him.”

“Handle him?” She shakes her head. “No one handles Dimitri. He handles them.”

Lucas remains patient. “I’m sure that is the case with most people. Not with me.”

“You kind of remind me of him,” she says. “He has this look in his eyes, like…I don’t know…like a shark when its eyes roll back.”

Lucas frowns slightly at Janice’s less than clear analogy. “You mean he’s a cold blooded killer?”

“Yeah.” She stares into his eyes for a moment, as if searching. “I see it in you too. I’ve seen it in lots of people over the years. This city seems to have more than its fair share of sociopaths.”

“You think I’m a sociopath?”

“You’re something. I just don’t know what. Same with Dimitri. He’s something as well, but I don’t know what.”

Non-human most likely, Lucas thinks. Maybe he
has
made a mistake in taking this place over after all. If it turns out Dimitri
is
a demon, that could make things complicated. Lucas isn’t sure if he can take out another demon--a most likely high level demon to boot--and not attract the wrong kind of attention, and by wrong, he means his enemies.
Enemy
rather. In the end, there is only one enemy and his name is Leonard, Grand Duke of Hell.

The smart move is to walk away, find another club to take over, one that has no connections with demons or any other non-humans. But he likes the Filthy Ecstasy club. There is something about it, besides Janice that is, that makes him want to stay. Besides, if he finds what he came to Mercy City in the first place to find, Leonard, or any other demon for that matter, will no longer be a problem. He can finally extract that thorn from his side once and for all.

He gets up of the bed and puts his dark suit back on. Janice, clearly disappointed by this turn of events, pulls on her thong. “When is this Dimitri due to collect again?” he asks her.

“Tomorrow night,” Janice says. “That’s why Jake was in such a state earlier.”

Lucas nods. “Does Dimitri come in person?”

“No. He sends his goons instead. Only once he showed up in person, when Jake was late paying. Scared the shit out of everybody.”

Lucas doesn’t ask how. He has a fair idea. Just as he himself has the power of charisma and persuasion (amongst other things), other demons have their own specialties. Most likely, this Dimitri, if he is a demon and not just some psycho Russian gangster, specializes in fear and intimidation. A lot of demons have majored in that particular class, even Lucas himself, but in his case, it was more of a crash course in order to survive the brutality of Hell.

“Okay,” he says after some thought, during which time Janice looks into the large mirror on the wall as she fixes her hair. “Here’s what you are going to do, Janice. First, you are going to get yourself some new clothes, as you aren’t wearing any. Here.” He pulls out a roll of notes from his jacket pocket, peels of a few hundred dollar bills and hands them to her. “You’re a manger now, you need to dress like one. Secondly, inform the staff that the club will be closing for a few days for refurbishments. Give them full pay and make sure they know they will all be re-interviewed for their jobs when they come back. Any of them have a problem with that, tell them not to come back at all. In fact, keep only the staff that you think worth keeping. I trust your judgment.”

Janice stares dumbfounded at him. “You don’t like to hang around, do you?”

“Waiting around is for mugs, Janice. I learned that a long time ago.”

“Well, I just hope you know what you are doing when it comes to Dimitri.”

Lucas smiles. “We will see about that, won’t we?”

CHAPTER THREE

Lucas Taurus Rameses is his full name. Before that, in Hell, he adopted many names for himself, depending on what part of Hell he happened to be in. In Pandemonium, where he eventually spent most of his time upon becoming a demon, he was known as President Lucruceous. Hell has many presidents, each controlling different regions. Lucruceous, as he was known, ruled over a small corner in Pandemonium known as Corpisol, or the Earwigging Triangle, so called because it is where much of the intelligence community is based--the spies, double crossers and rats who feed the intelligence machine that is the Ministry of Suffering. The Ministry of Suffering is a massive tower in Damned Square, right in the center of Hell’s capitol city. The purpose of the Ministry of Filth (as many Hellion’s know the place, as it basically processes filth all day long in every form) is to process all the souls that arrive into Hell. Punishments and levels of suffering are decided in a completely random way. There is no method to deciding how much suffering a soul should be sentenced to. A damned soul’s fate is decided by rooms full of low level demons and other damned souls who sit around rolling twenty-sided dice. Each side of the dice correlates to a particular variable, such as length of suffering, place of suffering, type of suffering etc. After ten rolls of the dice, each unique variable rolled is applied to the name of a damned soul. The more unique variables in play, the more specific the term and type of suffering. The less unique variables, the more vague the suffering. Rolling the dice is a punishment in itself. When Lucruceous first became a demon, he was posted inside the Ministry tower to roll the dice, which he did for a long time before being posted to a higher position.

The other purpose of the Ministry of Suffering was to gather intelligence for the King of Hell. A defense system against the numerous enemies who plotted to overthrow the King and take the throne for themselves. It didn’t matter who was on the throne. It was just another of Hell’s endless cycles, played out for eternity.

Lucruceous ended up becoming an integral part of the intelligence services in Hell, finally running all of it, except the Ministry of Suffering itself. Lucruceous controlled most of the agents who gathered intelligence for the King. It was a role he was made for, having spent most of his human life in the ancient Egyptian city of Memphes doing much the same thing, only the intelligence was purely for his own benefit, so he could use it to blackmail and extort his way towards getting what he wanted. At the time, what he wanted was power for power’s sake, a need he continued to feed even when he went to Hell (after he became a demon, of course--before that he was just another damned soul who regretted every second of his miserable and tortuous existence), even though that need became his downfall in Egypt, and eventually in Hell as well.

Now here he is on Earth again, and after two hundred years, he still feels the urge to gather intelligence and grow his power to monstrous proportions. Though this time, he keeps his need in check, by remembering where such needs eventually lead. His downfall.

Sitting in his new office, looking through the large plate glass window to the club below, he is trying to ignore the voice inside him that is already making plans to cover Mercy City with his influence, to seek out every secret, every possible bit of useful information so he can use it against people.

He wants to play the game again. The dark game. The dangerous game.

The
thrilling
game.

Once he gets what he needs to finally rid himself of his relentless pursuers, he will be free to spread his dark tendrils of influence even further.

“No,” he says to himself. “I cannot. Not again.”

It is something he has said to himself so many times in the last two hundred years, and every time, he has accepted his own decision. Being hunted like an animal by Grand Duke Leonard’s personal guards makes it an easy decision to make. He can never settle in any one place for long, so why plan on building another empire?

Now, the end is finally in sight. The running could soon stop. Long enough for him to build the empire a part of him always aches to build again. He is like an addict, addicted to power and influence. He has always been the same. Perhaps because he is the son of a King. Or more likely because said King banished him from his kingdom of birth, disowning him, casting him out like an unclean spirit. Even after aeon's, it still hurts him to think about it.

Down below in the club, it is empty and the lights are turned on full, illuminating all too clearly just how drab and grim the place really is. Nothing has been done to it in years. A club should always be reinventing itself, every couple of years at least. It keeps people interested, stops them moving on when they get sick of the place. Obviously Jake didn’t give a shit about people moving on. Most likely he was more interested in making just enough to fund his gambling and drinking problems.

And enough to pay off Dimitri.

Lucas has been waiting around in the club all night, waiting for Dimitri’s men to turn up, as Janice said they were due to. There is no one else in the club, just Lucas. Tomorrow the work men come to begin revamping the place. For now, Lucas has to deal with Dimitri’s goons, see exactly what he is up against, and see if the goons are human or non-human. He is really hoping they are the former, but his instincts tell him the latter is probably the case. If Dimitri is a demon or other non-human, he will not have humans working for him.

Earlier, Lucas locked the front doors of the club to prevent any humans from coming in thinking Filthy Ecstasy is open for business. He doesn’t expect the locked doors to stop Dimitri’s goons. They will either teleport in or break them down, one of the two.

As it happens, Lucas does not end up having to replace the front doors. From his vantage point by the large window in the upstairs office, Lucas sees two men appear out of nowhere in the middle of the club, near the center stage. The two men are heavy set, both wearing dark leather jackets and jeans. They stand for a moment, looking around, then they both look up at Lucas standing in the window, watching them.

So, Lucas thinks as he continues to watch through the window. Unfortunately I was right. Demons after all.