Monster (3 page)

“Sorry. Fire and paper gnomes don’t mix.” Chester folded himself into a parrot and settled on Monster’s shoulder. “Dispatch says Hardy is on the way.”

Monster made a neutral gruntish kind of noise.

The doll continued to chime. “If you’re not going to check your messages, you could at least turn that thing off,” said Chester.

“Can’t turn it off,” said Monster. “Only way to get it to shut up is to listen to the message.”

The doll grew more insistent in its chiming. “I don’t know why you don’t just get a cell phone,” said Chester. “At least those can be set on Silent.”

“Don’t want a cell phone.”

He didn’t want a nagging doll either, but Liz had insisted. She’d said the doll was more reliable, and it didn’t have to be recharged. The truth was that it was a lot harder to ignore the doll than a cell. The chiming would just get louder and louder and louder. Now that the doll knew he knew about the message, it would be even worse. It would also report his slow response time back to Liz.

The doll’s chime changed to a shrill hiss. It was getting impatient.

“All right, already. Give me the damn message.”

Liz’s voice issued from the doll. “Hey, this is Liz. Call me.”

“Thanks,” said Monster. “Glad I didn’t miss that one.”

The doll hummed. “Hey, this is Liz. Call me.”

“I got it.”

“Call me.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Call me.”

Monster snatched up the doll. “Listen, you stupid little bastard, I got the message already! Shut the hell up!” He hurled it across the parking lot. The doll jumped to its feet and jogged back over.

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to call her back?” asked Chester.

“Maybe.”

Monster raised his foot and prepared to stomp the stuffing out of the doll, but he came to his senses at the last moment. Destroying the doll would release the minor devil contained within. Although it couldn’t do more than one small malicious act before returning to the underworld, it could still be a pain in the ass. Last time he’d lost control and destroyed one of Liz’s dolls, he’d gotten a boil on his nose. And the one before that had taken all the fizz out of his sodas for a solid month.

Of course, minor devils lived for stuff like that. It was the whole reason they allowed themselves to be bound. Inevitably, they’d be released to pull one of their malevolent pranks. For a devil, spending a thousand years in mortal servitude was always worth it if it got to eventually inflict someone with a case of sonic flatulence for a day. Nasty little bastards, and Liz loved them.

That should’ve been his first clue.

No, he corrected. Summoning a girlfriend from the Pits, that should’ve been his first clue.

The doll chimed in hopes of irritating Monster to destroy it, but he set aside his foot. “Nice try. Just connect me with Liz.”

The doll rang three times. “Hi, this is Liz. I’m not here right now, but please leave a message after the beep.”

Monster declined to leave a message. He snarled at the doll. “You knew she wasn’t going to answer, didn’t you?”

The doll shrugged. He picked it up and stuffed it deep into his pocket.

Twenty minutes later, a lime green pickup pulled into the lot and came to a screeching halt beside Monster’s van. A large man, not exactly fat but tall, wide-framed, and doughy, got out. He wore a jumpsuit the same shade of green as his pickup. Other than his largeness there wasn’t much about Hardy to notice except the full set of ram horns curling around his skull. Hardy claimed to be part demon, but it seemed unlikely. A lot of folks claimed to be part demon, but a lot of people claimed to have known Merlin too.

Monster nodded at Hardy. Hardy nodded back. They said nothing else as they worked together to extract the yeti from the van and load it onto the pickup.

“I want forty percent,” said Hardy. “Forty? Shit, I captured the damn thing. All you have to do is deliver it.”

“Forty percent. And I’m doing you a favor. Alchemical harvest for a dead yeti won’t even pay for my gas. The most valuable parts are the tongue, eyes, and fangs, and those are missing. You aren’t holding out on me, are you?”

“Come on, Hardy. Look at it. The head got blown to bits.”

“So no teeth?”

“I checked. They must’ve been disintegrated in the blast.”

“What the hell happened, anyway?”

“A civilian got in the middle of things and misused a pacification rune.” Monster patted the yeti. “The pelt is used in some cryo preservation enchantments. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

“Maybe ten years ago. Forty. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine.”

“Great. Let me just go get the paperwork.” Hardy fumbled around in the cab of his pickup. Monster thought he saw a bulge just above Hardy’s ass, the telltale sign of a goat tail. It was far likelier Hardy was half satyr than part demon.

Monster pulled the doll from his pocket and tossed it under the pickup’s rear tire.

Hardy lumbered over. He wasn’t that fat and so there really was no reason for him to lumber that Monster could see. Unless Hardy was trying to squeeze some hooves into size-ten sneakers. With a smug grin, he handed over the forms, and Monster signed them.

“You drive a hard bargain, Hardy.”

“Just trying to make a living. You understand.”

Monster climbed into his van and drove a safe distance from the doll while Hardy started his pickup. The vehicle pulled forward, squishing the doll. The devil’s revenge was swift as all four tires blew out at once and steam exploded from under the pickup’s hood. The engine sputtered to a halt.

Monster waved to Hardy and pulled into the street. “Little much, wasn’t that?” asked Chester. “Hey, I owed him one. Last week he sprayed my underwear with chupacabra pheromones, remember?”

“And two weeks before that you replaced all his grimoires with Dr. Seuss books, if I recall correctly.”

“Only because he phoned in that false gryphon call to keep me from scoring that cockatrice bag.”

“And, if I remember correctly, a month before that, you—”

“Hey, I owed him one for the pheromones, and that’s that.”

“I suppose it would be a waste to remind you of the dangerously cyclical nature of these kinds of feuds.”

Monster pulled the three yeti fangs he’d managed to scavenge from the Food Plus Mart and stuck them in the ashtray, smiling. “You suppose right. Not least because I don’t know what the hell
cyclical
means.”

Three scores in one call was an unexpected windfall. He wondered if the Food Plus Mart might be a hot spot. A change in architecture or street names could create an imbalance in the flow of magic, but usually the Bureau of Geomancy was on top of that sort of thing. He decided it must’ve been a fluke. Even in the world of magic, shit just happened sometimes.

Half past six in the morning, he decided to call it a night. One of the advantages of being his own boss. He had enough cash in his pocket and figured he’d wait to drop his bags in the afternoon. For now, he was just tired and ready to get some sleep.

It wouldn’t be as simple as that. Liz would be waiting. She was always waiting. But it was either go home, sleep in his van, or get a motel room. His back was achy, and even fleabag motels cost money that he’d rather not spend.

He parked the van outside the house and sat there for a while, just looking at it. The lights were on. Liz didn’t sleep. Demons didn’t need to, and Liz was all demon, dragged up from the Pits. He’d dragged her up himself.

Demons were like people. They came in a lot of varieties. Though they were always evil or self-serving or, at the very least, obnoxious, they weren’t all the same. On the surface Liz was warm, intelligent, and charismatic. She was also part succubus and had the perfect body to show for it. There were a lot of good things about having a succubus for a girlfriend. She cooked. She cleaned. She had a job at Sin Central Incorporated that brought in more money than he made, and she never bugged him about playing too many video games. And there was all the sex too.

But there was a real downside to having a succubus for a girlfriend. Little things such as spitting fire, superhuman strength, that slight brimstone scent that no amount of air freshener could ever quite mask no matter how many gallons of aerosol artificial pine stench she sprayed over everything. And there was all the sex too.

“If you hate coming home so much,” said Chester, “why don’t you just break up with her?”

He’d tried once. There were still scorch marks on the ceiling, and he’d had to buy a new television after she’d melted the old one. She hadn’t hurt him. She never would, though she could’ve killed him easily enough. In her own way, she loved him, and he cared for her too. They just weren’t a good couple.

But they were stuck with each other. He kept her out of the Pits, and she kept from tearing him to pieces as per the scorned woman clause of their contract. He reminded himself that should he ever find a way to escape this relationship, he would never again answer a personal ad in the
Weekly Underworlder.

“See you tomorrow, boss.”

Chester folded himself into a palm-size square. Monster stuck the paper in his pocket and went inside.

Liz was sitting on the couch. She didn’t look up as he entered, just kept reading her
Cosmo.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey,” she replied. “How was work?”

He grunted. “I made some spaghetti, if you’re hungry.”

He grabbed a plate and sat beside her. Liz didn’t have horns, bat wings, or a tail, but her skin had a deep red tint, and her lips, eyelids, and hair were jet black. She looked like a sunburned Native American goth woman. Her tendency to wear clothing and accessories with flowers and butterflies usually added a touch of hippie to the mix, but today she was wearing one of his old T-shirts and nothing else. Fifteen months ago, he would’ve found the sharp hint of her nipples against the cotton and her naked perfect legs to be enticing. Now all he could think was that she was getting the scent of brimstone all over another one of his shirts.

She did it on purpose. She was slowly odorizing his wardrobe, marking her territory.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Yeti,” he replied through a mouthful of spaghetti.

She nodded to herself, thumbing through the magazine.

He finished his dinner in silence. Then he tried to slip off to bed unmolested, but when he came out of the bathroom in his pajamas, she was waiting for him. There was a time when the promise of her carnal pleasures would’ve filled him with glee. Back then she would’ve been naked and oiled up and ready for action. Now she was still wearing his T-shirt and reading her magazine.

Liz’s succubus nature meant that regular sex was necessary to keep her from getting cranky, but that didn’t mean she necessarily enjoyed it. There were plenty of times when she wasn’t interested in it except as a bit of exercise. And those times were more and more common lately. Maybe he wasn’t a great lover, but she could’ve had the decency to fake some passion. Hell, she was a succubus. Wasn’t that her job?

He went to the bed and lay down beside her. “I don’t really feel like it tonight, baby,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow. “Oh, come on. It never takes long.”

He was too tired to be insulted. “Our contract specifically says intimate relations are to be supplied on a daily basis.”

Monster didn’t need to be reminded. When he’d signed the contract, he’d found special promise in that particular clause. He’d assumed it was meant to bind
her.
Now he knew better.

“I don’t know if I can even—”

It was a weak attempt. Among Liz’s supernatural talents was the ability to give a man an erection by her willpower alone. He could’ve been strapped to a bed of nails while mongooses chewed on his face. It wouldn’t have made a difference. All she had to do was wave her index finger in a small circle and upward motion toward his groin and he would snap to attention.

Liz pulled his pajama bottoms down to his ankles without ceremony and climbed atop him. He made a halfhearted attempt to fondle her breasts but didn’t even have the motivation to reach under the T-shirt. She kept reading her magazine the whole time. Monster occupied himself by scanning the articles titles on the cover. He was guessing she hadn’t gotten to “Old Flames: Keeping the Spark” yet.

When she was finished, she got up and left the bedroom without so much as a “Thanks.” Monster pulled his pajamas up and covered his head as the dawn light filtered through the curtains.

The red cat was at their door again.

Rob didn’t like cats. He didn’t hate them. He just didn’t see why people kept them around. He also had the same puzzlement over dogs, snakes, hamsters, fish, and children. Spouses occupied a sort of subcategorization in his universe. Sometimes useful, but mostly a bother.

Over thirty years, Rob and Evelyn had developed an encyclopedia of unspoken communication. It was through this vast network of signals that their marriage endured—thrived—in a comforting familiarity and reassuring silences. The system had worked because they’d both come to conclusion that they really didn’t like each other. The truth was that neither of them was very likable. They could be pleasant, polite, helpful. But they weren’t charismatic or endearing, and a divorce and new marriage would only lead to the same place they were already at.