The Demon Deception (21 page)

“Well, let’s go ahead and eat, shall we? We
have a long drive ahead of us,” Lilith didn’t like the tack that
the conversation had taken.

Darcy looked down at her plate. In a quiet,
sad voice, she said, “But I’m a witch.”

The conversation was suddenly over. They ate
in silence after that, punctuated by the sound of knives and forks
on ceramic.

----------------------------------------------------

They arrived in
Amarillo eight hours later. Sam drove into the Amarillo Downtown
Marriott Courtyard parking lot. They grabbed bags and walked into
the lobby. Lazarus used one of his other identities and credit
cards to get four rooms. Before the four went in different
directions, Lazarus pulled Lilith aside, “I need to talk to
you.”

Lilith used her hand to tuck a lock of hair
behind one ear, and smiled, “If you want to get me alone, you don’t
have to be so serious. I’m more than happy to meet you in your
room, or mine.”

“Stop playing the seductress. I have
information that you need to know.”

She studied his face, and he watched the
conflicting motives on her face. He wondered what hidden agendas
were concealed there. He knew her plans revolved around her desire
to bring him back to her master. That would always be her main
goal.

She acquiesced, “Okay, when do you want to
meet?”

Lazarus looked at his watch, “How about
six-thirty. We can have dinner together.” He scrutinized her
intently, “but, there won’t be any collateral damage tonight. I’m
not in the mood for your games.”

She hesitated, and then nodded her
agreement.

Sam and Darcy watched them as they talked.
When Lilith nodded her head and accepted Lazarus’ invitation, Sam
turned to Darcy, “What about you? You up for some chow later
on?”

Darcy looked up at Sam, then looked over at
Lilith. Lilith gave a small nod. Darcy turned back to Sam, “Sure, I
guess we can get dinner.”

Lazarus knew what Sam was up to. Sam was
going to try and get information from Darcy. Sam was an experienced
interrogator, and when he turned on the charm, his dark, good looks
and bad boy persona could elicit information better than anyone.
Hopefully he’d be able to get Darcy to talk over dinner. Lazarus
had a feeling that Sam had other motives as well. Lazarus couldn’t
blame him. Darcy was a lovely, young woman. Sam was a handsome,
though large and dangerous, young man. Nature would take its
course.

----------------------------------------------------

He met Lilith downstairs in the lobby. She
hadn’t changed her clothes. Everyone in the lobby was staring at
her. One man tried to talk to her, but she waved him off before he
could get a word out. She saw Lazarus, strode forward and fell in
beside him. They walked towards the door.

“There’s a steakhouse halfway down the block.
I thought we could eat there.”

She didn’t say anything. He enjoyed the
silence, opening the door for her as they exited the building. It
was cold outside, and Lilith crossed her arms against the chill.
They walked down the sidewalk, and cars honked. Lazarus didn’t have
to look. He knew that every person was watching Lilith’s
mesmerizing stride.

Fifteen minutes later, they were at the
steakhouse. Heads swiveled as they were escorted to their table.
The men were jealous of Lazarus, and the women were jealous of the
way their husbands and boyfriends looked at Lilith. Lazarus and
Lilith took off their jackets, and placed them on the back of the
chairs. Lilith’s breasts strained against the flimsy material of
the t-shirt she was wearing. Lazarus, and everybody else in the
restaurant, was very aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“
It’s very cold outside,”
Lazarus
thought.

“Ya’ll want some biscuits?” the waitress
asked. She placed silverware and menus in front of them. She was in
her mid-thirties, dressed in a gingham top, tight blue jeans, and
boots.

“Butter?” Lazarus asked.

“Honey butter,” the waitress answered.

He smiled, “even better.”

“What do you want to drink?”

“I’ll take sweet tea.” He motioned towards
Lilith, “What do you want?”

Lilith leaned back, drawing the fabric tight
across her chest, “I’ll take sweet tea, also. Oh, and can you bring
me a chardonnay?” The waitress noticed the strained fabric, and
stammered as she told them she would bring the biscuits out with
the tea.

Lazarus shook his head, “Do you have to do
that?”

Lilith looked at him with a quizzical look on
her face, “Do what?”

“Wind up everybody you meet?”

Lilith idly waved her hand as she read the
menu, “It’s fun. Plus, I have a job to do. My work is never done.
You know that. You’d be amazed at some of the offers I get.
Strangely, I rarely have to work hard to glean souls for my master.
They’re all so willing to walk that path with minimal
guidance.”

Lazarus smiled at the waitress when she
brought the biscuits and sweet tea back. She walked away, and he
grabbed a biscuit and began buttering it, “Do you really need his
approval that much?” The biscuit was warm and soft. The waitress
came back with the chardonnay and placed it in front of Lilith.

She laughed as she picked up the glass of
wine, “Oh, I think you misunderstand the situation. It’s not about
my boss at all. I enjoy this.”

He made a circular motion with the butter
knife, encouraging her to continue.

She leaned back against the chair, “It’s a
good thing the boss likes what I’m doing. But it’s not about
him.”

“And you don’t care about damning souls to
hell for all eternity?”

Lilith shook her head, “If you think I’m the
reason they end up there, you don’t understand humans. Every soul
I’ve ever turned would still be headed down the same path. I’m just
the facilitator. Like I said, I don’t tell them to sacrifice
children. That’s their own sick fantasies floating to the surface.
I don’t create the evil, I just take advantage of it. It’s already
there, under the surface.”

She picked up a biscuit, and began eating. It
was a good biscuit, and she slowed to enjoy it. She ate the entire
biscuit, took a drink of chardonnay, and picked up another one.
Lazarus pointed at the honey butter with his knife. She thought
about it, picked up her butter knife and took a dab and spread it
on the biscuit. She continued, “I like to think, it’s more about a
job well done.”

Lazarus ate his biscuit, enjoying the
softness, the heat, and the sweetness of the honey butter. He let
her talk. The more she talked, the more he might learn. It would be
a long time before he could talk to a demon about their power
structure again. Any intelligence was good intelligence. Of course,
a lot of what she was saying was complete nonsense. There was
nothing human in her motivations. “I suppose it has nothing to do
with beating the other demons? Nothing to do with the amount of
souls that you divert from the righteous path?”

She considered this, “Well, I guess that’s
part of it as well. It brings a certain amount of satisfaction. But
the other demons are not even in the same league as I am. They
don’t have the capabilities, the finesse that I do.”

“I think that Mephistopheles might disagree
with you on that point.”

She stopped eating the biscuit, and placed it
on the plate in front of her. Her demeanor changed. She was colder,
the chill in her voice apparent, “When did you talk to
Mephistopheles?”

Lazarus kept eating, enjoying the biscuit,
and enjoying Lilith’s reaction, “I ran into him in St. Louis. Or,
maybe I should say, he tracked me to St. Louis, and I had a devil
of a time getting rid of his agents. No pun intended.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I wanted to see your reaction when I
mentioned his name.”

She picked the biscuit back up, and then her
butter knife. She put more butter on the biscuit, “And, he told you
what?”

The waitress stopped by the table, “Do ya’ll
know what you want to eat yet?”

Lilith looked at Lazarus and asked, “Are you
buying, Eli?”

“Yes, I’m buying,” he replied.

Lilith ordered a New York strip, medium.
Lazarus ordered a T-bone, well done. The waitress wrote down their
orders and walked back to the kitchen to place them.

Lilith asked again, “What did Mephistopheles
tell you?”

Eli was done with the biscuits. If he ate any
more, he wouldn’t be able to eat his steak. He placed the butter
knife across the small plate.

“Well, Les was upset with you. He seems . .
.”

Lilith held up her hand, stopping him, “Wait,
what. Who’s Les?”

“Mephistopheles. I call him Les. His name is
too damn long to keep repeating.”

Lilith was amused by Lazarus’ explanation and
laughed out loud, “Oh, that’s rich. I bet he hated that. He is such
a dilettante. He hates for anybody to be disrespectful to him.”

Lazarus nodded, “Yeah, I got that.”

There was delight in Lilith’s eyes. Lilith
was back to her old, seductive self. She ran her finger around the
rim of the glass, and looked at Lazarus, her eyes filled with lust,
“You are such a delight. It’s amazing the way you make me
laugh.”

Lazarus dismissed the obvious invitation,
“Sorry, you can put that right out of your mind. It’s never going
to happen again.”

An indolent smile played across her lips,
“Such a shame, I really enjoyed our time together. I wish we could
re-live some of the good times we had.”

“What say we get back to our previous
subject? We were talking about Mephistopheles.”

“Spoil sport. Okay, back to Mephistopheles.
What did he have to say?”

The steaks arrived and they stopped until the
waitress took away the old plates and put the new plates in front
of them. They both cut into the steaks, and took a few bites before
they began the conversation again.

“So, Mephistopheles,” she paused, smirking,
“or Les?” Lilith said, as a reminder.

Lazarus finished chewing, and swallowed,
“Yes. Les was upset about you working on this project with me. He
seems to think that you have ulterior motives not related to our
current mission.”

Lilith rolled her eyes, “of course I have
ulterior motives. You know that.”

Lazarus nodded, “Yes, I do. That’s why I
brought Sam along to watch my back. I don’t trust anything you
do.”

“Exactly, that’s my point. You would be a
fool to trust me to do what I say I’m going to do.”

Lazarus cut into his steak, “True, but I
think he wasn’t talking about me. I think he was talking about your
relationship with your boss.”

Lilith stopped cutting her steak, placed the
knife and fork on the plate, “What, he thinks I’m going to betray
the Great Deceiver, the master of intrigue? How the hell is that
even possible?”

Lazarus sat back and interlocked the fingers
of his hands. He pondered for a moment, and then spread his hands
apart, “I don’t know. Maybe by working with the enemy?”

Lilith shook her head, “So, I betray my boss
by working with an entity from another reality? That doesn’t make
sense. I’ve worked hard to get to where I’m at. If I work with
another boss, I just go to the bottom, and have to work my way back
up. You know, prove myself again. Right now, I’m on top. There are
no others even close. The boss is pretty happy with me. So, better
the devil you know. No pun intended.”

Lazarus nodded. He didn’t believe her, and
told her so, “You know that I don’t believe a word that you’re
saying.”

Lilith smiled, “Oh, of course. You would be a
very foolish man if you did. One thing you’ve proved to me over the
years, Eli, is that you’re not foolish at all. If you were, you
wouldn’t still be alive.”

Lilith took another bite of steak, “So, if
you aren’t prepared to believe me when I tell you that I’m not
prepared to betray my boss on this mission, why did you tell me
about Mephistopheles?”

Lazarus cut the last piece of steak from the
bone, and put it into his mouth. He chewed, enjoying the smoky
taste. He swallowed, and then took a drink of sweet tea.

“Well, I thought it would be a very good idea
to let you know about Mephistopheles, because it might cause
dissension between two major demons. Also, I thought you needed to
know that he’s using ATF agents to track us.”

Lilith finished her steak, “Good point about
the dissension. Good idea to let me know about the ATF agents as
well. I assume we’ll probably see them again?”

Lazarus nodded, “Yeah, I think we may see
them again pretty soon. We lost them in St. Louis, but it’s just a
matter of time before they track us down. Sam and I have some heavy
duty munitions that we have to pick up. I have no doubt that
they’ll be on our trail.”

The waitress stopped by again, filled up the
glasses with sweet tea, and asked Lilith if she wanted any more
wine.

“No thank you, but since Eli is buying, what
kind of desert do you have?” Lilith asked.

The waitress left and came back with two
desert menus. Lilith oohed and aahed about the various deserts,
then settled on a decadent brownie with vanilla ice cream and a
maple syrup glaze. Lazarus decided he might as well get a dessert,
and ordered apple pie a la mode, with coffee.

Lilith started talking about Mephistopheles
again, “He’s always been jealous of me. He hasn’t done anything
original since he convinced the Catholic Church that it needed
Quaestores to go around and sell indulgences in the Middle Ages.
That brought us a lot of Bishops. Avarice is an amazing thing. Then
Martin Luther had to go and spoil everything for him. He hasn’t
come up with a good idea since. I don’t know why the boss keeps him
around.”

“So, you two have a competition for the
Deceiver’s attention?” Lazarus asked. He was trying to keep Lilith
talking, trying to get some insight into the workings of the
political power struggles in Hell.