The Devil Stood Up (11 page)

Suits her, the Devil thought.

“That one suits you, Lillith,” he called up.

Surprise raced across her features, then pleasure followed quickly by suspicious anger.

“What do you mean by that? Suits me?” she said, calling down. She’d jumped lightly to the surface of the balcony and held Kelly’s head pinned between her knees, Kelly’s back against the wall. Kelly struggled but the demon’s body was strong of leg and held her easily.

“It’s obviously a body that’s had more than a few rough miles,” he said. “It’s fitting that its last miles should be over the roughest road imaginable. Meaning, my dear, that you are, shall we say, tough to contain.”

Pleasure and anger flitted across her features again. She didn’t know if she was being insulted or not, but she suspected that she was.

She squeezed her legs together and Kelly moaned in pain. Her head felt as though it was in a vise. There was very little in the way of padding on the whore’s wretched knees.

The Devil controlled his features, not wanting Lillith to see his distress. Although he imagined she could sense it. That was Lillith’s way–she was a Seer of all things.

“Yes, I do know how you feel about this one,” Lillith said and pinched again. Kelly yelped this time as the knees ground against her temples. Now Lillith smiled down. “Who would have guessed it? Lucifer loses his mind…for the second time, too!” Her voice became lilting, teasing. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d forget your lesson so soon, Lucifer. It was such a hard lesson to learn.” She shook her head, her smile growing wider. “Ever miss Heaven? Or are you over that now?”

The Devil smiled back. He knew he walked a fine line. He wanted to goad her into coming down but he was also causing Kelly more distress. He would have to count on Kelly’s strength. He had no choice.

“I wonder if you miss it, Lillith,” he said. “Or do you think earth is more your style?”

Lillith squeezed Kelly’s head again and then let go entirely, jumping up and over the balcony railing. Tearing fingernails from their beds, she climbed down, hand over hand, clinging to the wall like a bat.

The Devil kept his face neutral. Kelly’s head appeared over the balcony edge and she looked shaken but okay. He shifted all his attention to the descending demon.

She hit the ground and turned so fast she was nearly a blur. She was on him in a second. She wrapped herself around him, an arm around his neck, another around his waist and one long leg coming around his hips. She tightened like a constrictor and smiled into his eyes.

“What do you think of this body, now, Lucifer,” she said, breathing the words into his ear, drawing out the ess in his name.

He felt this body responding, growing hard against her pelvis. Autonomic response, he thought to himself. That’s all it is.

Sensing his thought, she pulled back, a pout on her fleshy lips. Her eyes were darkly rimmed and the pupils glittered eerily from the depths of her eyes.

“Let’s not kid each other, Lucifer; you miss heaven as much as I, and we always will miss it.” Her voice lost its teasing note, displaying the truth of her statement.

“It’s true, Lillith, I do miss it,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, stepping back and disentangling himself. “So, what’s your plan, my dear? How were you going to get me to go back?”

She looked up at him and smiled. She reached into her short, leather jacket and withdrew a knife that looked too big to have been concealed in that tight space. She smiled at his expression of mild surprise.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Without further hesitation, she thrust herself forward, grabbing his wrist in one hand, knife out and questing. The Devil turned, but not before the knife caught the trailing edge of his jacket, slicing through. Lillith turned almost as fast, her nails digging into the flesh of the Devil’s borrowed wrist, drawing blood.

He shook his hand, trying to dislodge her, but she held firm. She struck out again and he ducked and spun on his heels, drawing her arm up and over his head. He stood and snapped her against himself, the knife pinned between them.

He looked into her eyes, not smiling. He couldn’t let her go to make a grab for the knife; she was too strong. Without forethought, he brought his forehead sharply into hers, a sick, cracking noise filling his head. She staggered back, dazed, head split across the middle like a seam and he reached for the knife. She brought it up, slicing across the meat of his palm, and still her other hand held his wrist. It was as if they were welded together at the join.

He grabbed her flailing knife hand and she thrust her head forward, her lips seeking his neck, his jugular. He could not let her latch onto him there. It would be the end of him.

He ran his knee up and into her stomach and she heaved out breath, stumbling back, finally dropping the knife. He took the opportunity and grabbed her thin throat with his free hand and squeezed. He was careful not to squeeze the life right out of her…with her hand on his arm, he’d be dragged back to Hell with her, and that was not in his plan.

He leaned forward and propelled her, titling and stumbling, to the alley wall. “Time for you to go, Lillith,” he said, his voice harsh and panting. Holding her was like trying to hold a deadly, twining python. “You don’t have to go home,” he said and slammed her bodily into the brick wall for emphasis, “but you can’t stay here.” Slam.

Her eyes slitted in amusement and laughter tried to squeeze through the narrowed opening of her throat. Then she brought her own knee up.

It landed squarely in the Devil’s groin and he felt first a sharp pain, but nothing that would make him lose his grip. Then came a wave of nausea as a sickening heat radiated through his groin and up into his lower belly. The pain continued to radiate even as the nausea built.

Lillith pulled herself up and away from his collapsing form and she ascended the wall the way she’d come down, hand over hand, animal-like. She reached the balcony and flipped herself up and over. Kelly was gone. Lillith shrieked in frustrated rage. The woman was her one bargaining chip…she had to find her before Lucifer did.

The balcony was small, merely a decorative outcrop on the façade of the building. The window that faced it was one solid sheet of glass, not intended to open. Lillith looked up but it was a sheer face to the next balcony. The woman could not have climbed it. She looked left to the fire escape that snaked up the side of the building. It was easily ten feet away…the woman could not have bridged that gap. Then Lillith looked down, examining the side of the building. There was the barest suggestion of a ledge, a mere three inches of extended brick, but if the woman had been very brave, very strong, she might have done it.

Lillith leapt from the balcony and flung herself against the wall. Gripping with the whore’s already shredded fingers, forcing this body to work well beyond its limits, she crabbed across the building and onto the fire escape.

Up or down? She hadn’t gone down; she’d be by Lucifer’s side if she had. She must have gone up. Lillith began to climb the fire escape stairs. She went quietly on the toes of her feet, listening behind her for Lucifer. He would recover himself quickly. Perhaps had already. She gained the roof.

Kelly was mid-way across the grainy surface, struggling with a door that would lead into the building. She’d heard the struggle between the Devil and the woman (demon? Had to be, yes) and after considering her very limited options, had clambered across to the fire escape. It had been a terrifying, tenuous trek as she’d listened to the brutal exchange in the alley below her.

Now she turned at a light scraping sound behind her. The woman (demon) was coming over the fire-escape and onto the roof. The woman-demon’s face was slicked red from the gash in her forehead. The blood had run down her neck, soaking the cheap blouse she wore, blooming black roses in the rayon. Her hands, before they clenched into fists, displayed ragged fingertips, ground down nearly to the bone.

Kelly’s stomach seemed to slam up and into her throat and for a moment, she was unable to breathe. Terror froze her where she stood, even as the woman-demon gritted across the roof to her. She was smiling, her teeth the brightest thing in that mask of blood. She was horrific.

Kelly’s legs lost what little strength they had left and she slid down, sighing, her back to the door. The demon’s smile grew wider.

“No fight left in you, little lamb?” the demon said, her voice cracking and throaty from the Devil’s handiwork at her throat. Kelly’s stomach tightened again and her heart stuttered in her chest, making her gasp.

Now the demon was upon her and Kelly could only stare up, transfixed by the nightmare before her. The body the demon piloted looked half dead, beaten and tattered, ill-used. A swell of pity caused tears to form in Kelly’s eyes. Pity that someone could have used her only body, her only life, so uncaringly but worse to have that body end up as a demon’s mode of transport…to be used up and discarded as easily as you’d discard a sock with a hole…

Lillith felt the pity and took a step back, suddenly unsure. Then she knelt, puzzled and staring at the woman. There was something…something…curious…

“Who are you?” Lillith whispered, her eyes slitting suspiciously. She shook her head like a dog bothered by a fly.

Kelly pushed herself more firmly against the door and turned her head as the demon reached toward her with shattered, shaking fingers. Kelly barely registered the demon’s question, so great was her fear. She would remember the question, but only later.

The demon’s fingers traced her cheek.

“Lillith, leave her alone,” the Devil said, standing fifteen feet away at the edge of the roof. “Turn and fight. Let’s have done with it.”

Lillith turned and rose in one fluid movement. Dazed incomprehension shuttered her features, but from the distance the Devil could not see it.

Lillith started toward him. “Lucifer, you must–”

She stumbled and went to her knees, head down. This body was almost done in, but it was more than that that made her stumble…it was what she’d seen in the woman…

She got to her feet and stumbled forward again, forcing the legs into a run. She must tell Lucifer what she’d seen. Her ankle snapped and she felt the pain as something distant, of no consequence. She forced the body up again.

The Devil stood his ground, letting Lillith come closer. He wanted her as far from Kelly as her could get her. Lillith was wholly untrustworthy and more than capable of killing Kelly for her own purposes. He didn’t see the demon’s alarm in the whore’s face–its mask of blood hid every feature save the bright, staring eyes.

“Lucifer, listen,” Lillith said, her voice an incomprehensible, blood-filled buzz. “You must watch out, you must watch out for her, she’s–”

She was upon him, stumbling, arms outstretched, her mouth a wide grimace. The Devil took her arms and side-stepped, using her own momentum against her and flinging her from the roof. Lillith tried to grip onto Lucifer’s arms, but the fingers of this body were slick with blood and frozen by fatigue.

She couldn’t do it.

She fell.

Lucifer watched until the body hit, bursting like an overripe fruit, then turned and strode across the roof to Kelly.

By the time they got back to the alley, Lillith’s Transition was almost complete. She stood near their car, the headlights of cars passing on the street illuminating what little was left of her. She was almost entirely faded. At the sight of Kelly, she tilted her head as though listening.

Kelly was startled by the almost-not-there apparition.

“How long will she be like that?” Kelly asked.

The Devil looked at Lillith, his face an odd combination of sad and stern.

“It can take a while. The Transition is…it’s difficult. And she’ll be remanded to Hell for a while this time. They can interfere up here, but they can’t outright try and kill humans. Very frowned upon.”

Kelly couldn’t take her eyes from Lillith. She still appeared in the body she’d chosen, but now it wasn’t as beaten as it had been toward the end. Kelly glanced at the body that had fallen from the roof and quickly away, the pity swelling through her again.

“For killing this person, you mean?” she gestured to the ruin on the ground half way down the alley.

“No, that person was already dying as Lillith took her over, it’s the only way. I mean you. For trying to kill you; for even implying it.”

Kelly shook her head.

“She didn’t try to kill me.”

The Devil glanced at Lillith, startled. She was looking at him intently, trying to convey something. Her lips moved, but no sound emerged, she’d gone too far to the other side.

“What do you mean?” the Devil said.

“At the end, I didn’t get the feeling she was trying to kill me. She scared me, badly, but…she had plenty of time, if killing me had been her plan…” Kelly trailed off, looking at Lillith, remembering her trembling fingers as they slid gently down her cheek. “She could have killed me. She didn’t.”

The Devil looked at Lillith again. She was almost gone, but the Devil could see she’d gone beyond the point of caring about this world. Her face was full of lost, desperate fear…she was Transitioning.

As they stood watching, the demon faded until she was barely a glimmer in the dark and then she faded into nothingness.

* * *

Tremors coursed through Kelly’s body as she sat behind the wheel. She stretched her arms out and grasped the steering wheel trying to steel her limbs against the shakes, but they came again, swelling through her, making her teeth chatter. Delayed reaction. That’s what this was. Her body trying to rid itself of that excess adrenalin. That’s all it was.

The Devil stood next to her window, bent over, his arms resting on the ledge. He didn’t want her to go, but more than that, he didn’t want her in jeopardy. This had gotten so complicated, so quickly. How had that happened? Is that what it’s like, being human?

He looked at her profile. Her eyes were closed and her hair was tucked behind her ear. She looked noble from the side, strong-featured; a face you’d see in a painting.

“If you really want me to go, then I will,” she said, still not opening her eyes. Her hands tightened even more on the steering wheel.