The Devil's Wife (24 page)

      Levine was heating up the wire again, one of the Cutters holding my jaw still. The pain of my broken jaw pounded through my skull, making me dizzy as I watched Levine turn on me, the red-hot metal in his hand. He was grinning, panting in a way that I associated with desire and pleasure, for him rather than me.

      The wire vanished from my sight and my cheek exploded in burning, blinding pain.

      Levine's predatory grin vanished as I glared at him, clenching my teeth despite my broken jaw and flaring my nostrils. "I've been stabbed in the gut before, and in the back in a fucking prison riot," I snarled through my clenched teeth. "Your burns are nothing, you piss-drinking pervert."

      "Really?" he asked, frowning. "Then I suppose you'd be more accustomed to the pain of Andy and Marvin here." The Burner stood up and backed away, nodding to the Cutters.

      Andy held both my hands above my head and I struggled against him, the other pulling a filleting knife from a nearby table. I sank my fingernails into Andy, though I couldn't tell where I sank them. A cry of pain later, I was free, kicking the knife-holding Marvin in the balls.

      "Come and fucking get me, you pricks," I snarled, ignoring the pain in my cheek and jaw, and shooting off down a corridor as fast as I could.

      I heard two of the men running after me. I spotted a pipe ahead, just small enough to grab but thick enough to support my weight, and I grabbed it as I ran beneath it, pulling myself up on top of it.

      A second later, I saw a small ball of ginger fur hanging above me. I snarled at the men below me, pulling myself up on carefully-selected pipes to reach Aspen's ginger body, which I could now see was stained with blood.

      "Oh, Aspen," I whispered, pulling the rope from around his neck and examining him.

      There were patches of fur missing from him, his tail had been cut off, and when I turned him around, I discovered that it looked like he'd been thrown in a fire on one side.

      "You daft cat," I whimpered, hugging his body to my chest. "Why did you come with me? You could be at home, sleeping in the sun, alive, right now, but you had to come with me to this Hell-forsaken place."

      Someone shouted below me, and I jumped, holding Aspen's body closer to my chest. I had forgotten about the Hellraisers. There was no way that I could leave Aspen here, to be further dishonored by the Cutters and the Burner in their sadistic games.

      I started to climb the pipes again, like a cat myself, though one hand was occupied holding Aspen's body. I wrinkled my nose as the smell of it hit me—burned fur, charred meat, and decaying blood.

      I reached a stairwell and followed it up, staying among the pipes, avoiding the stairs themselves. I would not let myself get cornered. I had to find a way to escape. Hopefully Aspen was well on his way to Lucifer, and Jayce and I would be rescued soon. I just had to stay hidden until Lucifer turned up.

      My foot slipped on a wet pipe and someone on the stairwell grabbed my ankle, pulling me down. I fought him as hard as I could, kicking, scratching and dropping Aspen's body far below us, but the hand pulled me from the pipes. I hit my head on a large copper pipe on the way down, and I felt no more for a long time.

Lucifer Morningstar

      I shot across the sky faster than a missile, heading for the Portal. Now, more than ever, I wished that I could just be like the humans I watched over, able to enter and exit Hell anywhere in the world.

      I shot out of the far end of the tunnel and circled the Kingdom, landing stoically on top of the Frozen Lake. It remained frozen beneath my feet, not daring to swallow me up. I stamped on the ice, feeling the shudder as the noise echoed through the ground.

      "Leviathan! I need Jason!" I shouted, directing my voice downwards.

      I waited a couple of seconds, then the surface of the Frozen Lake rippled, the ice shifting and rolling around a shape. Jason shot up out of the ice and I caught him by the collar of his shirt as he fell.

      "If you tell me where your friends would have taken Jayce, I shall let you go," I bargained, placing him on his feet on the ice.

      "You mean, I can go to Heaven or something?" he asked, pathetically hopeful.

      "I don't have that power. But you can spend your time above the Lake rather than down there with Leviathan."

      He didn't even think about it. "Done. They have a warehouse in the Hudson docks that they use to house the people they're playing—"

      "Lucifer!"

      I turned automatically at the sound of my name, to

find a figure from my long-ago past racing across the red sands of Hell towards me. His hair was bright ginger, streaming to his shoulders, and he had a cat-like grace that had me wondering how I had ever thought my rogue brother-in-law a mongrel dog.

      Aspen shot across the Lake's surface as fast as he could run, panting madly, though, from the look of the blood staining his neck, he wasn't alive anymore. He raced across the flexible ice, leaving little ripples from his footsteps in the calm surface.

      "Aspen?" I asked, frowning slightly. "Don't tell me you—"

      "They got her! They snuck up on us, they got Clarissa, and they threw me in a sack and crushed me with their fat feet!"

      "Where did they take her?"

      "A dock somewhere. One of the warehouses! You have to hurry!"

      He reached me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me back to the shore, though why we were going that way I had no idea—we were directly under the Portal in the middle of the Lake. I felt my heart stop then kick itself into beating again. I looked to Jason.

      "Which warehouse is it?"

      "Third from the southern end of the port."

      I nodded at him and grabbed him by the collar, flapping my wings. I shoved him downward, back under the ice, ignoring his protests and screams of rage. I took off toward the roof, dragging Aspen behind me, the ex-cat screaming—I'd forgotten that, even as an Angel, Aspen hated flying.

~ * ~

      "You do know that this means you're going to have to be nice to me from now on, don't you, Aspen?" I snapped at him as I landed on the warehouse roof.

      "Yeah, yeah," he said sarcastically, his voice thin and hollow-sounding in the air. "I'll worship the ground you walk on if you can save Clarissa without her getting hurt. I completely accept fucking up royally on this one."

      "Hey," I snapped, offended, "I negotiated with God to get you your current job, don't forget! Don't press me into doing something, Aspen. You've used up your favors for today."

      "Doing what?" he demanded. "Coming with you?"

      I opened the small roof access point that I'd seen from the air. I turned to glare at him. "You're a liability far more than an advantage now, Aspen. It's not like you can hit anyone or shoot anything now."

      I gently pulled the trap door back onto the roof and dropped inside the building, using my wings to stop myself falling. Unfortunately, Aspen was now a ghost. And that meant that he could sidle through anything or spontaneously appear anywhere. I almost landed in him as I settled on a small balcony. Aspen had his chin in his hand as he watched something on the ground, looking bored, though there was anger burning in his eyes.

      I gagged silently on the scents in the room. Solder, honeycomb and grease oozed into my sinuses, making my head pound. Underneath the sins was a scent I knew well. Clarissa.

      "Oh, oh."

      Aspen's hollow voice made me jump and breathe in deeply, which made me gag on the stench of the sins' combined stink. I glared at him, then looked to the ground, where I could see two men torturing Jayce with a hot poker and a pair of scissors.

      I went to leap down to save her, but there was something holding me back—and it wasn't something I could stop, either. Aspen was holding my wing in a grip that threatened to break the hollow bone.

      "What?" I hissed. "Do you want to see Jayce suffer?"

      Aspen glared at me. "No, but if you want to know where Clarissa is, you're going to want to listen."

      "She's in the freezer down there," I growled at him. "Obviously your mind's been fried by your return to Angel form, Aspen."

      Aspen hit me over the back of the head, his hand strangely able to make contact with me. "Don't be an idiot, Lucifer. If you go in there, guns blazing, and she isn't in that freezer, she might get hit. Then, ghost or not, I will kill you."

      I frowned at him, but huffed in frustration. "Fine. Go be ghostly or something and distract them so I can check to

see if she's in the freezer."

      Aspen rolled his eyes but vanished, and I saw him appear behind the leader of the Hellraisers.

      "Congratulations," Aspen said, his voice echoing around the room. "You're all going to die a long, slow and painful death."

      The leader whirled around and the poker went right through the ghost's stomach. Aspen frowned and rubbed at his stomach, as though it vaguely tickled.

      "Don't do that again," he warned the man.

      The leader dropped the poker, pulling out a gun. I rolled my eyes and put my wings away, creeping down behind the leader, using the pipes, and heading for the freezer.

      I jumped as someone shot at Aspen, and whirled to look at him. He rubbed at his forehead, and I could tell that the men were wary of him, as he hadn't fallen to the bullet through his skull. There was a hole in a pipe behind him, where the bullet had gone through.

      "What are you?" one of the Hellraisers demanded, his voice quivering. I could see an array of knives hanging from him, so he was obviously one of the Cutters.

      "I am Clarissa's brother," Aspen lied, frowning at them. "You killed me."

      "I did not!" the Cutter cried, clutching one of his knives. "I never killed no one!"

      "You killed me," Aspen said in the airy, shaky way of horror-flick ghosts everywhere. He flew at the men, and I could see his wings glowing very, very faintly in the darkness. He was the ghost of an Angel, rather than a human, and would now be able to use all of the Angels' powers. Including flight.

      The humans yelled and ducked, and Jayce curled up into a ball. She didn't know who Aspen was, knowing as she did that Clarissa had no living family, and I could see she was terrified, her eyes wide as she shuddered. I crept to the door of the freezer and dropped, sneaking in. I looked around the room quickly to find it empty.

      Curse you and your common sense, Aspen, I thought, and darted out into the room, ready to grab Jayce and run.

      Aspen and Jayce were nowhere to be seen, and the

men were staring around with wide eyes. I growled, the gorilla-like sound echoing in the large room, attracting their attention. The human shot at me, and I took the bullets, walking up to one of the men and stealing a knife from his pocket. I knocked the gun aside and held the knife to the Cutter's throat.

      "Where is my Clarissa?" I snapped, glaring at the humans.

      The leader shot me between the eyes, and my head whipped back. My knife dug into the man's neck, and I cursed as he dropped. I hit my temple to try to fix my unfocussed right eye. I glared at the humans, feeling blood drip sluggishly from the bullet hole in the bridge of my nose. The bullet had passed through my head, leaving a lot of damage. I could feel it healing as I stared at the Hellraisers.

      "Do that again and I will kill you all, as slowly and as painfully as I can manage."

      The men stopped shooting, their hands shaking wildly on their guns. I shook my head at the man holding the only steady gun on me, and slid the knife across my throat.

      "I am already dead," I gurgled as my throat healed. "You cannot do me any lasting damage." I grabbed the closest man, pulling him into my arms and holding the knife to his throat so he was too afraid to do anything. "What have you done with my Clarissa?"

      "She—she's not here." The man gulped, and I felt revulsion for him. He was a weak little bully, playing with knives.

      "Then where is she?" I demanded, slicing the knife down his arm and smiling as blood dripped to the floor.

      "We don't know!" one of the other men yelled, breaking the spell that they were under.

      Something above us shifted lightly, making a pipe groan. The humans jumped, and I grinned.

      "Then you will find out for me, and you will bring her back to me," I ordered, throwing the man—a boy, really—at him.

      He caught his blood-stained friend and they fell to the ground. The men ran and I laughed after them. I snapped my wings open and leaped up into the maze of pipes. There was something above me, and I could only hope it was