A Hand in Hell

I pushed the door open with a rattling of keys and stepped into the dark kitchen, quickly flipping the switch beside the door to give Lauren some light to see by as she staggered into the house behind me. My head throbbed fiercely, and I squinted against the light. Fuckin' A, man. Misha might've done some real damage.

Lauren brushed past me as I paused to lean against the center island counter, craning her neck to see my down-turned face. "Are you all right?" she asked, her tone more curious than worried, and I waved my hand in dismissal.

"Just a little headache after some mental war games," I said lightly, putting a hand over my eyes, but no matter how hard I tried to block out the light, my head still ached incessantly. Fuuuuck. "I should be good to go any minute now."

"You shouldn't've even fought her," she said, leaving my side to peek inside the refrigerator. I watched between my fingers as she pulled out a fresh bottle of water, and I laughed inwardly. Glad to see she's making herself at home. "You should've found out what you needed to know and left," she went on as she turned to face me, letting the door slam shut behind her.

I shrugged and pushed myself away from the counter, giving up on blocking the light. "I would've had to kill her eventually, anyway. She pissed me off with her arrogance, so I decided to just get it over with."

She smiled wryly as she cracked the bottle open. "Her arrogance was a problem?"

I glared. "What are you trying to say?"

"I think," came a cool voice from the doorway to the living room, and I spun to find the Council's leader eying me, boredom a hearty force behind his crimson gaze, "what she's trying to say is that you, my dear, are quite the arrogant demon yourself."

"I didn't expect you to come so soon," I sneered, resting my hands on my hips. "News travels faster among your ilk than I thought, hm?"

He chuckled, coming to stand a few feet before me with his hands clasped behind his back. He looked wholly unconcerned, but my head only throbbed harder as I mentally prepared for the battle that was sure to come. "How long did you think it would take for us to notice that Mishakkon was no more? We do communicate, you know. Our bond is stronger than anything you could imagine, being a loner, such as you are."

I rolled my eyes. "So you guys talk. I'm so impressed."

He offered me a broad grin, his white teeth showing brightly from within his dark-skinned face. "We do so telepathically — any time, anywhere. Mishakkon did as well, right up until you fatally seared her synapses and tore her voice from us. She'd been telling us with complete confidence that she was going to end you once and for all until that very moment." His gaze slid to Lauren, placed carefully behind the center island counter, and his lips met in a tight smile. "It's fortunate that you have no one to communicate with in such a way, as I'm sure your own mental capabilities have been all but entirely burned away." Chuckling, he met my eyes once more. "I'm honestly surprised that you're not dead after facing someone who so clearly outranks you."

I slid my sunglasses off and eyed him as I clenched one ear piece between my teeth. Did he honestly think so little of me? "There's only one Council member who I might have a bit of trouble defeating," I all but hissed around the ear piece, "and that's you." I wiped the spit from my glasses and slid them back on, an unpleasant smile curving my lips. "Of course, I'm never above trying." And suddenly, I was before him, a tightly clenched fist heading right for his smug, scummy face.

He knocked my hand aside with a stiff forearm, and his fist was a blur of dark flesh as it hurtled toward my throat. I threw my torso to the right, his quick hit sending my hair whipping madly against my shoulder, and my eyes flicked down as a cool wave of air whooshed across my shin. I leapt backward to avoid his incoming foot, but I wasn't nearly quick enough, and the sole of his shiny black shoe caught my leg with the force of a perfectly targeted kick. With a grunt of pain, I dropped to one knee, my leg knocked cleanly from beneath me, and I scowled as he danced back a few paces, the beginnings of a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.

"Only a bit of trouble, you say?" he said, his words teasing but not his tone, as silky and businesslike as always. "I haven't even begun to try yet."

I felt my lip pull back in an involuntary snarl. "And you think I have?" I lurched to my feet and sprang toward him, nails forming claws as I swung a set of arched fingers at his ugly mug. I watched him intently as I moved, and the moment I detected the barest twitch of his muscles, I reached out for his entire somatic nervous system with the power I kept spindled inside my mind. But the second my figurative fingers touched upon that first tendon, a blinding pain lanced through my skull and turned my field of vision snowy white, and I fell.

As the ringing in my skull faded, the leader's deep laughter filtered in, and my vision slowly returned. I was on the floor at the man's feet, my hands tightly clutching my head, and he was watching me pant and cringe on the floor like I was some pathetic animal to be mocked and prodded. I tried to glare at him, to shut him down with an icy stare, but my head still throbbed violently, and all I could manage was a halfhearted sneer.

"You may have beaten Mishakkon, but it seems she's still giving you hell, hm?" He chuckled lowly as he dropped slowly into a crouch before me, his smirk much more apparent now. "I don't think we need to continue this any longer, do you?"

I heard a soft squeak from Lauren, an all-too-audible gasp of fear, but I did my best to ignore it. I didn't need to worry about her, too, and what this son of a bitch demon could do to her if I fell. "What do you want?" I asked, and my voice grated so harshly that I wasn't sure if it was even really my own. "Why did you come here?"

"Certainly not to finish this little spat of ours," he answered coolly, "or you would be very, very dead by now." He chuckled again and added, "Not even to beat you into submission as you deserve, or you would've already met the same fate."

"Then what?" I snarled, then gritted my teeth against an extra-sharp stab of pain through my skull.

He paused, and I watched as he carefully observed my shifting facial expression — savoring my pain just as I always savored the pain of my own victims. How could he deny me my prey when he would always have access to his? It wasn't fair! "I've come to offer you another stepping stone for this little path you've taken," he finally said, once my glare had settled back into place. "Another round to keep this game of ours going, if you will."

My nose wrinkled. "And why in the fuck would you do that?"

"Because," he chortled, "this is proving to be quite the entertainment. You know how little upheaval there is in our world. You know how rare it is to find true enjoyment among our own kind. Without you, what fun would I have?" He straightened from his crouch, his glowing eyes sweeping across the kitchen to land somewhere behind me, and I glanced back to find Lauren flush against the center island counter, hands gripping the edge and her wide eyes glued to the man's smirking visage. "Humans aren't much fun for the rest of us, you know, even after they've caught on and begun to come after us."

"If humans aren't fun for you," I grunted as I rose to stand in his line of sight, the pain in my head thrumming, low and steady, like a bass drum, "you're just not doing right."

His lips tightened in a thin mockery of a smile as his gaze dropped to me. "I'm sure. Now, are you interested, or should I just put you out of your misery now?"

"You're offering me mercy like I fucking need it," I growled, pleased to find that the gravel had finally left my voice. "Screw you. No."

"Vera!" Lauren snapped, and I could almost feel her glare burrowing into the back of my skull. "Shut up and listen to what he has to say!"

I rolled my eyes. Why did she even care? Oh, right — because if I died, she had no protection left. Good reason. "Fine," I sighed. "What did you have in mind?"

He vanished in a wash of flame and thick, black smoke, and his deep voice rolled through me a moment later. "I'm growing steadily less sure that you'll even be able to handle it, but I'm sure I'll enjoy the show either way. Care to take a guess?"

I turned to scowl, tight-lipped, at his dark form leaning against a nearby wall, his arms crossed and his smirk showing that he had not a care in the world. Must be nice, not having to worry about what you're going to do with your life day in and day out. "Cut the crap and tell me what it is you want."

He chuckled for a moment, but then, suddenly, his face fell. "There are seven of us, you know," he went on darkly. "Seven demons that you should have not a single chance in hell of defeating, and yet…" He turned his gaze to the ceiling with a dreamy, thoughtful look, as if he could see the night sky through the white paint. "Mishakkon is no longer among us. And from what I understand, it was no lengthy battle, no bloodbath, no challenge. You fought among humans, and they noticed nothing until my girl dropped to the ground and never rose again." His head remained tilted back, but his eyes dropped, and he pegged me with a hard stare over the top of his broad nose. "How is that, my dear Vera?" he all but whispered. "How…is…that?"

I swallowed involuntarily, the crackling tension in the air around us setting my teeth on edge. Was he doing something? Was he queuing some great power with which to smite me at last? Was he summoning the hounds of our great lord Satan himself to tear me limb from limb and drag what remained to his crimson-red master? No, no — of course not. He was just doing what he did best: intimidating the weaker ones.

Funny thing was, I'd never really been one of the weaker ones. Not even the pulsing pain in the base of my skull would convince me that I was.

I crossed my arms over my chest to mirror the more relaxed stance he'd had only a moment ago, my eyebrows climbing up my forehead. "You forget who you're talking to, my dear…" I paused, and one eyebrow dropped while the other only climbed higher. "Hm, it seems you've never deigned to tell me your name. Care to share?"

His head fell to leave his chin parallel to the floor, but the intensity of his gaze never faltered. "I expected you to know me. My mistake."

I waited for more, but he never went on, and I let loose a long, slow sigh. "Not very forthcoming, are you? Well, my dear Ring Leader — because that's what you are, my dear: the petty leader of a dying three-ring circus — you might want to watch yourself. I may not have the strength to take you down just yet, but in time, I'll have all I need." I smiled crookedly. "You can bet on it."

He dropped his head and smiled almost secretively. "If you weren't causing such trouble for our kin, Verapaini, I would do everything in my power make you mine." Before I could respond — and thank Satan for that, because I had no idea what I would even say — he raised his eyes to mine and went on in that thunderous voice of his. "There are two among our ranks who have begun to stray from the task at hand — not enough to provoke any punishment from me, but enough that I no longer care for their safety."

I straightened, ears perked, interest piqued. Straying from the Demon Council? Juicy.

"They've become quite…enraptured with one another, if you will," he continued, and his gaze drifted to the ceiling once more, contemplative, "acting almost like you in a way — primal in their insatiable desire for their carnal endeavors." His eyes dropped suddenly, his expression hard but painfully unreadable. "Their abilities are far superior to your own. At least, from what I've witnessed of you with my own eyes. You likely won't make it through the battle, but it should all be good fun — for all of us."

He began to fade then, flickering in the flame and dark smoke that grew over him like a slow-moving moss, and the barest hint of a smile broke out upon his face. "They spend most of their time on my side of Hell, but they've been spending more time on the surface as of late under the pretense of observing you." He chuckled lowly, all but his dark-skinned face covered in a thick, dancing wall of smoke now. "They think I don't know that they spend every other night in The Regency Motel, a mile outside of town. The simpletons." Even his face was nearly gone now — all but his eyes, like brown daggers that longed to pierce my skin and explore what lay beneath. I shuddered. "Your next chance to face them will present itself tomorrow evening, and I suggest you take advantage of it. Good luck, my dear." And then, he and his smoke vanished. Lauren and I were alone.

"You're going to do it, right?" the girl asked softly, and I listened to her soft footsteps approaching me as I pushed a pair of fingers against my temple. My head seemed to ache even more violently now that the leader had gone. "So he doesn't kill you?"

I turned to her as she drew to a stop at my side, my lip curling in a grimace. "Really, I have no desire to do anything that that asshat asks me to, but I don't have much of a choice here, do I? He's offered me the perfect opportunity." I let my eyes drift to where the man had last stood, and I thought I could detect just a wisp of smoke still floating there, inches above the floor — a mirage. "The chance to cut down his forces and the potential to have a great time doing it…" I frowned deeply, and the throbbing that rattled my skull increased twofold as I whispered, "But why? Why would he let me weaken his own personal army?"

"Are you going to do it?" she asked again, her tone gentle.

It was a trap. It had to be. But what choice did I have?

"Yeah," I murmured, looking to her face, her brow creased in a frown to mirror my own — beautiful in her too-human worry. "I guess I am."