A Hand in Hell

"New pet?" the bartender asked in a grim, husky voice, eyeing the girl perched on the stool beside mine with little emotion to his eyes. I grinned, more to myself than to him. The human was wearing a leash and collar, after all...

"Something like that," I laughed, my gaze sliding to the human. She sat rigidly on her bar stool, watching me nervously out of the corner of her eye. Her head was stiff on her shoulders, focused straight ahead, as if she were afraid that looking the wrong way might have some nasty consequences — and really, who knew? Maybe they would one day, when I was in the mood for it. Hell, if there'd been an audience, more people in the bar than just myself, the girl, and the bartender, perhaps I would have punished her, anyway, just to put on a show.

"She sure is cute," the man drawled as he placed his massive hands on the counter, the backs of them furrier than any dog I'd ever seen. I'd known the man for a while — a complicated case, really. He'd been a demon once, but he'd pissed off the wrong warlock, and, long story short, he was now more human than demon and less human than dog. Hair everywhere, and a nasty case of fleas, judging by the way he scratched himself. I liked to think about it whenever life got me down. It always gave me a good laugh. "How'd you get her?"

"I'd intended to torture and kill her like all the others, but I was ordered not to kill her and not to let her go," I explained, my tone turning more and more bitter with each passing word. Even thinking about his back story wasn't cheering me up now. "Speaking of, have you heard that there's now a fucking Demon Council? How ridiculous is that?"

His bushy eyebrows rose. "Created just for you, I expect?"

I wrapped my fingers around my cold glass and brought it to my lips — whiskey on the rocks. Maybe that would cheer me up. "How'd you guess?" I asked wryly once the liquid had finished its trip down my gullet, leaving behind only a pleasant tingling and the vague taste of alcohol.

"They only form a council when they have reasonable cause, and your antics as of late have been, well...quite the reasonable cause." If he hadn't pulled the bottle of booze from beneath the counter and refilled my waiting glass, I might have jumped across the counter and strangled him.

"What should I do about it?" I asked, leaning an elbow on the counter. "I mean, I can't just let this go. I have a reputation to uphold, you know? And I'm so pissed off that I could just fucking kill something. These bastards deserve some sort of retribution for stopping a perfectly good system like they did. I just don't know what course of action would be best."

"You could always start by killing her," he suggested, inclining his head toward the human at my side, and I watched with sick joy as her body managed to tense even further. Maybe I'd be happy yet. "Lure them out. Make them fight you."

I continued to smile grimly at the girl as I spoke. "I'm sad to say that I'm not entirely sure that I could take them all. There were three earlier, and who knows how many they have behind the scenes, just waiting for me to slip up?" I paused briefly before asking, "Are you thirsty, girl? You've had quite a trying morning, and I think some booze would help you loosen up a bit."

Slowly, she turned to look at me, twisting her whole torso for some reason. Her eyes were wide in a combination of fear and surprise, and for a moment, I wasn't sure if she was even going to answer me; but then, softly — "I just stopped drinking a few hours ago. I...I don't think I want any more."

"We have food, too," the man pointed out, and I briefly wished that I could remember his name. I mean, I bounced ideas off of him all the time, told him all about the troubles in my life, gave him little tastes of my power every now and again – shouldn't I have remembered his name, anyway? How rude of me.

"What he said," I told the girl with a jovial smile, shrugging off my previous concerns. "It's mostly a front for the humans, but it's actually not too bad."

She glanced from my smiling face to the impassive face of the bartender and back again, then cautiously asked, "What do you have?"

"Sandwiches, mainly," the man answered, "but I have some bags of chips and pretzels, if that's more to your taste."

Her expression grew even more suspicious, and she eyed me for a moment before asking, "Can I have a sandwich?"

"Oh, how darling," I crooned, grinning as I lay a hand on her shoulder, hidden beneath the gray fabric of one of my old T-shirts. "Asking me for permission. How sweet." I gave her shoulder a squeeze, and her face twitched as if she wanted to change her expression but knew better.

"What kind would you like?" the bartender asked, and I pulled my hand from her shoulder. "We've got ham and cheese and turkey and cheese."

"Ham, please," she said politely. He nodded, then ducked through a swinging door in the back.

"You're allowed to talk, you know," I told her wryly, spinning on my bar stool to put my back to the bar. I picked up my glass and rested my elbows on the edge of the counter, smiling at her as she eyed me distrustfully once more. "I know I tried to torture you and all, but with the way things are going, we're going to be together for quite some time. You should really try opening up a bit. It'll make our time together much more pleasant." I heard the door swishing open and took another sip of my drink, watching the man out of the corner of my eye as he returned.

"Here you go," he said tonelessly, dropping a prepackaged sub on the counter in front of her, condensation dripping from the plastic wrapper.

She pulled it to her cautiously, and I said to the bartender, "Get her some water, too, if you would be so kind." He nodded and left for the sink behind the bar, and I kept my eyes on the girl. She carefully unwrapped the sandwich and studied it for a moment, pulling the bread up to peer suspiciously at its contents, and I couldn't help a soft laugh. "Well, you're just a cutie, aren't you?" She looked at me, and her face twitched in the same way as before. I guessed that she wanted to glare, but I only smiled in return.

The man dropped a glass of water in front of her, beside her empty sandwich wrapper, and I spun back around on my stool to face the counter. "So, back to business," I sighed, placing my own glass on the counter. It was empty. When had that happened? "Killing her isn't an option, and honestly, the more I see of her, the more I want her to stick around, anyway." He refilled my glass, and I sighed again. "What does that leave us?"

He shrugged, recapping the bottle and tucking it away beneath the bar. "Direct attack? Though that one may not end favorably for you."

"I considered that one on the way over, actually," I remarked, swirling the amber liquid in my glass. The ice clinked against the sides, and I watched absently as it swam about. "It's the simplest, the most obvious, the most satisfying – but aye, utterly impossible." A grin spread across my face; I hoped it looked as wicked as it felt. "Unless, of course, I go after them one by one instead of taking on the whole council."

His eyebrows rose coolly. "There are two problems with that. One, do you honestly think that you can take the demons that were chosen to be an authority over other demons? They're bound to be formidable opponents, you know, even to someone with balls the size of yours. And two, how do you intend to find out where they are? They probably have dozens of barriers in place to keep crazy fucks like you from finding them through tracking, and I doubt they've made their whereabouts very well-known to the community as a whole."

I chuckled. "Have you forgotten that you work at a bar frequented almost solely by demons? You're not open 24/7 for nothing, you know."

He sighed through his nose, the hard exhale shifting the thick layer of facial hair that had taken over the bottom half of his face. "So that's why you're here, eh? Can't be bothered to do anything yourself, can you?"

"I plan to kill them myself," I said with a shrug, pausing to chug the rest of my drink before slamming the glass on the counter, the ice clinking around like crazy when I did. "Now, will you do this for me or not? I'll pay well, if that's what you're worried about. Whatever you want, it's yours."

A small smirk wormed its way onto his face, the first real emotion he'd shown since I'd arrived, and I cringed inwardly. Either this would be really, really good or really, really bad... "Well, as I'm sure you know, I have no need for money," he began, and those words alone told me that it would be really, really bad, "but I've obviously been having a bit of trouble with body hair as of late."

"Do you want me to remove it all permanently?" I asked dryly.

He grinned. "I want you to turn me back into a demon."

My eyebrows shot up, and I was quick to shake my head. "You're going to need another warlock for that one, dude. I specialize in ass-kicking, not in magic."

"But you've got the power to do it," he argued, gripping the edge of the counter tightly. "You don't need a spell. You just need to transform me."

"You act like it's easy," I said, shaking my head once more. "It's not. I can't just force your body back to what it was."

"But you could at least break the curse, right?" he said, bordering on manic now. "You've got enough power for that. You can force your way right through."

"If it's really that simple, why has no one else done it?" I asked, eyeing him scornfully.

He shrugged, the emotion gone from his face. "I've never asked anyone, and no one's seemed interested in helping out the poor old bartender."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine," I sighed. "If you get me the information I need, I'll do what I can to return you to your former glory."

"Before you make the attack, of course," he said pointedly, and I nodded, sighing again.

"I won't die fighting them, if that's what you're thinking, but yes, if it'll make you happy, I'll do it before I go gallivanting off into battle."

"If you betray me, things won't go well for you," he threatened darkly.

I rolled my eyes, already sliding off of the bar stool. "I'm sure." I pulled a wad of cash out of the back pocket of my jeans and tossed a pair of twenty-dollar bills onto the counter. "You still have my number, right?" I'd given it to him when I'd first come to this town, and he'd never called. I wondered why...

He nodded. "I do."

"Good. Call me when you have news – and you'd better have news soon." I smiled tightly, and he nodded once in return. "Are you ready to go, girl?" I asked, glancing at the human. She nodded, shoving the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth and rising obediently to her feet, and I caught the end of the leather leash she wore. "Well, then, I'll talk to you later," I said to the bartender, giving him a playful salute as I headed for the door. He didn't respond, and the girl and I were soon stepping into the warm, sticky air of the summer morning.

We walked to the car in silence, and a part of me was disappointed that no one was around to watch me leading her along on a leash. I opened the passenger's side door for her and stepped aside to let her duck inside, then dropped the leash on her lap and shut the door. I noticed her glaring at me out of the corner of my eye, as if she thought I couldn't see her through the windshield, and I smiled to myself.

"Well, girl," I said as I slid into the driver's seat, pleased to find that her expression was completely blank now, "we have a new mission before us." I pulled the door shut and started the car, never taking my eyes from her face. "Who would be the first to notice that you're missing?"

"Why?" she asked, but her guarded tone told me that she already had an idea — and likely the correct one.

"Because we have to get rid of them," I said simply, putting the car in drive and starting out of the lot. "They're a liability, obviously. Can't have anyone searching for you so soon."

The look of terror on her face when I glanced at her sent a delicious thrill through me, and I smirked. "No," she said, softly at first, then she yelled, "No! You're not hurting any of them!"

"Hurting? Who said anything about hurting?" Well, it was certainly running through my mind, but I hadn't said it. "I'm just going to kill them. Quick and easy, you know? No elaborate torture, no drawn out murder scene; just a quick bash of the skull or slit of the throat." I watched out of the corner of my eye as she squirmed in her seat, becoming more and more horrified by the second, then I added wryly, "Really, it's not a big deal. It's not like you'd be seeing them again, anyway. You wouldn't even know the difference unless I told you."

"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked in a whisper, her voice cracking as a sob broke through. "Why can't you just let me go? I told you I won't tell anyone."

I slowed the car to a stop at a red light and turned to her, my forced frown full of the fake concern I'd shown when I'd picked her up only hours ago. "But see, you would tell, and no one would believe you — worse, even. They might think you were crazy and lock you up, and I just can't bear to let that happen to you." I reached out, my fingers brushing gently against her cheek, and she quickly flinched away. "You're my charge now, baby girl," I said softly, putting my hand back on the wheel, and a cruel smile overtook my face without my consent. "I can't let you go back to those mean, icky humans."

"I don't understand," she whispered, and I swore I could see tears welling up in her eyes. "Why me? Why did you have to choose me?"

"Your eyes," I said simply, looking away from her as I stepped on the gas. How long had the light been green? "I almost always choose my victims by their eyes. Now, quit stalling. I'll find out who would notice your disappearance and give a shit whether you willingly volunteer the information or not. Honestly, the only thing that will come of your refusing to tell me outright who to kill will be a lot of frustration on my end, meaning a lot of pain on your end." I stopped at another light and let my eyes flick to her tight features, smiling sweetly. "I have your cell phone. I can find your Facebook page. With a bit of snooping and a little texty-text from your Droid here and there, I can have all of the information I need to know in a matter of minutes. The decision is entirely up to you — do you give me what I want to avoid the punishment, or do you take the punishment and watch your loved ones die, anyway?"

I watched the struggle dance across her face, the agonized writhing of her features as she picked her poison, so to speak, and I wondered — would she be the noble one, the one who would rather die than cause any harm to her friends and family? Or would she be the weak one, the one so afraid of suffering that she would sell her own loved ones out to avoid any semblance of pain? She squeezed her eyes shut as if fighting off some terrible pain, and I smiled to myself. She was the weak one, so spoiled and used to comfort and flights of fancy that she could never bear to —

"No," she breathed, and my mouth fell open in surprise. She turned to face me, her eyes open but so narrowed by a fierce glare that I could barely see the ocean blue that I loved so much, and said, more strongly now, "No. I won't give you what you want. I won't let you hurt them."

Not the weak one, then, I mused, my smile returning, as I turned my gaze back to the road ahead and stepped on the gas once more. "Fine, then, princess. We'll see just how long it takes you to change your tune."

"I thought you said you would try to find them all on your own," she said in a tone much snottier than anything I'd heard from her — and anything I'd expected to hear from her — thus far. She sounded like she actually thought she had a dog in this fight.

I chuckled. "I can if I have to, but where's the fun in that? I give you ten minutes on the table before you're just begging me to hunt down your loved ones."

"I won't," she said, but the conviction to her tone wavered, crumpling beneath the weight of her fear and uncertainty. "I'll never tell you. I'll never let you hurt any of them."

"Again, baby doll, I never said anything about hurting anyone. Of course…" I glanced at her, a wicked smile stretching my cheeks beyond their designated limits. "I suppose you have it right now. For your insubordination, I am going to hurt you. That little cut I gave you before will seem like a Goddamned tickle compared to what I'm going to do to you now. And then, I'm going to bandage you up again, and I'm going to bring you with me to watch as I kill every single person who's dear to you — your mom, your dad, your best friend, your roommate, your favorite professor, your fucking cat if I feel like it." I laughed to myself, my eyes on the road, though I could see the horror and anger commingling into an ugly, twisted expression on her pretty face out of the corner of my eye. "You don't say no to a demon, girl. That's a lesson you desperately need to learn."

If she wasn't weak now, she would be soon. I couldn't have my pet fighting back, now, could I? What would the other demons think?