A Hand in Hell

"Such a troublesome little girl," I muttered to myself as I clunked a glass tumbler down on the solid wood counter top. "Interrupting my playtime, getting herself shot, passing out and making me hurry through my dinner…" I couldn't believe I'd actually inconvenienced myself for her sake. I couldn't believe I'd actually wanted to save her life. "But I only did it to extend my playtime with her," I said as I uncapped a bottle of bourbon and filled the glass half full. "A dead pet isn't a very fun pet, to be quite honest. I may be a bit off my rocker, but necrophilia just ain't on the table." I screwed the lid back onto the bottle and dropped it to the counter with a thunk, then picked up the tumbler and watched the liquid as I swirled it at the bottom of the glass. "Then again," I mumbled thoughtfully, "you can't knock it 'til you've tried it."

I took a swig of my drink and turned to put my back to the counter, leaning against it as I glanced at the clock that ticked away at me from the opposite wall. 5:27. She'd been out for hours. What if she was dead, anyway? What if I'd wasted all that energy healing her and left behind perfectly good corpses for nothing?

I will find her in Hell and tear her limb from limb, that's what, I thought, and that cheered me right up.

I took another sip of my bourbon, and I swallowed it quickly at the sound of a gently jingling bell. "Fucking finally!" I cried, then downed the rest of my drink, slammed the glass down on the counter, and crossed the room to the open basement door.

When Dexter came into view, strapped securely to the table and already glaring at me, I grinned excitedly. "It's good to see that you're alive," I told her as I made my way to the table, stopping by her legs to give the faint gray mark on her thigh a light poke. "I wasn't sure if I'd gotten to you in time. I thought you might've bled to death."

"If you would've just paid attention to me when I yelled, 'I'm bleeding to death,' you wouldn't have had to worry about that," she said bitterly, and I felt my eyebrows take a trip up my forehead as I met her stern gaze.

"Well, aren't we cranky," I teased. "I'd think you'd be a little nicer to the girl who saved your life."

"I wouldn't even have gotten shot if you hadn't been there," she sneered.

"No, you wouldn't even have gotten shot if you'd had the sense to keep your mouth shut like I'd told you," I countered flatly. "Don't blame me for your own stupidity." She pursed her lips and turned her gaze to the ceiling, and I sighed. "What is this really about? I feel like there has to be more of a cause for this kind of anger than a mere gunshot wound."

"You told her I wanted her dead," she answered, her voice cracking with some unidentifiable emotion. "Her last memory of me will be of me wanting her dead."

I shrugged. "You're the one who thought it would be a good idea to yell, 'You said you'd kill her fast.' I just thought I'd play with what I was given."

She finally turned to me, her glare fierce for someone strapped to a table. "Play? Is that what that was? You killed my friend right in front of me, and you let her die thinking I was the one who wanted her gone. That is not 'playing.'"

"It is to me," I said nonchalantly, giving her nose a light poke that only turned up the burner on the fire in her eyes. "What's the big deal, anyway? She's dead now. You don't have to deal with her anymore."

"But there's an afterlife, isn't there?" she snapped. "A Heaven and a Hell? Wherever she is, she thinks that her best friend wanted her dead — she thinks that I wanted her dead. And the fact that she's dead is a big deal in itself, you insensitive bitch!" she shrieked, and I marveled at the sudden emotional leap, my eyebrows raising once more. "How can you just stand there and act like you didn't take an innocent person's life?" Tears welled in her eyes now, and I sighed inwardly, already preparing to get the tissues. "How can you just pretend that there isn't a problem here?"

"I'm not pretending, baby girl," I said coolly, making my way over to the desk and pulling a couple of tissues from the box. "There really isn't a problem."

"Do you not have feelings at all?" she asked, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks and drip onto the table below as I returned to her side.

I wiped at her eyes, and the little bell on the new collar around her neck jingled as she twisted her head in an attempt to escape my assistance. I smiled at the sound and gripped her chin tightly, holding her head still and more thoroughly dabbing at her tears. "I have all of the feelings the world requires me to have and none of the ones that the world finds extraneous," I said simply. "You, my dear, are the one with the wrong emotions here." I began to wipe at her nose, but she suddenly leaned up and sank her teeth into my hand. With a cry, I backhanded her with my free hand, and she fell back onto the table with a hollow thud.

"Fuck you, you stupid, demonic, evil whore!" she screamed, seeming completely oblivious to the blood that poured from her nose and the tears that still flowed from her eyes. I could only blink down at her as I rubbed my throbbing hand, fully taken aback by her outburst. "You killed my best friend, and you think that I'm the one who's not feeling the right things? I hope that council kills you! I hope they torture you worse than you've ever tortured any human! I hope they tear everything you love away from you and make you watch! I hope you burn in Hell forever! I hope…!" But she fell into a fit of sobbing, then, loud and noisy and messy and pathetic, and I pursed my lips and glared down at her.

"You really should watch how you talk to me," I said coldly. "Your life is still in my hands, you know." But the truth was, she'd shaken me, and she'd shaken me to my very core. Had I broken her or hadn't I? Was this show of rage a sign that I'd won or that I'd lost? And what was all of this she said about her feelings, about my feelings? Was she in the wrong or was I? I was a demon, and of course that meant I was right…right?

Her bell jingled weakly as her body gave an exceptionally strong jerk, and my eyes dropped to the deep purple collar around her neck. She was inferior to me, of course, as any human is inferior to a demon. She was wrong, I was right. End of story. So why did I feel so…so…confused?

"So kill me," she said once she'd managed to get her sobs half-assed under control. Tears streaked her cheeks, snot poured from her nose to mix with the blood, but I didn't dare try to clean her up again. I would probably snap her neck if she bit me again, and what fun would it be to give her just what she wanted? "Torture me. Do whatever you want. I don't care anymore."

"Does that mean you'll give me more names so that I can kill more of your loved ones?" I asked, more curious than nasty as I normally would have been.

"No," she said with a sniffle, leveling me with a glare that lost most of its edge because of her runny nose. "You said you would stop after the one. You promised."

I smiled cruelly. "No, now, remember how I said that promises weren't on the table? I wasn't kidding, you know."

"I won't let you kill anyone else!" she yelled, her ragged voice echoing through the room. "I won't let you kill any more of my friends!"

"Do you not care about the men I killed, then?" I asked curiously as I rested my elbows on the table, bending over her and almost daring her to try something.

She pressed her lips together and turned her eyes to the ceiling, and it took her a moment to answer. "It wasn't right for you to kill them, either."

"But you don't care, do you?" I pointed out, giving her nose another light prod. "You don't care about the people you didn't know — same as me."

She offered me another hard glare. "I'm not like you," she growled. "In any way. I'll never be like you, and I never have been. I may not care about strangers as much as I do about my own friends, but I do care. They were innocent, and they deserved to live as much as Vicky did."

"Honey, you of all people should know that those who cross a demon don't deserve jack shit," I said dryly.

"Stop it with your fucking superiority complex already!" she screamed, and I felt my eyebrows climb my forehead once again as I met her hard scowl. "You might be physically stronger than us silly humans, but we're not inferior to you. You're just a…a pathetic, emotionally stunted bitch who thinks she's better than she really is! That's why you torture and kill humans — to make yourself feel better about being so pitiful!"

I eyed her for a moment, watching her chest rise and fall in quick, shallow breaths, and when I was sure she wouldn't speak again, I asked flatly, "Are you done?" She gave one sharp nod, and I began to wipe up the mess beneath her nose with deceptive gentleness, my eyes on my work and not on her hard glare. I was beginning to find her stubborn ire — all of her stubborn emotions — unsettling, and it was only adding to my simmering annoyance. "You're in no position to be judging my race, baby girl," I said warningly. "You're in no position to be speaking at all."

"You just killed my best friend, and you don't even care," she spat, her voice quavering with more oncoming tears. "I think I have every right to speak and to judge your disgusting, Godforsaken race."

I gripped her chin suddenly, the spent, sticky tissues fluttering to the ground at my feet as I squeezed her cheeks together as tightly as I could without snapping her jaw off. "Maybe you should consider caring a bit less about a dead bitch and a bit more about yourself," I hissed in her face. The skin of my hand was growing sticky, and I hoped for her sake that it was only from the moisture of her tears. "After all, she's in a much better place than you are right now." The warm wetness of fresh blood and saliva spattered across my cheek, and I saw red even as she screamed, "Fuck you, you demonic piece of shit!"

I wasn't aware of what I was doing until I heard a cry of pain and the snap of a bone being popped from its place, and through the red haze that clouded my vision, I saw her lifted a foot above the table, her arms hanging back awkwardly and her face twisted in pain, my pale hands tightly gripping her shoulders. I let her body fall back onto the table with that familiar hollow thud, and the red fog slowly faded as I listened to her small sobs, mildly disoriented. The jingling of the bell at her throat came to the forefront but quickly faded. What the hell had I been trying to do?

"Oh, quit your whining," I said dryly, circling the table to take a closer look at the arm that still hung grotesquely from her shoulder. "All I did was dislocate your shoulder. You should be glad that you're still breathing." I gave her arm a rough jab, and she let out a shriek. "Oh, shut up!" I snapped, exasperated, as I began to unbuckle the strap around her wrist. "I didn't piss and moan this much when I had my intestines hanging out of a hole in my stomach, and I'm pretty sure that was a much more painful, much more terrifying experience."

"I'm not you," she said, and my eyes drifted to her face at the sound of a sharp inhale. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the air hiss out slowly through her teeth, trying to obey me in some sense. "I already told you that."

I wiped the bloody spit from my cheek with the back of my hand and let out a wry laugh. "And you were just talking about how terrible it would be to be me. You're dumber than you look, babe." She opened her eyes to glare at me, but I turned lazily back to her arm, gripping it at the elbow and quickly speaking before she could get out another insult. "Get ready. This is gonna sting a bit." She opened her mouth to say something, but all that left her gaping maw was a wordless screech as I abruptly shoved her shoulder back into its socket. "I told you," I said in a mocking sing-song, my voice lilting high above the fading sound of her scream.

We fell into silence, then, and I watched her tense features as she slowly breathed in and out, likely trying to quell the pain. Her eyes had long since disappeared beneath her tightly clamped eyelids, and a poetic part of me longed for the return of her ocean-blue irises, for the return of what had drawn me to her to begin with. Was it worth it now, I wondered? Were those eyes worth all of the trouble that this little bimbo had caused me?

Her eyes drifted open, and as I gazed into that pool of rich sea water on a clear day, the answer resounded through my mind: yes. And her gorgeous eyes were only a small part of it.

"Under any other circumstances, I'd heal any lingering damage and send you on your merry way, but I don't take being spat on very well," I sneered, straightening from my bent position over the table. "You're lucky I don't mind the occasional smart-ass masochist. You'd be dead if I wasn't so entertained."

"Quit with the bullshit and kill me already," she snapped, tears of pain leaking from her eyes. "You don't need me!"

I sighed, making my way to the other side of the table and beginning to unbuckle the restraint that still pinned her uninjured arm. "We both know that you're fibbing," I said as I slipped her arm free of the leather strap. "You humans have a horrible fear of death, and you'd never actually wish it upon yourself." I started toward the foot of the table, my eyes on hers as they followed me, her body completely still, as if even the smallest movement might get her toes torn off. "Besides, I'm not allowed to kill you, remember? I'm not even technically supposed to be torturing you." My fingers moved deftly as they loosened the leather restraint around one ankle and then the other, and I watched her legs carefully, waiting for her to try something. "I've grown somewhat fond of you in our short time together, anyway. I've never met someone who struggled against me as hard as you do," I murmured, a smirk spreading across my face, "and I think I like it."

She eyed me suspiciously, slowly rising to a sitting position upon the table and beginning to gently rub her injured shoulder with the opposite hand. "Why…Why are you letting me up?"

I shrugged, crossing the room to the tissue box that rested atop the desk. "I'm sure you're hungry by now, and you probably need a shower," I answered as I pulled a couple of tissues from the box and began to wipe at my hands and face. "Plus, you just made me dislocate your shoulder," I said, turning to face her with a smile on my face, "and I figure it'll hurt worse if I make you get up and do things with it." She slung her legs over the edge of the table and continued to eye me, uncertainty and suspicion still heavy in her gaze. "I wouldn't recommend trying to attack me or trying to escape, though," I added lightly as I made my way toward the stairs, tossing the used tissues in the trashcan as I passed it. "You won't make it far."

My bare feet thumped loudly against the ugly wooden stairs, and it wasn't until I had reached the top that I realized that there were no steps besides mine. "Are you coming?" I asked impatiently as I returned to the middle of the stairwell and peered down at her. She still sat on the edge of the table, staring confusedly up at me. "Come on. I brought some clothes back from your apartment. Go shower so I can stop smelling your Goddamn stench, would ya?"

Her eyes narrowed into a glare. "You brought me clothes?"

"Well, duh," I sighed, annoyed. "You didn't think I'd keep lending you my clothes forever, did you? Now, come on!" And with that, I made my way back up the stairs and through the open basement door.

The soft jingling of the bell at her throat soon followed, and I smiled to myself. She'd be a good kitty yet. Oh, yes, she would.