A Hand in Hell

"Atrocities?" I asked, batting my eyelashes innocently. "Why, whatever do you mean, officer?"

The demon's features tightened. "Don't play dumb with me, Verapaini. I don't have time for your games."

"Everyone has time for my games," I began sharply, crossing my arms over my middle, "because I make them have time for my games. If you want to make this short, say what you came here to say and get the fuck out of my kitchen. I have much, much more important matters to attend to than a little-dick demon with a complex."

"You might want to watch how you speak to me, Vera dear," he said lowly, venom dripping from every syllable — the impotent venom of a lyre snake, for how little it affected me. "I could take you alone, but I have an entire council on my side, and I don't think you'd like it very much if we used on you the same torture that you've been using on humans for years now."

I chuckled, grinning wickedly. "Just tell me what it is you've come to complain about, then perhaps we can pause for a little one-on-one battle. Wouldn't that be lovely?" Dexter let out a particularly loud sob, something like the wail of a dying cow trailing along behind it, and I reached behind me to clamp a hand over her mouth. My smile never faltered. "Make it quick. My pet needs me."

"Those humans you killed in the girl's apartment," he said, every hint of irritation bleeding from his features to leave him smooth-faced and composed. "That was a bad choice on your part."

"But not the other girl, eh?" I said wryly. The girl had mattered more to Dexter, the men had mattered more to this demon, and not a single damn one of them had mattered at all to me. Odd, how broadly a person's worth could differ.

"Of course not," the man said in a voice almost entirely empty of emotion. "While we would have preferred it if you'd stopped killing humans altogether as we'd asked you to, the girl was a mere civilian. The men, on the other hand —"

"Part of that handy-dandy human coalition bullshit, right?" I interrupted dryly, and at his sharp nod, I sighed. Dexter squirmed beneath my heavy hand, but I didn't dare uncover her mouth. At a time like this, her shrieking would likely send me over the edge, and as I always said, a dead pet isn't a very good pet at all. "Well, no need to fear, Mr. Demon Council Overlord. I intend to massacre the rest of the pathetic bastards as soon as I'm done with dear Dexter here."

"Not all of them are mere humans, you know," he said simply, and a hint of smugness seeped into his expression — I know something you don't know. Na-na na-na naaa-na. What was he, fucking five? "Some of them actually have a clue as to what you are, and they have the means to handle it."

I cocked an eyebrow, curious but unimpressed. "So they think they can kill me. So what? I've never been 'handled' by a human before, and I highly doubt that this century is when I'll meet my match in their sad little species." Dexter began to squirm and twist beneath my hand, her breath cascading across my skin in warm, frantic puffs, but I only clamped down tighter, pinning her head motionlessly to the table. "Unless they've been personally trained by a demon, I —"

"They have," he interrupted, and the shit-eating smirk that quirked the corners of his lips sent realization sliding through me like ice water in my veins, the flames of indignant rage hot on its heels.

"You fuckers are the ones who told them about me!" I roared, finally pulling my fingers from Dexter's face and storming toward the demon. I jabbed a finger into his chest as I added, "And you fucking told them how to take me out, didn't you?!"

"Relax, Vera dear," he chuckled, catching my wrists as my fingers strained to wrap around his throat, and that fucking name, that condescending, patronizing, annoying fucking Vera dear, only made me struggle harder against his iron hold. "It's all in good fun. Life's just a game, isn't it?"

"Life is my game, you limp-dick prick!" I managed to slide a hand forward through his clutching fingers with a rough shove, and the resulting blow to his throat knocked the smirk from his face. His hold loosened just a bit, and I jerked my arms from his grasp. "If it gets more complicated, it's because I wanted it that way, not because some piece of shit Demon Council peon thought it would be cute!" I aimed a punch at his jaw, but he was quick to catch my hand and force my arm behind my back, wedging it between our bodies as he pulled my back to his chest with an arm around my neck.

"Calm down, Verapaini," he warned, his words a low growl in my ear. I bucked against him, trying to squirm my way free, but I was suddenly being slammed front-first into the counter, bent over it and painfully restrained. Dexter's eyes were level with mine, still swimming with tears, and she let loose a soft whimper. I grunted. Of all the times she could've chosen to be a weak little doll like all the other humans, it had to be in this moment? I could've actually used her violent defiance right about now! "If you try to fight me, the game will end much too soon, and you wouldn't want that, now, would you?"

"If you're so strong," I started, my free hand stretching toward a shard of porcelain lying upon the counter, though his arm slipped from around my neck and fell upon mine almost instantly to pin me further, "why are you relying on humans to do all your dirty work?" I tried to wriggle my newly pinned hand free, but I only made it an inch or so before the man's hold became painfully tight, and all I could do was run the very tips of my fingers along the bare skin of Dexter's side. Her eyes flicked to me, filled with terror, and I wondered just what she had to be afraid of. I was incapacitated.

"They're not 'doing my dirty work,' as you so erroneously put it," he murmured in my ear, and my fingers stilled against Dexter's side as more anger roared to life within me. "They're merely offering me a bit of entertainment — offering all of us a bit of entertainment." The world spun as I was suddenly flipped onto my back and forced flat against the counter, an ache starting in my spine that only ratcheted my rage higher as I stared into the man's fiery red eyes. "This will end in death for you eventually, Verapaini," he said softly, his smirk returning in the slow curve of his lips. "Whether at our hands or the humans, it will come."

"Yeah, right," I growled, then whipped my head up and into his nose. There was a snap and a snarl of pain, and he staggered back, his hands slipping from my body as the unpalatable death-scent of demon blood filled the air. I staggered upright to face him, already flooding my clenched fists with the heat of raw energy in preparation for the coming fight, but the second my eyes landed on his over the top of the hand clutching his nose, pain shot through my body, tiny pinpricks covering every inch of my skin. My eyes dropped to the glowing red palm of his outstretched hand, and I fell to my knees on the hard tile of the floor, though the pain didn't register beyond the searing, stabbing sensation that covered my entire being.

I coughed, and blood spattered the floor in front of me — but was it from my mouth or from my hands? Blood was oozing from my every pore, coating the pale skin of my fingers, my arms, seeping through the thick denim of my jeans to turn the blue a rusty red. I screamed.

Fire, fire everywhere, the stabbing of a million red-hot needles, the twisting of a billion dull blades in a billion deep wounds. It clawed its way through my head, through my stomach, up my throat and back down again. My vision began to dim as a pool of blood formed on the floor around me, the intense pain overwhelming me until I couldn't see the demon anymore, until I couldn't smell my own blood or taste it on my tongue, until I wasn't sure if I even existed anymore.

Where was I? What was this?

There was nothing but the burning, a sensation like smoldering charcoal packed around my body and flush against my skin. Bleeding from everywhere — everywhere, everywhere. Had I been torn open? Where was I? What was this?!

"What are you doing to her?" I heard Dexter whisper from someplace far, far away. "What are you doing?!" Her sudden cry of pain broke through the haze, loud and clear, and I tried to get my eyes to focus.

It was blurry, but I could see it; I had to fight for it, but it was there — Dexter lying on the floor only feet away from me, the remaining shards of broken plate sticking out of her as if she were some sort of giant pin cushion. Her blood was redder than mine, I noticed as she writhed in a growing puddle of it, and the scent…

I blinked twice, and the world suddenly came into sharp focus. Pain still danced through my every limb, every muscle, every cell, but the scent of her blood was stronger, the sounds of her screams and whimpers louder and so much more intense.

I only vaguely wondered when I'd fallen over as I sat up, staring at the man who hovered over my pet — my pet, my toy, my human, my Dexter. His glowing palm was stretched toward her, the shards stabbing in and out of her flesh in a frantic jig at the whim of their demonic master, and I growled.

"She's mine, fuckmook." He turned to me, and I threw out my own hand, a hot tingle beginning in my palm as his body sailed back and through the kitchen wall, landing by the dining room table that lay beyond. I shakily rose to my feet as he gasped for air, and I clenched my outstretched hand. His pants cut short, and he began to claw frantically at his throat, his windpipe shattered — at least, for the moment. A Council-grade demon wouldn't be so easily ended.

I just barely made it to Dexter's side before my legs gave out, and I fell to my knees next to her, a sharp hiss leaving me as pain rebounded through my knees and shins and thighs. Everything burned — everything. What had he done to me? What kind of power did he have?

"Be quiet, Dexter," I snapped, my voice much raspier than I'd anticipated, as I drew the shards of porcelain from her flesh with a slow flick of my fingers. "Concentration is hard enough as it is." The shards finally pulled fully free of the girl's wounds, and I licked my bloody lips as I tossed them aside with a careless flick of my wrist. I eyed the blood that still poured like a river from her dozens of gashes, and my eyes narrowed in a glare. I was weak. I was in pain. I was bloody and probably dying from whatever that son of a bitch had done to me. But what about Dexter? How could I heal her when I couldn't even heal myself?

And why did I even care to?

"You've got some fight in you, I see," came the demon's drawling voice, strong as ever, and I didn't have to look to know that his entire body was in perfect condition. Just a wash of pretty power over that pretty, shapely form of his, and he'd be perfectly fine. The bastard. "But will it be enough to save you? Maybe if you eat your pet, you'll gain enough power to heal yourself," he mocked. "We both know you're not strong enough to do it otherwise, not even at full strength."

Oh, but I'd show him. I'd show him.

"I'm stronger than you fools seem to think I am," I growled, placing my fingers in the growing pool of crimson on the girl's quivering stomach. "You'll realize that when I kill you all." I sent a stream of energy into her, steady and careful, and her injuries began to heal right before my eyes — but the view lost its power as my vision began to dim, my head beginning to swim in a fresh wash of pinpricks and searing pain.

"You're going to die here," the demon sneered. "You're too weak, too stupid, and too attached to that sniveling little human to go on."

"Nah," I said, and smiled sweetly at him over my shoulder — at least, I hoped it was him. I couldn't see a single damn thing. Yet I let Dexter's body continue to leech the raw power that my body offered, to take what she needed to survive. I wondered if it would replenish the blood she'd lost. I hoped it did. I'd show him. I'd heal her and I'd survive. "I'll live through this. I'll live through everything that you and those weakling humans you trained throw at me. And the next time I face you or any of your little demon horde," — Dexter's body cut off the connection, and the energy that I'd been guiding through my palm flooded my body to send a thrill of relief through me, a shiver running down my spine — "I'll kill you." I laughed to myself, emboldened by what little power remained within me. "I'll kill you all in the most painful ways I can think of. I'll make whatever it is you've done to me look like a Goddamn massage."

The man chuckled. "Good luck, Verapaini. It would be a shame to lose such a precious pawn so soon." But he left the room with a soft rush of air that I would never have felt with all of my senses intact, and I fell to the floor with a gasp, the pain returning in full force. I thought I'd begun to cry, but I wasn't quite sure. What did crying feel like?

"V-Ve…Vera?" I heard Dexter's small voice beside me, so close but somehow so far away. "What do…What do I do?" I felt her hand on mine, gripping it with an eagerness I never would have expected, and I wrapped my shaking fingers around her hand as best I could. Her skin was so warm, and I was so very cold…

"You run away while your captor is down," I whispered. I felt my eyelids flutter, an odd sensation to reach me through the thick wall of pain, and I was surprised when they remained open, though I could see nothing but black.

"But you'll die if I leave," she murmured, her voice hitching as a sob broke through. I didn't understand what she was feeling. I didn't understand what she was doing. I didn't even understand what I was feeling. I didn't understand any of this!

I took in a quavering breath through my wide-open mouth, and it burned all the way down to my lungs as if I'd just swallowed a mouthful of fire. "If I'm going to die, I'll do it whether you're here or not." You useless fucking human, I thought as her other hand wrapped around mine, and I wasn't sure if she was shaking or if I was.

"Just tell me what to do to help," she whispered. "I won't leave you."

"Then you just…" I paused, gritting my teeth as I rode a wave of molten lava to the brink of consciousness. I'd never wanted to die more than I did at that moment, with my insides seizing and my flesh melting away in the heat of a fire that didn't exist. "You just wait and you see if I wake up —" I stopped, grunted, felt my body buck up off of the tile floor. "— baby girl." My eyelids fluttered again over my sightless eyes, and I tumbled headlong into the black abyss of unconsciousness — and the pain blessedly ebbed away.