by Holly Lisle
"What can I say about my guest this morning? He's here! He's bad! He's the Guest... from... Hell! Want to know if Aunt Marge took your suggestion and headed South when she punched her ticket? Want to know if your boss really is the Spawn of Satan? Want to know if anyone knows about you and that hot little number in Accounting? Then get on the phones and ask, because this morning you're gonna get answers. Our guest comes to us straight from a tour of the six hundred and sixty-six levels of the Abyss, and boy are his wings tired! I present to you the famous, the IN-famous, Puck!"
Dan grinned at the devil. "So tell me, Puck—according to you, you're one hot dude from Hell. You been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. So... what gives with reruns?"
The devil blinked at Dan in confusion. "Reruns?"
"Oh, come on. Don't play coy with me! Ever since the Unchaining I've got Full House on my TV set five times a week, and twice on Saturdays! You don't expect me to believe it's because people are actually watching it, do you? And what about infomercials? Wheel of Fortune? What about The Montel Williams Show? Do you expect me to believe it's all a coincidence?"
Puck shifted in his seat. "Well, no, but..."
"Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before. 'Herr Judge, ve ver just following orders!' Speaking of which, how's Hitler doing?"
"Who?"
"Hitler? Adolph? You know, the short dumpy dark-haired guy who believed in the racial superiority of tall muscular blondes?"
The devil blinked in confusion. "Sorry, I didn't work in Personnel."
"Here we go again! Oh well, forget Hitler. Give us the inside scoop on the Big Man himself, okay?"
"The big man?"
"The Prince of Darkness! Lord of the Hoary Nether-worlds! Satan!"
Puck shivered. "What about Him?"
"Well, just between you, me, and the wall, is he really the epitome and sum of evil itself? Or is it all just a front?"
"A front?"
"Hey, you can tell me! All public figures have at least two personalities; one to trot out for the troops and the real McCoy. So what's he actually like? Is he the ultimate badass like they say? Or is he secretly a shy kind of guy? You know, listens to Michael Bolton and cries when the hunters shoot Bambi's mother? Fuzzy slippers and warm milk at bedtime?"
The devil stared at Dan as though he were insane. "I—don't think so."
"I guess you're right. Probably feels like he's got to live up to the rep. So enough about Satan. What about you? You're unemployed at the moment, is that right?"
"Well, yes. Unfortunately."
"Hey—maybe we can help you find a job! Best to go with what you know, right? So tell me Puck, what'd you do in Hell?"
"Do?"
"Your occupation in Hell. What was it? Chief torturer? Convenience store manager? Wastewater treatment plant operator?"
The devil wiped a hand across his forehead. Dan pantomimed taking a deep breath and letting it out. Puck imitated him. "Nah, nothing glamorous like that. I changed jobs a lot, mostly within the bureaucracy. Last position I had was Employee Relations and Morale Clerk. I translated company directives from up above into unintelligible corporate-speak for the floor workers."
"What happened?"
Puck looked like he was relaxing a little. "I'm not sure. Upper management said they were engaging in a reevaluation of my long-term prospects for maximizing opportunity situations, and that they had unilaterally reprioritized my infrastructural imperatives pending lateral corporate placement by transfer to a positive-image-minimized employment situation with a sum-negative advancement track and a corporately advantageous payment structure."
Startled, Dan laughed. "They said that?"
"They said that."
"Oooooo—sounds like Hell."
"Yeah, well." The devil raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "We have to expect things like that. A lot of middle management flows our way."
Dan laughed again. "You know, I always suspected that. Even radio stations have middle managers." The devil was turning out to be a decent guest after all. He stank, but he didn't stink. At least their share wouldn't drop because of him. In the back of Dan's mind, an idea began to form.
"So tell me, where do you see yourself in five years, Puck?"
He only half-listened to the answer. His plan took shape. It was outrageous. Implausible. Incorrigible. Audacious. It would make that bastard Bernie yank out what was left of his hair.
It was perfect.
The devil stopped to catch his breath, and Dan waved him to silence. "Puck," he said, "repeat after me. 'The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. '" He did it with a faux-British accent.
"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain." The devil mimicked his delivery and his accent, then asked, "Why did you want to me to say that?"
Dan leaned forward. "Ever heard of George Bernard Shaw? Pygmalion? My Fair Lady?"
"No."
"You will." Dan focused on his microphone. "Listen up, Raleigh. Puck's an unemployed devil—a social leech with no job and no place to live, and he hasn't had a bath since Noah floated out of the Flood. In fact, he reminds me of an uncle on my mother's side. I say we turn him into an upstanding North Carolinian. We'll scrub him down, dress him up, and make a new man of him. If we can shape him up, we can shape any of them up. We'll call it the Great Devil Makeover. Grab a phone and let me know what you think! Call me now!"
Dan cued up "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones and flipped off his mike.
Puck watched him, those yellow eyes disconcertingly excited.
"You like it?" Dan asked.
"I like it," Puck said. "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."
"Ghostbusters, right?" Dan said, catching the line. He didn't let the devil's sudden enthusiasm bother him. He smiled. "I'm going to put this station back in the black, my fine fiend. And you're going to help me."
Chapter 3
The treadmill increased its speed again and Janna English moved from an easy lope into an outright run. Her feet pounded on the moving surface, her body gleamed golden beneath the gym lights, and sweat slicked her skin and made her glow. She checked her form in both the front and side mirrors. Shoulders up. Head erect. Knees up. Arms loose. Her hair, swept back in a loose ponytail, stuck to her neck in places. Irritating.
I will get the part, she told herself. I will be the best actress to audition. The director and producer will see me as the main character, they will have seen my work in Blackout and they will be impressed. They will want me. They will want me.
Paul from Building C stepped into the main gym from the sauna, wearing a towel around his waist. He was close to forty, with thin legs and ugly feet. He was a pathetically unimaginative lover, too, but he did have his strong points. She smiled at him.
He leaned against the mirror right in front of her, which prevented her from checking her forward form, and smiled back at her.
"Hi, babe. Want to go back to the apartment and screw before I go to work? My friend and I miss you."
He pulled the towel aside to show her how much he missed her.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said, maintaining her pace. "Management monitors the gym. And I can't come back with you. I'm working out." She needed to not lose her temper with him. He had a ridiculous amount of money in his bank account, and she was short enough on funds that some of it would come in useful, if they could stay friends. Or if she could maintain polite relations with his "friend. " "I'm up for a part today, so I have to get this out of the way now."
"Cattle call?"
"Callback. Reading." She tried to project her certainty that she would get the part. "My agent said they were very enthusiastic when they called her to set up the time."
"Oh." He watched her.
She thought, Would you move your ass out of my way so I can see what I'm doing? She didn't say anything.
He looked at the clock behind her. "I'm running out of time."
"Don't let me keep you. I have to lift
weights after this, and today is an upper body day—that takes longer."
He looked disappointed. Naturally. She smiled at him to lessen the sting, and he said, "Well, I guess I'll be going, then. You want to get together tonight?"
"Can't," she said. "I have a shoot for a local department store catalog tomorrow morning—early. If I don't get my sleep, my eyes will be puffy." He could say he was dating an actress. She didn't see any reason why he needed to say he was going steady with one.
"You doing okay for money?"
"No. I will be. If the movie comes through."
He smiled a little. "In the meantime, why don't you let me help you out?"
She smiled again. "When I make my million, I'll pay you back in style."
He turned to leave, and she called after him, "Turn on the radio for me, would you? Ninety-three point six. It helps to have something to listen to while I work out."
He nodded, turned on the radio, and left. When she got back to her apartment, she'd find a thousand dollars on the kitchen counter. Cash. No need to report it, no need to bank it—all she had to do was spend it. One of the nice little dividends to having a few movies in her past; now more than ever, men wanted to be with her, and they liked to give her gifts so she'd want to keep spending time with them.
She listened to another of her boyfriends doing his morning show. Dan wasn't one of the money boyfriends. He was one of the public appearance boyfriends. He was a celebrity in his own right, which gave him legitimacy, but he wasn't as well known as she was, so he didn't outshine her. He had a good body and a photogenic face, and he was the requisite two inches taller than her when she was wearing heels, so that they didn't look ridiculous in photographs. She couldn't afford to look ridiculous. The North Carolina celebrity scene didn't have the size or scope of that in New York or Hollywood. A few bad photos here could cost her work.
He was talking to a devil.
That was a first, even for him. The devil discussed what he hoped he would be doing in five years, Dan made an abrupt transition to quoting My Fair Lady, and all of a sudden he had her complete attention. She slowed the treadmill to a walk, manually overriding the variable-intensity program she'd chosen; she wanted to be able to hear what he was saying.
"Listen up, Raleigh. Puck's an unemployed devil—a social leech with no job and no place to live..." She continued her cool down walk while Dan presented his Great Devil Makeover idea to Raleigh's morning commuters. "Grab a phone and let me know what you think! Call me now!"
Her instincts told her this was an opportunity. It didn't seem like much on the surface, but everything about the Hellraised could command national, and sometimes even international, attention.
She suspected that Dan was about to find himself in the spotlight. She decided she'd like a large portion of that attention for herself. She resolved to call Dan and offer her support—maybe she could suggest herself in the role of acting coach. Or maybe she could just be there, getting her picture taken. NORTH CAROLINA ACTRESS REDEEMS HELLRAISED. She could see the headline. And the subhead, too. "Will Play Herself in Major Motion Picture."
Chapter 4
Meg Lerner rolled over and yawned. Seven A. M. and her alarm clock gave her not the voice of Dan, the man she thought she might be falling in love with, but the voice of Marilyn, his morning show sidekick, doing the news. She stretched but didn't get up. She wanted to hear the interview, which always came on at seven. Dan had announced the day before that a representative from Daltech, the big Research Triangle Park electronics firm, was going to be his morning interview. Considering that Daltech was one of the biggest employers left after the post-Hellraising exodus began, Meg was more than a little interested to hear what the man had to say.
But the Daltech rep wasn't there. Instead, Dan started interviewing a devil. He kept the tone light, and Meg thought some of the stuff on both sides turned out pretty funny, but it wasn't what she'd wanted to hear.
That is, it wasn't until Dan suggested doing a Great Devil Makeover and rehabilitating the devil.
That idea interested Meg a lot.
Meg spent a bit of time on the Internet when she wasn't trying to keep her little law practice afloat or trying to figure out where she and Dan stood with each other. And online, she'd been reading some disturbing things. Being a North Carolina native, and one who'd determined to stay come Hell or high water—or just high water, since Hell had already arrived—she'd closely watched the posts in the alt. hellraised newsgroups.
Recently, some of the posts had been getting extreme. Along with the usual wackos, flamers, and kids who were just trying to prod a response out of someone, a dark undercurrent of violence had begun to build. One guy from out west someplace was, in all seriousness, trying to encourage foreign governments to "Do The Decent Thing" and drop a few nukes on North Carolina since Washington didn't have the balls. A lot of outsiders blamed the state for its sudden population of Hellraised, and wanted to impose measures restricting everything from sex to free speech in the state in an attempt to make it pure enough that God would send the Hellraised home. No one seemed to think that North Carolinians were up to handling the problem on their own.
Meg did. She thought that North Carolina, with its historic tenacity and determination, might even manage to make something positive out of its Hellish invasion.
And there was Dan, offering the perfect proposal to a beleaguered state.
Meg sat up in the bed, thoughtful. She listened for a while to the tenor of the calls he was receiving, counting the number of people who just wanted to swear at him and comparing that to the number of people who thought maybe he was onto something.
The response, mostly positive, surprised her. North Carolinians had already discovered they couldn't run the Hellraised off their land. Killing them didn't work—the bodies just reappeared and the killer got stuck with an enormous bill sent straight from Hell for the damages. But as far as Meg knew, no one had ever tried to make the Hellraised into something North Carolina could live with.
Maybe it was time to try.
Chapter 5
At ten, Dan left Marilyn with the news and instructions to play music until he got back, and answered the urgent summons he'd gotten from the station manager's office an hour earlier. He rapped on the door and leaned in, being sure when he did to keep his face serious. "You wanted to see me, Bernie?"
"Damned right. Sit down." Bernie Hatcher, fortyish, pasty-faced, with thinning hair and a thickening middle, fussed with a spoon and a bottle of Pepto Bismol, then dropped the spoon and drank the medicine straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth and turned his phone around. "Do you see this?"
Dan looked at the flashing extension lights. "Yes?"
"Do you have any idea what kind of chaos that little announcement of yours has caused? Darlene says she's logged over two hundred calls so far. And..." Bernie paused. "Who's manning the booth?"
"Marilyn. She's doing the news now, and if she needs to, she'll put music on for me when she's done. What's the matter?"
"What's the matter? You hear that, God? He wants to know what's the matter. This schmuck can't figure it out on his own." Bernie liked to talk to God. Dan hoped God would answer some time real soon—he figured if he did, the station would have one less Bernie and he'd have one less headache. "This!" Bernie yelled. "This is the matter!" He picked up the phone and slammed it on the desk.
Dan stared at Bernie and smiled cheerfully. He wanted to kill the little tyrant—one of his best friends was unemployed with a sick wife and an infant child because this man had a fetish for time clocks. But killing him wouldn't solve Dan's problems, and getting WKTU back on track would. If the station started doing well, maybe Dan could force Bernie to give Steve Gromman his job back.
"Bernie," he said. "Telephone calls are a good thing. We want phone calls. We like them. Phone calls mean we got people's attention, made them listen, forced them to do more than sit on their cans passively sucking in soundwaves. It doesn't matter if we mad
e them mad. We made them care. That matters. The Great Devil Makeover is going to make a lot of people care. And in the process, it's going to put us in the black and on top of the ratings."
Bernie leaned back and glared. "I'm listening."
"The Unchaining is the biggest thing in this state, in this country. Hell, maybe even the entire world. People are fascinated and obsessed and burning with curiosity about the Hellraised. Hell's little devils cause a lot of trouble, but when it comes right down to it, we really don't know much about them. That's going to change, though. Now we've got a devil who's willing to talk and who has a reason to want to change—and think about what heroes we'll be if we can change him. If we can turn Puck into a good guy, Bernie, you will be a god, man."
Bernie didn't look convinced.
Dan kept going. "The people of this town will be kissing your ass and begging to buy spots on this station. In the beginning of course a few people are going to be upset, but even the ones who are upset are going to listen and they're gonna talk. The only bad publicity is no publicity."
"Uh-huh. But what about the sponsors? You can bet your ass that, even as we speak, religious wackos all over this city are calling every business that advertises with us to demand a boycott."
"You may be right. But we'll still keep the sponsors; in fact, we'll be turning new ones away for lack of air time."
"How do you figure that?"
"First, if those folks called, they must have been listening. And they're going to listen even more in the days to come. I plan to get the sponsors involved in the whole makeover process. Get them out there in front of people saying, 'Yes, we support WKTU. Yes, we want to make a difference, and we're doing something to make our state a better place to live. We may be doing it one devil at a time, but by God we're doing it.'"
Dan wished he had an American flag blowing in the breeze behind him right then. Maybe someone to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" softly in the background. He said, "This is the American thing to do, Bernie. The patriotic thing. We see a problem. We take a stand. And then we go to work, filling those sandbags, feeding those hungry children... and bringing those Hellraised devils and demons and fallen angels into the fold. We make a difference."
