Soul Mates

by Donald Hanley

  “No!” I protested, aghast at the thought. “No souls!”

  “Not all souls are pure and innocent!” Lilixandriel retorted sharply. “This one took her family’s wealth and left them with naught but suffering and despair, seeking to extend her life beyond its natural measure. She signed the contract of her own free will, with a full reckoning of the consequences. Heaven will not protest this one’s passage into Hell.”

  “But –”

  “Thou did send William Bellowes to our Dread Lord’s embrace,” she reminded me coldly. “Dost thou regret that now? Wouldst thou bargain for his release?”

  “Well, no, but –” If anyone deserved to end up in Hell, it was Dr. Bellowes, but this whole plan didn’t seem right somehow. “Dara, what do you want to do?”

  Dara stared down at her interlocked fingers. “I want to make you happy, Peter,” she said softly.

  You already do, I wanted to tell her, every moment you’re with me, but I couldn’t say that with Lilixandriel standing there radiating impatient scorn. “But what would make you happy?”

  She was quiet for the longest time and then she lifted her hand to her forehead. “I want to be beautiful again,” she whispered.

  My breath caught in my throat as Lilixandriel’s lips curved into a triumphant smile. Dara’s going to leave me, I realized, and my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore. I sat back on the bed, just staring at her. “If that’s what you want,” I said finally. I didn’t recognize my own voice.

  Dara’s eyes were bright with tears as she faced her sister. “What do I have to do?”

  “Do naught but remain still,” Lilixandriel told her silkily. “I shall do what is needful. Art thou ready?” Dara’s eyes shot to me and for one brief, hopeful moment, I thought she was going to change her mind. Then she drew a shaky breath and nodded.

  “Close thine eyes, dear sister,” Lilixandriel instructed her, “and I shall draw thy curse from thy body into mine.” Dara obeyed and Lilixandriel stepped right up to her and gently placed her hands on either side of her face, pulling her closer. “Be whole once more, Daraxandriel.”

  Lilixandriel covered Dara’s mouth with her own in a deep and sensual kiss that went on for a very long time. I watched carefully but nothing seemed to be happening, other than Dara’s arms reaching around to embrace her sister tightly. I wanted to ask if whatever Lilixandriel was doing was working but I didn’t dare interrupt them.

  I had to force myself to blink as they started to get a little fuzzy around the edges but that didn’t seem to help. I rubbed my eyes and looked again and their outlines were definitely indistinct, as if I was watching them through an out-of-focus camera. “Um, Lilith?” I asked hesitantly. “Dara? Is everything okay?”

  They ignored me as the blurriness got worse, until I could scarcely recognize them at all. I got to my feet uneasily, wondering if I should intervene somehow, and then everything suddenly snapped back into focus and the two sisters broke apart breathlessly and staggered backwards. Lilixandriel touched her horns with a shocked expression as Dara stared at her hands.

  “Oh my God, what happened?” I gasped. “Why didn’t it work?” They both turned to look at me and my jaw dropped open as I finally realized that the succubus standing before me had bright red hair and a Dallas Cowboys jersey. “Dara! You’re – you’re –”

  Daraxandriel whirled around and gaped at herself in the mirror, pressing her fingers to her cheeks as if she wasn’t sure it was really her. Her tail snaked around her side and nuzzled her chin and she hugged it with a beaming smile like it was her long-lost puppy. “Thou hast accomplished the unimaginable, Lilixandriel!” she exclaimed. “Thou art truly –” She turned to her sister and her joy faded away. “Oh.”

  Lilixandriel – No, just Lilith now, I told myself – held her arms away from her sides as if she was afraid of accidentally touching herself. She nudged Daraxandriel away from the mirror and twisted around, trying to look at her own butt. Her tail was missing, her horns were gone, her eyes were the same dark brown Dara’s used to be, and her hair was platinum blond.

  “Horrible,” she muttered to herself. “How could anyone stand being like this?” She shuddered and then took a deep breath to compose herself. “Well, at least you look tolerable, Daraxandriel,” she observed gracelessly.

  “I shall hasten to our Dread Lord’s side at once!” Daraxandriel promised. “Thou shalt not suffer long, I swear this to thee!”

  “Yes, well, good luck with that,” Lilith told her sardonically. “I’ll be off. Do stay in touch, dear sister.” She strode towards my bedroom door, leaving the two of us with our mouths hanging open, and then slowed with a puzzled frown. “Why isn’t it working?” she murmured to herself.

  “Wait, what?” I asked. “What was all that business about getting the curse lifted? Do you want to stay human?”

  “Don’t be disgusting!” she snapped. “Of course I don’t want to be human.” She turned around and walked in the other direction, obviously expecting something to happen. “Why isn’t this working?” she gritted in frustration.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “The shadowed paths! Why can’t I find the paths?”

  “Thou art human now, Lilith,” Daraxandriel told her hesitantly. “Thou hast no powers. The paths are closed to thee.”

  Lilith lifted her hand up where her horns used to be and then clenched her fists when she encountered nothing but air. “That’s just great,” she muttered angrily.

  “Why are you trying to leave?” I had absolutely no idea what was going on anymore. “Shouldn’t you just wait here until Dara delivers that soul?”

  Lilith rolled her eyes. “Sure, why not?” She sat back down in Daraxandriel’s chair and crossed her arms and legs. “Go right ahead.”

  Daraxandriel and I exchanged an uncertain look. “I shall return forthwith,” she promised and stepped forward. Lilith smirked when nothing happened. Daraxandriel blinked and then tried again, with no better success. “What is awry?” she asked in dismay. “Whyfor can I not open the paths?” She and I looked at each other and then at Lilith, who very deliberately smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirts, one by one.

  “I might not have been entirely truthful with you,” she admitted finally.

  Daraxandriel gaped at her and then flung her hands up in despair. “I warned thee, Peter Simon Collins! I told thee she would deceive us! It is inherent in her nature, she cannot gainsay it!” Lilith let her rant as she inspected her fingernails with an expression of distaste.

  “You tricked Dara into turning back into a succubus so you could become human and – and do what?” I demanded angrily. “What was the whole point of this?”

  “Well, it turns out that the soul I gave you is bound to this plane.” Lilith said it like she was commenting on the weather. “I wasn’t able to bring it to Hell and I wasn’t able to get rid of it.”

  “So you gave it to Dara instead?”

  “Well, she was stuck here anyway,” she shrugged indifferently. “What difference does it make? I did her a favor, really.”

  “A favor?” I echoed incredulously.

  “Of course! Just look at her. She’s so much more attractive now, don’t you agree?” Lilith smiled at Daraxandriel, who stared back at her in dismay.

  “Thou didst burden me with thy troubles without my leave!” she protested. “Had I known thy true intent, I would have refused thee!”

  “Well, of course you would. That’s why I lied to you.”

  I wanted to take Lilith by the lapels and shake her until her eyeballs rattled in their sockets. “So how are you supposed to become a demon again if Dara can’t bring that soul to Hell?”

  “Oh, that’s no problem,” Lilith assured me with a carefree wave of her hand. “The contract that girl signed is still valid. After Daraxandriel dies, her soul will be freed and our Dread Lord will send one of his servants to fetch it. He’ll get the soul, He’ll lift the curse, and I’ll be beautiful once again. Problem solved
.”

  “What do you mean, when Dara dies?” I asked carefully.

  Lilith found another wrinkle to smooth. “Well, that’s the other thing.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed. “Now what?”

  “There’s a demon hunter who’s been after me for,” she counted on her fingers and then shrugged, “well, a very long time and somehow he found out about my contract with this girl. He bound her soul to some magical artifact before she died and now he’s using it to follow me.” Lilith smiled. “He’s probably on his way over here right now.”

  6

  Witches are good. That’s the party line, anyway. Mrs. Kendricks is good, her ongoing campaign to get me into bed with her notwithstanding. She claims it’s to help me overcome the trauma of sending a man to his doom but I know better.

  Conversely, Dr. Bellowes was evil. Sure, he used his powers to hunt down demons and dispatch them back to Hell, but he also murdered innocent souls to maintain his unnaturally-extended life. May he burn for all eternity.

  Susie falls into sort of a gray area. She’s not inherently good or actively evil, she’s just shamelessly amoral. If it weren’t for her innate inertia, I’d be honestly afraid of what she might end up doing someday.

  Demons are evil. I think pretty much everyone would agree with that statement, even if they don’t actually believe in demons. Metraxion, the Bane of the Broken Plain, is definitely evil. I only saw him for a few seconds and I still have nightmares about him.

  Daraxandriel wanted to claim my soul but she spent more time playing Legends of Lorecraft than she did trying to convince me to give it up and she defied her Dread Lord to help me defeat Dr. Bellowes. Even back in demon form, she’s basically harmless.

  Lilixandriel, on the other hand, is smart, beautiful, and ambitious. She only wants what’s best for her and she doesn’t care what she has to do or who she has to hurt to get it. She is Evil Incarnate.

  I rang the doorbell at 151 Hyacinth Lane again and shaded my eyes against the porch light as I peered through the door’s leaded glass window. The interior was pitch black and I couldn’t make out anything inside.

  I glanced back at the Mustang but the street lights were spaced well apart in this section of the neighborhood and I couldn’t see inside it either. If the ride over here was any guide, Daraxandriel and Lilith were still sniping each other for every single thing that happened to them since they were spawned. After all these years, I finally understood why Dad always ended up with a headache on our family road trips.

  I dug out my cellphone and tried Mrs. Kendricks’ number one more time but it immediately rolled over to voicemail again. I hung up without leaving a message. The other three frantic recordings I’d already left her were probably enough.

  “Where are you?” I muttered. I held down the doorbell but it just ding-donged once and fell silent, so I used the brass knocker to rattle out a pattern that was probably a cuss word in Morse code. She wouldn’t still be at the library, would she? I wondered anxiously. How am I going to find her if her phone’s off?

  I heard the car door slam but before I could turn to see what was going on over there, Mrs. Kendricks’ front door whipped open and I found myself staring cross-eyed at the business end of an ebony wand crackling with sparks.

  “What the hell do you want?” snapped the witch at the other end, but it wasn’t Mrs. Kendricks, it was her daughter Anastasia – Stacy to anyone who wanted to remain in her good graces – and she looked really pissed. Judging from the rumpled sleep shirt she was wearing, I must have woken her up. She squinted at me myopically – she looked a lot younger without her glasses – and she blinked as she finally recognized me. “Peter? What are you doing here?”

  “Is your mother here?” I asked, peering past her to see if there was anyone else there. “I really need her.”

  “You what?” Stacy’s voice went as cold and flat as a skating rink.

  Behind her, a hallway light came on and Mrs. Kendricks appeared. Her hair was pinned up with her wands again but the loose ends were dripping wet and what I could see of her skin was damp. The towel she held against her chest was barely large enough to cover the important bits so there was a lot of skin to see.

  “Peter,” she smiled, “what a surprise.” She was lying. She didn’t look in the least bit surprised to find me on her doorstep in the middle of the night.

  “I need your help with a really big problem!” I blurted and her smile widened.

  “The bigger the better,” she murmured. “Why don’t you go back to sleep, Anastasia? I’ll take care of Peter’s,” her tongue teased her lips, “problem.”

  “Oh my God,” Stacy breathed, rolling her eyes heavenward, “she finally wore you down, didn’t she? Fine!” She threw up her hands in surrender and stepped back to let me through the door. “Just do her and get it over with. But I swear to God, Peter,” suddenly her wand was an inch from my eyeball, “if you get my mother pregnant, I will hunt you down and cut off your testicles with a rusty scalpel!” With that, she stomped off, glaring at her mother as she passed.

  “Don’t mind her, Peter,” Mrs. Kendricks assured me smoothly. “She’s just anxious about starting college. She’d love to have a little baby sister.” An inarticulate scream from somewhere in the back of the house was cut off by a slamming door. “Come in,” she purred. “Let’s take a closer look at your problem.”

  Her towel started to slip lower and then her eyes widened and she clutched it tighter. I looked behind me and found Daraxandriel and Lilith standing there glaring at each other.

  “She does impugn my character unfairly, Peter Simon Collins!” Daraxandriel complained. “Entreat her to cease her provocations!”

  “She just doesn’t want to hear the truth about herself,” Lilith countered irritably. “This is why she’ll never claim a soul on her own!”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Kendricks said faintly. “You meant this kind of problem.” She heaved a resigned sigh. “All right, come in, all of you. Let’s hear it.”

  Ten minutes later, we were all gathered in Mrs. Kendricks’ kitchen watching a YouTube video on Stacy’s laptop. It showed a closeup of a young woman sitting up in a hospital bed with all sorts of wires and tubes snaking out of her gown. Her blue-gray eyes were sunken into dark hollows and her cheeks were unnaturally pale and gaunt. A gaily patterned cloth wrapped around her head failed to conceal the fact that her hair was gone. Her lips were cracked and colorless but she still managed to smile somehow as she spoke directly to the camera.

  “So this is probably the last time ... I’ll ever talk to you,” she said with a hint of a Cajun accent. She seemed to be having trouble breathing and her voice trembled. “I’m going home tomorrow ... to be with Momma and Poppa and Timmy ... until the end. The doctors tried their best ... but it wasn’t enough.”

  “Cancer,” Stacy murmured.

  “I want to thank Dr. Simmons ... and the nurses and everyone else here ... at the hospital. They’ve been great this whole time ... and I wouldn’t have lasted this long ... without all their hard work and ... their love. And you guys ... have been wonderful too. All your support and your prayers ... in the comments really lift me up ... whenever I’m feeling sorry for myself. Which happens a lot ... these days,” she laughed, but tears rolled down her face.

  “I hope these videos will ... help others who are going through ... the same difficulties ... and I hope you’ll give them ... the same love and devotion ... you’ve shown me. I also want to let everyone know ... that your generous donations have been a Godsend. I especially want to thank one ... very special person. I just met her ... but her contribution to the fund ... blew the target away ... by a mile. All the bills are covered now ... and Momma and Poppa won’t lose their house ... and Timmy will even have enough ... to go to college. Thank you, Lily,” she sniffled, wiping ineffectively at her face. “You kept your promise ... and I’ll keep mine. Goodbye, everyone.”

  She broke down then, sobbing uncontrollably, and the video cut off, l
eaving a somber notice in white text on a black background: Our sweet Olivia Grace Benard passed away in her sleep two days later, surrounded by her friends and family. May she shine in Heaven as brightly as she did on Earth.

  We all turned to face Lilith, who was leaning against the sink with her arms crossed. “What?” she asked sullenly.

  “You took her soul?” I asked incredulously.

  “What about it?” she shrugged indifferently. “She was dying anyway.”

  “You said she was evil!”

  “No, I said not all souls are pure, which is true. I also said she was leaving her family destitute, which is also true. Medical expenses are just insane, aren’t they?” she sighed dramatically.

  “Unfortunately, it’s too late to do anything about it,” Mrs. Kendricks said sadly. She’d traded her towel for a long silky nightgown. “Olivia signed Lilith’s contract. Her soul is bound for Hell no matter how good she was.”

  “Nay, it is not so,” Daraxandriel said, shaking her head. Lilith shot her a suspicious look. “Her contract is invalid.”

  “That contract is perfect!” Lilith snapped. “Her soul for all that money! You all heard her in that video. She agreed that I met my end of the bargain!”

  “Yet Olivia did not seek that money for her own weal,” Daraxandriel pointed out smugly. “She sought it for her family. It availed her not at all.”

  Lilith closed her eyes with a recriminating sigh. “Damn it.”

  “You didn’t even ask her what the money was for?” I asked her dubiously.

  “I was in a bit of a hurry,” she snapped. “She looked like she was going to die any minute.”

  “Well, that certainly puts a different spin on things,” Mrs. Kendricks said thoughtfully. She eyed Daraxandriel, who backed up and hid behind me.

  “So does that mean that Olivia’s soul won’t go to Hell?” I asked hopefully.

  Mrs. Kendricks nodded. “It also means that Lilith’s plan to lift her curse isn’t going to work.” Lilith tried to stroke her horns, muttering angrily to herself when all she felt was her hair. “So now we’re just left with the problem of this demon hunter.”