“We have a problem,” she whispered low. Lux just frowned but urged her to go on silently. “The demonesses are gone.”
Ace looked anywhere but at Arcadia. Now it was time for me to frown. “Beloved, what did you do?”
She gave me a wide-eyed innocent look that was completely out of place on her sex-demon visage. “Me? Nothing? I may have warned them not to get any big ideas while they were here, but that’s it.”
I quirked a brow, and she scowled. “I may have threatened to send them to the seventh circle if they fucked up. Which they have. Looks like I’ll get to make good on my promise.” She looked gleeful at the idea, and Arcadia elbowed her in the ribs and gave her a disapproving glare.
“That was cruel, Ace. They were fine until you threatened them. Now we have two demons running around unchecked in Boston, and that means all sorts of drama that's directly your fault.”
Had to give it to Arcadia. She’d managed to get the matriarchal disapproval down to a fine art. Even Ace looked contrite. She looked at me. “Can you call them back?”
I shook my head. “Not until this night is over. We could just let them have their fun until then?”
It was Lux’s turn to look disapproving. Huh, maybe it was just a talent you got with age.
“No. Two demonesses could cause an untold amount of destruction. We’ll have to find them.” Lux sounded pissed. I tried the wide-eyed innocent look, and Arcadia laughed out loud at my expression.
“Jesus, that’s terrifying. No one in their right mind is ever going to think you’re innocent, Luc,” she consoled between chuckles. “Fine. Take the kids and find the demonesses. Ace and I will stay here in case they come back.” Ace opened her mouth to protest, but Arcadia shut her down with a look. “If you find them first, you’ll just terrify them into running again. You can stay and help Valery and me with the meal prep considering you scared off my help.”
Ace looked like she wanted to protest, but I was the Lord of Hell, gifter of punishments, and I could think of none better for my Consort than leaving her out of a hunt. Arcadia was good!
Lux went over to talk to Estrella and her Consorts, and I looked at Ace’s pouting face.
“Come now, my Love. You know Arcadia is correct. You would just scare them off.”
Two adorable frown lines marred her perfect face. “I don’t like being left at home like a naughty child.”
I reached out, pulling her close to me. Her body curved into mine sinuously, and I took a moment to savor the feel of her. I ran my hands up her back until I reached the curve of her wings. I ran my hands over the taut muscle and downy feathers and she sucked in a shuddery breath.
“Luc!” she whisper-yelled. “Not here.”
I leaned forward and kissed her neck, biting gently on the pulse point there. “I have a consolation prize that might make you feel better about missing the hunt.”
She moaned deep in her throat. “Oh, where is this prize?”
I kissed up to her earlobe, sucking it between my teeth the way she liked. “In the coat closet beneath the stairs.”
She grabbed my hand and tugged me from the room. Gusion rolled his eyes and grinned at us as we left, because every supernatural in that room, from Memphis to the Gargoyles Romanus and Rouen, would have heard our conversation. I wanted them to. I wanted the whole world to know that I was about to make love to the most beautiful creature ever created.
Ace quickly pulled me into the closet and pressed me against the wall. “You are never the consolation, Lucifer. You are my everything.” She kissed me hard. “Now where’s my prize?”
I grinned at his wild angel that was mine and dropped to my knees.
This was going to be a prize for us both.
Chapter Two
The sound of sobbing was never good. Normally it meant I was doing my job, but we weren't in Hell and I wasn’t torturing someone for fun. I was on an Upper-Middle class suburb of Boston, and the sobbing was coming from a woman dressed completely in pink velour, who had mascara running down her face like a bad surrealist painting.
Damn, I loved those surrealists.
Rella was kneeling in front of the woman, who was sitting on the curb crying into her hands. “Ma’am, are you okay?”
This sent a fresh wave of sobs out of the woman, who’s high pitched whines were beginning to sound like a trapped chihuahua. “I walked in there, and my husband was… he was…” More theatrical tears. He was what? If I had any virtues left, patience definitely wasn’t one of them.
“Dead?” Charlie prompted.
The woman scoffed. “I wish! He was fucking some blonde on my seven thousand dollar Louis V receiving table.” The wail this time was a pitch so high that it made the neighborhood dogs howl mournfully. Judging by Romanus’ wince, perhaps it made Gargoyles want to howl too.
“Is she crying because her husband was fucking someone else, or because he was doing it on the table?” Rouen whispered to Romanus, who just shrugged.
“This woman, was she blonde? Perfect figure? Boobs that defied gravity?” Rella asked, and the woman nodded furiously.
“Yes. And these ridiculous long nails. She gouged my tabletop. It was an antique!”
Naz turned to Rouen. “Definitely the table.” Then he turned and walked past the woman crying in the gutter and up the drive behind her. Good move. I didn’t think I could listen to her whine without accidentally sending her to the fifth circle on purpose.
I walked along behind them lazily. I was in no hurry to find Icciria and Astixia, but Arcadia wanted it so, and I could give her this one thing. The door to the home was wide open, and I saw straight away the woman's antique table. It was quite a fine piece.
I briefly wondered if its craftsman had ended up in Hell? I would endeavor to find out. My beloved consort needed a table to put all her weaponry on when she took it off for the night.
Unfortunately, this table was currently decorated with the naked and hairy ass of a slightly overweight middle-aged banker. He was slumped over it, trembling like a newborn.
There was no sign of the demonesses.
“Where’d the girl go?” Naz growled. He was really quite good at that. Too bad Hope had roped him into their little redemption scheme. I could have used him on the first level.
The man just panted and muttered incoherently. “Just appeared… Haven’t had a hard-on like that since the Red Sox won the world series in 2004… boobs…”
“I think she broke him,” Rella said, suddenly beside me. I almost startled. Rella was the only one who could sneak up on me like that, and the child did it every chance she got. I gave her my haughtiest look and then turned back to the shriveled balls of the man spread out like a feast on the Louis V table, even if the legs did seem a little precarious under his bulk.
I inclined my head, and tilted it to the side, searching for any more thought patterns in the household. Nothing.
“They are gone.”
Rouen came over, but first, he slapped the older man on the ass so hard I wondered if the police could get fingerprint impressions. It seemed to snap Sir Jigglebits out of his fugue, as he squawked and stood, running up the staircase as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him.
Rouen watched the man go, shaking his head. “Truly horrifying. Rella, my Queen, I think that man has single-handedly killed my libido. We may never have sex again.” Rella just made an unattractive noise, licked her lower lip and leaned in to say something in his ear. With that, the sexual tension in the room skyrocketed. Seriously, I fell to Hell for this, but they really did fuck like monkeys and it was a little ridiculous.
I cleared my throat and ignored Rouen’s hard-on. Fucking Gargoyles.
“Can we please concentrate?” I prompted them both.
Rella grinned, not even the least bit apologetic. Was she too old for reform school? “We know they’ve split up. Judging from the description given by the wife, Sticky was here, but she wasn’t with Icky.”
Charlie poked at the tabl
e, his face screwed up. “Sticky seems apt. That’s a lot of bodily fluids right there. If I was the lady of the house, I’d burn this in the backyard, no matter how many Louis’ it is.”
Humans were disgusting sometimes. The demonesses would be harder to catch separated, a fact I am sure they knew. Rella was already on the phone, talking to Hope. I could tell it was Hope because they both got this expression on their faces when they talked on these mobile devices. Ace called the expression heart-wrenching. My Beloved said it was because they mourned the loss of their connection, and if anyone knew of that loss, it was me.
“Hey. Yeah, we tracked Sticky but we were too late. Yes. Yeah. They’ve split up, but we can’t be too far behind. The guy she, uh, banged was still recuperating.” She just nodded a few more times, even though Hope couldn’t see her and hung up.
“They haven’t had as much luck, though Gus is keeping them on the relative right track apparently. They are heading for the old Mulligan stomping ground. That can’t be a coincidence, right?”
I shrugged. At one stage, the Mulligan family owned half of Boston. There were very few areas of the city that hadn’t been Mulligan controlled. It could be a coincidence, if I believed in those.
“We will head in that direction then.” I strode from the room, though Rella took a moment to embrace her very own Mulligan who’d gone a little pale at the mention of his family. Well, paler. He was dead after all; it wasn’t good for your complexion. Although he was able to walk this plane due to the paradox that was Samhain, he did not look alive as such. Humans would see him as so because the human mind filled in the blanks to maintain their fragile realities. But his skin was too pale, his eyes a little sunken and he had an unnatural stillness to him.
Estrella was whispering in his ear as she kissed his cheek, and I chose not to intrude on the moment.
It didn’t take a higher power to guess the direction of his thoughts. He did not want to run into any of his family members, but at the same time desperately wanted to see them. It was a little Catch-22.
I made a cap and oversized aviators appear in my hand, and gave them to Charlie. “Sometimes the easiest solutions are the best. Actually…” I made two more sets appear and gave them to Naz and Estrella. “It would not do for anyone to recognize you here in Boston. Estrella we could pass off as Hope. But two dead Mulligan sons will send a mass exodus to the doors of the Holy Cross.”
Romanus stepped onto the sidewalk and inhaled deeply. He pointed south. “She went that way.” His fingers twitched, and the urge to hunt rode him hard. Romanus was the best hunter on either side of the great divide. Demon enough to be a monster, but pure enough to temper it with empathy, he took his role as Alpha of their little pack of misfits very seriously. Our group power-walked in the direction he pointed.
It seemed that Gusion’s premonitions were right; they were heading toward the Hammer and Pinwheel, the headquarters of the Mulligan family. A very curious place for two demonesses to go. Well, Iccaria at least. It seemed Astixia was happy to take the scenic route and collect a few conquests along the way.
They all piled into one of Tolliver’s SUVs, Nazir at the wheel. I hoped he didn’t get pulled over by the police. It would be very hard to explain, again. I’d bailed them out of prison enough; if they went there again, I’d leave them there until their souls eventually faded back to Hell in the morning. Estrella rolled down the window.
“Are you coming?”
I shook my head. “I never liked those.”
“Those?” She looked around as if she was searching for an atomic bomb.
“Cars.”
The look of shock on her face was outrageous. “You’re scared of cars.”
I rolled my eyes. “I am the Lord of Hell, I am scared of nothing. I merely find traveling in them irritating, much the same kind of irritation as annoying children who don’t mind their own business,” I growled ominously, and she just laughed. Laughed! She had become desensitized to me down in Hell. I wasn’t sure if I liked that or not.
“Okay, Luc.” Her tone was completely disbelieving. “I’ll call you if we find anyone.”
I wondered if I could banish her to her rooms as punishment? Except, I’d heard what they got up to in their suites. I’d had to double torture rates in the first circle just to camouflage the sounds.
No one ever said having children was so hard. But it made Ace so happy that she was there. I could put up with her sassiness for my Beloved.
I flashed through time and space to the place where I could sense Gusion.
Unfortunately, I walked in on Gusion making love to his own consort in an alley. In broad daylight.
I threw my hand up to block the view of his naked ass thrusting, his gold wings spread wide. “Ugh!”
I flashed again to where I sensed Memphis. Fucking children.
Memphis, Azriel, and Blue Halloran were inside a nightclub. Azriel and Memphis were hidden to the human eye, so I did the same. I looked around the club, abandoned and lonely in the middle of the day. It was a strip club, judging by the poles and the neon lighting.
“I’m looking for a woman,” Blue was saying to a man who looked like a weasel who’d eaten too much and could no longer scurry away. The weasel was giving Blue a wary look. We were in Boston, where Blue’s legend preceded him. The Mulligan’s may have gifted him to Hope like a chattel, but everyone with half a brain remembered that he was their number one enforcer.
Especially if you wallowed in the seedy underbelly of Boston. Blue’s was the name you feared. His eyes are the ones that haunt your nightmares.
The weasel sputtered. “I thought you were fucking some rich bitch-” The man’s repulsive words ended when Blue backhanded him across the face.
Good. I was about to give him a fast track to the third circle. Given the look on Azriel’s face, he wasn’t above stamping his ticket to get his soul there either.
“You will not disrespect my wife like that. She is Mulligan fucking royalty, and they will burn your little shithole to the ground with you inside.”
I turned to Mephistopheles and Azriel, my brows raised. “Wife?”
“Blue did not wish for his child to be born a bastard as he was. They got married a few weeks ago, with only us as witnesses.” A small smile curled the lips of Heaven’s former Angel of Death. “It was a nice ceremony.”
I shook my head. This was not going to go down well. Ace and Arcadia had only forgiven Estrella for getting married without them because she died. Even then, Ace still brought it up. Hope was in so much trouble. My lips curled in a matching smile. The fallout would be amazing.
I tuned back into the blubbering weasel. “S-sorry, Blue. What woman? I have all sorts of women. Blondes, redheads, contortionists. Whatever you want, Blue, they’re all yours.”
What a scumbag. Blue looked like he was going to hit him again. “I’m looking for a blonde, big boobs, kind of dumb. She would have been here recently.”
Weasel Man was starting to sweat. It was running down his head into his eyes, and his straining blue dress shirt now had obnoxiously large sweat patches. “I’ve got lots of blondes, Blue. You can have whichever one you want, there's even a room out back-”
Blue punched him this time, the satisfying crack telling me he’d broken the Weasel’s nose. I was glad Hope was still in the alley with Gusion. She would not like this violence.
“Gusion is debauching your consort in the alleyway,” I said to the two angel’s, and they both just shook their heads in bemusement, not a hint of jealousy passing across their faces. I was looking for it, but they seemed amused, and a little exasperated maybe, but not jealous. What did the Jones women have that seemed to defy human nature, spitting in the face of millions of years of evolution?
The Weasel was blubbering on the floor now, blood mixing with sweat on his shirt-front. Blue still looked completely calm despite breaking the guy’s nose. I could see why he was the Mulligan’s number one enforcer. He was like one of those Australian animals;
completely harmless-looking until you were dead at their feet from getting too close.
“I’m going to break this down for your tiny little brain,” Blue said slowly. “I’m looking for a missing woman. She would have been in here really recently. She was blonde, a little naive, she didn’t stay long. Is any of this ringing a bell, or do I have to beat the memory out of you?”
Weasel nodded furiously. “I know her, I know her. She wandered in here, stupid as a box of rocks but looked like sex on a stick, you know? I sent her out back. I thought she wanted a job. Roberto was giving her a test run, if you know what I mean?”
Blue dropped the man to the floor and turned toward the back of the club. “Roberto is the owner of this shithole. Real dangerous scumbag. Not a Mulligan, Italian mob.”
Considering that Blue was the boogeyman of Boston, that seemed ominous. Well, ominous to anyone who wasn’t an accomplished hitman, two Fallen Angels and the fucking Devil himself. As we got closer to the back of the club, the muffled whimpers and the smell of blood got stronger. Well, this couldn’t be good.
Blue pulled a gun from the back of his jeans, but Memphis went through the swinging red doors first. Blue did not even protest.
Azriel leaned closer to me. “Blue is a smart man. He wants to live a long life with his wife and child. He does not let his ego get in the way of his brain. He knows we are bulletproof. Why go in first when you can send in someone who is immune to human weaponry?”
The Mulligans I had met were not known for being the smartest bullets in the box. Oh, there were a few of the old ones, the ones who came to the US and saw the opportunity to make something more for themselves and their families, even if it was by less than legal means. People like Uncle Seamus who’d slowly led the Mulligans from a more dangerous path, even if it was still a little less than saintly.
But Blue was this new generation, as was Charlie. They wanted out of the life, and weren’t going to ask permission to do it.
Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset Page 90
