Cast In Blood: Revelations Series Book 1:

by Christine Sutton

  "Lucy, you know me better than that by now. Besides, you don't even like innards."

  "True, but the threat stands."

  "Yes, Mistress," Polly said to a dead line. Lucifer had already hung up and the phone was silent against Polly's ear. Fuck, this is big. She then headed back to the table to deal with Lenny.

  "Okay, kid, I'm cutting you loose. The hunt for Demas is back-burnered. More pressing matters, I'm afraid."

  "No, wait! You can't come in here, tear my whole world apart, and then expect me to just go back to it like nothing is wrong." Lenny scowled at the woman who'd changed everything.

  "Shifter, I can do whatever the hell I want."

  "No, you can't. You can't just play with people's lives."

  "Hey, I saved you, you ungrateful brat. Your dear Father was about to use you like a cheap whore. The way I figure it, I did you a service here."

  "Oh, yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for blowing up my entire life and leaving me back on the streets again with nowhere to go."

  "Go back to your flock and play hero to the little ones. Keep them out of your saintly molester's hands. We may still need to hunt down Demas. And, let's be honest here, you knew I wasn't taking you away from there immediately. I mean that's why you wore someone else's face to escape tonight, isn't it?"

  Lenny gasped. "You saw that? How could you see?"

  "I can see your soul, child. No matter what face and body you wear, your soul will always look the same to me."

  "That's just creepy."

  Polly smiled. "Perhaps it is. Now, I tell you what, go back to the flock and see what you can find out about Demas and whatever else the false prophet is hiding. If you need me, call me."

  "What, like just say your name and you'll show up?"

  "No, like call me on my cellphone," Polly said, smiling. She reached out to hand Lenny a card and her smile faded as she changed her mind and pulled the card back, putting it in her breast pocket. "Of course you can always just call my name, too. That's probably a far better plan since cell reception is pretty shitty down in Hell, and I assume the charlatan in charge doesn't allow you a phone."

  "No, I don't have a cell," Lenny said with just a hint of embarrassment.

  "No matter, I'm not big on cell phones myself. Metaphysical communication is far cheaper, at least until the phone companies figure out how to harness it. Now, Lenny, if you do call out my name because you need me, I will show up. I may be a demon, but I never break my word, and I give you my word that I'll do my best to help you." Apollyon hadn't much cared about humans, but this one had some spark to her that caused her to feel a begrudging … something. It was a feeling almost like respect. She had to admit it took balls to stand up to a demon.

  "Thanks," Lenny said halfheartedly. She looked down at her plate and added, "Oh, and thanks for the pancakes."

  Polly nodded, turned, and left the diner while Lenny settled back in the booth, determined to eat her dinner. It was actually something the shifter was looking forward to and it seemed that it would probably be the only thing to look forward to for some time. Lenny sighed. She knew one thing for sure, and that was how the pancakes she'd ordered would be a far better dinner than those awful peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the ladies would be making back at the church.

  Chapter 13

  Apollyon hadn’t spoken to J. D. in over a year. The last time they'd had words, it was because she had just stripped him of his Knighthood. She clutched the phone tightly and dialed J. D.'s number. She took a deep breath to steady herself against the snark she knew was coming and hit the call button.

  "Hello?"

  "J. D.? Hi, it's, uh ... it's Polly. Lucy told me to give you a ring."

  "Polly?" J. D.'s voice sounded cold.

  "How have you been?"

  "Oh, you know, hating the fact that you betrayed me."

  "I understand. I'm not calling to beg forgiveness; I'm calling because you owe me a favor."

  "You think I'm going to do you a fucking favor now? After the shit you pulled?"

  "Yeah, I do. The shit I pulled was in deference to the crap you tried, so just remember the favor I did for you. Now that we put all that unseemly business behind us, I need you to focus on work."

  "Work?" J. D.'s voice grew colder by the second. "I don't work for you. What fucking favor are you talking about, anyway?"

  "J. D., do I have to remind you that you bear the seal and therefore belong to Lucy to do whatever the fuck she wants?"

  "Go to hell and leave me alone."

  "Funny, see, I've been there, and the ruler sent me here to get your assistance on a matter."

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "Because I love torturing people. As for your question about the favor, you got to keep your hellfire, didn't you?" This time it was Polly whose voice was icy.

  "Fuck. I knew I'd be made to pay for that eventually." His voice sounded shaky as he asked, "What do you need?"

  "For you to discretely ask around and see if someone knows something about souls being stolen before they reach Hell."

  "What?"

  "Someone is trying to siphon souls. I am looking into who. You will help me, and be quiet about what is going on, or I will call in your marker. Sorry to be a bitch, J. D., but that's just the way of the fucking world."

  "Jesus. Any clue as to who might be behind all of this?"

  "Yeah, I'm out chasing them down now and just took the time to make an uncomfortable and awkward call to you for laughs," Polly said sardonically.

  "Jeeze, you don't have to be such a bitch."

  "I'm not being a bitch, J. D., I'm being a demon. Look, it's like this, Lucy let you keep your hellfire and you owe her for that. So, pay up and get me some info, now." Polly hung up and unclenched her jaw.

  J. D. might be a pain in the ass, but he would get her information. She had no doubt on that. He was never stupid, and scoring points with Lucy and Polly could only help him once his marker was called in. He knew that much. He also had some of the best contacts in the business, on both sides of the board.

  As much as Polly hated letting him in on the situation, she knew it was for the best. He would get the info she needed about what was going on.

  I wonder how the shifter is doing.

  She hoped the girl would be smart enough to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open. There was a good chance she'd still have to take down Demas, and that girl was her best chance at doing so. She felt a tiny and extremely bizarre twinge of guilt that she wasn't able to help Lenny further. Once she got to the bottom of the missing souls thing, Polly did plan on going back to help the shifter out. She wasn't going to leave her in the lion's den high and dry. It wasn't her way.

  As much as she didn't like sending Lenny back to the church, Polly knew it was necessary. She really hoped the girl would keep a low profile and not attract any attention—like accusing the cult leader of pedophilia. She felt slightly guilty in showing the shifter the things Herschel had done, but at the same time she realized it would be important for Lenny to understand what a jackhole her "messiah" really was.

  Chapter 14

  As Polly called her other contacts for information on the soul thief, she also called in chits owed to her by some of those same people. Several were in place nearby the church, so that if she needed to get to Lenny in a hurry she could. One of her contacts called her back with information. She looked at her cell and saw it was Michael.

  "Apollyon?"

  "Michael, what do you have for me?"

  "I'm not doing this over the phone," the archangel hissed and hung up.

  Fuck, thought Polly, this is exactly what I was afraid of.

  She tossed her cellphone on the table. If the problem was on Hell's end, the big dog upstairs might call for a regime change. Polly was certain of one thing, and that was how much Lucy didn't deserve this kind of treatment. She'd done every vile, horrible, outrageous thing God had ever asked of her. If Lucifer was booted out of Hell and another fallen angel was put i
n charge, Polly decided she'd defect and go straight.

  She'd spend her days playing human, if need be, rather than work for whatever asshole-licking, stuffed shirt, teacher's pet that God would put in charge. All she really wanted was to figure out this mystery so she could snuff the little weasel behind it and carry on with hunting down escapees.

  There came a certain satisfaction with being a soul hunter that Polly relished. Ever since she was a fledgling demon, she'd always flourished in a well-organized environment. For her, bringing back offenders and keeping them where they belonged suited her needs and skillset perfectly. Polly had no dreams, or desire, of taking over Hell. She liked her life just fine as it was.

  The last thing she wanted was someone coming in and trying to upset the power balance. The system worked as well as it did because each side had a somewhat healthy, if entirely dysfunctional, respect for the other. Both were just doing their jobs in tempting mortals to choose a side.

  God spoke a lot about free will, but when all was said and done, there wasn't a whole lot of "free" to it at all. Everyone was forced to choose a side eventually. It fell to the demons to be the jailers of those angelic, demonic, and human souls who chose to do evil. For the most part, those souls were part of God's own army that snapped and decided upon slaughtering His favorite creations to get Daddy's attention. It was a sad fact, but a true one.

  Some beings felt uncomfortable about hunting down their own people. Polly rather enjoyed it. They may be fallen angels just like her, but they'd done wrong and had either taken lives they were never meant to take or made a move they should never have considered.

  Sure, those souls all looked at her as the bad guy when she had to be the one torturing them. That wasn't anything new to her. Everyone in the universe believed those from Hell were awful, horrible monsters, while those from Heaven were seen as kind and loving. Demons were evil and angels were good, and that was where the lines were drawn.

  Polly loathed that demons got all the bad press. Okay, so they tempted mortals into doing some bad stuff, but the fact remained that if those same mortals were good in nature, they wouldn't allow themselves to be tempted, would they? Polly knew that it didn't matter what she thought; the big guy upstairs didn't give a crap about her and those like her. He never had. All that hullabaloo about God and Heaven being the greatest was nothing more than good spin doctors doing their jobs.

  The truth was simply that Heaven was just as painful and full of assholes as Hell. However, Lucifer ran Hell with a tighter rein. Her demons were not allowed to get out of hand. They, unlike the angels, were not allowed to lie to mortals. They could be tricky, but they were not allowed to outright lie in order to secure a mortal's soul. God, on the other hand, had no such qualms. He allowed His agents to lie, cheat, and even steal to obtain souls.

  True, the souls went to a seemingly nicer place than the ones in Hell, but the souls populating Hades had made the choice of their own free will. They were the ones that still had a choice and the option of living a new life and bettering themselves.

  The ones in Heaven never did.

  They sat and stagnated, certain in their goodness and proud of themselves. There were some seriously vain and entirely rotten souls up there. Occasionally, those evil little critters fell, leaving it up to Polly and the other demons to keep them in line and remind them of how to be good. The irony wasn't lost on anyone.

  What nobody ever said out loud was that free will was something God steadfastly and truly refused to relinquish. If He deemed a soul to be good, He sent angels to protect and guide the soul. Demons were never allowed near it, weren't even given a chance. That didn't sound like free will to Polly and, as she thought about it, she grew angrier. If she found out this issue was coming from the top, she'd take it up with God all by herself, consequences be damned.

  Lucifer deserved to run Hell, and she was brilliant at it. Nobody could manage the true terrors of this world like Lucy.

  No, Polly thought, I'll make sure this asshole doesn't fuck things up for Lucy, and I'll do it before God ever knows there was a problem to begin with.

  Strengthened in her resolve, Polly picked her cell phone back up off the table and continued calling her contacts.

  Chapter 15

  Lenny stepped back into The Children of Light headquarters cloaked in the visage of Ronnie, the pimple-faced Casanova. She walked down the hall and had a brief taste of what Ronnie's life was like every day. Most of the other kids passing by paid no attention to him at all. There were a few that made a point of running into him or making faces at him, but mostly they just ignored him.

  Lenny had never felt like more of a pariah in her entire life.

  When she was satisfied she was out of sight, she shifted back into her own form. It was like slipping into a pair of comfortable slippers. She felt … right. As she slid through her bedroom door and turned around, she cried out in surprise when she saw Hershel sitting in the chair adjacent to her bed.

  "Oh my … you scared me to death," she said, holding her chest and breathing heavily.

  "Hello, Lenny," he said flatly. "I was just coming to check on you. Where have you been?"

  "I just needed some air," she lied. "I was up on the roof."

  He rose from the chair and stepped closer to her in one long stride. Lenny fought a strong urge to take a step back. She was surprised at herself that she was able to stand her ground.

  "Well, they need your help in the kitchen. I don't think that foul demon will try to get at you again. It seems she learned her lesson." Hershel placed a hand under her ear and pulled her in close to him. "You know that Father loves you and that you are so very special, right?"

  His lips were only centimeters from hers, and she could feel his warm breath tickling her nose.

  "Yes, Father."

  Hershel leaned in and Lenny braced herself. Instead of the kiss she expected, he diverted his path and pressed his lips to her forehead.

  "Go on to the kitchen and help Maggie now," he said, dismissing her with a coolness that matched the electric warmth of ten seconds before.

  She turned around and left without saying a word. She just wanted to get to the kitchen, make sandwiches or stir soup, or do some other menial task that did not require thought of any kind. That desire, along with all of the blood in her face, drained away when she saw the thing that was in the kitchen with Maggie.

  In the middle of a pile of ruined sandwiches, the thing stood towering over the young woman. Its moist skin was a pale aqua color with splotches of brown that gave it the look of a muddled pool of dirty water. Long arms extended outward at the monster's side, ending in three digits tipped with sharp, black claws. It stood on massive, bulging legs and sharp hooves. The atrocity turned its head full of long, black greasy hair and looked at Lenny. She felt as though her mind might slip away as its eye locked with hers—that single, solid black eye she'd seen behind the dumpster before the poor kid in the green Converse had been brutally killed.

  A long, low hiss escaped the nightmare's mouth, and Lenny thought about bolting out of the room and screaming like a loon as she took off down the street and never stopped running.

  Then she saw Maggie.

  The girl was sitting in a heap against the stainless steel counter. There was a steady stream of blood oozing from the gash in her throat. Lenny tried to assess if she was still alive, but it was impossible to tell. When she surveyed the situation again, she noticed that Maggie's hand was missing. Where it had been, there was a ragged stump with a whitish bone sticking out between strings of gore. The end of the bone was cracked and splintered as if it had been snapped off.

  Or bitten off. How any licks does it take to get to the center of a Maggie pop?

  Lenny didn't think the scene could get any worse until the thing started laughing and pieces of what she could only guess was Maggie's hand dripped from its mouth. Her blood ran cold and only one word filled her mind.

  Polly, Polly, Polly, Polly….

 
; She had no idea if the demon could hear her, or whether it would even come if she did. She sure as hell hoped she had some kind of Vulcan mind-meld , psychic super power thing going on, because she could seriously use a demon to help her get out of this situation.

  The monster suddenly squatted low to the ground and leapt toward her. She sidestepped without even giving the move any thought, narrowly missing a claw to her left eye. By this time, she could only assume that this monster was the one and only Demas Polly had told her about. She still didn't see how Dale could be this awful thing.

  Then she saw it.

  Around the thing's neck, Lenny saw a gold chain with a small medallion. It was a ten year sober chip that Dale had had made into a necklace and never took off. Apparently, he didn't even take it off when he turned into a gruesome, flesh-eating, killer djinn.

  She closed her eyes for a moment as Demas got back onto his feet … or hooves. It seemed as though she was suddenly on auto-pilot, reacting before she even had time to think. Within seconds, Lenny had shifted into the shape of the murdering djinn. She felt like a gelatinous blob of twice-baked shit, and she wondered how Demas could even stand himself. It was the foulest feeling of her entire life, and she was in a perpetual state of almost puking, but she jumped forward and took a swipe at Demas with her new claws. She missed, almost losing her footing and falling on her ass. Luckily, she was able to stay upright, and she lashed out at the monster again.

  The second swipe found purchase in his abdomen, and she cringed a bit as his flesh tore with a wet ripping noise. A pool of innards spilled out and hit the kitchen floor with a plopping sound. Demas' face contorted in an expression of pain and surprise as he clutched at his exposed guts. He seemed to forget that pain quickly and gathered himself to attack her again.

  Lenny wasted no time. She lashed out again, this time slitting Demas' throat. He made a sick gurgling noise as a torrent of blood gushed from his neck. He fell to the ground, still reaching out for her. Lenny shifted back into her own form as soon as the monster finally stopped moving, and she rushed over to Maggie's side.