Client from Hell: A Hellishly Magical Comedy (with a body count)

by R. J. Blain

  “It is the heart of your cancer,” the archangel explained. “Your bones were damaged beyond what modern medicine can heal, and the potion is rebuilding what you have lost. When it is done, you will begin producing blood on your own again. This is a good thing. The pain won’t last for much longer. Carry the burden the best you can, and no one here but you will judge you should you faint.”

  “I guess that would explain why I needed so many units. Not producing my own blood while my virus is gobbling my blood to heal everything else would be problematic.”

  “Yes, indeed. There. The pain should be easing some by now, yes?”

  I considered the burn deep within, and after some contemplation, I nodded. “It isn’t pleasant, that’s for certain. I no longer have an urge to try to strangle you, however.”

  “For which I am grateful.”

  Jonas grunted, and he sat near my hospital bed, crossed his arms, and grunted again.

  “Why are you upset, Jonas?”

  “He’s upset because incubi are empaths, and you’re undergoing a lot of pain. He’s aware of it, and he doesn’t like what I’m doing to you, but he understands the necessity of it. You should see him when his sister is distressed. Despite his many flaws, he has learned to be rather compassionate, although his compassion tends to be limited to those he is interested in. Your offer of sustenance is only a facet of his interest. He appreciates tough women, and it takes a tough woman to deceive the Lord of Lies.”

  “I’m pretty sure I was mentally unstable when I decided to torch his house,” I admitted.

  “Well, the cancer had done significant damage to important parts of your brain, hampering your ability to make sound decisions. Your decision had some merit, however. You hoped for mercy, which he would have given you. Alas, your plan has backfired, and you will be burdened with my brother’s adoration for a disturbing period of time.”

  “I’m thinking about kidnapping you and running far away. I can still be your bed buddy even when we’re running away from Lucifer and his general insanity,” Jonas muttered.

  “Do not mind Jonas,” the archangel advised. “Lucifer has been attempting to mold him since his conversion, and while some elements of Lucifer’s plans have worked, others have not. He is weary and hungry, as Lucifer will only provide should his health begin to fail. His health is not to that point yet, so do not worry. Making him wait to enjoy your company would not bring harm, and it might teach him patience.” The archangel shrugged, a rather disconcerting sight thanks to Camael’s lack of a head. “It might take a miracle to teach him good manners, so I will wish the best of luck to you on that front. It is a most excellent thing you enjoy challenges. He will be one of your tougher challenges in life.”

  “But will he send me to bed satisfied most nights, and will he tuck me in?”

  “Absolutely. He will even do things like bring you breakfast in bed, especially if he thinks you are unwell. You will enjoy a great deal of pampering in the near future, for you will be unwell for quite some time.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How viable is his kidnapping plan?”

  “He would run and take you with him, and Lucifer would chase because the game intrigues him. You would be wise to do the errands Lucifer listed out. They have an important purpose.”

  “Right. Errands first, kidnapping or fleeing second. How long will this torture session last?”

  “For you, approximately five more minutes, after which I will hit you with holy fire, which will result in your abandonment of consciousness. Things will be better when you awaken, that much I can promise you. Things will be different for you, but they will be better.”

  “Show me what you’ve got, Camael.”

  Seven

  It doesn’t hurt.

  The silence startled me awake. Over the weeks since my hospitalization, I’d grown used to the constant sounds. The machines buzzed and beeped. The nurse’s feet pattered in the hallway. Murmurs of conversation outside my door exposed when the staff discussed my fate in hushed tones. None of those sounds, comforting in their regularity, disturbed the peace.

  It’d been long enough since I’d enjoyed any form of peace I waited, my body tense, for the truth to reveal itself. In the hospital, the pain often came on the heels of the quiet moments right after waking up.

  Not even an ache bothered me, not even when I waited for the suffering to begin.

  Upon my diagnosis, the various doctors I’d worked with had all said the same thing: I would suffer, and then I would die. Death would not come on quiet feet, either. Pain would be a constant, a foe they would need to battle for the remainder of my life.

  I spent a long time appreciating the warmth, the comfort, and the stillness.

  Only after boredom set in did I open my eyes. The opulent splendor of some prissy hotel room surrounded me, and I shared the bed with an amused Jonas, who stretched out on top of the blanket, staring at me with a smile promising trouble. To my delight, he wore a pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt. “I have been with many women, but you are the first to spend forty minutes wiggling your toes in the blanket. It is a comfortable blanket, but your patience should have limits, Sandra.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I informed him. In my opinion, my statement explained everything.

  Something in his expression softened, and his smile lost some of its smug edge. “I know. That’s why I left you to indulge in your toe wiggling and waited until you were ready. Camael said you have been in enough pain for long enough she was uncertain of how you would react to the lack of misery. It’s been two days, and I’ve been caring for you, although I can state it’s the first time I’ve handled a naked woman without sex being involved. Most of the time, you weren’t sufficiently coherent to handle more than the very basics, and you were determined to bathe often.”

  “I can’t blame the drugs, can I?”

  “The drugs played a part. There are some you need to be weaned off of, and I have the prescriptions for you. The rest was exhaustion due to your treatment.” Jonas stretched. “It worked out well, as it gave me time to work on my share of the healing. Camael is an excellent healer, but I’m better than her at hormonal therapy and reproductive organ restoration.”

  “Does that mean I’m no longer sterile?”

  “You may have children if you choose. I have taken the liberty, at Camael’s recommendation, of preventing pregnancy. It can be reversed at any time, but a pregnancy would not be good for your health—or the baby’s health—right now. As such, I made certain there are no unplanned children conceived. She recommends at least a year for your body to adapt to your adjusted biology and the virus, but she recommends I evaluate your health then and give a recommendation of my own.”

  I would need more than a few minutes to come to terms with the rollercoaster that was my health. “I don’t know if I want children, but I like that I could have them if I wanted. Thank you. The doctors had been pretty clear I’d be sterile.”

  “You wouldn’t have been sterile. You would have been dead. Which reminds me. You’re going to come across this in the future without fail. Lucifer and many of his ilk call infertility being barren, no matter the gender. It’s a consequence of their age. People get offended because it’s not packaged in a way they approve of or appreciate.”

  “Jonas, he’s the Devil. Doesn’t he exist to offend people?”

  “Yes, but if the discussion of your sexual health comes up, that’s the language they will use. Lucifer often tells it as it is, and barren ground bears no fruit. That is how it is with the lot of them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I am not so easily offended.” Sitting up without a care I lacked even a stitch of clothes, I pointed at my stomach, doing my best to ignore the prominence of my ribs. “This gut wasn’t gonna be producing any fruit, so I don’t give a fuck if someone calls me barren. If the shoe fits, I’ll wear it. It all means the same thing.”

  “That gut, as you say, won’t be producing any fruit until you want it to, and when you w
ant it to, you will be able to enjoy the consequences of taking a lover.”

  “How long am I on bed rest without a bed buddy? I finally lured a man to bed, and he’s dressed and I’m not. Honestly? This is slightly disappointing.”

  Jonas smiled, reached over, and pressed his hand to my ribs, careful to keep his hand away from my breasts. “When I can’t see these poking out and on the verge of snapping at a wrong look, you’ll be able to indulge in your plans to acquire a bed buddy for yourself.”

  His skin ran a high risk of burning me with his heat. “I need pajamas before I freeze my ass off.”

  “The virus and the cancer trashed your reserves. I’ll draw a warm bath for you so you can get your body temperature up. I do have pajamas for you, but you’ve been bathing so often I stopped bothering with them.”

  “That is more than fair. Am I going to be able to walk to the bathroom?”

  “Not yet,” he admitted. “I’ll carry you, because a fall would not be good right now. I told Lucifer to shove his errand list up his ass. Instead of coming over and whipping my ass for defying him, he laughed and ordered me to give him a call when you are ready to go on errands. He’ll reissue a list. In the meantime, it’s you, me, this hotel room, and a ton of board games. Lucifer has been over several times with more games, two laptops we can game on, and he even brought a pair of screens to plug the laptops into. Then he said children needed toys and ordered me to make sure you play with the new toys.”

  I stared at him, uncertain of who was crazier: Lucifer for being convinced we were children in need of toys, or Jonas for his tolerance for the Devil’s absurdity. “He really said children need toys? In this case, us? We need toys?”

  “Yep.”

  “How good are these laptops?”

  “They’re good.”

  “All hail Satan. I am a child, and I need toys, Jonas.”

  Jonas laughed and rolled out of bed. “You’re not going to hear me complain, either. Let’s get you warmed up, fed, and dressed, and then we’ll explore our new toy collection and have some fun. After the hell you’ve dealt with lately, you deserve some fun.”

  Peace came in many shapes and sizes, but nothing surprised me quite as much as discovering tranquility in a hotel room with an incubus without even a hint of sex being involved. It took a few board games to realize the Devil had played us both, as Jonas had a competitive streak the match of mine, and neither of us liked to lose. The chess board saw a great deal of use.

  I appreciated Jonas’s determination to beat me, his patience when I took my time considering my next move, and his utter frustration when I crushed him. Defeating him rose to become my newest favorite hobby, although every now and then I left him an opening so he might enjoy a rare victory.

  No matter how many times I knocked him down at chess, he came back for more.

  After chess, we explored other classics, playing each one three times to determine who was the champion at the game. To my delight and his mortification, we proved equal matches.

  “I’m supposed to be destroying you at this. I’m older, I have more experience, and I play half of these games all the time. How are you beating me?”

  “I’m brilliance and beauty in the flesh,” I quipped, eyeballing our collection. “Really, I just hate to lose.”

  “Same. Who taught you to play chess?”

  I frowned, and my efforts to dredge up the memory produced nothing but annoying confusion. “I don’t know.”

  “Some parts of your brain were destroyed, so it’s not surprising some memories are missing. Camael did what she could, but she can’t restore things completely gone like that without a great deal of effort, and healing you was challenging enough. She can, however, look into the past and tell you the answer if it bothers you a lot.”

  As I refused to pitch a fit over a small consequence of being alive and in questionably good health, I shrugged. “It was probably my father.” Sucking in a breath, I stared at him. “Oh, shit. Do my parents know?”

  “Lucifer paid them a personal visit, playing a human, to inform them you would be in rehabilitation for a while and unable to take visitors until your health stabilized. They aren’t aware he’s Lucifer, but he wanted to make certain they were cared for. He is aware your motivations involve caring for your parents, so he wanted to evaluate the situation.”

  Crap. “If he’s prejudiced against the poor, I’ll kick his ass so hard his tail pops out of his ear.”

  “When I last spoke to Lucifer, the situation involved him recruiting several of the fucking assholes to repair their car. He borrowed it for a day after pretending that his broke down, and he took your library books back so there wouldn’t be fines—and he made sure any old fines were covered.”

  My mother tended to read books to death, which often resulted in fines she couldn’t afford to pay. “I’m going to owe him for that.”

  “Not necessary. Repairing the car cost him little, it let him work with some of the fucking assholes who didn’t really need to be tortured but did need some ethical adjustments, and covering the library fines is habitual because Kanika is the same way.”

  “Kanika goes to the library?” I blurted.

  “Early and often. I love her, make no mistake about that, but she can be an utter skinflint. She doesn’t think to just go buy the books she wants. She goes to the library. And then she gets caught up in work and forgets to return the books she has finished, gets fined, and freaks out because she hasn’t managed to free herself from the past yet. So, Lucifer gathers the books she’s forgotten about and has already read, takes them back to the library, makes sure the fines are paid, and goes back to his business. He tries to extend the books she hasn’t read, and if they can’t be extended any more, he buys that specific book. He has an agreement with the library; they’ll call him if she’s having an episode of book hoarding, give him the titles in question, and he’ll take care of it.”

  “Are you sure he’s actually the Devil? People keep telling me he’s the Devil, but I’m not seeing good evidence of his evil behavior. That’s disgustingly good behavior, Jonas.”

  “Having been kicked into lava pools numerous times by that asshole, I can confirm he’s an evil jerk and enjoys making me suffer.”

  I giggled at the thought of the Devil kicking an incubus into a lava pool. “Yet, he’s tossed you in with me, expecting you to play board games and enjoy consistent meals for a change. Of dessert, apparently.”

  “Virgins are delicious treats, and they remain delicious until said virgin selects a second partner,” he admitted. “A lot of people don’t realize that. It’s not really the virginity that trips our triggers, but the unworked potential. It doesn’t fade until our partner beds someone else. So, an incubus partnered with a virgin woman over a long period of time reaps full benefits from her for even years. Same with virgin men and a succubus. I think Lucifer set it up that way to control how far afield his demons and devils will go. It encourages procreation, too—we’re more likely to procreate with a human if we’re partnered with the same human for a while. We’ll procreate with other demons and devils, but we usually require a seed, so we just get a lot of exercise.”

  Interesting. “So, as long as I only sleep with you, you really do get a scrumptious dessert every night?”

  “And if you’re a species that has the same sort of magic, you’ll likewise benefit from a virgin partner. I am not a virgin partner, although that wouldn’t bar you from feeding. But, I can never tell with unicorns and the other species like that. They act like their permanent mates are virgins, but that’s often not the case. Honestly, I leave the unicorns alone. They are not to be trifled with. They redefine what it means to be grouchy if they haven’t gotten laid. Just watch Diana in the future. If Darian hasn’t been catering to her, she becomes a literal nightmare within three or four days. He went off for a whole week once, and she chewed on rocks in general frustration.”

  Poor Diana. “Do you think spicy ponies with bite are going
to have this problem?”

  “I would count on it. He has a rather wicked sense of humor, and He has planned for you to be able to tolerate living in hell with Lucifer. He is well aware my sister is trying to get me hooked up with someone permanently, too. If He makes you a voracious species, we’re both happy with the bed buddy arrangement. And nothing says we have to do anything other than play board games and be active bed buddies. We could hate each other and get along just fine in that sort of relationship. We could become masters of the frequent booty call.” Jonas shrugged. “I’m not exactly the easiest person to get along with. For some reason, people get annoyed when I resort to trickery, and when I get bored, I resort to trickery. And then I lie about being the source of the trickery.”

  “Jonas, I burned the Devil’s house down. I don’t think I have any grounds to complain about any trickery you may be involved with, have been involved with, or plan to be involved with.”

  “Look, you can’t tell me things like that when you’re not ready to be my bed buddy. All it does is turn me on.”

  I giggled. “How long until I can apply to be your bed buddy?”

  Jonas frowned, reached out, and pressed the back of his hand to my forehead. “No sooner than two weeks. That’s a guess, but I’ll check you daily. Your hormone levels are still a mess, and your organs are still healing. Your virus also needs a chance to get comfortable without the strain of starting a campaign to tame me. The virus doesn’t understand I can purge it at will, so I’ll likely let it do its thing until we decide we no longer want to be bed buddies. That said, your virus will become very upset when I purge it, and you’ll deal with the same general consequences of a broken mating bond between lycanthropes. Disclosure is important.”

  “You better make being my bed buddy worth it,” I informed him.

  “Broken mating bonds are not pleasant,” he warned.