by Lila Shaw
Lou raises the papers and taps them into order before leveling his dark eyes upon me. “Yve. Back for more, I see.” A grin spreads across his face, claiming as much of the real estate as possible. The smile fades, and he cocks his head to the side. “You short-changed me, tried to cheat me.”
“I did not! I kept meticulous records, Lou!”
He slams a fist on his desk and stands. “Not meticulous enough. I don’t like to be cheated. Nobody cheats me!” Less than a second later he’s standing in front of me, my chin in his hand. “Especially not by a temptress who had nothing more complicated to do than spread her legs.”
My jaw tenses. I’m sick of the attitude that succubi are no more than walking vaginas with a top notch advertising campaign. I’ve put up with the snickers and sneers from Lou and his demons for four millennia. Even if I owe him one more soul, and I’m sure I don’t, I refuse to let him devalue me like this. “Show me your records to compare to mine. I think you’re trying to cheat me.”
Behind me Raziel sucks in an audible breath through his teeth. I’m sure he thinks my challenging Lou is unwise. He’s probably right, but I can’t help myself.
Lou releases my chin and walks back behind his desk. “The fellow in Macy’s? Earlier today in the men’s dressing room? Remember him?”
I do. He had the tiniest prick I’d ever seen, but somehow he managed to get off. “Yeah. Joe, he said his name was.”
“That’s the one.” Lou snaps his fingers, retakes his seat and chuckles. “You’re losing your touch, Yve, because ol’ Joe faked it.”
A frisson of panic takes control. “What do you mean?”
“Faked it, as in he didn’t have an orgasm.” Lou places both palms against his cheeks. “No O? Oh no!” He snickers. Raziel joins him in his mockery of me.
“No way!”
“You know the rules, Yve,” Lou says shaking his head sadly.
“But you got his soul. I delivered that to you.” My panic has risen to just below my nose, nearly high enough to drown me.
Lou steeples his fingers and leans forward. “No. Your bargain with your prey is their soul for an orgasm while having sex with you. No orgasm for them, no soul for me, which leaves you one short, an oversight you nearly got away with until my eagle-eyed accountant told me he’d had a last minute soul reversion due to noncompliance. Lo and behold, it was one of yours.”
I clench my eyes shut and press my lips together. “Okay. Fine. I’ll leave, get one more and we’ll finally be done.” I rise to stand but two strong hands push me back down.
“I don’t think so. A thousand more souls or your ass goes into my harem for the next year. Your choice. Either option is quite generous on my part, I must say.” Lou pushes a contract across the desk to me, the same papers he had been perusing when I first entered his office.
Shit! I can’t believe this is happening. I’d cry but I lost that ability when Ta converted me. That I even remember crying is distressing all by itself.
I do the math. A thousand souls if collected one a day will take nearly three years. Three more years of sex with a slew of faceless, nameless men or one year with Lou. Sex with Lou, however, is never vanilla, but a terrifying and kinky imbalance of pleasure and pain, joy and despair, enlightenment and horror…and he is not stingy about sharing his toys with his favorite minions.
The contract contains the usual mumbo jumbo but is at least twice as long as the contract Ta’avah tricked me into signing. A good lawyer would need a week to dissect it. I don’t have a week, but I also know if sign, loopholes could keep me imprisoned far beyond the thousandth soul. But what choice do I have?
My shoulders slump and I sigh. “Can I borrow your pen?”
“Don’t sign that!” a voice cries out.
I turn to the source of the warning. Ta is striding toward me. Raziel spins to block him but Ta blows some sort of powder in his face then points out the door he’s left open behind him. “Raziel! Look! A virgin! Out in the hallway!”
Raziel grunts and charges out of the room, tackling a she-demon with blue skin and red eyes to the ground. Ta slams the door but not before I hear the demon’s cackles and Raziel’s lusty roars.
“Let her go, Lou. She’s fulfilled her contract,” Ta says. He’s breathless like he’s been running.
“Ta’avah. Why in Satan’s name would you dare show your face back here?”
“Yve has delivered a million souls as of today.” Ta moves stand at the edge of the desk.
“Mmm, I’m afraid not. She had a misfire with her last one in Macy’s this morning. That means she’s shy one soul. But no worries, I’ve given her a new agreement to sign and all this ugliness will be behind us.”
“I’m not talking about that needle-dicked jerk you sent. Oh yes, I know all about ‘Joe’ and your little plot. I thought something was odd about that guy from the word go. Now, of course, it all makes sense. You were the one who tried to cheat, not Yve. But, no matter. That schmuck wasn’t her millionth.” He places his two fists on Lou’s desk and leans forward, barely a foot separating their faces. “I was.”
I’m totally confused. What is Ta talking about? We had sex as part of my redemption ceremony, but I hardly think that counts. A quick glance at Lou, though, tells me there’s a lot more to this that I understand. I’m all ears.
Lou sits back down and smirks at Ta. “You’ll hand over your newly won soul, return to your former fallen state for this,” he points at me, “pathetic creature?”
What the hell is Lou talking about? My eyes dart back and forth between Ta and Lou, but my brain can find no sense in their words.
“Yes, but I propose a trade. My wings for my soul,” Ta says, a ferocious note in his voice.
“Without your wings, you’ll grow old and die like the rest of them, and for what? I’ll probably still get your soul on Judgment day.”
“I know, but that makes it an offer you can’t refuse, doesn’t it?”
“You’d do that? For her?” Lou’s brow is furrowed, the usual mischievous glint in his eyes gone, replaced by something cold and evil. “Why?”
Ta curls up half of his mouth in that wry smile that always undoes me. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re incapable of understanding, Lou.” He reaches a hand behind him toward me. “Come on, Yve. We’re leaving … for the last time.”
“You’ll regret this. You will. You’ll be back, mark my words, only your deal when you do—when you’re old and grey, nearly deaf and blind and aching with every step you take—won’t be nearly so sweet as your last one. Think long and hard before you make such a foolish sacrifice.”
Ta pulls me from the chair and tucks me under one of his arms. “I won’t be back. And if I were you, I’d start rounding up all the favors I was owed because you’re going to need them.”
We back away toward the door. Lou pushes back from his chair. “What are you talking about?” he asks.
Do I hear a hint of nervousness? From Lou?
Ta smirks but we keep moving. “Let’s just say a certain Demonic Council will be very interested in a ledger that will be delivered to them if I don’t step through the portal to recall it in about,” he checks his watch, “fifteen minutes. This ledger doesn’t quite match up to the one you’ve been reporting from. I’m certain the Demonic Council will find its contents … fascinating.”
Lou pales and takes on a greenish tinge. His eyes narrow to near slits. Lips roll back to reveal a row of needle sharp teeth, while his surfer blonde hair thins to a few wispy strands in the worst comb-over imaginable. The last glimmer of the façade he usually wears vanishes, and the demon standing in front of us wearing Lou’s tailor-made suit, is hideous and foul and very pissed off. Time to go.
Outside of Lou’s office I release a shaky breath and show Ta my still quivery hands. He smiles but keeps us moving.
We pass Raziel, who is being spanked and fisted by the blue-skinned she-demon. “Thank you, ma’am, may I have another,” he whimpers.
Not
only do we meet with no opposition this time, the path is completely clear of hazards, animate or inanimate.
“Are you going to explain what just happened back there, Ta?” I ask as we near the portal.
He sighs. “I wasn’t a human conscript but a fallen angel before I became Chief Succubus Maker. Don’t ask me about the circumstances that led to my contract with Lou. They are complex and best forgotten. But anyway, Lou took my soul and my wings as collateral until I fulfilled my contract. I got my soul back as soon as you delivered my billionth soul and your next to last one. The wings I could only reclaim after you concluded your contract.”
“So explain what happens now that you have a soul but no wings, as a former fallen angel.”
“Without them and with the relinquishment of my succubus-making powers, I will become as mortal as you once I leave this place.
“Is that what you want? I mean, if you stay, you could possibly negotiate, as only you can, a way to get them back.”
He takes me into his arms and kisses the top of my head. “From the moment I first saw you in that garden so many, many years ago, pissed off as usual at that dolt of an ex-husband of yours, you’re all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever dreamed about, all I’ve ever hoped or lived for.”
I lean back to gaze into eyes that twinkle not with cunning, but with tenderness, fragile and uncertain. On my tiptoes, I reach up and pull his head to mine and kiss him. He sighs and tightens his hold, deepening the kiss. Warmth floods every fiber of my being. My soul sings for joy and calls to his, both free at last.
When we finally end the kiss, Ta presses his forehead to mine and cups my cheek. “Are you ready?”
I nod. Holding hands, we jump through the shimmery window separating Hell from Sol’s meat locker.
Ta breathes in deeply. “Mmm. What’s that smell?”
“That, dear Ta, is heaven in a bun.”
“I could say the same about you, my treasure.” He winks, his handsome face having retained its last permutation. The strange fluttering in my belly makes an encore, warming my heart. He leans down and kisses me again, and I realize, with soul-shattering intensity that I can no more live without Ta than I can without air to breath or water to drink. As I gaze at him, I also realize that in my thousands of years, Ta has always been there, as much an inseparable part of me as my beating heart.
I link my arm with his and tug him through the door of the meat locker, through the kitchen and into the restaurant. “Come on. Let’s go eat. Afterward, I’ll take you to my home. You can stay with me… ‘til you get on your feet. But first we need to change your name. Ta’avah just doesn’t work in this world.”
“What would you suggest?”
I tap my finger against my chin in mock contemplation. “I think … Cletus would be perfect, the name of an Adonis. It suits you, Ta.”
I pat him on the back and lead him to a secluded table for two in the corner. Our waitress sashays over, but I wave off the menus. “A Gold’s special for my oldest, most dearest friend in the whole wide the world and beyond.”
The End.
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