by Holly Hunt
~ * ~
I watched Clarissa and Lucifer as they slept, my head resting on the doorframe and Aspen purring in my arms. I wished that I could have what they did. Even if it meant I did have to go to Hell for it. I would gladly do it, I'd brave eternal damnation for a love like that.
Hell wasn't the right word for Lucifer's Kingdom. After I'd taken a quick trip there with Clarissa for dinner once, I couldn't say that I had even been in Hell. I feared for my soul the whole time I was down there, but the Demons were all so nice, I couldn't think of them as terrifying or threatening, not really.
There was no burning sulfur, or eternal torture, except in the Pit for the worst offenders. The air was comfortable, the Demons greeted you like old friends, and everything you ever wanted was there. Lucifer's Kingdom wasn't Hell—that was for the bottom of the Frozen Lake, the depths of the Rift, or the Pit of Terror. Lucifer's Kingdom was just like Earth, but underground. An underground kingdom. A dance club that rocks out twenty-four hours a day, all year. There was no judgment there.
I could now see the damage—the mental damage— that Jason and his thugs had done to me. Clarissa found me in my bedroom crying occasionally, and we'd usually stay up all night while Lucifer slept, talking about my parents, avoiding the topic of Jason and his Hellraiser friends as much as I could. Often we talked about what we both envisioned in our futures.
Clarissa still wanted me to report the Hellraisers, but I didn't have the courage to do it. I was also worried that it would bring suspicion onto Clarissa because of Jason's murder—she'd been interviewed a few times over the last couple of months by police investigating Jason's death. Lucifer assured me that the police would never be able to blame Clarissa or me for his death, let alone Lucifer. Most of the humans who had claimed to see the Devil there were being sidelined as hysterical.
It was a couple of days before Clarissa and Lucifer's one-year anniversary when I really broke down all my barriers. Clarissa wasn't home—she was held up at work, looking after the secretarial stuff for her boss—and it was Lucifer who found me curled up on my bedroom floor, rocking backward and forward, bawling into a pillow.
~ * ~
"Jayce?" Lucifer asked gently, standing in the doorway. "Are you okay?"
I shook my head, burying my face deeper into the pillow. The room was dark, but not enough to hide the tears on my cheeks, especially with his night-sight.
Lucifer stepped gently inside my room. He was barefoot, wearing only his black jeans, as was his habit when he was at home, regardless of who was here. He crouched beside me, resting a hand gently on my shoulder. "Do you
want to talk about it?" he murmured.
I could tell by his tone of voice that he was at a loss for what to do. I was willing to bet he'd never been confronted by a weeping woman before. I nodded, wiping my eyes.
"Hang on a second. I'll go grab you a box of tissues."
I watched him leave, admiring his body. I could really see why Clarissa liked him, not just on a physical level, but a mental one as well. They were really well matched. I couldn't help a bitter sigh escaping my lips. I want someone like that too…
Lucifer returned shortly with the tissue box and a block of chocolate. I laughed as he helped me over to the bed, sitting against the headboard with me and putting an arm around my shoulders. It felt cozy, like the chats I often had with Clarissa.
"Okay," he said, cracking the chocolate open and handing me a tissue. "Tell me what the tears are all about."
I didn't know where to start. How would I explain to this Devilish God all of the things I'd done under Jason's control? About the degrading sex acts he'd forced on me under the threat of beatings? About the countless gang rapes he'd watched, when he'd set his friends on me?
Lucifer frowned, breaking off a piece of chocolate and popping it into his mouth. "The tears are for Jason, aren't they?" he asked, trying to start me talking.
"No! No, they'll never be for him again," I said darkly. "At least, I hope so. Every now then I just start to remember all the things he and his friends did to me, made me do, and it...it just—it keeps building until I can't stand it anymore and all I can think about is killing myself to stop it."
Lucifer squeezed my shoulders, trying to be understanding. "I don't know what you've been through— Clarissa would never betray your trust like that—but I know that when she finds you crying, it scares her more deeply than friendship dictates. She said that you were once as strong as her, that you would have won a physical or mental fight with her. Then Jason came along."
I shrugged weakly. "That might be true, it might not. All I know is that from the first time Jason hit me, I was scared for my life with every breath I breathed. I learned not to fight him because fighting made it worse. I stopped running to Clarissa because he would just drag me back and do worse things to me. Clarissa would try to help and he'd get her arrested for beating him."
"You learned helplessness," he said, taking another piece of chocolate from the packet and sucking on it. "You thought that with neither flight nor fight working, you would take the third option: give up."
I shrugged. "I don't know. When he realized I wasn't going to run or fight back, the beatings let off for a while. Then he came up with a new game. He would invite his friends over to drink and lock me in a room, binding me to a bed. He'd let his friends do whatever they wanted to me, under the condition that he get to watch and take over when he was ready..."
Another tear fell down my cheek and he wiped it away with a tissue.
"He was the worst of them all, including the one who loved to burn me, and the other one who would take to me with a kitchen knife, hitting and stabbing at me to get me to scream."
"He was meant to love you," Lucifer said, a dangerous note in his voice. I was suddenly glad I was his friend, in a round-about way, and he wouldn't direct such a tone at me. "How could he do such things to the woman he claimed to love?"
I could tell that he didn't understand why Jason did it. Just from that one statement, I knew that he loved Clarissa properly, loved her more deeply than I thought he did, that he would do anything he could to prevent her being hurt.
I really began to respect him, to believe him to be not what the Bible claimed, but the last true gentleman on Earth.
"I don't know why I kept going back, though," I admitted, feeling more tears fall down my cheeks. "The bruises were nothing to the heartache I felt whenever he told me he loved me. It always led to him hitting me."
Lucifer frowned, pulling me into a hug. "I want you to give me their names," he said, rubbing my back as I hugged him. "I want you to tell me their names and where they live. No one hurts my friends and gets away with it." He growled fiercely, making me shudder and shrink in fear.
"I don't know where they live," I said. "Except one. Benjamin Broder. He lived just around the corner from where we used to live."
Lucifer stiffened for the slightest second, then relaxed again. I turned to look over my shoulder at the doorway, and I saw Clarissa standing there. She was leaning against the doorframe, smiling at me. I let go of Lucifer and skittered away from him, my face burning. I must have been the same shade of red as his skin color, my face was so warm.
Clarissa pushed off from the doorway, settling on the end of my bed. She took her shoes off and settled against the footboard, watching us.
"Well," she said after a second. "Aren't you going to offer me any of that chocolate?"
Lucifer smiled at her, tossing the remaining half-block to her. "You two can share the rest," Lucifer said with a smile, climbing off the bed. "I have to make dinner." He kissed Clarissa and left the room, leaving me alone with her.
I sat meekly at the head of the bed, watching Clarissa warily. I felt like I was in the principal's office in high school waiting for to be punished for beating up the championship football team with Clarissa's help. Again. Only, this time, it was Clarissa that I was facing, and not some vague figure of authority.
"I'm not goi
ng to bite you, Jayce," Clarissa said through a mouthful of chocolate. "I asked him last night to talk to you. And since Jason, the only way to get you to talk is to get you to trust your audience. Despite how well you know me, you don't trust me enough to tell me everything. You're afraid I'll do something and be arrested again."
"I trust Luce more than my sister?" I asked, confused.
Clarissa smiled, amused. "You opened up to him in ways that I had to force you to open up to me." She swallowed the last of the chocolate. "Come on, let's go watch Lucifer cook. You know how much he loves having an audience, the clown."
~ * ~
The day of Clarissa and Lucifer's first year anniversary, I went wandering in New York City, heading for a specialty shop I'd been to a few times before. It was almost dark, but I was getting a gift for Clarissa and Lucifer.
The closest subway station to the store I was going to was six blocks away, and I had to walk there just before dark, as there were no cabs to be seen. It didn't worry me— I'd been brought up wandering New York City with Clarissa, after all, being more of a terror than the combined efforts of the three Hellraiser factions—but the sun was going down, and I didn't have Clarissa to cover my back in the darkness.
I spent an hour browsing in the store, not realizing how quickly the time was passing as I scrutinized the many statues on the shelves. I wanted to get them a present as a thank you gift for letting me live with them. Any other person, I was sure, would have kicked me out on the street when they chose to move in together.
But Lucifer and Clarissa treated me like family, beyond my hopes. I wanted to get them something that said more than, "Thank you for letting me live with you," without being romantic or overly sentimental.
The perfect statue sprang out at me as I wandered down the last aisle. I stared at it, my mouth falling open. The porcelain characters were the very likeness of Lucifer and Clarissa. An Angel reached up to a Demon from the base, the Angel lying on her side as though hurt. The Demon was stretching over the rock from above, trying to reach the Angel. Their fingertips were only just brushing, the rock just the slightest bit too tall for the Demon to reach the Angel, to take her hand fully.
The statue looked like it belonged in a museum, but it was so divine-looking that it could only have been made in the later part of the twentieth century. It was hand-painted, the details distinct in the glaze. Even the Angel's wings were individually feathered and—when I carefully picked it up to look at it—the Demon's wings were individually scaled as well.
I fell in love with it instantly.
I was willing to pay the seventy dollars for it—Clarissa and Lucifer had saved me far more money than that over the last year—and I carried it carefully outside, only just noticing how dark it was now.
I was a block from the store when I heard someone following me. For a second I thought it was only echoes of my footsteps—I was walking down an alley, after all—but
they were heavier and faster than mine.
I caught myself fearing that it was Jason coming back to get me. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of these thoughts, but I couldn't. There was no way that it could be Jason. Lucifer had killed Jason and escorted him and two of the Hellraiser gangs down to Hell already, leaving them in the Frozen Lake for Leviathan to have fun with almost a year ago.
My next fear was that it was Beelzebub or Leviathan coming for me. I feared that the Demons had lost their gratitude to Lucifer and were starting to rebel, taking their own cues. I shook my head, speeding up. I'd met Levi a few times and Beelzebub sounded okay. All of the Demons were still happy with Lucifer, following his occasional orders like they were perfectly-trained soldiers. There was more dissent between the Demon family and God than among themselves.
So that left a regular human to follow me home. I picked up the pace, hoping to leave the alley before they caught up with me. As I passed the halfway point, three men rounded the corner into the alley ahead of me.
I continued forward, cutting my speed a little. There was no reason to rush into danger. It would be better to let danger rush to me. I was glad I'd decided to fight when I saw the men in the light of a passing car's headlamps. They were wearing black, and had blue bandannas tied around their right arms. The sight of the men's armbands stopped me dead, and I stopped breathing, fear lacing my thoughts.
"Hellraisers," I whispered.
"That's right, Jayce," one of the men purred, sidling forward. "And you're gonna come with us. We have a little...a little job for you."
I could hear six men behind me. The man who'd followed me must have caught up with his friends while I was trying to escape him. He grabbed me by the arm, twisting it behind my back and yanking my hair.
I started to tremble. "I don't have any money," I said, holding onto my figurine. "I was just getting something for my friend. I spent all my money."
The men laughed, and the leader stepped up to me.
"That's all right, Jayce," the man behind me said, letting my hair go.
The leader, whom I recognized as Levine, the last of the Hellraiser leaders, ran the back of his hand down my cheek, down my neck and down the front of my body while I trembled. "We don't want your money."
He grabbed my ass and pulled me closer as the man behind me let me go and seized the figurine from my hand, throwing it aside. I heard it shatter against the brick wall, the tinkling sound bouncing around the narrow alley.
"No!" I cried, tears filling my eyes as one of the men put a gun to my head. "That was a one-of-a-kind! Lucifer's going to get you for that!"
"Big fucking deal. He doesn't scare me, that coward who hides in the shadows."
The leader laughed, the beer-soaked scent of his breath reminding me of Jason. I could feel my selfpreservation instincts kicking in. I knew I would do whatever the man wanted, as long as he didn't kill me. I'd been conditioned that way by Jason and his beatings, and I couldn't escape them.
"That's right, Jayce," the leader said, pulling me tight to his body and squeezing my ass with both hands. I could feel his erection through his pants. "You stay quiet and do as you're told and you won't get too hurt. Understand?"
I nodded, and the man behind me bound my hands behind me with cable ties.
"Good."
One of the men hit me in the temple with the butt of his gun, and I felt no more.
Seventeen
Lucifer Morningstar
"I'm worried, Luce," Clarissa said, pacing in front of the kitchen door. "She's never missed dinner with us before." She wrung her hands in front of her. "Do you think something happened to her?"
I smiled, stirring the pasta. "Issa, I'm sure she's fine. She might have just decided to let us have the house to ourselves tonight." I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her waist from behind, rocking her slightly.
"But she's not answering her phone, she's not answering my texts." Clarissa took my arms from around her stomach, resuming her pacing. "She told me she was going shopping for a present for us, and that was the last I heard from her."
"When was this?" I asked, returning to my cooking.
"About five." Clarissa pulled out her mobile phone and flicked through it. Sending Jayce another text, by the sound of it.
"C'mon, Jayce, answer the phone," she muttered, then put the phone to her ear. Clarissa went stiff for a second, then her lips peeled back from her teeth in what resembled Aspen's look of rage.
It was only when she started to growl that I paid more attention to her.
"What do you want with her?" Clarissa demanded, grabbing my attention fully.
There was a pause while Clarissa listened to the person on the other end of the connection.
"What kind of people do you think we are?" Clarissa demanded, glaring at the wall. "Why did you take my sister?"
Clarissa went pale for a second, then turned bright red. When she spoke, fury and rage dripped from every letter. "If you dare to touch her, I will personally see to it that you end up in the bottom of the B
urning Pit for all eternity." She paused for a second. "No, it's not a threat. It's a promise, one I can easily fulfill."
Clarissa laughed darkly for half a second, then threw her phone across the room. It hit the wall with a crash and fell apart, the pieces bouncing across the room.
"Clarissa?" I asked, concerned.
"The Hellraisers—the last faction you haven't managed to catch yet—have abducted her. Levine said that if we wanted to see her alive again, I'm to leave three million dollars in a bin in Central Park." Clarissa hit the wall with her fist, leaving a dent in the plaster. "I can't even call the police, because if we go looking for them and find them—and kill them, as I want to do—then we'll be the ones in deep shit!"
I stepped forward and took Clarissa's right hand, examining her knuckles. There was blood on two of them, and one felt broken, but there was no lasting damage. With a sigh, I quickly snapped the broken knuckle into place, holding her hand, and wrapped the dishcloth from over my shoulder around the bleeding knuckles. She didn't even grunt in pain, she was so angry.
