'Tween Heaven and Hell

by Sam Cheever

  I was proud of myself that I didn’t shriek. I very calmly—Okay my hands were shaking but I wasn’t screaming like a banshee so give me a break—reached over to push the off button on the shower, not trusting myself to speak to use voice deactivation.

  As I emerged he raised one silky, black eyebrow and let his gaze slide down my dripping flesh. “Very lovely. I shall enjoy this very much.”

  My pulse exploded in my chest and, for a very brief moment, I thought I would die. But, another point for me, I simply let my gaze slide to the towel he was holding for me, just out of reach of course. “You know, I’ve learned a lot about the Royal Court recently, but I didn’t know you were delusional as a general rule.”

  His yummy lips parted in a wide smile, showing just the very tips of his teeth. “Did you know that we can smell lust, little Tweener?”

  Okay, I’ll admit it, that one got to me. “Give me the damn towel!”

  He took one more look-see and then held the coveted piece of cloth out to me, taking care to hold it just far enough away that I would have to take a step closer to grab it. I looked longingly at the drying tube but quickly realized I would have to turn my back on him and leave him to his own devices for the length of time it would take the tube to dry me off. I wasn’t willing to do that at the moment.

  Seeing no other choice, I moved that one step closer and pulled on the towel. Without my even realizing that he’d moved, he suddenly had me smashed full length against his body, with one arm wrapped around my waist like a steel band, just at the top of my butt where it curved into my waist. “I will have just one taste now, as a preview of things to come.”

  I tried to jerk away but found that my legs and arms had turned to air. As his incredibly soft lips lowered to mine I felt myself floating, completely boneless in his arms. His breath smelled of lust and sensual things and the sweet heat of it moved like molten pleasure through my body as we kissed. I knew he was playing with my mind again and I wanted to cry with frustration that I was so helpless against it. Here I was, a big, bad, demon and devil conqueror and I was putty in this beautiful creature’s hands. I wanted to scream. I wanted to knee him in the balls. Instead I moaned, dammit and ground myself against him. Damned traitorous flesh.

  His hands moved down my wet body to cup my buttocks and pull me more tightly against him. This more intimate contact certainly didn’t make me want to pull away, let me tell you.

  However, from somewhere in my misty brain came a single, unbidden but soul saving picture that moved between us, metaphorically speaking of course, like a gust of arctic air. My mind formed a picture of Timmon, spread across a cold, stone floor like so much green blood pudding and I felt my anger rise. The anger flooded through my body, producing a tingly feeling that felt like power. It was a power I’d never experienced before. It was one I didn’t know I had. But somehow I recognized it with the primitive instinct that had served my ancestors and my kind so well.

  For an interminable moment, my mind tried to fight against the wonderful sensations he was producing in my body. I had to create some mental space between us so I could recover my equilibrium enough to kick his ass. His lips had left my mouth and were scorching a trail down my throat, licking away the last of the moisture there and moving inexorably toward more vulnerable destinations. In desperation I began gathering the fledgling power around me, using only the barest of instincts to pull it into some kind of focus.

  My body started to vibrate under the building power. His lips left mine abruptly and his eyes narrowed on my face. My flesh began to tingle and jump where he touched me and, with widening eyes, he looked down at the arm he still had wrapped around me. As he did, sparks erupted from the juncture of our flesh and he released me with a surprised laugh. As soon as his flesh left mine, I felt the power explode. Closing my eyes, I tried to focus all of it into a single stream that centered in my right arm. The air around me buzzed with electricity and began to pulse against my skin, pushing at me insistently, though I wasn’t at all sure what it wanted me to do. I was going strictly on instinct, on pure blind intuition, as I raised my arm toward him and opened my eyes.

  The power shot out of the fingers of my hand, taking my breath with it and almost pulling me off my feet. My arm jerked under the force of the explosion and, rather than blasting him, I shattered a hologram of my parents that had been hanging on the wall behind him. I gritted my teeth and refocused my arm, leaving a scorch mark on the wall as I guided it toward him.

  He could have gotten out of the way. He knew it was coming. But he stood his ground and surprisingly, he had a vague smile on his face as it hit him. Rather than exploding him as I’d hoped, I merely succeeded in raising him up off the floor a couple of inches and pushing him back a couple of feet, until he met up with the wall. He hung there, the smile sitting on his face and his arms crossed against his chest, bringing a memory, sharp and disturbing, of him as he’d been in my apparently prophetic dream. Above the smile, those strange, black eyes, which were now filled with revelation and something that looked like surprised recognition, were locked on me unwaveringly.

  All too quickly the power started to drain away. It had pulled every available bit of energy from my cells and had no more fuel to draw on. A final, harmless spurt of power shot from my throbbing fingers and Dialle sank slowly back to the floor, still smiling.

  My knees buckled and I collapsed. My whole body felt like just so much stiff rubber. I had no energy left to hold me upright. As I hit the floor, the world faded to charcoal gray around me and I knew I was going to pass out.

  I landed on the cold floor and lay shivering uncontrollably, though I somehow knew that the air was suffocatingly warm all around me. As I floated away, my mind just barely registered the sound of his voice speaking in Hades over me, in a surprisingly gentle tone. Then I felt him pick me up and my world faded completely to black. Leaving me to whatever fate I had stumbled against.

  * * * * *

  I woke up in my bed, with a seriously woozy feeling in my head. The room felt unusually cool and, as I pulled the blankets up and tucked them just under my chin, I realized that my arm was incredibly sore and stiff. The tips of my fingers still tingled and felt a bit numb. I pulled the strange appendage out from under the blankets and stared at it in awe. Had I dreamed the whole thing? Had I really discovered a new power?

  I frowned at the seemingly normal hand in front of my face. I couldn’t see any difference in it. It certainly didn’t feel very powerful at the moment. As I shifted into a more comfortable position, my entire right arm pulsed and punished my movements with spikes of pain that started at my shoulder and ripped a path to the tips of my tingly fingers.

  I took deep breaths until the pain passed and lay as still as possible, restricting my gymnastics to the mental kind. It was true, I did have magic in my family tree, on both the angel and the devil sides. I didn’t know much about it and I had made it a point not to find out the details because the idea scared the holy shit out of me. But it seemed I would need to do some research. If this power was going to insinuate itself on me unbidden, then I’d better learn from whence it came and how to control it.

  After a few minutes of mental preparation, I forced myself to get out of bed and realized with a jolt that it wasn’t just my arm that was sore. My entire body ached and throbbed. I stood up with a small, wimpy moan and found myself unwilling to move. I just stood there with my eyes closed, trying to outwait the pains that were shooting up the backs of my legs. After a minute I realized standing still didn’t help the pain and took a step toward the food service area. Maybe about a thousand jolts of black coffee would blast the aches out of me.

  The strong, black coffee didn’t take away my aches, but it gave me the energy to keep moving. As I prepared for my day, my muscles slowly warmed and softened and, by the time I stepped into the Viper, I felt almost normal. Only a general fatigue and achiness in my right arm remained to remind me of my late-night skirmish with the devil.

 
Along with the jolt of excitement I felt at having won the minor battle against him with a newfound power of my own, I was deeply aware of a sense of mental discomfort that I wasn’t ready, or willing, to examine too closely just yet. I was only dimly aware that it had nothing to do with my behavior of the night before and everything to do with his.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Devil’s Friend Pays a Visit

  The thing had fangs the size of thumbs and claws the length of hands,

  It tore the flesh of one she loved and died for its demands.

  There is only one thing worse than being tempted by evil. That would be paying taxes. In the year 2091, the tax bite basically eats up about eighty percent of our earnings and business expenses eat up the rest. That’s why I was in such a foul mood that day. It really had nothing to do with my previous night’s frolic with evil.

  I posted my electronic signature on the payment for another really scary bill and grimaced at Emo, who, as usual, sat across from me suffering the slings and arrows of my grimaces and pained sighs with a look of terror that was only exacerbated by his devilish countenance. Emo, it seems, has never really learned to trust in our success and, as a result, always stands on the precipice of despair over such mundane things as bill paying and fee collection. In other words, in a world that is split exactly in half between the glass is half empty and the glass is half full types, Emo is on the Board of Directors for the former group.

  With one, final sigh, I paid the last of the bills and touched my hand to the ID pad to close down the virtual accountant software I’d been using. With this action, Emo’s despair only deepened. His devilish features had sunk into a truly deplorable state, making him look more devil than the angel I knew him to be. I watched him squirm helplessly in his chair for a minute before I let him off the hook. What can I say, I am part devil.

  “Looks like we’ll make it another month, though I’m not quite sure how we pulled it off.”

  Emo sighed and let his red features relax into a neutral state. “I knew that. I just wanted to hear it from your pretty, pink lips.” His smile turned devilish and I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Yeah. Right. Did you confirm our appointment for this afternoon?”

  Emo stood and walked toward the door of my office as the bell on the outer office door jangled. “I put the information on your desk. It’s there somewhere, under all the paper.” He disappeared out the door and I swiveled to stare out of my newly repaired window.

  This time of day, in the part of town where my office was located, not much traffic moved on the streets below or the sky above. During peak traffic times, air cabs and sky buses forged an almost constant traffic pattern across the airspace outside my third floor windows. However, the ultra green movement had been successful in nearly shutting down all travel between the hours of one p.m. and four p.m.. Drivers who found they needed to travel during these hours now needed to have a special permit to do it, which, of course, reduced traffic during these afternoon hours mostly to Traffic Detectives and critical care vans. Along with a few, well connected rebels who refused to be told where they could go and when they would go there. It probably won’t surprise you to hear I’m one of those. Doesn’t surprise me.

  The empty sky outside was darkening with some sort of weather. By craning my neck I could see the few, scattered trees on the mainly empty street. The trees had begun to sway from side to side in a quickly growing wind. Something skittered across my peripheral vision and a sense of foreboding filled me. A sudden chill ran down my spine and I shivered under it. Just as the little hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention, I heard a strangled cry from the outer office and threw myself out of my office chair.

  Emo had put himself into a battle stance and was barely breathing as I came up behind him. He moved one hand just enough to tell me to stay back. Of course, being me, I ignored him and moved forward so I could see what his large, red body was blocking from my sight. As my eyes landed on our unwelcome visitor I just had time to wonder what it was in my nature that made me resent authority and spurn damn good advice before the thing, seeing me, sprang.

  It was about the size of a very large dog or a small pony. That, however, is where the resemblance to things cute and fuzzy and man’s best friend-ish ended. As its ticklike, leathery body launched itself through the air, my protective instincts kicked into overdrive and I sprang sideways, reaching for one of the platinum daggers I had strapped to my left thigh as I rolled behind Emo’s large, sturdy desk and regained my feet.

  I heard the impact as the gargoyle slammed into Emo. My partner’s devil came out in a big way as the thing bared greasy yellow teeth and went for his throat with a snarl. For the moment, Emo’s devilish strength, fueled in no small way by the fact that he was monumentally pissed off, allowed him to match the gargoyle’s strength and hold him off. However, I could tell what it was costing him by the way his veins were popping and I quickly realized that he wouldn’t be able to hold the thing off for long.

  Clamping the eight-inch-long knife between my teeth, I dropped to my belly and slithered under the desk, hoping that Emo could keep the thing occupied long enough to allow me to sneak up on it and break its spine, which is the only way I know of to kill a gargoyle.

  With the instinctive understanding that comes from a long relationship Emo seemed to sense my intent and, with the last of his quickly waning strength, began trying to get the gargoyle turned so that its back was to me.

  I was a mere two feet away when Emo began to lose the battle and went down with the gargoyle on top of him. From where I lay, stretched out on my belly with the knife still clenched in my teeth, I could see the long, deep holes in Emo’s arms and legs where the thing had held on and pierced him. Blood flowed out of him into a pool of shimmering red. Half angel blood. I quickly dipped the knife into Emo’s blood and jumped to my feet.

  The gargoyle’s thick, ugly head turned to me and its snout opened in a roar as it saw me standing over it with the blood-tipped knife. “To Hades with you, fool. For God hath tired of you.”

  As it whipped around, too fast for anything human to move, I drove the dagger into its chest and twisted it sideways, feeling gristle, flesh and bone give way under my adrenaline-fueled charge. The blood that tipped my knife was like acid to the gargoyle’s flesh. As the sharp, deadly knife did its work, the blood helped it along by softening and melting away any flesh or gristle it touched. My nose wrinkled against the acrid smell of burning ’goyle and I couldn’t help thinking that if some inventive chef ever attempted to cook up a mess of gargoyle, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t taste like chicken.

  The howl of pain the gargoyle let loose covered my screams as its claws ripped across both of my upper arms and raked my chest just below my chin. Combined with the platinum of my knife, the angel blood was just enough to weaken the gargoyle so that Emo could grasp its head and twist until we heard its spine snap. Then we sank, panting, to the floor on either side of the nasty thing. We leaned against the twisted carcass of our victim until we could recapture enough breath to speak.

  I looked at Emo over the gargoyle and wrinkled my nose. “This thing stinks.”

  Emo nodded, gulping against the pain in his arms and legs as he pulled himself upright and away from it. He was making a funny wheezing noise that bothered me but, under the circumstances, didn’t surprise me much.

  I scooted backward until I could lean against Emo’s desk and rested my hands on my knees, trying not to look at the fresh wounds on my arms and chest. “Thank the Big Guy for your angel blood, partner.”

  “I knew it would come in handy some day.”

  The weak, whispery tone of his voice caused me to look up in alarm. His normally deep red face had turned kind of a pinkish gray color and I realized with a start that he was about to pass out. I jumped up and ran to him and managed to catch him before his head hit the hard cement floor. As his weight pulled against my torn arms I couldn’t help giving a little yelp of pain. Then I remem
bered there was nobody around to hear me and I let out a blue stream of curses as I carefully lowered him to the floor.

  Emo’s pulse was very weak and his breathing was much too shallow for the wounds I’d witnessed. I did a quick inventory of his body and found the problem. Protruding from his chest, just about where his heart would be, was a large black claw about the size of two of my fingers melded together. I tried to pull it out but the gush of deep red blood that threatened to follow it scared me too much and I stopped. Sitting back on my heels I realized with horror that I might lose him. Hot tears flowed down my cheeks and that pissed me off. I stood up and screamed at the top of my lungs, kicking the stinking carcass of the dead gargoyle with every ounce of strength I had left. I kicked it until my leg gave out and then I decided that I would need to do something a little more constructive if I were going to save Emo.

  As I had the thought, I felt the air grow cool around me and Prince Dialle made an appearance beside my fallen comrade. My first instinct was to run and get between them, but as I looked into Dialle’s black eyes I saw something there that stopped me. Something inside of me wanted to believe that Dialle would not hurt Emo. Immediately I realized I couldn’t trust that notion and stepped forward to stand between Emo and my…other…devil.

  “I see you’ve met Nerul’s pet.”

  I tried not to let him see how this news affected me. “I kind of assumed he was one of yours.”

  Dialle cocked his gorgeous head to one side and smiled. “Why would I want to hurt you or your partner?”

  I shrugged, dragging my eyes from his in an attempt to stay clear-headed and focused on the problem at hand. “Maybe you didn’t think your little display at Abrine’s the other night was enough to scare me into cooperating with you.”

  Dialle’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “I had nothing to do with that. That was Nerul’s doing.”