Authors: Eve Langlais
“Raking in Lucifer’s favor with big sins. Interesting strategy. But we are way off topic. You believe there is someone creating these puddles.”
“No, I said there might be. These could also be the result of some strange, yet entirely natural, phenomenon caused by a lack of pollution in Hell or a crack in the hozone.”
“Things we can’t fight.” She spun from him and walked away a few paces, stopping before one of the larger liquid-filled basins.
She didn’t say anything or move for a few minutes.
It didn’t take a genius to see the gears in her head churning. Why did she seem so torn?
“Is something wrong, Valaska?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Given the initial mission we’ve been sent on has drastically changed due to our discoveries, it is my belief we should turn back.”
The answer startled him. “Turn back? Did you sniff some swamp gasses without sharing?” Their hallucinogenic properties were well known—if noxious smelling at first. “Why would we leave when we’ve only just begun our exploration? Not even a day in and we’ve discovered incredible things. We can’t stop. We need to keep going. To find out the truth of how these puddles are coming into creation.” And wow that was said with much more gusto than necessary. Maybe
he’d
sniffed some swamp gasses.
“I agree, yet, at the same time, don’t. Yes, we found cool shit, but it’s shit we should report.”
Valaska turning down adventure because she had an incredible desire to file paperwork? He narrowed his gaze at her. “Hold on a second. Before, when our quest involved a high level of danger looking for minions in the wild, everything was fine. But now, even though we’ve yet to encounter anything more vicious than an out-of-place boa snake, a dying imp, and salt water, you want to quit?”
She bit her lip, and he could tell she had to force her head to nod.
“What a load of bullshit.”
“Dex, such language.”
“Don’t go changing the subject. I know what’s going on here, and I don’t fucking believe it. You’ve been told to not let me get hurt.”
At least she didn’t lie. Nor did she duck her head in shame. Boldly meeting his gaze, she smiled. “Actually, letting you get hurt was considered okay. It builds character.”
“Did Lucifer say that to you?” Or his dad? His dad always did say he’d have to get tougher. Of course, Dad also had an insane obsession with making sure Adexios got enough calcium.
For strong bones.
“It wasn’t Lucifer who said that thing about character. It’s an Amazon teaching. We are trained to believe pain only makes you stronger. So a little pain on our quest was good. But I had to promise to not let you get killed.”
“I didn’t think Lucifer cared.”
“He doesn’t.”
Of course not. “My dad,” Adexios stated with assurance.
Blonde hair went whipping from side to side. “Try again. You’re close.”
“You listened to my mom?” His exclamation emerged a tad high-pitched. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“She cornered me with the most perfectly grilled bird leg, lightly seasoned and so juicy.”
“You turned on me for rotisserie poultry?”
“And a tankard of warm apple cider.”
Oh, the cider. “The smuggled kind from the mortal plane I’ll wager. I see you brought out the big guns, Mother,” he mused aloud.
“So you see? See how she attacked me? But I’ll have you know I was resisting ‘til that point,” Valaska admitted with vehemence. But then her smile drooped. “Until she brought out the homemade chocolate and mint chip ice cream.”
“Oh, Mother. Not the ice cream.”
A frozen confection in Hell wasn’t an easy-to-find commodity, especially for a warm world that had issues keeping power on. Not to mention that mortal appliances, with their reliance on science, didn’t work very reliably in the pit. Something about the esoteric waves and the clogging abilities of the ash making them explode. And, in a few rare cases, absorbing their owner and coming to life.
Lucifer still had yet to recover the car that went on a killing spree and inspired a famous novel.
Personally, Adexios didn’t think Lucifer tried too hard to locate that missing murderous soul, not given the scale model he had built, which sat in a place of pride on the bookshelf in his office.
“So you agreed to utterly humiliate me for ice cream.”
“With caramel sauce.”
“Is that all?” he mocked.
“And a cherry.”
He glared at her.
“Okay, there were two cherries, plus whipped cream. But now can’t you see why I agreed?”
Yes. But he didn’t forgive her or his mother. Chin tilted, in his most frosty voice, he said, “I’m a grown man. I don’t need you or my mother making decisions for me.”
“I agree.”
He blinked at her. “Agree? About what?”
“That you should totally defy your mother and cut those apron strings. As well as let your hair grow out.”
He reached up to touch his short locks. “You think so?”
“Yes, but do it another day. Even if it weren’t for your mother, I’d suggest we go back. This puddle situation is important news. The Dark Lord will want to know. We should return to the last village and report it. Together.”
He almost agreed and then gave a head shake. No. Something of import was happening here. Something big. Possibly deadly. Adexios might not have wanted to come here in the first place, he might fear the danger they’d encounter, but he wasn’t a coward.
If something threatened the safety of Hell, his family, his friends, then he owed it to them to discover exactly what.
“You can pussy out if you want, but I’m going on. Something’s happening out here. And I don’t think we have time to ignore it and wait for the Department of Unnatural Disasters to fill out the paperwork necessary to get a team out here. Time is of the essence. I’m going ahead.”
Valaska cocked her head and eyed him with curiosity. “You’d go alone into danger?”
“Yes. Someone needs to put a stop to what’s happening.”
Damn, that almost sounded fucking heroic. Later he’d have to remind Valaska to not mention anything about that speech to Satan. The devil would have a conniption for sure.
“I like a man with big balls.” And to his chagrin, she dropped her gaze to his crotch.
He shifted his knapsack in front of it because he just couldn’t seem to armor himself against the Amazon goddess and her unintentional allure.
She is just a woman.
A woman with a brilliant gaze, silken wheat-blonde hair, and a body that could crush a man.
He gave his head a shake. He needed to stop letting his awe, which was a polite word for lust, control him. Or, as Lucifer would have said,
Time to stop the brain farts because all the blood in my head keeps going to my dick.
It was rather embarrassing, and also painful, just how easily she managed to arouse him. It wasn’t as if Adexios was an innocent virgin. His dad had made sure of that when he hooked him up with a pair of damned twins who brokered a deal to reduce their penance.
After that eye-opening experience, he’d gone on to bed his fair share of women, okay three, but still he knew his way around a woman’s body. He could have experienced more if he’d wanted to. Many ladies—and that was being generous—were determined to get in his pants to see what he hid. Once he realized this, he put a stop to it, especially since, while the ones he did sleep with were happy with his size and skill, they also left his bed disappointed because he was so, as one girl put it, ‘Normal looking’.
Given he was far from a virgin—a carnal sin that earned him brownies—he should have been able to deal with this blonde beauty without any problem. And yet, he couldn’t help but sport wood every time she got near.
I need to take control of this situation—and her.
“You know what? You’re not going back to the last town. Neither of us is. We are going to move ahead and gather more information.” He stated this in a commanding tone he’d never heard come from his mouth.
She looked as surprised as he felt, but she didn’t let shock prevent her from saying, “Forget what I said before. I’m in.”
Was it wrong that he wanted to be the one to say,
I’m in
, in her that was, his balls slapping against her as he—
Hello, lust, nice to see you again.
Now there was a sin he didn’t seem to have a problem with.
“Shall we go and save Hell?” she queried.
“I’m in.” Hunh, what did you know? It was kind of fun to say it.
Spear in hand, Valaska took the lead, which meant he got a fantastic view of her ass.
Look away. Resist her allure.
Fuck that. Enjoy the ass.
Imagine that ass naked. Bent over and…
The puddle he stepped in, that soaked him to the knees, snapped him back to his senses. Keeping his gaze averted, he took the opportunity to focus on the scenery around him.
While the oversized puddles of water didn’t have any growth within them, all around other vegetation grew. It just didn’t look very healthy.
While the sifting ash contributed to some of the pallor in the leaves and on the trunks, it didn’t take a Hotanist—someone who specialized in Hell botany—to realize the trees and plants were dying. He’d wager the high salt content in the area was to blame.
But where was the damned salt coming from? It wasn’t as if it rained from the sky or spontaneously appeared?
Did it?
Never put anything past the pit. Strange things happened all the time. It played havoc with real estate prices. One day a person could be living in hellurbia, with a jagged, wrought-iron fence and a front garden lined with thorny roses. The next, a fissure could open and the noxious gases farted by the dragon at the heart of their world could waft, causing extreme eye watering and skin color changes, not to mention tainting everything with an unmistakable stink.
Would it turn out the salty puddles were in actuality tears from some giant celestial being?
He peered at the sky, the gray haze of ash blocking the view and rendering Hell’s version of a sun as nothing more than a fiery, red disk.
Dusk fell, bringing with it shadows, sore feet, and a rumble in his tummy. “I think it’s time we stopped for the night.”
Valaska didn’t argue and even accepted his offer of some of his mom’s famous fettuccine Alfredo with grilled chicken and cheese-covered bread. No garlic. Although not a vampire, his mother couldn’t abide it.
As they ate in silence, Adexios contemplated what they’d found. And what they hadn’t.
Over the course of the afternoon, they’d seen the foliage retreat more and more while the salt-water dilemma grew. Where they’d currently halted, the water extended all around them in puddles no smaller than six feet across. They could still travel between them, but Adexios wondered how far they would be able to travel the next day if they continued to crowd closer.
The only good news was none of the puddles appeared very deep, no more than thigh high that they’d seen, but again, that could change the farther they went.
Of other worry was the fact that they’d also not seen a single other demon. Actually, in the last hour or more, they’d not seen any life at all. Not even any bugs.
As signs went, that wasn’t a good one.
Valaska was right. They needed to report this.
Stowing away his plastic containers—back into the temporal rip for his mom to wash—he then dug in his pants pocket for his cell. “You know what, now that we’ve gotten a full day in, I’m going to give the boss a shout and let him know what we’ve found.”
“You have a hellphone?”
“Well, yeah.” He couldn’t resist a certain duh emphasis. “Who doesn’t travel with one?”
Judging by her pinched lips, she didn’t. “We tend to eschew technology when out in the field.”
“What do you do if you have an emergency or need to contact someone?”
“We rely on the old tried and true methods. Smoke signals work anywhere.”
“If someone sees them.” He shook his head. “No thanks. I think I’ll stick to calling people.”
“Why didn’t you mention you had a phone earlier when I talked about going back?”
He shrugged. “I figured you had one, too, but didn’t want to use it.”
“I don’t.”
“Apparently. Good thing we’re not both Luddites.”
“Did you just call me a name?”
Would she hit a guy with glasses? He shoved them against his face to draw attention to them just in case. “Yup.”
She beamed. “About time. Although, next time you want to insult someone, could you use a word that doesn’t require a dictionary?”
“How’s technophobe?”
“Better. So what are you going to tell the big guy?” she asked.
“The truth.”
A wide grin popped a dimple in her cheek. “You know he hates that.”
“Which is what makes it so fun.”
Adexios dialed before putting the phone to his ear.
Ring
.
Ring
. The phone was answered with a grunt.