The imp? Seriously? There wasn’t a day that went by since the collecting office had first been created that she couldn’t remember the small blue creature creeping around, his angry, aggressive looks following her.

  “The bastard!” she snapped. “Why the fuck would he do that?”

  For once in the history of the world, she saw something she never thought she would do… a look of shame flash upon Lucifer’s face. “Well, I may have once told him that he might have the chance to run the office one day.”

  “You what?”

  “It was back in the early days when the office was still being established. He was complaining all the fucking time, moaning about all the ghosts, the lost souls. I was down there looking for Tlatoani’s file when whatever-his-name-was came in talking about how he could run the place better. I humoured him for a while before I got bored of all the talk and kind of blanked out of the conversation. And well, I may have… kind of… agreed with him. Just to shut him the fuck up, of course.”

  She couldn’t believe it. She had been stuck having to deal with Gabriel’s ass all day, and it was totally Lucifer’s fault. There she had been, thinking that no one had been in the office long enough for him to have pissed them off, and she had never even thought about the one constant addition to the office… The fucking imp.

  “How was I supposed to know that he would pull a stunt like this? It’s been that long since the discussion that I had actually forgotten all about it.”

  “Funny, I thought you knew everything.” She smirked. “At least that’s what you have always told me.”

  “I may miss the odd thing every millennia or two, but I didn’t miss what was wrong with Hudson when he was in here earlier today.” The unexpected mention of his name causing her breath to catch.

  Glancing around the room she wondered where he was, the burning body having steeled her attention upon entering, she hadn’t thought about where he may be. “Don’t bother looking for him. He’s long gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He left. Came to me, demanded to be taken back. So I did… once he had found this shit bag for me anyway.”

  Gone... He was gone… She couldn’t believe it. It really was over.

  Ever since the fight, since her anger had gotten the best of her, she had secretly hoped that they could work things out. That he would choose to stay in Hell with her.

  Looks like she was wrong.

  Collapsing into a chair beside the fire, she sighed. “What the fuck happened? I just don’t get it.”

  “What don’t you get?”

  “Everything. Things were going great. I thought he really liked me. Maybe even…”

  “Maybe even what?” he asked, a little excitement rising in his voice.

  “Loved me?”

  The largest, creepiest smile spread across Lucifer’s face, the fires of Hell burning in his eyes. “Go to him,” he snapped so suddenly that Dee almost jumped at the sound.

  “What?”

  “Go to him. Talk it out.”

  “He doesn’t want me; he made that perfectly clear when he left.” There was also the fact that for once in her entire existence she was scared, scared of what would happen, the pain she would feel when he told her that he didn’t love her back. “I can’t see him.”

  “Well, tuff! I am your Lord and Master, and I demand that you go up there and talk to him.”

  “You demand?” Never once had Lucifer ever demanded anything of her. Yes, he was her boss. The Dark Lord. But he had never forced her to do anything that she didn’t want to.

  Well apart from work her backside to the bone collecting souls, but that was what she had been created for in the first place.

  “He saw you with Gabriel.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t know much about lover boy, do you? Well, let me fill you in.”

  And he did. Telling her the whole sorry tale of a young man in love with a young woman – a complete slut – that he had seen fucking her new bit on the side, just minutes before he lost control of his car and wrapped it around a tree. The same tree in fact from which she had collected his soul from all those years ago. “He hasn’t let a woman get close to him since… until you. Can you guess what he thought upon seeing you and Gabriel together now?”

  “But nothing is happening between Gabriel and me, obviously. He’s a complete knob. Why in the world would he think anything was going on between me and that bastard?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered flippantly. “But he does.”

  “I just don’t get it. I can’t think of anything that he could possibly have seen that would make him think…” Then it hit her, the image they must have made that morning when Gabriel had wrapped his arm around her, pulled her to his side as they had left her apartment. “Fuck!” she yelled, running her hands through her hair in frustration. “What am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to do what I have just told you to do. Go to him. And for fuck sake get a move on,” he growled, grabbing a poker from beside the fireplace and jabbing at the remains of the burning corpse within.

  “Fine. No need to get your knickers in a twist,” she snapped back, getting up quickly and storming out of the office. Her hands were shaking with a mixture of pent-up rage and nerves. She was angry, but not with Hudson. She was angry at Gabriel and his wandering hands. Angry at herself for not ripping the fucker’s arms off the moment he had moved to touch her.

  Fuck. The image it must have painted, her leaving her apartment with another man, his arm around her waist pulling her tight against his side. She had to set things straight. She just hoped that it wasn’t too late to do so, to fix things.

  As she closed the door behind her – well banged it really – she heard a few last muttered words from her Lord. “And complete that damn contract.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  Chapter 20

  Hudson was in a heap load of trouble. Apparently disappearing for a week and leaving no trace made people worry. Not the people that should care the most though. With him going missing from his foster father's construction site you would have thought that it would have been him that had called in the police when no one had been able to contact him, but no. He had wondered if it had been his work that had called it in, after numerous miss calls, but again no.

  It was the hotel.

  After he failed to check out and pay his bill, they had entered the room to find all his stuff gone – it having been taken down to Hell for him – and no sign of him having been there in a couple of days, so they had phoned the police to report it.

  Lucifer, after some persuading, had taken him back to the living world and deposited him around the corner from the hotel, so he had decided to go there and see if there was a room available. After all the craziness of the past 24 hours, he’d just wanted to close his eyes and sleep for a week, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The moment he had walked through the door, hotel security had been on him, grabbing him and throwing him to the ground. Obviously, he had struggled, he had had no clue what the hell was going on. But when the fat one, a bulging bold guy who reminded him slightly of a troll but without the handsome face, sat on him, he quickly sustained.

  He had spent the past five hours in a cell at the police station before someone had come to speak with him. “My name is Officer Williams,” the police officer said as he took his seat across from him in the small interview room. “Can you tell me why you are here today?”

  “Because the person who collected my belongings apparently forgot to pay my bill,” he answered. Though he doubted they had forgotten, more likely just not bothered.

  “And why didn’t you check out yourself? Why send somebody else?”

  “I was called away on important business.” Which was technically true.

  “So important that you didn’t even have the time to return and collect your things yourself.” Officer Williams didn’t believe him in the slightest, his disbelieving stare told him that. “Or even your car? I find it funny that you left on a very important business trip and didn’t even take your car.”

  Well, he had him there, but it wasn’t like he could just say he had caught a lift from the Grim Reaper.

  “So where was this important business?”

  So far, he hadn’t needed to lie, everything that had come out of his mouth had been the truth, though a little vague in places, but now came the part where he had no choice but to lie. But what could he say? Whatever he told them it would only take a few, if not one, phone call to prove that he was lying. “Well…” he started, his brain moving a mile a minute. “I was…”

  “Well Mr Mayer, where were you?”

  “I was…”

  The air suddenly turned chill, the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end, the electric light above their heads flickering, capturing Officer Williams gaze but not Hudson’s. No, his gaze was on the shadow that was slowly growing larger and darker in the corner of the room.

  What was she doing here?

  When the room went dark, the lights going out completely, Officer Williams muttered. “Must be a power cut, but why hasn’t the backup generator kicked in?”

  “Because I didn’t want it to,” the cold voice of Death sounded through the darkness.

  She spoke. Actually spoke. In front of an unknowing human at that. He couldn’t believe it, and by the looks of it, neither could Officer Williams.

  “What? Who? How?” he gasped, grabbing his phone from his pocket and using the light of the screen to see. His eyes widened as he took in the dark cloaked figure stepping out of the shadows. “I don’t… I don’t…”

  “Yes I know, you don’t want to die,” her voice nothing but a whisper as she pulled down her hood to reveal her beautiful, breath-taking face. He didn’t want to see her as beautiful, but no matter how much she had broken his heart he couldn’t deny that she was. “Heard it all before. Now if you would kindly take a little nap,” her eyes widening, darkness swirling within them that he had never seen before. He heard a strange ripping noise followed by a great whoosh of air as two large dark feathered wings filled the space behind her.

  What the fuck? He didn’t know she had wings.

  Officer Williams breathing became erratic; his eyes filled with fear as he slumped down in his chair and passed out cold. Looking upon the woman he loved, the one that had broken his heart into so many pieces that he wasn’t sure if it could ever be fixed, he asked. “Why are you here?”

  “I'm here because you’re a fool,” she said before her eyes cast down at the floor in a nervous gesture. “And so am I.”

  * * *

  It was so hard to just stand there, to keep her distance, when all she wanted to do was throw herself across the room into his arms and tell him that it had all been a misunderstanding, that Gabriel was no one to her, that nothing had happened, but she kept her position. If he flinched away from her it would kill her – not that she could be killed, Death was immortal in all sense of the word – she would be destroyed inside. Still refusing to look at him she cast her gaze to the officer in a heap on the floor, his eyes beginning to flutter as he started to come to. “We need to go before he awakes.”

  “Go where? I'm not going back down there.”

  “Down,” she giggled, smiling to herself. Everyone thought that, thought that Hell was buried deep down inside the earth. Once again, they were wrong.

  “What’s so funny?” A little hurt and annoyance coming through in his voice. He must have thought that she was laughing at him.

  “Hell isn’t actually down there,” she explained, pointing to the floor. “It’s in a different dimension, like the demon realms I told you about. But we don’t have time to get into all that just now. He’s about to awake any moment, and I would rather us not be here when he does. When he wakes up in here alone, he will just think he has been working too hard and hallucinating. Seeing me twice will be a little more difficult to explain away, and I really don’t want to have to kill him.” She hadn’t taken a life in almost a millennia, and she really didn’t want to start again now.

  “Ok, but not to Hell,” he stated, taking small steps towards her.

  Pointing to the shadows, to the portal she had opened hidden within it, she sighed. “Fine, just go into the shadows and I’ll get us away from here, but we will stay in this realm.”

  Drawing her wings back into her body she followed him into the darkness, through the portal and out into the mass of bodies riving and grinding against each other in her favourite vampire club, Sinister.

  Spinning around to face her, he asked over the heavy noise, “Where the fuck are we?”

  “A vampire club.”

  “A what?” he gasped, his whole body tensing as he looked around as if expecting to see people with fangs and blood running down their faces. “Those are real?”

  “Yes,” she answered with a smile, not going into any more details even though she could see the many questions circling his brain. “Come on.”

  Moving through the room, she headed towards her booth, one that the owner of the club, Denton, kept reserved especially for her. Even though she only turned up a couple of times a year, it was always waiting empty, a bottle of her favourite vodka sitting upon the table. Sitting down she quickly poured herself a shot, downing it quickly before pouring another. She was nervous. She didn’t know what was going to happen. All that she did know was that she needed to set things straight with Hudson. She just hoped that he was going to give her the chance.

  “You going to share that bottle?” he asked. “Or do you intend to down the whole thing by yourself?”

  Looking up she realised that she had already drunk a third of the contents of the bottle within a matter of seconds, downing shot after shot. “Sorry, I tend to drink a lot when I'm nervous.”

  “Why would you be nervous?”

  Because she was about to open herself to him, tell him something she had never done before. After she set him straight on the whole Gabriel thing, of course, and thanked him for catching the imp and putting a stop to his meddling. “What you thought you saw this morning… you didn’t.”

  “Oh really? So I didn’t see you leaving your apartment with another bloke, his arm around you and a satisfied smile on his face?” he seethed, his voice cold with anger.

  “You did, but it isn’t what you think.”

  “I think…” he began angrily, but she wasn’t going to give him the chance to mouth off at her.

  “The guy you saw is Gabriel, an angel. He came to Hell the night before because someone had been fucking with the files – that imp you caught. He had caused eight good souls to be taken into the Pit and tortured. Gabriel was sent to retrieve the souls and to help discover what was going on. He spent the night at the Inn and was meant to meet me at the office this morning to help with the investigation but being his usual annoying self he turned up at my apartment. I don’t even know how the fuck he knew where I lived, but I'm going to kill the fucker that told him.”

  “Okay, so I know who he is and what he was doing there, but that doesn’t explain his arm being around you and that smug smile he had upon his face.”

  “It’s simple… he’s a creep. Every time he comes to Hell, he always tries it on, but he always gets the same reply.”

  “And what reply would that be?” The hardness in his eyes softening a little, giving her a small burst of hope that they could get through this.

  “Pain… If you had followed us around the corner, you would have seen me push him away, seen me twist his arm to almost breaking point and yell at the fucker. Ask Flereous. Hell, ask anyone. I hate the bastard.” Closing her eyes, she took a deep calming breath. Getting riled up and yelling wasn’t going to do any good. “Hudson, I don’t want a misunderstanding to be the end of us. I have never been happier than I have these past few days with you. I don’t know what this is, but I do know that I'm not ready for it to be over… not by a long shot.”

  “So there really is nothing between you two?” he asked as hope built in his eyes, his hand inching closer to her own across the table.

  “No, there isn’t,” she sighed as he took her hand in his, rubbing his thumb lightly over her knuckles.

  “And you want us – whatever this is – to continue?”

  “Yes.” Her heart rate picking up as he slid around the booth towards her, it gathering more speed the nearer he got. It felt like forever since she had been this close to him, since she had felt his hands upon her body, his lips moving against hers, and being this near to him now was making her crave all those things and more.

  Cupping her cheek with his large hand, she leaned into it, his touch seeming to sink deep down to her core, touch a part of her that no one had ever even gotten close to before.

  “What have you done to me?” he whispered, looking deep into her eyes. Leaning ever closer, his lips just a breath away…

  “Death?”

  Pulling away she turned to the speaker, the annoyance she felt at the intrusion clear upon her face. “Denton, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Denton was a vampire, and to be specific, the vampire that owned the club and ruled all the vampires in the area. He was strong, stronger than most, and not somebody to mess around with. Though, being who she was, she didn’t really need to worry about that.

  His violet eyes moved from her to Hudson and back again, a peek of interest in his gaze. “Tonight is probably not the best night in which to visit us with your… human friend.” His fangs flashing in the sinister red lighting that the club was lit with.

  “Expecting trouble?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Very well. Hudson, we better go.”

  Exiting the booth, she turned to her friend. “Happy hunting, Denton. I’ll see you soon.” But instead of her words causing a flash of excitement and hunger to blaze in the vampire's eyes, as the mention of hunting usually did, he seemed resigned.

 

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