Chapter 24
l see I can gloss over the
hell-is-another-dimension-and-not-easily-visited portion of my
lecture.”
“I hate you,” I said
without opening my eyes. There didn’t seem to be any point to
getting an eyeful of where I was and what was going on. “So, so
much.”
“If I were human,”
Satan bitched, “I would have an unsightly black eye. This is how
you treat a guest you invited into your home?”
“Invited is a strong
word,” I replied.
“Are you okay? How
many fingers am I holding up?”
“Child, she hasn’t
opened her eyes.”
“That’s true, Laura.
I haven’t.”
“Does it feel like
anything’s broken?”
It was nice; Laura
sounded superconcerned. “Only my sense of reason, purpose, and
childlike wonder.” I opened my eyes. And blinked. Lots. “Where the
hell are we?”
“Yes,” Laura and the
devil said in unison. Followed by the devil adding, “I’m astonished
you got it right the first time. I had allotted twenty minutes for
you to eventually guess right, and then need everything explained
at least twice. Starting two minutes ago. And now, see? My entire
evening just opened up.”
“Yes, well, let that
be a lesson to you.” I sat up, wincing, then lurched to my feet. My
back ached from neck to butt, and I had a whopper of a headache,
probably from the devil tossing me ass over teakettle into the
bricks above the fireplace. Luckily I’d fed recently, and thank you
again, would-be rapists.
Dead or not, I could
still be hurt. I could still die (again). Tough to kill didn’t mean
invulnerable. It did mean tough to kill. So I bounced back pretty
quickly, and never was I happier about that than when I woke up in
hell.
Which was really,
really good, since I was betting she’d fractured my skull and
possibly, for funsies, shattered my spine. In hell for—what?
Seventy seconds, and already hideously crippled.
“And I left my
overnight bag in the stupid parlor next to the stupid Book of the
Dead!” Great. Already this field trip sucked. “No lip gloss.” (I
dunno if all vampires were prone to dry lips, or just me, and there
was no way to tell, because I had lived on Chapstick since I was
six.) “And no change of underwear!”
“Tsk. I can’t tell
you how much—” Satan cut herself off and got a peculiar look on her
face. She looked as though she were listening to voices. Which she
most likely was. Unlike the average citizen of the damned, the
voices in her head were probably real. “Well, that’s just terrific.
Sorry, ladies; I must fly. Something has come up.”
“But—” Laura began,
already sounding panicked. In hell for a minute and a half and
ditched by the devil? Muy
uncool.
“My assistant can
answer your questions and give you a tour. Just go through that
door.”
We looked; we were
standing in a room of nothing.
Okay, I’ll elaborate:
we were in a nondescript room with high ceilings and cheap
carpeting. Everything was blah gray. No windows, no doors. No
sound. No light source. It was almost like we were standing in a
fog bank that had walls. It was a room of nothing.
“But Baal—” Laura
began.
“I’m good, darling,
but even I can’t be in two places at
once. As I said—my assistant will take over until I return. She’s
through that, there. No worries; no one here will bother you.
Unless I tell them to.” Satan grinned, and blinked out of
sight.
“Well, this is off to
a suck-o start. What’s amazing is that I hear myself, and I
actually sound surprised.”
“She might not care
if you die,” Laura said, clearly trying to be reassuring, which
would have gone over better if she didn’t look terrified, “but she
seems to care if I do. So if you stick by me, Betsy, I think we’ll
be safe.”
“And I think I’m
weirded out.” I gestured. “That’s a door.”
“Uh ... yes. It is a
door. See? I’m not scared. You shouldn’t be, either.”
“Laura, you sound
like an episode of Sesame Street. There
wasn’t a door three seconds ago. There wasn’t anything three
seconds ago.”
“Should
we—?”
I looked at her, then
back at the door. The doorknob gleamed innocently. I was pretty
sure. “I guess we’d better,” I said.
I stepped forward and
gingerly gripped the knob. I was expecting it to be hot. You know
... hellish. But it just turned when I turned it.
So we went
in.