Page 11

Chapter 10

A Soft Spot for Mice

SJ

M ount those horns of his. Mount those horns of his. Mount those …

“Hey, Boss? There’s water falling from the sky,” Bub observed, snapping me out of the torturous reverie that had been echoing inside my skull for days. “Is that normal?”

“How should I know?” I snapped. “I’ve not spent long enough in the Human Realm to know what is normal and what is not up here!”

“Jeez!” Beezle sniffed, sitting and scratching his ear. “You still all torn up over the whole horn mounting thing?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, inhaling deeply. The sky water scented the air with an odd, fresh, earthy smell. It was quite pleasant, actually.

“Because you know she probably meant she wanted to nail them,” Bub added, completely unhelpfully.

I turned to glare at the pair of them. Bub’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, and Beezle cocked his head to the side.

“To the wall. Nail them to the wall ,” Beezle clarified as my stomach flipped inside out. “You know, the way your dad has that whole wall of trophy horns from the demons who’ve tried to disobey him?”

“Thank you, Beezle,” I muttered, turning and looking up at the healing building … hospital, Jemma Bliss had called it. This was an insane plan. And yet, I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head since she’d mentioned the sick children were desperate to play with her Luci-Fur.

Mount those horns of his … Mount those horns …

Was there a small part of me that had decided to incorporate a visit to her little art activity into her first FiendPay repayment purely due to the fantasies I’d been having every night about her ‘mounting’ my horns? Possibly.

Was there even a slight chance that those fantasies would become a reality? Doubtful.

The portal not being fully closed when she’d said those words felt like a curse. I was not supposed to have heard them; I knew that. And I could not think about them in any way but a filthy one that was most certainly not the sentiment she had intended.

Although, she had massaged her bosom in that provocative way …

But then she’d shouted at me. Which, oddly enough, had only made my … desires … stronger.

Infuriating human!

I leaned out from under the awning, squinting as fat water droplets splashed on my face and shirt. The shock of the cold water managed to snap me out of the aroused haze I was falling into—had been throwing myself into for almost a week. Ever since I’d stepped out of a portal into her apartment to find her humming absently, a strip of pale, flawless skin exposed between that teeny, little shirt and the indecently tight pants that had hugged every curve of her …

“Are we doing this, Boss? Because your shirt is getting wet from the sky water,” Beezle remarked. I looked down, the fabric of my shirt splotched with droplets.

“Stupid,” I muttered, pushing past the pair of them and stalking towards the entrance we’d watched her take every week. “There’s no time to go back to Hell and change. Hounds, you need to be much smaller than you are … at least until we get to our destination.”

I needed this to work. I needed to feed the Soul Token. Needed to show progress to my father. Damn it, I needed to tell my father that I had a Soul Token with a piece of her in it, and that it could—theoretically—draw energy from the living to feed Hell.

You can’t tell him yet. You’ve only seen it happen once. It might have been a coincidence , I told myself, pausing as the doors loomed before me.

Two tiny black mice scuttled up my leg, along my back and up under the collar of my shirt.

“You seem to like this form,” I murmured, wondering where the handle for the door was. Come to think of it, I’d never seen Jemma Bliss use a handle. She seemed to simply walk up to it, and it parted for her.

“Yeah, we figure you’ve got a soft spot for mice,” Bub squeaked in my ear, his whiskers tickling.

“Well, one ‘Mouse’ in particular, am I right?” Beezle added cheekily.

“I could crush you in my fist so easily right now, you whelp,” I growled under my breath.

“But you won’t, Boss. Because you’re the best boss ever, you treat your employees like friends.”

I scowled. That was because I had no friends. Hell wasn’t a place to make connections. I barely tolerated my father and my sister. I wasn’t about to go out carousing with the greater demons. Their idea of a fun night was to get completely sloshed on Demonade and engage in an orgy with the eye sockets of their prisoners.

I shuddered just thinking about it.

Pushing these maudlin thoughts aside, I strode forwards. The doors remained closed. Would they open for me? Was there some form of security measure that would refuse me entry because I wasn’t an employee? Because I wasn’t … human?

Could a door be sentient and sense these things about the beings who walked through it? Could it tell I was a devil in human skin?

The doors swished open, and I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. Doors did not possess consciousness. No, humans possessed technology. I glanced around, blinking in the bright glare of the white lights. People bustled about; uniformed humans pushed trolleys with blanket-clad forms on them.

“Where now, Boss?”

I slipped my hand into my pocket, feeling a jolt when my fingers closed around the Soul Token. Her Soul Token.

I turned left and headed down the hallway. The Token cooled under my fingers. Not that way.

Spinning on my heel, I walked back in the other direction. It got warmer, but not hot enough to tell me I was truly close to her … and then it cooled again.

“For crying out loud,” I grumbled, about-facing once more.

“Are we lost, Boss?” Bub asked. “You want us to change back to Hounds and sniff her out?”

“We are most certainly not?—”

“Are you lost, sir?”

I glanced down to find a chubby, older woman in strange pyjamas similar to the ones that Jemma Bliss’s friend wore. Only these were a vibrant shade of purple, with rainbows all over them.

Humans had the oddest fashion sense.

“I … I’m not?—”

“Ask her for help!” Beezle whispered. “Make up some story that will get you to Jemma Bliss!”

The woman watched me, her expression turning from polite to concerned. Perhaps she thought I was in need of medical treatment.

“I … I’m looking for my … my girlfriend!” I blurted. “She …” I wracked my brain for the word Jemma Bliss had used. “She voluntaries here.”

I plastered what I hoped was a normal, human-looking smile on my face. Bub chittered mirthfully away on my collarbone. I’d squeeze the life out of him, too, for his insolence.

But not now.

No, now I needed to find my way to Jemma Bliss.

“Volunteers?” the lady asked, patting me on the arm. I stared down at her hand resting on my shirt sleeve.

“Yes, that is what I meant,” I replied, kicking myself for my lack of preparation. For my rush to use this opportunity to make misery for Jemma Bliss.

So she’ll mount those horns …

“What ward is she on?”

Every second word this dumpy woman uttered was foreign to me. And here I’d been worried about entering this healing centre—hospital—because the levels of misery of sick people were usually overwhelming to me.

I hadn’t counted on making myself so bloody miserable instead.

“Uh … cancer. Children’s cancer,” I blathered. “She voluntaries?—”

“Volunteers, dear,” the woman corrected gently.

I wondered if I could squeeze the life out of her as well while I was on a roll of fantasising about doing just that to everyone in my vicinity.

“ Volunteers … doing art with some girls there,” I finished, wishing I could collapse into a chair in relief that I’d managed to get some portion of a sentence out that made me appear to be an only somewhat-incompetent human.

The woman’s eyes sparkled, and she nodded, beaming up at me. “Oh, you mean Jemma! She’s a darling. Those girls have had such a rough trot, and she’s like a ray of sunshine in that activity room every Thursday!”

My stomach flipped at the description of Jemma Bliss. While I was pushing down those feelings, the woman turned and started walking straight at the wall of silver doors.

I scowled. What was the point of any of that interaction if I didn’t, at the very least, get directions to where I was headed?

She turned back, eyeing me oddly. “Well, are you coming? I’m on my way up there now—that’s my ward. I’ll take you to Jemma.”

Jaw tight, something inside my chest doing somersaults, I followed her as she pressed a button on the wall, and the doors slid open, revealing a tiny box room.

The woman walked right into the claustrophobic space as if sealing herself into this metal tomb was completely normal.

I froze.

“Is everything alright, dear?” she asked, her tone almost patronising. “We’ve got to head up to level five if you want to see your lady love.”

Two tiny hisses of laughter erupted from under my shirt.

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself into the box.

“Jemma never mentioned a boyfriend,” the woman remarked, eyeing me as she pressed a button and the doors slid shut. “Which honestly is a shock because a strapping thing like you? I would’ve thought she’d be screaming about you from the rooftop.”

I swallowed down a bark of laughter, picturing Jemma Bliss on the roof of this place, screeching, “I’m dating Satan! I’m dating Satan!”

“It’s new,” was actually what I grunted out. And I couldn’t say any more because my stomach lurched into my feet as the box jerked upwards. I gripped onto the metal rail behind me with clammy hands.

The woman’s eyes softened. “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest, popping in here for a visit. Does she know?”

“She does not,” I managed. Something else was lurching in my middle area at the thought of Jemma Bliss’s face when she discovered who had ‘popped in’ for a visit.

“Oh, you’re surprising her? That’s such a romantic gesture! What’s your name again?”

“I didn’t tell you my name.”

No human had ever asked my name before. Not even Jemma Bliss. But I suppose my only interaction with her before I revealed my true nature had not been the type where we would casually exchange names and pleasantries.

“No … you didn’t,” she remarked, then stuck her hand out to me. “I’m Sally. It’s lovely to meet you …?”

I stared at her hand. What was she doing? Did she … want me to shake her hand?

My chest constricted at the thought, sweat prickling at the back of my neck.

“You’re getting very slippery back here, Boss,” Beezle grumbled.

“My name is …” I mumbled, wracking my brain for a name … any name that would pass for a human one. “I’m …”

“Simeon,” Bub’s tiny voice whispered behind my earlobe.

“Simeon,” I repeated dutifully.

The Hounds’ claws dug into me. I could picture them throwing back their heads and cackling little rodent cackles.

Simeon … Simeon ?

Where the bloody home had they picked that name up from?

Sally looked down at her proffered hand and then up at me, confusion on her face. Thankfully the box halted, and the silver doors slid apart, distracting her from my refusal to engage. Was this hand business considered a normal human greeting? Because in Hell, it meant something very different.

“I’ll just sign you in, get you a visitor pass, and we can go surprise her!” she giggled, trotting out of the box. “Oooh, I can’t wait to see Jemma’s face when you walk in!”

“Neither can I,” I muttered, my chest getting tight as I followed her.