Page 18

Chapter 17

Soul Reaping and Passive Misery

SJ

“W ill you cease your fidgeting!” I grouched, nudging Bub with my toe.

“Sorry, Boss!” he whined. “I’m just so excited!”

“Hey, Bub!” Beezle panted. “We’re gonna reap a soul!”

“A banner day indeed.” I hoped the dryness of my tone masked my nerves as I watched from the alley across the street from The Artful Bite as the final staff filtered out.

“What did you glean from your eavesdropping?” I demanded, my hand reaching into my pocket to find the Soul Token. I rubbed it between my fingers.

“Well, he was positive that Bliss’s brother was there to buy his pictures! He told the skinny female that if it wasn’t for you, he would have been laughing all the way to the bank off that ‘stupid finance guy’.”

“Yeah, Boss, he was not happy with you! You should’ve heard him!” Bub chortled. “He was all, ‘I had a sale in the bag, until that big fucking blond cunt turned up, and everything went to shit’!”

“He was talking about you , Boss!” Beezle cackled. “ You’re the big fucking blond cunt!”

I chuckled somewhat nervously.

“That human is so delulu, thinking anyone would want to buy his squiggles!” Bub added.

“Delulu?” I grunted, eyeing my Hound. Bub sat back on his haunches, scratching at an ear with his hind leg.

“Oh, yeah, the girls in the hospital kept saying it! Pretty sure it means delusional. They said that Jemma was ‘delulu’ for not spilling all the tea about her snack of a boyfriend earlier!”

“Snack?” I was completely discombobulated by this conversation.

“I think it means you’re good enough to eat,” Beezle remarked.

“Bad grief,” I muttered under my breath, trying very hard not to think about Jemma Bliss wanting to eat me. It was bad enough that I still heard her snarky little voice discussing the mounting of my horns on a regular basis.

“What else can you tell me about him? Anything that I can use when I … once we’re in front of him?”

The Hounds looked at each other in the way they had that always made me feel incredibly paranoid.

“Well, his female was all, ‘Oh, babe, I’m sorry you missed out because of that big mean man’,” Bub yipped in a very believable impersonation of the female in question. “And then he smirked and said that it was only a matter of time before someone with good taste would waltz in, fall in love with his talent, and purchase the lot, and suddenly everyone would be clamouring for a Chad Dunston original, and he’d be famous.”

“Delulu,” Beezle panted.

Yes, the ‘delulu’ was indeed rampant with Ratty-Man. But delusion was very easy to manipulate.

“Well, that gives me a good idea,” I murmured, flipping the Soul Token between my fingers. “I’m not sure this will be all that difficult.”

“Daddy’s gonna be so proud of you, Junior!” Beezle nuzzled his head against my thigh, interrupting my reverie.

Bub barked out a chuckle. “Our little boy is becoming a man!”

“I wonder if the Pit Demons know that King Satan hasn’t been up to Earth in decades …” Beezle wondered.

“I mean, they are pretty dense,” Bub added. “But even they would see that souls are just not descending the way they used to …”

“No wonder they’re constantly on the edge of rioting!”

“Lucky Boss is taking matters into his own hands, just in time, too!”

I cleared my throat. “None of this is helpful right now.” The last thing I needed was to be thinking about how my father used to do this regularly; come up to the Human Realm, find someone in a vulnerable state, and convince them he had just the solution for their problem … as long as they were prepared to do a ‘little favour’ for him in return.

None of them knew when they struck the bargain with him that the ‘little favour’ was that their soul belonged to Hell. When they died, they got the nastiest surprise of their afterlife.

I’d been training to do this for years but had never actually done it. Instead, I’d developed the Soul Token, believing I had a solution that could help the kingdom both immediately and long term.

While I was certain that my time had been better spent in creating a new way to harvest misery and souls … eventually, even with the Soul Token and FiendPay, I would have to do the reaping part.

It was just delaying the inevitable.

I would have to reap Jemma’s soul at the end of all of this.

I wondered if she’d gotten the donuts I’d had delivered. I wondered if she’d eaten them. More likely, she would have taken one look at my message and thrown them out.

“You know, it’s probably a good idea that you’re gonna reap that bastard!” Beezle remarked. “You wanna know you’ve got the whole thing down pat before you do it to Jemma Bliss.”

He’d always been good at guessing my thoughts.

“Indeed.” I clenched and unclenched sweaty palms and checked the entrance once more. Two of the staff at The Artful Bite were still having a long, heated discussion just inside the front door.

“Did you glean anything about her from your little trip into the bowels of Ratty-Man’s domain?”

“You mean Jemma Bliss?” Bub asked. I nodded.

Beezle woofed awkwardly. “Jeez, Boss, he really, really hates her!”

I swallowed back a growl, human nails digging into my palms. “What did he say?” The words grated out with barely concealed murderous intent.

Bub tilted his head in thought. “Pretty sure his exact words were …” he cleared his throat, and in a slightly nasal tone that was an excellent impression of Ratty-Man, said, ‘Never thought I’d see that fucking gullible bitch a—’ aarghghghg!”

“Boss!” Beezle gasped, and I blinked, releasing my grip on Bub’s throat and staggering back a step. Bub collapsed, panting.

“Nah, that was my fault, Beez. I shouldn’t’ve done the voice …” He glanced up at me, those red-ringed eyes seeing far more than I liked. “Ratty-Man really got on your last nerve, eh, Boss?”

“Something like that,” I muttered, turning away with a flex of my fingers. Finally, the moronic staff had exited the premises, and I could move.

Without a word, I stalked off across the street. My stomach was a riot of fluttering imp wings, but the fury sat, scorching hot and demanding its due, right in the centre of my chest.

The locked door was no match for me: a quick flick of my fingers, and it unlatched and flew open. I surged inside, the Hounds on my heels.

“Now, Boss, remember you need to seem human …” Beezle scuttled in front of me, slowing my progress. “And you need to be … like, maybe just a tad less menacing? I mean, nobody’s giving up their soul if you, I dunno, give away right off the bat that you’re jonesing to shove them in a torture pit for all eternity.”

I cricked my neck and inhaled a long, hopefully calming breath, forcing the scowl off my face. “Better?”

Beezle tilted his head to the side, then glanced at Bub, who had joined him. They conversed in eerie silence for a moment.

“I think it’s the best we’re gonna get,” Bub mumbled. Beezle nodded, and I pushed past them.

“Get small!” I commanded, not bothering to wait for them as I strode onwards, eyeing the hideous wall art as I headed for the back rooms. No wonder he’d had to steal Jemma’s ideas if these calamitous riots of paint splatters were the best he could come up with.

The rage tried to clamber up my throat, but I swallowed it down as I made my way through a disappointingly immaculate kitchen. The Hounds were right. I needed to appear amenable to be offering this piece of elephant excrement an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.

I stepped through a door, and there he was. With the woman he’d cheated on Jemma with. She was splayed out on his desk, pants-less and with her shirt hiked up around her neck. His eyes snapped to mine as he froze, midway through frantically tugging at his decidedly less-than-average, mostly flaccid member.

I almost laughed aloud at the irony that I would walk in on him in a compromising situation, just as Jemma had. But this time, she would get her revenge on this tiny-pricked imbecile. Even if she didn’t ever know that vengeance had been served to him.

“What the fuck?” Ratty-Man hissed, frantically tucking his minuscule manhood away. “Mate, we’re closed, and this …”

“I wish to discuss the purchase of your art.”

That stopped him in his tracks. He froze as his female slipped from the desk, cheeks flaming, grabbed her trousers from the floor and scurried away. I let her go. I wasn’t interested in her.

Just him. And his pathetic little soul.

“More specifically,” I continued, sauntering into the room, filled with the vindictive confidence of knowing I was infinitely more powerful than he, “I wish to purchase your entire collection. How much?”

Ratty-Man gaped at me. “But you … you said my art was … that … that her students …” he blathered, finding his T-shirt with shaking hands and slipping it on over a chest so scrawny it was almost concave.

Pitiful little man. I couldn’t work out why Jemma Bliss, the feisty beauty that she was, had lowered herself to this excuse for a male for an entire year of her life.

I took a seat, tugging it backwards to put distance between myself and the spot on his desk where his female’s naked backside had just been smeared. Resting one ankle on the other knee, I regarded him, watching him just long enough that he became very uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

“I know what I said.” I reached into my pocket, finding the Soul Token. It was warm but stable. She was content at that moment.

Good. I wondered how she would feel if she knew what I was about to do.

“I am what I like to call a … mentor, of sorts,” I lied, flipping the Token over and over in my fingers. “I enjoy finding artists who just need a … little nudge … to be great. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Jemma,” I leaned closer as if I were imparting a little secret between men. “Because I didn’t want to upset her, you know? She’s quite fragile about her art.”

He relaxed a little, a knowing smirk pulling at his lips. I fisted the Soul Token so tight I would have an impression of it on my palm for days. This bastard needed a fist right in those slightly crooked teeth of his.

“So, you have connections in the art world that you can get my work in front of?” he asked, and his eyes gleamed greedily.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I tempered, steepling my fingers in front of my face. “What I have is a gallery with some … prime real estate, where your work will be seen by many.”

He didn’t need to know that the many I spoke of were souls being transported to and from their daily torture … and their demon handlers.

“I’ll ask again.” I pressed the Soul Token safely into a crease in my pocket, then willed my hand to fill with human cash, tugging it out and setting the stack on the table in front of his bulging, covetous eyes. I leaned back, letting him take in the teetering pile of notes.

This man was despicable, and before Heaven had changed their selection criteria, he would already have been a shoo-in for Hell. So I felt no qualms about what I was about to do.

Or very few of them, anyway.

“I am willing to pay handsomely.”

“That’s … that’s more than …” He abruptly cut himself off, straightening and eyeing me with slight suspicion. “What else do you want from me?”

Oh, so much more than you would ever be willing to part with, if you knew . “Like I said, I want your work to be seen. I’m prepared to pay extra to take them off your hands immediately.”

His eyes widened. “But … but I won’t have anything to display in the café tomorrow, and it’s the weekend!”

“Yes, well, that is unfortunate. But I do want to get them up for display in my … gallery, as soon as possible. But if you don’t think you want to part with them …” I reached towards the cash stack.

His hand shot out, snatching the cash. “Yes, of course, you can take them.”

I stood, stretching and staring down at the pathetic human, clutching his cash to his chest. The stupid fool.

“I’m very pleased to be able to support your endeavours.” I made to turn to the door, then stopped, and as if I’d forgotten something, turned back to him.

“You know, I do want something else from you.”

“What?” he asked, all too eager. My stomach clenched. It was time for the part that I knew, in theory, how to do but had never done in practice.

“There will come a time when I will need a favour from you.” My throat was so dry, but I pushed past it. “Given I am doing you quite a significant favour here.” I nodded at the stack of cash he could barely fit one of his small hands around.

His fingers twitched on it. “Yeah, I think that’s fair. Uh, what do you want from me?”

“Nothing in the immediate future. But I’ll be sure to let you know when it comes time to … reciprocate.”

I proffered a hand to him, hoping it wasn’t coated in sweat the way the rest of me suddenly was. My chest thrummed painfully, but I ignored it as he transferred his money to his other hand, reaching out and grasping mine in a limp handshake.

A jolt of scorching power flared in our joined palms, and he flinched, but I held tight, squeezing until the heat faded. When I released him, he staggered back, his skin bone white and clammy.

“What the fuck just?—”

“I’ll take my leave,” I interrupted, spinning and stalking out before I gave myself away. Stumbling towards the main entrance, I managed a quick flick of my fingers, summoning to Hell the artwork that Ratty-Man had just sold me … along with his soul.

I had reaped a soul. He had absolutely deserved it, but … I had tricked him with nothing more than some conjured cash and a false promise.

Father would indeed be proud.

I only just made it back to the alley before I bent at the waist and vomited into one of the metal bins there.

“Aww, Boss. The first one always feels the worst.”

I straightened, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, chest pounding. The sympathy in Bub’s eyes made my stomach tighten.

“Yeah, it’ll get easier the more you practise,” Beezle added.

I promptly vomited again.

“Let’s just get out of here,” I gasped when I was done, opening a portal and falling into it.

* * *

“Boss?”

I groaned and rolled over, pulling my covers over my head. “Go away!”

A wet nose snuffled into my blanket burrow, nudging me on the cheek. “Time to wakey wakey, you sleepy devil!”

I shoved Beezle from the bed. “I said, fuck off!”

“Technically you said, ‘go away’ …” Bub added. There was a scuffle down near my feet, and then another wet nose began sliding its way up my calf. “If you don’t wake up, Hellen will be in here yelling at you again …”

“And no one enjoys a Yellin’ Hellen.”

They both cackled.

I sighed deeply, pushing down the blankets and rubbing at my gritty eyes. “Ugh.”

My mouth tasted like bile. Had I really portaled straight into bed without even bothering to rinse my mouth?

And then the rest of yesterday came flooding back. Telling Father and Hellen about the Soul Token … and the way it had pulsed. Brunch with Jemma Bliss and her brother … and that purple, pulsing haemorrhoid of an ex-boyfriend …

Her kiss …

His soul …

I’ll have to do that to HER at the end of all of this …

I staggered from my bedchamber and doused my head under the faucet before I threw up whatever might be left in my stomach.

“So …” Beezle began as I shook water from my drenched hair and stalked across my chamber, then back again.

“So?” I grunted, pacing the length of my room again. And again.

“Might be time to start thinking about the second task for Bliss, Boss?”

“Yes,” I muttered, massaging my skull where it ached at the bases of my horns. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Seems counterproductive to be worrying about the end when we still have so much time before that point.”

I strode to my thinking chair—the one I’d been sitting in when I came up with the idea for the Soul Token—and collapsed into it, staring up at the gleaming black stone above me. Beezle and Bub trotted over to seat themselves at my bare feet.

“Do we have any ideas?” Bub panted hopefully.

“Ugh, no,” I muttered. My brain was blank.

“Oh, I know, I know!” Beezle yipped, his butt bouncing eagerly against the stone floor. “We go to her markets, and every single time she sells something, as soon as she hands it over, we make it unravel in the customer’s hands! And?—”

“No,” I said flatly. “That is … unnecessarily cruel.”

I didn’t miss the loaded glance Beezle and Bub shared. “Stop that, both of you! Let’s think rationally about this …” I frantically rummaged through my fuzzy brain for a reason their suggestion simply couldn’t work while my stomach did somersaults imagining the expression on Jemma Bliss’s face as she watched all her hard work quite literally unravel in front of her eyes.

“Her market business is a constant source of tension between her and her brother,” I blurted. “They had a heated disagreement over it yesterday. That was why her Soul Token was so active!” Well, one of the reasons, anyway.

Bub’s head tilted to the side. “So?”

I only barely refrained from rolling my eyes. “So, we leave her business alone, and instead, the Soul Token fills up with the misery that festers between her and her brother because of it. We’re …” I cast about for the right word. “We’re harvesting passive misery!”

I sat back and folded my arms, relief tingling through every inch of my body. The Hounds stared up at me, slack-jawed, tongues lolling.

“Boss …” Beezle began, and something tightened inside me. Did they disagree? Was I going to have to find some other way to convince them that we needed to leave her business out of this?

“I mean, I’m sure we’ll come up with something?—”

“You’re a damn genius, Boss! Passive misery! You’re a trailblazer, a … an innovator!”

“Well,” I mumbled, scratching at the stubble on my jaw. “It’s more a … happy accident. I never intentionally developed the Token to do that.”

“Don’t tell Daddy that, though!” Bub was aghast. “You celebrate your success, Boss!”

“We won’t be telling Da-Father anything. Not until the end … not until the whole process has been tested.” I swallowed back the ache in my throat at the mention of the end. “Aren’t we supposed to be coming up with a task for Jemma?”

“Oooh, she’s just Jemma now? You two getting a bit … intimate?” Bub’s words were sly. “We saw how you were touching her leg under the table, all comforting-like.”

“Of course not!” I protested, glad that my skin was already red, because I was blushing furiously. Which in itself was mortifying. Devils did not blush. They especially did not blush over being caught out having … thoughts … about humans. “I was trying to unsettle her!”

Beezle snorted. “ Sure you were.”

“Can we please stick to the task at hand?” I demanded. “What else do we know about Jemma … Bliss ,” I added with a sharp look at my amused Hounds, “that we can use?”

Silence fell. And into the silence, my very inappropriate brain threw up a number of things that I knew about her that were probably not very helpful but were hard to stop myself thinking about. Things like how she giggled when I brushed my thumb over that soft skin of her inner thigh …

“Gluten!” Bub yelled.

“Gluten?” I blinked, forcing myself to stop thinking about Jemma’s thighs. “Ah, yes, there was some mention of ‘gluten intolerance’ today … whatever that is.”

“Oh, we already know, Boss!” Bub panted excitedly. “That Ratty-Man was having a good old whinge about it. Said … oh, Boss, can I please do the voice?”

I sighed. “Alright.”

Bub’s snout split into a leering grin, and he coughed once, affecting the nasal tones of Ratty-Man. “And she’s still telling everyone who’ll listen that she can’t eat gluten? She’s such a bloody attention seeker! She used to make a big song and dance of getting stomach cramps and gas and having to leave everywhere early. Fucking ruined our social life, just because she needed something that made her feel special, the dumb fucking sla?—”

“Enough!” I snapped, shooting to my feet. “So, it’s a food … or a food ingredient, perhaps? And she doesn’t get unwell from eating it, just a bit …” I rubbed my stomach. “That would be very humiliating for her. But … we would need to be sure that it wouldn’t actually do her serious harm.”

The Hounds exchanged that look again.

I scowled. “It’s not because I … care … because I don’t! But we cannot jeopardise her health, not when she’s under contract with us. If she dies mid-task, I do not know how that would work. I believe that, as long as she was still engaged in the task, her death would release her from the contract.” I eyed them sternly. “Which would mean no new soul for Hell.”

“Oh … well, when you put it that way, Boss.”

“I do put it that way. So … if we can be sure that utilising this will not have a more serious effect than a bout of discomfort and flatulence … then this could actually work.”

The boulder covering the entrance to my chamber rumbled, and I turned, finding Hellen standing there, looking agitated.

“Is it done?” she demanded, hands on hips, tail lashing.

“Bad morning to you, too,” I muttered under my breath, unfolding myself from my thinking chair. “What, pray tell, is this ‘it’ that is supposed to have been done?”

And there was the cat’s arse face again as she surged into my chambers. “The Soul Token! Did you complete your silly little experiments? Did it work? Can we test the Token?”

I backed away from her, my fingers twitching, itching to reach into my pocket and reassure myself that it was still there, still safe.

But I kept my hands by my sides. I didn’t need Hellen getting any ideas about the Soul Token. She already had a manic expression on her face, which sent icy shudders down my spine.

“What in the home made you think I was finished?” I demanded. “I told you yesterday that I’d only completed one task with her! You clearly don’t understand the delicacy of clinical trials!”

“Spare me your pseudo-scientific batshit, Junior!” Hellen pushed past me and slapped her backside down at my dining table. “You reaped a soul. Was it the one you’re working with on this new ‘scheme’ of yours?”

I flinched. “I … yes, a soul was reaped. But it wasn’t … how did you know?”

Hellen rolled her eyes. “The ‘days since last reaping’ counter in the throne room reset to zero last night. The imps have been chittering non-stop about it.”

She eyed me with a new, calculating expression that made me want to back away from her. “Father will be very impressed. He’s only been wanting you to start reaping for the last ten years. How was it?” Her expression turned sickeningly eager. “What did it feel like?”

Bile rose again as I remembered the strange, electric sensation as I shook his hand. I swallowed it down with a hiccup.

“I feel a little … hungover,” I managed.

Hellen nodded sagely as if that made absolute sense to her. “Yes, coming down from the high, no doubt.” She stood abruptly, heading back to the door. “Oh, Father has decided to celebrate Mephistopheles Day this year.”

I blanched. “Really? Is now a good time to be hosting a party? With the Pit Demons on the verge of mutiny?”

Hellen shrugged. “They seem in much better spirits knowing their future king has a solid plan to save them.” Her voice was chilling, and her smile was vindictive. “Besides, a party always boosts morale.”

She reached the door, her eyes boring into mine. “Between your Soul Token and the first reaping in decades, you’ll be the guest of honour.”

With that, she turned and strutted away, her hips swaying, her tail thrashing.

“No way you can get out of attending this time, Boss,” Beezle informed me.

Fuck.