He Loves Me, He Loves Me Hot Read online

  Paul and Otis were the Council members who’d worked with Satan to wipe out the Markku, and they’d killed Nick’s dad, all before Jerome came on board. The Markku had gotten tired of being Satan’s slaves, so when Nick’s grandpa had figured out how to escape hell, he’d made a deal with the Council: if they’d help him lead the rest of the Markku to safety, he’d make the Markku available to help the Council any time they needed some muscle.

  But once the Markku had gotten free and the Council realized how powerful they really were, they decided it was bad to have the Markku be a free people, and they made another deal, this time with Satan. The Council traded an entire race of beings in exchange for Satan’s Chamber of Unspeakable Horrors.

  Satan had been irate that his whole Markku army had bailed on him, and he’d ordered his Rivkas to destroy all Markku they found. With the help of the Council, who were happy to point out the safe houses they’d created for the Markku to recover after battle, the Rivka had decimated the race with their gold fireballs while they’d slept, except for one or two Markku who’d crashed elsewhere.

  Like Nick’s grandpa, which is why Nick’s pa and Nick himself existed.

  But they were all who had survived, and the Council had killed Nick’s pa when they’d found him. It was damned annoying Nick had promised his pa he wouldn’t stalk, torture, and maim the Council in retribution. Paul and Otis had no idea who Nick was, and Nick had to keep it that way, or else they’d be so threatened by his existence that they’d find a way to kill him, leaving Nick’s ma and sister alone.

  He’d promised his pa, and he’d stand by it, which meant walking away, no matter how hard it was. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try to find out what was up with that Markku who’d tried to kill him. Were there really others out there, hiding like he was?

  “Jerome! What’s going on here?” Paul, the old guy, asked, his hands hiding inside the flowing folds of his white robe.

  The businessman, Otis, whipped out a Blackberry and started typing on it, his manicured fingers flying over the keys as he typed out an e-mail. “I’m going to have to file a report for destruction of property.”

  Jerome raised his brows. “Satan Jr.’s melting. Shouldn’t we order backup refrigeration immediately?”

  Otis looked up, peered at the battered ice chest, then cleared his throat. “Yes, well, I suppose we do need to make sure he doesn’t thaw and re-form, don’t we?”

  Nick and Jerome exchanged glances at the lack of urgency in Otis’s voice, and Nick suddenly wished he didn’t have to go pass out for a day or two. Satan Jr. would be serious trouble if he got unfrozen.

  Jerome opened his own cell phone and ordered emergency freezer backup himself, while Otis walked around the room, tallying up the damage.

  Paul moved in front of Nick. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  Nick tensed at Paul’s probing gaze. As a half Markku, he blended into human society better than a full-blood Markku, but Otis and Paul had spent a lot of time with the Markku during the rebellion, and Nick wasn’t sure exactly how sensitive they were. Time to vacate. “I was just delivering Jerome’s dry cleaning. Gotta take care of those puffy silk things he calls shirts.” Nick hoisted his machine gun over his shoulder, shoved his guns into his shoulder holsters, and walked out, ignoring the protests of Paul and the curious stare of Otis.

  “Wait!” Jerome grabbed his arm. “Who am I going get to protect Satan Jr.?”

  “From what? Explain what’s going on, Jerome. I insist—” Paul stopped suddenly and held out his hand, letting the glittering remains of the dead Markku settle on his palm. “Is this what I think it is?”

  The trembling in Nick’s legs told him he didn’t have time to hang around. He and Jerome looked at each other, then Nick walked over to the block of ice, pulled out his gun, and peppered the corner of the block until a twelve-inch piece fell off. He ignored the shouted protests of Otis and Paul, who didn’t dare approach him while the bullets were flying.

  Too bad. Death by friendly fire would have worked for Nick.

  He holstered his gun, and Paul lunged for the small block of ice. Nick swept it out of his reach and walked over to the portable fridge that Jerome had set up for him.

  He dumped out the contents, grinned at the beer that had been hidden in the back, then shoved the chunk of Satan Jr. inside and tucked the fridge under his arm. “If anyone tries to re-form Satan Jr. without this piece, he’ll be missing something important. Probably not worth the risk.”

  “You can’t take that!” Paul threw himself in front of the door. “Otis. Call for backup.”

  As Otis fumbled with his headset, Nick rolled his eyes at Jerome, then grabbed Paul and tossed him aside. The Council member landed with a splash, spluttering, and Jerome had to turn away coughing.

  Nick shuddered with weakness again and broke into an uneven jog, forcing his failing body to hurry and willing his way through the pain in his damaged knee. No way did he have the thirty minutes he’d initially thought. The gold blade had taken more out of him than he’d anticipated. Twenty feet to Jerome’s office, where he’d anchored his black-market portal. He preferred using his motorcycle, but he’d figured he might not have time to get back to his safe house by ordinary means, and now he was glad he’d had the foresight.

  He shoved open the door, kicked it shut, then strode to the middle of the room, to the faint circle outlined on the floor. The portal kicked on automatically as soon as it sensed him, and he closed his eyes against the faint humming in his body. A couple more minutes. That’s all he had to hang on.

  The humming stopped, and he opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by four walls of steel, deep underground. It held only a bed, a fridge, his armoire, and a bathroom. His body trembled, and he dropped the icebox.

  He grabbed the chunk of Satan Jr., his muscles aching with the effort, staggered over to the freezer, and threw it inside. Then he made it the three feet to the bed and collapsed, letting the weakness overtake him like a black cloud.

  He had a minute, maybe two, left of consciousness, and he relaxed. He was safe now.

  Then his phone rang. He smiled at the sound of Toby Keith, the ring his little sister had programmed into his phone for her calls. He hadn’t heard from her in over a week, and he’d been starting to worry.

  Groaning, he yanked his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, letting it rest against the side of his head. “Where’ve you been, squirt?” He closed his eyes and let his hand flop to the mattress.

  “Nick! You have to help me!”

  The franticness in his sister’s voice caught him, and he battled against the wave of pending unconsciousness. “What’s wrong?” His tongue felt thick and heavy.

  “They’re going to kill me if you don’t do what they want!”

  Her voice became distant and fuzzy, and he cursed, struggling to stay conscious. Not now. “Who?”

  Another voice came on the phone. “Kill the leader of hell by Sunday or your sister dies.”

  Sunday? It was already Tuesday. That was kind of a short deadline for killing the leader of hell, wasn’t it? “Dani—” And then the world went black.

  Two

  I can’t believe you want your life force to be a goldfish.”

  “It’s better than having my life force be Satan.” Her heart thudding, Becca Gibbs, Satan’s favorite Rivka and personal slave, carefully set the Tupperware container holding Ellie the fish in the middle of the spot she’d cleared in New York’s Central Park. Three large flashlights were set up around them, illuminating the isolated clearing. It was just before midnight on Wednesday, and the park was relatively quiet. “A hundred years is my limit for being forced to obey his every command, torture and harvest souls, genuflect to his greatness, kill my own friends, and have my personality be nothing but an extension of his warped one.” She set her hands on her hips. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  “But how do you know Ellie isn’t some evil life force just wait
ing for a chance to force her soggy will on the world?” Theresa Nichols-Siccardi swished her tail in typical aggravated-dragon fashion, upending a small tree and crushing a drinking fountain. “Maybe she’s Satan’s worst nightmare and once you give her your body to act through, the world as we know it will be destroyed.”

  Becca slanted a glance at the testy dragon as she wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans. “She’s a goldfish. There’s no way she’s harboring some evil soul.”

  “And everyone thinks Mona is only an espresso machine, but she’s actually the Goblet of Eternal Youth, chock full of enough power to disrupt the natural order of hell and the mortal world. Looks can be deceiving.” Theresa blew a puff of ash out of her nose.

  Becca tensed at a crackle in the dark woods, staring into the black night for a long moment.

  “Yo’, Rivka, what if you turn into a fish, huh?” Theresa wrinkled her scaled blue-green nose. “You want me to eat you and put you out of your misery? I’m generally not into eating friends, but if it’s that important to you, I suppose I could be persuaded.”

  There was no other noise in the woods, so Becca turned back to the circle she was creating, trying not to wince at each gust of wind. She knew Satan would figure out what she was doing. Her only hope was to get it done before he showed up. “First of all, we’re not friends. Second, if you even think about eating me, I’ll turn you into a pile of ash.” She hadn’t spent an entire century thwarting Satan only to have a primadonna dragon have her for a late-night snack. “Third, I’m not going to turn into a fish. I’m only going to connect to her life force.”

  The dragon snorted. “But you’re nothing but a figment of Satan’s imagination, kept alive by his life force and his personality, so if you switch your life-support machine over to Ellie’s, won’t you have the personality of the fish? Is a goldfish really better than Satan?” She flashed an apologetic smile at the fish. “No offense intended.”

  “If I link to a weaker spirit, then my personality will trump and I’ll be able to be myself, in theory anyway.” And then I’ll truly be free. She eyed the dragon, who was just crazy enough to understand. “I mean, seriously, my life was bad enough already, but this morning Satan ordered me to quit my job at Vic’s so I could concentrate on hell stuff.” She was vice president at Vic’s, the only place where she had control over her life, where people respected her for who she was. She felt like someone there, and it was her oasis.

  “What?” Theresa yelped. “Who would run Vic’s if you left? I live for those pretzels.”

  “That’s why I’m quitting Satan instead.” She frowned. “But even worse than that, someone tried to kill me last week! What if he’d succeeded and I’d spent a hundred years suffering and then died before I could get free?” She shuddered. “I can’t wait any longer. I have to get out now before I lose everything.”

  “I hear you, girlfriend. Premature death would suck. Especially for you, because if you died, then you’d really be dead and not sent to the Afterlife, where everyone else gets to go for round number two.”

  “Yeah, the benefits of being a resident of hell. Yet another reason to get out now.” Becca paused again to listen to the night. Crickets chirped, an owl hooted off to her left, and frogs croaked down at the nearby pond. Normal night sounds that indicated that the leader of hell wasn’t out in the darkness, sipping wine and waiting for her to cross that line.

  She took a deep breath, then walked a circle around herself and Ellie, pouring the purified water in an unbroken line.

  The dragon burned a mosquito out of the air. “Are you worried that it’s wishful thinking that you actually have your own scintillating personality buried under there somewhere?”

  “No.” Sweat dripped down her back, even though it was a cool night for summer. What if she didn’t have her own personality? What if everything she was was Satan, and when she linked her life force to a goldfish, she no longer existed? She faltered in her steps and had to clamp her hand over the top of the gold vase to keep the purified water from spilling. No. She’d done her research. She was certain this would work.

  “I mean, do you wonder whether he bothered to give you an identity when he created you?”

  “Would you please shut up? You’re driving me insane!” She clamped her fingers around the vase of purified water so she didn’t drop it by accident.

  “Sorry.” Theresa sat back on her haunches and folded her wings. “So, who did you say found this spell?”

  “It’s not a spell. It’s a process. And I came up with it myself after a century of research.” She finished pouring the circle, set the vase in the middle of the circle, and took off her black boots and set them aside, wiggling her toes in the grass and the earth. Dirt was pure. Elemental. Real. Everything Satan wasn’t.

  The dragon snapped a stick as she shifted position, making Becca jump. “Why don’t you find a spell that allows you to generate your own life force instead of merely transferring your lifeline from one being to another?”

  She shot the dragon a disbelieving look. “You seriously think I’d be out here with a goldfish if there was a way for me to generate my own life force? I’m not hardwired that way.”

  “Well, that sucks.”

  “Gee, you think?”

  Theresa was thankfully silent while Becca set up eight shot glasses at evenly spaced intervals around the inside of the circle, dropped a twenty-four-karat gold ball inside each one, then filled each of them to the top with purified water.

  “So, if you succeed and then some owl swoops down here and eats that fish, you’re dead, right? It dies, you die?”

  “I can protect a goldfish long enough to get her back to the Goblet of Eternal Youth to make her immortal.”

  Theresa sucked in her breath. “She can’t drink from Mona! That’s so illegal! The Council would kick all our asses from here to hell! Have you met the Council? They are scary shit, girlfriend. No way am I crossing them!” She clutched her claws to her chest. “They’ll put me in the Chamber of Unspeakable Horrors! Have you heard about it? It’s an eternity of the worst tortures imaginable. I can imagine really, really bad tortures, and it’s worse than that!”

  Becca looked up and met the dragon’s gaze across the eerie shadows from the flashlights. “They won’t put you in there. You don’t work for them anymore. They have no authority over you.” But she knew all about the Chamber. Satan had created it as a joke to threaten Rivkas into submission, then traded it to the Council, who actually used it whenever they wanted to make a point. It was brutal, horrible, and no one had ever emerged sane enough to even explain what happened when you were inside. Three minutes in there was enough to fry you for eternity. “How many favors do you owe me, dragon?”

  Theresa whistled softly. “Damn, girl, you drive a harder bargain than Satan.”

  Becca managed a grim smile as she laid one of Satan’s custom dress shirts in the center of the circle, and then poured a spoonful of Ellie’s water in the center of it. “So, you’ll help?”

  Theresa held her claw over her heart. “I love you, girlfriend. I’ll do anything you need.”

  Becca tensed and shot the dragon a red-eyed glare. “How many times have I told you that we’re not friends? It’s too dangerous for you.”

  The dragon snorted and flicked her tail in irritation. “Shut up already. You can’t scare me. I’m an immortal dragon who survived making a deal with Satan. Do your spell and let’s get you and Ellie to Mona already, okay?”

  Becca piled a stash of cedar sticks on top of the shirt, then sat back on her heels. “We are not friends.”

  Theresa put her claws over her ears and started humming the theme from The Brady Bunch.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Becca gave up on the dragon, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She hugged herself and whispered a prayer to the heavens that she wasn’t allowed to acknowledge. It was time.

  For a brief moment, she hesitated. As much of an egotistic tyrant as Satan was, she’d miss him. He was s
uch fun to annoy, and it was more than a little scary to think about going off on her own… No, it was time to move on. A girl had to have standards, and between the near assassination and being ordered to give up the one thing she valued in her life, well, the line had been crossed.

  Game on.

  Becca held out both hands and a fireball popped up on each hand, heat and flame whirling in the dark night. She blew a kiss to Ellie, who swam happily in her little bowl. “Don’t let me down, girl,” she whispered.

  She fixed her gaze on Satan’s shirt and then whispered the words she’d spent so long working out. As soon as they left her mouth, she crossed her wrists and shot the pile of sticks with both fireballs. The shirt exploded in an array of golden sparks, and her voice rose above the din as she shouted the next words.

  “Shit!” Theresa shouted. “You melted the Tupperware container! Save Ellie!”

  Becca felt her concentration slip, but she yanked it back. I have to finish.

  She grabbed the northernmost shot glass and threw the contents down her throat.

  The pain was instant, blinding, and it knocked her to the ground. Jesus. She felt like her insides were being bled with acid.

  “Becca? Are you all right?”

  Bitterness sliced through her throat, blades ripped through her gut, searing agony tore her chest. This was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. It hurt like a mother-f—

  “Rivka! You betray me! I am much chagrined!”

  She flinched at the sound of a familiar male voice, in too much pain to lift her head and look up. Satan had found her too soon. Dammit! “You are such a pain in my ass.”

  “As you are in mine,” Satan crooned. “I adore you, Rivka! You make my life so interesting while you try to thwart me at every moment. You are my greatest pride.”

  “I know.” She hunched over as thousands of invisible knives stabbed at her flesh, tasting blood as she bit her lip to keep herself from screaming. She was not going to give him the satisfaction. Never. “I rock,” she managed, her voice raspy.