Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (17 page)

“It was worse where I was before,” Max said. “It took a while before I could see and hear other people. I could sense the source of the heat and avoided it. And then I found Justy’s mirrors.”

I could hear the fear and disgust in his voice. Or non-voice. He had a right to be afraid. We were trapped ghosts with no visible way back and people were about to haul off our bodies. I was too freaked to do more than shiver.

“We don’t have too long if they’re hauling us off to hospitals,” I said, thinking aloud. “The docs couldn’t help when our friends went comatose, which is what I guess we are right now. But everyone in the Zone came back after Acme’s generator was turned off. I don’t think that works for us.”

Especially since I figured
Saturn
had granted my wish that time, by bringing the Zonies back from la-la land, and the generator had nothing to do with it. I’d had to kill a mad scientist to earn a wish large enough to save a village.

There was nothing evil down here for me to kill.

As if in response to that thought, a haunting wail emerged from the direction of the light. I would have jumped out of my skin if I’d had any. The intensity climbed until the resulting explosion of noise bounced off invisible walls while we covered our invisible ears.

Above us, the maracas and chanting grew louder.

In the distance, beyond the light, I swore I saw a blue blob. It glowed briefly. The scent of incense became overpowering. The heat intensified.

And then Gloria’s face melted in demonic laughter in a fiery ring between us and the light.

“Damn you, Gloria,” I shouted.

To my astonishment, the laughter turned to screams of anguish.

In terror, I visualized Dane’s chilly kitchen and the sanity of chanting witches and voodoo doctors.

***

“Miss Clancy moved!”

I was shuddering and my ears were still ringing from that ghostly wail, but I thought I recognized Father Morrison’s soft voice rise in triumph.

“Yeah, another live one here.” The maracas stopped shaking. “Hagatha, you saved a senator yet?” The voice was mocking.

Swell. Our priests were having a competition over our dubious souls.

Before opening my eyes to whatever havoc reigned, I took inventory of my body’s bruises. I could damn well feel them now. I ached in every bone.

I was lying on an icy floor with cold drafts on my feet. I’d worry about catching pneumonia going from the heat of hell to Dane’s icy kitchen, except I couldn’t figure out if a heated soul worked the same as a cold body. Waaaay too much thinking involved. And I’d just proved that fear worked better than logic in this voodoo world.

My
essence
wriggled with the memory of orgasmic sex, but my body didn’t. It just felt bruised from head to toe. Weird.

Dane’s physical body had been burned, I remembered. I tentatively raised a hand to my aching head and pried my eyelids open.

I wanted to shut them again, but unholy fascination prevented it.

The professor looked even more primitive than I remembered. He was wearing face paint that resembled dried blood. His ratty hair was coming undone and the bones were rattling loose. He practically had his big bare feet in my face. They were painted crimson.

I eased up on one elbow to watch Hagatha rub unguents into . . .

Oh damn, she’d stripped Dane nearly naked. His charred clothes were piled in a stinking heap by the kitchen counter.

Dane was one muscled dude, even if his burns now glistened with grease and smelled of scorched herbs. He shifted, apparently feeling the cold floor beneath him. And I’d just had soul sex with him? My gaze drifted downward, but Hagatha had left a towel over his privates. Sweet of her.

I reached over and poked his ribs so he’d turn my way and wake seeing me instead of the witch’s wrinkled visage.

His eyes opened and he almost smiled, until the priest sprinkled holy water over him. The curse he uttered wasn’t heavenly. Or dignified. Yep, Max was still in there. Arrogant politician Dane would probably have just died of humiliation or threatened to sue someone.

I turned my head the other way. The prof was standing between me and Andre, which was why I got a big whiff of crimson toes.

Andre was fully dressed, darn it. Apparently they’d just stripped Dane to address his burns. Bruises didn’t rate extra attention.

“Wake up, Legrande, or they’ll start anointing you with chicken gizzards.” I couldn’t kick him. The prof was in the way. I had to drag myself into a sitting position and shove past knobby knees to poke him. I seemed to be dressed as well.

“Go away, Clancy,” he muttered. “I’m trying to wish myself home.”

I chuckled. “Good reaction but not happening.”

I leaned my bruised—but solid—bones back against a kitchen cabinet and shoved away a feather Hagatha was trying to brush in my face. “I don’t suppose anyone called ambulances or fire engines or anything sane like that?”

“No, why would we?” Father Morrison asked with honest innocence. “The authorities aren’t likely to believe in exorcism. And it’s probably best that they don’t know the senator was involved in one.”

Hearing my own words thrown back at me had my eyes rolling, but I accepted the stupidity, for now. “Get moving, Senator,” I said grouchily. “It’s not getting any better if you just keep lying there. Better hang onto your towel, though.”

“Bathrobe,” he ordered without opening his eyes. “Top of the stairs, to the right.”

No one moved. With a sigh, I studied our exorcists. “Did you get rid of Gloria or will I be walking through a towering inferno if I use the stairs?”

I remembered seeing her in the nothingness and hearing cries of anguish, but I’d also seen blue blobs and had soul sex. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been having the weirdest sex dream of my life.

Had I just visualized us to safety because I’d been terrified? I’d study on that later.

“The tree is now ash and we’ve seen no more of the demon,” the priest reported. “It’s difficult to say if all is well, but all appears normal, and the evil emanations seem to be gone.”

Maybe I’d finally released Gloria from Zone limbo into a real hell. If it wasn’t in a law book, I really didn’t want to know.

“Fine, then.” I stood and looked around.

Hell’s cellar door had melted and it looked as if the patio and back door had been bombed. Blackened timbers had collapsed into a hole below the floor. I blinked, then looked at our exorcists. “This is normal?”

“The demon left and closed the door,” the professor said with a shrug.

I poked Andre with my toe. “Up, Legrande. We need contractors before Hell’s Mansion falls into the cellar.”

That brought both my slacker boyfriends to a sitting position. Taking one more long gander at Dane’s gorgeous body, I moseyed on out to the front rooms in search of clothing.

The swinging door into the hall had been blown off its hinges. A blackened stain in the shape of a pentagram marred the terrazzo tiles of the foyer. I had a clearer idea of why they hadn’t called medics.

I craned my neck upward to search the ceiling three stories above me. I didn’t see any exit holes from the tree’s rocket launch. It must have burned up in the atmosphere—which stank of sulfur.

I jogged upstairs and located the messiest bedroom. Expensive clothes were scattered everywhere, as if Max/Dane had expected a servant to pick up after him—a luxury both men probably had experienced growing up. Fortunately, Max hadn’t risked crisping anyone by employing them in this hell hole.

I found a plush navy robe and some slippers and carted them back down. I could feel the ache of bruises from being sucked through doors and into walls. I was still a little woozy, but mostly I wanted a giant pizza.

I met Hagatha packing up her boxes in the foyer. She glanced up at me with a puzzled frown and sniffed, as if I was the one who stank of rancid herbs.

“Very powerful vibes,” she said, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t need us. If you wish lessons, let me know. The coven would welcome you.”

Oh yeah, just what I needed, a coven of witches in my life. I’d sooner call on Max’s biker friends. I might, at that. Several of them were good carpenters. Witches . . . not so much, I bet.

“Thanks, I think,” I told her. “I’ll help you with those in a minute. We owe you big time if you got rid of the demon.”

“She’s gone,” the witch said, bobbing her head affirmatively. “We trapped her and sent her back where she belongs. No worries.”

I refrained from snorting. My life was one big long worry. I’d just seen Gloria in a ring of fire one dimension away. “Send the senator a fat bill. He can afford it. But if one word leaks out . . .”

She waved me off. “It won’t or we’d lose all our D.C. business. You have no idea what evil can be summoned by a bunch of demented politicians.”

I had no idea and didn’t want one. Just the thought of heads of state calling up demons to do their dirty work sounded too probable to me. That would explain a . . . heck . . . of a lot.

I dropped the robe on Dane and joined Andre at the blackened hole where the back of the kitchen had been.

“The cellar was just below here,” I said.

“Still is,” he said, studying the gaping maw where a floor should have been. “But it looks like molten lava with barrels.”

Gloria’s rusted chemical drums had been solidified into the crud.

Father Morrison sprinkled the last of his holy water across the hole. It didn’t steam. Whatever had melted was now solid rock. “We sealed the portal to hell,” he said as if he did this every day.

Belting his robe, Dane came to stand beside us. I was overly aware of his height and breadth and nakedness. I told myself it had been Max down there in that hellish dimension, not Dane, but my long-neglected body wasn’t convinced.

“Gloria experimented with Acme’s age-defying cosmetics. She used to store them down there,” he said. “Do I dare believe that it’s safe to bring out workmen, or should I just demolish the place?”

He sounded rather hopeful about the latter.

In the kitchen behind us, the voodoo professor and priest were arguing the same thing, while I was worrying about chemicals and thin dimensional veils.

The argument was interrupted by the doorbell and Hagatha shouting, “Company! The nuns are here.”

Andre and Dane both looked at me. I shrugged. “You said I could invite them.”

I grabbed a tray of sandwiches from the still-standing counter and sashayed back to the foyer as if welcoming carolers to a party.

Andre followed with the punch bowl. Father Morrison carried a tray of cups.

Since no one else emerged from the kitchen, I assumed the senator had taken the back way upstairs to get dressed, and the professor had escaped through a window rather than face nuns.

A few minutes later, Hagatha’s VW putt-putted to a rattle and departed, hopefully taking the prof with her.

The sisters smiled benevolently and with some degree of puzzlement at an empty foyer adorned only with a pentagram burn. Passing it off as a misguided Star of David probably wasn’t a good idea.

“A slight mishap,” I explained. “Come into the dining room. We had to send the rest of the party home. So sorry we didn’t have time to call you.”

I’d forgotten the chandelier above the table had torched the ceiling. We had no light to illuminate the snowy gloom. I wasn’t about to see if the fireplace had gas logs.

The nuns fluttered about the elegant table and hors d’oeuvres as if they were at a true diplomatic party. With an adoring audience, Father Morrison was in his element.

When Dane entered in all his sartorial glory, the nuns positively beamed.

In the gloom, it was hard to tell that half his hair had been burned off, and he was hiding a limp as well. Damn, but the man was good.

Patting to see if more of my own hair had been singed, pulling out a few more clumps, I stepped back next to Andre while the nuns blew on their pitch pipe and began their serenade.

Andre caught my hand behind my back and held it as the horrible house filled with joyous song.

I swear I saw angels singing with them. I was in bliss.

“Want to blow up the Zone next?” Andre whispered in my ear.

Eighteen

Andre and I left Max writing big checks to the church and to the hallelujah-singing angels. The nuns were happily recommending contractors to repair the senator’s newly exorcised hellhole. He still looked lonely, but wealthy politicians have lots of options. I couldn’t be one of them, no matter how
interesting
today had been.

It was dinnertime. I was bruised, exhausted, and as hungry as if I’d actually just had sex. The chicken sandwiches hadn’t appealed. Andre agreed a Chesty’s run was called for, and we set our mutual vehicles on the road to home.

To spare my tires from Zone rot, I had intended to park my Miata behind my boarding house and walk down to the Zone. But when I entered the neighborhood, everything was dark except the blue neon glow of the buildings.

And the red glow of the manhole covers.

Urgency beat out caution. I parked in front of Chesty’s beside Andre’s Mercedes. Warily, we both climbed out and stared at the restaurant’s blank windows.

“No electricity?” I suggested. “They all went home?” The utilities had promised me . . .

It was eerie not hearing the metallic thump of loud music and the shouts of a noisy crowd. They hadn’t even cranked up the manual music. I glanced down the street and elbowed Andre.

The lights were on at Bill’s Bar.

In sync, we strolled toward the only lights in town. I kept an eye on alleys, looking for blue blobs and mad utility men. The genuine garden gnome I’d seen before was still bathing in the steaming run-off of the gutter. He kicked his feet and winked at me.

Inanimate objects had a tendency to develop a life of their own in the Zone. That got me to thinking that I probably should bring the gnome statues back down here,
after
we halted the fight with MSI. Uniformed Nazis weren’t in my immediate plans for the Zone’s future, but I couldn’t keep them stoned forever.

The bar blasted heat, light, and raucous noise when Andre opened the door. I almost backed off. But curiosity and hunger forced me inside.