'Tween Heaven and Hell (3 page)

I was meeting Mx. Deaver at the Church of the Twined Hands
that night at nine o’clock. Suffice it to say I was not looking forward to it.

Chapter Three

Between a Devil and His Hard
Place

When I was very little, I used to hide from monsters,

Now I am very big, the monsters hide from me…

As the Viper dropped through the roof of my transpo shelter
at home, I opened my weary eyes and gathered up my bag and briefcase.
“Exiting.” The driver’s side door of the Viper opened and I stepped out.
“Secure area.” The door in the roof of the shelter hissed shut and locked into
place and the driver’s side door on the Viper closed and locked. I moved around
the vehicle and punched my code into the keypad on the wall. The entrance to my
living quarters slid back into the wall as I approached it, then slid shut
behind me. “Secure area.” And it locked.

This was the only time of day I wished I had a pet or
something that could greet me at the door after a tough day at the office.
Maybe I should get a pigmy gargoyle or something. I heaved a weary sigh and
dropped my bag and case on the table beside the entry door. “All lights, full.”
The entire house lit up and I moved into the kitchen immediately to see what I
could scrounge up to fill the empty, aching hole in my stomach. The motley
assortment in the refrigeration unit was totally uninspiring, but I managed to
snag a dehydrated meal and a slightly flat bottle of fizzy water. I placed the
meal into the rehydrator and went to change for the meeting with my new client,
sucking down the bad-tasting water as I went.

I pulled the snug, black turtleneck sweater I was wearing
off over my head and removed my caramel-colored simulated leather thigh skirt.
I headed for the personal hygiene room, pulling black tights off my legs as I
went. My message center on the televisual bleeped to life when it sensed
movement in the room.

“You have four new calls,” a sexy, male voice informed me as
I nearly fell on my head when I got tangled in the tights. “Shit. Play Number
One full volume,” I said as I continued into the personal hygiene room.

The center beeped to announce my first message and my friend
Kayla’s bright, breathless voice followed me into the personal hygiene room.
“Hey girl. Where ya been? Call me, I need to tell you about this crashin’ guy I
met.”

I smiled. Kayla was always meeting “crashin’” guys. Which
was a good term for the kind of guys she met. To Kayla, they were like a
serious drug and when they dumped her because she was oh-so needy, she always
crashed and burned for about two weeks.

Message #2 was from my mother, who basically just wanted me
to get married and settle down, take a safe, boring job selling environmentally
and politically correct items, and give her about ten grandchildren. The third
message was from a longtime client who wanted me to kill a murderous demon that
was torturing his customers.

Just a typical day in my life.

I programmed the faucet to emit warm, soapy water and washed
my face quickly, leaning into the warm air of the drying disc on the wall with
a sigh. Not for the first time that day, I wished I could put my soft, warm
jammies on and climb into bed with a good palm screen novel.

As I left the personal hygiene room I grabbed a
tooth-cleaning lozenge and popped it into my mouth. It exploded gently as it
mixed with my saliva and began fizzing away the day’s scum as the final message
beeped into my consciousness.

“Mx. Phelps,” said a heavily accented, baritone voice. “I
need to see you tonight. I know you are meeting a client at the Church of the
Twined Hands and I must see you before you go there. Please call me back
immediately.”

I pulled a soft, black dress over my head and said, “Bite
me.” I was getting pretty sick of everybody needing everything last week. With
a sigh that said, Astra, you’re an adult now and you have a business to nurture
and you are subject to the every whim of all of your clients, even ones you
don’t know you have yet, I said, “Return last call.” The phone barely finished
ringing through before the same, deeply masculine voice answered it.

“Mx. Phelps?”

“That’s me, who’s this?” I sat on the edge of my bed and
pulled tall black boots with no heels over my bare legs. The politically
incorrect leather of the boots melted around my calves and held them gently but
firmly. No matter how hard it tried, humankind would never make a fake leather
that rivaled the real, God-made stuff. I rubbed my hand up my right boot to
smooth it and then shoved a long, thin stiletto type knife into the side of it,
leaving just the top ridge of the handle exposed so I could grab it quickly if
I needed to.

“That isn’t important right now, I need to meet with you.”

Okay that did it. “You’re kidding me right? I don’t run all
over the place meeting with people if I don’t know who they are and why I’m
meeting them. Not in my line of work.” I was dimly aware of a certain shrieking
tenor to my voice but I was beyond caring.

I was tempted to flip on the visual but I generally resisted
using it at home because I had a habit of forgetting it was on and embarrassing
myself by answering it naked.

A very long silence filled the air as I waited for my sexy
sounding antagonist to respond. I was damned if I was gonna talk again before
he did. I used the time to put a vial of holy water into my purse and clasp a
belt of gold crosses around my waist. A platinum dagger tipped with angel blood
slid neatly into the sheath I strapped to one of my thighs and, though the
dress was soft and draped nicely around my curves, the sheath hid the dagger
nicely. I stood in front of my mirrored wall and made a few adjustments until
everything was properly hidden.

Just as I was about to think he’d hung up without my knowing
it, the voice said, “I guess you could call me Mx. Deaver’s problem. I need to
talk to you before he fills your head with his lies and nonsense.”

“You’re the advocate?”

“I’m sending someone to pick you up.” And he was just…gone.

“Shit!”

I knew I couldn’t wait around and allow myself to get
dragged to a meeting with some evil advocate before I knew what I was getting
myself into. I grabbed my bag and left my living space.

The Viper rose into the cool, clear night on nearly silent
feet of air and tore away from home. I programmed in the location of the Church
of the Twined Hands and heaved a sigh. I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d felt a
stab of fear and dread as I’d spoken to Deaver’s Advocate, but I’d learned long
ago to trust my instincts. They were almost always right on the mark.

The televisual unit on the Viper’s control panel chirped
twice and Emo’s devilish face filled the eight inch square screen. “Hey Astra,
I just wanted to let you know you got a call from some scary sounding guy, I
think it might have been your new client, that cultist, what was his name?”

“Deaver?”

“Yeah, him. I had a really weird feeling talking to him. He
had visual blacked out and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. I don’t want
you to meet with this guy alone.”

“Yeah, I think I already talked to him, he called at my
place. He was pretty pushy but I can handle him. Did you get somebody to fix
the glass?”

He frowned and opened his mouth but before he could speak
his image wavered with some kind of weird interference and, as I was playing
with the controls to bring him back into focus I suddenly realized that the
Viper’s interior had grown much too cool. A prickle of fear sprung up between
my shoulder blades and I cursed silently as the hair on my arms stood at
attention again. The Viper jerked to a sudden stop as if someone had tied a
rope to it. My ears picked up the remembered moaning noise outside my stalled
vehicle.

Sonofabitch! I grabbed the cross I’d clasped around my neck
as the Viper started to vibrate against the sucking power of the thing outside.
I took the Viper off auto control and plunged it into hyperforward, feeling it
strain against the grasping monster. The Viper bucked and swung violently from
side to side before giving up with a gasp and letting itself be sucked into the
night.

I fought to control the helpless terror that gripped me as
the Viper shot off in the opposite direction from where I’d been heading. What
was especially disconcerting was the fact that my protective screens had come
up without my telling them to, completely blocking my view.

Let’s see, I was blinded, flying somewhere at about light
speed, under the control of something I couldn’t see and had every reason to
fear and my armpits were beginning to sweat onto my nice, black dress. Yep.
This event was definitely going into the shitty book.

The Viper whizzed north, for about twenty minutes. At the
current speed, which was about four hundred mph, I estimated that I should be
well into Wisconsin by now, unless we were going the opposite direction, in
which case I didn’t know where the Hades I was.

I prayed for the Viper to stop and then when it did, I
suddenly wished it would keep going. When I finally felt it slow and begin its
descent, I checked all of my weapons and cursed myself for not bringing my
ultraviolet light laser with me. Then, closing my eyes and taking a deep
breath, I tried to prepare my mind for whatever battle lay ahead.

As the Viper settled silently into hover, I clutched the
cross, which was secure on a chain around my neck to help me hold onto it in
case the sucking thing was out there and said, “Exiting.” The driver’s side
door swung open and I forced myself to step out of the Viper. Looking around, I
realized that we had settled tidily into the center of what looked like a
large, empty warehouse. I flared my nostrils and closed my eyes, putting all of
my energies into sensing the space for auras, but there appeared to be nothing,
or no one, else in that room with me.

“Well that’s just great! What the Hades am I doing here?” I
stamped a foot angrily and shouted into the empty space. My voice echoed off
the bare, concrete walls and came back to me as a rumble of deep laughter. I
narrowed my eyes and plunged my hand into my coat pocket, where I’d stashed the
holy water during my lovely, relaxing flight to my current destination.

I really didn’t think my voice was that deep. “Who the
Heaven’s there and Hades hold you!”

The laughter stopped and something shimmered just on the
periphery of my vision. I turned to meet it head-on and my eyes landed on the
most devastatingly gorgeous hunk of he-devil I’d ever seen.

Chapter Four

Advocating Evil

When evil has a pretty face, it’s often hard to fight,

When evil has a crashin’ bod, you’re Hades-bound
tonight.

He moved toward me on long, straight legs that were encased
in equally long, seductively tight pants of some kind of black, shimmery
material. The pants climbed his legs lovingly, reaching toward an impossibly
beautiful torso with tender fingers of cloth and melted over his narrow hips
before tucking themselves away in his trim waistline. His shoulders were broad
and strained against the sheer white shirt he was wearing. Like a pulsating
billboard hanging over Times Square, the shirt pronounced him a sexual
predator. It was tucked into the shimmering pants but was left basically
unbuttoned, showcasing a lean but well-sculpted chest of the most beautiful
golden color I’d ever seen.

As he walked, his pecs rippled and his biceps bulged against
the tissue thin fabric of the shirt. My eyes finally made it to his face as he
got within five feet of me and I almost forgot to raise the cross to stop him.

His deep laughter rumbled through the room as he came to a
casual stop and cocked his gorgeous head at me. “You have no reason to fear
me,” he said. After the barest hesitation he added, “At the moment.” It was the
deep, sexy voice from the televisual.

I blinked. “You’re the advocate?”

“I never said that.”

I blinked again. “You didn’t?” I felt as if my mind had
turned to water and was flowing out of my head. My body felt languid and warm.
Very warm if you know what I mean. I had to force myself to concentrate on
keeping the cross up. He just stared at me through almond shaped eyes that
looked about ten miles deep. His devastatingly sensual gaze was cloaked in
black velvet and ringed with pulsating rings of gold. His burnished black mane
of hair fell around his square, golden jaw and touched his shoulders just where
the barest, sexiest, little curl started at the ends.

“Shit.” I shook my head and pinched myself with my free
hand. “Get out of my head!”

He laughed again. “But it’s nice in there.”

“Get the hell out or I’ll vaporize you. I pulled the holy
water out of my pocket and started unscrewing the cap.

He raised large, square, hands in surrender and the woozy
feeling began draining away from my mind. After a minute my body almost stopped
tingling.

He shook his head, causing the glossy, black mane to swing
away from his shoulders. No, the tingling wasn’t entirely gone, but I wasn’t
going to say anything because I was afraid it was me doing it this time and I
didn’t want to embarrass myself.

“It’s really too bad, I was enjoying our mating.”

Forcing myself to ignore his affect on my body I shook my
head and narrowed my eyes at him. “There was no mating going on, bud, not even
a little bit.”

He simply smiled at me in a way that made me doubt my own
reality.

“Not of the physical kind, of course, that will come later.
But you must have noticed how our minds were drawn to each other. I haven’t
felt that kind of attraction for quite some time.”

To avoid thinking about what he was saying, I concentrated
hard on the accent. Where had I heard it before? “Get over it, it’s not
reciprocal.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Deny it if you will. It
will do you no good.”