It didn’t creak and groan and reveal a hidden staircase like action movies had conditioned her to expect. The wall just
vanished,
taking the entire room with it.
Sasha wasn’t in a crisp, gleaming white crypt anymore.
“What the he—” She stopped herself before referencing Hell, uncertain what the protocol was for swearing in the Underworld. “Hello?” Her voice echoed as if she were on a cavernous sound stage, but the dim, torch-lit room she was in was small, barely bigger than Saint John’s alcove. Sasha spun three hundred and sixty degrees, trying to get her bearings.
There were no doors, no windows, just a seamless drywall box, but somehow she had been transported here without moving an inch. In theory, that meant she could get out again. Unless the entire quest was a trap. But why would the angels go to such trouble to trap her here? It didn’t make sense. This had to be the entrance.
Or some kind of waiting room. The only furnishings were a high-backed chair, a freestanding lamp and a coffee table stocked with back issues of
Us Weekly
and
Hello!
magazine.
“Great. The waiting room of Hell. So where’s the damn receptionist?”
A high, chattering giggle echoed behind her.
Sasha whipped around, her hand going to the Desert Eagle on her right hip.
A little man crouched in the shadows.
“You weren’t there a second ago.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Wasn’t I?” He giggled again, the sound skittering around the room like a bird fluttering off the walls.
“Geryon?”
“Please, call me Gerry.” He stepped into the light from the lamp and Sasha realized what she’d thought was a crouch was his natural height. He couldn’t be more than four-feet tall, but his shoulders were those of a much larger man, broad and heavy. He wore snug black leather pants and a flowing pirate shirt hung open midway down his chest. He had a thin, greased moustache—the kind that hadn’t been popular since the twenties—and when he smiled his face was eerily familiar, though Sasha was sure she had never seen him before. She would have remembered the horns. Not to mention the solid red complexion.
Nubby horns the size of a thimble ringed his head like a crown, poking out of his oil-slicked black hair, and his skin was the ruddy color of red clay.
He looked classically demonic, but she’d envisioned the gatekeeper as bigger, more imposing. Maybe breathing fire or with razor-sharp teeth. Not as a chittering Oompa-Loompa with a pirate fetish.
“You’re the gatekeeper?”
“Mmm,” Gerry mumbled vaguely as he circled her, peering up into her face. “So you’re the one dating Satan’s stepson, eh? I thought you’d be taller.”
“Sorry, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” Sasha said, beginning to feel like that was all she ever said. “I don’t know Satan or his stepson.” She flashed the invitation. “An angel sent me. I need to get into Hell.”
And with those words she officially surpassed her daily quota of things she’d expected never to say.
Gerry beamed at her and scuttled back to perch on a stool she would
swear
hadn’t been there a minute ago. He crossed his legs and laced his fingers over one knee. “Complicated business, angelic quests. They never tell you everything you think they’re telling you.”
“I hear you on that one. They didn’t tell me shit.”
Gerry giggled, and again the sound seemed to travel around the room without him. “I like you, Christian. You’re funny. I can see why he chose you.”
“I wasn’t aware a sense of humor was a criterion for being picked on by angels.” And she certainly hadn’t been trying to be funny. She waved the invitation again. “You’re the gatekeeper, right? I give you this and you let me in?”
“Well—” Gerry swung his top leg, rocking on the stool, “—there is the small matter of the toll.”
“Of course.” There was always a price. “And the toll is…?”
“That’s a nice jacket.”
“I don’t really think it’s your color,” Sasha retorted, already emptying the pockets of artillery and stripping the brick-red leather from her shoulders. She flung it at him and he caught it deftly, plucking at the seams with sharp little nails and humming happily.
“Lovely workmanship. Thank you, Christian. I shall treasure it always.” He swung the jacket around his shoulders like a cape, the hem brushing the floor. “Now about your toll.”
She wedged her Taser into her front jeans pocket, adjusting it so it didn’t bump the angelic .44 Magnum on her hip. “The jacket is my toll.”
“Is it? Did I agree to that?” Gerry’s giggle roamed the room again. “Christian, Christian. You will never make it in Hell if that is how you make deals with devils. Giving me gifts before we agree to a price? You give me all the power in the negotiation.” He shook his head dolefully. “I like you, but the next demon may not be so generous.”
So generous as to steal her favorite jacket.
Damned Oompa-Loompa.
“How does one make deals with devils?”
“Very carefully.” He smiled viciously. “Angels, humans, you’re so direct. A demon never comes at a deal head-on. You cannot reveal what you really want. Exposing your desire makes you weak and dealing with demons is all about strength, getting everything while giving nothing. You give a compliment, offer something you have no intention of giving until your opponent reveals what they truly desire. Then you have the power, see? Angels have rules and brute force.
We
have strategy and finesse.”
There was pride in his voice and Sasha was struck by the realization that she was talking to a real, live demon. It was a symptom of how insane her night had been that it had taken her this long before that whammy hit. She had never even seen a demon on television before. They were hermitlike with their privacy. And now, here she was, getting a crash course on demon negotiations from a devil himself.
A thousand questions leapt into her mind—
Are demons really evil? Why would they bother tempting man? Do they feel happiness? Joy? Love?
—but she didn’t have time to interrogate Gerry. Jay had been in Hell for nearly two hours already. She had no idea what was happening to him and the longer she delayed, the more a gnawing sense of worry ate away at her insides.
She needed to negotiate her entrance into the Underworld. Quickly.
Give a compliment…
“That’s a nice moustache.”
Gerry preened, stroking the greasy curl on his upper lip. “You like it? My glamour was locked when I was imprisoned here, so I can’t change it, but I think it suits me. Don’t you?”
“Definitely. It’s you.”
“Douglas Fairbanks had one just like it, you know.”
With those words, Sasha abruptly realized who Gerry reminded her of. The twenties moustache, the swashbuckling clothes, even his facial features were similar, with the exception of the horns. Geryon was Douglas Fairbanks as an Oompa-Loompa demon. She’d heard a demon’s ability to change his appearance varied, but it never occurred to her that a small, horned man with red skin would try to make himself over into a long-dead silent-movie star.
“You a big Fairbanks fan?”
“He was the first.” Gerry sighed, radiating hero worship from every ruddy pore. “The first of the Hollywood royalty. His charisma could captivate an audience.” His expression turned sly. “There’s power in that, you know. No one could hold a viewer in the palm of his hand quite like Fairbanks.” Gerry hopped down from the stool and wandered over to the wall, pulling down a framed black-and-white photo that hadn’t been hanging there a moment ago. “Morning Star was jealous, of course. In retrospect it might not have been wise for me to tell Lucifer to his face that Douglas Fairbanks was more charismatic than he, but a hundred years guarding this gate is a small punishment. Though the time does seem to stretch these days. I don’t get many visitors. Are you sure you won’t stay?”
“I really should be getting on.” She had no way of knowing how long it would take her to find Jay and bring him out. Visions of torture danced in her head—this Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly Sugar Plum Fairy material.
“I don’t have to let you pass,” Gerry said with a cagey smile.
Sasha’s eyes flicked down to the celebrity rags littering the table—this week’s issues by the look of them. Gerry might not get out much, but he had the most up-to-date celebrity gossip at his fingertips. “That’s a shame,” Sasha said carefully. “If you don’t let me through, I don’t think I can tell you the inside scoop on Trista Lovelace’s new boyfriend.”
She tossed out the name of Hollywood’s newest darling casually, but Gerry’s breathing quickened and his pupils dilated until his eyes were pools of black—a junkie scenting his next fix. “Trista Lovelace?”
“I might be willing to tell you,” Sasha said carefully, “if that information paid my toll and got me into Hell without any further delay.” She tried to make the sentence pin down any variables, leaving as little up to interpretation as possible.
Gerry beamed. “She learns!” He laughed, bounding up onto his stool again, the framed photo vanishing from his hands. “Tell me.”
“Agree to the deal first.”
He rocked back and forth on the stool, humming gleefully. “Smart, Christian, not to trust me.” His eyes twinkled like a demented Santa Claus as he confessed, “I
lie,
you know. It’s what we do.”
The feeling she was completely out of her depth returned. Marching into Hell and making deals with demons wasn’t how she’d envisioned her Christmas Eve. Fantasies of decorating cookies and watching
It’s a Wonderful Life,
all down the drain so she could negotiate with creatures who took pleasure in deception.
“Do we have a deal?”
“So stern, so forceful.” Gerry snickered. “A deal. You tell me about Trista Lovelace’s love life and I open the portal of Hell for you.”
“Do we shake on it?”
“Never give a demon lord your hand, Christian. You might not get it back.”
Sasha put her hand back on the butt of the Desert Eagle. “Fair enough.” Thank God she’d just finished doubling for Trista on next summer’s blockbuster. “Trista Lovelace broke up with Cameron Kyle and is now dating his younger brother, Duncan. Open the portal.”
Gerry’s head wobbled in a circle as he giggled, the Cheshire Cat on helium. “Duncan Kyle! That is almost worth two boons.”
“The portal.”
“Yes, of course.” He spun to face the blank wall behind him, rubbing his palms together. “But where should I put it? Here? Close to your imprisoned lover? Or perhaps there, in the outer Mongolia of the demonic realms? Decisions, decisions.”
Frustration tightened Sasha’s grip on the angel’s gun. “Put it close. You can count that as my second boon. You said yourself my gossip was worth two.”
He held up a finger. “
Almost
two. But I can put you right in your lover’s lap,
if—
”
“If?”
“Layla Christian. So beautiful, so charismatic, and yet so elusive. She smiles and even the press forget to mourn the loss of the stories she could give them. And
you
know all her secrets.” Gerry’s expression was no longer that of a playful fanatic. Now his eyes were hungry and dark. “Tell me just one secret, Layla Christian’s daughter. One thing no one else knows.”
The Desert Eagle seemed to leap out of the holster, eager to come out and play. “My mother taught me how to fire a gun,” Sasha said, leveling the .44 Magnum at the impish demon. “How’s that for a secret?”
Gerry gasped, his expression alight. “Oh yes, I can see why he likes you. An Amazon with an angel’s sword.” He grinned again—an expression Sasha was coming to realize was more feral than joyful. “You may yet succeed tonight, Christian. But are you sure you want to? Angelic promises never mean what you want them to. What prize did they offer you?”
“This isn’t about a prize.” She wasn’t a mercenary, for Chrissake. “I’m getting Jay out of Hell.”
Gerry shrank down on himself, his giddy humor darkening rapidly. “Be careful what you wish for, Sasha Christian. In Heaven, as in Hell, things are rarely as they seem. The pawn of virtue enamored of Morning Star’s stepson is not beloved of angels. Light cannot love the dark.”
What the hell was his deal with the Satan’s stepson bit? Was that some kind of demonic trash talk?
“Thank you, Yoda. The portal?”
This time Gerry’s smile was disturbingly demonic. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He turned and placed his hand against the plain white drywall. It shriveled away from his touch like tissue burning, peeling back the walls and ceilings and eating across the floor until the waiting room was reduced to ashy cinders on a rough stone floor.
Now
this
is a catacomb. Indiana Jones, eat your heart out
.
Torches lit a massive cavern with wavering light, drawing shadows on pocked stone and sod walls. Sasha avoided looking at those walls too closely—not wanting to know what else they might be composed of.
Uneven stairs led up to a stone altar in the center of the cavern, an altar dominated by an engraved metal door standing alone at the center of the dais. A door she knew didn’t just open to the empty air on the other side.
Gerry scurried up the stairs, pulled a key from his voluminous pirate sleeves and fit it into the lock. The door swung open without a whisper of sound—no pomp, no fanfare, no deathly screams. Gerry bowed like a Victorian butler. “Welcome to Hell, Christian.”
Sasha licked her lips nervously.
Quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
She took the steps two at a time and kept that momentum going, rushing the door.
Oh shit, what am I doing?
Two running strides and she was there.
Sasha stormed the door to Hell at a run—and slammed into an invisible barrier, bouncing off it and landing hard on her ass.
“Oomphf.”
Gerry’s cackle danced around the cavernous room. “Did the Champion forget to sign her contract? Silly girl. Can’t get into the Prince’s lair without signing.”
“What contract?” Sasha snapped. “There was no contract.”
“Wasn’t there? What’s that in your pocket?”
The embossed invitation to Hell began to rise out of her back pocket of its own volition. Sasha caught it one-handed before it could float out of reach. The paper crackled beneath her fingers, heavy cardstock morphed into crinkling velum and a trifolded contract fell open in her hands. Large calligrapher’s script filled the pages with brown ink.