HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO JEFFE KENNEDY!!! RITA WINNER! :D
My regularly scheduled post:
Behold my inability to offer you flash fiction whilst in the midst of migraine. The drugs are onboard and I should be okay eventually. But deadlines wait for no head-splitter. So an excerpt of a fiery scene it is. This is from Damned If He Does. Our hero has attempted to seduce the heroine to no effect. Since he's an incubus, this is not expected. So he reports to his boss for advice. Only that doesn't go exactly as planned.
“Incubus,”
Ole Scratch said when the elevator door opened. He didn’t bother to look up
from whatever he was working on. “You’re here off schedule.”
Darsorin
approached the desk. “Yes. I’m a little confounded.”
Satan
glanced up at that, though he continued writing, his pencil shrieking against
the paper.
It
set Dar’s teeth on edge.
“You’re
empty-handed. Even after the power I fed you.”
Nearly burst him with,
Dar corrected. Not that he’d ever admit that aloud. “She’s asexual.”
“An
ace?” Satan’s gaze returned to his work. “Fine. You’ve wasted enough time on
that one. Leave her.”
“No.”
The
pencil stopped. Ole Scratch lifted his bottomless, soot-black gaze to Darsorin’s.
Scorching heat licked his skin. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to go on
meeting the twin pits of endless evil.
“What
did you say to me, unwise little demon?”
“I’ve
upheld my part of the bargain several times a night all over the world for the
past . . .”
“And
you will go on doing so for all of eternity, Hugh McClellan,” the Devil noted
in a flat, soft voice.
Dread
shivered up his spine at hearing his true name on the Devil’s tongue.
“Or
do you grow weary of your enviable task? You seduce countless women, something
you embraced with relish in life.”
No
match for that jab, he closed his eyes. “And sacrificed that life to it.”
Ole
Scratch chuckled. Screams of tortured souls echoed behind the sound. “You were
judged and damned. It wouldn’t be punishment if it didn’t pinch, now would it?
You understand your options.”
“I
haven’t been Hugh McClellan since the day I died. You made certain of it.”
“And
yet it is your true name and still holds your soul in thrall. So hear me. Leave
her or seduce her and bring me the curative power of her sexual energy. Your
soul hangs in the balance. If you’ve lost your taste for a job in the afterlife
that takes advantage of the proclivities you displayed in life, I am certain I
can find some other situation for you. Perhaps you’d prefer to spend eternity
the way murderers do.”
He
tried to suppress a shudder. Failed. Heaven provided special dispensation to
Satan for the punishment of murderers. Souls damned for killing someone –
anyone – stood in for innocent murder victims time after time. The innocent
souls still died, something neither Heaven nor Hell could prevent because of
the freewill clause in the human/Divine contract, but the innocent could be
spared pain and horror by trading in a damned soul to take the brunt. The
punishment was reserved for the most violent, and insanely painful
circumstances. Devilish, effective comeuppance. Dar had never had the courage
to ask what Ole Scratch got out of that bargain. That Satan did was certain.
Dar
swallowed hard and opened his eyes. “Understood.”
His
boss’s eyes narrowed as he studied Darsorin. “What is it about this one? You’ve
imagined yourself infatuated many times before now. How is this one different?”
“She
has no expectation,” he said. “I’m not a means to an end.”
Ole
Scratch snorted and sat back in his chair. “You imagine she values you for you?
When she has no idea who and what you are? Son. You’re thinking with the wrong
head.”
“It’s
not like I have a heart to break,” he snapped.
“Or
to give. Remember that. Don’t imagine you’re falling for her. You weren’t
capable of it in life and you are not capable of it now. Make your choices
going forward very, very carefully.”
Demotion
hung unspoken in the air between them. Darsorin blew out a sharp breath. “I’ll
let it go for a few days. Give her time to cool off. She ordered me to leave
her alone.”
“Why
would she do that, Incubus?”
“She
caught me out. Recognized me in waking life.”
“You
were staking her out?”
“Looking
for a way to break her open,” Darsorin said, nodding. “She confronted me.”
Satan
shrugged. “Not the first time it’s happened. It won’t be the last.”
“Though
usually, it leads to a waking sexual encounter,” Dar said. “This did not.”
“What
did it lead to?”
“Breakfast.”
“Breakfast.”
Darsorin
shrugged. “I made her a deal. I’d leave her alone if she’d have breakfast with
me and tell me why nothing I did worked on her.”
Ole
Scratch sat bolt upright, his eyes wide. “You did WHAT?”
The
floor trembled.
Darsorin
froze.
“You.
Made. A. Deal.” Satan bit out the words as he rose, his fists planted on his
desk. “YOU MADE A DEAL? Show me. NOW.”
He
did.
“You
struck a bargain with her.” The Devil snarled. Darkness swallowed the sunshine
outside. Thunder rumbled. “You swore an oath to leave her alone. To vanish from
her life.”
“With
no intention . . .”
“Any
bargain you strike with an innocent is made in MY name! Think you that I’ll be
forsworn by the likes of you? Over her? When I again do battle with the Divine,
it will be on my terms and in my time. You gave your word, demon. You will keep
it.”
Satan
flung a gesture at him.
Fire
erupted around him, slamming him to the melting carpet, consuming him. His skin
bubbled and crisped, cracking. The scream ripped from his blistering lips came
out a hoarse, parched croak. He became pain and smoke.
A
distant shrill rattled his charring skull.
Smoke
detectors.
The
flames winked out of existence.
Darsorin,
trapped in a body that Satan couldn’t kill, lay shuddering on the carpet that
he’d become a part of. The fibers had melted into his charred skin.
The
Devil uttered a guttural, ugly word not meant for human ears. It resonated
through the tortured flesh and bones of Darsorin, all the way to the damned
soul of Hugh McClellan, which Satan held in thrall.
Reality
opened beneath him and he fell.
He
moaned a protest before he plunged straight into the soul crushing gray stones
of his penitent's cell and into a sadist’s lash.
