The Devil and Dan Cooley Read online

  She held the contract in her left hand, crumpled. When someone found her body, he'd find the contract with it, and people would know why she'd done what she'd done. She wasn't worried that the contract would be destroyed by the weather. The rain left Hell's paper untouched. It didn't get soggy or sodden, the letters didn't run, the corners didn't curl. That didn't surprise her. She figured if she had thrown it into a fire, it probably wouldn't have burned either.

  Pity the makers of envelopes couldn't get the formula, she thought. The post office had creamed enough of her mail that she figured nothing but Hell-proof paper would get through unscathed.

  Similar environments. Similar bureaucracies.

  She climbed onto the white cast-iron lawn chair she kept on her balcony and stared down into the darkness. She only stood a couple feet higher than she had before, but suddenly she felt dizzy. That would pass.

  She smiled a hopeless smile. So would everything else.

  The wind gusted past her, buffeting her. She eyed the poured-concrete railing and swallowed. The top of the railing was about six inches wide, and the whole thing was sturdy. Still, she hesitated. The wind would make standing on that railing precarious—and she intended to jump, but she did not wish to fall. She wanted some control over the last moments of her life.

  She braced both hands on the railing at the corner and scooted one leg up onto it. Then the other. The rain soaked through her clothes, stuck her hair to her face, stung her skin like a shower of BBs. It blew first left, then right, then left again as the wind shifted its patterns around the apartment building and found different routes through the complex. Lightning illuminated her target, then left her in darkness blacker than before, with afterimages of the ground below her etched in blue, white and black on her eyes.

  When she could see again, she tightened her grip on the contract that stole from her everything she'd worked for, and slowly began to stand.

  Chapter 46

  Meg looked out into the darkness. The incubus Larial, whom she'd first met in her law office just the day before, stood beside her, one strong hand resting on the small of her back.

  "The storm is magnificent," he whispered into her hair, "full of rage and power and hunger. But you would shame the storm, and make it as weak and mewling as a kitten, if you released your passion. Ah, Megan. Let me pleasure you. Let me give you all the magic in my body."

  Meg felt the thunder as much as she heard it; felt the rumble in her belly, in her breasts, in the tingling of her skin. She said, "I'm your lawyer. I represent you."

  "You are doing so much that is good for my kind, beautiful Meg. You'll give so much of your time and your effort to our lives. And what will you get in return? Only money? Money is cold, and it won't kiss you awake in the morning. It won't fill you, or tease you, or lick you, or bring you to ecstasy. It won't make you scream with pleasure... like I will."

  "It won't damn me to Hell, either," she said.

  "I won't damn you to Hell, Meg. Perhaps you can teach me to love. Perhaps we can find love for each other in our searches for pleasure. In Hell there is no place for love—did you know that? You didn't, did you? I can see it in your eyes."

  "That's ridiculous," Meg said. "You're saying that the only people in Hell are those who don't love anyone."

  "Or anything. If you truly love your work, or your hobbies, or even your pets, you can't go to Hell. Love will save you. You could save me, Meg. You know about love. You know what it is. Teach me."

  Meg felt the incubus's hands cupping her breasts, sliding down her belly, undoing the clasp and zipper of her skirt. His movements were so familiar; she closed her eyes and she could imagine the hands belonged to Dan.

  And anger tightened her muscles, and rage soured her stomach.

  Dan, you bastard. You embarrassed me in front of my clients. In front of my uncle. You had the balls to call my house and try to enlist him in helping you make up to me. You were sleeping with some other woman while you were dating me, and even if we never said we were exclusive, I wasn't seeing anyone else.

  The hands kept slipping... sliding... caressing.

  "You know about love," he said in Dan's voice. "He showed you what love was."

  Love, she thought. I know about love, all right. He showed me what love wasn't. And you're just like him, aren't you? You want to use me, too.

  Well, it isn't going to work this time.

  She turned, both angry and aroused, and ripped Larial's zipper down, and yanked his pants down around his knees. She wanted to hurt, to embarrass, to shame Dan—but Dan wasn't with her, and Larial was.

  She tripped him backwards, and when he collapsed to the floor, slapped him once across the face. That was for Dan.

  I can't love you, you bastard. You're just like Dan.

  But I can use you.

  Chapter 47

  Puck held out a hand, and Dan saw a light begin to shimmer in the darkness of his living room. It formed into a rounded cylinder about five and a half feet tall, and the cylinder began to shape itself into the form of a woman. High, tight breasts, long legs, narrow waist, flowing hair the color of dark honey. Huge sad hazel eyes, narrow nose, full lips.

  And the smile that he could never forget. The smile that said "I love you, and I will love you forever."

  "Francie," he whispered.

  She held out her arms to him and his heart felt like it would break.

  "I can give her to you," Puck said.

  The voice was outside of Dan's head, but inside of it too. I can give her back to you.

  Would you give anything to have her back?

  Would you give anything?

  Anything?

  And he thought, She's right there. Not solid yet, but she's Francie. My Francie.

  And Puck is my friend. He saved my life. He cares about me.

  I would give anything to have her back.

  Would you?

  Of course. I love her.

  How much do you love her? Would you give me your soul?

  That was the question, of course. He knew it was the question Puck would ask, though he didn't know how he knew. Puck had redeemed himself. Puck had saved Dan's life. He had escaped Hell, regained his memories of his past, repented...

  But he hadn't repented. He was still angry with God for taking away his wife and his son. He still hated God for sentencing him to Hell.

  And Dan had said he understood. But did he?

  He'd been dead. He'd been above his body, away from the world, and he knew without a doubt that Francie would be waiting for him. He knew that he would find her there. Where? Certainly not in Hell. Francie had loved the whole world and everyone in it. Wherever Francie was—and Dan wasn't certain that she was in a literal Heaven with angels and harps and God with a long white beard—she was someplace good.

  He'd been on his way to her.

  And Puck had pulled him back.

  And Puck was offering him a physical reincarnation of Francie for the few years the two of them would live. In exchange, he would give up an eternity with Francie in that wonderful place she'd discovered beyond.

  Dan stared at Puck.

  "You can't really give her back to me. You can only take me away from her. Can't you?"

  He caught movement behind Puck. The imp, Fetch, shaking his head vehemently back and forth. No, no, no. But doing it out of Puck's line of vision.

  "Don't be silly," Puck said. "She's right here. I'll have to have your signature on a few documents before I can completely materialize her—you wouldn't believe the number of Hellawatts it takes to bring someone back."

  "You're right," Dan said quietly. "I wouldn't."

  Puck stopped smiling. "Dan," he said, "what's gotten into you? I'm offering to give you Francie again. I can't tell you what I would have done if I'd had an offer like this. Here she is... the woman you love... and look at her, Dan. She wants you. She's waiting for you to bring her back into your arms. You think she hasn't missed you as much as you've missed her?"


  Francie held out her hands to him. Pleading. Her eyes were so sad and full of longing, her tremulous smile so full of hope. His heart nearly stopped from the pain of turning away from her.

  He reminded himself of the succubus he'd met, the one who'd offered to be Francie for him. He looked again to this ghostly Francie, and he wondered how much of her, if any of her, had ever been the woman he'd loved whole-heartedly. Probably none of her. Francie's soul was surely beyond the devil's reach. He couldn't haul her out of the afterlife and stuff her into a body—so this woman who looked just like Francie, and who might even act just like Francie, couldn't possibly be Francie. If she wasn't another succubus, she was something Puck had created from Dan's dreams and wishes and memories.

  These Hellraised monsters were going to bring back the dodos and the dinosaurs and the woolly mammoths; they were going to have Wyatt Earp and John Lennon and Marie Antoinette walking around in their park shaking hands with the paying customers. Why in God's name would he think Puck couldn't create a convincing replica of Francie?

  That's when it all became clear.

  Resolutely he turned back to Puck and said, "Now I know why you saved my life."

  Puck's eyebrows rose. "You do? Well, I'm glad to hear that. I saved your life because I'm your friend."

  "No," Dan said. "You saved my life because if I'd died then, I would have gone to be with Francie, and I would have been beyond your reach. You saved my life because I wasn't damned yet."

  Puck laughed.

  "You've been working on me all along, haven't you? You're no closer to redemption now than you were when I met you."

  Puck continued laughing, and he began to change. He grew taller, broader, uglier. His skin sprouted scales and his forehead and shoulders sprouted horns and his fingers changed to razor-tipped claws. Hellish fangs slid out of increasingly heavy jaws. His clothes vanished, and two black leathery wings unfurled from his back. His laughter got deeper and uglier.

  "Why would I want to repent?" he asked. "Why would any of the Hellraised want to repent? We have power. We have wealth. We have unimaginable knowledge. We can do things you can't even begin to understand."

  "Get out, Puck," Dan said.

  "And leave you without your darling Francie? You're damned anyway now, Dan. Damned and doubly damned. Because of how you treated her, Meg is at this very moment fornicating with an incubus, knowing full well what it is, and not caring. She's hating you and cursing you for your infidelity, and swearing that she'll never forgive you. That sort of hatred would be enough to damn her, and would be almost enough to take you down with her; those who cause the damnation of others are themselves damned. But that's not all."

  Dan closed his eyes. He could almost sense what the devil was about to say.

  "Right now Janna is standing on her balcony railing, getting ready to take the big plunge, if you know what I mean. She's realized that you don't really love her, Danny boy, and she thinks it's the only way out."

  "You're lying," Dan said between clenched teeth. "You're full of shit!"

  Puck shrugged, and described a circle in the air with one claw. The inside of the circle turned white, and then Dan saw Janna, just as Puck said, standing on the balcony railing, her hair whipping violently in the wind.

  Is it a trick? he thought. Could he show me this if it weren't really happening?

  "There's something else," Puck said. He waved his hand and the image of Janna disappeared. "She's carrying your child, Dan. She's carrying your child and soon the two of them will be nothing more than a wet spot on the pavement. And it will be your fault."

  The devil laughed.

  "And tomorrow my people are going to make sure that the Great Devil Makeover is proven to be a fraud. I'm going to go out and show them how I really am. And who I really am. My name is Scumslag, and I'm in charge of Satco. I'm going to lay out all the contracts I've signed with your radio station clients—you think they wanted to talk to me because I knew where their relatives were? They wanted deals—wealth, power, success, a longer life. All of them signed my contracts. And you were with me, so how is anyone ever going to believe that you weren't in on it—on this attempt to defraud and deceive an entire nation?"

  "No," Dan said. "They wanted reassurance."

  "They wanted what only I could give them. Guaranteed success. You know what else? Because of you, we got the land we wanted to build Devil's Point. All because of you. We figure we can get more souls out of Devil's Point in a month than we got in ten years by regular methods. And the other devils who've been taken in and cared for by all you suckers are going to come out and let everyone see the souls they've collected. Because of you, Dan. Because of you, and the good thing you did, helping a poor unfortunate devil find his way back to Heaven."

  The devil tapped on the table with one claw. "Every soul that's damned because you helped us will count against you in the Old Communist's record books. Millions of souls."

  The devil smiled an evil smile. "Pretty good thing you did there, wasn't it? You fooled a nation and damned some of the better people in the state, and come tomorrow you aren't going to be able to lift your head. They'll be hunting for it from here to Alaska. So take Francie now. Sign my contract and take her, because you'll never see her again after you die. Your soul already belongs to us. All my contract will do now is dictate the terms of your service to Hell. And maybe let you live a little longer when they come hunting for you—after all, we take care of our own."

  Lightning turned the room white. Thunder shook the walls and the floor and rattled the dishes.

  It could all be true, Dan thought. Perhaps none of the Hellraised had escaped the clutches of Hell; maybe, as Puck—rather, Scumslag—said, they didn't want to.

  Maybe every good thing I intended to do has done evil instead.

  The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

  And maybe it was all just a lie to get Dan to sign the contract. The imp still stood back there in the corner, shaking his head. No. No. No.

  Dan looked up to the place where he always figured Heaven would be, and he said, "God, if I've screwed this up, I'm sorry. I mean really, really sorry. I only wanted to help the Hellraised take advantage of the second chance you gave them. Please don't let anything bad happen to Janna, or to Meg. Please."

  He meant it with everything in him.

  He didn't expect what happened next. Scumslag screamed and vanished. "Francie" howled, metamorphosed into a hideous long-fanged gray-scaled monster out of a nightmare, and shimmered into darkness.

  Several sheets of paper fell to the floor, where they exploded on contact, burned brightly for just an instant without catching anything else on fire, and left the room in darkness.

  He stood shaking. "I have to call Meg," he said. "And Janna—Christ, I have to save Janna. I have to let them know."

  He heard the scuffling of tiny feet, and felt a tug at his pants leg. In a raspy, barely audible voice Fetch said, "Come too?"

  Chapter 48

  Janna stood on the railing, her arms outstretched, the contract in her hand.

  She squinted into the rain that slashed across her face, feeling herself swaying with the wind.

  I blew it, God, she thought. I was a jerk and a creep; I used people; I was probably at least halfway to Hell before I signed the contract, and I'm sorry I did it. I'm sorry. If I had it to do over, I'd do it differently, but it's too late for me now.

  She took a deep breath.

  Too late for me.

  The contract in her hand burst into flames.

  Startled, shocked, she flung it away from her, lost her balance, and fell. Backward. Over the chair. Onto her balcony, where she lay on the concrete with her head ringing and aching and her ribs on fire from the place where they'd hit the chair on the way down. She watched the contract burn.

  The rain stopped.

  She looked up at the black sky, and a flash of lighting illuminated the clouds. She almost expected to see God looking down at her, but she sa
w only the rounded underbellies of the cumulonimbus clouds that scudded by, racing toward the sea.

  The thunder rumbled.

  Shaking, hurting, she sat up. Her contract with Hell had burst into flames when she'd said she was sorry. She was free. Her entire life lay before her, and if she didn't have guaranteed success in it, she had an endless stream of opportunities. She would make of them what she could.

  She drew herself to her feet, and realized something was thudding against her front door. She wobbled a little as she hurried to answer it.

  It burst open before she got there, and Dan charged in, shouted, "Christ, you're alive," and threw his arms around her.

  She stood there like an idiot, with tears running down her cheeks. She wrapped her wet arms around him and sobbed. "I'm alive," she said. "I'm alive."

  They held each other for the longest time, and when they pulled apart, she could see that he'd been crying as hard as she had.

  "I haven't been completely honest with you," he said, stroking her hair. "There are some things in my past I need to tell you about. I was married once. My wife died of cancer. I promised myself when she died that I'd never fall in love again—that it hurt too much. But that's no way to live. It's like dying with her. And I'm not ready to die."

  "Me either." She nodded. "I've kept my own secrets, too, Dan. I've used people, I've lied, I've done things to hurt people who never did anything to me. I may not be perfect in the future, but I'll be better. I've seen the other side."

  "Do we have a chance together?" he asked her.

  She looked at his face, imagining the two of them growing old together. Not a very Hollywood image—but she could see it. More importantly, she could believe it. "We have a chance. Not a guarantee, you know—"

  He smiled. "A guarantee would be too easy."

  She took his hands in hers, and nodded. She deserved better than guarantees.

  He asked her, "Are you pregnant?"

  Her eyes went wide. "Of course not. Why would you think that?"

  "Something Puck said—that you were killing yourself and our baby because of me."