Sympathy for the devil Read online

  He had one hour to get ready.

  Less than one hour—the steps from Hell had eaten some of that time.

  He sat up and stiffened his spine and took a deep breath.

  "Agonostis," he told himself, "you've dragged more souls into Hell than any other Hellspawn in existence. You've dragged the mightiest and the purest through the mire, and you had fun doing it." He nodded sharply. "What you told Jezerael wasn't a lie. You've been made commander of your own army—almost sixty thousand strong, and surely the worst Hell has to offer." He grinned. "And you're operating with God's permission."

  There was an American phrase that came to mind—shooting fish in a barrel. "That's it," he said. "This is shooting fish in a barrel. And as for Dayne Kuttner—well, Agonostis, you've never had the opportunity to go one-on-one with a single human soul before. Let's see how this woman stands up to the Lord of Lust."

  He thought over the rules Lucifer had read to him, and when he considered them, he could think of dozens of ways to stay within the letter of the law while still completely subverting its spirit. Agonostis reached a decision. He stood and materialized himself into the Earthside operations computer room. He faced the mainframe that took up the central portion of the room and said in a loud voice, "Computer, I need a complete file on Dayne Teresa Kuttner and regional maps of the area in North Carolina that she inhabits with all the hot sin-spots marked out. Generate a database of our souls in the area, too, hard copy and disk media—I intend to set up a branch office wherever she lives. Also, I'll need the complete list of the troops assigned to me, and their specialties. Give me those in hard copy and disk, too."

  The box hummed ominously, then subsided. The words, GO AWAY, YOU INCOMPETENT BOOB—I'M BUSY, scrolled down the screen.

  Agonostis gritted his teeth. He said, "Tell me what I need to know or I'll have you reprogrammed by gargoyles."

  The computer flashed a different message. YOU'RE IN HOT WATER WITH THE ARCHFIEND, SHITHEAD. DON'T THREATEN ME.

  Agonostis bit the inside of his lip. God was going to suck him out of Hell and dump him somewhere on Earth in a very short time, and he didn't know who, or what, he was up against. "I want those records now."

  YOU'LL WAIT UNTIL I FIND THEM.

  "I'm not in that much trouble, Computer. Nor was I joking about the gargoyles." Agonostis pressed the palm of his hand against the side of the computer, and ran a short, sharp spike of power through the circuits. "If you try to screw with me, I'll melt your chips and your soul can come back as shit on the soles of the feet of the damned . . . and you can spend a millennia or two working your way up to gargoyle junior grade. Got that?"

  The computer grumbled and snarled and growled. GOT IT.

  "I thought you might. Give me the list of Unchained right now. Have an imp bring my materials to me in the anteroom in ten minutes, and immediately notify all lieutenants and above who are going to Earth to meet me there at the same time."

  A disk and a sheaf of fireproof paper appeared in Agonostis' outstretched hand.

  Agonostis dematerialized into a pocket of fast-time, set to exist for nine minutes. He set his own personal time for twenty-four hours, and in that twenty-four hours he set up his battle plans and made assignments and created well-focused disorder out of chaos. The energy drain on his soul required to compress time so fiercely and to hold it for so long was enormous, and he was literally sweating blood by the time he'd completed the plans. But he had them, and they were good.

  He appeared in the anteroom to discover his command scurrying in the door and scrambling for seats; the room bustled with activity.

  Agonostis cleared his throat, and the throng fell silent.

  "All right, you. Hell is taking its business to Earth, and I am in charge. You make a mistake, you'll answer to me—and if you screw up badly enough, I'll make you wish you were still damnedsouls hanging in the Pit. Do . . . you . . . understand?"

  "Yes, Lord Agonostis!" they shouted.

  Agonostis nodded curtly. "Fine. These are your orders." He outlined the plan he'd worked out in slow-time.

  Chapter 11

  The light on her answering machine blinked incessantly. Dayne decided to listen to the messages before she made her popcorn. Five messages instead of the four that had been there when she got home. Somebody must have called while she was in the shower.

  "Hey, Dayno. It's Greg. Lucy and I are going to be in town next weekend—I've got a project down your way and the company is flying us in. If you're going to be there, we'd love to stop by and see you. Give me a call back when you can."

  Her oldest brother and his wife rarely made it down from Minnesota. Dayne was scheduled to work the entire next weekend, but might be able to swap some time with a couple of her colleagues; they owed her since she'd covered for them while they had the flu. She made a note to herself to call the hospital first thing the next morning to start lining things up.

  . . .

  She hated hangups.

  . . .

  Another one.

  "I hate talking to these things. Geez, Dayne—are you ever going to get home? When you get off work, come over. Mike got a great deal on steaks and we need to use them up. Call before you come and we'll have yours ready when you get here. Any time will be fine. We're going to be up late."

  That was Paige, who never identified herself on the answering machine, and usually refused to leave messages. Most likely the two previous hang-ups had been hers. Dayne paused the machine and considered. Paige called when she wanted Dayne's company; she also called when she'd just met a single man she thought Dayne would like and had decided it was time to try matchmaking again. There was absolutely no way to tell which kind of call this was.

  "So how much do I want a grilled steak?" she asked the cats.

  They sat on the floor in the kitchen, watching her with inscrutable expressions.

  "I don't know either."

  She pushed the pause button.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "I'm watching you" . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Her stomach twisted. The call had come while she was in the shower. Was it a coincidence? No one could see her in the shower, though maybe someone might have been able to see her in her spare bedroom working out. Had she left the blinds up? She'd been really angry when she was up there.

  She shivered and stared at the goosebumps on her arms.

  Most of the time, being alone was better than being married had been—but when she'd been married, she'd never gotten phone calls like that. As it was, she didn't get them often. They still felt ugly though.

  The procedure the police had for dealing with such calls was complicated, and the phone company's was about equally so. She'd called both when she'd had a similar problem over a year earlier. She frowned and stared at her answering machine. There had to be something she could do to get rid of the caller . . . something she could say.

  She sat down with a pencil and paper and made a few notes—things that would convince whoever was doing this to go away. She juggled her ideas back and forth, and finally came up with a message she liked. She practiced it a few times, letting her anger work through into her voice, then began recording.

  "You have reached a number that is currently under surveillance," she said, pitching her voice low and mean. "Under FCC regulations and state and federal wiretapping and recording guidelines, I am required to inform you that all calls to this number are being recorded, and will be admissible as evidence in police procedures and in a court of law. Leaving a message implies informed consent. If you still wish to leave a message, do so after the beep."

  She stopped the recording and grinned. Let the jerk think about that for a while.

  The phone call decided her, though. She felt like having steak for dinner on somebody else's nickel, and more importantly, she felt like getting out of the house and going som
eplace where there were people. If Paige was trying to fix her up, maybe the guy would be someone interesting. If Paige was not trying to matchmake, Dayne would have the pleasure of visiting with friends for an evening instead of watching reruns.

  And if the jerk called back, he'd get the machine.

  She dialed Paige's number. "Paige . . . I'm on my way over—but don't let Mike throw the steak on the grill just yet. I think this time I want it still kicking a bit."

  When she hung up, the thought that the person leaving the messages might actually be watching her recurred. She considered options; she had the apartment about as burglar-proof as she could make it. There were deadbolts on both doors and all the windows were pinned—but she might need some security measures available to her when she answered the door. She was strong for her size, and fast—but she was also five-feet-nothing and she weighed ninety-seven pounds. She couldn't rely on strength. Instead, she'd have to rely on leverage—just like in nursing. Her eyes narrowed. Just like in everything, really.

  She ran upstairs and rummaged around until she found both of her old baseball bats. She'd been on the hospital softball team for a couple of years, and had spent more than a little time practicing.

  She rested one bat behind each door. That would do for a start.

  She pulled a couple of spare canisters of pepper gas out of her kitchen junk drawer and put one of those near each door, too. Pepper gas was nasty stuff, better than mace or tear gas or ammonia-water or anything else she knew of for stopping attackers, either two- or four-legged. With her apartment armed, she found some jeans and a rugby shirt and her presentable sneakers, and jogged out the door with a third canister of pepper gas tucked inconspicuously into her front jeans pocket. She looked at her watch as she got into the car—nine P.M. already. Pretty late for dinner, she thought. She hoped Paige and Mike had been serious about staying up.

  She was halfway to her destination when something big and red dashed across the road in front of her headlights. It was only where she could see it for an instant—far too short a time for her to identify whatever it had been. She slammed on the brakes, hoping to get a second glimpse . . . the thing had almost looked like someone in a costume, though it had had an animal's shambling, loose-limbed gait . . . but then the eerie feeling that she was being watched made her decide to hurry on.

  She arrived at Paige's house still frowning, convinced that what she had seen was wrong somehow.

  She wished she'd gotten a better look.

  Chapter 12

  The light had come while Agonostis was still finishing laying out his battle plans—without sound or warning, Heaven had taken Lucifer's hand-picked Hellspawn from whatever part of Hell they'd been in. Fifty-eight thousand eight hundred fifty-one damned vanished from the bowels of Hell. From the lowliest gargoyle and gremlin to the mightiest of fallen angels, they blinked out of existence in one location and blinked back into existence somewhere else.

  But each of them was in a different somewhere else.

  Agonostis looked around. He was alone, in the middle of somebody's garden, stark naked and in his original form. He had not intended to arrive in such a fashion. He'd been expected to stop by the office to pick up his final orders; he'd failed to do that, and the fact that it was God's fault wasn't going to cut any ice with the Father of Lies. Lucifer only cared about results, and the results he cared about were being screwed up because Agonostis hadn't followed orders.

  Agonostis took a deep breath and nearly choked from the surprise—the air was clear, with a great deal of oxygen in it and neither sulfur nor brimstone. He stopped worrying about Lucifer for a moment and simply looked around. His night vision was very good—he could see a wealth of detail from the terrain around him on this nearly moonless night. The soft greens of grass, the rich reds and golds and yellows of leaves, the bright flowers in their matching hues of reds and oranges and golds, the cozy houses and gentle sounds and sweet smells overwhelmed him. The warm yellow light that spilled across neatly-mown grass seemed welcoming.

  Unlike the lower orders of the Unchained, who had worked their way up from damnedsouls, and so had known only Earth and Hell, Agonostis had known Heaven before he was cast down—and if this place where he found himself was not Heaven, it was at least close.

  He stretched—nothing hurt. He moved slowly. Still no pain. He jumped up and down vigorously, trampling huge holes in the garden—his body rejoiced in its vigor and its freedom from the constant throbbing agony of Hell.

  He shouted—and a clear, icy, evil voice in his head said, "Do you intend to bounce naked on that dirt until your month is up and I recall you and turn you into an imp—or are you ready to get busy now?"

  Agonostis froze. "God took us early, stripped our possessions from us, and scattered us," he said. "I have neither clothes nor supplies nor the money to buy them."

  "I—know—that. You're fortunate you told your officers where to gather their troops; had you not done that, you would very likely have to round up every single one of the Hellspawn yourself. As it is, your inferiors, dreading your wrath, are out busily beating the bushes for you. And if you'll simply get yourself to Charlotte, I have your initial consignment of supplies waiting. I was going to leave you without them, but I decided I didn't want God to get the jump on us quite that quickly, since that was obviously his intent. I'd rather get even with him now . . . and you later."

  Agonostis nodded. He shut his mind, effectively blocking out Lucifer's voice, then concentrated on locating waiting supplies. Some of Hell's computers sat in the pile, their souls shifting and stretching as they tried to get a feel for the world in which they found themselves. He focused on those, and closed his eyes, and thought himself to them.

  The supplies sat in an abandoned warehouse—computers and peripherals, racks of clothes and boxes of shoes, boxes and crates of things someone had thought might be necessary in bringing Hell to North Carolina. Agonostis found the manifest, slipped into slow-time, and checked it off—he had no intention of signing in blood without being certain every single item on the manifest actually existed. And as he reached the end, he was pleased with himself for having checked. The manifest noted that five million dollars accompanied the rest of the supplies—Lucifer's war chest was deep. But the actual amount of cash in the bags was only two and a half million.

  "Where's the rest of the money?" Agonostis snarled into thin air.

  "Oh, just cross through that amount and write in the correct amount and initial it," Lucifer said into his head.

  "Not a chance. I'm not signing for anything until this manifest is correct."

  "Oh, nonsense," the Archfiend said. "I'll send the other half along later."

  "Now, or I don't sign. I'm not going to make myself responsible for repaying two point five million dollars I didn't even get. I won't do it."

  "You become annoying quickly," Lucifer said, but the extra money appeared. Agonostis counted it, and on an impulse, checked serial numbers on the bills. About half of them were the same. "I won't do this—" he started again, but with a flash of ugly red fire and the stench of Hell, real money in the proper amount appeared.

  He moved back into real time as the first of his officers appeared. "Devils, demons, and leccubi—clothes are here. Sludgewight," this to an ugly devil, even by Hell's standards, "you're paymaster until Squige reports in. Any variances in the accounts, I will personally take out of your hide." This was no empty threat. Agonostis had discovered several crates of Hell's most up-to-date torture implements. Since, by God's rules, he wasn't going to be able to use them on his human prey, he might as well get some good from them; they'd be ideal in keeping his underlings in line.

  An imp appeared—a vibrant blue imp with enormous bat-wing ears and a face like a train wreck. "Mighty Lord Agonostis," he said in a shockingly deep, rich voice, "Earwax, here, reporting for duty."

  Agonostis looked down at the imp and said, "I ate you for breakfast today, didn't I, imp?"

  The imp's blue fle
sh paled to a dusty, near-white color, and the obnoxious creature went down on its knees. "No, Great and Terrible Lordship—I am not that imp. I am the imp Lucifer gave you as your personal aide and gofer."

  Agonostis smelled something worse than rat in that setup. "He did, did he? And what did you do before this?" Agonostis reached out a finger and touched the imp's forehead, and the fiery power of Hell itself flickered between them. The little imp froze.

  Mesmerized, it answered, and its voice was flat and hollow. "Insubordination, mostly. I fetched for Pusbucket as a low-level imp, operated a phone at central communications as a mid-level imp, and recently received a promotion—I read soul radar in the main office; and just today I made the Evil One angry at me. He gave me to you because he said you would eat me within a week, and then I would be out of the way . . . and he could charge you for the body."

  Agonostis pondered. Earwax wasn't a spy, then. That was something to the good. He was likely to be a pain in the ass, and that wasn't good. Agonostis didn't feel like owing Lucifer for the body, though, so he determined that the imp's skin would stay intact—barring extraordinary circumstances. He would decide those as he went along.

  Agonostis took the whammy off of him. "So you can answer a phone, can you?"

  "Oh, yes, your Stupendously Stinking Magnificence."

  Agonostis' eyes narrowed. "Sir," he snarled. "Call me sir, you twittering excrescence, or . . ." But no. He didn't want to rip the imp to shreds. "Or . . ." But he couldn't bake him and feed him to gargoyles either. "Or," he said coldly, ". . . else."

  "Sir." The imp's head bobbed up and down like a soul in lava. "Yes, sir, sir."

  Imps were up there at the top—with computers—on Agonostis' list of least favorite things.

  Agonostis said, "Good. Then starting tomorrow, at zero hour, find a phone and answer it. Don't report back to me until I call you."

  "Any phone?"

  "Any phone!"

  It was too late to find Dayne Kuttner this day—though he knew Lucifer would count the day against his number. He would have to use his first night on Earth just to bring his people in and get them organized. But he could come up with a plan for the corruption of the Almighty's little favorite as he prepared his troops for battle—the next day would be soon enough to start his attack, if he knew in advance how he would run it.