The Devil and Dan Cooley Page 6

"That's up, isn't it?"

  "A little."

  "A lot." God raised an eyebrow. "Any changes in the mix?"

  "The mix?"

  "The percentage of low-ranking to high-ranking damned."

  "Oh." Honorial said, "Low-ranking repenters have remained steady. Higher-ranking repenters are trending upward."

  "Why?"

  Honorial hated that question. "I'm not sure."

  "Think it might have anything to do with my experiment?"

  Honorial nodded. "But... Your Gloriousness... they're cheating. And if you allow them to get away with it, they'll find other ways to cheat."

  God said slowly, "There has never been a time, Honorial, when individuals didn't matter more to me than rules. And I have not, at this late date, had a change of heart." He stood and tucked his T-shirt into his running shorts and brushed a hand across his face. When he did, his beard disappeared. He ran his fingers through his hair and suddenly it was short and neatly trimmed. The glow that always surrounded his face when he was in Heaven vanished. "If that's all, I'm going to go running for a while."

  Honorial realized he was about to lose his audience. "If you're going to leave the Hellraised in North Carolina, and if you're going to let them cheat, why don't you at least help out your human children—"

  God held up a hand and Honorial stopped. "I don't intervene directly with my children's lives. I don't meddle."

  "You could do so much for them, though."

  "I could do everything for them," God said softly. "And if I did everything for them, they'd turn into a bunch of whining, sniveling, spoiled monsters; they would have no backbone, no conscience, no morality, no compassion. Souls don't grow in easy times, Honorial. In easy times, they rest. Only when they're challenged with grief and pain and fear and suffering do souls stretch out and reach their potential." He paused, and stared down at his shoes. "Or fail. But my children must be permitted their failures, too."

  Honorial watched God walk away. "You already knew what I was going to tell you, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Why did you wait for me to tell you, then?"

  God turned back for just an instant and looked at him. "Sometimes I hope to see signs of growth in my children here, too."

  Honorial felt a knot growing inside, and the feeling began to form in him, as he watched God leave, that he had somehow disappointed Him. That God had expected better of him than what He got. He closed his eyes, feeling the unfamiliar heat of shame burning in his cheeks, and was not even sure why he felt it.

  Chapter 12

  Puck looked better when he came out of the bathroom. He smelled better, too. Dan studied him, wondering why the devil seemed so much more presentable. His wiry hair, fluffed out a little, made his horns look smaller. His teeth didn't seem so sharp. His coppery scales seemed both more attractive and less obvious. A shower and a change of clothing couldn't have done all of that.

  Janna was smiling. "Puck, I can't believe it's you."

  "I feel... better," he said. "This is a very kind thing you're doing for me. It's been a long time since I felt better," he added, sotto voce.

  Janna glanced at Dan, her eyebrows raised. Dan said, "Well, you'll feel even better after a meal."

  The three of them sat at the table. Janna showed Puck the knife, forks and spoons, and took a moment to show him how he needed to hold each.

  Then she brought out the food. Puck's brightened demeanor vanished in an instant. "What's all this?"

  "Stuffed tomatoes, eggplant parmesan, three-bean salad, and carrot sticks," Janna said. "I thought I'd keep it simple."

  The devil stared at the food in dismay. "Don't you have anything that bleeds when you cut it?"

  "Meat?"

  "Well, turnips don't bleed."

  "Ugh! No!" Janna wrinkled her nose. "Didn't Dan tell you I'm a vegetarian?"

  The devil gave Dan a cold look. "He forgot to mention that."

  "Well, I am. And if I cook, I cook vegetarian for everybody."

  "If you'd cooked a vegetarian, I wouldn't be complaining," Puck said.

  Dan covered his mouth with a hand. "No, Puck. Funny joke, but not here."

  Puck leaned over and whispered, "Who was joking?"

  This isn't going to work, Dan thought. He motioned for Puck to sit down, then joined him. He leaned over and whispered in Puck's ear, "This is the food you get. You don't have to like it. Just eat it."

  "Did I forget to mention to you that I'm a pure carnivore?" Puck whispered back. "I eat this vegetable slop and it's going to go straight through me and come out the other end looking exactly the same as it does now."

  Dan stared at him. The devil shrugged.

  "What about cheeses?"

  "I can tolerate those, but I much prefer raw meat. The fresher the better."

  Dan closed his eyes. It had to figure, didn't it? He told Puck, "She doesn't have any meat. Eat the cheese off of the eggplant parmesan and don't worry about the rest. We'll get something you'll like better on the way home."

  Janna instructed the devil on the proper use of napkins (It's what you just used your sleeve for) and silverware (Don't stab, Puck; I assure you that the cheese is quite dead).

  Dan and Janna started a conversation—how their workdays went, what sort of things they anticipated for the evening. Puck tried, gamely, to join in. The results were awful.

  "I used to have a game I liked to play," he said, when Janna said she really would love to play a set of tennis with Dan.

  "Really?" She gave him a smile, the one with the raised eyebrows that Dan always saw as her polite "I'm listening" smile. Puck had quit even pretending to eat. He'd been sitting quietly staring at his plate.

  "Yeah," he said. "In Hell, I used to be on chute duty with a couple of other guys and we always had this game. New damnedsouls come in with their Evilness Index stamped on their heads. You know: four fifty-three or seven twenty... like that. Some of them come in ready to be devils or demons—you know, pretty high on the food chain—while some are never going to be anything but imps or leccubi or gargoyles. So the other demons and I—this was before I made devil—we'd agree on a number each day, something between two hundred and a thousand; those are the numbers on the Evilness Index that will end you up in Hell—and then we'd go through the new souls and the one that was closest to the number we picked, we'd misfile. This one guy, he'd come in as a first-level devil—his index was about eight hundred." Puck started laughing. "It was the funniest damned thing. He would have been our boss, but we made him into a gargoyle." He was sputtering and thumping his hands on the table by that time. "And gargoyles are gargoyles forever! They can't advance!" Puck suddenly realized neither Dan nor Janna was laughing, and his own laughter died. "See," he said, "it was a practical joke. It was funny. He was all set to be this powerful guy in Hell, and now he's stuck forever being a gargoyle..."

  Dan kept staring at him, unable to think of anything to say.

  "What?" Puck's voice rose defensively. "Are you trying to tell me you don't think that was funny?"

  Dan and Janna exchanged glances, and Janna finally answered. "I think you'd probably be better off, Puck, if you didn't tell any more work-related stories until you get a job other people can relate to."

  "Oh." He looked down at his plate again. "I see. Your stupid story about an actor saying his lines wrong fifty times in a row was funny, and his stupid story about the caller who couldn't get the joke right and kept forgetting the ending was funny, but my story, which really happened, wasn't funny."

  Dan shook his head. "I think you might want to avoid humor until you have a better feel for it."

  Puck looked at him coldly. "Yeah. I'll keep that in mind." He gulped the contents of his glass, then looked at Janna. "You mind if I get myself something else to drink?"

  "Not at all." Janna pointed to the closed kitchen door. "Right in there. Help yourself to whatever you want."

  Dan could tell Janna felt guilty about not being able to laugh at Puck's story. W
hen Puck left the room, she turned to him and sighed. "I think he wants to fit in, Dan, but if he tells stories like that at dinner, no one is going to want to have anything to do with him. He'll never be accepted."

  "I know."

  A loud crash—followed by a high-pitched yip—erupted from the kitchen.

  Janna shot to her feet so fast her chair fell backwards. She ran into the kitchen with Dan half a step behind her.

  He froze just inside the door. "Oh, no."

  Puck stood in front of the open refrigerator, his neck bulging. One hind leg and a short, ratlike tail hung out of his mouth. As Dan watched in horror, the devil swallowed convulsively and the Chihuahua's hindquarters slipped down his throat like a rat down a snake's gullet.

  "He bit me, I bit him," the devil said.

  Chapter 13

  Meg got home late. She'd spent much of her day at the Raleigh office of the ACLU, going over case law with an old colleague.

  Her uncle Ed greeted her at the door. "Thanks so much for calling. Supper's burned."

  "I'm sorry I didn't call. I simply could not get to a phone." Meg shoved her hair back from her face and kicked her shoes into the hall closet. "Who cooked?"

  "What difference does that make?"

  "I want to know whether to weep or rejoice that I was late."

  "Greg cooked."

  "So I have to weep." She sighed. "I'll do it later, okay? Right now I'm too tired to cry."

  "Dare I hope that you're working for a paying customer?" He led them into the kitchen and pulled out a seat for her before getting one for himself.

  She dropped into it and rested her elbows on the table. Only when she completely settled in could she feel the ache in her back and the back of her neck, or appreciate how completely beat she was. "Nope. Something speculative."

  "Oh. Wonderful. And how shall speculative pay the rent?"

  Meg eyed him warily. He wore a half-smile on his face but it wasn't the sort of half-smile she'd come to associate with encouragement. It was more along the lines of "Meg's lost her mind again; what is she thinking this time?" She said, "I wanted to talk to you about that."

  "I'm sure."

  "This... case... has the potential to turn the situation in North Carolina around."

  "I see. You're petitioning God for a miracle. And for that I'm expected to forgo another month of rent on your room."

  "Well, it would help a lot." Meg sighed. "I know this is awkward. But listen. I think I have the solution to all of North Carolina's problems with the Hellraised." She shook her head and waved a hand in negation. "Let me try that again. I think I may have a partial solution that could greatly lessen North Carolina's problems with the Hellraised. I don't want to allow myself to fall into hyperbole."

  "Never that," her uncle said, and rolled his eyes. "So what is this tremendous idea?"

  "I want to work with my old colleagues in the ACLU to file an antidiscrimination suit on behalf of North Carolina's Hellraised."

  Ed's eyes widened. "You want to do what?" That response, at least, was pure disbelief, completely without the affectation of ennui that Ed put into almost everything else.

  "I want the ACLU to file an antidiscrimination suit on behalf of North Carolina's Hellraised," Meg repeated.

  "Dear God. Megan, half the people in this state are already convinced lawyers are in league with Satan. You want to prove their case?"

  "Ed, hear me out. There's a method to my madness."

  He nodded. "My meticulous lunatic. I'll wager your friends always refer to you as the quiet one."

  "Depended on what kind of friends they are. Come on. Give me a chance to explain."

  "Dar-r-r-rling... as if I'd let you leave this room without an explanation."

  She perched on the edge of her seat and leaned forward. "Answer me this. What happens when two hostile and disparate cultures are forced to coexist due to mutual self-interest?"

  "Bosnia. The Democratic party."

  She ignored the jibe. "Two things can happen. Either the two integrate, forming a new culture, or they clash, and one culture is destroyed."

  Ed rested his chin in his hand. Withholding commitment, she thought. "Humans and the Hellraised. I see where you think you're going, but in this case your point doesn't apply. The Hellraised are incapable of harming human beings. And, from what I understand, there isn't a great deal we can do to them either."

  "Exactly! So what is the result?"

  He thought for a moment. "Continuous conflict."

  "With no peace for anyone. And remember, while the Hellraised can't directly harm us, they can create situations where we might harm one another, by using our own stupidity and prejudices against us."

  "No one denies that the Hellraised can be dangerous."

  "And will continue to be so. Unless an alternative exists."

  Meg watched his brow furrow. Good, that means he's intrigued. "What kind of alternative?" he said.

  "You remember Glenda, the ACLU paralegal I got along with so well? She and I did a search of the Internet and found and downloaded the contract that God—or Heaven—made with the Hellraised. It's short, to the point, and as far as I can tell, rife with loopholes."

  "You have a copy."

  "You bet." She dug the folded paper from her pants pocket and unfolded the single-spaced pages. She studied them again briefly, still unable to believe what she'd found. The complete printout read:

  From: honorial@data###proc.chrstn.hvn.aftrlif.net (Honorial, Chief of Data Processing, HeavenNet)

  Received: from hellex.hellwire.info.net by x1.hellwire.info.net for ;

  Fri, 8, Oct 15: 14: 10 -0400)

  Received from HEAVEN.aftrlif.net by x1.hellwire.info.net; Fri, 8, Oct 14: 17: 41 -0500

  Return path: honorial@data.proc.chrstn.hvn.aftrlif.net

  To: lucifer.the.fallen@chrstn.hell.aftrlif.net

  Subject: Operation Tarheel Message-ID:

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Command from On High

  By order of the God of Heaven and Earth, Creator of All Things, Eternal Parent of the Infinities, Bringer of Joy and Hope, Master of all the Realms—

  O fallen angel who is anathema to me, you whose name shall not pass my lips until you have humbled yourself before me—

  By my order and on my express command and through the intercession of my daughter, Dayne Teresa Kuttner, you shall send forth out of Hell, under my parole, exactly fifty-eight thousand eight hundred fifty-one fallen angels, devils, demons, and assorted members of the lower orders of Hell's crawling vermin into the state of North Carolina—this number being exactly one one-hundredth of the human population in that state at the instant of my reckoning.

  Unchained denizens of Hell must obey the following rules:

  —They will neither inflict, nor pay to have inflicted, any physical harm on any human.

  —They will not parent a child with a human, either with or without the human's consent.

  —They will not steal by supernatural means.

  —They will not cause any disease or plague, nor will they act as the agents through which any disease or plague is transmitted.

  —They will not impersonate a minister, God, or angel of God, or any divine messenger of God.

  —They will not cause any virgin births.

  —They will not leave the State of North Carolina.

  The Unchained denizens of Hell may:

  —Lie, tempt, deceive, mislead, and otherwise carry out the usual agenda of Hell.

  —Impersonate human beings if that is within their nature and capacity.

  —Own property, become citizens, hold offices, own and operate legal businesses, marry humans—if the humans are apprised of their true nature beforehand and no intimidation is used—and in all other legal ways approved by the State of North Carolina attempt to achieve a normal life on Earth.

  —Enter into binding contracts with human beings—with one of the two following stipulations:

  1) The hum
an must be fully apprised of the nature of the contract and the nature of all parties involved in the contract; or,

  2) The human must sign the contract with his own blood. (Percentage of blood to inert materials not specified; blood must be less than twenty-four hours old in Earth-sequential time only, as per previous agreements between Heaven and Hell; human must know that blood has been drawn; no blood from blood donorship or other merciful blood collection agencies, or from accidents and injuries may be used. )

  —Repent.

  Unchained denizens of Hell must:

  —Eat and drink mortal food, or their Earthly bodies will wither and fail, and they will have to pay Heaven for new ones. Heaven will charge a cost-per-body fee plus punitive wastage tax for any Earthly bodies above and beyond the one that will be issued free from Heaven per Hell-soul at the time of exit from Hell—this will be collected by the usual revenue methods. These Heaven-issued Earth-bodies will be indistinguishable from the individual Hellspawn's normal form and will have all the Hellspawn's usual abilities excluding those which would run counter to the above decrees.

  —Obtain their sustenance in the normal mortal way—that is, by growing food or paying for it with cash or barter.

  Meg shook her head and handed the document over to her uncle.

  Ed read over it, his expression more bemused by the second. "I wonder if it's legitimate."

  "As far as anyone could tell, it was. The appended text at the top of the file, which I didn't print, said something about a hacker who received a post not too long after the Unchaining that had been routed through hellwire. info. net, who started trying to e-mail the addresses until he finally got an answer. According to the post, Heaven didn't get back to him, though his message didn't bounce, so he assumed it was received. Hell, however, sent proselytizers to his door and put him on all its mailing fists and kept finding him no matter how often he changed his e-mail address. He finally, according to the story, had to drop off the Internet entirely and move out of state."

  "I've ended up on mailing lists like that," Ed said.

  "Someone told the Jehovah's Witnesses once that I wanted personal visitation; I've always suspected it was the husband of a client of mine whose divorce I handled. That was almost as bad. Anyway, the stipulations that I find most interesting are those that suggest the Hellraised have permission to settle down and live normal lives here—and the hardcopy proof that they're allowed to repent."