Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business

“Excellent question,” Belial said. “Suffice to say that you’re the hunting dog, and your man here is holding the leash.” He nudged Jack’s side with the toe of his shoe. “Come on, Winter. Where’s that fighting spirit I saw in Hell?”

Pete took a step. “Don’t touch him.”

“Be a luv and give us a moment alone,” Belial told her. Pete started to protest, but Jack waved her off.

“Go. Nothing he can do to me he hasn’t already.”

“Wrong again,” Belial said, crouching next to Jack. “Now, I’d hoped you’d cling to your dignity, but I can see I was setting my hopes much too high.”

Pete clearly wanted to stand over him, but Shavers shouted at her from the front hall, and she worried her lip. “I’ll deal with him. If you hurt Jack…”

“I assure you,” Belial said. “I only hurt Jack for the fun of it. This is serious.”

Her footsteps retreated and Belial stared after her, shaking his head. “Going to be a crying shame when she bulks up and loses that rear bumper.” He hauled Jack up by the front of his shirt. “So, you picked out names and wee little booties yet?”

“You say another word about my fucking kid and I don’t care who you are or how many Named demons you hobnob with,” Jack said. “I’ll send you back to the fucking Pit in a shoebox.” Pete could shove him off and tell him she wanted him out of the baby’s life, but a demon didn’t get to talk about any offspring of his. The kid would be raised to know that Hell was never the answer, and demons were never your friends. If somebody had drummed that into Jack a bit harder, he wouldn’t be here.

Belial held up his hands. “All right, then, Papa Bear. Calm yourself.” He walked through the blood-spattered master bedroom and out onto the balcony, which looked down the back side of a canyon, scrub and loose dirt fading back to green on the upswing. Across the canyon, another miniature replica of a mansion from some other sort of place stared back at them with blank, shuttered windows.

Belial breathed in and leaned on the railing. “Air’s good up here. The rich swim in their infinity pools and the masses suffocate.” He tapped his pointed nail against the iron. “Remind you of anywhere, Jackie?”

Hot wind, sand, and glass in the bleeding cuts and patches of missing skin. Watching carrion demons creep among the dead, their red stone nails pricking distended abdomens.

Jack lit a cigarette. “Nope.”

“You know this place is neutral ground?” Belial said. “The City of fucking Angels. No demon of the city, no Named putting his feet up. A cesspit built on top of a faultline, rimmed with mountains and eroded by a poison sea. If I could never go home again, I’d go here. Fucking paradise, this is.” He held out his hand. “Let’s have one, then. Don’t be greedy.”

Jack handed the demon a fag and offered him his lighter. Belial inhaled and studied him through the resulting cloud. “You’re looking fit. Not cutting back on vice, are you? That’d make me cry.”

“Never felt better,” Jack said. “Been eating my spinach.”

Belial blew smoke from his nose. “Nice ink,” he said, before flicking his fag into the dry scrub below the deck. “You know in sixty-nine the fires in Malibu burned so close to the beach the rock stars and big-titted third-rate actresses were standing in the fucking ocean, praying their condominiums didn’t go up? And then a few weeks later, Charlie Manson creeps down from the hills and hacks up their friends. Must’ve been a run on mother’s little helpers that summer.”

“Manson didn’t actually hack anyone,” Jack muttered. “What are you, some kind of groupie? You and he going to be best friends when he goes down the stairs?”

“Oh, Charlie’s not one of ours,” Belial said. “What demon would deal with a deranged midget who can’t carry a tune? Useless.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that under my hat for the next pub quiz,” Jack said. “Did you really come here to give me the dirty history of Los Angeles?”

Belial jerked his thumb in the direction of the bedroom. “This was one of ours. Well, I’m simplifying. More than one. Not really ours.”

“Jesus, could you dance around a bit more?” Jack muttered. “Put on some tap shoes. They’d suit you.”

Belial tugged his tie loose and ran a nail under his collar. Jack didn’t think demons could sweat, but if they could, Belial would be damp. If he didn’t know it was a ridiculous notion, on par with thinking a turnip had feelings, he’d say that Belial was scared. Demons understood fear, but they didn’t feel it. They didn’t feel anything. They worshiped bargains and they fed on the fear and blood of other things.

“I made a fair deal, you know,” Belial told him. “You agreed to it.”

“Yeah, I agreed to the Pit in exchange for not bleeding to death on a cold floor,” Jack said. “Some fucking choice.”

“You’re a coward, Jack,” Belial said. “Not my fault you took the coward’s deal rather than going into the light.”

“I am this close to chucking you over this fucking railing,” Jack said, holding his fingers apart. “I’m beginning to think you crawled up out of that living sewer you call a home just to chat.”

“Demons aren’t the only things in Hell,” Belial said. “We’re not even the first things.” He looked back out over the canyon. A helicopter puttered across the white-blue sky, and Jack could hear Pete and Shavers talking downstairs. And still, the murder house screamed at him, sight knifing his head.

“Is this going to be a long story?” Jack asked. “Because if it is, ’m going to need a drink and a sitdown.”

“When Nergal cracked open his prison,” Belial murmured, as if he hadn’t heard, “it sent shocks through all of the Pit. Through the Underworld, through the Black, even through the daylight world. You saw it.”

“Painfully close up,” Jack agreed. This wasn’t the Belial he knew—the smirking, insufferable cunt who delighted in pulling the legs off of human flies. Belial looked almost human. Even his form was tired and rumpled. Whatever could make a demon this nervous was firmly in the realm of Not Fucking Good.

“You ever think about what else might have slipped the locks?” Belial said. Jack folded his arms.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Before there were demons, there were other things,” Belial told him. “Things that crawled in the dark, things that made us what we are. Spawned us out of mud and shit and blood. Things that we realized we could never let free of the Pit.”

“And I’m guessing I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t fall down on the job,” Jack said.

Belial twitched inside his human skin. “This isn’t my mess, but I’m cleaning it sure enough.”

“Ten years isn’t exactly a weekend in time outside the Pit,” Jack said. “One of these bastards has been free a while, hasn’t he?”

“One, we could manage,” Belial said. “Hunt him with our own blokes. But the tears Nergal caused gave him the chance to let loose all of his little friends.”

“And what do they hope to accomplish by running around up here, slashing families to death?” Jack said.

“That’d be your job to figure out, wouldn’t it?” Belial said. “LA is a safe haven for things like that, but outside we could track them. You bring them to me, and I’ll be done with you and your little bit of sunshine.”

Jack pushed back from the rail. “I still don’t trust you.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Belial said as Jack walked away. “You know I’m a demon of my word.”

Pete stayed silent until they were nearly back to Venice. “You hate me?” she said finally, pulling the Fury to the curb by Mayhew’s office.