Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (16 page)

I started to get up. Max held me down.

“Don’t, babe. If we’re back in hell, he doesn’t need to be here.
You
don’t need to be here. I just don’t know how to send you back.” He lifted me into his lap and began massaging my belly. If I was wearing anything, I couldn’t tell. His fingers were hot and knew what I liked.

“Hell? Hell is nothingness?” I arched into his caress. It had been a damned long time . . .

“Listen.”

I listened as much as I was able while his magic hands performed the feats for which he was known, and my insides unknotted and opened. There was a reason I’d put up with Max for months beyond his useful life.

But then I listened, and shuddered. I heard maracas. And chanting. Or maybe praying.

“Our bodies are back there and apparently still breathing,” he suggested. “Gloria’s finally sucked our souls down with her.”

So not liking that theory. I explored his chest. Had the fire burned off our clothes? “No bodies? Then what the hell are we doing now? Soul petting?”

I could
feel
a fully aroused Max beneath me. His hands were doing all the things my breasts liked best. I was open and ready for him. More than ready. This was beyond insane and well into the world of nightmare. Or wet dream. I was shuddering with need.

“Souls are pure essence, babe. We’re still us. We still need each other. And this is how we’re used to expressing that need.”

“Not making sense, Max. I’m wearing clothes, aren’t I?” I couldn’t tell, that’s how insubstantial I felt.
I was a ghost?

“No body parts, no clothes.” He flipped me on my back.

I knew there was dirt below me, but I wasn’t really touching it. I was sensing Max’s thoughts? His arousal? I was feeling his whole damned
essence.
And it was all powerful male and more sensational than Max in human form. And with no bodies . . . why not?

I reached out and his essence was abruptly inside of me and around me and holding me as I desperately needed to be held, and I was steaming hot and ready.

I understand the romance books crow about the blending of two souls during sex, but all I’d ever experienced was purely physical. This . . . this was incomprehensible. I felt the need that drove Max, recognized his humanity and how it matched the craving in my own heart and soul. It was like our vibrations hummed in synch, creating a more powerful reality. I opened. I blossomed. The whole world rocked.

Even if everything else felt insubstantial on a mortal level, the ensuing orgasm shook my spiritual world.

Max thrust, shuddered, and cried out at the same time. I could sense an ethereal blending of our . . . essences? Incredible, potent, and just a little frightening as I felt Max inside and out. I really didn’t need to be in his head when he was doing me, but . . .

Man, I’d needed that. Soul sex. What a concept. I gave a shuddering sigh of gratification.

“Wow, maybe we belong in hell,” he muttered. “I didn’t see that coming.”

I snickered. Okay, so in real life, I’m a soulless lawyer. I only get mystical experiences while in hell, and I can’t handle it. So I revert to cerebral and snicker.

“Dirty mind, Justy.” He rolled over and tugged me . . . my essence . . . with him. “Hope that cleared the air so we can think again.”

Now that my mind had returned . . . I pondered that. “I can’t think clearly when I go all red ragey and damn people. Is this some other weird magic? We get all sexed up and mindless after we’re damned?”

I ought to be terrified. But I wasn’t. That was weird in itself. I just felt satiated and pleased with myself, with just a little tremor at the unknown. I know—stupid. Sex makes people stupid.

“I don’t know about me,” Max said, holding me. My essence. “But I don’t think you’re dead, Justy. If the priest is still up there, the house didn’t blow. You should only be bumped or bruised.”

“Maybe like Andre does, we’ve gone unconscious and slipped into another dimension?” I asked tentatively, trying to find walls but touching only nothingness.

Of course, Max didn’t know about Andre’s dimension walking, or did he? He didn’t question my statement. “Where is Andre? We were all together,” I said, remembering more. The wretched man had actually apologized—because he’d known this was coming? “Andre!” I shouted.

I was starting to feel maybe just a little nervous. I stood up. Or thought myself up. Whatever. Max did the same, not releasing me. I wasn’t arguing. I needed to know I wasn’t alone in a blackness where nothing existed.

The best sex in my life, and it was all in my head. Maybe I should learn from that.

“Montoya?” Max called, helpfully. “Have you murdered Gloria again?”

“Keep it up,” came a faint reply. “I’ll find you just to kill you.”

“Andre!” I jumped with relief—or I thought I did. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Hell if I know,” Andre said grumpily from a distance to our left. “I should have let Dane burn.”

“Yeah, probably,” Max agreed, speaking of Dane’s body.

Since Max didn’t hug me, I had a nasty feeling he meant that. So I punched the
essence
of his biceps. “Not after all the trouble we went through to bring you back. We’re getting out of this. You have the opportunity to change the world, and I’ll be . . . danged . . . if I let you give it up.”

“I’ve been toasted again,” Max grumbled. “I think Gloria sent us all to hell.”

“Been here, done that,” Andre said surprisingly, sounding closer. “Clancy, get between us. I’m not holding Vanderventer’s hand.”

This confusion had to stop sometime. “Not Vanderventer. Max, meet Andre. Andre, meet Max.” I got to be grumpy, too, as I patted around, hunting for the invisible.

“Max?” Andre asked in amusement, grabbing my free hand. “Not Dane? Want to explain that one?”

This was weird. Body or not, I could tell the difference between Dane’s manicured soft hand on my right and Andre’s tough lean one on my left. Maybe memory of those hands was part of my essence.

“Don’t laugh, Legrande,” I said, wanting a level playing field so we could find our way out of here. “Your old boyhood chum is roasting with his mother in hell. And I’m guessing they’re out to roast us back.”

“If they can,” Andre agreed. “You really sent Dane to hell?” He almost sounded impressed, if I disregarded the amusement.

“Don’t laugh, Montoya,” Max mimicked in irritation. “Acme’s version of hell apparently has permeable boundaries.”

“Dimensions,” Andre corrected. “We’ve been blasted through one of the dimension boundaries. I thought that was only possible in the Zone.”

They were literally talking around me. And for once, I had nothing to say. Nothingness felt real to me. Just dark. And hot. But not fiery and filled with lost souls. Dimension hell almost made sense.

Both Max and Andre had experience in walking through dimensional veils, although Andre had claimed he’d crossed time, which was how he made his occasional unreliable predictions.

“Do we go looking for mirrors?” Max asked.

That’s how I’d found him after I’d sent him here the first time.

Before I could start worrying about my cat or the various people who might possibly miss me, Andre squeezed my hand. I wasn’t dead yet. My hormones responded predictably, even after I’d just boffed Max. Guess head sex didn’t last long. I started wondering if I could do the same with Andre.

“There’s always a way out,” Andre informed us. “It’s just a matter of finding it.”

“Party pooper,” I muttered.

Andre chuckled as if he knew how I’d responded to holding his hand.

Max didn’t laugh. They’d both been through war and various kinds of hell, so they were entitled to their own way of dealing with life-sucks moments. Mine was apparently to think about sex.

Or get angry, but who would I get angry at besides myself?

“I don’t think I can fling a flaming compact at Dane’s head and visualize us out this time,” I warned. “So how do you suggest we get out of here?”

“The compact was probably a one-off,” Max agreed. “Not helping here.”

He’d used the contact with the compact’s mirror to enter Dane’s body from the hellish dimension he’d inhabited at the time. Much too complicated to repeat, for sure.

“When we’re out of here, I want to talk about Max being alive when Dane’s body is out there,” Andre muttered, apparently attempting to process what little he knew.

“Don’t question us when you’re our dimension walker,” I retorted.

Andre had told me that Acme’s chemicals had tossed him into other dimensions. He’d always found his way out. Maybe he could do so now.

Except—we’d been associating the dimensional phenomena with the Zone. We weren’t in the Zone now. All bets were off.

“Don’t see any mirrors into the world. Gloria probably didn’t have any. Should we go to the light?” Andre suggested.

“I see a light at two o’clock,” Max agreed.

“Got it. Let’s go, boys and girls,” Andre said.

Not liking the dark, I kept a firm grip on both their ethereal hands. I could see a bit of twinkle ahead, but it didn’t pose much hope. One didn’t exit space through stars, after all.

I couldn’t see, but all my other senses were tingling. Andre’s hand was tight around mine. Andre was not a hand holder, so I assumed the grip indicated he was as unhappy about our situation as I was. I hoped he wasn’t as scared out of his wits as I was. One of us needed his thinking cap on.

I didn’t think we were in Gloria’s cellar anymore, Toto.

I felt a slow thump, thump, as if feeling a giant pulse. And now that I was more or less functioning, I thought I could smell the crap our witch doctors had been burning, along with hearing their chants and rattles.

“Not liking this, guys,” I said, just to hear something besides the insides of my head as we walked. Or thought about walking. Or drifted like ghosts. Real hard to say.

“For good reason,” Andre said. “They’re probably splashing our bodies with holy water and rum and calling an ambulance. We need to get back or they’ll be pumping us full of stuff that will really mess us up.”

“You’re jiving me, right?”

“Hell . . . heck . . . if I understand it,” Andre said, belatedly covering up what we all feared. “But some part of us found each other, and that part needs to get back where we belong.”

At least Andre was sounding bossy instead of talking in that weary, disjointed way he had when he’s stressed and fading fast.

The bad part was that our dimension walker didn’t recognize this dimension—but Max did.

“Don’t suppose it would help if we shout or sing?” I said in discouragement. “I’m kind of missing that red ragey thing that makes it so easy to just whack someone.”

I felt both men glare at me. I shrugged. If I was going to die or wander lost forever, I wanted them to recognize that I was more than a misfit lawyer. They both knew a little about me, but even I didn’t know everything I could do.

“Maybe it’s time you tried doing something useful instead of whacking someone,” Max suggested. He was closest to understanding my dangerous abilities since I’d killed him with them. Well, not exactly, but close enough.

“You caught Tim without being red ragey,” Andre said. He hadn’t actually
seen
me do anything, but he’d seen the results.

“You’re the dimension walker, Legrande. And Max found his own way out of hell,” I said, feeling helpless after my bit of braggadocio. “What makes you think I’m of any use here? Is that light any closer?”

It didn’t seem to be.

Seventeen

I took a deep breath, smelled rat poison or incense or whatever Witchita Hagatha had been burning, and I tugged my companions to a halt. That I had the strength to stop two hunks who towered over me said something about this dimension.

I didn’t hear medics or sirens. Yet. How long had we been out? Medics would make a special effort for a comatose senator.

“I don’t understand one milligram of this,” I warned. “I’m hot.” I’d just had the steamiest orgasm of my life, but that wasn’t what I meant. “I see nothing. I can’t even see the two of you or my own hand. But I smell incense, and I think the rattling is louder.”

“We’re still connected to the world through our corporeal bodies,” Andre said. He’d had some experience in dimension walking, so I listened. “But whatever makes us—
us
—is here, on the other side of the veil.”

“We’re really holding hands in Gloria’s kitchen?” Max asked dryly.

“Shut up, Max. Let me think.” I glared at the light that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. “I do stuff by visualizing. How do I visualize our souls popping back where they belong?”

“Not easily. Keep moving while you’re puzzling that one out.” Andre tugged us on down the tunnel.

The tunnel, with a white light ahead. Not sounding good. Andre could still be responding to his suicidal tendencies. I’m all about staying alive.

“All right, we’re mentally or metaphysically connected somehow,” I decided, refusing to move. “If I can picture men as frogs—”

“Frogs?” Max inquired with interest. He hadn’t been there for that episode.

“Shut up, Max,” Andre mimicked me. He’d been there.

“Can we picture our bodies sitting up and talking?” I continued, ignoring the boys.

“Go with whatever you did to catch Tim,” Andre suggested. “That didn’t involve illogical rage. You’re whacko when you lose your temper.”

True. I didn’t do a lot of thinking when my head was full of fury. “I don’t want to diminish your opinion of me, but I failed to turn a turd into a frog the other day,” I warned.

“But you did a really bang-up job with the gnomes,” Andre countered. “How is that working for you?”

“Shut up, Andre,” both Max and I said.

“Can either of you feel the walls of this tunnel?” I demanded, since my hands were otherwise occupied.

They obediently stopped and felt around.

“Okay, that’s weird,” Max said. “I don’t
feel
anything, but I can’t push through. It’s as if nothing is there and maybe I’m nothing.”

“Don’t say it, Andre, or I’ll send you back as a toad,” I warned.

Andre snorted in amusement but obediently refrained from calling a senator a nothing. “That’s how it is over here. Although usually, I see things, not just this black hole.”