Love Charms (94 page)

Chapter
One

Centuries later…

“Stupid, bloody Devil and his
hell-be-damned clauses,” Ysabel grumbled under her breath as she stomped to her
Lord’s office.

Receiving his imperious summons –
essentially his voice booming from the walls themselves and ordering her to
move her sweet cheeks – she immediately began cursing. Lord of the Underworld
or not, the man was truly a pain in her ass. Didn’t he know she had better
things to do with her time than run when he summoned, like trimming her nails,
or washing her hair? Besides, according to the terms of the contract she’d
agreed to over five hundred years ago – signed in her still sizzling
blood no less – her time as his personal assistant was almost up. Freedom
beckoned just around the corner and she couldn’t wait, even if she didn’t have
the slightest clue what she would do with all her upcoming spare time.
Gardening in the Pit wasn’t feasible. Joining the general populace made her
shudder. What did that leave?

No matter. She’d find a hobby. One
definite benefit? Not having to answer the devil’s every beck and call.
Just
a few more days, then I’m free.

Of course, Lucifer didn’t care if their
tenure together was coming to a close. The man got sadistic pleasure out of
goading her, reminding her that she wholeheartedly agreed to be his personal
slave in exchange for revenge. Thankfully, his idea of chores involved the
menial kind; phone answering, filing paperwork, customer – AKA damned
souls – relations. In other words, mostly clerical work, a small price to
pay when it meant that those who had a direct hand in her burning would be
punished eternally for their sin. Vengeance tasted beautifully sweet.

Heels clacking on the slate floor –
because Lucifer, stuck in the middle ages, clung like a leech to a
dungeon/medieval castle theme – she made her way to the throne room where
the Lord of Hell liked to rule his subjects, or, as Ysabel liked to call them,
Heaven’s leftovers.

When a person died, if they lived an
absolutely pure life, free of sin, even the teensy tiniest one, they went to
Heaven. Slide across the line into bad, even if you just took the
other
Lord’s
name in vain once, and you were screwed, doomed to an undying life as a damned
soul.

Welcome to Hell, where the living
conditions went beyond crowded, the jobs sucked, and the pay sucked even worse.
It was like living in, well, Hell.

Forget the ash strewn streets and
tenement housing. The inconveniences of the Pit paled beside Lucifer, a true
prick of a boss. He brought new meaning to the term sexual harassment.
Although, she’d cured him of his ass grabbing habit by wearing a skirt braided with
tiny silver slivers... Did she forget to mention they were blessed?

Cost her a fortune to acquire seeing as
how some demons had to smuggle it from the mortal side, but worth every damned
coin when the Prince of Darkness – dressed in his stupid Darth Vader cape
– hopped up and down in his office shaking his hand, bellowing.

The video she’d taken, and threatened to
post on HellTube, helped her finagle a private suite in the west wing of the
castle. Peace and quiet at la– 

“Ysabel!” Lucifer’s yodel made her
grimace. “I know you’re out in that hall, woman. Stop testing my patience and
get your ass in here so I can explain before it happens.”

Explain what?
Waving to his shriveled secretary, she
swept past the reception area and pulled open the massive door to his office
and stepped in. Her heels tapped on the floor as she headed to her boss, who
paced in front of a massive carved desk. It should be noted that the
magnificent piece of furniture was carved out of bone, the creature to whom it
belonged hopefully extinct, given the ridiculous size of the jaw the artist
used. As usual, folders of all thickness and colors covered the desk’s
gleaming, ivory surface.

Great. More filing. Looks like I’m
working late tonight.

The business of selling one’s soul
boomed, which meant more work and no raise.
I should have joined the minions
union
.

“About time you got here,” Lucifer said,
as he halted his pacing to face her. She paused and waited as he did his usual
once over, his eyes lingering on her tits before traveling down. Sure, she
could have ruined his enjoyment by wearing something nun-like, but she found
more enjoyment in showing him what he’d never have. Besides, Devil or not, a
girl liked a man to find her attractive. She cocked a hip and waited for him to
finish.

His gaze hit her feet and his brow
creased. “Uh-oh. You might want to kick off those expensive pumps of yours.”

“Why?” she asked staring down at her
shoes. Ridiculously high heeled, and an eye popping purple, green and blue,
meant to resemble a peacock’s feathers, she didn’t care if her toes hurt, or if
she didn’t exactly have the slim kind of thighs the shoes demanded. She
discovered a fetish for shoes in the eighteenth century, probably because she
spent most of her mortal life barefoot. Her collection now numbered in the
hundreds and the pair she currently wore were fantastic, stolen from the corpse
of a favorite movie star – again, an item that cost her a ridiculous sum
to smuggle, but so worth it in her mind.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he
muttered enigmatically.

It started with a tickle of her toes that
turned into a hot itch. She shifted her weight, wiggling her little piggies. It
didn’t help. Her feet ignited. Despite her usual cool, Ysabel shrieked, and it
wasn’t very ladylike. “What the fuck are you doing to my feet?” Forget her
feet, the flames licked higher, up her bare legs, snagging her short, white
skirt – a color worn to annoy her boss – then, her magenta silk
blouse. Engulfed head to toe, a living, screaming torch, the moment brought
back the nightmares of the way she’d died.

Dammit! It took hundreds of years of
reliving that awful moment before she eventually prevailed and put her memories
of burning at the stake away. It took only seconds of getting torched, once
again alive, to bring it all back.

“Goddamn, donkey fucking, bastard,
whoring…” The list of words went on and on, because despite her fiery new look,
she remained conscious the entire time. More annoying – though her body
survived sans blister and flaking skin, the pain was just as excruciating as
she remembered.

White foam hit her in the face, shutting
her up. The same soothing cool smothered the rest of her body, dousing the
flames. It didn’t take away the ache in her skin, but at least she wasn’t
ablaze anymore. She couldn’t say as much for her temper. It simmered, held at
bay only because she couldn’t see the object of her ire and feared opening her
mouth and getting a taste of the chemicals used to put her out.

“Hold out your hand,” Lucifer said.

She did as told for once and felt a cloth
dropped into her palm. Wiping her face first, she opened her eyes and glared at
the Lord of the Pit.

For those who’d not met him before
– but probably eventually would, because chances were you’d already
sinned – the man everyone feared looked like an ordinary business man.
Kind of tall at about five eleven or so, with a stocky build and dark hair
going silver at the temples. If one ignored the wicked orange fires in his
eyes, he would look almost benign. Until he smiled. How he could make something
so innocent as the curve of his lips appear so evil, she didn’t know, but she
practiced, every night in the mirror, to no avail. She just couldn’t make her
apple cheeks and dimple look grim, no matter how she tried.

“What the fuck just happened?” she asked
in a tight voice.

“You were on fire,” he calmly replied
before turning and heading back to his desk.

Controlling an urge to fling a curse at
his back took her a few seconds. Not because holding her temper was the right
thing to do but because the jerk possessed a bouncing spellshield on him, kind
of like the kids rhyme – ‘I’m rubber you’re glue, whatever you say,
bounces off me and sticks to you.’
Ouch
was all she had to say on that
matter.

“Okay, oh king of observation, I was on
fire. Care to tell me why?”

Lucifer shuffled some papers on his desk
as she stalked toward him – clip, clunk, on uneven heels – as gobs
of extinguisher foam fell off her to the floor. Flicking her gaze down, she
shrieked.

“I’m naked!”

“Yeah, I noticed. Nice tits by the way.
Did I mention you might want to look into getting some flame retardant
clothes?”

Eyes narrowed, she shook her finger at
him. “You. Explain. Now. And get me some fucking clothes or Lord of Hell or
not, I’m going to rip your eyeballs from your head and shove them where the sun
never shines.”

She knew she’d gone too far when his body
began to expand and smoke poured from his ears.

“Enough!” he roared, the force of his
yell shaking the room. Dust sifted down. “I might have to put up with this kind
of attitude from my daughter, but dammit, you work for me!”

“Not for long,” she muttered not in the
slightest cowed. Lucifer yelled a lot. Tortured and killed at will too, but, as
she’d learned over the years, he respected people with backbone. Of course, he
respected it only in private. In public, she smartly bowed and scraped like all
his other minions. He did have a reputation to uphold after all. Some lines she
knew better than to cross. But alone…she didn’t take shit from anyone. Oddly
enough, she got the impression he liked her feisty attitude.

“About the termination of your contract
– we have a slight problem.” He snapped his fingers, and using some kind
of magic she had yet to decipher, the burnt remnants of clothing, the foam,
everything about her mishap disappeared, including the lingering pain. She
dropped into a chair, relieved but not wanting to show it, glad for the simple
robe he’d conjured that hid her body. Exhibitionism was for those who went to
the gym on a regular basis.

“What problem? We signed a deal, Lucifer.
In exchange for my soul and five hundred years of service, you were going to
condemn all those who had an active hand in making me burn to an eternity of
suffering in Hell. Seems pretty straightforward, and according to my contract,
those five hundred years are up next Tuesday.”

“Except, we’ve had a prison breakout.”

“And what does a prison breakout have to
do with my contract?”

“Hold on to your panties, and I’ll show
you. Oh wait, you’re not wearing a pair anymore.” He leered. She growled. He
sighed as he muttered, “You are absolutely no fun.”

Reaching below his desk, he grabbed
something. The object thumped onto his desk, a green folder thick with paper,
and labeled, no surprise, with her name. Slave to the big guy didn’t mean she’d
rolled over and turned into a docile mouse once she got to the Pit. In the
circles of Hell, it was every man/woman/demon for themselves. And after the way
her lover betrayed her, Ysabel clung to her freedom and status like a pit-bull,
cursing with magic anyone who stood in her way. It seemed the Lord had kept
tabs on her shenanigans.

Lucifer flipped open her file and pulled
out from it, in another feat of magic she hadn’t mastered, a yellowed scroll
bound in a lock of her hair. He sliced a fingernail across it, splitting the
binding and the paper unrolled several feet, revealing line after line of tight
handwritten script. He flattened it on his desk, using a pair of paperweights
– the skulls of those who dared defy him – to hold down its
corners. Ysabel stood and leaned over to verify it, noting her signature: a
giant ‘Y’ – the only letter she knew how to draw at the time – the
blood having dried into an almost black color.

“Why are you showing me this?” she asked.

“Read sub-clause forty-nine, paragraph C,
section VII.”

Her eyes scanned the document, her lips
moving as she read, a skill she’d not owned at the time of signing. She’d had
someone impartial brought in to read it for her, a powerful witch by the name
of Nefertiti. She’d apprenticed under the sorceress for a time after her
arrival, but Nefertiti’s brand of magic – sex based orgies for power
– wasn’t something that appealed.

Oddly enough, though she’d read hundreds
of contracts for other souls, this was the first time she’d actually read her
own. The more she read, though, the more she wished she’d paid attention at the
time instead of being so focused on vengeance. But then again, impartiality was
hard to achieve with memories of her skin flaking off and the imagined scent of
her own roasted body making her hungry for chicken.

“If I’m reading this right,” she said
slowly, trying in vain to control her temper, “it says that if within my five
hundred years of service, should one of the five I bargained to have cursed and
sent to Hell manages to escape, then the terms of my employment are extended
until the soul in question is caught.”

“Keep reading,” he replied. “And keep in
mind, this is a standard contract.”

Eyes flicking back to the document, she
read the rest before grabbing the closest paperweight and throwing it at him.
“You jerk! The prison breakout was by one of the souls I had damned to an
eternity of suffering, wasn’t it? Which means I am going to have to relive the
moment of my death, daily, until the soul is caught.”