22)

Martin- In a dream.

Sofiya, who for some odd reason was dressed up like an old west gunfighter, took a step into the room as she slowly pushed back the side of her bleached white leather duster. She rested her hand on a holstered revolver, glared down at the demon wearing her thirteen year old form, and hissed. "Our kind aren't welcome here.”

Damia stumbled back with a startled "Epp" sound.

You know what? Girl fight. Not getting involved. Sofi looks like she can handle this all on her own, and a gentleman should not greet a lady in his room dressed in nothing but a set of sailboat pajamas.

I still felt underdressed as I slipped on and belted my bathrobe, but it was symbolic at least. Ritual even.

Oddly enough the pajamas and robe I had when I was thirteen fit me as an adult. Dream logic I guess?

My first love followed Damia into the room, drawing her pistol as she stepped in and cocking the hammer back with her thumb as she pressed the end of the barrel into my unwelcome visitor’s forehead. “That means you need to leave, on your own, or by my hand.”

Damia snapped out “Right! Sorry!” as she quickly faded away.

The two of us looked at each other, she had grown a few inches and gained a tan, but her eyes were still just as blue as the sky. And her crooked smile was still just as sly.

She tilted the revolver up toward the ceiling and eased the hammer back down before giving the gun a spin as she dropped it down into its holster. "Nice to see you again Marty. I missed you."

Not even a trace of her Russian accent was left, it had been replaced with one right out of an old western film. One that was perfectly suited to her new looks.

The girl I had known was… no. That girl was right here, right now, and starting to look a little tense. Be happy with who she is now, let her know…

“I’m so happy to see you again Sofi. Tell me everything.”

She laughed and gave me a real smile. "A bit of a tall order there."

I crossed my arms and rolled my eyes. “Nine years and the first thing you do is make a short joke. Really?"

She made a sputtering sound and shook her hands in protest but I pressed on. "You still have a few inches on me, but were you so worried that I had outgrown you that you had to wear cowboy boots to make sure you still towered above me? Then you wore all the rest as well just to match the boots?" I shook my head sadly as she began to laugh so hard she had to lean back against the side of the doorway.

"You just have to overdo everything. I mean we made out, one time, and just because it got a little awkward. You ran off and exiled yourself to hell.”

Her laughter cut off abruptly as she looked over at me in disbelief, "I ate part of your soul, I had to go or I would have ended up killing you. Or worst, turning you.”

I held my arms out to her as I stepped forward “I would have risked it.”

She waved me back with a sad smile. “Yes, you would have, and I was so messed up I would have let you. That is why I had to leave that very hour to make sure I never laid hands on you again.”

I dropped my arms by my side. “Even here, in a dream?”

She looked down. "Always. In hell, you learn to set the hunger aside because there is almost no one there to feed on, and down there I couldn't get to you even in our dreams. Not from that far away.”

She crossed her arms, hands clenching at herself just above her elbows as if holding herself back. “I've been trained so I can be around humans who have ended up below, but around a guy, I care about?"

“It’s all I can do to stay on this side of the room, so you damned better stay over there on your side or I’m gone.”

Her lopsided grin had turned into something that looked more shy. “Now you tell me everything.”

Donovan- Chatting with the First in the Party Mart

I leaned back against the counter. "My uncle did something to my head and send me off to this party store to shoot the guy that was working and living here. When I shot him, he did something that sent a copy of the store down here while keeping it connected to the other store by mirrors.” I pointed up at the round shoplifter spotter mirror up high in the corner where two of those blue monsters were keeping watch on us from the other side.

They sneered back at me.

“Then Roxir showed up and killed me, but I got better. Just like the store does. Then your daughter showed up and took over the place."

The cowboy, Damia’s father started looking around the store as I talked, not at the stuff on the shelves, but at the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. Some of the time he seemed to be looking several feet beyond the walls.

I gave him a moment before asking. "I'd appreciate it if there was some way you could get me back to the real world before I turn into something else and end up stuck here like you said.”

He gave me his full attention. “Wish I could son, but, I can never leave hell, that was his first rule. So I got no way of getting you up there myself. The Creator's rules only have so much wiggle room.”

He gave a nod up above. "Now if you had a way to convince my darling girl to put in a claim on Perdition. You could catch a ride up as it becomes a Realm, and from up there not only will you stop changing, but there are places you can literally walk back to your world.”

"Failing that. Well, once you change enough to walk around outside, you can always look for another domain if working for my daughter ain't working out for you. Hell is a big place. Bigger than the Earth by a whole lot. You'll find that there are a lot of places out there in need of a few bad men.”

I wanted to… swear or break something. But I didn't want to do anything to upset this guy. People down here tended to be willing to hurt me real bad with no warning and outside of the store, there might not be any second chances.

Guess I had finally learned the lesson about burning bridges.

I heard the rattle of hooves coming down the metal staircase behind the store just before Linda burst into the store dressed in a loosely buttoned silk pajama shirt which made it look like she might not be wearing anything underneath it. "Hi Luther! Damia is doing a dream thing so she went to sleep, so me and Clarice are going to have a slumber party while she guards Damia.”

Luthor smiled at her fondly as the pale blue girl stood there beaming at him. “That’s great, you go do that sweety. Have fun.”

She dashed off with a giggle as she filled her arms with snacks and drinks. He leaned over to me and whispers. “I think I got the measure of all that, but what exactly is a slumber party?”

I leaned in as well. “Bunch of girls get together for a sleepover, stay up late giggling and eating junk food. More of a younger girl thing.”

He nodded, "Well Linda is a young girl. Now anyways. She deserves her fun."

I gave him a side look, and he explained. "In the old days, demons didn't know they could come down here to get away from their hunger. And I couldn't go up there to collect them. Things weren't all that organized so demons could end up feeding on a lot of people for a long time, and every time they feed they lose more of what made them human."

He returned a cheerful wave from Linda as she headed out the back door. “Wasn’t much left of Oglindati when she finally got cast down. Some sort of snake cult had started making sacrifices to her. I had to work with her myself for a long time before she could put together enough of an identity together to grow into.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then gave me a cold look. "My daughter wants to be treated as a grown up. Betray her, injure her, or anything short of killing her and I won’t raise a hand against you. But with Linda, be kind. Or I will show you why men fear hell."

Cassy- On the road again.

Kinkade, bless her heart, tried to fix my car by tearing off the crumpled rear door and kicking the bent frame away from the wheel. But it was going to have to be towed by Helios's roadside service back to the secretive dwarves dealership to get it back on the road.

Since it was a Company car, a quick call to a service agent with a thick Nordic accent who claimed to be named "Jeff". It only required a brief explanation of "Angry witch" for the cause of the damage and getting him the address of the place from Otto. Then I was ready to hit the road.

Grimaud got sat down on a bench in the back of a van with Otto sitting opposite him, the two of them chatting to each other in french in a surprisingly calm manner. I ended up riding shotgun while Kinkade jumped into the back of a panel van clutching a harpoon and saying something about "Let me give this back to you, Chuck."

I gave my boss a call. "Hey Natalie, the package has been collected. What now?"

My boss responded in a cheery tone. "You sound pretty calm. So no deaths?"

I looked back to see Grimaud look up from his chit-chat to give me a shrug. "No problems at all, he agreed to come in after a brief meeting of the minds with Kinkade. But he ain't saying anything."

Natalie hummed for a moment. "Yeah, I got an official meeting arranged with my father later tonight. Well, more like early this morning. I need you to get two more things for me, so it looks like tonight's going to be an all nighter I'm afraid."

I nodded, Yeah I know, not all that helpful on the phone. "I'm good boss. I'd rather get this done and over with tonight. What do you need me to do?"

She hesitated. “Well, first I'm going to be sending Johanson to meet you at the hell hole. He'll have a stone I enchanted with him. I'm going to need you two to go down to hell to take care of something for me, but I need you to activate it. It will bring the two of you back up as well.”

I gave the phone a look, again not something that works with a phone. “He’s a bit green for... I can't believe I just said that. I meant, he isn't even a field agent. He's your driver.

A laugh from my boss, "He'll be fine. The orc girl with the succubus is his older sister who dropped out of college after her roommate, the succubus, fed on some guy at a party and got sent back down."

I rolled my eyes. “I knew about the sister, just when did you find out about the rest of that?”

She giggled before going on in a sterner voice. "You aren't the only minion I have toiling away for me throughout the night Agent Varrow. But seriously, they were already on file. I'll send you a copy. Bye now."

I told the driver, Vincent, we were heading back to the Party mart lot, and he called it in on the CB.

The file matched what my boss had said. Some guy at a frat party had tried to roofie Prudence Ward. She didn't take that very well after her roommate, Clarice Johanson, explained what the drug was supposed to do, and what the frat boy was planning on doing to her if it had worked.

Obviously, the guy was a norm. Who else would try to rape a succubus?

She in turn faked being woozy and out of it, let him half carry, half drag her back to his room. Then she did something so bad to him that it made his screams loud enough to disrupt the whole party. It also left him catatonic for the next several weeks. Meanwhile, Clarice held off his frat brothers who tried to rush the door to help him.

Well. describing it as just holding them off is a bit charitable. she didn't kill anyone, but most of them needed a trip in an ambulance to the hospital, and some of them still needed crutches to walk a year later.

Apparently, Clarice held the entire frat collectively responsible for the attempted rape. Which is making me think her whole family might be what I considered good people.

Then someone made the two of them vanish off the face of the earth.

Not us. The Magic Incident Bureau usually handled this sort of thing, but it appears a higher power handled this herself. Which makes sense considering who Prudence's father is.

The First. Ruler of hell. The first being made by the Creator to forever stand guard over the barrier between all of reality and the raw chaos outside of it.

And here I was thinking this case was over my pay grade when I found out it involved the Families.