Undead and Undermined

The voice was raspy and weak and hissed more than spoke. The voice sounded like nothing human, which made sense, because the person who owned that voice wasn't human. And check out the list of insults! The devil must have kicked ass in vocab.

Everything inside me went cold, while my face got warm. I figured out what that meant after a second . . . I was scared, yet pissed. I patted my warm cheeks (which, due to my sluggish blood flow, were almost never warm). Yep, definitely getting hot under the collar. Hmm, wonder what could have brought that on? I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck not just trying to stand up, but trying to get the hell out of Dodge.

I don't blame you, l'il hairs. We should all leave. So how dumb does that make me, that I'm just standing here waiting to be smited? Or whatever?

Satan was getting up. Carefully and slowly, she was rising to her feet. Her movements were stiff and forced. Her face was still a mottled blue; the whites of her eyes were severely bloodshot. No, they were filling with blood. No, they were red. The whites of her eyes were red. No. The whites and her pupils were red. It was like being glared at by a stoplight. A stoplight who had a run in her pantyhose.

And her wings were out. They were red, too, cardinal red. They fluttered and seemed to help her with her balance as she climbed up from the floor into a standing position. They were huge . . . the top of the wings started just above her neck, and the tail feathers stopped just above the floor.

What I found really strange was that the wings and her new and improved eye color didn't make her seem alien or odd, though I'd never in my life seen someone (something?) who looked like that. In a weird way, seeing her wings pop made the whole package easier to swallow. It showed that the suits and the shoes and the carefully prepped hairstyles were the camouflage. The woman in this room with me now, that was the real Lucifer.

Weird, to look at something so alien and unfamiliar and think, This is right. This is the way she's supposed to look.

It made me think of Laura's eyes and hair . . . when she got mega-pissed her hair would deepen from blond to red, and her eyes would go from blue to poison green. It was like the coloring was her litmus test for rage. Maybe that's why I wasn't terrified when we fell through the library into hell and, for me, anyway, woke up on a coroner's table. Her hair and eyes had never changed. So at the time I knew she was pissed, but not, like, lethally so.

Lucifer finally got all the way to her feet-it seemed, at least to me, to take a long time. It also seemed to hurt. Awwww. The devil had a boo-boo. She clutched her head in both hands, then closed her evil scary red eyes and gritted her teeth. We could all hear them grinding together and then a new sound, a sort of dim crackle. It took me a second to realize: she was healing her shattered vertebra. They were knitting back together right in front of us.

My finger marks stood out like vivid red brands on her Anne Boleyn neck ("I have a little neck," remember? A great line for someone who knew she was going to be legally murdered by the thug who was Henry VIII). While we watched, the marks on her neck slowly faded . . . it was like watching a film run backward. Harsh marks, then lighter, then fading, then . . . look at what the miracle of plastic surgery can do for women of all ages!

"Wow, who could have predicted any of that?" I wondered out loud. "Weird. Do you think it was something you said? Or something you did?"

Satan glanced down at herself, saw her skirt was rumpled and her pantyhose had runs. Then her skirt was fine and her pantyhose were flawless.

She looked at her bare feet for a few seconds, which seemed like years, and then simple black flats appeared, probably Dior.

I wasn't certain why she was taking so long to smite me, but I had an idea. An idea that might have occurred to her right around the time I was making her neck go squish.

I shouldn't have been able to hurt her, that was the thing. She was a zillion-year-old angel, she was the devil for crying out loud, and this was her world, her realm, her turf. No one ever tried to stomp her before? Ha. No one ever got the drop on her since God nailed her with His official smackdown? Double ha. No one ever tried to stomp her on her own turf before? And again, I say ha. Even if I took my considerable shortsightedness and vanity into question, I couldn't make myself believe that.

Not because I was a mega-powerful vamp queen. Because I wasn't especially original, and no one could tell me that in skatey-eight billion years, not one person had ever tried to pop Satan here in hell.

So I figured that had to mean one of two things. Lucifer let me kick the shit out of her. Or she didn't. And right now I had no idea which one it could be. I almost wished Sinclair were here. He was pretty smart about the sneaky stuff. So was Tina. She practically had a master's in trickery. Either of them would have been able to figure this out by now.

I glanced at Garrett. I hoped the devil didn't hold grudges now that we were about to ask a favor. Then I almost laughed at myself again. I had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I normally wasn't this naive, either.

I cleared my throat. Peeked at Garrett once again. There was no chance, no chance, but I had to ask for Antonia anyway. I wasn't going to come all the way to hell and not even say her name. "So, you're probably all wondering the reason we're all gathered here today-"

Satan held up a finger. "You should not talk right now."

"I'm sure you're right, but that never has, and never will, be-"

"What do I have to do to get you to leave?"

Uh. What? Get me to leave? Like she couldn't throw my ass out whenever she wanted? Like she had to be careful because she might need me? Or I might fuck her up? Please. I hadn't even been able to make her dead for more than a minute. Maybe if I reeeally pissed her off she might have a stroke . . . for about fifteen seconds. There wasn't anything I could do to her that she . . .

She . . .

Okay. Wait. Vain as I was, I'd never believe I could hurt the devil, really hurt her. Not right now, at least.

But how about, oh, I dunno, let's grab a number at random. How about a thousand years from now? Hmm? How about then? Was I a danger to Satan after the world ended and I was king of the mountain?

Aw, shit. You know how when you think of something and have no evidence any of it's true, and no way to prove it will be true, but you know it is all the same? The way you know your name, and how your husband's hands feel on your skin? That's how it was. Even as I was speculating, I could almost feel the click as my brain engaged and coughed up explanations that felt right.

So: Lucifer was afraid of Ancient Me, or needed Ancient Me, or both, so she couldn't smite me anytime this year, or the next, or the next. So: she wanted us out of her living room (in a matter of speaking). So: what do you ask the devil for when you know there's not much she won't give you?

Naturally, my first thought was of Antonia (the least annoying one). That was why we'd come, and it was good that we came . . . I was beginning to see the wisdom in the old fortune-cookie saying ("Keep your friends close, but your enemies should be watched a lot," or however it went). Antonia should never have died in the first place. If I'd been quicker, or smarter, or bulletproof, she wouldn't have. And, at the time, if someone had said to me while we were all staring at her brains on the wall, "If you could undo this, would you?" then yes, I absolutely would. So here was our chance, and I wasn't going to waste it.

I opened my mouth, I was ready with my plan, my course of action seemed clear, and all the voices in my head were in agreement. But what came out of my mouth was, "I want my Valentino couture black-lace midheel peep-toe pumps back. The ones I had to sacrifice to you last week in order to get you to appear."