Chapter One
Hell: Greed District
“You’re not bringing it inside, are you?”
Phil scowls at me, thin lips pursed in disgust. I smirk at the threshold, shrugging with Bubby’s leash in my hand as his scaled, whip-like tail beats a happy rhythm on the cold stone floor.
The elevator eases closed behind the two of us in the twelfth-floor vestibule of Satanic Panic Inc.
, and it takes all my self-control to hide my shit-eating grin.
Yesterday, our contracts were renewed. Mammon’s shell corporation of soul acquisition start-ups exceeded all expectations in its first four quarters, and even Lucifer was pleased to see how his initial investments paid off.
Leasing my soul contract to Mammon was a profitable venture.
As the Senior Acquisitions Associate of Possess-An-Ex, the sexiest subsidiary of Satanic Panic Inc. , I’ve more than proven myself.
As such, my soul is secure—no matter how much I piss off Phil.
For now, at least. But that wasn’t always the case.
Twelve months ago, when Phil led me into this boarded-up office building, cardboard file boxes in hand, I seriously doubted the old demon’s sanity.
“This is the window?” I said, taking in the shattered glass littering the cheap tile floor. Singed wooden boards crisscrossed over square holes leading out to the building’s exterior. “I should’ve read the fine print.”
“You should always read the fine print.” Phil dropped his file box onto the single desk in the center of the room. It creaked ominously. “And I know this is better than your cell in the barracks.”
“I’ve got my own toilet in the barracks.”
Without saying a word, he marched the length of the office to a narrow door. He grasped the jiggly handle and pushed it open, revealing the grossest bathroom I’d ever seen.
And this is Hell we’re talking about.
He gestured within. “Help yourself.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged. “Cleaning crew comes in Tuesday. We’ll have to make due until then.”
And then I held back a shudder as a floppy tentacle squelched out of the toilet bowl and smacked what remained of the seat.
“Come on, Phil, I’ve always wanted a pet.
And now that our contracts are good for another decade, I can actually afford to take care of the little thing.
Look at this face,” I say, reaching down and squeeze the pathetic imp’s wrinkly cheeks with my thumb and forefinger. “How can you say no to this face?”
A snot bubble pops as Bubby wheezes, coating my claws in mucus. Phil flinches.
I retract my hand and wipe it on my pants, grinning. Bubby sneezes, and a puff of smoke sparks from his snout. This delights the little thing, so he continues to sneeze, sending a thick stream of the dark clouds drifting between us. Another trail of snot dribbles down his rotund body.
Phil looks horrified.
“Regardless of your contract status, I’m still in charge here, Az, and that–”
“His name is Baalzebub.” I argue. “And he’s not a ‘that.’ He’s family.”
I pat the disgusting creature on his head, tugging a handkerchief from my pocket and wiping the snot away from his bulbous nose.
“Damn it all, Az, this is a business, not a petting zoo! First you show up an hour late, and then you waltz in here with an abraxas that’s probably lousy with fleas–”
“That’s a hurtful stereotype!” My claw flies to the hollow void in my chest where my heart would be if I weren’t, you know, a demon.
Phil flattens his gaze at me, in a gesture that’s more tired than angry.
“Unless you intend to fire me, sir, I would implore you not to engage in such harmful assumptions about my precious baby boy.”
A snort from the other room cuts me off. Then Eve joins the conversation. “The only thing precious here is your ego, Az.”
I ignore her, raising my eyebrows at Phil. “You let Eve have Beta.”
“That’s different. Beta’s a service hound. She wears a vest.”
The hellhound in question barks at the sound of her name, and Bubby’s tail straightens in alarm. I wind his leash around my wrist an extra time.
“So do I, and that doesn’t give me any special treatment.”
A lot has changed since that first day in the office.
For months, I didn’t know if I could trust Phil enough to push his buttons.
As Lucifer’s agent, he’s got a bit of a reputation as a goody-two-shoes.
Tattled a time or two too many on his lessers, and got them banished to the fighting pits in Wrath.
It was only me and him those early days, and when neither you nor your only coworker feel comfortable using the shitter in your slum of an office, a lot of tension can build up.
But Mammon, true to his word, provided us with a few other staff members to handle all the non-weapons-based business.
An entire legion of imps from Phil’s forces arrived that first week to clean and rebuild, dividing the dank, unwieldy space into more manageable rooms and cubicles.
The bathroom was fumigated and sprayed for eldritch horrors, and new glass was installed in the single window, which is now behind Phil’s desk.
We got our first few possession gigs, and to my surprise, no one micromanaged me.
Eve, pain in the ass though she is, was a real find.
While not as experienced as Phil and me, she’s been around the block a time or two in the Wrath district, and Mammon leased her from Satan around the same time he leased us from Lucifer.
She’s shit with a Possession Pistol, but brilliant when it comes to seeking out new clients.
Organized. Surprisingly good with technology.
While I’m normally on standby for summoning calls, she’s the one that handles the client records and the Ouija board. She’s also big on word-of-mouth advertising.
I’m not sure what exactly has been going on topside the last few years, but the interest in the occult has skyrocketed.
Eve keeps her ear to the sky—even going as far as to install a human television in her cubicle—tuning into Earth news and driving us crazy with her constant stream of some inane 24-hour drivel called “CNN”.
Phil was skeptical at first; the resources needed to run a cable far enough to get signal from the surface slowed down progress significantly in those first few months.
But he can’t argue with the results of her methods.
Like clockwork, she’ll hear a whisper of a story or concert in some Earth city, send out a few scouts, and within a day we’ll have a dozen calls and as many new souls to add to our balance sheets.
Then two weeks later, there will be a news story about some sex cult or other getting broken up by local authorities in the same county.
But that’s the thing about Eve. As a former human herself, she understands how to infiltrate their society. What makes them turn to temptation. Hell, she might know that better than anybody.
Doesn’t excuse her taking Phil’s side, though.
“Who’s going to watch him while you’re out on a gig?” Phil groans.
“I may be a demon, but I’m not a monster.” I lift the bag of pet supplies I got from the pound. “I bought a crate.”
And treats, and a bed. Toys, too. Hell isn’t easy for anybody, but it’s especially bad for imps like Bubby, who lost everything that made them them millennia ago. They’re essentially the punching bags of the Wrath district.
If I can give this one a better life, then you’d better believe I’m going to spoil him rotten.
I smile innocently at Phil, and he looks like he’s about an inch away from firing me out of sheer spite. But then he thinks better of it, shakes his head, and turns tail back to his office, mumbling something about allergies.
Which is bullshit, of course. As an abraxas—a breed of imp that looks like a little winged pudgeball with claws and a snake tail—he’s hypoallergenic. I checked.
Satisfied, I guide Bubby back to my cubicle. I settle in, right across the makeshift hallway from Eve and Beta. The two pets growl at each other for a moment, sniff each other’s rectums, and then I nudge Baalzebub over to his designated spot.
“Welcome to your new home, Bubby!” I coo at the little abraxas, laying out the dog bed I’d purchased for him beside my desk.
I pull a couple chew toys from my briefcase and toss them to him.
He flaps his little wings excitedly, snatching the toys from the air before tumbling onto the bed and gnawing at them with his serrated teeth.
Beta whines in response, and Eve scowls at me.
“I knew I should have applied to Hex-R-Us,” she mumbles.
I ignore her, heading over to the coffee pot to fill up my mug and get ready for another day of possessing humans.
Humans have summoned demons for as long as we’ve both existed.
But it used to be surface-driven. Some poor schmuck on Earth would get bored with their free will and decide that everything would be a whole lot easier if they sold their soul to get the mortal happiness cheat code.
Sometimes it was a djinn in a lamp, other times a snake in a garden—you’ve heard the stories.
Make a deal with a demon: one soul for a lifetime of easy mode.
But this never really amounted to anything at scale. We didn’t go off damning humans en masse. It was never a business. Humans always made the call, then we got their souls when they died. And for millennia, it stayed that way.
But a few years back, Mammon got lucky enough to get summoned by some preacher on the surface who wanted to squeeze more money out of his congregation.
Real grifter, this guy, using some funny words and mob mentality to get a bunch of idiots in a tent every Sunday to shout “Hallelujah” and toss their life savings into a hat.
He wasn’t the first to do it, but he had something none of the other mega-preachers had.
Somehow, he’d gotten hold of one of Solomon’s grimoires. The one with instructions for summoning the Prince of Greed himself.
And once Mammon saw his set-up, an idea began to form.