Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
REMIND ME TO COME DOWN HERE NEXT TIME I WANT MY CONSTITUTION UNDERMINED
The blackness in front of Shiver was punctured by the appearance of a tiny red circle of light, a burning ember of toxic Hellfire that briefly lit up the face of his employer as he took a drag. In another moment, the glowing red ball swished away to where he was resting his arm on the chair.
"You're on thin ice, boy." The voice of the head demon was deceptively soft—a gentle, lazy, accent-free drawl that called to mind more a disappointed father figure than the third-in-command to the Devil.
And yet, the more one listened, the more one could hear its dryness, the grit of a sandstorm, the creak of an old stair, the wheeze of a throat deprived of water, the last gasp.
Very few things made Shiver shiver. The voice of Eligos never failed.
"Is it already time for my decade review? Where does the time go? I swear we were just doing this at the tail end of that Influenza —"
"Shut up, willya?"
Shiver shut up. It was advice he should respect and heed at all times.
Another long pause, dry as a tundra. Another drag on the glowing ember. Eligos was in no hurry.
"You know I hate to entertain gossip in the workplace," he said. "Especially from a fucking weasel like Frenzy. But then I hear a few more of these… rumors. And I'm thinking, this can't be true, not of Shiver. Not of my best guy."
Eligos spoke as if it truly pained him to hear anything negative said of one of his men, and Shiver wanted to buy it.
How many centuries had they known each other as Shiver rose through the ranks?
How often had they laughed together as another Fallen roasted, even while Shiver knew he was one failure away from just such a roasting?
"Rumors, my lord?"
White eyes flashed in the dark. The head demon always took his meetings like this, in a pitch-black office with the most enormous chairs that made one squirm to fit just right.
"Rumors that you've got a fever stashed up top that you won't claim because she has a tight cunt. Am I getting warm, kid?"
Shiver knew he shouldn't be able to blush.
He had no blood to rush up to his face. But tell that to his cock, which also twitched at the thought of Clara and her delicious attributes—and all in the office of his demonic boss, no less.
He fought to stay cool. But the sad truth was, in the face of adversity, Shiver never failed to make an utter ass of himself.
“Well, Eli, I mean to say," he rubbed the back of his neck with a helpless shrug. "Have you been up top lately? The hair is shorter, the skirts are shorter… can you blame a guy for wanting to make the job last a little?"
"I can if there are souls on the line, including yours," said Eligos. "You wait too long, she'll recover on you, and you’ll get to join your old friend, what was his name? Delirium?"
Shiver chewed on his lip. Delirium had been the most recent to lose his human. His screams had lasted for weeks.
"You said it yourself, my lord, I'm your best," Shiver tried to hoist up a confident grin. "I wouldn't fail now at the sight of a pretty dress."
Shiver caught the glowing ember zig-zagging in the darkness, as if the person smoking it were shaking their head.
"You've been up top too long this time, my boy. Get it finished and quit making me wonder about you." The ember bounced as it was stubbed out on the chair's arm with a hiss, and they were left in blackness.
"Because if I find out you're lying, I'll make you watch what I do to that girl."
Frenzy had many talents that outshone his colleagues, but the finest of them all was an understanding of that most unholy of things—bureaucracy.
Hell thrived on the reddest of tape—reports filed in triplicate, permits to file those reports, multiple passcodes to unlock those permits, and another permit required before one could obtain a passcode.
It was beautiful. Everything had a precise order, and none of it made sense.
Such measures were perfect, modern ways to torment the living, and Frenzy counted it as an added bonus that it fucked with his fellow demons as well.
He'd set up a doozy for his friend Shiver—a real nib-buster, as he might have called it not too long ago, when he still worked in the world of the living.
After Shiver's meeting with the boss, he would be ensnared in a bramble of forms summarizing the talking points of their meeting, requesting his signature on a formal citation, a stack of questionnaires about his performance to fill out (in triplicate, of course), and Frenzy's personal favorite, a survey about his experience filing his paperwork.
The underground was decades ahead of its time, while those pansy cloud-dwellers still played harps for fun.
What a shame, he'll be tied up all day, thought Frenzy as he made his way up top. Some kind soul ought to check in on his adorable little human.
Clara made her shaky way inside, the dark coolness of her kitchen a balm to her burning forehead after the late afternoon sun.
Autumn was closing in fast, and she would miss the sun when it was gone, but today that bright burn sizzled right between her eyebrows.
Unpleasant, yes, but it only reminded her of her fever demon. Was he watching even now?
Had he meant what he'd told her the night before?
Clara had hardly allowed herself to think of it. What business had he to tell her he loved her when he would be gone as soon as her health improved? What a waste that would be, to love him just as he was going away, what a terrible waste.
Clara's happiness had been snatched away from her too often lately. Her new life as a columnist in a real city was gone just as she was getting comfortable. Her parents were gone just as she was beginning to reconnect with them.
Shiver would be gone soon, too. It was much better to treat him as if he were already out of her life. She could grieve silently, slowly, a tiny little bit at a time, as she always did.
Clara untied her apron and hung it on the hook by the screened back door.
"Why stop at the apron, honey, the show was just getting good."
Clara yelped at the voice that sounded like it was just beside her ear, whipping around to see nothing.
"Shiver?" She called out, uncertainly. It hadn't really sounded like his low, timeless thunder roll of a voice, but who else would it be? She blinked into the dim light of the room beyond the kitchen, dizzy from her spin.
"No, better," said the voice from just at the edge of her vision. "Frenzy."
There was a vague shadow there in the darkness, something darker than the dark room, but she could hardly make it out. Her hand inched toward the skillet on her stove.
"Get out of my house," she said.
Frenzy laughed in mock offense. As if he wanted to be among humans again.
"Happily, my dear child, I just thought I'd warn you about our mutual fiend," he said, turning as if to head for the door. "But if you want to wind up behind the eight ball over some villain, it won't keep me up at night."
Clara frowned into the darkness. She didn't like that she couldn't see this creature. Of course, she had barely been able to see Shiver at first, but… he changed.
"What are you getting at? Is Shiver in trouble?"
Frenzy stopped, leaned back against the wall where he'd been, and flicked his wrist to produce a glowing ember between his fingers.
"Honey. Shiver is trouble."
As the shadow took a drag from the strange glow in his hand, Clara could make out the black outline of a slim figure in a hat, eyes that only stood out when they hit the light, shifting like an owl's would.
"Say your piece, then get out," said Clara, wrapping her numb fingers around the handle of her skillet.
"Now take it easy, baby," Frenzy put up his hands. "I just came here to help. There are rumors that Shiver's been working overtime on you. Getting a little too close. The fact you can see me doesn't help his case much."
"He can't have a friend?" Clara asked, keeping her eyes on Frenzy while trying to focus on the peripheral to stay aware of any sudden movements.
"Don't be such an olive." Frenzy took another pull from his ember. It never really scratched the itch his old Lucky Days once did, but it came close enough that he could pretend. "He's not up here to be your friend; he's up here to put you in the ground."
Clara dropped the skillet with a clang so loud they might have heard it in town. She stared at the darkness in the dark, feeling the tingle from her fingers sliding all across her body.
"Did you say… you said in the ground. Dead."
Frenzy looked up from his faux cigarette, eyes locking onto Clara.
"He never told you?" Frenzy asked, and slowly a smile spread across his face. Clara couldn't see it, but she could hear it when he spoke. "Ohhhh no. Oh, you poor lamb, how awful."
"You are lying to me."
"Pretty thing, I don't even have to lie," he said, flicking his ember away and approaching her now that the iron was safely out of her hand. "The truth is already too good."
Clara backed up to the countertop, but the shadow thing only pressed right against her. She could see it now, tiny hints of sunset red highlighting the blackest of black, little glinting eyes. He was far more defined than Shiver had been at first, but darker. Dark as pitch.
"Did you really think he was just going to go home once you recovered? Did you think he wasn't feeding on every cough and groan and tremble?"
Frenzy could feel that tremble now, and it shot straight to his cock—one part of himself that still worked, to his torment.
And now, so close to this delicious little slip of a thing, pressed against her counter as if she could melt through it to escape him, shaking with fear, with anger, even with the fever that ravished her body, he learned new things about sin every moment.
"H-he told me… well, he said —" Clara couldn't remember what he said, not now with this demon pressed right against her as her countertop dug into her back.