Free bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled by sam cheever Page B

crush of hot, sweaty bodies pressed into me and although Abrine had obviously taken great pains to perfume the air and filter out the raunchy smell of hundreds of gyrating bodies packed into a space that was entirely too small to accommodate their existence, I could smell a faint undercoat of demon beneath the perfumed air. It was that rotting earth, mold and decaying flesh kind of smell that demons gave off and that they could never fully mask from non-humans. It clung to every table, stool and wall in the place and caused my nose to twitch in self-defense.
    I tried to block it out of my sensory pool and turned toward the bar, where I hoped to get the information I needed. I was momentarily alarmed by the roiling mass of human and demon flesh between me and the bar, but then I mentally rolled up my sleeves and went to work chiseling a path through the gyrating wall of flesh.
    It only took me a couple of minutes to push, shove, threaten and wriggle my way through them all. The last obstacle between me and the bar was a particularly revolting couple, where he was of the extremely good looking human type and she was of a particularly disgusting demon type, with purple, warty looking skin and green Brillo pad hair that moved even when she wasn’t moving. I determinedly averted my gaze from the moving hair as I passed by. I’d been killed by curiosity once too often on that front.
    Some demons, known as supra-demons, serve as hosts for other, smaller demons that resemble something from the reptile or maggot family, depending on their size. Of all the demons, I’ve found these to be the foulest, in more than just the obvious way. As I took a tall, surprisingly empty stool at the gleaming bar, I glanced one more time at maggot head, I couldn’t seem to help myself. She turned bulging brown eyes to me and winked as a slimy, white wormy looking thing crawled down the side of her face. I pinched my lips together in revulsion and turned away. The last thought I gave her was to wonder what the human was seeing as he looked at her. Little did he know that the Miss America he thought he was sidling up to was a complete illusion and he was really rubbing up against something that was too repulsive even for his sad, human imagination to conjure up.
    The bartender that smiled at me when I finally hit the bar was small, finely boned and almost too pretty, with close cropped black hair and smoldering, black eyes. He was definitely sexy, but not really my type. Generally I like my men in a larger size. (tsk, tsk, such dirty minds!). Unbidden, my devil’s face filled my mind’s eye and I shook it off. I must have shivered a little because the bartender, whose name was riding above his head on a holograph, smiled at me with large, very white teeth that looked familiar. He leaned close across the counter and looked into my eyes with velvet black ones of his own. “Are you cold, little halfling?”
    I glared up at him, finally realizing that he must be one of the royals. I didn’t remember seeing him the night before, when I went for my little unplanned visit to Hades on Earth, but he obviously knew who I was. “No. Actually, Torre, it’s much warmer in here than I would like. All these mashed together bodies and demon flesh. It’s not only stuffy, the heat in here feels like hot, burning, tongues of fire on my skin.” I offered him my bad girl smile, “you ever feel that way?”
    His gaze burned into me. “More than you would care to know, Mx. Phelps. Now, what can I get for you?”
    “An audience with Abrine.”
    His beautiful, black eyes widened just enough to tell me I’d surprised him. “What would a pretty little thing like yourself want with a big, bad demon king?”
    I shrugged and smiled. “I think you might have some idea, if you use your imagination.” Hating myself, I ran my tongue over my suddenly very dry lips and leaned across the bar toward the handsome devil. He grinned back and met me halfway, pushing his face