Play with Fire

chapter Thirty-Five

PETERS AND ASHLEY lay among the tangle of sheets, the sweat slowly drying on their bodies. Peters closed his eyes and entertained the two contradictory thoughts that usually occurred to him after sex with Ashley: My God, that was fantastic, and One of these days, she’s gonna kill me.

Even though Ashley had been given human form before being sent over from Hell, Peters thought that the creature he sometimes thought of as his “pet demon” had managed to retain sexual appetites and capacities that few mortal women could match – or might want to.

Peters had no way of knowing that Ashley sometimes thought of him as her “pet human.”

They lay quietly, Ashley apparently feeling no need for conversation and Peters lacking the ability, at least until he got his breath back. He had just decided he was capable of speech again when he heard a two-tone “ping,’’ the sound clearly audible in the silence of the bedroom. Peters listened more carefully, and when the sound came again he said, “That sounds like it’s coming from your purse. Is that your phone?”

“No, mine doesn’t sound like that,” she said. “I thought it was yours.”

“Uh-uh.”

The sound came again, and Ashley got up, frowning. Just as she reached the chair where she’d left her purse, the “ping” came once more.

Ashley rummaged in her voluminous Dior bag and pulled out a new-looking iPhone in a pink travel case.

“Cute,” Peters said. “When did you get it?”

Ashley looked up, her heart-shaped face a study in puzzlement. “That’s just it – I didn’t. I’ve never seen this thing in my life.” She looked again at the phone. “But it looks like someone’s trying to text me.”

“Who’d do that? You don’t exactly know a lot of people, this side of Perdition.”

“Let’s find out,” she said, and pressed an icon.

Whatever came up on the screen, Ashley stared at it far longer than it should have taken to read a brief message. When she looked at Peters again, she didn’t appear puzzled – she looked scared.

“It’s Astaroth. He wants me to text him back.”

Astaroth was the demon, very high in the councils of Hell, who had sent Ashley and Peters to the human plane a year ago. Since he had the power to recall them to the Place of Eternal Torment at any time, they had both hoped never to hear from him again.

Peters got very quiet, but after a few seconds he shook himself, like someone trying to pull his mind out of a bad dream. “Wait a second,” he said. “A text – from Hell?”

“I know,” she said. “It transcends the physical laws of nature – but then, so do we, babe. So do we.”

Peters nodded slowly. “All right, okay. But that doesn’t mean it’s all over for us. Can you imagine Astaroth being polite enough to send a text: ‘Please return to Hell immediately?’ That’s not his style, and you know it. He’d just yank us back there. One second we’d be here in bed making the springs creak, and the next we’d be among the flames again, listening to the screams of the damned. He’d do it that way just to see the expressions on our faces.”

Ashley gently tapped the phone she was holding. “Maybe you’re right. But why would he go through the trouble to get in touch at all, then?”

Peters took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “There’s only one way to find out, babe. Do what the man said. Text him back.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“Better do it now. Last thing we want to do with a guy – demon lord, I mean – like Astaroth is keep him waiting.”

“Good point.”

Ashley studied the phone for a few seconds, pressed a few more icons, and began to type with her thumbs. Then she pushed another icon and put the phone down.

“What’d you say?” Peters asked.

“Just that I was responding, as directed, and would humbly wait to receive his commands.”

Peters snorted gently. “Humbly – you? Why do I have trouble getting my mind around that?”

She looked at him and said, with utmost seriousness, “With one like Lord Astaroth, humility is the only attitude that will not result in a great deal of pain. You, of all humans, should know that.”

He rubbed a big hand slowly across his face. “Yeah, I do. Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’ll be once I get back in that bed with–”

The pink phone pinged again. Ashley picked it up and said, “Well, here goes nothing – or, rather, everything.”

Ashley stared at the screen, her gray eyes narrowed. Then she grabbed the nearest piece of paper, which turned out to be an envelope containing the condo’s electric bill, and began to look around frantically.

“A pen, I need a pen,” she said tightly.

“If it’s a text, you can save it–”

“Get me a f*cking pen.”

“Right.” Peters rolled out of bed and walked rapidly into the next room. In seconds, he was back with what she needed. “Here.”

Ashley wrote on the back of the envelope, frequently consulting the phone’s screen. Then she put the pen down, studied the phone for a few moments, and pressed an icon. Satisfied, she put the phone on the nightstand.

“I know you can save a text message, and I just did,” she told Peters, “but I also know that if you press the wrong button, it’s gone forever. I’m not familiar with this phone, and couldn’t afford a mistake. This message gets lost, and I’m royally f*cked. Or, rather, we are.”

“Are you gonna show me, or what?”

“Of course,” she said, handing him the phone. “There should be another message coming any second, though. This one is incomplete.”

Peters stared at the little screen and read:

“There is 1 like U, sent 2 open Gates of Tartarus. Spell in Corpus Hermeticum. Ritual calls 4 burning churches & shamans + big sacrifice center. U must sto”

He handed the phone back to Ashley and said, “We better hope there’s another one on the way, because this message is clear as mud.”

“It’s not quite that bad,” she told him. “But, like you said, I sure hope there’s more. There’s a lot that I still need to know.”

“I assume the last word here is intended to be ‘stop.’ Why didn’t he at least finish the word, you figure?”

She picked up the phone and looked at the text message again. “He hit one hundred and sixty characters,” she said.

He stared at her. “You mean Hell has to follow the rules of some stupid phone company? That’s f*cking ridiculous!”

“The whole idea of a text from Hell is absurd – but here it is, nonetheless. Why would someone in Hell use Earth technology?” She spread her hands wide. “No idea. Why didn’t he just show up here and give us orders personally? He did when you were first sent here, right?”

“Yeah,” Peters said. “He took on the aspect of a kindly old Catholic priest. Astaroth likes his little jokes.”

“Whatever’s going on, this doesn’t look like a joke.”

“You know what the Gates of Tartarus is? And the Corpus Hermeticum?”

“Yes to the first, and I learned of the second quite recently,” she said. “But before I start with the explanations, let’s wait for the next text. With any luck, it’ll explain some things.”

But there was no second text from the demon Astaroth. They waited for almost ten minutes in silence before Ashley said, “Well, f*ck me, anyway.”

“Gladly,” Peters said. “But first I want you to tell me about the stuff that’s in that text.”

“I guess that’s all we have to go on – for now, at least. If he can send one f*cking text, why can’t he send another one? Damn, that pisses me off!”

“I’d say you’re beautiful when you’re angry, but the truth is you’re scarier than shit. Calm down a little, will you, babe?”

Her expression made him wonder if she was about to eviscerate him with the pen she was holding. Then she grinned and said, “Shit is scary? That doesn’t mean we’re giving up anal sex, does it?”

“Not on my account,” he said. “But let’s stay out of the gutter for ten minutes while you tell me about the Gates of whatever it was.”

“The Gates of Tartarus.” She went over to the bed and sat down next to him. “There is a legend in Hell–”

“Wait – Hell has legends?”

“Any society has its legends,” she said, “and the society of the damned is like any other. Well, okay, not like any other – but, yes, legends. Now stop interrupting.”

“Yes, dear.”

She delivered a slap to his bare thigh that was more painful than playful.

“So, the legend of the Gates of Tartarus says that there is a way out of Hell – not to Heaven, which is forever closed to us, but to Earth, world of the hated humans, who were responsible for our Great Rebellion in the first place.”

“Responsible? What the f*ck did we do?”

Another stinging slap. “I told you not to interrupt. Humans are believed responsible because it is your very existence that offended certain angels, especially Lucifer, who was high among the angelic hierarchy. The idea that the Father, against Lucifer’s advice, would create a race of... apes with souls was unbearably offensive to some of us who had existed as pure spirits since time began.”

“Apes with souls, huh?”

She didn’t hit him this time. “My view of humanity – well, certain parts of it, anyway – has undergone some revision since the time of the Great Rebellion. But many of the Fallen have not changed, and would love nothing better than to lay waste to humanity and everything it has created.”

She picked up the envelope on which she had written Astaroth’s text message. “If you want to talk about things that are scary, there are a couple of things in this message which should scare you down to the insides of your bones. The first fact is that the Gates of Tartarus are apparently not just legend – they really exist.”

She turned and looked at Peters, and the expression on her face frightened him more than anything that had already transpired this evening. “The second fact – if I’m reading this right – is that someone from Hell has been sent to this side and given flesh, as I was. And this individual is apparently charged with throwing those gates wide open. The result, if he succeeds, will be, quite literally, Hell on Earth.”

“Great,” he said. “Just great. If I won’t go to Hell, then they’ll bring Hell to me. But what about this other thing–” he consulted the envelope “–the Corpus Hermeticum?”

“That,” she said, “represents the only piece of good news to come out of this mess, so far.”