A Wolf at the Door

Boy, did I. The fact that I’d come out of this so far without a nasty black demon brand down my arm and my soul in Hell’s pawnshop was a constant amazement to me. My own ice was dangerously thin, to be brutally honest. “Fine. What’s the favor?”

“I need you to go to Los Angeles. There’s a girl there, and she’s in danger. I need you to protect her.”

I admit, I stood there and blinked at him for a few moments. Of all the things I expected him to say, that was…well, pretty far down the list. Maybe in the footnotes, or something. “Is this girl…a special friend of yours?”

He gave me a puzzled look until he realized what I was asking, then made a face. “Ew! No! What do you take me for?”

“You really don’t wanna know.” I frowned a bit, thinking it over. “You realize that it’s the holidays, right? If I take off, Mira’s gonna be pissed.”

The man-demon snorted. I realized that his breath didn’t fog in the air. What the hell did that mean? “Your holiday was yesterday. I waited.”

“And your thoughtfulness touches my heart, really.” With a sigh, I brushed some snow off the patio table so I could lean up against it as we talked. “Are you going to give me any more information, or do I have to bargain it all out of you?”

“I can tell you most of it. The pertinent bits, anyway.”

I guess that was as good as I was going to get. “Okay. Tell me about this girl. What’s so important about her?”

“She’s soulless. I’ll tell you that right off. But this isn’t a champion request. I don’t need you to get her soul back.”

“Good to know. I guess.”

“She sold her soul years ago, and she sold it so that she could be beautiful and famous for her entire life.” Axel shuffled his feet in the snow, making a nice packed-down space that was going to be a bitch to shovel later. “Only, as part of her contract, she also agreed to collect souls herself, to store them until the time of her death.”

“You can do that?” I’d never heard of that before. Didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, just…taking other people down with you? That was kinda dick.

Axel nodded. “It was more common in the old days, but…yeah.” The old days. Which could be anywhere from the 1960s to biblical times. “Currently, she is holding within herself two hundred and seventy-six additional souls, mostly from men she’s seduced.”

I had to whistle lowly at that. That’s a helluva lot of seduction. “Damn, who is this girl?”

“Gretchen Keene. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her—”

“Gretchen Keene, the movie star? Seriously?” Heard of her? Hell, you couldn’t flip on the TV without some news or entertainment show dribbling her name all over themselves. I think she had four movies come out last year, and another couple due for the summer blockbuster season coming up. “Blond” and “bombshell” were the words most frequently associated with her.

“Oh good, you know her!” Axel seemed delighted.

“Well, not personally.” The whole seduction thing made a bit more sense now. I mean I’m sure there were easily two hundred and seventy-six men who would sell their souls to spend the night with Gretchen Keene. I was honestly surprised it wasn’t more. And a demon contract did explain her meteoric rise to fame, starting about five years ago. It explained a lot. Dammit, didn’t anybody get by on their own merit anymore? “That makes her like a succubus or something, right? Using sex to get souls?”

“More or less. As you know the word.” Axel nodded agreement. “For one of us…one like me…that many souls equates to a tremendous amount of power.”

“When she dies, what happens to those souls then?”

“Well…that’s the kicker.” Axel rocked on his heels, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “See, the demon who made her contract was fairly inexperienced. He left an amazingly large loophole, and really those souls are going to go to whoever can be there to claim them when she dies.” For a moment, he shook his head with a faint expression of awe in his eyes. “That kind of power…that power wins wars, Jesse. Or loses them.”

Axel never did anything for purely charitable reasons, and I’d been confused about his motives up until this point. Now things were starting to become clear.

There was a war brewing in Hell. At least, that’s what I’d managed to piece together from stray Axel comments and a bit of research. Axel was on one side of the conflict, I’d gleaned that much. I had no idea who was on the other, or even which side was the “good” one. I mean really, when they’re all demons, is there a good side?

“You basically have a loose nuclear weapon, and you don’t want the other side to get their hands on it first.”

“Roughly, yes.” Axel mulled that over for a moment, then nodded. “A rather apt analogy.”

“So why send me to play bodyguard? Why don’t you just go yourself and collect the extra souls?”