Hell's Bells: Lucifer's Tale (Welcome to Hell Book 6) (9 page)

O
n the beach
by the summerhouse Lucifer maintained—where many a vacation Hell memory was forged—Gaia stood, stave in hand, stray hairs floating on a sea breeze.

I’m here.
Ready to meet the hag who dared screw with her. And Gaia wasn’t here alone.

The dark legion spread across the beach and the bluffs, an evil force gathered for one thing. One person.

Turning her back to the rolling waves, she faced the legion. She knew from centuries of watching Lucifer at work that motivation and a strong leader were necessary for all battles.

“Why are we here?” she shouted.

“Because you said so!” they yelled.

Good start. “We are here,” she stated as she thumped her staff in the sand, “because the sea hag Ursula has stolen something of our Lord. And we are going to get it back!”

Clang
.
Clang
.
Clang
. Weapons on shields and rock and anything thump-able, including shorter comrades, the noise filled the air as they chanted, “Get it back. Get it back.” The treble of their song shook the very foundation beneath their feet.

To keep their blood fired, she went on with her impromptu speech. “The forces against us will be mighty.”

As if that would dampen their enthusiasm. “Yay!”

“This battle might prove deadly.”

“Bring it!”

She eyed them, these eager imps and demons and other creatures gathered. She had only one more thing to say to them. The trigger words. “Be relentless. Be victorious.”

“We shall show no mercy!” Remy shouted. “For we are the legion of darkness.”

“Hooyah.”

“We shall crush them,” the ogre-ish contingent yelled.

“Stomp them,” boomed the giants.

“Make them wish they were the load their mother spat out.” Remy’s evocative addition.

“Slice them into bite-sized chunks for a beach bake,” yelled a ferryman from a bobbing flatboat as he shook his oar aloft. While the cloak hid his face, Gaia recognized Adexio’s voice.

Everyone had come to give her a hand against Ursula. Gaia wasn’t planning to leave this beach without Lucifer’s heart—and that sea hag’s head.

She felt that moment when the future of Hell sat at the tip of an axis. They all did.

“Monster!” someone yelled.

Gaia whirled to see a purple eye stalk bob from the waves alongside Adexio’s craft.

“Hold your fire,” she hollered, recognizing SWEETS.

Adexios huddled with his pet a moment before announcing, “Ursula’s army approaches. Remember to use the bombs on the kraken.”

Any more words he might have spoken got drowned in the sudden boil of ocean water, not the heated boil from a flame, but that from hundreds of creatures thrashing upwards from its depths.

Aerial predators also swooped from the sky. Strange monsters not of this world, nor this dimension.

Ursula had proven busy building her army, drawing from the dimension that, until recently, had held her prisoner.

She might have lots of monsters to throw at us, but that’s all right because I’ve got a hungry army.
“Legion! Attack.”

With a cry of excitement, the soldiers and minions surged over the dunes and through the choppy waves on the beach. Some demons soared overhead, strapped onto the backs of drakes, the smaller cousins of the dragons.

The Vikings chanted as they stroked their longboats farther from shore, heading for the waving limbs of the rising kraken.

“Row row row our boat through the choppy sea

Until we find a big fat fish

And stab it ’til it bleeds.”

Catchy tune, but not one she had time to hum as creatures slopped onto the beach and humped across wet sand. Others skittered on spindly legs, clacking pincers. A few, like the Undines, the deadly progeny of Hell’s mermaids, walked on two legs and swung coral swords.

The legion met the threats.

It wasn’t just from land that they fought. Nor from the sky. Neptune himself also joined the fracas, jabbing at the bobbing beasts with his mighty trident, while his son, Tristan, arced and flashed through the waves, a pair of scimitars in hand. No surprise, Muriel rode a chariot drawn by hellphins. Her consort, Auric, swooped on shadow wings at any stray tentacles that came too close.

Stray glances were all she could spare as she found herself engaged with the enemy. They swarmed the space around her. Every swipe of Gaia’s machete, every jab with the sharp points on her fingers into something jellylike that burst, had to count. As she whirled and sliced something new, she caught a different glimpse of the battle.

There went Marigold clicking her fingers and turning rampaging brackish crabs into pink ones with bow-wrapped pinchers.

Thrust. Jab. Gurgle. Spin.

A group of Undines went waddling past on webbed feet chased by Katie who wore nothing but a bikini and a smile. “Woooooooo,” she screamed, her voice fading in tenor as she streaked past.

Duck. Kick. Ouch as someone yanked at her braids. Crunch as her head thrust back and broke something.

Spin around and she noted Nefertiti standing atop the bluff, arms upraised, body nude, and yet covered by hands, dozens of them as her harem fed her magic. She lobbed electrical darts at thrashing tentacles splitting the waves.

Drop to a kneeling position. Gut the bloated hellfish on two mutant legs. Take a deep breath and narrow her gaze as a tremor of wrongness hit the force all around her.

She’s here…
The unmistakable stench of her presence was a discordant note she couldn’t ignore.

A note she would silence.

Standing, Gaia tossed her one remaining machete to the side and drew the stave strapped down her spine. She shook it until it grew, its knobby grain stretching. The staff was formed of the wood from the oldest tree in her garden, given as a gift for her to fight the forces against nature. A thing of beauty that extended to whatever length she required, the ends sharpening into points.

“Oh, Ursula. Over here,” she sang as the sea hag slithered onto the beach, the tentacles beneath the skirt of her dress peeking from under the hem.

“If it isn’t Lucifer’s whore. Oh wait. That was last week. Way I hear it someone isn’t going around flashing his dick anymore. Not even to his own fiancée.”

“Hate to break it to you, but my sex life with Lucifer is just fine. Better than fine. Orgasmic. According to him, I was finger-licking good, unlike someone else we both know. I hear someone has an odor problem.” Gaia smirked. Pricking someone’s pride was the surest and quickest method to get them to lose their composure.

Red suffused Ursula’s features, and her eyes flashed stormy blue waves with white-crested peaks. “Keep your manwhore. Not all of us wanted to spread our legs for the devil.”

“Afraid you’d lose the stick in your ass?” Gaia laughed as rage made the hag tremble.

“I am going to take great pleasure in stuffing that mouth of yours with sand.” Clapping her hands together, Ursula then held them out, palms raised. From the rolling waves at her back leaped a pair of swordfish, their snouts pointed and sharp.

Even though Gaia didn’t physically touch the creatures, she could sense the wrongness about them. The perversion tainted the very air around her. “What have you done?” she asked.

“I did what I had to in order to survive and entertain myself. I created. Some of the friends I made only needed little nudges to become what I needed; others,” she intoned grasping the handle-shaped tails, “needed a little more work.”

“That kind of gross manipulation of things with free will is wrong.” Gaia rarely imposed her will upon the world. The world just kind of reacted to her emotions and thoughts. It also gave her whatever she wanted, and in turn, she cared for the world.

But Ursula thought only to use and abuse. “Free will is only for those strong enough to have it. Everyone else is fair game.”

“If you mastered the dimension you were in, then why return?” she asked. The hag certainly didn’t seem happy here.

“Can’t a girl come home to visit?”

“I think you’ve overextended your stay.”

“Less talk!” yelled Valaska as she dashed past Gaia, covered in blood. “More fight.”

A good reminder. While Gaia blabbed with a villain, the legion faced incredible deadly odds. Remember what Muriel had said. Delaying the fight did nothing but delay the inevitable. Ursula had to die.

“Give me back what you took,” Gaia growled, advancing on the blood-soaked sand, stave held in a ready position.

“Make me.”

With those taunting words, it was on!

While Ursula jabbed with her modified fish sticks, Gaia twirled her staff, using it to block jabs and thrusts. She landed a hard tap on Ursula.

The hag grunted and threw herself back.

Striking a pose, leg extended, sending a scurrying purple crab flying, Gaia regarded Ursula, the hint of a smirk hovering on her lips. “Are you done already? Gonna take your toys home to your other dimension?” She hoped not. There were still some anger issues requiring resolving.

“We are just getting started, you hippy whore.”

“Hippy?” Gaia danced to the side. “I’ll have you know I haven’t looked like a long-haired flower child since the eighteen hundreds.” If she didn’t count the times she played the part of naïve virgin in the garden and Lucifer played himself, the snake... But that was less about peace and love than it was about raunchy, screaming sex.

Gaia ducked as something shot from a sucker on a waggling tentacle. Splat. Whatever it hit behind her cried out once and then fell to the ground with a thump.

“Loogie tossing, really? Are we children in the dawn of time still?” she taunted.

“Does this seem childish to you?” Ursula spun, her tentacles whirling like a dervish on the sand, her arms extended, sharp blades slicing the air.

Ducking under the onslaught, Gaia managed a slice across Ursula’s mermaid dress. She really wished she hadn’t, given the fabric dropped and everyone got to see what was really under that skirt.

Writhing, moist tentacles, mauve-ish gray in color. And the smell…

“Stinks like dead fish.”

“That’s not what Lucifer said when he tried it.”

“Liar. He never touched you.”

“He might have been drunk, and the cave dark, but he most certainly did.”

Oh. Gross.

Possessed of a berserker rage, Gaia flung herself into the fight. She knocked the swordfish from Ursula’s hand. A moment later, she missed her timing on the handspring and paid for it as the rotation of the tentacles flung the stave from Gaia’s grip.

It didn’t stop the fight. Onwards they grappled, fighting hand-to-tentacle for the right to live.

Only one of us is going to be able to claim victory.
A grim determination possessed Gaia.
I will win.
Defeat was not an option. More than half of winning was the right attitude.

The rest was cheating, Lucifer had whispered to her more than once in the past.

Gaia yanked the dagger from her thigh, and while she wouldn’t risk tossing it, she could use it to slash.

Ursula hissed as a line in her flesh welled with blood. “Tricky garden weed. Would you just give up and die?”

“Get stuffed and roasted over a fire.” As Gaia spoke, she kicked the stave now within reach into the air. Her hand shot out and grasped it.

Armed again, she twirled her staff, banging it off Ursula’s arms and straying tentacles. The onslaught proved quick and tricky. The hag fell back, her blubber-butt hitting the sand.

Gaia did not relent. She pressed the sharpened end of her stave against the squishy flesh of Ursula’s third boob, all that stood between Ursula and a permanent death.

“Give me back Lucifer’s heart,” she demanded.

Despite the direness of her position, a smug smile pulled Ursula’s lips. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Gaia leaned forward, knowing the end of her staff punctured the outer layer of skin but not caring. “I know you took it. Now give it back, or I will end your miserable existence.” Mercy was for those who deserved it.

“You still don’t get it, do you? Did all those pesticides fry what smarts you had? I can’t give it back to you because he already has it. The heart beating in Lucifer’s chest is his own.”

“That’s his heart?” The words slipped out on a faint breath filled with incredulity. “Impossible. No. You’re lying.”

“No lie and you know it.” Ursula’s grin twisted into a sneer.

“It can’t be Lucifer’s. The heart in his chest is polite and caring. Lucifer’s heart is—”

“Not as black as you’d think. The demon had it removed so long ago it had a chance to recover. A little purifying in Elyon’s antiseptic pool in Heaven and—”

“You’ve been to Heaven?”

“Indeed I have. A touch too bland for my tastes, but it served its purpose. It turned the devil into a pussy. No more Mr. Badass who thinks it’s okay to lock me away in another cold and dark dimension just because I tried to have him killed a few times. And just think, soon you’ll be married to that puny imitation for eternity. The reign of the so-called Dark Lord is over.”

The knowledge hit Gaia with gale wind force. She mentally reeled, and Ursula took advantage.

This close, Ursula didn’t miss with the trident formed of seawater that came spearing forth.

Despite Gaia’s armor, the tines sank through, their touch icy cold. The pain proved sudden, and she couldn’t help but scream and then scream again as it pushed deeper. Gaia, on the brink of possible death, sent a plea out to the one person she always called to when she needed help. The one person who always came. “Luc!”