Hell Has a Succession Problem

Blood on the Dance Floor

Marcel dragged Cass behind the bar by her good arm, swearing the whole way.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Stay with me."

"Boss." Her voice was a thread. "You're dripping on my clean glasses."

"You're dying, Cass."

"Still. They were clean."

Her eyes rolled back again. Marcel laid her flat on the rubber mats and finally looked at her wrist.

The mark was a brand shaped like a hooked spear, burned deep into the skin. It pulsed yellow, slow and steady, like a heartbeat.

Every pulse sent a thread of ash drifting toward the front door.

The invitation was a courtesy, she had said.

It wasn't a wound. It was a delivery address.

"You absolute bastards," Marcel whispered.

He lunged for the old landline under the register, the one he kept for tax people, and dialed from memory.

It rang twice.

"It's four in the morning, Marcel." Raven sounded wrecked and furious and awake. "I just got home."

"I need a doctor. Right now."

"Are you hurt?"

"Not me. Cass. Something burned her arm to the bone and it won't stop glowing."

A long silence.

"And I'll tell you everything," Marcel said. "Tonight. All of it. No jokes."

"Say that again."

"Everything, Raven."

"Ten minutes." The line clicked.

Marcel stared at the receiver. It was the first useful thing he had said to her in four years, and it had taken a hunter with a spear to get it out of him.

Then the front window blew in.

Glass sprayed across the dance floor. Three figures landed in it, and none of them bothered to look elegant.

A man in a pizza delivery uniform. A woman in neon running spandex. A tall guy in a hotel concierge's vest, still wearing his name tag.

Their skins were fresh. Their smiles were not.

"Large pepperoni," said the pizza man, in two voices. "Extra Hell."

"I didn't order that."

"You will pay for it."

"Tip's on the house," said Marcel, and kicked the ice well.

Forty pounds of ice and slush hit the tile in a white wave. The pizza man lunged, hit the slick, and went down in a spectacular tangle that took out two tables and a speaker stand.

One down.

The jogger came over the bar in a single leap. Marcel was already holding the spray bottle he used to clean the taps.

It was full of overproof rum. He had a lighter in his other hand.

"Sorry," he said, and meant it.

He sprayed a cloud of rum into her face and thumbed the lighter. The mist caught with a soft, ugly whump. Neon spandex went up like a candle, and the jogger shrieked in a voice that made his fillings hurt.

She hit the exit at full speed, trailing flames, and was gone.

Somebody's cousin, Marcel thought. Somebody's daughter, before she became a coat. He shoved the thought into the pile with the rest.

That left the concierge.

"Mr. Hart." The man straightened his vest, perfectly calm. "I am here to collect the girl."

"She's busy. Can I take a message?"

"We will take the girl, and we will take you."

"Do you have a reservation?"

The concierge frowned.

"Because the bathroom is through there," Marcel said, pointing at the walk-in cooler. "Past the kegs. You look like a man who needs to freshen up."

It was the stupidest bluff of his life.

The demon was also a hotel employee, with a hotel employee's instincts.

It walked straight in and pulled the door shut behind itself to check the lock.

Marcel slammed his shoulder against the steel, jammed a barstool under the latch, and leaned against it with his heart going like a jackhammer.

Three for three.

Something thumped inside the cooler, then thumped again, then began to laugh.

"Okay," Marcel panted. "Okay. I'm a fucking genius."

The front door opened.

It did not blow in. It did not shatter. It opened politely, with a soft chime, like a customer arriving at nine.

A man stepped through.

He was tall and immaculate, in a gray suit that fit like a second skin. Dark hair slicked back. Not a crack in him, not a single seam.

His face was friendly and broad and a little tired, the face of a guy who worked the night shift and liked it.

"Don't tell me," Marcel said. "You're the manager."

"I am the one who pays for the others." The man looked at the cooler, the ice, the scorch marks on the bar. "You have been very busy. I am impressed."

"It's a service industry."

Marcel checked the clock over the register. 3:51.

If this one was wearing a stolen body, the clock was already running.

"I do not borrow," the man said, as if he had heard the thought. "I rent. Long term. The seams hold."

"Of course they do."

"You will not outlast me, heir."

"Watch me."

The knife was in Marcel's fist before he knew he'd drawn it.

It was still warm from Trigon. He swung it at the man's throat with every ounce of fear he had.

The man caught his wrist.

He did not even look at it.

"Hm," he said, almost kindly. "The little knife remembers whose it is."

Then he threw Marcel across the room.

Marcel hit the bar mirror with his spine. The glass exploded. He slid to the floor in a rain of silver with his ribs screaming and his burned throat on fire.

"Get up," he told himself. "Get the fuck up."

His legs did not listen.

The man walked past him, unhurried. He crouched beside Cass, and the mark on her wrist flared bright to greet him.

"There you are," he murmured. "Good girl. The hunter does the marking. I do the collecting. You led us right to him."

"Don't touch her," Marcel rasped.

"She is a leash, little heir. A very effective one. I give her back when you sign."

"Sign what?"

"Anything. Everything. You will know it when you see it."

"Her name is Cass." Marcel dragged himself up on one elbow. "She hums off key when she polishes glasses. She is not a fucking leash."

"Then I take her and I take you."

He stood, and the cold came off him in a slow, rolling wave.

Marcel had one trick left. It was a bad one.

He grabbed the nearest bottle, a heavy cut crystal decanter of eighteen year scotch, and swung it at the man's skull.

The man did not move.

The decanter exploded. Scotch ran down his collar.

He looked at Marcel, tilted his head, and smiled.

Then his hand closed around Marcel's throat, right over the six burned fingers, and lifted him off the floor.

The pain was white. The room went to static.

"Sixty seconds," the man said. "Then the doctor arrives. I would like to meet her."

Marcel kicked. Clawed. Choked.

It was no good.

Four years of building a life that couldn't be used against him, and it had taken one night to make a liar of every wall.

The bell over the front door chimed.

"Marcel?"

Raven.

She stood in the doorway in a hoodie, jeans, and a coat thrown over pajamas, a trauma bag over one shoulder. Her hair was wet. She had run.

She stopped.

She took in the glass, the ice, the smoke, and the stranger holding Marcel off the floor like a coat.

"Let him go," she said. It was the exact thing she had said last time, in the exact same voice.

The man turned his head slowly.

"Doctor," he said warmly. "Good evening."

Raven's face changed.

"I know you," she said.

"Do you?"

"Walt." She frowned. "You're Walt. You work security at the ER. You hold the door for me every night."

"Every night," said the man, and his smile widened. "At six, Doctor. Right on time."

Marcel finally understood.

It wasn't wearing a stranger. It was wearing a man from her hospital.

"Raven," he rasped. "Run."

"Walt, what is this? Are you hurt?"

"Not yet."

The smile kept widening. It went past the edge of a human mouth.

Walt's face slid downward, soft and slow, like wet paper off a wall. Underneath, there was no skin. There were no eyes.

There was only a ring of teeth, turning slowly, like a drain.

Raven did not scream.

She had watched one of these things burn to ash only hours ago. That was the thing Marcel would remember afterward. She went absolutely still, and then, God help her, she took one step toward it.