Table of Contents

Chapter One - In which we learn about the nature of Hell, and take jokes seriously at our own peril.

Chapter Two - In which our young Reverend loses his religion.

Chapter Three - In which we learn a bit more about the good Reverend and his business

Chapter Four - In which we find out what an old friend has been up to for the last millenia

Chapter Five - In which we witness a rude awakening, followed by inappropriate breakfast conversation

Chapter Six - In which a deserving clerk gets told off.

Chapter Seven - In which we meet a little demon.

Chapter Eight - In which Scroat may have met his match

Chapter Nine - In which Joe loses a friend.

Chapter Ten - In which Joe gets ready to head out

Chapter Eleven - In which we learn a bit about Scroat and his Girlfriend (but not much because I just ran out of time today...)

Chapter Twelve - The demon broods.

Chapter Thirteen - In which Reverend Milton begins taking care of business.

Chapter Fourteen - In which the Reverend meets a new, lifelong friend.

Chapter Fifteen - In which an unlikely creature threatens to swallow Hep's soul.

Chapter Sixteen - In which the trouble has just begun for the Reverend.

Chapter Seventeen - In which Reverend Milton pisses the demon right off.

Chapter Eighteen - In which Reverend Milton has a bright idea

Chapter Nineteen - In which the demon plays hard to get

Chapter Twenty - In which the demon is a real jerk.

Chapter Twenty One - In which Hep has a moment to himself, and promptly discovers he needs to go save the day.

Chapter Twenty Two - In which things might be looking up for the Reverend. Or not.

Chapter Twenty Three - In which three bikers, and a parrot, make their way cross country.

Chapter Twenty Four - In which our four favorite people have a big reunion.

Chapter Twenty Five - In which we learn how Hep first met the demon.

Chapter Twenty Six - In which not a whole lot happens, but there's some mildly funny dialog.

Chapter Twenty Seven - In which everyone is bored, but the Reverend has a good idea

Chapter Twenty Eight - In which Hep calls in a favor from an old friend, who is very eager to help

Chapter Twenty Nine - In which the Reverend loses a friend

Chapter Thirty - In which Joe goes home early.

Chapter Thirty One - In which Joe has to give some stranded friends a lift

Chapter Thirty Two - In which Joe goes to a funeral, and the demon has a meeting

Chapter Thirty Three - In which the demon recovers from a hangover, and goes to a strip club

Chapter Thirty Four - In which almost everybody dies.

Chapter Thirty Five - In which the Reverend goes to Hell

Chapter Thirty Six - In which Scroat gets back just in time for Hep to leave

Chapter Thirty Seven - In which the Reverend suffers in Hell.

Chapter Thirty Eight - In which Hep and Ares stir up some trouble

***Hey, look at that pretty pretty banner that says "WINNER"***

Chapter Thirty Nine - In which you find out what happens at the end.

Epilogue  - In which I pad my word count by wrapping things up.

IT'S OVER!

Epilogue

Hep arrived in Oklahoma the next morning. During the process of buying his tickets, he learned that they’d been gone for approximately one week. He’d been mildly worried that Ares and he would arrive back two centuries later, or something like that. It had happened before.

He went to the storage lot where he and Scroat had left their motorcycles. He was relieved to see Scroat had already gotten his motorcycle.

Hep had been mildly worried that Scroat and Sarah would stay too long at Cyrus’s house. They did, after all, love consequence free partying.

Hep paid for his parking, and set off towards Arizona. It was a fourteen hour trip. Hep was glad there wasn’t anyone else with him. He could just blast through Texas and New Mexico without stopping. Hep figured he’d be home in twelve hours, tops.

He stopped at a gas station on his way out of Oklahoma City to pick up some things to munch on as he rode. He got gum, water, corn nuts, peppered beef jerky and a couple of snickers bars. He stashed the bag in his sidecar, and rode on.


Ares arrived home to find everything as he’d left it. That is to say, in total chaos. He was a little disappointed he hadn’t gotten to finish the fight with Satan, but assumed there would be plenty of opportunities for a re-match in the future. In the meantime, he had no problems finding trouble to get into.


Scroat and Sarah had taken a couple of days to get back to Arizona, since they were in no particular hurry. Once they had reached the house again, Scroat parked the bike, Sarah put Killer in his cage for a bit, and the two of them set about fucking like it was going to go out of style.


Grace got herself a new job working as a volunteer for a charitable organization. She had plenty of money. In fact, in his will, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton had left her everything he’d owned, since she had been his best friend for the last several years. Grace wasn’t exactly sure that was true, but was happy to accept the money. Now she had a great job where she didn’t even have to show up if she didn’t want to. She made a point to give generously, and tried not to rip anyone else off.

She was able to sell off Joe Anderson’s house without too much difficulty, along with most of his possessions. She kept the motorcycle, though.


The other preachers continued doing revivals. No one really noticed Reverend Milton’s disappearance, though many of the other preachers attempted to imitate his showmanship. One or two of them may have gotten demons of their own, but that’s a different story.


Hep’s trip back to his house was extremely dull. For all of the wonder and beauty in Texas, it sure is spread out all over the place. The great majority of the state is a whole lot of boring. That was OK though, because Hep had had enough excitement for a while. He just really wanted to get back into his shop, and start tinkering again.

Hep arrived home, and heard the horrible noises coming from inside the house. Apparently all the excitement had not calmed Scroat’s sex life in the slightest. Hep hung his head for a minute, then got off the bike, went over to the garage door and opened it. Hep rolled his motorcycle into the garage and debated getting to work on another project in order to avoid going in the house.

Ultimately, he decided he was just too tired to stay awake any longer. He went inside, and was greeted by Killer yelling “I’ll swallow your soul!”

“Maybe not tonight,” Hep said.

He went into his bedroom, pulled the covers up over his head, and fell asleep within seconds. He did not dream, and didn’t move all night.

The next morning, he woke bright and early. He got out of bed, dressed, and pounded on Scroat’s door, then yelled “Wake up! It’s time for breakfast!”

Scroat and Sarah were grateful Hep did not wake them in his usual way.

For breakfast, Hep had a gigantic pile of bacon, hash browns, some fresh fruit, and a whole lot of coffee. He spent the rest of the morning reading the newspaper, and once he was certain he was well rested enough, he went out to his shop, fired up the forge, and spent the rest of the day and the next evening working on a new project.

It was good.


Nubbins did indeed get revenge on the last few demons who had slighted him, and now held a position he felt suited a demon of his experience and power.

He quickly got back to his old tricks, seeking out challenging souls to tempt and torment. You might think some of the more recent military actions and political fiascos were his doing. They were not. He assigned things like that to his underlings, now.

Speaking of underlings, he was now regarded with an appropriate degree of respect and fear among the ranks of Hell. Anyone caught using office politics was cast immediately into the pit, and overall, Hell got a lot worse. Or better. Or worse. Or, you know. People got tortured in Hell, and possessed and tempted on Earth a whole lot more.

Nobody called him Nubbins anymore. Not a single solitary damned one of them.

Chapter Thirty Nine

After Hep and Ares had beaten and dismembered a great number of the demon horde - upwards of half of them - the rest thought a strategic retreat would be the best course of action. They ran like, well, Hell.

Ares had chased after a group of them, leaving Hep alone to try and find Cyrus. Every now and then he’d hear a distinctly demonic shriek, followed by Ares’s laughter.

Hep walked past the lake of fire, and past the pit. He walked past souls chained to the wall begging him to let them free.

“Sorry, I’ll try to get you on the way back,” Hep said to them.

Every now and then, he’d spot a demon out of the corner of his eye. When he’d turn to look, the demon would duck out of sight. Hep couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought it was more than just one demon following him.

He did not get the impression they were going to mess with him. At least, not these specific demons. He knew better than to think he and Ares would be able to waltz out of Hell with Cyrus in tow.

After a long while, he reached a row of caves, each with an iron door barred shut. He walked along the caves, taking a moment to peer into each and see if Cyrus was inside. In each cave was a despondent soul. Most were curled up and either rocking back and forth or gibbering. A few tried to be efficient and rocked and gibbered at the same time.

Cyrus was in the second to last cave. He too was curled up, though he was neither crying nor gibbering.

Hep grabbed the key to Cyrus’s cave. The key was hung just far enough out of reach that Cyrus would be unable to reach it, but close enough for him to know it was there and try to grab it.

Hep put the key in the lock, and turned it. The lock made an awful grating noise that put Hep’s hair on end. The hinges did the same as Hep opened the door.

Cyrus looked up at Hep, then started.

“Hep? What the?” Cyrus asked. His eyes were wide open, and he suddenly didn’t quite know what to do with his hands.

“Well, you didn’t think we were going to give up on you just because you’re dead, did you?” Hep asked in reply. “Come on, let’s get out of here before someone notices.”

They heard running footsteps then, and seconds later Ares appeared in the doorway next to Hep.

“Hey, you found him! All right!” Ares said in between breaths.

“What’s your hurry?” Hep asked him.

“Oh. I found some more demons with a bit of fight in them. I didn’t want to hog all the fun,” Ares said. “They’re headed this way.”

“Um, thanks?” Hep said. “Come on Cyrus, we don’t want this to be the shortest jailbreak ever.”

Cyrus got up, and left the cave he’d been in. The three of them turned to leave, and saw a battalion of armed demons heading towards them.

“Oh, they’re so cute!” Ares said. “Look at them, with their little swords, it makes me want to give them all a big hug!”

Cyrus looked at Hep for an explanation. Hep looked back, shrugged, and said, “It’s best not to ask, or argue.”

“You kids want to play?” Ares said, and gleefully ran towards the demons.

The demons had heard Ares was a god of war, but they really weren’t expecting this. Ares head-butted the first demon he reached, snatched his sword away from him, stabbed him, then threw the sword to Hep. Seconds later, he did the same to another demon, and threw that sword to Cyrus.

Cyrus was not accustomed to such things, and Hep had to catch the sword at the last second to prevent it simply sticking into Cyrus.

“Here. You hold this end, and poke the bad guys with that end,” Hep said, and handed the sword to Cyrus.

Cyrus looked at Hep, blinked, and said “Are you crazy?”

Hep looked back at Cyrus, and said, “Do you want to stay here?”

After less than half a second of consideration, Cyrus decided he most definitely did not want to stay in Hell. He clutched the sword, which was already dripping with demon gore thanks to Ares, and walked slightly behind Hep to meet the demons.

Ares had not had this much fun in a very long time. The problem with killing mortals, you see, is that they aren’t alive to appreciate your witticisms after you’ve dispatched them. Demons, of course, do not die. At least, not as such. So Ares was able to carry on a conversation with the heads he’d lopped off.

“OK, go long!” he’d say to a head he was holding, and then he would drop kick the head. If it didn’t fly far enough, he’d then taunt the head, question it’s parentage, and tell it not to let him catch it hanging around again.

The now-armed demons never really stood a chance. They were made for wickedness, certainly. Evil, most definitely. Torture and suffering, undoubtedly. But nothing had prepared them for Ares doing what he loves best.

To give you an idea of what Ares loves best, Cyrus never had to lift his sword, except to use it as a bat in order to fend off the occasional stray head or limb. Hep did have to fight, a little bit, but honestly he was just picking up scraps Ares had missed in his passion.

It didn’t take very long for the rest of the demons to flee, again. Really, they just weren’t cut out for this kind of thing.

Nubbins had, however, found someone who was indeed cut out for this sort of thing. Nubbins, his boss and, well, his boss’s boss were all heading for Hep, Ares and Cyrus, determined to end this nonsense, kick Ares and Hep out, and get everyone back to work punishing the damned. Productivity was already going to take a huge hit as the demons Ares had dismembered waited to heal.

The three demons, two of which were actually powerful, and one of which was really good at office politics, reached Hep, Ares and Cyrus quickly.

Hep, Ares and Cyrus were standing near the pit, trying to remember their way back to the gates, when the three demons found them

Hep turned, and said, “Satan?”

Satan stepped forward, and said, in a weary voice, “Hep, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Getting this guy out of Hell,” Hep said. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“He can’t go,” Satan said. “We got him fair and square. We didn’t break any rules, and he deserves to be here.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Hep said. “I’m taking him anyway.”

“The fuck you are!” Satan said. His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. “He’s mine. He couldn’t belong to me any more than he does now, even if I branded ‘Property of Satan’ on his ass and kept him on a leash.”

“Oh, that’s good, write that down,” Nubbins’s boss said to Nubbins. Nubbins glared at him and wrote down “Boss is a total fuck head,” then put his notepad back in his satchel.

“Hey, I found him first,” Hep said. “In fact, he wouldn’t even be here if it was for me suggesting he use religion to make money. As far as I can tell, I own his fucking soul, not you!”

Cyrus looked quickly at Hep. “What the fuck?” he asked in a panicked little voice.

“Hep, that’s just bullshit and you know it,” Satan said. “Now hand him over, and we’ll walk you to the gates, and you’ll have to stop by sometime again for coffee.

“Nah, I think we’re just going to have to kick your ass,” Hep said.

Ares grinned widely, and charged at Satan, bellowing. Satan raised his arms, and the two of them caught each other and grappled, each trying to knock the other to the slippery, hard ground.

“What the fuck Hep?” Cyrus said. “You don’t own my soul.”

“Shut up. I was trying to get him pissed off. It didn’t work as expected, but I think Ares has things under control,” Hep said.
Just then, Ares went flying past the two of them, and crashed into a rock wall.

“Oh, that sucked,” Ares said, and got up again. He ran at Satan once more, and both of them fell to the ground, getting in little punches and both trying to get a proper hold on the other.

Nubbins’s boss was entirely engrossed in watching the fight, and didn’t see Nubbins leaping towards him until it was too late to avoid him.

“Steal my fucking job, will you?” Nubbins snarled. “I’ll fucking kill you. You knew I would. Today, I will.”

The other demon grunted, and tried to grab Nubbins and pull him off. The little demon was tenacious, however, and slippery. Nubbins grabbed on to his boss’s horns and repeatedly drove his knee into his boss’s face.

Hep and Cyrus watched all of this with a mixture of surprise and awe. To one side of them, Ares and Satan were locked in combat. To the other side, Nubbins was apparently trying to climb the career ladder. Neither Hep nor Cyrus realized how close they were to the edge of the pit.

Nubbins’s boss managed to give the little demon a solid punch, dazing him enough to get a solid grip. The larger demon grabbed Nubbins with both hands, and threw him into the pit.

Only, not quite. Nubbins managed to grab hold of the edge of the pit, and did not fall.

Without thinking, Cyrus reached down, grabbed Nubbins and pulled him up to safety. He set the little demon on the ground next to Hep.

“Oh, fuck!” Satan said, and released Ares. Ares, puzzled, got to his feet and looked at Satan.

“Um, why did you stop?” Ares said.

Satan gestured vaguely towards Cyrus and Hep and grunted.

A white glow grew around Cyrus. Cyrus looked around, then to Hep.

“What the fuck?” Cyrus asked, and then faded from view.

“What the fuck?” Ares and Hep asked at the same time.

“The son of a bitch performed an entirely selfless act. He had nothing to gain from helping Nubbins, and he did it anyway,” Satan said, disgusted. “Fucking people.”

“So, pretend we’re stupid and tell us what that means,” Ares said.

“I don’t have to pretend, you are stupid,” Satan said. “It means he redeemed himself. He’s probably not in heaven at this moment. I expect he’ll have a few thousand years in Limbo, since he couldn’t even avoid cussing as he was being redeemed, but he’ll get there eventually.”

Satan turned then, to face Nubbins’s boss.

“And this was all caused by you,” Satan said. “Consider yourself fired.”

Nubbins’s boss sputtered for a second, before being whisked away to the lake of fire.

“So, Nubbins, a new management position has opened up, are you interested?” Satan said.

“Sure I can handle that,” Nubbins said, delighted for the first time in centuries.

“Good, you start right away. Give ‘em Hell!” Satan said. Nubbins gave an awkward salute, and disappeared.

“Now, you two,” Satan said. “Come with me, I’ll show you the way to the gates.”

The three of them walked in silence, until they reached the gates.

“Now, seriously you two, you’re welcome to drop by for a visit anytime. Please just let me know you’re coming first instead of beating up my doorman,” Satan said, then whispered conspiritorially, “He’s not really good at anything else, and I can’t afford to let him quit.”

“Got it,” Hep said. “We’ll see you around, Satan.”

“Yeah, take care,” Ares said.

The two of them walked out the gates of Hell then. The doorman saw them, and tried to stay inconspicuous behind his pedestal.

“Hey, nothing personal,” Ares said to the demon.

Then he and Hep returned to reality. They stood on a chilly street corner. It was hard to tell if any time had passed since they’d gone to Hell. Everything still appeared the same as when they’d left.

“Well, I gotta get my ass down to Oklahoma and get my motorcycle out of storage,” Hep said.

“Yeah, I should probably go find out if I still have an apartment. Talk to you later, Hep,” Ares said.

“Sure will,” Hep said. Ares vanished then, and Hep walked off in search of a cab to take him to the airport.

Chapter Thirty Eight

Hephaestus and Ares had gone into the kitchen in Cyrus’s house.

“Well, here goes,” Hephaestus said. He took a breath, and stepped out of reality.

He and Ares stood in a vast, dark space. It was not hot. It was not cold. There was no wind. The ground, if it could be called that, was insubstantial. Above them shone an intensely bright light, though there was no tunnel coming down to meet them. Below them, impossibly far away, was a dim, red glow. It looked like little more than a pulsing ember from where they stood.

“That’s where we’re headed, I think,” Hep said.

Ares clapped his hands once and said, “Let’s get going then!”

They fell. Since they were in a spiritual dimension, not a physical reality, distance was as irrelevant as time. They could have fallen miles. It might have taken years to get to their destination. Or, they may have simply stepped off a curb and continued on seconds later. None of it mattered, so long as they were in the right spiritual state to arrive at the gates of Hell.

As gods, of course, they’re generally in the right state to arrive where ever they decided they wanted to arrive. And where the two of them wanted to arrive, at that moment, was at the gates of Hell.

The large demon who minded the gates of Hell was quite surprised to see them. No one was scheduled to arrive for a few more minutes, according to his book.

Hep took a moment to examine and admire the ironwork of the gates. They weren’t quite up to his standard, but apart from their grotesque appearance the gates were quite well done.

Hep and Ares approached the demon who stood, as always, behind his book on the pedestal.

“Um,” the demon said, visibly flustered by their unscheduled appearance, “Names?”

“I am Hephaestus, and this is Ares,” Hep said. Ares bowed slightly.

The demon put on his reading glasses and scanned through the great book in front of him. He flipped a couple of pages and continued scanning, then checked his watch.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” the demon said, helpfully.

“Oh, yes, I’m quite sure this is where we’re meant to be,” Ares said.

The demon looked back at his book again. He flipped through a few more pages, then pulled a slightly smaller book out from behind the pedestal. He set it on top of the great book of names, and flipped through it.

“Ah! Hephaestus, and Ares!” He said, as though everything made sense now. “You’re both gods. Greek.”

“That’s a very handy book you have there,” Hep said.

“Yes. Now, then, what exactly are you doing here?” the demon said. He removed his glasses and set them down again.

“Getting in to Hell,” Hep said.

“Well, we’re always happy to get some new faces around here, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t meant to be here,” the demon said.

“Oh, come on. Sure we are. We’re bad guys,” Ares said, and grinned. “Really, really bad guys. I mean, I’m a god of war, for fucks sake. I’ve killed so many people I lost count two thousand years ago.”

“Well, you may or may not be bad guys, as you say, but you are not the kind of bad guys who get sent to Hell,” the demon said.

“Aw, come on,” Hep said. “Hey, what was that one bad thing we did?”

Ares looked at Hep. His eyes twinkled.

“You mean the one thing we did that was really rotten?” Ares said.

The demon watched them quietly, with growing impatience. There were fresh, hell-bound souls on the way, and these two were wasting his time.

“Yes, that one,” Hep said.

“Oh, man, you are going to love this,” Ares said to the demon.

“Oh yes?” the demon asked as politely as he could manage.

“Yeah,” Hep said, “You see, Ares and I, this one time...”

At that moment, Ares swung and landed a mighty blow, hitting the demon’s jaw just where it hinges on the skull. The demon fell like a sack of demonic potatoes, unconscious.

Ares darted behind the pedestal, hopping easily over the demon, and grabbed the key to the gates.

He and Hep had just reached the gates, and were about to unlock them, when two worried-looking souls appeared.

“Hell-bound?” Hep asked.

The souls both nodded at him, trembling.

“We’re full. Fuck off. I hear there’s room in Heaven.” Ares said.

The souls looked at each other, decided not to ask questions, and ran like hell in the opposite direction.

Hep and Ares unlocked the gates to Hell, and pulled them wide open.

“After you,” Hep said, and gestured grandly to Ares.

“You’re too kind, sir,” Ares said, and walked in to Hell. Hep followed him, leaving the gates open.


The demon who guarded the gates came around a few minutes later. He sat up, and rubbed his jaw, then stood. He spent a moment looking for his reading glasses, put them on, and looked at the great book.

Two souls were due. He checked his watch. They were due ten minutes ago.

He then noticed the gates to Hell were wide open, and Hephaestus and Ares were no where to be seen.

“Oh fuck!” the demon shouted, and scrambled to alert the other demons.


“Man, I thought Hades was bad,” Ares said to Hep. “This place just reeks of efficiency analysis and middle management.”

“And sulphur,” Hep added.

They had reached the Lake of Fire, and spent a few minutes looking around and trying to get their bearings. There was no discernible order to Hell’s layout. Hep blamed middle management for that too.

“So where the hell do you think he is?” Ares asked Hep.

“I don’t know,” Hep said, honestly. “Where do you think they’d stash a con-artist preacher?”

“Perhaps we can be of some assistance?” said a voice behind them.

Hep and Ares looked at each other, and turned around slowly. Standing behind them were the legions of Hell. All of them, from what Hep and Ares could tell.

“Would you kindly tell us what you two are doing here?” the demon in front of them said.

“Sight seeing?” Hep said in reply.

“Ah, yes. Well, I’m sorry to say Hell is what you might call a restricted area. If you would be so kind as to walk with me to the gates, we can all get back to work,” the demon said.

“Aw, man, and we haven’t even see the pit yet!” Ares said.

“Well, perhaps we can arrange a tour for you at another time. Currently, we’re all rather busy though, so if you would just come with me,” the demon said.

“Now wait just a minute. You folks have been nothing but rude to us since we got here. I think we deserve a little more professional respect than that,” Hep said.

“Yeah!” Ares said.

“Well, I gather the demon guarding the gates was quite offended that you punched him unconscious, but he isn’t here wasting your time and complaining about it,” the demon said, impatiently.

“Gee, poor guy. He could have just let us in,” Hep said.

“Yeah! We told him we were bad guys,” Ares said.

“Sure thing. This way, please,” the demon said.

“Aw, fuck that. I’m not getting escorted out of here by the likes of you, you little pussy!” Ares said.

He grabbed the demon by the throat, lifted him off the ground, and threw him back into the crowd of demons, knocking a great many of them over.

“Nicely handled,” Hep said.

“How kind of you to say,” Ares said. “So, what do you say we rip these fuckers limb from limb?”

“Sounds pretty good to me,” Hep said.

The demons closest to Ares and Hep were still trying to get their bearings when the two gods came at them, fists swinging.

Hep had his favorite hammer, and used it to great effect against any demon foolish enough to approach him. Many demons lost a horn or two when Hep’s hammer connected with them.

Meanwhile, Ares was getting hands-on in his own unique way.

“A demon, scared of heights? I don’t believe it. Here let me show you how great they can be,” Ares said to a slightly-built demon. He grabbed the demon’s horns, and with a twist and a yank pulled the demons head free from his neck. Ares then lobbed the demon’s head as high into the air as he could.

“See? It’s fun!” Ares called after the head.

“Now then, how can I cure you?” Ares said to the next closest demon, who decided it would be a prudent time to run the fuck away.

“Hey! Come on, this is one-on-one, top quality therapy I’m offering!” Ares yelled.

Nubbins and the muscular demon saw all of this from the back of the demon horde. Nubbins ran off to summon some more help, while the other demon pushed his way through the demons, to get his own turn at fighting the two gods.

Chapter Thirty Seven

Over the last five minutes, or thirty centuries, it was hard to tell, Cyrus had been whipped, boiled, stretched, beaten, broken, eaten, burned, poked, prodded, pinched, slapped, punched, violated in every conceivable way, left to rot, left to freeze and worse.

Worse was, of course, having to relive every painful memory without being able to do a damn thing about it, hearing himself utter words he’d wished he could take back, watching himself doing terrible things and being entirely powerless to stop any of it.

Nubbins was always present, but rarely involved in the actual torture and punishment. The little demon generally stood off to one side, looking extremely bored, ordering around another demon who did the actual dirty work. Cyrus may or may not have been interested to know that Nubbins was using him to show less experienced demons the ropes, but it didn’t matter because Cyrus did not, in fact, know that.

The current demon, who was busy trying to heat a propane torch in an intimidating way and failing miserably, did not seem to have the same aptitude for the job as the others had. Nubbins expected this one would likely get assigned to a desk in the pit, keeping track of punishments given, making sure everyone was thoroughly unhappy. He just didn’t seem to have a knack for torture, and the last attempt Nubbins had made at taking him along for field work had been a disaster. Instead of possessing and corrupting a young man of fourteen, he’d somehow managed to only convince the young man, and three of his friends, in the existence of Hell. All four of them swore right then they’d join a monastery as soon as they would be accepted.

Now Nubbins would have to go back and tempt them while they were monks.

The demon had finally managed to get the torch lit, and attempted a menacing laugh. He sounded less like an angel of Hell, and more like a thirteen year old role-playing nerd.

Cyrus was still suitably intimidated, because the demon did, after all, have a lit propane torch. The demon made a production of selecting a pair of tongs from the assortment lined up on the wall of the cave they were in. He finally selected a pair which came to a sharp point, good for tearing and twisting Cyrus’s skin.

Unfortunately, the demon somehow managed to get his hand in the way of the torch’s flame, and gave himself a nasty burn. It did not improve the smell of the room at all. Cyrus watched, mildly puzzled, as the demon hopped and danced around the room clutching his burned hand and cursing up a storm.

Nubbins sighed, said something Cyrus could not understand, and led the clutzy demon out of the cave. Cyrus was only alone for a moment, however, as Nubbins let in a few tiny, tiny demons with wings. They were maybe twelve inches tall, at the most. They were carrying spears, however, and kept Cyrus very occupied indeed by flying around him jabbing at his tender parts with their spears.

Cyrus was entirely unable to defend himself because he was tied to a stake in the middle of the room. The rope chafed his skin, and there were several patches where he’d been rubbed raw.

Despite the torture, Cyrus remained defiant. At least, as defiant as one can be while tied up in a hot cave while being prodded by action figure sized demons.

“I’m going to get my hands on you eventually, you little bastards,” Cyrus yelled.

The little demons laughed, and as one said, “No, you’re not.”

Eventually, once Cyrus was riddled with little punctures from the spears, the demons left him alone in the cave, still bound to the stake. He was hot, and he ached, and he was thirstier than he’d ever been.

He thought, if only I’d known it was this bad when I was preaching. I probably could have scared the money right out of those suckers’ pockets.

He was left alone for what seemed like years. Decades, even. He could feel his beard as it grew. He itched. He started to think his bonds were getting looser. It seemed his teeth were getting loose as well.

It did not occur to him that he had no body to degrade, even though he’d been tortured repeatedly, and instantly healed just in time to be tortured some more.

The heat grew more intense every moment as he stood in the cave. His thirst was unbearable.

The door to the cave opened, and Nubbins came in. He smiled a wicked smile at Cyrus, and untied him.

“Would you like some water?” Nubbins asked him. He pointed to a pitcher of crystal clear water near the door of the cave.

Cyrus took a huge, ragged breath and staggered towards the pitcher of water, imagining the joy of the clean water wetting his lips and cooling his parched throat.

A huge fist, seeming to come from nowhere, slammed into Cyrus’s jaw just as he’d been reaching for the pitcher. It sent him sprawling back across the room. Cyrus looked up to see a large demon step the rest of the way through the door.

The demon was very large. He was also quite muscular. And he was carrying a black, spiky, iron implement which the Reverend really did not want to contemplate the use of.

The most terrifying aspect of this demon, however, was his smile. Huge. Evil. Jagged. Pointy.

Cyrus had a small revelation then. What, he wondered, if Hep and Scroat had just been joking about the religion business?

Cyrus heard a voice inside his head say, “I am going to break you. Again, and again.”

Cyrus looked around on the floor of the cave for something to defend himself with, but there was nothing. Not even a pebble to bounce off the demon’s forehead.

Just then, Nubbins shouted something in the language of Hell to the larger demon. The big demon stopped smiling then.

“I am going to break you, later,” the voice inside Cyrus’s head said. The two demons left Cyrus alone in the cave then, locking him in once more.

“What do you mean someone has broken in?” the larger demon asked Nubbins as they both hurried towards the gates of Hell. “No one can break in to Hell. It’s impossible!”

“Sure they can, if they really want to. Hell is set up to keep souls in, not to keep things out,” Nubbins said. “Someone really wanted to get in, it seems. Hurry up.”

The pair of demons broke into a run, and were joined by many other demons. All of them were hurrying towards the gates.

Chapter Thirty Six

Scroat’s flight back to Minnesota was long and boring. The passengers sitting near him on the plane were singularly dull, and he’d stopped trying to converse with them less than an hour into the trip.

He was stuck in the middle seat. The plane was pretty packed, so he couldn’t relocate to a different row with some more interesting company. He’d tried hanging out near the restrooms hoping for some social contact, but the flight attendants shooed him back to his seat. He’d read the in-flight magazine and Sky Mall repeatedly. As much as he wanted a countertop upside down hydroponic tomato garden, he wasn’t going to be able to play with it until he got home, so reading about it didn’t do him much good.

Scroat had never been good at sleeping on planes. Apart from the discomfort of the seats, and the noise, the smell of the airplanes just bothered him. He was relieved none of the other passengers in his immediate area were wearing a ton of fragrance, but all the same he would have liked something to cover up the smell of recycled air. His seatmates didn’t seem like the types to participate in a fart-off, either.

By the thirteenth hour of the flight, Scroat was about ready to try hijacking the plane just to alleviate the boredom.

He did eventually reach Minnesota (after about 20 hours of travelling, all told), and he’d never been happier to get off a plane some place cold and snowy. After a stop in the men’s room, he went to one of the airport payphones, and called Cyrus’s house.

Sarah answered the phone. For the time being, Hep, Scroat and Sarah were the only ones who knew Cyrus was dead, but someone was bound to figure it out sooner or later, and she was worried about what would happen if that person called. But, at the same time, they were expecting a call from Scroat when he arrived, so she couldn’t just ignore the phone.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hey, baby, I’m back,” Scroat said.

“Scroat! I could kill you!” Sarah said.

“Hey, don’t do that. I’ll wake up in fucking Australia again, and I didn’t enjoy the flight home so much that I want to do it again,” Scroat said.

“You should have stayed here,” Sarah said.

“Well, I tried to, but you told me to leave,” Scroat said.

“You shouldn’t have wanted to go in the first place!” Sarah said.

“Are you high?” Scroat said. “Of course I wanted to go. Then I wanted to stay, but somebody didn’t want me to. So I left. Then I got killed. Now I’m back. This is a good thing, remember?”

“You’re a dick,” Sarah said.

“Damn straight. Is Hep there?” Scroat said.

“Yeah,” Sarah said, and dropped the phone. Scroat pulled the handset away from his ear until the clattering noises stopped.

“Scroat?” Hep said.

“Yeah, man. I’m back,” Scroat said. “Can you come get me?”

“Uh, no, Scroat. The car blew up. Remember? Take a damn cab,” Hep said. “See you soon!”

Hep hung up the phone then.

“Fucking dick,” Scroat said, and hung up the phone.


Scroat arrived back at Cyrus’s house about an hour later. By the time he had gotten out of the cab and on to the sidewalk, Sarah had come running out of the house.

“You son of a bitch!” she yelled.

Scroat turned to see five feet and seven inches of Sarah flying through the air towards him. She knocked him to the ground, and smothered him with kisses.

“You’re not allowed to die again, do you hear me?” she said.

“Yeah, loud and clear. No more dying for me,” Scroat said, and laughed.

They got up again after a minute or two of rolling around in the sticky, heavy snow, and went into Cyrus’s house. Hep was sitting on the couch reading a motorcycle magazine when they got inside.

“Hey, dumbass, how was the flight?” Hep said.

“It sucked shit right out of a pig’s asshole,” Scroat said.

“You gotta quit getting yourself killed. It’s really an inconvenience,” Hep said.

“Are you telling me?” Scroat said. “So what’s going on here?”

“Well, I’m trying to figure out how to get Cyrus out of Hell,” Hep said.

“Any good tips in that magazine?” Sarah asked.

“Tons, None of them really apply to this particular situation, however,” Hep said.

“How’s your plan coming along, then?” Scroat asked.

“Well, so far I’m stuck at the part where we somehow get into Hell. I figure we can play the rest by ear,” Hep said.

“What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Sarah asked. “Scroat is staying right here.”

“Yeah, I didn’t mean him, anyway. I’d hate to mess up your thing by keeping him wrapped up in Hell for a few decades,” Hep said.

“Decades?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, time as you know it doesn’t really apply in Hell. I might get back in five seconds, or in a few hundred years,” Hep said.

Sarah looked at Scroat, “You are so not going.”

“OK, you’ve sold me,” Scroat said.

“So who is ‘we’?” Sarah asked.

“Well, me and Ares. Who did you think?” Hep said.

“I don’t know, Hep. Ares might get a little too into the job, don’t you think?” Scroat asked.

“Nah, I think in this case his unique passion will come in quite handy,” Hep said.

“So when are you leaving?” Scroat asked.

“Well, now that you’re back here, I guess we’ll leave as soon as he gets here,” Hep said.

“And when is get going to get here?” Scroat asked.

“When is who going to get here?” Ares asked, with a big grin. “Uh oh, my ears are burning.”

“Hey Ares. Do you want a drink or anything before we go?” Hep asked Ares.

“Hell yeah! How about a beer?” Ares answered.

“No beer. Want some water?” Hep asked.

“Aw, fuck. Yeah, ok, I guess since we’re bound for a hotter climate,” Ares said.

Hep got Ares and himself a couple of big glasses of water from the kitchen.

“So, I hear you got killed too Scroat,” Ares said. “How did that work out for you?”

“Well, I’m back here in this fucking cold-ass state, so I guess the effects weren’t permanent this time,” Scroat said.

Hep finished his water.

“Are you ready to go?” Hep asked Ares.

“I’m always ready to go,” Ares said.

“So, uh, you guys probably shouldn’t stay here too much longer,” Hep said to Sarah and Scroat. “Cyrus didn’t give us the house or anything, and someone is going to notice he’s gone sooner or later.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll catch up with you back in Arizona, Hep,” Scroat said.

“Or, not,” Sarah said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Hep said.

“Don’t need it,” Ares said. “I’m all over this one.”

Chapter Thirty Five

Cyrus could not recall exactly how he died, which meant he probably was dead before the car went up in a big fireball. A small mercy.

He could recall looking down on the flaming car and realizing it was his car, and also realizing his body was still inside the car. These discoveries came with a cool detachment. Then the edges of his vision went blurry and dark, and soon all he could see was a brightly lit tunnel before him. He felt peaceful. He moved to take a step forward into the light.

“Oh no you don’t,” a voice said, and he felt something grab his ankles and start pulling him down. He looked down and saw Nubbins dragging him down into darkness, away from the light. He began to panic, and thrashed and struggled to get away from the demon as the light at the end of the tunnel got further and further away from him. Cyrus could not believe the strength of the little demon, who was not phased in the slightest by Cyrus’s struggles.

“Yeah, it’s best you get all the struggling out of the way now,” Nubbins said. “Pretty soon all the fight will have gone out of you, and struggling just won’t be as satisfying.”

They descended for an eternity, or so it seemed. Time passes strangely in the afterlife. That is to say, if it passes at all. Occasionally, time seems to stop and take a breather. Alternately, time can pass very, very quickly if it decides to.

After an age, Cyrus realized he could see a red glow coming from far beneath them. What started as a tiny spot of dim, red light quickly grew, until Cyrus and Nubbins arrived at the gates to Hell.

Given the number of souls entering Hell every day, one might expect there to be a long, long line to get in. There was not. If Hell prides itself on anything, it is their attention to quality customer service. Granted, the customers usually did not want to experience their unique service offerings, but a soul had not had to wait for what it had coming for a long, long time.

The gates to Hell were impressive. No, they were imposing. Huge, black and pointy, there was no way anything could get through them, unless the gates were open. They were easily sixty feet tall, and the proportions were exactly wrong, such that simply looking at them made one’s mind hurt. Those lucky enough to be on the outside of the gates (usually a temporary situation) usually did not want to find out what was on the other side of the gates.

There was a demon standing to the left of the gates behind a pedestal with an enormous book upon it. The demon was easily eight feet tall, and enormously muscular. He was also wearing a pair of reading glasses.

As Cyrus and Nubbins approached the demon, he looked up at them, and gave a small nod to Nubbins.

“Name?” the demon said when they reached the pedestal he stood behind.

Cyrus looked at Nubbins.

“Tell him your name, shithead,” Nubbins said.

“Uh. Cyrus,” the Reverend said.

“Your full name, please,” the demon said, and tapped irritably on the book with his pen.

“Uh, Cyrus Evander Milton,” Cyrus said. The demon looked down at the book through his reading glasses, and scanned through the open pages using his index finger to keep track of where he was. His hands were huge, and he had thick, black fingernails that came to a sharp point.

“Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton,” the demon said in it’s impossibly deep voice. “There you are.”

The demon made a few notes in the book, looked up and said, “You’re a bit early. Did you get a little to eager to get here?”

“Aw, shut up and open the gates, will you?” Nubbins said.

“Whatever, no need to be a dick to me,” the demon said. He produced an enormous key which had been hanging behind the pedestal the book was on and walked over to the gates. He inserted the key, and pulled the gates wide open. He then walked over to Cyrus and Nubbins.

“Welcome to Hell,” the demon said, then, with a great roar, he grabbed Cyrus and forcefully threw him through the gates and into Hell. He then shut the gates forcefully, and locked them again. The lock clicked shut with a heavy, final thunk.

“Nubbins, always a pleasure to see you,” the demon said. “I trust you know the way to the employee entrance.”

“Yeah, yeah. Talk to you later,” Nubbins said. He vanished.

“Little prick,” the demon said, and went back over to the pedestal to await the next soul, whom he was expecting any second.

Cyrus lay where he fell. Contrary to popular belief, the road to Hell is not paved with good intentions, but with sharp and very hard rocks which really hurt to fall on. Good intentions would be far too comforting.

Nubbins appeared next to Cyrus.

“Get up,” he said, and kicked Cyrus in the side. Cyrus groaned, but made no move to get up.

“I said get up,” Nubbins said and gave Cyrus a hard kick in the left kidney. Cyrus cried out in pain, rolled over and got to his hands and knees.

Nubbins kicked him again. “Get the fuck up!” Nubbins shouted at him.

Cyrus stood, and got his first good look at Hell. He immediately regretted looking up from the road. There were buildings, of a sort, along the road. There were terrible noises coming from inside of all of them. In the distance, Cyrus could see the lake of fire he hadn’t believed in. The sky above was a dull red, with no sun or moon visible. There was one star visible, tiny, but brilliant. It gave him no hope.

“Start walking,” Nubbins said.

Cyrus did as he was told. He did not walk quickly enough for Nubbins, however. The little demon picked up a rock and threw it at Cyrus’s head.

“Walk faster!” Nubbins yelled.

Nubbins led Cyrus past the buildings, past the lake of fire, and past the torture pits to a dank, foul-smelling cave, with an iron door sealing it shut. Nubbins took a key from the wall next to the door, unlocked the door and opened it.

“Well? Go in!” Nubbins said.

Cyrus ducked a bit, and went into the cave. Nubbins slammed the iron door shut after him, and said, “We’ll be back for you later.”

Nubbins walked away. Cyrus took a look around the cave. It was damp, cold and there was a disgusting smell of sulphur and rot. He could hear screams and wailing in the distance. Someone, or several someones, closer to him were sobbing.

“Hey, who’s out there?” Cyrus asked. He did not get a reply. “Anybody?”

Silence. He tried to shake the door, but it was solidly shut and didn’t even wiggle a little bit. He leaned up against the wall then, and slid down to the floor. There was, of course, no furniture in the cave. There wasn’t even a rock for him to sit on. His options appeared to be standing up, sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the slimy walls or laying on the floor. The floor was cold and damp.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” Cyrus said, semi-hopefully.

That was when the beetles swarmed out of nowhere and covered him in a chittering, multi-legged wave of unpleasantness. Cyrus hated bugs. They crawled in his ears. They crawled up his nose. When he opened his mouth to yell, he immediately regretted it, as many of the beetles crawled into his mouth.

If you’ve never closed your mouth when it’s full of beetles, well, you probably don’t want to know what it’s like. It’s crawly. And crunchy. And exceedingly foul tasting.

Getting bugs in your various facial openings is pretty bad, but getting eaten by a cave full of beetles is worse. In fact, the only thing worse than being eaten by beetles in a sulphur-smelling cave in Hell is realizing that one is already in Hell, and once the beetles are done eating you, you’ll be whole again. Just in time for some other rotten torture.

Chapter Thirty Four

Hephaestus woke up in Greece. Well, actually, he woke up in Olympus, but for all practical geographical purposes, he was back in Greece. He looked around a little bit and tried to get his bearings. When he realized where he was, he leapt up and yelled, “Fuck!”

Ares, who was sitting at a table nearby with Zeus and some of the other gods, looked over at him.

“So, you got killed in a auto accident, huh?” Ares asked. “Probably not the strategy I would have gone for. How did it work out?”

“I gotta go!” Hep said, and promptly vanished.

One of the main reasons Hep preferred travelling by motorcycle was the fact that riding is reasonably painless. Travelling by thought, on the other hand, always resulted in a massive hangover. It didn’t seem to bother Ares, for whatever reason, and a few of the other gods seemed to be fine with popping in and out of physical existence, but it gave Hep the kind of headache that starts wars.

Because of the excruciating pain, Hep only used teleportation in dire circumstances.

Hep popped back into existence in Cyrus’s house. Sarah was playing catch with Killer the parrot, and not her breasts as she’d said she was going to do when he’d left with Scroat, Cyrus and Nubbins. This was a relief. Sarah stopped playing with Killer, and stared at Hep with an expression of incredible surprise.

Hep said, “hey,” and then fell to the floor clutching his head and groaning in pain.

“Hep? What the fuck? Where’s everyone else?” Sarah asked.

Hep continued groaning and thumped his head on the floor a few times.


Everyone else, as it turned out, was dead. Well, that wasn’t completely true. They had all been killed, but Scroat was alive once again, back in Australia. Nubbins was alive and on his way back to Hell.

Cyrus was definitely dead, though, and on his way to Hell with Nubbins.

As they drove away from the strip club, a chunk of ice had come loose from a truck next to Cyrus’s car. The chunk of ice went under the Challenger, and knocked the exhaust system loose, sending it slipping and spinning across the road to rest in the gutter.

Cyrus, who was quite distracted by all the terrible things happening to his car, did not notice the red light, and drove directly in front of an eighteen wheeler carrying a load of bricks. The trucker was shaken, but fine. His truck was mostly undamaged. The Challenger, on the other hand, was thrown across the road and rolled, coming to rest on its roof.

“Whoa,” Scroat had said, and then the car burst into flames. As gods, upon their death Hep and Scroat just went back to their original home. For gods, physical death is kind of like pushing a reset button. Only with a lot more pain, most of the time.

Hep wasn’t sure if Cyrus had been alive or not when the car burst into flames, but Hep hoped he hadn’t been. Of the ways to die, incineration was pretty low on the list of most enjoyable ways to go.

Hep managed to sit up, still holding his head, and muttering under his breath. Sarah couldn’t hear him, but what he was saying was “Owie owie owie owie”

“Are you OK?” she asked him. “Where are Scroat and Cyrus?”

Just then, the phone rang. Sarah was the closest, so she answered it.

“Hey Sarah,” Scroat said.

“Scroat? Where are you?” Sarah asked, urgently.

“On the edge of the Australian outback,” Scroat said.

“Fuck you, I don’t have any patience for games right now,” Sarah said.

“I’m not playing games. I’m on the edge of the fucking bush in Australia. It’ll be a couple of days until I get back,” Scroat said.

“I don’t understand. That’s like a twenty four hour flight!” Sarah said.

“Ask Hep to explain. Look, I had to scrounge change for a pay phone, and international rates are a bit higher than...”

The phone clicked, and Sarah heard only the disconnected tone.

“What the fuck?” Sarah said, then turned to Hep. “Hep? What the fuck?”

The pain in Hep’s head had mellowed out enough for him to be able to speak again. He took a breath and said, “He’s on the edge of the outback, right?”

“Yeah, what the fuck is the deal?” Sarah said. She took a breath to really light into Hep with some intense questions, but he held up a hand before she could start and shook his head.

“OK, you know we’re gods already. We were just killed,” Hep said. Sarah’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to start asking even more questions. “Hang on,” Hep said.

Hep got up off the floor, and moved to the couch.

“OK, so we were just killed. Well, what do you think happens to a god on Earth who gets killed? He goes back to whatever origin he, or she, had. In my case, I go back to Olympus. Scroat is from Australia, so that’s where he ends up. Actually, I’m kind of surprised he called so quickly. Civilization must be moving further into the bush. The last time he got killed, I didn’t hear for him from several days, and he was mighty pissed off about having to hike through the wilderness.” Hep said.

“Well, how’s he going to get back here?” Sarah asked. “He’s in fucking Australia, without any of his stuff.”

“He’s got everything he needs, including the information he needs to withdraw cash from his bank account. He’ll get cash, he’ll catch a plane, and he’ll be back here swearing at us and being his usual crude self in a couple of days,” Hep said.

“How many times have you guys been killed?” Sarah asked.

“Me? Not so much. Scroat is always getting his dumb self killed though,” Hep said.


Scroat woke up in a very bad mood. He realized what had happened when he looked up and saw a couple of kangaroos looking at him with some curiosity.

“Fuck off,” Scroat said to the kangaroos.

“Blow me,” one of the kangaroos said in reply, and the pair hopped away.

“Fucking overgrown fucking jumping fucking bush fucking rats,” Scroat said. He stood up and brushed the dust off. He stood looking around for a minute or two, then turned and started walking east. He was surprised to find a road after only a couple minutes of walking, and even more surprised when a car came along shortly after that and offered him a lift to the next town.

All told, it took him less than an hour to get back to civilization. The last time this had happened, he’d had to hike through the bush for a few days before he’d finally reached a town. Happily, he hadn’t bumped into any of his relatives in a few hundred years. He still owed a bunch of money to a few of them, and it was probably best to simply avoid them.


“So what happened to Cyrus and Nubbins?” Sarah said.

“Well, obviously Cyrus died, and Nubbins escorted him to Hell,” Scroat said.

“So we’ve failed,” Sarah said.

“Not yet,” Hep said.

“What the hell are you talking about? He’s in Hell! I’d say we failed!” Sarah said.

“Well, we’ll just have to go and get him out of Hell, won’t we?” Hep said. “Well, not you. You’ll have to stay here. Sorry.”

Sarah thought about it for a minute, and said, “You know, I’m OK with staying here this time around.”

“It’s really for the best,” Hep said. “Hell is... difficult. I mean, I’d drag you through Hades in a heartbeat, assuming you wanted to go, but Hell is just nasty.”

“So how long did Scroat say it was going to be until he got back here?” Hep asked Sarah.

“A couple of days, he said,” Sarah told Hep.

“Well, until then we’ll just have to hope no one comes around looking for Cyrus,” Hep said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a nap.”

Chapter Thirty Three

Cyrus woke the next morning around six thirty. Once he had gotten his bearing, he looked around and realized he was awake before Nubbins. This was a first. He crept out of his bedroom, and went down to the kitchen.

Hep, Scroat and Sarah were already up. Nubbins was passed out on the couch, with a mostly empty bottle of cheap vodka clutched in his right hand. You don’t need to know what was clutched in his left hand.

“Hey,” Cyrus whispered, “the little shit is actually asleep.”

“Yeah, fucking weird huh?” Scroat said in his normal, loud voice. Nubbins muttered something, and turned his head so he was facing the back of the couch.

“Yeah. Weird,” Cyrus said. “He’s never been asleep when I’ve been awake. I don’t think he sleeps, really.”

“Sure he does,” Hep said. “He’s just got enough pride in his workmanship to be awake before you are up, and still awake after you go to sleep.”

“So what’s this?” Cyrus said, and pointed at the little demon. “And he was acting all spooked yesterday at the funeral.”

“I think he’s depressed,” Sarah said.

Hep, Scroat and Cyrus all turned and looked at her.

“Uh, what?” Cyrus said.

“Maybe he got some bad news?” Sarah suggested.

“What kind of bad news could a demon get?” Cyrus asked.

“Well, he could have been told he had to go back to Hell sooner than planned,” Hep said.

“What?!” Cyrus asked. “Sooner than expected? But he’s not supposed to go back until I die! He’s supposed to escort me!”

“Yeah, and I bet he’s not looking forward to that at all. You people might joke about already being in Hell, but you’ve got it good up here. This is as close as he’s been to heaven for eons. Think on that a minute,” Hep said.

“Oh, gee, sucks to be him,” Cyrus said. “If he’s going back soon, that means I’m going to die soon!”

“Well, maybe they’re just going to replace him with some other demon,” Sarah said.

Hep thought about his long past experiences with the little bastard. Chasing a crooked preacher around really didn’t seem his style.

“Yeah, that could be it,” Hep said.

“Yeah, or maybe he’s going to, oh, I don’t know, kill me!” Cyrus shouted.

Nubbins snorted and dropped the bottle of Vodka. He grabbed one of the throw pillows on the couch and put it over his head, then stopped moving again.

“Nah, he won’t kill you. There’s a loophole, you’d get off scot-free,” Hep said.

Scroat turned and looked at Hep.

“Where the fuck did you hear that?” Scroat asked.

“I think it was a Stephen King novel,” Hep said, doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m so fucked,” Cyrus said, and put his head in his hands.

“You sure are!” Scroat said as cheerfully as possible, and slapped Cyrus on the back.

“Fuck you,” Cyrus muttered.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Scroat said, and looked at Sarah. He winked.

“Not now, shithead,” Sarah said.

“Aw come on!” Scroat said. Sarah kicked him, hard, in the shins. “Ow!” he yelled.

Nubbins sat up on the couch and said “Will you fuckers keep it down? I’ve got a motherfucker of a headache.”

“Tough titty,” Cyrus said.

Nubbins looked at Cyrus, then at the end table by the couch. There was a nice, heavy looking snow globe sitting there. He snatched up the snow globe and pitched it at Cyrus’s head.

“Duck!” Sarah said.

Cyrus didn’t think, just ducked, and the snow globe smashed on the wall behind him, leaving a nice dent in the drywall.

“Thanks,” Cyrus said.

“Don’t mention it,” Sarah said.

Nubbins stumbled off in the direction of the bathroom then. He was gone for a very, very long time. When he came back, he had a very satisfied look on his face.

“What are you so happy about?” Hep asked. Nubbins said nothing.

“Hey, did anyone hear the toilet flush?” Cyrus said after a minute. They all looked at him, mute.

“Aw, shit!” Cyrus said, and ran to the bathroom. Hep, Scroat and Sarah heard Cyrus yell, “God damn it!”

They turned, then, and looked at Nubbins. He gave them a toothy grin, and went back to the couch muttering something about, “last time he wakes me up like a dick.”

Cyrus came back in to the kitchen with his jaw set. He rummaged around under the sink for a minute and produced a large bucket, several rags, a pair of thick rubber gloves and a bottle of bleach. He left the room again muttering, “little son of a bitch.”

“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think they were in love,” Hep said.

“You know better?” Scroat asked.

“No, I guess not,” Hep said.


About an hour later, Hep, Sarah and Scroat heard Cyrus flush the toilet repeatedly, then he came through the kitchen on his way to the back door carrying a garbage bag at arm’s length. He went out the back door, and they heard him slam the lid down on the metal garbage can back by the garage. He came back into the house, and spent several minutes scrubbing his hands in the kitchen sink. Then he scrubbed out the kitchen sink with bleach.

Once he had finished he turned around and saw Scroat, Hep and Sarah watching him intently.

“You just don’t even want to know,” Cyrus said.

An hour after that, Nubbins got up from the couch and stomped into the kitchen, holding his head.

“You want some aspirin or something?” Cyrus asked.

Nubbins looked at him suspiciously for a moment, then slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and said “Yes please. Many of them, if you don’t mind.”

Cyrus tossed him a bottle, and Nubbins poured out four of the little white tablets. He tossed them into his mouth, and washed them down with a few big pulls from the bottle of vodka he’d been clutching earlier.

“Thanks,” Nubbins said.

“Don’t mention it,” Cyrus said.

“What the fuck?” Scroat asked the room at large.

“Love thy enemy as thy self,” Hep said.

Nubbins snorted, “I hope you don’t think that’s gonna work, buddy.”

Cyrus said to Hep, “No, it’s keep the hungover demon from doing more damage out of spite.”

“Also a good strategy, “ Hep said.
Half an hour later, after everyone except Nubbins had gone into the living room to see if anything was on TV, Nubbins got up from the kitchen table. He got a big glass of water, drank it, then went out into the living room and stood directly in front of Cyrus.

“You are taking me to a titty bar today,” Nubbins said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cyrus said in reply.

Nubbins twitched his left hand a little bit, and Cyrus collapsed to the floor in agony, clawing at a spot on his back.

“You are taking me to a titty bar, now,’ Nubbins said.

“OK! OK!” Cyrus yelled. Nubbins twitched his left hand in a slightly different way, and Cyrus groaned in relief.

“How do you propose we get to this titty bar? My car has no windshield,” Cyrus said.

“Doesn’t bother me,” Nubbins said.

“Yeah, but it bothers me,” Cyrus said.

“Which bothers me even less than your broken windshield. I’d suggest you bundle up,” Nubbins said.

Cyrus looked at Hep and Scroat, who looked back at him and shrugged.

“Well, I’m game!” Scroat said. Hep rolled his eyes.

“I guess I’ll go to,” Hep said.

“Well fuck you guys. I’m going to stay here and play with my own tits,” Sarah said.

Scroat took a breath to speak, but Sarah spoke first, “And it’s too late for you to stay here, fuckhead. Have fun watching a demon get his rocks off.”

“Aw, fuck,” Scroat said. He was really going to have to start thinking these things through better, he decided.

The four of them left right away. Cyrus was in a rotten mood, and didn’t take the care he had taken the day before with his car. The drive to the closest strip club was still a long thirty minutes, made longer by the lack of a windshield.

“I’ll tell you what, that wind will work better for keeping the libido down than the coldest fucking shower,” Scroat said.

The strip club itself was pretty uneventful. At least, as uneventful as a strip club can be. No one noticed Nubbins, even as he leered at the girls mere millimeters away from their breasts. Of course, in the dark of the strip club, no one would have paid him much attention anyway. They got clients who were much stranger than a knee high demon on a regular basis. As long as the freak had cash, he or she was welcome any time.

Scroat sat with his arms crossed, trying to ignore the action going on around him. He was very pissed at himself for missing out on a chance to fool around with Sarah. Hep also did his best to stay unnoticed.

Of course, the only way to remain unnoticed in a strip club is to look like you don’t have any cash. As such, Hep had dancers visitng the table to offer private dances about every thirty seconds. He turned them all down with as much good grace as he could muster.

After a couple of hours, Nubbins had had enough and told Cyrus it was time to leave.

Cyrus was relieved, because he was running out of one dollar bills, and the ATM machine in the bar had a thirty dollar fee for withdrawing cash.

They left the bar then, squinting as they emerged from the gloom into the bright, snowy day light. When the four of them reached the Challenger, they saw someone had broken out the driver’s side window.

“God damn it!” Cyrus yelled. “Why would they do that? That’s just dickish!”

He opened the door, got in, and unlocked the passenger side door. As he leaned over to unlock the other door, he saw the stereo was gone.

“Who steals a factory installed radio from a 1967 Dodge Challenger? They’re not even worth anything! God damn it!” he yelled.

“Yeah, that sucks,” Hep said as he climbed in to the back seat with Scroat. Nubbins got in without saying a word, and slammed the door.

“Drive, fucker,” Nubbins said.

“Fuck you,” Cyrus said, and put the keys in the ignition. He started the car, and pulled out on to the street.

Once they were rolling, a huge chunk of ice fell off of a truck next to them on the road. It went directly under the car, and somehow managed to knock his entire exhaust system loose. It suddenly got a whole lot louder in the car. Cyrus saw his exhaust system go spiraling off to one side of the road in his rear view mirror.

“Could this day get much worse?” he shouted.

“Oh yes,” Nubbins said quietly. Too quietly for any of them to hear.

Chapter Thirty Two

Judy’s funeral was at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. Cyrus, Joe Anderson, got up early and dressed in Joe Anderson’s best suit (which was significantly less fancy than Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton’s best suit). He, and Nubbins, who discretely climbed into the car along with Cyrus, rode with Sam since the windshield in the Challenger was ruined, and it was pretty darn cold out.

Nubbins had been uncharacteristically quiet that morning. Cyrus thought he seemed anxious.

Good, Cyrus thought, let him sweat for a change.

Hep had offered to come along to the funeral, but Cyrus insisted he stay at the house. This part of his life had been separate from the religious part of his life, and it seemed best to keep it that way right now.

Hep thought Cyrus was probably on crack, since Nubbins, a definite reminder of the religious part of his life, was going to be at the funeral with him. But Cyrus had been quite clear that he didn’t want Hep to come with.

Cyrus hated funerals. He felt the whole mess with viewing the dead body and then, inexplicably, having ham sandwiches and noodle salads for lunch afterwards was just a little too bizarre for a grieving person to have to put up with. He had stipulated in his will that when he died there was to be a memorial barbeque with an AC/DC cover band playing no less than six months after his passing, and that was it. No morbid corpse-gazing for him, thank you.

And the burial services! If anything, Cyrus liked those even less than the viewings. The best that could be said for the graveside stuff was that it was reasonably quick, and most of the time the graveyards were pretty enough to think it wouldn’t be so terrible being buried in a place like that.

Judy’s funeral was exactly as unpleasant as Cyrus had expected it to be. Judy’s sister wept openly through the entire thing, while others in attendance seemed nearly jovial, at least when the service didn’t call for them to be somber. It was odd to see the different ways people mourned, and to wonder if he was doing a good enough job of mourning his friend.

The graveside service was extremely odd for Cyrus. Not because of the service itself, but because Nubbins had wandered off on his own seconds after arriving at the graveyard. Nubbins had never done anything like that, apart from the time he disappeared while fighting with Ares.

Which had resulted in Cyrus having to come to a friend’s funeral. So, it was understandable that the demon’s disappearance made Cyrus very nervous.

The little demon’s reappearance made Cyrus even more nervous. Nubbins had popped out from behind a tree, and wandered over to Cyrus again. He seemed even more nervous than he’d been earlier that morning. Nubbins shifted from foot to foot, and kept looking around anxiously. His nervousness began to make Cyrus nervous.

Eventually the service was over, and Cyrus and Sam (and Nubbins) made their way back to Sam’s car. They rode back to Sam’s house, making idle conversation and pointedly avoiding the topic of Judy’s death. Sam invited Cyrus, Joe, in for coffee, but he passed, promising to have Sam over the next day for lunch. Cyrus and Nubbins walked back into Cyrus’s house, to find Hep sitting in the living room with his fingers in his ears, and some kind of awful racket coming from the room Sarah and Scroat were in.

“Are they?” Cyrus began.

Hep nodded.


Upon his arrival in the graveyard, Nubbins ditched Cyrus and went to find a remote corner to hide out in, and wait. This particular corner of the graveyard was dark and not particularly well maintained. There was just enough room for Nubbins, and the other demon he was expecting.

That morning someone inside his head told him they would meet him during the funeral, and he should temporarily leave the Reverend alone. Nubbins thought leaving the Reverend was a poor idea, but funerals had a tendency to be very distracting, so he felt it was unlikely the Reverend would get any bright ideas.

The voice inside his head was, of course, a demon senior to Nubbins, at least hierarchically. The little fucker (little in this case is not strictly literal) was well over five thousand years Nubbins junior, but good at being in the right place at the right time.

Nubbins was not eager to meet with this demon. This assignment was the kind of thing he should have been left alone to just do. Meetings were not required. Discussions were not required. Planning and strategy were really not required. All he had to do was wait for the fucker to die, and make sure he made it to Hell. Easy as tossing a politician into a lake full of snakes and bile.

So why a meeting? It made Nubbins nervous.

So, he waited in the darkest corner of the graveyard. He was only there for a few minutes before he could feel the presence of the other demon.

“Hail Satan!” said a voice which sounded as though it thought it were very important.

“Hail Satan,” Nubbins said, in as unenthusiastic a voice as he thought he could get away with.

Nubbins’s supervisor then faded into view. He was approximately seven feet tall, with impossibly black eyes, and sickly, pallid white skin. His name is not important for us to know, as we don’t have enough jaws to pronounce it anyway.

“Nubbins, why are we here?” the larger demon said.
“Do you mean in a philosophical sense? I think we’re in a great cosmic game of checkers, and no one has gotten a king yet.” Nubbins said.

His supervisor hit him, hard, across the face, and sent Nubbins sprawling to the ground. Nubbins got up immediately, but did not retaliate. Not yet. He filed this latest grievance for revenge at a later date.

“No jokes, Nubbins,” the larger demon said. “How could you have let this idiot get so close to redeeming himself that you had to kill this woman?”

“Why do you give a shit about some old lady?” Nubbins said.

“I don’t. We don’t. Kill anyone you like, you know that. Preferably get a mortal to do it, but I don’t really care either way. No, what I’m pissed off about is the fucking meat popsicle out there who almost redeemed himself,” the larger demon said.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway. The fucker was going to lie and undo any brownie points he earned anyways,” Nubbins said, getting annoyed.

“Maybe, maybe not, but he would have been that much closer to finding an effective way of saving his soul. And he’s got friends, divinity no less, helping him out. You need to stay on your guard,” the demon said.

“Yeah, OK, lesson learned already. You know I figured that out on my own. Why are you here?” Nubbins asked. He had already been annoyed, but now he was getting close to being really ticked off. Wisdom from a relative newbie? Someone needed to be put in his place, and Nubbins couldn’t wait to be the one to do it.

“I think a change of plan is called for,” Nubbins’s supervisor said.

“Oh really? What new plan do you propose then, oh wise and powerful fucktard?” Nubbins asked. He sneered at his boss. If the bastard would just step half an inch to the left...

The larger demon took a step to the right, and winked at Nubbins.

“The proposed plan is easy. You should be able to handle it, I expect, given your vast experience in these matters,” he said.

“Uh huh? And could you just tell me the plan sometime before the funeral is over?” Nubbins said.

“Kill him,” the larger demon said.
“I beg your pardon?” Nubbins said, honestly shocked.

“Take your little hands, and put them around his little throat, and choke the ever-loving shit out of him. Or something else. Just make him dead,” the larger demon said.

“I can’t kill him. If I do that, he’ll go to heaven. Loophole? Remember?” Nubbins said. The loophole was this - if a demon directly killed someone who was hellbound, it didn’t count because the damned soul hadn’t had a chance to properly atone for its sins. It was a pain in the ass really. Bureaucratic nonsense, since maybe one or two souls ever actually managed to redeem themselves. God may be all forgiving, but mankind is all-fuck-upping.

“Well then don’t outright murder him. Just influence things a bit. You’re good at that,” the larger demon said.

“Influence things, right,” Nubbins said. “Sure, I can do that. What am I getting out of this again?”

“You won’t be fired. At least, not immediately,” the larger demon said.

“Oh. Great,” Nubbins said. He truly could not stand this supervisor. The bastard didn’t even do quality work on his own, he just postured and made threats. His biggest accomplishment? He got an alcoholic priest to fondle a nun while on a bender. Hardly promotion-worthy. Nubbins had seen newly-spawned demons accomplish more.

“So, if you could just take care of that in the next couple of days, that’d be great. Good bye, Nubbins. Hail Satan!” the larger demon said, and faded out of sight.

“Hail Satan,” Nubbins muttered.

Kill the mortal? Shit, if he did that, he’d have to go straight back to Hell. He hadn’t even been to a strip club yet. Damn it, he was busy having fun up here. If they weren’t going to give him a good assignment, they could at least let him slack off a little bit here and there.

This was just management fucking with him. Nubbins fully intended to take his revenge, and it would be swift, and brutal.

And unfortunately, his superiors knew it. They would do the same thing, after all.

He kicked at one of the nearby gravestones, then hopped around on one foot in pain. Fucking people with their fucking sturdy fucking monuments.

Once he could walk again without limping too much, he slunk back to where Cyrus was. Then they rode back to Cyrus’s neighbor’s house.

Back in Cyrus’s house, Scroat and Sarah were having their usual wild, unbearably noisy sex. It did nothing to improve Nubbins’s mood. He went straight to the liquor cabinet and started drinking. The liquor made him feel a little better, as did knowing he’d just polished of a bottle of scotch whiskey he knew cost Cyrus about one hundred and sixty dollars.

Once he had a solid buzz going, he left the liquor cabinet, sat down in the living room with Hep, Cyrus and Killer, and irritably watched Cyrus for the rest of the evening.

Chapter Thirty One

The cab driver did not like Killer at all. He didn’t like those stupid dogs some women felt compelled to carry in their purses. He didn’t like cats. And, he just discovered, he did not like birds. He discovered this fact about himself only seconds before Sarah and Killer had gotten into the cab, along with Hep and Scroat.

Shortly after Scroat had given the driver directions to their destination, Killer made his presence known by saying “I’LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!”

The cab driver forced a laugh, and said “That’s some animal you’ve got back there.”

He figured he could tolerate the bird long enough to get a decent tip. But then Killer kept talking and carrying on, as an excited parrot is known to do. The racket drove him crazy. He started to think the bird was actively trying to irritate him. The little shit. Then the bird screamed. A 110 decibel bird scream in the confines of a taxi is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable.

Halfway to Joe Anderson’s house, he pulled off the freeway onto a side road and told them all to get out.

“What the fuck?” Scroat asked.

“I can’t take any more of that goddamned bird. Get out of my cab!” the driver said.

“Did you lose your mind?” Hep asked. “We’re not even close to our friend’s house.”

“Well, you’ll have to call him and ask him to pick you and the fucking bird up, then. Get the fuck out of my cab!” The driver said.

“I don’t believe this shit,” Scroat said as he opened the door and got out of the cab. Sarah and Hep got out behind him. Hep slammed the door and told the cabbie to watch his back.

“Fuck you!” the cabbie yelled, and sped away from the curb, throwing up a nice spray of grey slush which made the whole experience that much more pleasant for Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer.

Sarah wrapped a small blanket around Killer’s cage and said, “So. What now?”

“Now we find a phone and tell Joe to get his ass over here and pick us up,” Hep said. He started trudging north, away from the off ramp and towards – or so he hoped – a gas station or some other establishment with a heater and a payphone. Sarah and Scroat followed along behind him.

Traffic whipped past them, showering them with a nearly constant spray of dirty water and snow. They walked two blocks before they reached a sidewalk that was reasonably clear of snow.

“Now I remember why I moved to the desert,” Sarah said.

Hep struggled to keep from falling over on the slippery patches. Ice was hard enough to walk on as it was, but it’s really not any fun when one has two gimpy legs and shoes not meant for the cold.

After walking a few more chilly blocks, a gas station came into view.

“Phew!” Hep said.

A few minutes later the three chilly walkers (and one cold bird) opened the door and went into the gas station. There they bought three large cups of coffee and tried to warm up a bit. Given the short notice for their trip, none of them were dressed particularly well for the weather.

After he’d finished his first cup of coffee, Hep dug a couple of quarters out of his pocket and went to the payphone to call Cyrus.

The phone rang a few times before someone picked up, and Hep heard Cyrus say “Hello?”

“Hey, ‘Joe,’ we need a ride,” Hep said.

“I thought you guys were going to take a cab,” Joe said.

“Yeah, we did too, until the dink cabbie threw us out. Come get us,” Hep said.

“Can’t you get another cab? My car is put away for the winter,” Joe said. He really didn’t want to expose the Challenger to the winter roads. Too much salt, and chunks of stuff getting thrown up from other cars.

“Come. Get. Us.” Hep said.

“OK, OK, I’ll come get you, you big baby,” Joe said. “Where the hell are you?”

Hep told him where the gas station they were currently hanging out was located. Joe told him he’d be there in an hour or so, since he’d have to get the mothballs out of his car.

“Whatever. We’ll be here,” Hep said.

Hep got himself another cup of gas station coffee (“Best in the Mid-West!” said a sign next to the pot of roofing tar they called coffee), and went to hang out with Scroat and Sarah again.

“He’ll be here in an hour or so,” Hep said.

“Oh. Nice of him to hurry,” Scroat said.

“Yep, he’s just a hell of a nice guy,” Hep said.


Joe spent a couple of minutes trying to come up with a way to avoid taking the Challenger out. Sam wasn’t around, and it was unlikely he’d loan Joe his car anyway. His other neighbors were all at work. He began to wish he’d kept a beater around, for circumstances like these.

After pacing around his kitchen for a few minutes, much to the delight of Nubbins who enjoyed seeing Cyrus in distress, he realized he was just going to have to suck it up and take the Challenger to get them.

It only took him a few minutes to get the car down from the jack stands and hook the battery up again. Nubbins poked around the car a bit to torment Cyrus.

“Oooh, what’s this do?” he asked, and Cyrus ran around the car to see what the little demon was doing. Nothing, as it turned out. He was just standing there with a shit-eating grin.

Cyrus opened the garage, got in the car (Nubbins hopped in the passenger seat), and turned the key. The engine roared to life, as it always did, the first time he turned the key. Cyrus had always hated getting into a cold car. Somehow, being cold in a car was much worse than being cold out in a howling snowstorm. He backed the car out of the garage, pushed the button on the remote for his garage door opener, made sure he had the directions to where Hep, Scroat and Sarah were, then backed out of his driveway, and pointed the Challenger in the direction of the freeway.

If it had been a warmer and less icy time of year, Cyrus would have then stomped on the gas pedal and smiled widely as light bent around him. However, it was currently a jillion degrees below freezing (at least, that’s how it felt) and the roads were nice and evenly coated with ice and snow. Cyrus had to be extremely careful not to give the big V8 too much gas lest both rear tires spin wildly and send the car, along with its occupants, into the closest snowbank or ditch.

Cyrus drove with extreme caution, and it took them five minutes longer than it really needed to in order to get to the freeway. When they reached the on ramp, Cyrus accelerated slowly, getting up to the speed of freeway traffic just as he reached the end of the ramp, to the annoyance of all the drivers stuck behind him. Once on the freeway, he stayed in the right lane and stayed far, far behind the car ahead of him.

It took him about twenty minutes to reach the exit he needed to pick up Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer. Two minutes later he arrived at the gas station they were waiting at.

“For fuck’s sake, man, it’s been two hours!” Scroat yelled at Cyrus when he got out of his car.

“Well, if you guys hadn’t pissed off the cabbie, it would not have been a problem, would it? Fuck, I had to get my car off of blocks, and now it’s all covered in road salt and sand. Jesus, how hard is it to get along with a cab driver? Just sit there and shut up, and...” Cyrus paused there, as that’s when he noticed Sarah staring daggers at him.

Sensing an opportune moment, Killer said, “FUCK YOU!”

“Right. Get in the damn car,” Cyrus said. He put the front passenger seat down, and Scroat and Sarah climbed into the back. Hep waited for Nubbins to get in. Nubbins, meanwhile, stood glaring at Hep.

“Get in the fucking car already,” Nubbins said.

“What? You don’t have bad legs, you get in the back,” Hep said.

“Fuck that, he’s my pet human, you have to ride in the back,” Nubbins said.

“Son of a bitch,” Hep muttered and climbed into the back seat along with Scroat, Sarah, and Killer.

“Damn, these cars are pretty roomy,” Hep said.

Nubbins got in to the front seat then, and slammed the passenger door. Cyrus got in on his side, and fired up the car again. Then he set off at the same creeping pace he’d used to get here.

It took a solid fifty minutes for them to get back to Cyrus’s house. He had kept such a long following distance on the freeway that a plane could have landed between him and the car in front of him. He carefully yielded to any car anywhere near him.

They arrived back at his house, and he stopped the car in his driveway and sighed with relief. So far as he could tell, there was no new damage to his car. He’d just have to wash it right away, and it would be good as new. He clicked the remote for the garage door opener, and once the door was all the way open he slowly pulled in to the garage.

Had he pulled in a little faster, the coming disaster might have been avoided.

Just as the windshield passed under the garage’s overhand, one of the huge icicles fell and landed on the windshield. The glass spiderwebbed, and then collapsed in on itself.

Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer were all stunned into silence.

“What. The. Fuck?” Cyrus yelled and stared out the hole where his car’s windshield had been seconds before.

He looked over at Nubbins, who looked back at him with a huge, defiant smile.

“What? I didn’t do it,” Nubbins said.

Chapter Thirty

Cyrus, that is to say, Joe Anderson, was on the phone with one of his neighbors in Minnesota.

“Sam! It’s Joe, how ya been?” Joe said.

Nubbins watched him calmly from the other side of the room. There were only a few pieces of undamaged furniture left in the room, and Nubbins had claimed the comfortable chair for himself.

“Joe!” Sam said, “Wow, weird timing that you called.”

Joe felt an icicle push into his heart, but tried to maintain a jovial tone of voice.

“Oh yeah? Is my house burning down as we speak?” Joe asked.

“No, nothing like that. I have some bad news for you though,” Sam said.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Joe asked. He felt his stomach crawling up his throat, and had to fight a strong urge to start pacing about the room.

“Well, I hate to have to tell you, but Judy passed away last night from a heart attack,” Sam said.

“What?! Oh my god!” Joe said.

“Yeah. She’d been bringing the garbage out, and collapsed. Steve across the way saw her, and called 911. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late,” Sam said.

“Oh no!” Joe said. So the little bastard really had killed her. He had been hoping the little demon was bluffing.

“Yeah. There’s going to be a memorial service for her next Saturday,” Sam said. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

“It’s OK, Sam. I guess I’ll be seeing you later this week,” Joe said. Nubbins sat up in his chair and watched Cyrus with a bit more interest.

“See you Joe,” Sam said, and hung up the phone.

“See you later this week?” Nubbins asked. “You’re going up there?”

“Yes, I’m going up to my friend’s funeral,” Joe said. He called Grace, and told her he needed her to cancel the coming weekend’s revival appearance for him. She objected until he told her about the funeral for a friend.

“What the hell is going on over there, Cyrus,” Grace asked him.

“Grace, I promise I’ll tell you all about it another time,” Cyrus said. “By the way, cancel payment on the check to Judy. Donate the money to your favorite charity instead.”

He hung up the phone.


The next morning Cyrus was on a flight back to Minnesota. He’d bought two seats on the plane, ostensibly for a bit of space, but actually because he didn’t want Nubbins sitting in his lap.

Nubbins was unusually still during the flight. There was something deeply unsettling to the demon about being thousands of feet in the air.

They landed in Minneapolis, and took a cab to Cyrus’s – Joe Anderson’s – house. Once he had opened up his house and turned the heat up a bit (he kept the thermostat at a cool forty five degrees, since he wasn’t there) he stopped by to visit his neighbor Sam.

The street in front of the house was icy, but Sam had done a great job of keeping Cyrus’s sidewalk and driveway clear. It actually looked like someone was living there. Cyrus decided he was going to have to pay him more for helping out.

He and Sam visited for a little bit, and talked about nothing much of importance in the way that people who’ve lost a friend will do when they’re trying to avoid talking about their friend who just died. While they talked, Nubbins slid around on the ice out on the street. Many people think demons would hate the cold, given the usual climate they have to live in, but the fact is a trip to somewhere snowy is a universal daydream among demons. If he hadn’t needed to keep such a close eye on the Reverend, Nubbins probably would have stuck around up in Minnesota for a while longer after killing Judy.

But, instead he had to get back to the Reverend. He’d catch hell if anyone in Hell found out about how he’d had to kill Judy. Not, you understand, that they’d have a problem with her death. The problem was that Cyrus had gotten awfully close to redeeming himself. Preventing such a thing from happening was the whole reason Nubbins was here, and Cyrus shouldn’t have gotten that close to saving himself.

So he kept a close eye on Cyrus as he, Nubbins, tried to enjoy the cold weather.

After a while, Cyrus, Joe, wrapped up his conversation with Sam and walked back to his own house.


“Well what the fuck happened to him?” Scroat said in the hallway outside the room Cyrus had been staying in while in Coalgate, Oklahoma.

Several hotel employees were hauling away the wreckage from the fight Ares and Nubbins had had the night before. The cleaning crew was waiting outside to get in and take care of the wood splinters and broken glass, as well as to replenish the towels and strip the sheets.

Hep thought about it for a minute.

“I know where he probably went,” Hep said, and paused. “He probably went up to Minnesota.”

Scroat and Sarah both gave him a blank look.

“For the funeral?” Hep said. “You know? For his friend? The one Nubbins killed?”

“Oh. Right,” Scroat said. “Well, I guess we can all go home then, right?”

Sarah and Hep both gave Scroat the kind of look usually reserved only for those who are being willfully and maliciously stupid.

In Scroat’s case, he was honestly that stupid, with no malicious intent.

“No, Scroat. We’re all going up to Minnesota now,” Hep said. “You know, to keep trying to help him out.”

“Yeah. You know, we haven’t been doing a real great job of that,” Scroat said. “We might want to consider giving up and finding some other impossible challenge.”

Sarah kicked him, hard, in the left shin.

“Ow! Fucking Fuck! OK, we’ll go up. Just throwing an alternate idea out there. Keep your pants on,” Scroat said. “I hope Killer likes the cold.”

They all stood silently in the hallway for a moment as a couple of scrawny guys hustled by them carrying replacement furniture for the room Cyrus had been in.

“Anyone know where he lives?” Sarah asked.

No one answered, and they turned and walked back down to the lobby of the hotel. Sarah spotted a woman sitting on one of the couches, and said “Hey, isn’t that his secretary?”

Sarah, Hep and Scroat walked over to the woman.

Hep said, “Excuse me, do you work with Reverend Milton?”

Grace looked at the three of them, and hesitantly said, “Yes.”

Waves of relief flowed through Hep. He had no idea how they would have found the bastard up in Minnesota. He knew Cyrus lived under an alias up there, but he didn’t actually know what the alias was.

“Can you tell us how to find him in Minnesota?” Hep asked.

She blinked twice, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And Reverend Milton is a very private man.”

Hep and Scroat looked at each other, and Scroat said, “Do we look like the fucking holy rollers that go to hear him preach?”

Grace looked at the three of them again, and said, “Well, no.”

Hep said, “We really need to catch up with him. Could you help us at least figure out how to find him?”

Grace was quiet for a moment, then dug a pen and note pad out of her purse. She wrote something down, handed it to Hep, and said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Hep said, and walked away. Scroat and Sarah followed him.

“So? What did she give us?” Scroat asked Hep.

“A name and the number for directory assistance,” Hep said. The left the hotel and went out to the bikes again.

“Let’s head to a bank and get some quarters,” Hep said.

“What for?” Scroat asked.

“Someone has to make a whole shitload of calls to directory assistance. And then call a whole bunch of guys named Joe Anderson,” Hep said.

They rode to the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, and left their bikes in the long-term storage lot. They went into the airport then, after Sarah put Killer into his shiny new travel cage.

In the airport, Hep set about getting the three of them (and the bird) tickets on the next available flight to Minnesota. While he was doing that, Sarah and Scroat went to call directory assistance and try to track down ‘Joe Anderson.’

There were fifty six listings for Joe Anderson in Minneapolis alone. Sarah and Scroat really hoped he didn’t live in St. Paul, or one of the outlying cities.

After about twenty minutes, Hep came over to the bank of phones Sarah and Scroat were at. He handed each of them a ticket.

“Any luck?” Hep asked them.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sarah said, and showed him the huge list of phone numbers they had to go through.

“Well, good thing we’ve got four hours until our flight,” Hep said. “Let’s get to the terminal and start calling from there.”

They made it through security with relatively few problems. One of the security doofuses tried to take Killer out of his cage while Sarah was otherwise distracted, and got the hell bitten out of his hand.

Sarah looked at him and said, “Do you always stick your hand in the face of small, cornered animals? You should have just asked me to take him out.”

Once they had made it to their gate, they split the quarters and headed for the payphones to try and find the right Joe Anderson.


The temperature in his house had just become comfortable enough for Joe to take his jacket off. Nubbins had found Joe’s liquor cabinet almost immediately. He was three quarters of the way through a bottle of Jack Daniels when Joe noticed.

“Hey, stay out of the expensive stuff, would you?” he said to the little demon.

“Fuck you, I’m going to drink whatever I want,” Nubbins said.

Joe had been about to say something when the phone rang. He was a little curious who would be calling him, but figured it was probably Grace.

He picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Is this Joe Anderson?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Joe sighed. How had a telemarketer found him when he’d only been home a couple of hours?

“Yes,” he said.

“Joe, this is Scroat. Do you know who I am?” said the voice.

“Oh, yeah! Uh, how’d you find me?” Joe asked.

“I have my fucking ways, dickhead,” Scroat said. “Most of them involve calling twenty other Joe Andersons until I find you because you couldn’t be enough of a fucking gentleman to fucking call us and fucking tell us you were fucking going to fucking Minnesota, you fucker.”

“Um. Sorry about that. I was distraught,” Joe said.

“No, you were a dickhead,” Scroat said. “But enough of that. Where the fuck are you, and how the fuck are we going to get there from the Minneapolis airport?”

“Yeah, uh, here goes,” Joe said. He gave them directions to his house, and asked when he could expect them. Then he hung up the phone, and wondered how he was going to explain Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer to his neighbors.