Chapter Twenty Nine

Hep knocked on the door to Cyrus’s hotel room. He, Scroat and Ares heard someone cursing and walking to the door. Cyrus opened the door, and they were shocked to see he had a shiny new black eye.

“What the fuck, Cyrus?” Hep said.

“The little bastard threw the closet door open as I was walking by,” Cyrus said.

“I was expecting you to say something like, ‘I fell down the stairs,’” Scroat said. “Or, ‘it’s just his way, I should have kept my face out of the way,”

“Fuck you,” Cyrus said to Scroat. Then he noticed Ares, and his eyes widened.

“Cyrus, meet Ares. Ares, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton,” Hep said.

“Hi,” Cyrus said.

“Greetings. Are you going to let us in, or are we going to stand here in the hall for the rest of the night?” Ares said.

“Oh, yeah, come on in,” Cyrus said, and opened the door wide. The three gods walked in to Cyrus’s hotel room.

Nubbins was busy jumping on the bed, which made a horrible creaking noise with every bounce, like demonic fingernails on a demonic chalkboard along with a choir of damned cats fighting. He was grinning widely.

“Hello Ares,” Nubbins said, still jumping on the bed.

“Hello Nubbins,” Ares said.

“Jesus, do all of you know each other?” Cyrus asked Hep.

“I didn’t know that fucker until you had to go and introduce me,” Scroat said.

“So, you’re our man, huh?” Ares said to Nubbins.

Nubbins stopped bouncing on the bed for a moment, raised an eyebrow and said, “Yes?”

He didn’t have time to say anything else, because Ares had already thrown a chair at him and was stomping over to grab him. He dodged the chair easily enough, but Ares was a bit tougher to avoid.

Nubbins stepped to one side just as Ares reached him, and Ares missed him by inches. Ares roared.

“What the fuck?” Nubbins said and turned to keep Ares in his sight. He was a little ashamed of himself for not foreseeing a stunt like this.

Ares turned around and grinned at Nubbins, he crouched a bit, hands out and ready.

“You’re pretty quick,” he said.

“I saw you coming a mile away,” Nubbins said. Ares lunged again.

Meanwhile, Cyrus had grabbed the phone and frantically dialed Grace’s number. She answered just as there was a huge crash as Ares and Nubbins grappled.

You might think Ares would have the advantage in this fight, since he was much larger than Nubbins, not to mention more physically powerful, and experienced in handson combat. What you must consider, however, is the speed and relative agility of a demon that is only knee-high.

Nubbins currently had a solid grip on Ares head, and would occasionally give him a quick punch in the nose. Ares grabbed wildy, just barely missing the little demon each time.

“Grace, listen fast. I need you to send a check to Judy Sachsen, she lives in my neighborhood in Minnesota,” Cyrus said. There was another great crash, and Ares laughed loudly.

“What the hell is going on?” Grace asked. She was more than a little disturbed by what she was hearing on the phone.

“There’s no time for that. Send Judy a check for $20,000. That should do it. Send a note with saying God told me to do it because of her need. OK? Send it overnight! You got that?” Cyrus said.

Ares and the little demon were faced off, circling one another. Ares clutched a chair leg in each hand like a pair of clubs, while Nubbins had a pair of scissors held out in front of him like a fencing foil.

“I don’t understand!” Grace said to Cyrus.

“There’s no time for that! Do you have the info you need?” Cyrus said urgently.

Ares bellowed, dropped one of the chair legs and pulled the scissors out of his thigh. The little bastard had thrown them. Ares swung the chair leg he was still holding at Nubbins’s head. Nubbins ducked it easily, then looked sharply at Cyrus.

“Oh no you don’t,” Nubbins said to him, just as Ares leapt to tackle him. Nubbins saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, gave Ares a look of supreme contempt, and made a pushing motion as he said something in a demonic language no one knew.

Ares flew across the room and crashed into the entertainment center, destroying it.

Nubbins popped out of existence then, for a few minutes. Cyrus looked back at the room, and hung up the phone as Grace was asking him what was happening again.

“Where the hell did he go?” Cyrus asked the others.

Hep and Scroat both shrugged, each as surprised as Cyrus was, while Ares climbed out of the rubble that was once an entertainment center.

“I don’t know,” Ares said. “I guess he fled.”

“Not fucking likely,” Scroat said. “He was kicking your ass.”

“Fuck you,” Ares said.

“Shut up and tell me where he went!” Cyrus shouted.

“I don’t know!” Ares shouted back.

Just then, Nubbins appeared again. He looked very pissed off.

“You stupid fucker,” Nubbins said. “Because of you, I just had to go and kill an old lady who hadn’t really done anything wrong. Now no one is even going to get another chance to tempt her and get her into Hell.”

The blood drained from Cyrus’s face.

“What?” he asked, in a small voice.

“That stunt,” Nubbins said. “Trying to send her the money back. Very clever, except I’m here, remember? I can’t have you saving your soul like that. The only thing I could do was kill her.

“Besides, it wouldn’t have worked, because you were sending her a pretty fucking huge lie along with the money.”

“If it wouldn’t have worked, why did you kill her?” Hep asked.

“Because I’m a fucking demon. I’m not here to be nice,” Nubbins said.

Just then, Ares clubbed Nubbins over the head with a chest of drawers.

“Take that, you little dick!” Ares yelled at Nubbins.

Nubbins stood up then, to Ares’s surpise, and slowly turned around to look at him.

“Oh, it’s on now, motherfucker,” Nubbins said.

Nubbins leapt at Ares then. Ares was off-guard because most people, even demons, don’t get up that quickly after getting hit with a couple hundred pounds of veneered fiberboard. Nubbins latched on to Ares’s head and bit down hard on his nose.

Ares bellowed, and grabbed on to Nubbins, trying to pull him loose. He finally managed to get a good hold of the little demon’s head, and got him to let go. The two of them continued to duke it out, Ares fighting with brawn, and Nubbins outwitting him, until they both lay on the floor next to each other, gasping for breath.

“You really are a dick,” Ares said, and paused to catch his breath again, “You know that, right?”

Nubbins looked over at him, and said, “And you’re a shithead.”

“It’s agreed then. We’ll call it a draw,” Ares said, and got up. “If I thought I could trust you, I’d give you a hand up.”

Nubbins got up from the floor on his own. “You can’t trust me. Comes with the job.”

Hep patted Cyrus on the back, and said, “Sorry, man. We tried.”

The three of them left then.

Out in the hallway, Ares said, “That little fucker had some fight in him.”

“I guess. Boy, I didn’t see that coming. If I had, I would have warned Cyrus,” Hep said.

“Well, don’t beat yourself up too much. Demons are tricky, nasty little fuckers,” Ares said. “I guess I’d better get home. You guys take care.”

Ares then vanished.

“Come on,” Hep said to Scroat. “We’d better find some flowers for you to give Sarah.”