Page 43 of Client from Hell

“At worst, you’re trespassing. It wouldn’t even do more than blip on your record even if you did get charged with something, but hearing you say the Devil made you do it might be worth the fuss of you being put on trial,” Jonas replied, descending into the dark pits of hell—or the bowels of the decrepit house. “This is a closed-off storage room. There are unopened bags of cat food down here. The dry kibble kind. This is not appropriate fare for lions or tigers. If this was what those assholes were feeding them, it’s no wonder they ate their captors. I won’t call filth like them handlers. Darlene calls them fucking assholes. She’s right, these twats are fucking assholes.”

“I agree. The twats the lions and tigers ate are fucking assholes.” Muttering curses at myself for being foolish enough to trust the Devil’s word on my general survivability, I eased into the hole, swearing even more vengeance for my lot in life. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“I’d count on it.”

Ten

I don’t know what it means to be properly cuddled.

So many regrets, so little time.

In good news, the floor’s collapse didn’t earn me an automatic escort to the afterlife. Jonas had something to do with that. One moment, we fell. The next, I landed on top of him, he’d sprouted wings, and he used his dark, leathery wings to shield me from the debris.

Transformed Jonas had destroyed his shirt, revealing a muscular chest with enough definition I could lose a great deal of time acquainting myself with every curve and dip in his physique. My position, with my hands planted on his shoulders, put me in the perfect position to pursue a new plan, one without a single lion or tiger.

Jonas lifted his hand and covered my lips. “As you can’t see in the dark, there are more large cat predators in cages in this room. They’re alive, but barely. I can also see the freezers, which are on. Some have kittens, which aren’t doing well. I’m confident these are the cats Lucifer wants.”

Shit. I wiggled on top of Jonas and eased his wing down so I could peek. A faint illumination from the walls near the ceiling offered barely enough light to make out the walls were lined with large cages filled with big cat predators, and the poor things had seen better days, in far worse shape than the lions and tigers who’d tried to eat me. “Oh, those poor things.”

“It’s a lot different when they’re caged and helpless, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“I can fly and teleport, so I’ll leave you to feed these poor cats. You’re going to have to get close to them, but hopefully they’re okay enough to accept you tossing meat to them through the bars.” Jonas lurched upright, and I scrambled to stay on his lap. With a low chuckle, he wrapped an arm around me. “I think I see the problem. You’re so starved for human touch and affection it’s manifesting as a heightened sex drive. Give me a hug and get it a little out of your system, and tonight, I’ll make sure you get properly cuddled.”

I could see myself enjoying a lot of time cuddling, especially if Jonas opted to leave his shirt at home and showed off his wings. “I don’t know what it means to be properly cuddled, so I’m expecting good things tonight.”

“It’s a plan. Perhaps spicy ponies with bite require a great deal of affection to thrive? Cindercorns are like that. I could see Him following Lucifer’s base plan for his equines when working with you. Despite appearances, He genuinely does like Lucifer and wants him to be happy. Anyway, the cindercorn fillies have been brought up so they simply won’t whine when they want a hug, but they want hugs all of the time, just like their mother. And their mother? Ruthlessly hunts their father because he’s part incubus and she hasn’t gotten the hang of just asking for hugs. Also, she’s a hungry cindercorn, so she might think about asking for just a hug, but then she remembers she is married to her incubus-gorgon-doohickey, and thus he’s taken for a ride because she’s insatiable. I keep thinking about telling Sam, who is the poor, hunted father, that she really just needs a lot more hugs than she’s getting. I figure he likes being hunted and left it at that.” Jonas shrugged, and to my disappointment, his wings disappeared. “I sometimes manifest my wings when I get startled or fall. It wasn’t because I’m hungry.”

I laughed at the absurdity of his concern. “I want you hungry, Jonas.”

“Not that hungry you don’t—at least right now. By the time you’re ready and healthy enough for my attention, I’m sure I’ll start being tempted to show my wings off. I often resist showcasing my wings, though. My nature makes that a really bad idea. When a succubus sees an incubus showing his wings, she’ll get her pack together and go for a hunt and a good time. That lifestyle doesn’t work well for me. So, I spare us all the drama. I think Lucifer helps with that, honestly. I’m not sure how, but I’ve been around long enough to understand we start showing our wings involuntarily when we’re that hungry.”

“And you’re often that hungry.”

“Basically.”

“If I get eaten by a lion or a tiger, you lose your dinner, so you need to make sure I don’t get eaten by a lion or tiger.”

Jonas glanced at the cages surrounding us. “Or ocelots, cougars, exceptionally rare tigers and lions, and I’m pretty sure at least two of these animals are supposed to be extinct. Lucifer runs a conservatory in one of the sublayers, and he grabs as many critically endangered animals as he can, puts them into a habitat they’re comfortable with, and encourages them to breed. He then fiddles with the offspring to encourage genetic diversity and remove genetic faults that would bar survival. And in the case of there only being two left and inbreeding is required, he brings out the fucking assholes with genetics backgrounds and engineers the offspring so they can reproduce until he has a viable population again, then he starts new lines using the genetically diverse stock. And since he is who he is, he doesn’t mind encouraging inbreeding if it brings a species essentially back from the dead. In short, he’s using us for his animal rescue projects.”

I joined the incubus in regarding the poor animals. “Okay. So, we’re animal rescuers today. When my college said there was a client needing a legal intern, I was not expecting this. I got the client from hell, and he’s not even using me for my legal knowledge.”

“I’m sure you’ll get to put your legal schooling to work soon enough. But first, let’s help the cats, and then I’ll call and yell at Lucifer for a while. It makes sense why we’re here now, though.”

“You mean it’s not to get eaten by lions and tigers?”

“No, it was probably to find those corpses upstairs, to potentially identify the workers the lions and tigers ate, and get these animals out of here before authorities come and destroy them. Lucifer will negotiate for the man-eaters, and he’ll claim custody of them. More accurately, he’ll just take these and tell the authorities he loves cats, and if he were to leave an unhealthy cat alone, his wife would shred his skin from his flesh and she wouldn’t make him like it, and that makes him surly. Nobody wants Lucifer to be surly.” Jonas got to his feet without dumping me on the ground, lifted me up, and set me down, waiting until I could stand without help. He made a thoughtful noise, and he pointed at a corner. “There are also small wild animals in the corner. Otters, looks like a mongoose or something, and there is no amount of money available to convince me to fuck around with the honey badgers.”

Despite the severity of the situation, I giggled at the thought of the incubus having a healthy fear of honey badgers. Sure enough, there were six or seven cages with the surly animals in it, and like the other occupants, they looked gaunt and on the verge of death. “I don’t know how any of these poor animals are still alive.”

“The lycanthropy virus, same way you’re still alive. Somebody found a way to infect animals with lycanthropy, but while it helps with their survivability, the virus doesn’t do much more beyond have a host to infect more humans.”

Crap. “And that’s why we’re here, too. You can’t realistically become infected. I’m already infected.”

“That’s right. Well, mostly right. You will do your best to infect me, and if you’re anything like any other equine Lucifer has ever had any influence over, you’re going to launch a very exhaustive campaign to make certain I’m capable of becoming the same species of equine for your enjoyment. There’s only one equine right now who doesn’t have a same-species partner, and that’s Malcolm. He does not mind, because he adores his sphinx and wouldn’t ask for anything else, and once he catches her in the water, they’ll throw fillies left and right until Kanika gets tired of her father’s meddling ways and demands a colt. Honestly, I already told her I’d make sure Malcolm gave her a colt when she wants one. I might be murdered once Lucifer finds out, but it’s a big deal for them. They have one significant stumbling block right now, and that’s Kanika’s general fear of the water. Malcolm’s only fertile in the water.”

While the Devil’s little cupcake of a daughter could drive me to the brink of madness, I sympathized with her plight. “That would be one hell of a prank. You can circumvent Malcolm’s fertility, can’t you?”