LITMIR.BIZ

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until it rivaled the gunshot sound of an orchestra pit’s bass drum—boom BOOM!!! boom BOOM!!! My blood thrummed, making its own melody as it crashed through me, heated me, revved me until I was ready, steady, go. Caught in the backbeat of my body, I remembered green eyes and an eager smile, imagined curly black hair that no brush could tame. And then I pictured her: short but far from small, moving her lithe body in time to music, dancing more seductively than Salome with all her seven veils.

      I love him, Daun.

      Him.

      The flesh puppet with the stupidly big shoulders. Him, named after the prude Apostle who claimed it was better to marry than to be set aflame with passion.

      What could a mortal like him know of lust?

      Her voice insisted: I love him.

      Love? Demons don’t love, babes. Whatever you think you’re feeling, you’re just fooling yourself.

      So what if I wasn’t really talking to her? The message still worked: the memory of her voice faded, blended into the complete silence of Pan’s antechamber. It took another moment to banish her face from my mind; even after her words stretched into empty ghost whispers, the image of her dazzling eyes, gemstone eyes, winked at me—the deep green of emeralds, vitreous, sparkling with mirth.

      Damned flirt. I poked those eyes with mental fingers. Get out of here, babes. You’re not welcome. Before my treacherous memory could toy with me further, I announced: I’m here.

      ABOUT FUCKING TIME.

      I rolled my eyes. Pan was a master of bitching and moaning. If he’d really wanted me that badly, he could have just summoned me directly into his receiving room. But if it wasn’t urgent, then the King of Lust obeyed our Sin’s unwritten rule: give a Seducer a time to complete current business. To creatures like us, clients came first. Always. Pan had given me time to finish up with the angel; therefore, his summons was merely important, not life-threatening.

      The flesh puppets, they were to kill you.

      I shrugged away the Berserker’s words. Humans can’t kill demons, not without a lot of help. Good thing I’d destroyed that particular demon of Wrath; he’d been too stupid to live.

      Through the psychic link that connected all Seducers, I said to Pan, I got here as soon as I could.

      WHATEVER. GET IN HERE.

      Sure thing. Where’s the door?

      NEVER MIND. I’LL SHOW YOU IN.

      Strips of nothingness wrapped around me, papered me like a mummy and hefted me up. Oh, fuck me, I hate this part…

      I tumbled backward as invisible hands scooped me up, spun me in a windup. All I could do was snarl and bear it. But flashing my fangs did little good; now I was careening through the darkness, flying like a demonic fastball. Sensations battered me as I tore through the boundary of Pan’s antechamber: the stench of sewage and charred meat coated my nostrils; damp coldness smothered me, drowned me in brackish water. A crushing weight splintered my ribs, squeezed my heart until it was a pulpy liquid mass in my chest. From the blackness around me, a low rumble sounded, growling, stretching into a hungry snarl.

      He’s such a Goddamn showoff.

      I landed in an unceremonious heap on the ground, only slightly buffered by a thick rug—wool, still holding the stink of the sheep from which it had been shorn. I spat the fabric from my mouth and sat up, only to be assaulted by an overpowering stench of greenery and woods. Pfaugh!

      My eyes watered, and I waved a hand in front of my nose. No luck—the thick smells of foliage and fertile soil coated the roof of my mouth. Not breathing did nothing to dissipate the smell. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear that I’d materialized into the heart of some Athenian nighttime paradise. I snorted, expelling the odors of cedar and pine. It fucking reeked of forest. I half-expected to see a cartoon deer with obscenely huge eyes come traipsing out, swishing its obnoxiously cute tail like it was cruising for a piece of ass.

      But as I looked around, no woodland scene unfolded before me. Just a freakishly huge bed—far past king size; this was god size—atop a stone altar, surrounded by various short tables that overflowed with incense, lava lamps, and bowls of jelly beans. (Pan insisted that the candy was an aphrodisiac. I’ll stick with oysters and all-consuming fear.) The room was lit by multi-colored spotlights from somewhere up on high. All it needed to complete the mood was a soul man crooning in the background about getting some sweet lovin’. This definitely wasn’t what I’d expected from Pan, who was known across the Heartlands for his penchant for duct tape and ball gags.

      “Finally, he arrives.”

      The deep voice of my liege-lord reverberated through the room. I looked up at the gigantic bed, saw humped shapes lolling beneath the vomit-green cover and at least seven women, all naked and unconscious, sprawled atop the blanket. If there were any less than a dozen people in that bed, I’d eat a horseshoe. And the horse still attached to it.

      The source of the voice was farther back, reclining against a small mountain of pillows by the headboard. Curly brown hair, from the top of his head down to the goatee on his chin, framed a face of leather and hasty seams, a tribute to ugliness that even the gorgons would have appreciated. Ice-blue eyes regarded me, their pupils elongated, rectangular. Goat’s eyes. He smiled, tight-lipped, and settled back on his throne of pillows. Watching me. His chest gleamed with sweat or oil; tawny curls covered the expanse of his torso, led the eye down the plane of his stomach, down to the thick mass of hair that started just over his hips. His erection was a thing of epic poetry—grotesquely huge, ready to be sheathed in the nearest available flesh.

      With at least a dozen juicy women around me, I’d have a huge boner too.

      One bulky leg, swathed in a curly pelt, lounged insolently over a feminine shape beneath the blanket; his other leg was shrouded from hoof to thigh by the bedcover. His sinewy arms splayed out to either side of his body, his right hand cupping the breast of a nude woman, his left stroking another woman’s inner thigh. Neither lover responded to his touches, but that didn’t halt his caresses.

      Behold, the great god Pan, original party animal and current Lord of Lust, answerable only to the King of Hell. Wonder of wonders, gigolo of gigolos.

      Pan grinned hugely, slicing his face in two. “The incubus Daunuan is come. Can you give me a hallelujah?”

      I’d never understand his humor. Bowing low, I touched my forehead to the carpet. “Sire.”

      A pause, then he asked, “Who’re you supposed to be? Johnny Cash?”

      “Last client was into it, Sire.”

      “Taking the Tall, Dark, and Handsome thing literally, huh? Still, worlds better than the pastel shit that was all the rage a few years back.”

      Decades, but whatever. Time tends to blur for creatures like Pan.

      “Oh, get up already. We go back way too far for all this bowing shit.”

      I unfolded my body and rose to my feet, sure to remain at a respectful distance from the bed. We did go back a ways; Pan had been my contemporary for most of my existence. Recent events (known far and wide as the King of Hell’s poor temper control) had placed him as a Principal of Lust, but that was a thing of the past; just two weeks ago, he’d been tapped to be the new dread ruler of the Seducers. Not too shabby for an entity that used to entertain himself by scaring the piss out of shepherds and then fucking all the sheep.

      Snorting out fumes of pine, I said, “Love what you’ve done with the place, Sire.”

      “Yeah?” He stroked his goatee as he glanced around the room. “I’m thinking of going S&M once I’m done auditioning the girlies. It’s been forever since I was into the nature scene, but they seem to like it. Makes them think of cute and fluffy bunnies frolicking in the meadows, or some shit like that. I say fuck the meadows, give me the masochism.”

      Eloquent, as usual. “Auditioning? What for, Sire?”

      “I

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