ram guttered low on her dresser, flickers of blue flame reflected in the big mirror above. Three incense sticks stood waiting in a human skull, ready to fill Eden’s bedroom with the intermingled scents of vanilla, sandalwood, and jasmine at the touch of a demon’s hot claw.
For so many years she had waited to be strong. Everyone told her that she wasn’t. Mama, Daddy, Tura and Lorelei. . even Harold. Time and time again she was forced to confront her weaknesses, each time accepting lies from the lips of those who claimed to love her. She was weak. She was no child of Satan. She was not even a child of her own mother, who disowned her with the last words she spoke on this earth.
Mama’s words couldn’t hurt her now. Eden was too strong for that. But the words had cut her when Mama spoke them in the chapel, just as so many other slights and reprimands had cut her over the years.
Eden was a good girl. She accepted every slight. Every reprimand. Every punishment and reproach. Until the very last one that spilled from her mother’s lips.
Those words broke Eden. In their wake, she
And then Eden lost Harold too, breaking down in front of him, so that his only recourse was to flee into the night.
That was the greatest blow of all. The pit of weakness called to her, and she plunged into it. She hit bottom. And it was only then that she heard His voice. Only then, for the first time in her life, that she truly took Satan’s hand.
For it was Satan’s hand who guided her own.
Satan fitted Eden’s hand with a pistol, and she shot her mother in the heart, and she was strong. Satan slipped a straight razor into her waiting palm, and she slit her father’s throat, and she was stronger still. With a rusty knife from Satan’s pit she stabbed her lover in the back and felt his strength quiver on the blade as she spilled his blood. And with a dead man’s pistol she killed her sister-yes, even this she did-and strength fairly pulsed in her veins.
And soon she would crucify the heavyweight champion of the world to the glory of Satan. Surely the dark one could not receive a greater gift than this. Eden had stolen this prize for Him. Alone, she had captured the strongest of all men. And she would slay him and revel in Satan’s glory, but she would not do these things alone.
Satan would send her a demon, for no man could satisfy her now. No mere mortal could hold sway with a woman of her strength.
Of course, the mere mortals in Las Vegas did not recognize the true nature of Eden’s plan. The fools would pay her ten million dollars for Tony Katt’s safe return, and she would pocket the ransom money and sacrifice her captive.
Eden would sacrifice Jack Baddalach, as well. For she would demand that he alone deliver the ransom.
She had not forgotten the Harold Ticks Shuffle. Harold might be gone, but she would keep something of him, even if it were only his treachery.
And when she had that ten million dollars and Jack Baddalach was dead, she would burn his bones and sow his grave with salt. And her demon lover would dine on Tony Katt’s flesh and grow strong, and from Katt’s naked bones Eden would fashion a gate to the great pit of hell which yawned in a Mojave Desert chapel. And all who came to worship at the place called Hell’s Half Acre would see this gate. And all who came would know of Eden’s strength. .
Hot as hell’s promise, the night air drifted through the open pillbox window. The moon hung high in the sky, a ball of fierce blue light shining upon the earth, fierce blue light that licked Eden’s body like the flickering flames of black ram candles.
Upon the desert sands, she heard a heavy tread.
A shadow passed before the moon.
Eden sat up, fearing an intruder. She almost reached for Harold’s.357 Magnum, but the hot breeze blowing through the pillbox window stilled her hand, for carried upon it was the scent of hell.
The smell of balms known to Satan’s children filled Eden’s lungs. Oil of dog and attar of black roses. Eau de Sodom and essence of iniquity.
Eden breathed deeply and tossed back the red silk sheet.
Down the hall, the front door swung open.
Naked, she waited. Her chest rising and falling as anticipation pounded in her blood, the scent of demonflesh searing her lungs.
A heavy tread slapped the tiled hallway floor. Eden smiled and stared into the darkness.
The hallway stretched before her, a study in gray and black slivers of light. Then a huge silhouette appeared, coming closer, closer. .
“Here, my lord,” Eden said. “I await-”
He came to her, his great arms outstretched.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “I have waited so very-”
Tony Katt snapped the crazy bitch’s neck.
“Who’s stronger now?” he whispered. “Huh, bitch? Who’s stronger-”
Oh, God. That was it. Tony dropped onto the bed. He had burned himself down to cinders. He didn’t have an ounce of strength left.
Weird. Tony felt every damn thing. Every ache, every pain. Every cut, every blister, every open wound. That fucking tree had rubbed him raw. But he felt the satin sheets, too. Cool on his tortured flesh, slicked tight against his back by ribbons of blood.
It fucking hurt. Sure it hurt. But pain was the only thing that had kept him alive.
The buzzards had pushed him over the edge. Oh, he’d known pain before they came. He remembered that.
Hell, he would never forget it.
