Hell's Kitty (Welcome To Hell) (4 page)

The mission certainly had taken an entertaining twist. It seemed his hostesses were unaware this hellcat possessed excellent auditory senses, which meant he heard every word of their interesting conversation. Enlightening, and hopeful. It seemed Jenny wanted to leave with him. She just harbored a few minor doubts. Doubts he’d work at putting at ease. After all, convincing ladies to give in to his whims was a specialty of his.

He was quite surprised at the hospitality offer, almost as much as Jenny was. He’d heard
rumors of the way things worked around here. Siren Isle had quite the reputation. Lured men were used as studs and while they guested—in some cases for life—were kept segregated from the sirens, their daughters, and any other female guests. To call this place matriarchal was an understatement. The sirens truly had no use for males other than their cocks and semen—the creamy kind, not the sailing kind.

To have one of the original sirens, or so legend had it—the legend speaking of four sisters born of
some sort of ocean god—invite him to stay with a protégé of theirs was frankly unheard of. Which meant he’d better tread carefully. While he might find himself attracted to the green-haired chit, this was one time when seduction might serve to make things more deadly rather than less.

Knowing this didn’t stop him from checking out her plump ass
that wiggled as she walked ahead or him tossing her his best panty-dropping grin when she caught him peeking. The red in her cheeks surprised him. Sirens weren’t known for their shy and virginal responses.

The
trail they followed proved pleasant, lined with bushes and foliage boasting giant colorful blooms with exotic fragrances. While not quite paved, it was close, with seashells pounded into the ground to give it a cobbled feel. The usual symphony of birds, natural to most jungle habitats didn’t exist here, and he briefly wondered at the lack. Actually, there was a lack of any animal life; no drone of insects or rustling of leaves as something small and furry skittered away. Stretching his senses, he sniffed, and his kitty seemed flummoxed at the lack of scent from anything it considered prey.

The strange hole in the ash clouds allowed a beam of pure sunlight through, the how and why a mystery as far as Felipe knew. Some legends said it was the remnant of an ancient spell, cast by a mighty wizard to please his siren lover.
Others that it was a hole in the hellzone atmosphere caused by too much cleanliness. Whatever the cause, the warm rays were pleasant, especially for someone who’d only very, very rarely been granted permission to visit the mortal side.

As to their
destination, it wasn’t hard to figure out. A massive cone-shaped mountain rose from the center of the island, an old volcano by its appearance, with frozen black streams of rock twisting and lumping down its sides and crisscrossed with more seashell paths leading to dark openings.

Fuck
me, they are taking me to a cave.
He’d hoped they joked. When the path split at the base of the mountain, the ladies halted, and Raidne kissed Jenny noisily on both cheeks whispering—but not low enough for him to miss—“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

“That’s not a long list.”

“Exactly,” Raidne replied with a husky chuckle. To him she said, “Watch yourself, cat. You are a guest only so long as you behave. Step out of line, and minion on a mission or not, we’ll have your heart for breakfast. Roasted and sliced on crackers with a smear of caviar.”

Mmm, if it weren’t his organ she spoke of, the snack would have sounded great.

With a smile and blown kiss of goodbye, the siren who’d just threatened him literally, skipped off while humming.

“That is one seriously freaky lady.” He’d not realized he spoke
n aloud until Jenny said, “Yes, she is. And even better, she means every word.”

So not reassuring.

Turning to his hostess for the night, Felipe tried to veer the conversation to something less disturbing than the image of a beautiful woman with cannibalistic natures. “Where are we going?”

“
My home. It’s up this way. I chose a cave toward the top of the volcano because I enjoy the view of the ocean, especially when a storm rolls in.”

Holding aloft her skirts with one hand, and showing off
trim calves covered in an odd pattern of green scales that shimmered in the light, she nimbly skipped along the steep trail. Felipe had to hurry to keep pace. She’d not kidded when she said the top. Good thing he kept fit or he would have found himself huffing and puffing when they finally reached the aerie’s entrance. That kind of external manifestation of exertion was only acceptable when naked and fucking. Other than that, a male had to maintain the appearance of being a big, tough bastard—even if inside he was a pussy cat.

In front of
the gaping maw, which he assumed served as her front door, was a wide-open space, a patio of sorts. It featured, of all things, a pair of chairs, one an Adirondack, the other a carved wooden rocker, both facing the horizon.

Felipe paused to gape. “You weren’t kidding about the view.”
Magnificent didn’t come close to describing it. The dark waves of the Darkling Sea rolled, the crests of some peaks frothing white, the dark and light contrasting with the reddish hue of Hell’s skyline.

Jenny turned a dreamy gaze outward.
“Pretty, isn’t it? I love to sit out here and watch it, imagining.”

“Imagining what?”

“Nothing a man like you would find interest in,” was her curt reply as she spun away and led the way into the dark hole cut in the mountainside.

Felix truly didn’t want to follow.
He really didn’t enjoy confined spaces. Couldn’t he remain outside in the fresh air where there was plenty of space? He could sleep in the chair. He didn’t mind. He’d slept in worse spots in the past—the cat carrier Ysabel stuffed him in whenever they traveled came to mind.

Remaining outside, though,
smacked too much of cowardice, and besides, he didn’t want Jenny to have time to change her mind.
Keep ’em off balance so they don’t know what hit him
, an expression Lucifer liked to use and that, oddly enough, worked most of the time.

Be
a man and not a fraidy cat.
With a scowl, and a curse for the demon lord who made him do the most annoying things, Felipe followed. Into the belly of darkness he strode, walked a few yards, stopped dead, and stared, utterly stunned. “I have to admit I wasn’t expecting this.”

People heard the words, “lives in a cave” and immediately the image conjured involved rough walls, a dirt floor, stala
ctite ceiling, oh and the kind of cold and damp that made you wish for sunshine.

In this case, the only part that applied
to his predefined notions was cave. Yes, they’d entered a giant hole in a volcano and walked a few feet down a hallway with smooth walls except for the glittering line of seashells embedded in it. The tunnel opened into a large cavern, like majorly large, with a ceiling that domed high overhead.

And this was where his perceptions had to shift. The stone might have proven cold if not for the myriad rugs covering the space, from the massive oriental one set between a pair of
almost matching blue couches to the rag-tiled oval contoured one under a carved wooden dining set to the cream-colored shag nestled alongside the four-poster bed.

I wonder if I’ll get to sink my toes into that in the morning. Guess it depends on where I’m sleeping tonight and with whom.

A massive flat screen television hung above a fireplace. Within the massive stone-carved hearth, flames danced and crackled while sconces lit the space with a warm glow from their evenly spaced positions on the walls.

An open kitchen area was set against the rear wall boasting stainless steel appliances, driftwood cupboards
, and a massive island, the granite top alone bigger than his bed at home.

“Nice place,” he uttered
, even if it seemed inadequate. The girl was living in the lap of luxury. No wonder she seemed hesitant to leave it all behind. Heck, he’d show reticence too given space went for a premium especially in the inner ring of Hell.

“Thanks,” Jenny said, not meeting his eyes. “Most of it we salvaged from the ships that wash
against the rocks.”

Less wash and more like crashed.
“The water doesn’t ruin it?” he asked vaguely, gesturing to the television.

“Depends on if we get to the wreck before it sinks.”

“What do you do with the extra stuff?”

“
My aunt Teles manages an online Helliji account where she auctions off the items we don’t need or she barters it for stuff we want. We’re not exactly on any trade routes, so getting essentials takes a bit of work.”

“And this is all yours?”

“Yes. It’s not as big or opulent as my aunts places, but I like the cozy atmosphere.”

He almost choked at her use of the word cozy. Cozy was his one
-room bachelor pad with its Murphy bed which, when in its upright position, allowed him to use the built-in drawers for storage and had a drop-down shelf with a cushion for a couch. Felipe could have afforded a bigger place, but didn’t bother. He rarely spent time at home, preferring to roam and get into trouble. Or spend his nights in someone else’s bed.

“Are you hungry?” she asked as she left his side to enter the kitchen area. Opening the fridge, she began to pull out food
, which she placed on the island, a heap of vegetables he noted with a wrinkle of his nose.

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about seafood?” she asked, turning to finally face him.

“Love it. Do sirens eat it?”
Or did they consider them family? Wait, he was mixing them up with mermaids.

There was a misconception
in the mortal realm about sirens and mermaids being one and the same. Hardly. Sirens, who were more closely related to birds than aquatic creatures, lived on land and collected what they needed from the ocean. They looked and lived like humans, except for the fact they aged very slowly, could sing a man into doing whatever they wanted, oh and were cold-blooded killers.

Mermaids
, on the other hand, were half woman, half fish, living under the waves of the ocean. They, too, took their bounty from the sea and were also cold-blooded killers, but they didn’t use song to achieve their goal. Their methods were more savage. His one encounter with a mermaid who’d accidentally ended up in the Styx didn’t leave him with an urge to meet one again.

“
Of course they eat fish, as do I.”

“You speak as if you’re not one of them?”

She rolled her shoulders. “I’m not technically.”

“But you live here and call them
all aunt.”

“
Only because of circumstance.” When she would have stopped there, he stared at her pointedly until she continued. “My turn to spill my life story, I take it? It’s not very interesting. I was abandoned here by my mermaid mother when I was young. The sirens felt sorry for me and took me in to raise as one of their own. They seem to think my affliction might be siren-based.”

“What affliction?”

From where he sat, Felipe noted no imperfection. On the contrary, Jenny possessed an exotic beauty that he’d rarely encountered, a wild purity he found insanely attractive. Just ask his semi-erect cock and his inner kitty, which would have loved a chance to lick her with a raspy tongue from head to toe.

“
Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have a fish tail. Which was quite embarrassing to my mother who was considered to have one of the more beautiful ones in her school.”

“I thought I heard mermaids were all women, which means the fathers are—
”

“All human or
, in some rare cases, demons. But the only thing we usually inherit from our fathers is their eyes. Mermaids give birth to the next generation. Which means tails and seaweed hair.”

“Your hair is green
,” he pointed out.

“But it’s hair
that set me apart. Then there was the whole can’t-breathe-underwater thing.”

“So you’re different. That’s still not a reason for a mother to abandon you.” He found his temper rousing for her
, angered that anyone could abandon their child over small things that shouldn’t matter.

“Oh, I’m sure if it had just been that, she might have kept me, but then there was the biggest problem of all.
When I speak or sing, things either die, maim, or kill themselves. Something about my voice sets them off.”

Other than a huskiness and tenor a touch lower than most women, he’d
not noticed an issue with her speech. He actually thought it was kind of sexy. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“So I’ve noted. And you’ve no idea why?”

“No.”

“A shame,” she said with a s
igh as she withdrew a wickedly long knife and began expertly chopping her pile of vegetables.

“Why a shame?”

She threw him a pointed look. “Did you not hear what I just said? People freak when I speak. And when I sing, I can literally kill.”