I would just like to take a moment to remind our favorite little hypocrite...

Chapter 20: Taken by Her Demon Overlord

Grace thoroughly expected she’d wake to find herself alone.

She expected her skin pristine, her bed unsullied, and that her dreams of Alastor fucking her into oblivion were doing nothing but getting progressively more vivid and explicit.

The last thing she expected was exactly what she woke to: healing scratches, bites, and bruises. Dried blood all over everything.

And Alastor, sleeping soundly, curled up against her, right arm over her waist and hand cradling her bare breast, his face nuzzled into the nape of her neck.

The radio station hadn’t been adjusted but where it had been playing soft jazz last night, this morning it aired nothing but static, as if the radio itself was snoring quietly. Oh, holy shit, that’s so fucking cute!

Grace lay there in silence for a while, drinking everything in; she wouldn’t even allow herself to think. It was the perfect moment, and it was the most ‘in the moment’ she’d probably ever been. The perfect moment to be so in the moment.

It didn’t matter the day.

It didn’t matter the time.

It didn’t matter if the exterminations had happened overnight and Alastor and Grace were the only two souls left in Hell.

She finally had everything she never knew she was missing.

Grace couldn’t withhold a sigh.

Alastor stirred, first releasing her chest, then pulling his arm from her waist.

Grace waited for him to bolt upright, to realize in disgust what he’d done. Had he even been in his right mind last night?

He shifted onto his back with a long sigh of his own.

After a heated internal debate, Grace rolled over to face him.

Alastor glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, his perpetual smile creeping a tiny bit wider. “What time is it?”

Grace reached behind herself, groping blindly for her phone until she located it. The first thing she noticed when she turned it on was the temperature. “105 degrees already? This place is almost as bad as Phoenix!”

He made a noise suspiciously similar to a chuckle.

“It’s a quarter after nine.” She wondered if this felt as awkward to him as it did to her; probably not if he had little to no frame of reference. “Thank you for helping me with the headboard last night.”

Alastor winked at her, prompting warmth to flood Grace’s cheeks in an instant.

She sat upright slowly, bringing the blankets with her, clutching them against her chest for some reason she really didn’t understand. After what they’d done last night, after Angel Dust had ripped her bikini top off and Alastor looked on in utter indifference? Now she sought modesty?

“I’d better go wash up.”

“Charlie will be expecting us for today’s activities, I’m sure.”

Grace hesitated before gathering the nerve to ask, “You’re not actually here to be redeemed, are you?”

“Heh. No more than you, my pet.”

Blushing more furiously, Grace excused herself from bed, wrapping the sheet around herself as tightly as she could, and shuffled into the bathroom to clean up.

Alastor had really done a number on her; she didn’t realize just how much he’d bitten and scratched her. At least washing away the dried blood made her healing wounds look a lot less horrible.

As she dried herself off, Grace reminisced about the dream that apparently hadn’t been a dream.

She gasped in realization.

The mystery groin injury that had laid her up for several days; his slicing into her ligament had actually happened. That was how her leg had gotten all fucked up.

Grace selected a modest outfit to cover what she could of the marks that hadn’t healed yet.

When she left the bathroom, Alastor and his clothing were nowhere to be found.

Grace took a steadying breath.

He probably viewed last night’s activities as nothing more than a lapse in judgment, an indiscretion, a moment of weakness, or maybe some requisite behavior in return for the deal they’d made.

It was surprise enough that he’d stayed the night, probably too exhausted to get back to his own space—whether by manual means or magical ones.

She couldn’t really have expected him to leave her bedroom with her. That he was willing to show any kind of affection to her where the others could see had been shocking enough.

It was approaching lunchtime by the time she was done getting ready for the day. The usual suspects were already gathered around the table in the dining room, chattering over lunch.

And Alastor —

Grace swallowed a sigh.

Alastor looked like his typically unruffled Alastor self, sipping tea from his mug and looking like last night hadn’t been for him what it was for her.

She was met with a chorus of gasps.

Oh. Oh, shit! She’d left her sunglasses in her room, hadn’t even thought about grabbing them.

“Grace,” Vaggie cried, “No! Say you didn’t!”

“I’m sitting right here, you know,” Alastor said, his voice perfectly even. “That’s offensive. Well,” he laughed, “it would be if I cared. Which luckily for you all, I don’t.”

“Grace,” Charlie gasped, walking up and taking her hands gently. “Why? You had so many other options—”

Grace looked past Charlie to see Alastor. “But this was far and away my best option.”

If she wasn’t mistaken, Alastor’s face lit up.

Grace pulled her hands from Charlie’s grasp and wordlessly took the empty seat beside Cherri. 

Vaggie brought Grace her meal with a thoroughly disapproving frown.

Meanwhile, Cherri’s gaze swept Grace, her eyes narrowing. “Hmm.”

“What?” Grace replied a little too quickly, her voice a little too high.

“Mmmhmmm.”

Glances were exchanged.

Grace’s cheeks darkened. “Seriously, what?” 

She wasn’t on the receiving end of a ‘you sold your soul to Alastor’ appraising look. This was a ‘you had sex with him, didn’t you?’ appraising look.

Alastor continued lazily flipping through the pages of the newspaper on the table in front of him in between bites of his lunch.

That’s right.

This is Hell.

Cherri arched an eyebrow at her. “‘What,’ indeed.”

Grace’s phone buzzed numerous times in her pocket. She pulled it out to see what its problem was with the added bonus of pretending like Cherri’s stare wasn’t panicking her as much as it was.

There was no way Cherri could possibly know what had happened last night.

Grace opened her text app.

Grace didn’t reply to Kofax, simply setting her phone back on the table, screen-side down.

Chatter over lunch slowly petered out. One by one, the other hotel residents were picking up and scrolling through their phones.

“Did anyone else get a Shitter link from Kofax?” Angel Dust asked.

“I did,” Vaggie replied. “Did you click it?”

“Click a link from Kofax?” Husk laughed. “How stupid would you have to be to do that?”

That exchange gave Grace some idea of how the whole attack on the Vees had started. The question remained: which of the Vees had clicked the link?

Cherri said, “I’m pretty sure her computer viruses are so nasty they could actually literally turn Hell upside down, reverse time, and disembowel you. Gotta admit, though, I’m super curious.”

Shame that’s an exaggeration. Grace would have enjoyed very much knowing that Vox had been disemboweled.

Niffty gasped, scrolling furiously on her phone.

“Oh, no! Niff! Say you didn’t click it!” Charlie cried. “There’s no way Al’s gonna get you another new phone after what happened to the last one.”

“I didn’t really want to get her that one, to begin with,” Alastor groused without pulling his attention from the newspaper.

“‘Breaking,’” Niffty read as she scrolled. “‘Barrage of tech attacks cripple media giant VoxTek Industries.’”

Grace focused on eating her lunch. The strawberry soup was especially good today.

In the periphery, Grace caught Alastor straightening in his chair. He’d stopped eating and reading in favor of watching Niffty like a hawk.

“‘Velvette’s media empire is blacked out,’” Niffty continued to read. “‘And a Massive DDOS attack crashed all of  Valentino’s porn websites. Hackers compromised the operational technology network at Vee Tower, resulting in a total power grid failure. Vee Headquarters had to be evacuated, many sinners collapsing on their way down the stairwell due to heat stroke. Temperatures inside the tower are estimated to exceed 140 degrees Fahrenheit and it has yet to reach today’s forecast high of 120 for Pentagram City.’”

Suddenly that strawberry soup tasted sour. When Grace had sicced Kofax on Vox, she hadn’t intended for there to be collateral damage.

“‘VXTK shares plummet to zero, something seen only when a company becomes bankrupt or insolvent.’”

“Holy shit—” Charlie breathed.

“‘VoxTek was also the target of a ransomware attack. VoxTek CEO refused to comment on the hacker’s demands. In potentially related headlines, billboards all across Hell have been hacked, displaying various claims Vox asserts are libelous. One billboard in downtown Pentagram City has gone viral across all non-Vee-owned social media sites. It shows VoxTek’s CEO in a compromising position with a pillow bearing the Radio Demon’s likeness that Vox has since stated was a poor photo manipulation.’”

“Sucks to be Vox,” Angel Dust said with a grin.

Alastor burst out into hysterics, laughing so hard his eyes started watering.

Grace took a long sip of her drink through its straw to hide the smirk that threatened to play at her lips, keeping her gaze locked on the table. “Such a shame for the Vees,” she remarked as flatly as she could muster. She rolled her straw between her fingertips and added casually, “Probably oughtta update the masses over the airwaves, don’tcha think, Alastor? All those souls who can’t get Velvette’s updates are probably wondering what’s happening.”

She glanced at him just in time to catch his ears shoot upright. He excused himself from the table, leaving most of his lunch uneaten.

In his absence, Grace picked up her phone again.

Grace opened a different text conversation with a devious grin. Her skin buzzed, leaving her feeling almost as if she were drawing a bit of power from Alastor.

She proceeded to do to Vox what she had done to Valentino: deleting the conversation history and blocking his number. Vox likely wouldn’t get that message for quite some time, anyway, at least not until his servers were back up. And he restarted his system fifteen times. 

But that didn’t matter in the least to Grace.

She set her phone down to finish her lunch. The others were chatting up a storm again. Gossiping. Speculating and ruminating. Grace’s phone continued buzzing.

Grace finished eating before replying,

Without a word of explanation or otherwise, Grace excused herself from the hotel’s dining room.

Next week, Chapter 22: One Hell of a Broadcast

Stay sane, deer friends!