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Oh. Oh wow. This wasn’t the real world. Not anymore.
“Bloody hell,” Florian muttered, flecks of blood-laced spittle dribbling down his chin.
Bloody hell was right. We weren’t in the Beauregard suite anymore, the bed having transported both us and itself into some kind of huge, sprawling garden – only none of it was green. Where you would have expected great, curving leaves that gleamed like wet emeralds in Paradise or the botanical gardens of the Nicola Arboretum, here, everything was blood red, as if the plants themselves were made out of flesh, or grown and fed on blood instead of water. Even the stone fixtures nearby, the statues and fountains, all gushed out copious quantities of blood. Whether the blood itself was human, animal, or even demonic in origin, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Wait. I looked down at myself, at the generous coating of blood left all over the mattress, my clothes, even my duffle bag. So, this was the offering Belphegor demanded. Everyone who entered the domicile needed to donate a portion of blood to these horrible, gory gardens.
Something shifted near my pants leg, and I kicked out and yelped. What I at first assumed to be a red snake turned out to be some kind of tendril with an opening at its end, and it was lapping at the little puddles of blood formed by my life force spilling from the bed onto the bright red grass.
“Aww,” I said, grimacing. “Gross. This is all super gross.”
Florian spat one more time, then pressed a finger down over his left nostril, blowing a bloody snot rocket out of the right. “Listen, buddy. You’re not the one who had to swallow a whole bucket of blood. You’re fine.”
I examined myself again, tugging my shirt aside to check and running my fingers over unbroken skin. “I guess. But I’m still not sure how the hell all this happened. I mean, you’re drenched. So is the bed.” I smacked the sentient tendril away when it tried to probe at my wrist. It wriggled off, emitting a noise very much like a kicked puppy. “Of all the communions we’ve ever been on, this has to be the very worst.”
“Flatterer,” said a voice that came from somewhere behind a red topiary.
I lifted my duffle bag up to my chest, then stood up, trying to infuse myself with some dignity despite being slathered in gallons of my own bodily fluids. Florian slipped a couple of times across the slick sheets as I helped him up, but we managed in the end. There we stood, sullied, bloodied, but for the moment, very much unharmed.
I angled my head around the topiary, trying to spot Belphegor among the foliage. “It’s never easy with you, is it? Bunch of riddles, you show up whenever you like, and instead of talking out a contractual agreement, you try to soft-boil our brains from the inside.”
Belphegor chuckled hoarsely, issuing puffs of bluish smoke as he coughed in between peals of laughter. He was back in his skater boy skin, the same form he used when he went to visit Beatrice Rex to drop off the instructions. More of the same bluish smoke curled from the joint pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the unnaturally crimson ember at its end burning the same color as his eyes.
“It’s nice to see you too, boys. I trust the trip over wasn’t too much of an inconvenience?”
I lifted one finger up at him, pointing at the dead center of his chest and not his face, because while I was pissed, I wasn’t quite pissed and irresponsible enough to goad Belphegor into turning the inside of my head into a barbecue pit again.
“First of all, the knife thing was a major psych out. It hurt like hell, and I swear I could feel myself actually dying.”
Belphegor shrugged, blowing gently on the end of his joint, dislodging a gnarled twist of ash from the tip. “That’s just how stuff works here. It hurts a little at first.”
“A lot,” I grumbled, grimacing.
“Sure, whatever. But the actual gesture is more symbolic than anything. The extraction of blood, though, that part is very real. I structured the ritual very specifically, but long story short, it kind of gets teleported out of your body.”
Florian spread his arms out, demonstrating for Belphegor’s benefit. “It’s like a bottle of ketchup jizzed all over me. I feel like a crime scene.”
I nodded. “They could study him for spatter patterns, honestly.” I nudged Florian with my elbow, then mumbled softly. “Sorry again for spraying all over you, man.”
Florian grunted, then nodded back to accept my apology. “Point is, Belphegor, we haven’t even started the workday yet and we already need showers.” Florian sniffed at himself. “Three showers. Each.”
Belphegor groaned. “Ugh. The two of you are such whiners. I know that humans complain a lot, but you’re supposed to be hybrids. Mongrels. Shouldn’t you be better about handling this sort of thing? Babies.”
He blew out a stream of blue smoke, then snapped his fingers.
Something – something shifted in the air just then. It felt like a hot breeze was blowing through the gardens, specifically towards us, and my clothes were shifting in the wind. Wait. That wasn’t because of the wind.
Florian and I stared at ourselves in horror as my blood removed itself from our clothes and bodies, wriggling down in tiny, microscopic beads, as if every cell had gained sentience. I felt every droplet of blood as it swam over my skin, moved through the hairs on my arms, slipped from my body and dripped into the grass to feed Belphegor’s garden of horrors.
My skin crawled, goosebumps forming under every hair as the last of my blood leapt from my body and landed somewhere in the soil. I shivered, then rubbed my forearms with both hands, thoroughly heebied and jeebied. Florian stamped his feet on the ground, less audibly bothered, but still clearly grossed out as he shook off his hands and fingers.
Belphegor rolled his eyes and sighed. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I give the two of you the royal dry cleaning treatment and do I get a word of thanks? Not even close.” He took one last impossibly long puff of his joint before tossing it in the grass, where it hissed as it made contact with the blood. He stubbed out the ember with his shoe for good measure. “Come. I’ll give you babies the grand tour. We’ll come back to the Crimson Gardens later.”
Said tour led us through more of the carnage gardens, clearly Belphegor’s pride and joy, before we actually arrived at the back entrance to an enormous mansion. It was, I suppose, about what I expected a demon prince’s home to look like: sumptuous, luxurious, where every hard surface was either marble or onyx, and every soft one was either crushed velvet or silk.
My relative poverty felt more and more pronounced, despite the fact that I was still in possession of a very decent sum of cash left over between Loki’s prize and Beatrice’s price. Belphegor prattled on as we walked, pointing out his favorite couches and divans as we passed them.
We came to a marble balcony, a semicircular platform so huge that it felt more like an extension of the mansion than a place to hang out on for afternoon cocktails. I followed in Belphegor’s footsteps, admiring the fact that the sky seemed to be permanently reddish orange, like a sunset.
