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The Soul Dealer rushed to reply. “Indeed, my Lord. I—”
Bzzt.
Bunny’s eyes widened in horror. Her cell phone was vibrating against her butt cheek. The Soul Dealer paused before striding into the room, hand held out to Bunny as he approached.
“I’ll take that,” he commanded.
“No you fucking won’t,” she retorted, just as imperiously.
His eyes cut to Connie, who was staring up at him in fear. That look on her mom’s face would be burned into Bunny’s memory forever. No matter what else happened, she would forever be worried about what this dick had done to make her strong Southern mama that scared of him. But that didn’t mean she was about to give in.
She tucked her arm behind her back as he reached for her phone, using the other in an attempt to push him away from her. But her strength was no match for him. He moved forward like a steamroller, swiping her defensive arm to the side as he slammed her into the wall of their cell. Her wrist crunched against the gritty surface, and Bunny grunted in pain and defiance.
“The longer you take to hand it over,” he growled, “the more I pulverize your bones.”
To demonstrate his point, the man leaned into her. Pain radiated up Bunny’s forearm and down her fingers, making her yelp. As she leaned forward on the tail-end of the cry, he used her momentum against her and slipped his hands behind her back. Another moment, and he had wrested the phone from her weakened grip before roughly shoving her to the floor.
“You bastard!” Bunny shouted. There couldn’t have been more hatred in her words if they were an actual dagger she was trying to plunge into his back.
“Silence!”
The monstrous thing in the tunnel that Bunny assumed to be Satan raised its voice to a deafening crescendo, making both women shrink back, whether they intended to or not. “You are both only still here because I wish it. Any more insolence—from either of you—and you will go straight to the Inferno, where my imps will feast on your flesh for a thousand days and a thousand nights.”
The shadow moved away from the door, down the tunnel a ways. The Soul Dealer pinned the women with a look before following.
“This isn’t the fucking inferno?” Bunny whispered to her mom to break the tension. “It’s like a thousand degrees in here!”
Connie threw her daughter a look of warning before they both listened in on the hushed conversation in the tunnel outside their cell.
“Look, can you deal with this?” The voice was soft and almost feminine. If it hadn’t been for the throaty purr-like quality, Bunny would never have recognized it. “I have to go. There’s a union meeting in brimstone pit 692, and I skipped the last one.”
“Of course, my Lord,” the Soul Dealer murmured. “I will be on guard.”
“Ensure you are,” Satan whispered. “For your own sake.”
A couple of seconds later, the Soul Dealer reappeared. He had Bunny’s cell phone pinched between his thumb and index finger, holding it aloft as though it were a pair of frilly panties.
She narrowed her eyes at him as he smirked, casually leaning against the doorframe of their cell. He flicked his wrist, catching the phone in his hand before flicking the screensaver up with his thumb.
“Help!” he read aloud as he typed, in the manner of a teenage girl writing in her diary. “We’re locked in a cell in Limbo. They don’t know I’m able to text you. Hurry!”
He moved as if to put the phone in his pocket, but then seemingly thought better of it. He glanced at Bunny. “PS,” he added, a devilish smirk on his lips. “I want you every which way from Sunday. Deal with it.”
Bunny’s mouth popped open in shock and anger, and she rolled her eyes at his antics. “Don’t worry. He’ll never fall for that shit,” she told her mother confidently. More’s the pity.
“Give me your pass,” the Soul Dealer shrugged, holding out his free hand, “and you won’t ever have to find out.”
“Because we’ll be dead,” Bunny pointed out with a sarcastic scoff. “What a great deal.”
Any charm the Soul Dealer possessed drained from his face as he glared at Bunny. “Give me the pass!”
“It has to be given freely,” she said, inclining her chin. Her blonde hair had started to escape the short ponytail she’d scooped it into before starting this gig; her bangs fell around her face and made her feel like something out of Xena: Warrior Princess. “And this place will fucking freeze over before I give it to a piece of shit like you!”
He pressed his lips together in a rage. His nostrils flared, and he stared her down. “Then I’ll get it when you die,” he told her. “Simple.”
“You and I both know that won’t happen,” Bunny said, calling his bluff. “It will just pass to a new line.” She grinned, not bothering to hide her amusement. “You’re screwed.”
The loud caw of a crow startled Bunny out of her smugness. It was accompanied by a flurry of black feathers as the bird swooped through the door and into the cell, talons flashing in the low light.
