Tom let out a frustrated sigh as the case file was almost thrown across the table at him. The Director was furious, but not at him this time. Silently, Tom thanked what little good luck he had that he had an assignment to take his mind off his own anger.
Tom was mad about Ceria, and what she'd said to him almost a month ago. It bothered him to no end that she liked nothing more than to seduce him, and then tease him into being a reckless idiot and saying things that she could twist and mold into whatever she wanted. It was so frustrating to even think about her, let alone try to figure out why she kept bothering him.
At first, he thought it was actual attraction, from that one look she'd given him behind her smirk in his bathroom. He thought he had seen something like desperation, or hope. But after that, they'd met once, and she had just gotten under his skin with every little thing she could think of, and then left without having actually accomplished anything but pissing him off. She was just fucking with him to amuse herself.
The Director, though for a different reason, was angry with Ceria as well.
"...this ridiculous folly. She's risking everything we have with Hell right now, which I can't say is more than a very slight peace," the Director snapped to nobody in particular. Everyone in the room, including Tom, was silent. The room was packed full of the higher-ups in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Divisions, and Tom.
"Sir, we could call in help from our contacts in Hell. If the situation is really-"
"I'm not wasting what little favor we have with our friends down there. That's what the Ruskies did, and look what's happened in Moscow. Three murders by demons in the metro and nobody can do a damned thing, and they know it down there. They fucking know it. Like hell I'm having that happen here. Not when I have other options."
The room was so silent that a cough would have sounded like the Tsar Bomba. Nobody wanted to tell the Director otherwise when he swore. He was calm, collective, and he had chosen his words carefully. There wasn't a single soul that was going to tell him that he was wrong, not if they wanted to leave the room alive.
After a long, tense silence, the Director sat back down and turned his hard eyes on Tom, who couldn't do anything but look back and wait for him to say something.
"You, she's after you now. I don't know what she's trying to do to you, but..." he looked around the room slowly. "Get out."
The roomed emptied quickly, leaving only Tom and the Director sitting across from each other.
"Sir-"
"Let me give you a word of advice, something that you should never forget. She won't let you go, not until you're as broken as the last one that fought her. I don't know what you did to get her so interested in you, but if she's coming back to get you away from us, then you've done something you shouldn't have. Now you'd better call us the next time she even glances at you outside of this facility. Do we understand each other?"
Tom nodded. "Yes sir."
"You're dismissed. You have your assignment; see to it."
"I will sir," replied the agent, and he quickly made his way out of the conference room and down the hall without stopping to explain himself to the sly onlookers that had been waiting outside the door.
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Tom was rather surprised to go to someone else's house for a change, instead of having the demon come to his. It wasn't what he was used to, but a two hour drive into the heart of Mississippi had piqued his interest, if just a little. He checked the address on the papers in the manilla folder before he shifted his car into park and opened the door.
Well, it didn't look very out of the ordinary, just sort of...unremarkable. For a demon's house, he had expected something a little more. But, looks were almost always deceiving. He shook his head and walked up to the door, feeling the wooden porch sag a little under his feet. Before he could knock, the door opened and before him stood a redheaded woman with a smile on her face.
"Can I help you?" she asked, putting a hand on her hip and leaning on the door frame.
"Are you Gabriella Klein?"
Her smile widened. "I'm surprised you got my name right," she said, stepping back from the doorway to let him in. Tom stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Gabriella was already on her way to the other room by the time he turned around. He looked around for a moment before following her.
The front door opened up straight into the living room, where two couches sat in an 'L' shape in front of a large flatscreen television. Four stuffed deer heads, each with over twenty points, hung on the wall behind the TV. It smelled like pine needles and fresh lumber.
"You coming or not?" Gabriella asked from the kitchen. Tom hurried into the next room and found her looking through the refrigerator. She pulled out a large pitcher of lemonade and set it on the table in the center of the kitchen. She pointed to the cabinet above the sink. "Get two glasses and some plates for me. I've got some key-lime pie in here somewhere."
Tom did as she asked, and had two plates and glasses on the table when she turned around with the pie in her hands. However, the pie was green instead of yellow. She furrowed her brow and then dipped her finger into the pie. She licked her finger and then nodded.
"You make green key-lime pies?" Tom asked absentmindedly as she moved around him and got silverware. She gave him a confused look.
"You never had a green key-lime pie before?"
Tom shook his head. "No, I don't think I have."
"Now don't tell me you're afraid to try it. I can feel it that you ain't lookin' at it like it's somethin' you wanna eat," she said, cutting two pieces of the pie and giving him one on a plate. He took a fork and waited for her to cut her own piece.
"I read in your case file that you're not looking for sex. What is it that you want instead?" Tom was really confused as to why he'd been sent out all this way to see someone who wasn't at all frustrated, had no sexual needs to be filled, and seemed perfectly content to be left alone.
She gave him a look like he was stupid. "Did they not put down that I was a five in frustration and a cat two? God bless 'em, damn kids up there. Well, you can still take care of me, right? I ain't hard to please, just a little frustrated is all."
"Sure, and this pie is really good."
"Try the lemonade," she said with a smile, flipping her fork around in her fingers. He took a long gulp from the glass and blinked hard as it left a bitter banana taste in his mouth.
"What'd you put in this?" he asked, blinking again.
"Oh, you know, five parts lemonade, one part morphine, one part rohypnol, one part laudanum..." A wicked grin spread across her face. "And the pie has a little bit of ecstasy in it."
"You drugged..." Tom's vision swam and then he saw the table rising to meet him rapidly. Stars danced in front of his eyes for half a second, and then everything faded into darkness.
------------
Tom opened his eyes to the sound of a phone ringing. He raised his head, only to find that something caught at his neck and he couldn't progress any further. He tried to feel what it was, but his hands wouldn't move...or his feet.
He'd been trained for a situation like this, but all the hours of picking locks and being taught how to be an escape artist went right out the window. He yanked hard at the thing binding his right hand and heard a hard, loud snap.
Something hit him in the head, hard, and it sent stars dancing before his eyes. He took a few moments to collect himself and then rubbed his head with his hand. He paused, and then brought his hand before his face, finding that he was free to move it now.
There was a cord tied around his wrist, and the other end was tied to what looked like the knob from a headboard. He looked around for a moment, and everything clicked.
He was tied up, naked, spread-eagle on somebody's bed, and he had a hard-on that throbbed with the need to be attended to. He groaned with effort, but couldn't pull his head up past a few inches off the pillow behind him. He reached back, and felt that it wasn't a rope holding his head, but a solid chain that went beneath the bed. A collar was fastened around his neck with a lock at his throat.
He yanked with his left arm, but he didn't have the luck he'd had with his right. The headboard held and he remained stuck. He tried his legs, but after looking at them, he realized that the only reason his hands were bound with rope was because the person who'd tied him up had probably run out of chains. He let out a frustrated sigh and visually searched the room for his clothes.
Luckily, he saw his phone on the bedside table to his left and rolled over to get it. What Tom realized then was just how much mobility you lose when you can't move your head. As soon as he got half way turned over, the collar pulled taut around his neck and he strained hard against it to get his phone.
He growled, and scrabbled across the top of the table with his hand, inches away from his phone and the call that would bring help. He didn't know how long he spent trying in vain to reach the stupid little thing before a hand reached out and plucked it off the table right before his eyes.
"Thinking about ordering take-out, are we?" asked the demon, flicking a few stray locks of red hair out of her face. She winked at Tom and put his phone on the table across the room. Then, she returned to the bedside and pulled the rope holding Tom's left arm like it was a guitar string.
