The crowd parted in respect and fear as I entered the establishment. It did wonders for my bruised ego. Male Demons dropped to their knees and the females lowered their eyes in deference. Normally seeing my people grovel before me gave me a rush—tonight it left me cold.

After the intercourse slash intercom slash interception slash fucking intervention with my relations, I was in a foul mood. Not to mention, my office was still a fucking jungle…

Of all the bars in Hell, this was my favorite—dark, dangerous, smoky, teeming with criminals and full of unabashed lust. On any given day this was where I would go to relieve my own needs, but that wasn’t working for me lately. At all. What I needed was a Siren named Adrielle Rinoa and she was hiding from me. Unacceptable.

“Here you go, Boss,” Lizard grunted, pushing a tumbler of scotch across the pitted wooden surface of the bar.

The rare and obscenely priced spirit was kept in stock just for me and only me. The burn of the amber liquid as it slid down my throat did little to dull the rage burning inside me. Lying, cheating and stealing wasn’t finding me what I wanted and I wasn’t a happy camper. Drinking certainly wouldn’t help, but vices were going to have to suffice for the time being.

“Lizard, answer me this. What do you when your family is driving you crazy?” I asked.

He stopped serving drinks and stared at me for so long I was ready to repeat my question. Many dead languages were spoken in Hell so for a moment I wondered if he’d understood. I spoke all of them naturally, but I couldn’t quite recall which tongue Lizard enjoyed conversing in.

“Is that a trick question, sire?” he inquired warily, looking a little like he was ready to slit my throat.

Clearly he spoke and understood English… Lizard was such a bizarre, vicious delight. He was a strange one as far as my Demons went. I wasn’t entirely sure he was a full Demon, but his tantrums were legendary enough that he’d secured his place in Hell. Rumor had it he actually was a lizard. In the six hundred years I’d known him though, I’d never witnessed Lizard morph into a reptile. However, it wouldn’t really alarm me much if he did. I enjoyed him—as a Demon… or reptile… or whatever the Hell he was. He stole from the bar on a regular basis which was to be expected and praised. Lizard was at least part Demon after all. However, he also rarely lied to me and was a truly interesting conversationalist. His wonderfully violent tendencies, along with his copious knowledge of useless trivia, were amusing.

“Not a trick at all,” I replied with a shrug.

“Hang on a sec, Boss,” he said holding up a callused finger and grabbing a bat from behind the bar. He effortlessly hopped over it and savagely nailed three Demons in the throes of a knife fight. “Not when I’m working, motherfuckers,” Lizard roared, picking up the downed Demons and punting them out of the bar.

No one batted an eyelash. It was Hell. This was par for the course. I was just glad I had Lizard to deal with it this evening. Normally punishing bad behavior delighted me. Tonight? Not so much. I was a little off my game at the moment.

Lizard’s grin was wide as he hopped back over the bar and stowed away his bat.

“Are they alive?” I questioned.

“Mostly,” he replied.

Lizard poured me another then glared at me with raised brows. With a curt not and roll of my eyes I nodded back. The bartender’s disrespect was refreshing. Only those directly related to me were brave enough to test my limits. Lizard was either very brave or very stupid. Tonight I’d call his behavior brave. He’d caught me in a forgiving mood. Tomorrow it would be anyone’s guess.

His grin widened and the bastard poured himself a healthy amount of my secret stash.

“Well, my Lord of Darkness, when I get pissed off at my mom, I’m quite fond of setting her on fire, blowing up her house, and singing her Joan Baez folk tunes. I’m also enamored of baseball bats—lots of damage—great sound effects. And I truly enjoy the vibration up my arms when I nail a skull just right—nothing like it. I don’t use that one on my mom cause she hits harder than a motherfucker amped up on steroids and a truckload of those peanut butter-chocolate Girl Scout cookies—which by the way, are outstanding frozen. That old bat is a total fucking machine,” Lizard told me as if he was discussing the weather. “If that doesn’t work, torture is always a good go to. I’ve found dislodging fingernails with pliers to be relaxing and breaking femurs with sledgehammers calms my nerves.”

While it was difficult to render me silent, Lizard had almost done it with that diatribe. I somewhat agreed with the part about his relaxation techniques except for the folk tunes. And I was definitely going to have to sample the frozen cookies. However, the Demon wasn’t following what I meant and I wasn’t in the mood to explain. As entertaining as Lizard was, I didn’t trust him completely. Hell, I trusted no one completely except my deranged family and even a few of them were iffy. Plus, an affinity for folk tunes was simply appalling.

“Interesting,” I said absently as I swirled the ice cubes in my glass enjoying the sound of the frozen chunks of water hitting the crystal.

“Shall I sing for you?” he asked in all seriousness.

“Are you interested in seeing tomorrow?” I inquired.

Lizard gulped and nodded slowly. “I’m gonna take that as a no to the folk tunes.”

“Smart man,” I said. Killing a man for singing Joan Baez was a bit rash, but then again I prided myself by being unpredictable and somewhat demented. It kept my people on their toes. “Anything going on in Hell I should know about?”

“Nah,” he assured me. “Same old shit, but I gotta say I enjoyed the fuck out of your book. Funniest damned thing I’ve read in years.”

Breathing in through my nose and expelling it slowly through my mouth, I reminded myself that I was fond—for lack of a better word—of the idiot behind the bar. However, if Lizard wasn’t the keeper of my scotch and one hell of a fiendish Demon, I might have smote him dead where he stood.

My autobiography slash romance novel wasn’t supposed to be a fucking comedy. But then again, Lizard was an odd one and excellent with a bat. I’d let it go for now.

“How so?” I asked in a tone so quiet he grew uncomfortable.

“You going to throw me down into the Basement of Hell if I tell you?” he demanded, standing his ground.

His cojones were impressive. The Basement of Hell was where the most evil burned for eternity. I enjoyed the Basement immensely.

“Not today,” I replied smoothly. “However, I want to hear your truthful opinion.”

Lizard eye-balled me for a long moment and then shrugged. “Fine. First off, I’d like to congratulate you on the pen name Blade Inferno—excellent—very masculine yet intimidating at the same time. However, the sheer amount of bullfighting in each chapter makes it a little hard to swallow,” he explained, leaning in to make his point. “I mean it was getting really interesting with you giving Nero some of his own evil medicine and then all of a sudden you guys were in Spain fighting bulls and drinking rum—and I know for a fact you like scotch, not rum. And the chapter where debased and naked participants in the orgy with the Elizabethan Court decided to attend a bullfight instead of fornicating threw me.”

“Fucking Hemingway,” I muttered with a chuckle.

Hemingway had been pissed that I’d demanded he edit my tome. However, the drunken, literary bastard owed me. He was one of my Tuesday night poker guests. Of course, Ernest lived in my brother’s neck of the woods, but found Hell to be far more appealing than Heaven. And who wouldn’t? He and a several others took a fieldtrip to the Underworld every Tuesday for a few friendly high stakes games.

He’d lost large and I made him edit. Listening to Lizard though, I was beginning to wonder if that had been a wise choice. My life was far from a comedy and I’d never attend a bullfight naked.

“The part that had me on the floor was when… hang on a sec, Boss,” Lizard grumbled as he hopped the bar again and beat the daylights out of a few more misbehaving Demons.

Satisfied that he’d ended a potential bloodbath, Lizard placed the dazed Demons on bar stools and served them all beers on the house. As violent as he was, he clearly had a bit of caretaker in him.

Looking over my shoulder, it depressed me that I couldn’t even enjoy the bloody display. I was so off my game even violence didn’t cheer me up.

“What did they do?” I asked as Lizard hopped back behind the bar.

“Not sure. Just didn’t like the look of them,” he replied, wiping the blood off of his hands and onto his leather pants.

Lizard was insane, but I tended to like those types.

“So anyhoo,” Lizard went on. “All the sexy stuff was great, but I didn’t think the bullfights fit in during the foreplay, but if it worked for you, I figure I’m going to give it a shot too.”

“Don’t,” I said.

“Really?”

“Really,” I replied with a laugh. “Ernest Hemingway is an ass.”

Lizard ran his hand through his hair, making it stand on end. Not a real good look, but Lizard was not a real good looking Demon to start with. While most of my subjects were outstandingly easy on the eye, Lizard was a bit scaly and his eyes were a tad too close together. Maybe he was a lizard…

“Not following you there, Boss. But if you say no bullfights during sex, I believe you. I also think you were underpaid,” he added as he slid a few more beers down the bar to bloody, inebriated Demons he’d just beaten the Hell out of.

“Do you?” I asked.

“Damn straight. Should have gotten a few million extra in my opinion. I would have netted you at least forty to fifty million more.”

Glancing up at my favorite bartender with a newfound respect, I grinned. “Do you like your job, Lizard?”

“Fucking hate it. Why?”

“I’m looking for a new agent.”

“You got another book?” he asked, looking intrigued.

“No—a movie deal and I’m not pleased with the contract the Gnome negotiated for me.”

“Your agent is a Gnome? Lizard asked in complete disbelief.

“Was,” I clarified. “I was using a Gnome for an agent.”

Apparently hiring a Gnome was going to be as hard to live down as the fact that I occasionally used the word bosom in reference to a woman’s breasts. If I was going to stay relevant I needed to get with the lingo and stop hiring assholes. Or at least hire assholes I enjoyed.

“Well that was your first problem,” Lizard pointed out correctly.

“Yes,” I agreed with a chuckle. “How would you like to solve this little dilemma for me?”

“Can I bring my bat?”

I paused in thought and then a slow very evil and very attractive smile pulled at my lips. “Sure. Why not?”

Lizard with a bat in La La Land was going to be a story that just might get me out of my funk. Finally, the future was looking up.

All I needed now was a little beauty sleep before tomorrow. Actually, I was still beautiful without sleep, but today had frayed my nerves. A little rest would ensure that I would be less apt to behead the denizens of the City of Angels in the morning.

Hopefully…