Page 45 of Client from Hell

“I know,” he replied with a laugh.

I fed the animals, and I used every practitioner trick I knew to clean them and their cages. Upon locating a large sink tucked in a corner with clean, running water, I went to work making sure everybody had water to go with their food, too. The work exhausted me, and even Jonas appeared worn from his efforts to keep the lions and tigers contained and placated with meat.

We emptied every working freezer, and the little to spare went to the loose predators.

“Why didn’t we call Lucifer and ask for a miracle?” I checked the time on my phone to discover we’d missed lunch and dinner. “How am I not passed out or starving to death?”

“Adrenaline,” the incubus replied, and he checked his phone, too. “We didn’t call Lucifer because if Lucifer had seen the state of these animals before we’d fed them, I don’t know the block would have survived. He would have called Diana, and she would have gone on a rampage. She’s a literal nightmare, and she’d destroy everything in her wake. We need the bodies upstairs to identify them. If Diana came here before we’d gotten the animals fed and cared for, we’d have no bodies left to work with.”

“Is she a spicy pony with bite?”

“She’s definitely a spicy pony, but she doesn’t usually bite. She’s more of the breathe fire and ask questions of the ashes type. She saves the biting for Darian.”

Returning to the otter cages, I opened the door for the little girl I’d first picked up, and she squeaked at me, sniffing my hand before trying her best to climb up my arm. Neglect had left her weak, but she seemed alert enough, and I scooped her up and cuddled with her before putting her on my shoulder. She made herself comfortable, content to hold on for the ride. “Do you think I can keep her, Jonas?”

“Yep, you’re going to fit in just fine. You’ll have to keep her boyfriend, too, but I don’t see why not. I’ll just tell Lucifer you have been charmed. It was an otter defeat on your part.”

The rude punster would pay for his verbal assaults of my person, no matter how right he was. “She needs the best habitat.”

Jonas chuckled and tapped at the screen of his phone before holding it to his ear and waiting. “Lucifer, I’m pleased to inform you that we have located a collection of formerly extinct animals in this specific lab. We’ve fed and watered them, and Sandra took care of cleaning their cages, but we’ll need to relocate a bunch of them before law enforcement comes. Sandra has decided she has adopted a young Asian small clawed otter and her boyfriend. You’ll want to have Diana abuse her holy fire with your new mischievous romp of Japanese river otters. Their health is currently questionable. There’s a room full of loose tigers and lions, and they’re undeniably man-eaters, so you’ll have to escort them straight to hell to take up residence in a secure sub-layer. They know we’re tasty, and it’s just a bad combination. The cubs know we’re tasty, too. You’ll need to deal with law enforcement, get the tigers, lions, and cubs out, and then leave the bones for investigation purposes. There’s a body on the floor in the kitchen, and the freezer upstairs has the heads of five vics in it. Sandra’s handling things fine, but she’s going to be hungry. We’re going to abuse you and request clean clothes and dinner. It’s been a day.”

No fucking kidding. I needed to inform Jonas he deserved an understatement of the year award.

“Yes, she likes Lucille. Yes, she named her car Lucille. Yes, she’s driven it, and I’ll consider myself lucky every time she lets me have a turn. Also, while she can drive with her vision as it is, it involved a lot of squinting, so you need to provide new glasses for her.”

Damn. He’d noticed. “I would have pulled over if I thought I wasn’t safe to drive.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t say anything. You were driving just fine. You were just squinting, and you’ll give yourself a migraine doing that.” Jonas sighed. “Sorry, Lucifer. Two conversations at once, and unlike you, I’m not a telepath who can hold ten conversations at once. You’ll have to repeat yourself, because what she says is more important than what you say.”

Holy hell. A close encounter of the large predator kind must have cranked Jonas’s general courage into overdrive. “He’s going to kill you.”

Jonas leveled a stare in my direction. “He won’t kill me. You want me to be your bed buddy, and if he killed me, you’d be out a reliable bed buddy, and finding a reliable bed buddy is not an easy task. It would be far more work for him to work that miracle rather than leave me alive for your enjoyment.”

All he needed to do to convince me to strip was smirk. A single smirk, brimming with ridiculous confidence, would do me in. “He better not kill my bed buddy. You’re a unicorn among men, and I have plans to bridle you.”

“I’m not an actual unicorn. I’m far tamer compared to the unicorns.”

While faint, I could hear Lucifer laughing at us.

“He must be busting your poor eardrums with that maniacal cackling, loud enough I can hear him from here.”

With a shake of his head, Jonas replied, “Your virus is probably bonding with the essence of spicy pony with bite. He’s not being that loud. You’re just having an easier time hearing him. You’ll get used to that. Phone calls aren’t private anymore unless you go to a room by yourself, and if you really want it to be private, you better use a soundproofed room—and do something to block the annoying telepaths from listening in on your thoughts.”

“Okay. You better tell him we’re going to need a lot of carriers for these animals. These cages are all bracketed together. I don’t think they’re designed to be separated,” I replied.

Jonas did as I asked, and he hung up. “He’ll be here within twenty minutes. He’ll have to coordinate with the CDC, get cages, and so on. I expect he’ll recruit demons and devils with teleportation to take cages to the fucking assholes, who best be careful with Lucifer’s new animals. Some of the fucking assholes will be rewarded for good behavior. None of the animal abusers will be part of this, although I expect the abusers will get to work with the man-eaters. The man-eaters aren’t going to change their stripes, and as long as the next generation isn’t taught to hunt humans, they can be released into the wild later. We’ll end up using live prey to feed the man-eaters within a year.”

“What about the hybrids?”

“They’ll be taken to a different habitat, and the tigers and lions will likewise be separated by species and integrated into their habitats. It’s a bit of a process.” Jonas examined the cages with some of the primates, which had been kept in the upper cages out of reach. “These monkeys bother me.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea what they are or where they came from. I’ve never seen anything quite like them before.”

A faint pop warned me someone had come calling, and I turned. Lucifer stood behind Jonas, joining the incubus in staring at the cages and their occupants. “It seems someone has cracked cloning from old DNA samples. This particular species of monkey went extinct thousands of years ago. Humans found them to be particularly tasty and ate them right to extinction. Some became pets, but when you have solitary pet monkeys with a population of monkeys otherwise slated for the market, they eventually go extinct. More reason to make sure their operations are halted. There is a fine line between working to prevent a species from going extinct and trying to play God. This infringes on the playing God territory.”

Crap. I joined them in staring at the animals. “You’re not going to destroy them, are you?”