Must Love Hellhounds

until there was no possibility of escape. No change in sound announced their coming. These soldiers were like large dust bunnies. They progressed by rolling silently down the slick floors. At first, Batanya was inclined to laugh, but Crick’s expression told her that they were in big trouble. “Run!” he said hoarsely. “Run!” They reversed, but Batanya, who was now in the rear, was overcome within seconds.
    It was like being sucked up in a vacuum cleaner, Batanya thought, as she gagged and choked on the dust and bits of hair and trash that made up the creature’s body. It managed to get strands twisted around her wrists and to lift her off the floor so she had no traction. She began to kick out and throw her body from side to side, but somehow the dust bunny surrounded her with strands and particles of debris that restrained her efficiently.
    “Clovache!” she called. “You?”
    “Held fast,” came a muffled voice. “Crick?”
    There was only a choked series of coughs to indicate Crick’s position.
    The ball began rolling down the tunnel, Batanya inside. She rapidly became so dizzy that her priority changed from escaping the creature to not throwing up.
    The heat increased as her encompassing, nebulous captor rolled through the passages. Finally, the sense of constriction eased. The wretchedly sick Batanya felt that they’d arrived in a large open space. Then movement blessedly ceased, and all the threads and bits of debris that had snared her simply unknitted. “Oh, shit,” she said, a second before she landed on a stone floor that had never known the passage of a slug.
    The impact knocked her breathless for a minute, but the second she could inhale she was on her feet with her short sword drawn. The dustball that had held her rolled away, and for the first time she saw Lucifer’s great hall. It had a high vaulted ceiling and was randomly dotted with stone pillars. There was a throne carved out of the stone; it had been created when the rest of the hall was mined, and it stood in dark splendor by itself in the middle of the vast space. The handsome gentleman standing on its bottom step was wearing a three-piece suit and a neck scarf decorated with a huge ruby stickpin. He was blond. He was smiling.
    “I always thought Lucifer would have black hair,” Clovache whispered, as she got up on one knee. She was a yard away, and she had given in to the impulse to vomit. Crick? Batanya looked around for their client, and she found him on the floor behind her. She positioned herself in front of his prone form and got ready to fight.
    “Brave but foolish,” said the blond man. “Look.” He pointed behind her, and very cautiously Batanya turned her head. Just in the edges of the light that hung over Lucifer’s head was a host of creatures—demons, more of the quadrupeds, wolf-men, snakemen, dust bunnies, humans. There were at least two hundred of them, and they were all armed in one way or another.
    “Well, shit,” Batanya said for the second time. She nudged Crick with her heel. “Shall I die in your defense?” she asked. Crick groaned, rolled on his side away from her, and puked, considerately aiming away from her boots. Clovache staggered upright and with fingers that were shaking so hard they were almost useless, she attached her wrist crossbow to her left arm, the bow cocked and at the ready and the arrows neatly lined up in their strap. Batanya had never been prouder of her junior.
    “Surely he doesn’t want you to,” Lucifer said. “You two are so . . . formidable. The great thief Crick wouldn’t want to condemn two brave warriors to death unnecessarily?”
    “No,” Crick moaned. “No, don’t do it.”
    “That’s good, Crick! Now they can provide entertainment for my troops,” Lucifer said, smiling angelically.
    “The Collective would frown on that,” Batanya said.
    Lucifer’s smile dimmed a little. He strolled over to the little cluster of shaken outer-worlders. His nose didn’t wrinkle when he got within smelling distance, so Batanya figured his olfactory sense must have been damaged by his long sojourn in the fetid air of Hell. “The Britlingen Collective,” he said, only the faintest trace of a question in his voice. The two women nodded in unison. Lucifer made a face; a disappointed face, Batanya decided.
    “I have no wish to fight the Collective,” Lucifer said. He brightened. “On the other hand, who’d know?”
    “If we don’t come back, everyone would