“He’s out doing insane stuff again,” Alto Tumour told Liu Xi Xian as the young Chinese elementalist slipped through the doorway of the Second Hand Occult Bookshop on Ditko and Ploog. “You can wait under the stairs for him with that other chick.”     Liu Xi frowned. “Other chick?”     An attractive young woman was sitting beside Vinnie De Soth’s cluttered desk in the back alcove of the dingy shop. She had long raven hair except for elegant silver streaks at each temple, and she was dressed in expensive black. She was eyeing the contents of Vinnie’s workplace with distaste.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello,” Liu Xi Xian said to her cautiously. “Can I help you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you Vincent’s receptionist?” the young woman answered. “I’d like a black coffee. No sugar.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m Vinnie’s friend. Who are you?”     The young woman considered for a moment then decided to answer. “I am Pandemonica Ananké,” she explained, holding out a calling card. “I am Vincent’s fiancée.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You told her what?” Vinnie demanded, pacing up and down his tiny bedroom closet behind the stairs at the back of the bookshop.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing but the truth,” Pandemonica noted. “We have been betrothed since birth, by pact between the houses of Ananké and De Soth.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except that pact was broken, on account of us not being able to stand the sight of each other!” Vinnie argued. “And also because I got disinherited when I wanted to go fight in the Parody War and it wasn’t on the side of the Parody Master.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that was a rather clever choice of yours as it turned out, Vincent,” the poised brunette admitted. She perched on the edge of Vinnie’s newly-purchased mattress and attempted a bright smile. “We all thought you’d just gone insane – more insane. It turns out you had inside information and backed the right horse. Very smart.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I just did the right thing,” Vinnie told her. “I expected to die.”     Pandemonica’s smile flickered a little but she kept it in place. “Well, that was very brave of you, I expect.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we’d split up a long time before that,” Vinnie pointed out. “The words spineless, moronic, insipid, vapid, and never amount to anything entered into the conversation quite a lot. It was as if you were channelling my mother.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, you know,” Pandemonica said with a hollow little laugh. “Lovers say the most terrible things when they have their little tiffs. And then you ran off with that ghoul slut and then that werewolf bitch and that grotesque little whatever-she-was with the ring through her nose.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Art student,” Vinnie supplied. “Sonia was an art student. It didn’t last long. She said I was too vanilla for her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But through it all I knew that one day we’d be together again, Vincent. And here we are.” She leaned forward. “All alone. In your bedroom.”     Vinnie rubbed his forehead. “I’ve got a headache,” he said. “Look, Monica, what’s this all about? I know for a fact that you despise me. We’ve not seen each other for years. And suddenly you’re back here wrecking my chances with somebody who’s not a pathologically monomanic self-egotist, and I want to know why.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The little elementalist girl?” Pandemonica sniffed. “Keep her. Daddy always has two or three mistresses on the go, and she looks like she’d be pretty cheap. I’m not the sort to stop a gentleman having his entertainments. But Vincent, really, it’s time to live up to our parents expectations, isn’t it?”     Vinnie forced himself to stop grinding his teeth together. “Liu Xi Xian isn’t like that, and that’s not… Look, you know what? It’s none of your business. You walked out of my life years ago, and I defused your parting curse only months afterwards. So just go. Leave my, er, tiny dingy cupboard and never come back. Go.”     Pandemonica bit her lip and looked unhappy. “But… we’re betrothed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, we’re not. You were very emphatic about it at the time you dropped me into the three-hundred-and-twelfth tier of the abyss. I still have the scorch marks.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vincent…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie. I’m called Vinnie these days. You don’t even know me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“V-vinnie,” Pandemonica corrected herself. “I really need a fiancée right now.”     Vinnie paused, then frowned. “You’re not knocked up, are you?” he checked. “Because that definitely wasn’t me unless there’s been a remarkable amount of time travelling.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, I’m not!” the dark-tressed woman snapped. “I just… require a fiancée for a while.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A while? For how long?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Only until the wedding,” Pandemonica conceded. “And you were the first person I thought of.”     Vinnie slammed his forehead to rest against the damp plaster of his wall. “Monica, please tell me what’s happening. Why the sudden need to be married? Why me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, Daimon Soulshredder wouldn’t do it,” the girl answered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I thought you said I was your first choice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“First person. I said person. And as for Daimon, well he was very keen to read my runes and handle my charkas back when the Moons of Khelath were rising, but now it’s all ‘Sorry babe, I have a business meeting in the Dreary Dimension, gotta dash.’”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the what-the-hell-is-going-on part?” Vinnie insisted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah. Well. You see, the silly thing is, my father seems to have promised me the tiniest bit body and soul to be the bride of a demon,” Pandemonica winced. “And not even one of the good-looking ones with the enormous…fiefdoms. But since I have a prior engagement, so to speak, well the whole deal is clearly null and void and there’s really no reason for me to spend eternity screaming as Mrs Lord of Infernal Torments, is there?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your father sold you to a demon and suddenly being married to me looks like the soft option?” Vinnie summarised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well yes,” agreed Pandemonica.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m flattered.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, you’re nothing like as bad as eternal agony and torment,” she assured him. “I’m pretty sure I could improve you to near-tolerability. You could be a pretty mean sorcerer if you only applied yourself. Maybe sorcerer supreme one day. And you could get a haircut and a new wardrobe, maybe some occult tattoos…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Monica, I’m not going to marry you,” Vinnie told the young woman firmly. “Even if this isn’t another one of my mother’s convoluted plots to get me back into the family tree.”     Pandemonica was close to tears. “Please, Vincen… Vinnie! I could be a good wife to you. I could change. I’ll pretend to be mundane and boring like those girls you’re interested in. I’ll become a good person and do charity work with undeserving maggots not fit to live. I can be the sort of person you want me to be.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I really don’t think…” Vinnie began.     He was interrupted by a hammering on his closet door. “Vinnie, man!” called Alto Tumour. “Sorry to interrupt you when you’re nailing that hot hair-extensions chick but there’s a big purple dude with swords out here to see you. And horns.”     Vinnie’s head found the wall plaster again. And again. ***     Vinnie faced the nine-foot tall being with the four muscular arms and the sight-foot bastard sword and glanced back at Pandemonica. “Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator?” he hissed at her. “You’re betrothed to Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator? You’re going to be Mrs Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well…” she began nervously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The wench will come with me,” grated Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator. “She has been given.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er, yes, about that,” Vinnie sighed, sidling round to the charms and counter-charms spinner rack in Alto Tumours cheap-and-cheerful-‘chantments section, “It looks like there’s been some kind of administrative error. See, Pandemonica, she’s already been, um, pre-given.”     Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator frowned. “Pre-given?” His massive sword moved closer to Vinnie’s neck.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. See, Monica was my betrothed. Big pact dealie. Parchment. Wax seals. Signed in blood. Major runes. Probably witnessed by the Chronicler. Long time ago. So she’s not, um, on the market right now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dude,” warned Alto Tumour, “I think that purple guy might be some kind of demon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, thanks,” Vinnie told him. “Fortunately, being an exorcist-for-hire helps me spot that really large purple things with horns are probably not human. It’s a trick of the trade.”     Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator leaned over Vinnie. “You claim prior ownership?” he growled. “You contest her?”     Vinnie glanced over at the quivering Pandemonica. “I do,” he replied, sighing. “She can’t marry anybody else unless I say so.”     Zaklokakliel brought his scale tusked face close to Vinnie’s. “And you will duel for her against the one she’s been promised to?”     Vinnie swallowed hard. “I guess,” he admitted.     Zaklokaliel stood up. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll transport you to him now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” frowned Vinnie. He turned to Pandemonica. “You’re not supposed to be Mrs Zaklokakliel the Eviscarator?”     The girl shook her head. “He’s just the delivery boy. Father has sold me to…”     The world around them blurred, and suddenly everybody was in a dark cold chamber carved from human bones. A tall gaunt figure in ascetic robes with a black skullcap looked up from the lectern where he was reading. Only his completely black eyes betrayed him as the most powerful of the current Demon Lords of Hell.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Lord of Deceptions,” concluded Pandemonica. “You just agreed to fight him.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, let me guess,” Vinnie reasoned, rubbing his temples. “You got sold off to Grimpenghast and didn’t really fancy the life of eternal horrors that goes with being his infernal consort. So you propose a deal with him where he lets you off the marriage thing if you can get me to agree to a demonic duel with him. That way when he wins he gets to snatch my soul and torture it for eternity, which is one up for the bad guys and maybe even earns him a tiny bit more demon-cred and teaches me not to be so stupid and altruistic by having me tortured beyond the end of time. Am I right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Pretty much,” admitted Pandemonica. “I’m sorry, Vincen… Vinnie. It’s not like I had any choice. I didn’t really want to… what you said. You’re not the person I’d most want to do this to. Just the only one I could.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You always have a choice,” Vinnie told her. “You just didn’t want to choose.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Whoa, dude,” said Alto Tumour, looking round. “I don’t think this is my bookshop. Those were really, really strange mushrooms. I’ve gotta get me some more like that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mr De Soth,” Sage Grimpenghast greeted the stricken young man, “A pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve been hearing much about you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing you like, I hope,” Vinnie told him. “Okay, you’re got me. But now you have to keep your deal with Monica. Send her home. And Alto too.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think those skulls are real?” Alto wondered. “This is better than the Hollywood backlot tour with the Indiana Jones sets.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m really, really sorry,” Pandemonica told Vinnie. The exorcist for hire had never seen actual tears in her eyes before.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My deal with Pandemonica?” Grimpenghast asked. “Why it has been fulfilled. She has arranged for you to be here, for you to agree to duel with me with your soul in forfeit, and now she is free to go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But…” the girl objected. “I’m in hell! I’m in the middle of the abyssal plane. I won’t last one minute here! I’ll be caught and… then everything!”     Sage Grimpenghast nodded agreement. “I rather imagine you will, yes. You and the fat shopkeeper that Zaklokakliel brought along for comic relief. Or was that lunch?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lunch,” agreed Zaklokaliel the Eviscarator.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I settled for twelve Snickers bars,” Alto Tumour objected. “And a diet cereal bar, to help me lose weight.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is Sage Grimpenghast we’re facing,” Vinnie told Pandemonica. “He’s master of deceptions. You didn’t check the small print of your agreement.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You may stay to witness the fate of the man you betrayed to my hands,” the Demon Lord granted her, “but then there are an infinite number of my minions waiting to make your intimate acquaintance.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bummer,” said Alto.     A rather confused middle-aged witch shambled out from behind a pile of skulls. “Excuse me,” she called to the bookshop owner. “I seem to have lost the Wiccan section.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, me too,” agreed Alto Tumour.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So these people are free to go,” Vinny confirmed. “It’s just that they’ll get kind of ripped to shreds and eternally tortured on the way?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie!” shrieked Pandemonica.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Correct,” agreed Sage Grimpenghast. “Unless of course you defeat me and claim my abyssal realm.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you’re betting that I can’t free them by beating you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed.” The Lord of Hell leaned forward to look over his scholar’s glasses. “But do feel free to try. Amuse me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” said Vinnie. He pulled out the packet exorcisms he’d picked up from the cheap charms rack. “You asked for it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie!” hissed Pandemonica. “Those things are useless! They get rid of very minor poltergeists and drunken leprechauns and that’s about it! They wouldn’t even tickle Zaklokakiel, let alone Sage Grimpenghast!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, I made these,” Vinnie objected. “They work just fine if you apply them properly on, um, unchallenging subjects. If I made them good enough to do difficult jobs I’d be putting myself out of work.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Self deception,” chuckled Grimpenghast. “The best kind.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do you know the way to the Wiccan section?” the lost witch asked Vinnie plaintively.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ma’am, I do,” Vinnie promised her. He broke open his packet exorcism and blew the dust at her to eject her to her plane of origin. She vanished with a surprised hiccup. Two more packets similarly dispatched Alto and Pandemonica. “They don’t need to be good enough to send demons home,” Vinnie pointed out as his former fiancée vanished with a squeak. “Only to send humans home.”     Grimpenghast eyed Vinnie with an icy stare. “Very inventive,” he snarled. “You saved the little people after all. Even the heartless minx who condemned you. So forgiving. I enjoy punishing souls for that.” He carefully laid his quill next to his ledger and stretched out his fingers. “And so to the formality of our duel, and your eternal suffering.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, hold on,” Vinnie called out, putting his hands out in front of him. “I promised to contest you. I just did. You bet me that I couldn’t free those folks by beating you. They’re free. You wanted them to get tormented forever. I stopped you. I beat you.” The exorcist smiled at the Demon Lord. “Vinnie one, Grimpenghast nil.”     Grimpenghast stared at the young mortal until Vinnie felt frost forming on his clothes. “That is your contention, is it? Here, in my realm, where I am the final arbiter of all?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, that’s my contention,” agreed Vinnie. “But I’m thinking I’d like a more neutral referee.” He used the last packet exorcism on himself, and vanished.     Sage Grimpenghast stared at the place where Vinnie had disappeared. “I believe I shall be making a special project of that young man,” he said to himself as he returned to his writing. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie! You’re alright!” Pandemonica cried as her erstwhile betrothed reappeared in the bookshop. She bounced into his arms and kissed him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Um…” said Vinnie, disentangling himself.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was thinking,” the raven-tressed beauty told him. “I know it didn’t work out before between us. We were both very young and foolish. But people change, Vincen… Vinnie. I can change. You can change. Maybe some kind of small beard to look a bit more commanding and a few undead retainers to tidy up after you. And some sort of robe might make you look more… more. But we could start again, Vinnie, really we could. I wouldn’t betray you to a demon lord a second time.”     Vinnie gently pushed Demonica away from him. “I think we’d better not find out, Monica. I’ve got a business to run, and a not-girlfriend to call and grovel to, and you’ve got… well whatever evil stuff you do these days, and a long chat with your father that I sincerely hope involves some kind of blunt weapon on your part. Best we leave it at that.”     Demonica Ananké stared at him in disbelief. “Vincent Arcanus Greymalkin De Soth, are you turning me down.”     Vinnie grabbed up a handful of countercurses from the counter. “I guess I am.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You do not know what you missed,” Pandemonica told him icily. She swept all the contents of Vinnie;s desk off onto the floor, then vanished in a stench of black smoke.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I guess I’m just lucky like that,” answered Vinnie De Soth, bending to gather up his papers. “Hey, that’s where those receipts went to.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dude,” said Alto Tumour, “You owe me for like four of those exorcism packets.” *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.