DeVille's Contract. Scott Zarcinas

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      Flash Freddy winked, and said, “Naturally. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

      The gesture was supposed to have put him at ease, but all it did was send a shudder down Louis’ spine all the way to the tip of his furry tail. He drew his paw away and absently wiped it on his toga.

      Flash Freddy didn’t seem to notice. He opened his briefcase, picked the contract off the ground and put it inside, then snapped the briefcase shut. “You must be pretty special to have The Boss take such an interest in you,” he said. “I’m one of LeMont’s most expensive attorneys, you know.”

      Louis heard the lizard’s colleague sniggering from the passageway again. He motioned toward the open door with an upward nod. “Why’s your friend hiding?”

      The lizard glanced over his tail and said, “Smiggins, show yourself to our new friend. He’s not going to bite you.” Saying nothing, he turned to Louis and shook his head, as if to quell any notion Louis might really have had of taking a bite out of his colleague.

      Louis heard a hiss and a shuffle of feet. Flash Freddy hooded his eyes and told Smiggins again to show himself. Then again. Finally, after the fourth time of asking, Smiggins appeared in the empty doorframe. “Louis DeVille,” Flash Freddy said, now beaming. He even pronounced his name correctly. “This is Warren Smiggins. Your personal assistant.”

      Louis took one look at him and for some reason licked his upper lip. He almost did have the urge to rush over and sink his pointy teeth into his neck.

      Smiggins was a goddamn rat.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

       The After Life

      STARING at the rat, Louis felt the grip of revulsion twist in his gut. The stench of horseshit had become overwhelming the instant Smiggins had entered the room. Flash Freddy was still smiling his salesman’s smile, but he had another thing coming if he thought the CEO of Global Resolutions Network was going to work with a guy like this. It was a goddamn insult. If this scrawny rat as his PA was a condition of becoming IMC, then there was no way in hell he was going to sign the goddamn contract. Wouldn’t even think about it. An eight-figure sum wouldn’t be enough to entice him to the negotiating table.

      “I think you’ll enjoy working with each other,” Flash Freddy said, motioning for Smiggins to get closer.

      By far the smallest of them, Smiggins was also standing upright, his spine bent like someone three times his age. For some reason, his bony claws were clasping a calculator to his chest. To Louis’ relief, he stayed exactly where he was, keeping the safety of the open door at his back.

      “The Boss is staking the future of LeMont International Enterprises on your ability to get along with one another,” Flash Freddy said, hooding his eyes. “He’s invested a lot in getting you here, Mr. DeVille. Had to pull a lot of strings. We wouldn’t want to disappoint him now, would we?”

      Louis kept eyeing the revolting critter near the doorway. His navy blue suit and pinstriped tie was identical to his colleague’s, yet beneath it the rat seemed to be wasting away. The jacket sagged over his shoulders like a baggy raincoat, and the backs of the legs hung like two limp flags at half-mast. His tail furthermore, poking out from the seam of his trousers, jerked like a worm stretched unnaturally long and thin in the throes of death. “You injected me with some kind of sleeping drug,” Louis said, rubbing his neck.

      The rat sniggered, and like the lizard had done before removed a drug bottle from his inner suit. “For your own protection,” he said, swallowing a pill and pocketing the bottle.

      Louis cringed with disgust, wondering just how in hell he expected any respect with such a high-pitched feminine squeal. He’d be buggered before he allowed this goddamn faggot to work as his PA.

      Flash Freddy flicked his tongue and licked his lips. “Most new clients don’t handle the transition very well,” he said. “We’ve found it easier for all concerned to induce a state of somnolence when they first arrive. It… uh, kind of lessens the shock, if you know what I mean. You, by the way, are handling the whole thing extremely well.”

      Louis glanced at his reflection again, hitching the toga strap that had slipped from his shoulder. The lizard had absolutely no idea how much trouble he had accepting this new image of himself.

      “Before The Boss established the protocol of sleep induction, we used to do nothing,” Flash Freddy went on. “We used to let the newbies sort it out themselves, but too many of them went completely nuts.” He shook his head and chuckled at the memory of some or other amusing incident with a newbie. “You wouldn’t believe what some of them did, I tell you. Head banging. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fur pulling and self-mutilation. Some are still staring at themselves in the Mirror of Truth as we speak, thousands of years after arriving. As you can imagine, it became a bit of a problem for The Boss.”

      Flash Freddy and Smiggins glanced at each other, sharing a private joke. Louis just stared at them. “Thousands of years?” he said.

      “Hmm? What? Of course,” Flash Freddy said. “This is the After Life, Mr. DeVille. Or hadn’t you worked that out yet?”

      Louis guessed he kind of had. How else could he have turned into a goddamn weasel? It was just… well, he was kind of hoping he hadn’t died so soon. There were still so many things he wanted to do. So many women, so little time. As it was, he now had a whole heap of questions he wanted answering. “How do you know I’m not just having one of those goddamn lucid dreams? I mean, really, look at the two of you. Who’s ever seen a lizard and a rat in a two-piece suit? And what about me? I look goddamn ridiculous in this thing.”

      With surprising alacrity, in the time it took Smiggins to snigger, Flash Freddy reached out and plucked one of Louis’ whiskers. “Ow!” Louis said. He flinched and took a step back, rubbing the end of his snout. “Why’d you do that?”

      Flash Freddy held the whisker up in front of his face, examining it like a kid would eye the head of a grasshopper he had just detached from its body, then let it flutter to the ground. “Do you feel pain in dreams?” he asked. Smiggins sniggered again. “This is real, Mr. DeVille. The After Life is very real.”

      Louis scoffed. “Then where am I? Heaven or hell?”

      Smiggins briefly held his eye, then looked away and sniggered. Flash Freddy held out his arm, ushering him to the doorway. “Come now, Mr. DeVille. You’re an intelligent being. You don’t believe in that nonsense, do you?”

      Louis didn’t really know the answer to that. He had lived his whole life a goddamn atheist. Thought he had worked out all the answers to life and death and the whole damned universe when he was in his twenties. Life was a jungle, survival of the fittest and all that. You were born, then you died. Whatever happened in between was purely a matter of how much goddamn hard work you put in, sprinkled here and there with a bit of good old-fashioned luck. Anyone with half a brain could see that you came from nothing, and you went back to nothing. Pure and simple.

      Except that’s not how things had turned out, had it? There really was something after death. Well fancy that and bugger me. He kept rubbing the dull throb on the end of his snout. Goddamn hippies and religious freaks had it right all along. Who would’ve believed it?

      Flash Freddy put his scaly claw on Louis’ shoulder. Louis hitched up his toga again СКАЧАТЬ