Necessary Evil and the Greater Good - A novel

Necessary Evil and the Greater Good - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

...friendly Iceland

They had been walking all morning and they were cold, miserable, and weary. The shepherd was exhausted from carrying Persephone across the countryside in increasingly worse conditions for over a week. Luckily they hadn't run into any snow, as spring didn't necessarily mean the end of winter weather in Iceland. His clothes, which had become more and more ill-suited as the weather got colder and colder, were soaked and filthy. Persephone's soft wool was matted and caked with mud, and she shivered constantly.

She had woken him up in the middle of the night over a week ago, bleating like she was being eaten by wolves, and banging on his front door. He hadn't recognized her at first, but when she spoke to him the voice was unmistakable. All he could get out of her was that "he" had found her and they had to run. He wasn't entirely sure who "he" was or where they were going, but Persephone insisted with such an intense fear that he couldn't tell her no. He could never tell her no. He was in love with a lamb. Now they were heading toward the only people that might take them in.

They walked through a field and came up to a small, muddy country road. Out of habit the shepherd looked both ways before he stepped onto it. Safety first, after all. Despite the wind and rain, visibility was good enough that he see the coast was clear in either direction. It was quite a surprise, therefore, when an SUV with a couple of pickup trucks trailing behind seemed to appear out of nowhere going incredibly fast. It didn't look like they were going to stop.

St. Peter was complaining with much gusto about the lack of enthusiasm and intelligence the average henchman had these days. Though he was driving, he was only paying marginal attention to where they were going. They were in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere Iceland where there was nothing but sheep and inbred farmers.

"What I want to know is why it takes so much fucking effort to get good henchmen?" asked St. Peter.

He was unleashing this well-trodden tirade on the only passenger in the SUV, a long-time lackey named Wheezy whom he had recruited straight out of Hell over a hundred years ago.

Wheezy was a tall, lanky man with a patchy beard and beady eyes, whose tanned and weathered skin constantly looked dirty even though he was a meticulous neat freak. He had been a guerilla fighter for the Dutch farmers during the First Boer War in South Africa in the late 1800's. Now he was a low-level Shadow in the employ of Hell Industries, so technically he was one of Satan's boys, but St. Peter paid him well and let him do things that he would never get to do as a Shadow. Hell Industries thought he was too stupid to do important work. The truth was that Wheezy was actually pretty smart, but he had been tortured so many times before and after his mortal death that he no longer had a tongue, and his vocal chords were either completely severed or severely damaged.

"It's not like I'm asking for a whole lot. I just want average intelligence and unwavering loyalty. I can get the loyalty, but then they're too dumb to know the difference between following orders to the letter and following the spirit of those orders. On the other hand, if they show a modicum of common sense, I can't get them to do shit."

The demon shot a quick look at St. Peter and sighed.

"You don't have to say something for me to know what you're thinking. You think if they're smart enough to know better than to follow me blindly. So what's your excuse? Just smart enough to know you're not smart enough to do it all by yourself?"

Wheezy gave a concessionary shrug. He might be ignorant, but he wasn't stupid; St. Peter decided he would have to keep an eye on him.

"Don't think that just because you can't talk that I don't know what you really—"