The Wish List Read Free

spinning along beside her. One minute it was a dog, the next a boy. Canine features bubbled under a human skin, poking through like computer animation effects. It was horrible. Grotesque. Yet strangely familiar.
    â€œBelch?” said Meg uncertainly. “Is that you?”
    Her voice sounded strange. As if there were holes in it. The thing that had been Belch could only howl in Scooby-Doo fashion. But it was her partner all right, unmistakably so. And it looked like the gas tank had done a real job on the boy and his mutt. Belch and Raptor, all mixed up, as if they’d been dumped in a blender. Oddly enough, the new mix suited Belch. As though it had been inside him all the time.
    â€œBelch? Get a grip, will you?”
    The dog-boy could only stare in horror as his fingers morphed from stubby digits to pit bull claws. Tears and slobber rolled down his face, dripping in large gobbets from a furry chin.
    Oh no, thought Meg. First I get saddled with him on Earth, now I have to put up with him for all eternity!
    â€œMeg! Help me.”
    Belch was giving her the puppy eyes. Pathetic.
    â€œGet lost, Belch! You tried to kill me!”
    She blinked. Belch had killed her! He’d killed them all!
    â€œMurderer!” shouted Meg.
    The old Belch would have retaliated. But not the new thing. He just—it just—whined pathetically.
    â€œThis is all your fault, Belch!” screamed Meg. “I told you not to shoot! I told you!”
    They hurtled around a bend. Up ahead the tunnel split in two. That didn’t take a whole lot of figuring. Up and down. Good and bad. Heaven and hell. Meg swallowed. This was it. Payback for all the cruelty she’d inflicted on the people of Newford.
    The currents bore them along at a terrific speed. There was no friction. No winds whipping at their clothes or ballooning their cheeks. Just an increasing heat blast from the lower branch of the tunnel. As they drew closer, Meg could make out cinder-blackened figures with pitchforks dislodging stragglers clinging to the wall. Hurrying them along on their way to hell.
    This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be happening to her. Fourteen-year-olds didn’t die; they went through a troublesome phase and grew out of it.
    Meg could see details now. The red demon-eye glow of the tunnel creatures. The silvery glint of their prongs. The job satisfaction in their grins.
    Belch whined in dumb terror, pinwheeling his arms in the heavy air, as if that could save him. Meg steeled herself.
    The gate to hell loomed before them. It seemed as large as the sun, and almost as hot. Meg balled her fists. She wasn’t going down easy.
    Then her course changed. Just a nudge to starboard, but enough to steer her away from the lower passage. A relieved sigh exploded from her lungs. Purgatory, limbo, reincarnation—she didn’t care. Anything was better than whatever waited at the end of the red tunnel.
    The Belch-Raptor combo wasn’t so lucky. In a second the fiery current had him and he was gone, spinning into the inferno.
    Meg had no time to worry about the fate of her associate. Whatever power had been guiding her suddenly vanished, leaving her careering with the force of her own momentum. The tunnel wall reared before her. It looked soft. Soft and blue. Please let it be soft. . . .
    No such luck. Meg smashed into an unforgiving surface at an Earth speed of four hundred miles per hour. Not that speed makes any actual difference on the spiritual plane, where kinetics are out the window. That’s not to say that it didn’t hurt.

THE DEVIL WAS NOT HAPPY.
    â€œTwo,” he said, drumming filed nails on the desktop. “I was expecting two today.”
    Beelzebub shuffled nervously. “There are two, Master, sort of. I have them . . . it . . . whatever . . . in pit nineteen.”
    â€œTwo humans !” hissed Satan, tiny lightning bolts sparking between his horns. “Not one youth and his dog! How did a dog get in