Underworld Queen

by Sharon Hamilton

  “Um, yes. Thank you.” The room’s temperature had climbed a good five degrees.

  Molly punched a few keys on her computer and instructed him to wait while she went to the back. He thought about how she wrinkled her nose and how it accentuated the creamy pinkness of her skin and the light dusting of freckles across her bridge. She was kissable. Probably everywhere she was kissable.

  She brought out a large volume, slapping it down on the countertop with a whack, sending a small cloud of dust up and out at the sides. Carl was surprised to read the title:

  Pirates of the Americas.

  Chapter 3

  The charred remains of the executed dark angel smelled like the soil at a slaughterhouse Jonas had seen as a child. It was disgusting then, and it was even more disgusting now, as his black boots trudged through the crispy black flakes, kicking up a fine dark-grey dust that got lodged in his nostrils. He forced a sneeze to clear himself out, but was rewarded with a whirlwind of fine particles—the remains of the dark angel who had come to meet him. Jonas had not told Audray everything about his past and this now festered like a splinter under the nail of his moral code. He might have to reveal things he’d hoped he could bury forever, along with the story of his youthful love and her family who had died, partially because of who he’d become.

  He had to see for himself what was left of the fellow. He found a melted silver medallion, like a large dollop of shiny wax, still attached to the grape wreath silver chain some of his ancestors wore when Jonas was a boy. He couldn’t make out any indentation or markings as he cleaned the smooth surface from the black grit of death. It reflected back his distorted face.

  Although already dead, Jonas had begun to cherish his afterlife as an immortal dark angel. His relationship with the new Director made him feel strangely alive for the first time since becoming immortal some three hundred years ago. After his disastrous years at Court, where he’d been conscripted into doing despicable things, he’d slipped aboard a vessel bound for the Caribbean, and set up a new life on several of the islands there, until he’d been discovered and then took the only option available to him as a last resort: join the Underworld as a dark angel.

  It had been a long three hundred years, and he’d considered ending himself in a true death. Until recently, he’d wondered if he could tolerate living forever. But finding Audray had changed everything and opened up a brand new bright future for Jonas. She was every bit his equal, in intelligence and strength of character. Her desires in the bedroom also matched his perfectly. If he could have a thousand nights with different women or one night with her, he would take her anytime. He’d thought of himself as completely dark and brooding. But these past few weeks he was beginning to feel the warm afterglow of—could it be—love?

  Nah. Impossible. It’s lust. I’m thinking with my other brain. He would have to think more on this.

  He’d denied himself anything but an occasional quick and simple no-talking tryst, just to take care of his basic needs. But now he carefully explored her body, asked her questions, told her things about being the man he really was, being careful to edit out the parts he wasn’t ready to reveal. He thought about their conversation and her questions that very first day they were together.

  “I made kings for a living.”

  Audray had looked puzzled. “Explain,” she said as she walked around his body that afternoon and touched him…places…that came alive and ached for her. She was looking at him, picturing in her mind what they would look like together, what they would feel like together. His grandfather had the same gift of sight, but only with women he loved. Audray stimulated in him something like that. He’d never before been inside a woman’s head, and he was intrigued with her strength, as well as her sensuality. He’d never thought much about how women saw things. But he wound up wanting to know how she thought. And what she wanted him to do.

  “I pleasured royal ladies whose husbands could not father an heir.”

  “I see.”

  “I was very good at it.”

  “I’m counting on it,” she’d answered. They’d been inseparable ever since.

  His smile abruptly left his face as his thoughts returned to the macabre scene at the cell as he fingered the melted medallion in his palm. “Anyone get a look at this before it melted?”

  Two guards shook their heads, but the third said he had seen one before, on a new recruit who came to the Underworld a month ago.

  “Strange fellow. Pink skin, almost womanly, if you know what I mean.”

  The other two guards burst into laughter and Jonas had to wait to find out the guard checked under the man’s clothes, and yes indeed, he was a man, albeit a small one.

  “So what about the medallion?”

  “It had a design in the middle with lines radiating outward. Three little balls, lined up like a triangle, with an eye in each one. There was a serpent that bordered the outside, eating its tail.”

  “Never-ending cycle of evil,” Jonas whispered, recalling the old fairy tale his grandmother had scared him to death with at night when he was young, as well as a few nights as a teen. “Everything for the kingdom,” he whispered, recalling the ancient prophecy of a ruling dynasty that would never be vanquished. It had been a long time since he’d thought of it. He’d supposed everyone from that cult were long dead.

  “Never heard of it or seen it before.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. Wasn’t your story. It’s mine.”

  The guards started to clean up the floor, getting out their mops and long-sleeved bright blue rubber gloves.

  “Anybody come after, looking for this guy?”

  “Nope. And the viewing room was empty, except for the regulars.”

  Regulars were female dark angels, the reviewers, who liked to be on the receiving end of a man’s first night as a dark angel, when they discovered for the first time their prowess, able to make love indefinitely. They could finally be the men they bragged about being. These ladies would haunt the viewing area, watch the human’s last dying vision on the big screen and then vie for the privilege of treating the reconstituted dark angel like long-lost lovers. They’d pounce on him just after he walked through the padded blue door to the viewing reception area. Sort of a “welcome to hell and the rest of your dark life, sucker.” It was usually an emotional time for a man—or a woman.

  “Any idea why he ripped her apart?” Earlier, Jonas had peeked over Audray’s shoulder at the images. In his three hundred years, they were the most disturbing things he had seen here.

  Everyone shook his head as one guard offered, “You can get the disc from the viewing office.”

  And that was something he hadn’t considered. Certainly could get a better feel for the bastard by watching him alive than watching what was left of him being mopped up.

  The viewing office resembled a large multiplex theater. Each time a new recruit was admitted to the Underworld, they had to be confirmed as a suicide, which was the only way a human could gain entry in the afterlife. For this purpose, while the recruit was in a waiting or “stasis” pattern, viewers were gathered in one of the small viewing rooms similar to an earthly theater and were given the task of confirming that the recruit’s last minutes did properly reflect a suicide. It couldn’t be a murder, murder for hire or accidental death. The recruit had to willingly throw his life away.

  Occasionally someone didn’t pass. Jonas had no idea what happened to the prospective Underworld citizen, but they were never heard from again.

  Jonas had to wait an hour in the viewing office while the record he was looking for was located in the archives. The extremely short grandmotherly woman with a bun looked like a woman who had killed a string of husbands for their Social Security. Her face was sweet enough, although heavily lined and smelling of tobacco and Red-X, the preferred drink in the Underworld when one truly wanted to forget who and where one was. But Jonas knew he’d never drink anything those hands of hers gave him, even if it looked like it came right out o
f the Underworld well itself. What made her particularly dangerous to Jonas was the fact that she looked bored. People without focus and purpose scared him.

  Finally at the window, Jonas waited impatiently for his video to arrive while the woman took an incoming call. “Honey, like I tried to tell you, we don’t always get advance billing,” she said into her headset. “Sometimes we know, most the time we don’t. Not everyone is lucky enough to have fans down here before they turn.”

  She rolled her head from side to side, showing her annoyance with the caller. Jonas saw the whites of her eyes—the whites only. It freaked him out.

  He heard a deafening sucking sound and thunk, rattling the glass partition in front of her desk.

  “That’s fine, dear. I’m sure you’ll locate your husband eventually. Good day.” She removed the headset and squealed. “Oh, looky here.” She held up a clear yellowed pneumatic cylinder containing a compact disc and rattled it around like a castanet. She carefully wiped the disc clean before handing it to him.

  “There you go now. Have fun.”

  Jonas was sickened by the suggestion she thought he was viewing the man’s coming out party and crime of murder as fun. He sniffed the disc.

  “The Red-X gets everywhere,” she stated. It was a fact.

  But Jonas smelled traces of blood. “Someone get hurt retrieving this?”

  “Oh gosh, I hope not!” Then she gave him a broad grin. “Wouldn’t want any of my girls’ civil rights trampled on, would we?”

  Jonas slipped the disc into the zipper pocket of his vest and patted it once. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Granny lit a cigarette and lasciviously looked him over. He thankfully couldn’t read her mind, but he guessed she was wishing she’d been turned at an earlier age.

  He was halfway out the door when he remembered the other dark angel with the silver medallion.

  “You keep records on every turning?”

  “No. Some are expunged.”

  “Who orders that?”

  “Depends.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, spitting out the bits of tobacco that had stuck to her tongue.

  “Who has the authority to expunge? Come on, I need some answers.”

  “Why don’t you ask that pretty little blonde you’ve been humping day and night? She knows.” The woman blew a cloud of white smoke in his face; the foul-horse-dung-smelling fumes made Jonas cough. “Or don’t you two talk about things like that?” Her grin showcased red-stained teeth.

  “Fine. I’ll discuss our little conversation with her. I’m sure she’ll be interested in helping me out, seeing as how you’re so busy.”

  Granny abruptly stood up. “Hey, wait a minute. I’m trying as best I can. I don’t want to step on any toes here.” She put her cigarette out and waved the smoke away with her right hand. “Look, I’ve got something for you.” She rummaged through a desk drawer and pulled out a clipboard with yellowed sheets of manhandled paper. She lifted up the top page, peeling it back and pointed to a line on the page underneath, tapping her finger on a particular entry.

  “What’s this?” Jonas crossed the room with two long strides.

  “It’s the address of the other one.”

  “What other one?”

  “The one who didn’t kill the girl. Arrangements were made for him to stay above the Pink Pussycat bar.”

  Jonas looked down at the address and the beautifully scripted letters. “Who wrote this?”

  “I did. Used to teach penmanship in high school.”

  Jonas knew she had changed her mind and was now being truthful with him, almost helpful.

  “Who set this up, the apartment and all?”

  “Peter,” she answered.

  The former Director of the Underworld who Audray helped eliminate. Peter had spent nearly a full year jockeying for position, even cheating, to get himself elected as Director of the Underworld, a position he only held for a short time. What always had bothered Jonas was why Peter wanted the job so badly. Did this have to do with the prophecy of the “second coming?”

  His blinding obsession with power eventually caused his demise. It put him in direct conflict with a much older dark angel, Jonas’ friend, Joshua Brandon. Audray had been Joshua’s newest recruit, and together they toppled the greedy Director, who had been vaporized in the process. Was this a loose end that Joshua had overlooked? Part of the former Director’s grand scheme to consolidate his control over the Underworld?

  But as Jonas mulled over these things, he came to the conclusion that this was something personally directed towards him, stemming from his past. Since Peter was now truly dead, perhaps this surviving new recruit, with the right coaxing, would reveal the secrets Peter took to his Underworld grave.

  He didn’t like unearthing the past. But, in an attempt to protect Audray, he had to find out what schemes were afoot that might put her in danger. He’d dealt with danger his whole life, both his human one and his longer immortal one. But with Audray, his new reason for living, he found new passion to keep her safe, no matter what the cost. He was glad Audray agreed to give him a few days to satisfy his concerns.

  The Underworld seemed suddenly too small. Jonas felt a knot in his stomach. He touched the inked entry with his fingers, and then quickly removed them, wiping his hands against his jeans. He looked at the older dark angel and knew he wouldn’t like what she said next.

  “They were family, I think.”

  Chapter 4

  It had been a long week in the Underworld. Former Directors, with the exception of Audray’s predecessor, had never learned to read. Joshua, her sponsor, had told her that was a good thing. An educated dark angel was more dangerous to the “live and let live” lifestyle of the Underworld and was someone to be feared, according to him. “Remember, my dear, Heaven is imperfect by design. The Underworld is imperfect by accident.” He warned her that anyone who mastered the organizational skills and could read would enslave all dark angels to a life of obedience, something he detested.

  So Audray had spent the entire time working her way through reversing several bureaucratic layers Peter had imposed on the Underworld, relaxing some of the ridiculous rules he’d set in place to restrain and control his dark angel subjects.

  She studied the new requirements Peter had imposed on the number of new souls recruits were to achieve or risk elimination. He’d made lists of dark angels who had not fulfilled that quota and she noted a number of long-time allies of Joshua’s had been eliminated. Then she found Joshua’s file about her own past, with the official transcript of her own turning, which intrigued her.

  Jonas was sitting with one leg over the arm of a new red leather high backed chair she’d brought into the office, waiting to escort her home for the evening.

  “Listen to what Joshua says of me, ‘She is easily the most well-equipped dark angel I have ever turned. Although I don’t believe in predestination, Audray’s existence makes a case for it.’ ”

  Jonas’ bedroom eyes and crooked smile told her he agreed. “You are indeed a natural. Never met anyone so perfect for this job, my love.”

  “And I would have said Joshua was the natural. A born leader,” she answered back.

  “Who never wanted to be a leader. He just didn’t like people messing with him.” She was reading the report further, when he asked, “Does that ever bother you that he thought your higher calling was being a dark angel?”

  “Never. As a human, I felt limited.” But it still hurt when she thought about her past. The unfinished business of her revenge should have left her, she thought, but instead, the growing urge to strike back was consuming more and more of her thoughts. She read on, but kept her emotions quiet and shielded from Jonas.

  ‘I have given her the right to seek revenge against her human abuser, something I’ve done only a couple of other times, and with disastrous results. I believe Audray can handle it, like she has handled every other task I have given her.’

  “You are worried about something?
” he asked her, finally. The man was patient, but protective.

  “Not really. But I do have some unfinished things up top.” She hoped he wouldn’t be able to feel her true intentions. She didn’t like to mislead or lie to Jonas, but she wanted this part of her life to remain private, at least for now.

  “Then I’ll make arrangements. When do we leave?”

  “Jonas, I’ll be fine on my own. I know you have work you want to complete down here. When I’m done, and you finish your investigation, we’ll meet for a few days in the human world, how about that?”

  “I do have some leads I’m working on. But I don’t like you being alone for too long.”

  “Just a few days. Four or five at the most, okay?”

  Next day, Audray was finally back in the human world, fulfilling the promise she’d made to herself. She had thought about making this trip hundreds of times since she was sixteen. Though Jonas had offered to go with her, this was something she had to do, and do alone. She wasn’t ready to tell him that she had a living human mother. It had continued to nag at her after she assumed the role of the Director. And while part of her just wished for another few days off with Jonas to kick back and enjoy the way their bodies mingled and played, she was feeling something stirring in the air—something dark and dangerous. So, while he was consumed with his research about the two new dark angel recruits, now seemed like the perfect time to confront her past. There would be time for the pleasure—an eternity in fact—later.

  When she was offered immortality in exchange for her life as a human, she was promised she could go back and seek revenge against the man who raped her just a week after her sixteenth birthday: her mother’s live-in boyfriend, Burt.

  It was time.

  She’d spent hours thinking about how to kill him, how to exact as much pain as possible. After the brutal rape, which occurred the evening before her dance competition, she took the five hundred dollars she won despite her emotional and physical pain, and hitchhiked to LA in a big rig driven by a Christian trucker. She hadn’t seen her mother since.