by Debra Dunbar
“Wait,” Candy said suddenly, a strange look on her face. “Didn’t Wyatt say there was a higher incidence of kills among females? I’d noticed that a few of the early kills had admitted to fertility treatment. I didn’t think anything at the time because that’s a real grey area in our contract. But now I’m wondering if Althean is targeting the more fertile among us. Can angels discern that sort of thing? It would really hasten our extinction if he picked his victims based on their ability to produce offspring.”
“I don’t know if angels can do that or not,” I said. “Either way, killing an already pregnant woman and her unborn baby is not allowable for them. I could see killing the father, assuming he’s the fertile one, and coming back to kill the mother after she gives birth, but not while she’s pregnant.”
“Do you think it could help us identify who the potential victims are?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I can’t sense someone’s fertility. I don’t think it’s going to help us catch him.”
I left Candy and scrolled through the TV stations. Candy had ruled out any porn while she was in the room, so I ended up watching NCIS reruns. Wyatt finished his obscenely long shower and emerged from the steam with sweat pants and nothing on top. The guy had the best chest ever. Slim, but cut and muscular, with arms Popeye would give his eye teeth for. I stared like a starving orphan. This was going to be the most torturous night of my life. Wyatt pulled the bedspread and top sheet down to the bottom of the bed and tossed himself on it holding the remote–on–a–chain. Damn, that was just sexy.
I was not allowed to change into my pajamas in the room and was banished to the bathroom to disrobe and brush my teeth. Candy had outdone herself on the nighttime wear selection. Normally I just slept in the nude. Tonight I would be sleeping in flannel shorts and a Tinkerbell t–shirt that could easily have contained three longshoremen. Yep, it was that big.
As I walked out of the bathroom, Wyatt caught sight of me and made a choking noise. I pivoted around to show him the entire glory of the Tinkerbell shirt that came well past my knees. I didn’t know why I bothered with the flannel shorts since you couldn’t tell I had them on under the tent of the shirt.
“Come on, baby, you know you want me,” I told Wyatt while posing seductively. I could have been three hundred pounds in this thing and you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
“Sorry, Sam, my libido vanished at the sight of that hideous nightwear,” he laughed.
I plopped down on the bed next to him and watched Candy take her toothbrush into the bathroom.
“Do you think we have time for a quickie while she brushes her teeth?” I asked Wyatt.
“I heard that,” Candy said over the sound of running water.
“That’s a no, then.” Wyatt seemed genuinely regretful. I wondered if he was still scared of me. I wondered if we’d ever have sex. Hopefully soon before he got old and less attractive. Humans have such short lives, and are not very appealing in the early or late stages of them. Wyatt was very appealing now, spread out on the bed before me like a prime rib buffet. I just wanted to rub my hands up his naked chest. And my mouth. Heck all of me, like a cat against a chair leg. Full of sexual frustration from my imagining, I turned on my side with my back facing him and squeezed my eyes shut trying to sleep.
Candy came out and the lights and TV went off as the others settled in. In spite of Wyatt’s claims that he never slept, he dozed right off. I could hear Candy snoring softly too. Just me, awake and horny with my head full of thoughts. How was I going to kill this angel? I didn’t know much about them, and Candy only knew a bit more than me. I wasn’t sure how to face off something that was at very least my equal and probably much more powerful than me. I’d killed a few of my own kind, but those were accidents. In spite of the propaganda painting us as evil murderous beings, we really didn’t battle or assassinate each other on a regular basis. Yeah, there was the occasional feud, but it was over pretty fast. Life was hazardous enough. We’re a pretty hardy species, luckily, so it would take a wallop of power to bring one of us down when we were in defensive mode. I’d just have to assume the same with the angel and maybe double it just to be safe. Overkill. When it just has to be dead.
About a half hour into my musings, Wyatt rolled over and grabbed me pulling me across the bed to him, squashing my back up against his chest and wrapping his arm and leg around me. I think they call it ’spooning’. I froze and didn’t know what to do. I’d never slept with anybody. We just don’t do this sort of thing. It was like being in a straightjacket; one that breathes on you and wraps your legs up too. The whole thing was both uncomfortable and a turn–on. I was starting to get kind of hot having Wyatt wrapped around me like a blanket, and feeling him pressed against me like this wasn’t helping me fall asleep either.
It was a long night. I’d doze off, then move into a more comfortable spot only to have Wyatt grab me and jerk me in tighter. Plus I didn’t realize that male humans had erections off and on all night long. How the hell was I supposed to sleep with a boner pressed against my ass, reminding me of the enjoyable things I could be doing? It was fucking torture and I woke up to my cell phone beeping, sleep deprived and in a hideous mood.
It took me a few moments to extricate myself from Wyatt’s grasp. I thought I’d have to gnaw my limbs off at one point. Of course, my struggles woke him up too.
“What?” he asked groggily as I climbed over him to grab my cell phone off the bedside table. I made sure I smashed my boobs into his face on the way as payback for a night of dick on my ass. I looked at the phone. Craig. His text from a few seconds ago said “he’s here now.” I vaulted from the bed jabbing a knee in Wyatt’s stomach and knocking the lamp on top of Candy’s head. I had my keys and was out the door before either of them could say a word.
My Corvette screamed along the roads to Craig’s house taking up the entire road as I shot around the narrow curves. It was too early for traffic, but I narrowly missed a tractor and a fox. A squirrel wasn’t as lucky, and I was relieved to see it flopping around in death throes behind my car as I sped off. At least it hadn’t gotten hung up in my undercarriage. At the last moment I realized that I could hardly go rocketing up Craig’s driveway smashing into the angel like something from Mad Max. I whipped into the neighbor’s driveway, and dashed through their back yard toward the tree line that extended to Craig’s deer blind. If they were up, I’m sure the neighbor’s were startled to see an expensive sports car spinning out gravel in their driveway followed by a half naked woman darting across their back yard. Not something you see every day over your morning coffee.
My feet were scratched and bruised by the time I reached Craig’s deer blind. “Where is he?” I asked breathlessly.
Craig stared at me in amazement. I looked the ruthless killer in my nightshirt with a toddler sized Tinkerbell on the front, bloody bare feet, and bed head. At least my morning breath was fear inducing.
“He’s gone. He was only here a few moments around the side of the house. I didn’t get a really good look at him, so I can’t describe him. He just appeared out of nowhere around the side of the garage, walked over to the house, stayed there for a few minutes, then walked back and disappeared.”
“Maybe he crawled up the ditch by the driveway like I did?” I suggested. Stupid idea. I couldn’t picture a powerful angel scooting on his belly through the mud. Although it would be really funny to watch one do that. Really funny.
“No, he didn’t look rumpled or dirty. Plus, I can see the ditch from here, that’s how I saw you coming to the house.”
Another testament to my incompetence. This guy probably thought I was a total boob. I was beginning to think I was a total boob.
We walked down toward the house and Craig showed me where the angel came from and where he went to. By then, Candy and Wyatt had arrived, pulling in the driveway like civilized folk. They were dressed, and Candy had even combed her hair, although she had forgone the make–up in her haste.
“We missed him, he was only here a moment.” I told them as they walked over to us.
Craig put his hands on either side of a window, then straightened up and walked back toward the garage. “That’s exactly what I saw him do. It probably only was three minutes and he was gone.”
I looked carefully at the garage and along the path the angel took. Nothing. I looked at the house and at the window. No smudges, no marks, no energy signature, no DNA markers. I stared at the window in despair, and noticed a slight distortion. It was like the window had rippled under heat and a dull prism reflected back. Why would he have applied heat to the window? It didn’t appear to be enough to break or even weaken the glass. Was heat a byproduct of his presence? If so, why didn’t his energy signature appear to me, and why wasn’t the siding where he placed his hands warped or melted even slightly?
I’d done all I could do with my human senses, so I put a hand up and sent a tentative trickle of exploratory energy to the window making sure I anchored it firmly in myself so even the smallest of information would come through. The second my energy touched the window, I felt an explosion slamming me to the ground. Pain seared me, and all I saw was white. White, pain, and a screeching noise like roofing nails on a chalkboard. Was I dead? Was I dying? Or maybe blind and deaf. I wasn’t even sure I was still at Craig’s house. Definitely not dead since the pain was still excruciating. Pain. Pain. I couldn’t seem to find my way out of the sound, light and pain.
Finally the white dimmed a bit, and the sound began to recede. I realized someone was holding me and stroking my hair. “Sam, Sam.” Wyatt murmured in my ear as he rocked me like a human child with a boo–boo. I appreciated his calmness since I was pretty sure whatever injury I’d suffered it hadn’t been pretty. Things began to swim into focus around me, and I concentrated to identify where the pain was to cut it off.
Oh my. My left hand was melted up past the wrist. I removed my personal energy from the flesh, leaving it just a blob of melted fat, bone and tendon. It was as if a wax sculpture had been put too close to a blowtorch. It was pretty dramatic, but it no longer hurt now that I’d isolated it. I must have instinctively shut off my probe or whatever melted my arm would have continued and shot right through me. It would have killed me.
My kind tends to tear ourselves up pretty regularly, what with rough sex and our risky lifestyle. The key is to make sure the flesh has only minimal feeling and that your personal energy is safely away from the areas being ripped or torn, or chewed. Most accidental deaths happened from someone having their personal energy out and about during an unexpected trauma. My personal energy had been extended out and firmly rooted deep to my core. I was very lucky. This could have easily been the death of me.
Wyatt still stroked my hair and I heard Candy and Craig in hushed voices to the side.
“It’s going to kill her with one blow. This isn’t going to work. Is there some other demon you know? Maybe a better one?”
Great. I was going to be sacked in favor of a ’better’ demon. One with red skin, a pointy tail, horns, and a goatee no doubt. They wanted scary? I’d show them scary. I struggled to my feet, pushed back the pounding headache which was fifty percent from lack of coffee, and staggered to the garage. The three followed me. Wyatt at least looked worried.
There was no hatchet to be had in the garage. What self respecting Pennsylvania country boy doesn’t chop his own wood? Even better though, I found a hack saw. I smacked my left arm up on a workbench, sending bits of melted flesh flying. Giving myself an inch past the melted part, I started to saw my arm off. It wasn’t easy since I hadn’t clamped it down first. I had to give myself enough feeling to hold the arm in place, but not enough that it would be agonizing. Still, I made it nice and slow, making sure to stick it in the bone a bit so I had to wiggle the saw blade loose. Bone is usually spongy and hard to cut through without power tools, but whatever melted my hand had made the bone more brittle than usual and somewhat easier to cut. Craig made retching noises; Candy stared with her mouth clamped shut; and Wyatt looked everywhere but my arm. Sorry, Wyatt. I hadn’t really wanted him to see this kind of thing. Guess we were back to square one, again. No sex for me.
After I had separated my arm from the rest of my body, I made sure to let it spurt blood a bit over the workbench. I left the melted arm there too. Let Craig clean it up himself, asshole.
Time for a new arm. Like I said before, I could convert myself a new arm in an instant. Wham, new arm. It’s not very impressive though to just make an arm appear supposedly out of thin air in a flash of light. I looked at my stump and slowly converted matter around me into a new arm. Bone first, nerves and veins snaking down out of the stump, muscles that grow outward and flesh crawling like a tan plague over the surface. It hurt like a bitch, but it looked horrifying.
“Okay,” I said, wiggling my new fingers experimentally in the air. “Let’s go back and take a look at that window again, shall we?”
“Don’t touch it, Sam,” Wyatt implored. “I can’t take all this again before breakfast.”
I approached the house and held my energy tight to myself as I looked at the window. I could see it now clear as day. That’s when I realized it wasn’t just the window. Whatever coated the window, coated the entire house. It was so clear and obvious, I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t see it before. I assumed it wasn’t made for human eyes, and it was not something I’d ever see done at home. I looked carefully at the dull rainbow of colors and heard the faint scratching noise. It made a pattern. A pattern I recognized from long ago. Far back in my memories of visits, here.
“It’s a hex,” I said, half to myself.
“A hex?” Candy looked all over the house and obviously saw nothing. “Like the ones the Pennsylvania Dutch put on the side of their barns?”
I shrugged. “Kind of. The ones around here on the barns are pretty artwork, but they usually don’t make any sense from a symbolic point of view, and the makers don’t have any power to charge them and create actual wards of protection. They probably had some superstitious meaning a few centuries ago, but they’ve lost that now. This hex, you probably can’t see at all with your eyes. I couldn’t see it at first, either, since it’s based on color, pattern, and sound, subtle work that we don’t use back home. This one is based on the same ancient symbolic nature that the pretty barn decorations use now. It’s a kind of ward to protect and guard the occupants of the house.”
I motioned with my hand. “There are a series of circles covering the house. They symbolize eternity and tell me that this protection is meant to last forever. Inside are both five and eight pointed stars which carry the protection against evil. Within them is a tulip which is for trust and faith. The symbols add up to an eternal protection from evil that is based on faith. Faith extended from the angel, which is a significant gift.” I looked at Craig. “You should feel honored to be gifted this. It’s well crafted, and powerful. The main color of the hex is white, which is the energy that powers it. The white is huge. When I touched it, that’s all I could see. It practically blinded me. The power behind this is just immense. There are other colors, too. Blue to reinforce the protection, black to bind the hex together as a whole, and a set of reddish purple angel wings like an artist’s signature. The wings stamp it as a divine gift. So any idiot who tries to break it knows whose hammer is about to drive him into the ground.”
I silently admired the hex a moment. It was just amazing. I couldn’t believe the amount of skill that had gone into creating it, let alone the immense power behind it. What angel could possibly have power to just toss into a hex like this? This angel was way out of my league. Way out of any demon’s league. The crafting, the level of detail and intricacy of the thing was awe inspiring. I could feel the power humming from it. The whole thing stirred something deep within me. Something beyond admiration. I shook my head trying to clear it of the fascination I felt contemplating this magnificent work of art and its equally magnificent creator.
“In short, it�
��s a protective hex,” I told the others. “It guards against supposedly evil spirits, which is why it practically fried me into the ground. I’ve seen witches do this in the past, but it’s not been as powerful and doesn’t really do much to keep me out. Those are mainly to keep bad intentioned humans out and as good luck charms. Plus, theirs are visual since the makers are at least mostly human and the protection extends against evil humans who would need to see the warning.”
“Why would Althean put a protective hex on the house of a man he was about to kill?” Candy asked, bewildered. “Why bother to protect him against evil spirits when he’s planning to kill him in the next day or two? Does he want to make sure no one else gets him first?”
“I’m pretty sure this hex would work against angels as well as my kind and many others. The way it’s formulated and how it’s activated would keep any angel except the one who placed it from touching the house, and that extends directly to the owner inside or within a certain range outside the house.” I turned to Craig. “You could be anywhere within a thirty foot radius, and be totally safe from evil intent against your person, and be safe within your house even if there is no active evil intent. I can stand here and talk to you, but I can’t enter your house. And if I decided to do you harm close to your house, the hex would extend out to me. Best of all, Althean won’t be able to touch you or enter your house, because it’s Gregory who placed this hex.”
TaDa! I’d freaked them out with my arm sawing, and now I’d wowed them with my folkloric knowledge. Better not be any more talk of finding someone “better” or I’d have to start chewing limbs and fucking asses.
“Gregory?” Candy looked lost. “Why would he do this? If this is such a powerful and significant gift, then what has Craig done to deserve such protection?”
“I think it’s less about Craig personally, and more about trapping Althean,” I said. “Gregory knows he’s got a problem on his hands. An escalating problem. And he’s in charge of these enforcing angels. He’s the top dog. It reflects badly on him to have Althean running amok, wiping out innocents. He’s got to get him now before there’s notice from his higher–ups, or perhaps before you all feel there’s nothing left to lose and there’s a werewolf rebellion. Think, we’ve got a couple in Hawaii for two weeks. That leaves Craig and Robinson. He can’t be two places at once to catch his naughty boy, so he’s safeguarded one, essentially herding Althean toward Robinson. And Robinson isn’t due back until late tonight or tomorrow which gives him some time to plan and set a trap.”