The Deal (The Fallen Angel Series Book 1)

by S C Cunningham

  “I can’t leave him like this.” Amy looked toward the curtains. “There are children outside that window. God knows what he’ll do. Well, actually, I do know.” Her eyes hardened.

  Jack spun around, grabbed her firmly by her arm, and pushed her towards the door.

  “We’re leaving, whether you like it or not. We’ll sort him out legitimately when he’s on the list, but not yet. Maybe Pyke needs more time to get into his computer, source his contacts, his victims, his sites, and then we can close in on him and his fellow pervs in one hit. You’ve gotta see the bigger picture…but, meanwhile...”

  He waved his hand across the table top. The mug of hot coffee toppled into the man’s bare lap.

  “He’s not going to be playing with his genitals, or anyone else’s, any time soon.”

  The hot liquid burned into the man’s skin. He jumped up out of his chair, screaming with pain.

  “There are rules…and there are rules. Everyone spills their drink from time to time.” Jack beamed his cheeky grin as he manhandled Amy out the door. “Come on, you.”

  She turned to face him in the hallway, giving a playful punch to his stomach, smiling up at him where they stared at each other for a moment. She wished he wouldn’t treat her like a child. She wished she had the courage to take the risk and kiss him.

  She knew any minute he would turn away from her, as he always did. Was he embarrassed about his face, or did he find her unattractive?

  He was stunning in an ugly-handsome kind of way. His chiselled face was covered in scars she found beautiful, and she loved the way his generous mouth tilted up at the corners. She wanted to taste those lips. If she could just stretch up on tiptoes, she could reach his mouth with hers and smother his scarred skin with kisses.

  What would he do? Would he recoil in disgust or take her in his arms? What would Mister ‘always working by the rules’ do? Did he like her or just see her as an annoying newbie he had to babysit?

  Were they even allowed to have sex? Was it against the rules? Would the skies shake with rage and she and he explode in flames? She made a note to ask the boss.

  He looked down at her, silent, his twinkling eyes momentarily serious. She considered reaching up to his mouth, just for a second, then lost her courage. His face had lost its playfulness. One thing she hadn’t left behind was her fear of rejection. She put her hand on his chest and gently pushed him backwards. The moment vanished.

  “Wait, I’d better just close the curtain. The children…they may see him,” she said.

  Before he could stop her, she squeezed past and scurried back into the room.

  Jack, lost in the moment, confused as to why she’d pushed him away, didn’t have the strength to argue. He let her go.

  He couldn’t blame her. He knew he was ugly. A beautiful woman like Amy wouldn’t look at him twice, wouldn’t be able to see behind the damage. He closed his eyes and lowered his head. If only she knew.

  “I won’t be a second,” she shouted out to him through the doorway.

  He sighed and waved an exasperated hand through the air after her. At least he got to spend time with her. Precious time he didn’t want to lose by her being stupid, going vigilante and getting chucked out of the Unit. The boss only gave them so much leeway, and he had been pushing his luck.

  “OK, OK, but hurry up! We’re late. I’ll call us in,” he shouted. “And do those buttons up. It’s hard enough working with you without your tits hanging out.” He stepped through the front door and out into the stairwell.

  He tapped his ear and waited to be connected.

  “Bonjour.” Pyke’s cheeky voice picked up.

  “We’re on our way back to the office.”

  “Bon.”

  “Just checking in.”

  “Qui.”

  “Shut up, Pyke…”

  “Non.”

  “Look, mate, could you quit the Franglais stuff? I barely speak English, never mind French, and you’re an East End boy whose closest thing to France is a bottle of Kronenbourg.”

  “OK, OK. Touchy aren’t we, mon petit chou. What’s rocked your boat?”

  “Nothing. That last job was a bit messy. That’s all. I’m getting old…and I ain’t your shoe.”

  “Non, Monsieur…chou, chou …it means cabbage…or is it powder puff?”

  “You’re weird.”

  “It’s a term of endearment in France. I’m learning French, widening my horizons,” Pyke announced excitedly.

  “And that’s gonna be of use, why?”

  “Pourquoi. It’s pourquoi.”

  “Pour what?”

  Amy could hear Jack busily talking to Pyke while he stood outside on the communal staircase. She quickly walked back into the man’s flat, fumbling with her shirt, doing up the buttons. He sounded angry. Shit! I’ve pissed him off again!

  She looked down at her chest. But my tits are a distraction. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?

  Walking over to the curtains, she peeked outside the window, checked for children, and finding none present, took a deep breath. Right, I can do this… empty, feel, build and throw.

  After a few false starts she managed to pull the drapes tightly shut. Decades of dust permeated the air. Waving it away from her face, she spluttered in disgust. You sooo need a cleaner, mate.

  She looked back at the squealing man leaning against the wall, desperately dabbing his shrivelled penis’s burning skin with his dressing gown’s hem. She sauntered towards him; a smile crept across her face.

  Checking the doorway, she eyed the coffee mug lying on the floor. OK, here we go…empty, feel, build, and throw.

  She held her hand over the mug, closed her eyes, and tried to empty her brain of everything else but moving the mug. She cupped her hand and waved it forwards. Nothing happened. She did it again. The mug rolled forward on the ground. She took a deep breath, brought her mind back to her four-year-old state, felt the fear, the hatred, the disgust. Her hand tingled with heat, building until she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  With an almighty sweep of her arm, she threw her hand at the man. The mug flew at the wall above his head, smashing into pieces. Porcelain fragments fell around his feet. The anger rose within her. The heat in her hands built further. She leaned down, held her hand over the largest jagged piece, and with a gasp of air, lifted it off the floor.

  The man stopped whimpering, staring in awe, eyes wide, mouth open. The mug seemed to have a life of its own. It raised itself off the floor and smashed against the wall, just missing his face. What the fuck?

  He watched as chunks of china fell to the ground, then one piece swooped up into the air in front of him. What the…?

  With an ascending sweep of her hand, Amy brought the serrated edge up under his chin, causing his wide-eyed head to slam back against the wall with a thud. Her second driving thrust slid the edge deeper into his neck with a quick left, then right, flicking motion. She sliced his throat wide open.

  The porcelain remained wedged in his throat as she took a step back and watched his gurgling body slide to the floor. He sat slumped against the wall, his bemused wide eyes staring vacantly across the room. His legs splayed out in front of him. His arms wilted at his side and his head flopped forward over his rotund belly.

  She leaned over and wiped her bloodied hands on his dressing gown.

  “I haven’t got time for rules. They’re for sheep,” she whispered into his ear. “Goodnight, kiddie fiddler. Hope you enjoy hell.”

  She slunk out of the room to join Jack.

  In the hallway, a familiar smell hit her—a burning smell similar to a barn mixed with old grass, cinnamon, and stale, acrid tobacco. She instinctively looked back over her shoulder, but saw no one.

  Why did it feel as if someone was watching her?

  Chapter Six

  Twenty-eight years earlier

  Amy Fox, a four-year-old sweet little girl, loved to play in the street in front of her house with other kids from the housing estate where she live
d. Back then, it was common for parents to encourage their children to play outside in the fresh air and enjoy the camaraderie in the neighbourhood they all deemed safe, and if a day went by without the sound of children’s playful games, parents would peer out the window to see if rain had forced them back indoors.

  But at the end of the estate’s perimeter lay fields and thick woodland, dark and mysterious, the kind of setting found in bedtime stories. Everyone’s read those frightening tales of bogeymen and scary monsters. And the children on the estate never ventured into those woods, those spooky fairy tales always in their minds.

  They feared the bogeymen, witches, and wolves, and all manner of things that happened in the stories. So they remained just outside the boundary of the woods, as if an invisible magical perimeter kept them safe. They laughed and played all day… happy, carefree, and naive.

  One sunny afternoon Dick Parker changed all of that. Amy and her friend, a little boy from next door, a few years older than she, played kick-about with a big red shiny ball Amy had received for her birthday.

  The little boy accidently kicked the ball too hard, and with a skewed angle it sped away from them. The two of them stood and watched it roll cheerfully along a small winding path and disappear behind trees, landing in a clump of bluebells. Without thinking, Amy chased after it. She wouldn’t normally go into the woods, but she loved that ball. It would only take a second.

  At the age of nineteen, Dick Parker was a loner without friends. Abused by his step-father, ignored by his drug-addicted mother, he hadn’t learned how to socialise, how to develop relationships, or what love even was.

  Dick Parker liked the woods, how the trees kept him hidden in the shadows and made him feel safe. He didn’t have to talk to anyone. He could just be himself. He liked to watch the children play. They had what he didn’t: a childhood, a fantasy world of fun and games, parents to go home to and cuddle him at night. He had nothing.

  Dick Parker had a plan to get close to these children, to feel them, to be a part of their cosy world. He would sit and wait for the right moment, the moment when he could pick off a straggler from the herd and initiate his plan. They had everything. Why couldn’t he have a piece of it?

  Today, little Amy fulfilled his fantasy; she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  As Amy ran into the woodlands, chasing her ball, Dick snatched her. With his hand shushing her squealing mouth, he carried her to a wooden hut deep within the forest and ‘played’ with her. After a few hours, he brought her back to the edge of the woods and set her free, warning her to never tell a soul or he would come after her and give her to the bad bogeyman.

  Amy ran home and obeyed, keeping quiet. She didn’t understand what had happened, didn’t have the words to explain, but instinctively knew something was wrong. She didn’t understand why. It just felt bad. She vowed never to go into the woods again.

  That night, nightmares about the bogeyman triggered her first panic attack. Her heart pounded as if it might burst. She thought she was dying. When she woke in the morning, she found herself in a wet bed. The carefree little girl in her had gone.

  The following week the street bustled with Police and press. Amanda May, a little girl the same age as Amy, had disappeared. A dog walker had found her body three days later. She’d been raped and beaten. The police hunted for her murderer, for the evil bogeyman, for the sick monster who’d taken poor Amanda May from her grieving parents.

  In the best way she could, with limited vocabulary, Amy told her parents about the strange man in the woods and what he’d done to her. They in turn informed the police. A very empathetic and consoling lady spoke to Amy, making her comfortable in a special cosy room with toys and sofas. With a pencil and paper, Amy drew a picture of the man in the woods. She sketched a stickman with dark curly hair, surrounded by trees. She held her nose and said, “Pooh!” He smelled bad. Soon after, her parents sold their house and moved to a new place, ready to let the incident bury itself and go away. They never mentioned it again.

  But Amy did. She mentioned it every night in her prayers. She wanted God to stop the bad man and made a deal with Him. If she promised to be a good girl, when she died, she wanted Him to allow her to sit on a cloud for a while before going to heaven. She wanted to be invisible, to have special powers and stop all the bad people He and the Police didn’t have time to arrest. She’d like to deliver justice to the ones that slipped through his fingers. She wanted to be like a Superhero and save lives.

  Years passed. Amy grew up and went on with her life, forgetting all about her deal with God, and at times, forgot about God. But He didn’t forget her. At the age of 32, on the way to work during a heavy rush hour, she fell on the underground tube train tracks, killed instantly, devastating her family and friends. She was way too young to die.

  God had kept his promise.

  She opened her eyes, dazed and shocked her life had been cut short, to find she’d not been the only one to ask for the same deal.

  When Amy’s spirit revived to the startling truth she no longer lay on the subway tracks, the echo of Sally’s screams ringing in her ears, she sat dazed and shocked to realise her life had been cut short. Her hands reached out, passing right through a misty whiteness, an ethereal realm holding her up in some plane she didn’t recognise. Once her eyes adjusted and her mind oriented to the new world surrounding her, she saw other spirits wander about the clouds. Out of curiosity, she waved one over.

  “Err…excuse me…err…do you speak English?”

  The cheery dark-headed woman giggled as she walked towards her.

  “We speak a universal language here. We are all the same.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “This is the afterlife, the place all souls are destined. Don’t you know?”

  “No, I don’t.” Amy’s face screwed up in question. “What am I doing here?”

  “Did you make a deal?”

  Amy rubbed the back of her head as if to nudge her memory. Then it flooded back to her.

  “I may have…Yes, I think…when I was a child. Do you mean it worked?” she beamed. “Bloody hell…how effing fantastic…oops, sorry, I guess no swearing here.”

  The woman waved away her apology.

  “Yes, it worked. He always keeps His promises. Everyone here made a deal with Him. This is the world network of the Fallen, of souls involved in the business of dishing out karma. You’ve got work to do.”

  The woman turned away and walked on, her words smacked Amy with such intensity she sat with her mouth wide open, staring into the mist, taking in the world around her.

  “Oh my god.”

  It didn’t take long for her to become acquainted with the other Fallen hovering the skies or learn the rules of the business, how they were to conduct themselves in serving comeuppance to evil, the ones who thought they’d escaped judgment.

  Although excited to crack on and fight the good fight, Amy wasn’t too happy with the list of rules. Bad people didn’t play by the rules, so why the hell should she?

  Chapter Seven

  Present day, HQ,

  UK Unit, Cloud 9

  Jack and Amy walked into the light, airy office, clutching mugs of coffee and munching biscuits.

  “I’m being watched.”

  “Nonsense. We’re the ones doing the watching…don’t be ridiculous,” Jack scoffed.

  “It’s true. I felt it again just now back at the kiddie-fiddler’s place. It’s been going on for a while.”

  “The only one who’s watching you is me…and Pyke, when he tunes in to see what we are up to,” chided Jack.

  “What! Why?”

  “Cos you’re a nightmare. Believe me, you need to be watched. You can’t go around killing anyone you fancy. You can’t go solo. You’re a Fallen and must wait for orders.”

  “Where the hell do you get off acting like my keeper?” barked Amy, through a mouthful of biscuits. “So, I get in trouble.” She shrugged. “What’re they gonna do?
Shoot me? I’m already dead.”

  “Touchy, aren’t we?” teased Jack.

  “Sorry.” She took a breath and wiped crumbs from her mouth. “You know what? I also felt followed when I was down there, alive,” she said, pointing to below her feet. “I was always looking over my shoulder. Maybe I’m paranoid.”

  “Maybe you sensed Fallens looking out for you.”

  “No. Most Erthfolk can’t see Fallens. It wasn’t a Fallen. It was more sinister.”

  Jack stared at her. His heart missed a beat.

  She continued.

  “I just get so frustrated with all this effing politically correct bullshit. I had enough of it down there. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t upset this person, don’t upset that religion…for fuck’s sake. If someone is bad, whatever make they are, whatever God they worship…sort it, simple.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not that easy,” Jack muttered, looking over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was listening. “We have to play by the rules.”

  “Seriously, Jack? I repeat. I’m dead. What’re they gonna do?” Amy shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands, palms up. But Jack wasn’t listening. He was too busy scanning the room.

  She followed his gaze.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, waving her away. “Nothing.”

  “No, I mean what’re they gonna do about me breaking the rules?”

  “Chuck you out. Send you down. Who knows? But whatever happens, I’m responsible for you, and I’ll get it in the ear as well. I don’t fancy Hell, do you? We’ve sent too many of our clients down there. It won’t be fun.”

  “Heaven, Hell…I’m not sure I believe there are such places. What if this is it? Up here is dead.” She pointed down below her feet. “And down there is alive. We’re just forever recycling. Living, then policing… living, then policing.”

  Maggie piped up from behind her enormous tank of a desk. Her designer reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.