Hells Angel

by Kim Faulks

  He didn't stop until his breath became labored and the knife was as heavy as stone. When he stopped and rolled off the rotting corpse underneath him, he realized it was dead. He had killed it.

  He climbed to his feet and stared down at the mess that littered his dining room floor. The knife was coated with bits of flesh and soft yellow gunge. He was going to puke if he looked at it any longer, so he threw it down and frantically wiped his hand on the back of his jeans in his desperate attempt to rid himself of residue.

  "Now I'm all cut-up, Darrion, and just when I thought we were getting to know each other."

  Hunter watched the moving corpse get to its feet and look down at the mess that he had made with the blade.

  "Lucky for you that I'm immortal, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!"

  He didn't see it move, didn't even feel the impact of the blow as it connected with his head. But he did feel the floor as his head bounced, hitting it once, twice, three times before he finally blacked out.

  Chapter 5

  Kellah pulled on her skin tight black jeans, knee high boots, and her favorite shirt. A half-naked woman riding the Devil, her sexy gaze looking back over her shoulder as she announced, I'm going straight to Hell. Wanna come?

  She usually received a nice healthy dose of disgusted looks from humans as she walked down the street and sometimes, for kicks, went to the prayer meetings every Tuesday at ten at the local church. That was a sure fire way to get her in a good mood.

  But, lately it was getting harder to get a reaction. She blamed the younger generation of humans and their movement away from the strict rules of society. Now days the living were already going to Hell or, as she had seen first-hand in their haunted eyes, some of them were already there.

  The temperature of the day was already heading into scorching by the time she hit the pavement outside Killer Place, and she breathed in deep, filling her lungs. There was nothing like the choking scent of melting asphalt first thing in the morning. Kellah adjusted her bra, jiggling her tits so that they sat up higher, and smoothed her shirt along her flat stomach, casually casting her shaded eyes down the street.

  She could see him, watching, waiting for her to stumble and slip up, and she smiled as she started towards the car. Here was the one person she would happily go out of her way to torment. It wasn't hard to admit that she loved the chase, and the way he focused so intently on her. She wondered for split-second if he would be as focused in the bedroom.

  It would be easy to seduce the Detective and leave him and set him up with a garage of stolen goods. This thought pleased her greatly, and she could even feel the corners of her mouth curl in to what could have resembled a smile. And she never smiled.

  She needed to get money elsewhere and although she had options, human options, she was never the kind of girl to bleed them dry - well not normally. Maybe it’s time for me to move on, she thought, and considered where else she could go, just until I can work out a way to get back home.

  The Allayan Desert Moors surrounded Red Valley and, although Kellah liked the place well enough, she didn't want to live the rest of Detective's Hunters life watching over her shoulder, waiting for him to turn up and cause her trouble once again. So, to get out she needed money, which bought her back to problem number one.

  The Northside was out of bounds for her, there was too much money at stake to lead Detective Hunter anywhere near there. The coppers would be searching for days for the gold and wouldn't be able to open the cover of it without a crane, so all she had to do was wait and maybe have some fun.

  She sniggered and accentuated her hips with a swagger as she walked up to where his piercing blue eyes stared at her. Her powers as a demon were not limitless and she had struggled at first, hiding in homeless shelters and half-way houses for the mentally unstable. If they had only known, she thought and smiled to herself. Her tales of home had caused more than one doctor many a sleepless night.

  He made his focus on her no hidden secret, and she wondered how many sleepless nights outside her apartment it would take for him to snap and do something stupid. She was counting the days. She lowered her sunglasses and gave him a perfect wink from her black lined eyes, watching him give her his best cold stare. She watched his fist tighten around the steering wheel and, although he tried his best to remain impassive, she could see he was anything but. "Have a great day, Detective," she said as she passed the open window.

  He didn't respond which was unlike him, he usually had lots to say: Where were you on Friday the second, between nine pm and ten-thirty pm? Do you have anyone that can verify your whereabouts at this time? Where do you get your money from? Who is your next of kin? Where did you come from before you moved to Red Valley? And before that? And before that??? The list just went on and on and on.

  She wanted to give him the answers to the questions he so desperately wanted. She wanted to do more than just give him the answers, she wanted to show him where she came from - but that was against the rules, her rules. If she didn’t want to spend a thousand years in this Hellhole they called Earth she would, for once in her miserable existence, have to play by the fucking rules.

  She crossed the street and made her way down-town. It was only ten-thirty, and already the drunken bums and street corner hookers were out in force. Times were slow and where money was available from government cheques and small time crimes, the men would drink and the women would wink, and then lead them around the corner. Money was money and she had thought of turning a trick herself on more than one occasion.

  The windows of Paradise were dark, mostly with dust and dirt, but the door was unlocked, so she pushed it open and stepped inside. It was far from Paradise for a human, and even Kellah could say that it had seen better days. The carpet stuck to her heels as she headed towards the bar and reached behind, grabbing the closest bottle of scotch before making her way towards the back.

  "Oh fuck me, Kellah! How many times I gotta tell you, don't help yourself to the fucking alcohol!" Gerry said from behind his desk. He spoke a lot with his hands, throwing them around like he was having a fit. It was lucky for Gerry that she liked him, as she could have easily torn those arms off and shoved them up his arse.

  "Calm the hell down, Gerry. You're gonna give yourself a heart attack, and you know what will happen next," she said, upending the bottle into her mouth. "Anyway, this shit is so fucking watered down you can't even call it alcohol, more like yellow fucking water."

  "True," he said with a shrug and a smile spread across his face. He was ugly when he smiled. Hell, he was ugly when he didn't smile. "So, tell me. What the fuck happened?"

  "You know, the usual."

  "The Detective, huh?" he said, pulling out a draw and lifting a bottle up onto his desk before reaching back down. The clinking of the glasses made her smile, and she placed the bottle she had on the end of the desk before flopping onto the lounge.

  "I'm going to have to wait for the heat to die down before I can go and get it."

  Gerry was the only human that knew what she was, and the agreement was that she would make his journey down below as pleasant as possible. So, he usually gave her money and whatever else she needed, but she had a suspicion that the deal was running dry. He still expected her to live up to her end of the bargain, but like they say there is honor amongst thieves, and she was so much worse than a simple petty thief.

  He handed her a glass and she leaned forward, grabbing it from his hand. "So, I'm gonna need a little something to get me through till I can get to the bag," she said.

  He licked his lips as he stared down her top, but looked up at the mention of money. He shook his head vehemently, although his gaze never wavered. "No can do this time, Kellah. You know things are tight. Hell, I got the hookers working overtime just to get my hundred percent. Besides that, you still owe me a little something right, or did you forget?"

  She had known her luck was just about to run out, but she just needed one more payment and she had been hoping Gerry had forgotten sh
e owed him the diamond she had hidden at her apartment. "Although, you know, you're a fine lookin' chick. If you wanted to we could work something out."

  She laughed and drained her glass as she stood. "What, Gerry? You want to go to bed with this?" She switched between her human and her demon form for only a second. It was all that was needed, she watched the blood rush from his face and his hand shook violently as he finished his glass and re-filled. "I thought so. I'll go get you your bloody stone, and I'm gonna need at least a hundred so don't give me some shit about you being broke."

  She held out her hand and waited patiently for his legs to work before he moved towards the safe. He looked over his shoulder and stared at her suspiciously as he keyed in his code. Stupid fucking fool. She had a mind to walk over and tear the safe apart with her bare hands and see what he thought then.

  She wanted to go back to the apartment, anyway. This human body still shivered, even after all the years of being away from home she found that she ran hotter and constantly felt cold here. He handed her a roll tied tightly with an elastic band, and she slipped it into her pocket. "Thanks, Gerry," she said walking over and grabbing the bottle from his desk. The good stuff this time. She was no two-bit fucking whore.

  Chapter 6

  Darrion had everything he needed to install the bug in her apartment. The transmitter was small enough to hide almost anywhere and no one would ever know. All he had to do now was to wait for her to leave.

  When he first spotted her image on the video footage the morning after the robbery he was sure that he had her. She had obviously gone back there for something, and as the jewelry hadn't been found he was betting that was it. Her anger reflected perfectly through the black and white images to where he sat watching in his car, waiting for the opportunity to throw her ass in jail for good. But a morning jogger had spooked her and she had smashed the camera before taking off.

  It wasn't long before her movement caught his attention as she shoved through the glass apartment doors. He hated her on sight, despised her with an almost palpable sense that reeked from the pores of his skin. He swallowed the rage that always started with the hot burn inside his stomach and ended with the violent shaking of his hands.

  His reaction to her was so instant and so very much entwined with his pain that he almost forgot where or what he was. The need for her to be gone from his life was so pure it became blinding.

  Hunter's past and present had melded so fluidly that it was difficult for him to find the threads to function in this world. Kellah Slater was the knot in this whole problem, a knot that needed to be either unraveled or cut out. He shifted nervously in his seat and moved the buckle of his belt, touching his head and the scar he carried, remembering that time so clearly ... too clearly. It was the day he almost died, and the day he wished he had died.

  He couldn't remember where he stayed, or when he slept. Only the motel painting stuck in his memory. He should be able to remember ever detail of the dirty green landscape , because that was all he saw, that and the bottom of the bottle, one after the other.

  The memories of his wife and daughter haunted him as drove home to his empty house. He tried to remember the happier times, times filled with love and laughter, for nothing but the sake of his sanity. The way Naomi's chocolate brown hair fell across her creamy skin, and the soft snores that came from her parted lips when she slept.

  He wanted to remember those times; needed to remember those times. But as hard as he tried his memories conjured another of her chocolate hair as it fell across her skin, although the color was brighter and more vivid. In this memory her mouth was again parted, but instead of her soft, sensual lips waiting for him to cover them with his own, they were wide, stretched and split open in the corners. An eternal scream that would haunt him until the day he died.

  If he thought watching the insides of his partner's body spill out of itself and coming close to being murdered himself was bad, it paled in comparison to what he now lived through. Mind stilled images, overlaid with the stench of blood and other bodily fluids kept him awake. He pulled himself together enough to stumble from the room and drive to his desk sergeant's house. He needed release and an end to the torment that ravaged his mind and body. The bright outside lights snapped on, and it was then he realized it was night.

  "Hunter, Jesus Christ. What are you doing?"

  Sergeant Lunder stood at the door, his face shadowed with annoyance and confusion until he turned toward him. The look of annoyance quickly dissolved, leaving traces of pity and sadness. "Oh shit, Hunter. Come inside, you look like death."

  He shook his head, he only came for one thing and he would never have come if he didn't have to. "No. I just want it back, that's all."

  "Come inside Hunter, it's three in the morning. Lucky the wife and the kids are away on holidays. Come on, come inside and I'll make us some coffee."

  He leaned closer to pull on his arm, then jerked back abruptly. "Maybe a shower first, mate?"

  The Sergeant would have his off-duty piece inside somewhere, it was option B and that was what he needed, options that would release him from this agony. He allowed his friend to pull his arm until he followed inside.

  "I'll go get you some clothes, okay? And you can have a shower, mate. Just don't sit on the lounge, Beth would have a fit."

  Lunder turned to disappear into a room and stopped with Hunter's hand on his arm. "I don't need a shower. Just give me back my piece."

  He stopped and turned, the look of wariness covering his sadness as he said slowly, "Hunter, you know I can't do that. Anyway it's back at the station, locked up. Come on, mate. I know it's tough, but you will get through this, I promise."

  His vision blurred for the first time since that afternoon and his voice came out choked and thick. "You don't know, no one knows. You have your off-duty piece, give it to me. Say that I stole it, I don't care. Just one bullet is all need. I can't live like this!"

  "She wouldn't want this, Hunter." he said grabbing him by the shoulders. "She'd want you to find the bastard who did this. She'd want you to live."

  His friend's words burrowed through his dangerous thoughts and for the first time since he found them he allowed himself to grieve. His tears came hard and fast, along with his violent sobs. Lunder held onto his shoulder, pulling him into his hard chest and as embarrassed as he was, he allowed himself to be held.

  Three cups of coffee and a long hot shower later he felt tired and wrung out, but sober and human once again. He didn't know where his head had been in the last few days, but he knew wherever it had been hadn't been anywhere safe.

  He left two hours later no longer suicidal, which was a start, and drove along the streets heading down town. The night was on its way out and the dew had started to settle, coating everything it touched with tiny beads of moisture. He didn't know why he felt an overwhelming desire to drive down that street and park the car at the intersection. At the time he put it down to not wanting to go back home. He wasn't quite ready to see all the things that would remind him of what he had lost. Instead, he sat and watched alley cats and the homeless wander mindlessly around, sifting through the bins in hope of finding cans, food, or both. Is this what he would become, someone alive, but not living? How was that any better than ending it here and now?

  He climbed out of his car, not understanding why he was here at this minute, at this very second. His purpose in this life had vanished in the space of only a couple of hours, leaving him dangerously hanging on the precipice of self-destruction.

  No. The thought was as loud and clear as if someone behind him had spoken it. He turned, searching the darkness as fear coursed through his veins, pushing his heart to its limit. But no one waited for him in the shadows, not that he could see. Don't be afraid, Darrion. I am not here to hurt you. I am only here to help, let me be your guide.

  Even though his heart still raced, he was able to focus on that voice, feeling it reverberate inside he knew with one simple unchallenged thought that the voi
ce came from inside, and that knowledge ushered the most peaceful feeling to wash over him; He had never felt so calm as he did in that moment. The feeling of love was so intense it caused him to sag back onto the bonnet of his car and close his eyes as a wordless cry escaped his lips. Darrion, I love you. Naomi's voice whispered in his ear and he felt a ghost-like touch across his face and the lightest pressure on his lips. "Naomi?" He cried out, raising his hand to his lips, desperate for any kind of connection.

  Darrion, do as he says, okay? You need to listen to him.

  He knew it was her and inside he knew she was telling him this was the right thing to do. The right thing, he didn't know what that meant. Only that he needed to understand and make a decision. If that meant he could feel her again, that is what he would do. Okay, whatever you need me to do, I will, he answered her whispered question.

  A noise echoed along a darkened side street where he stood and it drew his attention away from the spiritual connection. He cursed the intrusion, searching his mind for the fragment of his dead wife, praying that the connection wasn't gone.

  But the intrusion grated on his nerves, pulling his attention back toward the shadows once more. He felt like he needed to walk to that alleyway, for what he didn't know. He wanted to trust that voice inside himself. He needed something to anchor to, and he pushed himself off his car and crossed the street.

  At first he saw nothing but overflowing commercial bins, until he stepped into the shadows himself and his eyes adjusted to the dim. She sat against the wall, her head bowed, staring at her lap. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do and now he was suddenly starting to feel very awkward.