Repossessors of Souls: Expendable Pawns

by Danae Ayusso

  His free hand balled into a fist on the table and the fingers of the other pressed even deeper into my leg, his nails grating against the bone, and his breathing started to labor.

  “What’s wrong, Karael? Didn’t my file tell you that I’m a truthsayer?” I smirked.

  “I’m not a fallen,” he snarled. “I was a dedicated soldier fighting the war in the name of our father, and yet he cast us out like lambs to slaughter because we were acting in his best interest when silence fell over him. Gabriel was only acting as the right-hand of God because God was absent himself. If it wasn’t for us and my armies, the world would be swarming with you disgusting parasitical spawns of Lucifer! Contract or not, I am doing the will of my father.”

  This just reiterated why I hated angels. They were all completely insane and fanatical.

  “I think someone has Daddy issues,” I informed him.

  Karael smiled. “Not at all. But I’m curious, what did you trade your soul for? I have to know.”

  I’m up for repo, that’s impossible!

  “You and me both, pencil dick,” I said. “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about or what’s going on. I’m a repo man. I haven’t, and would never, trade my soul for anything because I don’t want to deal with assholes like you knocking on my door.” I laughed, it was kind of hard not to in that particular situation.

  Never in a million years did I imagine dying in this means: death by clerical error. What was really funny was Loke always teased that I’d die by overdosing on shopping, sliced wrist via platinum American Express card, possibly slip and trip in my closet and impale myself on a stiletto, Gucci scarf getting caught in the escalator at Macy’s and I’d get strangled to death standing there, shoot myself with one of my guns while cleaning it, possibly get ran over by a taxi since I never paid attention to where I am stepping off—case in point, what happened earlier today—but never did Loke mention death by filing error.

  This sucks.

  “What’s so amusing?” he demanded.

  “This,” I said and chuckled again, motioning between us as if it explained it all, because it totally should have. “And to think, twenty-minutes ago all I could think about was how we were going to be fucking each other’s brains out in less than an hour. Damn,” I huffed then rolled my eyes. I cracked my knuckles and discretely used my thumbnail to draw a circular pattern in the palm of my hand.

  “I was hoping that we could,” he admitted. “However, your dossier appears to be inaccurate.”

  That’s what I thought.

  “Seven pieces of pie,” I said and nodded my understanding.

  How could I be so dumb and blind? Perfect men don’t exist, especially for a demon like me.

  “Exactly,” he said, sounding ridiculously disappointed. “I would have liked to have played with you for a few more hours, maybe a couple days, before claiming what is mine. Is the offer still open?” he smirked.

  I flipped him off.

  “Oh well, next time I will just roll with it and see what happens,” he said then smiled wide. “I’m surprised that you aren’t interested in one last romp in the sack before you die, after all, you are a used up, discarded like trash, concubine. According to your dossier, even your own master wouldn’t touch you. How sad is that? The only purpose of your existence was so you could lie on your back with your legs spread and let your masters have their way with you. It truly isn’t rocket science, and yet even you couldn’t do that right. It amazes me that anyone would make an effort to save a disgusting, useless woman, whose only purpose is to sit there and look pretty and take it anyway the man wants to give it to her, like you. I wonder if he hates you as much as he hates himself for sacrificing so much, and for the imprisonment and banishment that he has had to endure for breaking the rules, all because of you.”

  Wait, what? He knows who freed me from Hell?

  “Oh well, when I see him again I will make sure to ask if it was worth it, knowing that I was the last person you ever got the privilege of gazing upon.”

  This dude is completely insane.

  “We’re in Eden,” I pointed out the obvious, trying to buy myself some time—you couldn’t kill demons, angels, or immortals in the Eden, it only caused them to bounce back to whichever hole they crawled out of: in my case, Hell, and I really needed to know what he was talking about and who saved me and why my soul was being repoed.

  “For now,” he smugly informed me.

  My body felt as if it was being tugged from one place to another but snapped back.

  He shook his head then glared at me.

  Now it is my turn to smile wide. “Did you honestly think that I would frequent a spot in Eden that wasn’t warded against assholes like you? This is neutral territory so you can’t do shit here,” I smugly informed him.

  Karael’s eyes moved around the diner and that’s when he noticed them, small runes and scriptures from all worlds delicately carved into the entire building warding against moving in and out of the spectrums, pulling demonic or heavenly weapon, even company issued hardware didn’t work in neutral locations.

  I wasn’t as dumb as I looked.

  “Then we will just have to take this outside.”

  “Blow me,” I retorted and continued to glare at him.

  His head tilted to the side and his face was consumed with a smile. “I was hoping that you would be doing that. But now I’m afraid that you’d do something that would cause me more pain than pleasure...unless of course you promise to be a good little girl and not bite.” He licked his lips and I fought down the bile rising in my throat and snapped my teeth at him. “Just as I thought,” his scoffed and his smile fell. “Disgusting beast.”

  Mrs. Miles appeared and started clearing off our table. Her head titled to the side, exposing her dark neck to me, and suddenly a white symbol appeared on her neck: the mark of Adramelech. “Will there be anything else, kids?” she asked with a smile, pulling Karael’s attention.

  Adramelech, you never cease to surprise me.

  I rubbed my bloody hand on the table in a circle then quickly started scribbling symbols as I chanted under my breath. “Sanguis Bibimus. Corpus Edimus. Tolle Corpus Satani! Ave Adramelech!”

  Karael grabbed for me, but Mrs. Miles was quicker and slammed the underside of the tray in his face, causing the angel’s head to snap back, and his hold on me to loosen.

  “Get out of here, child!” she yelled at me.

  “Thank you,” I whispered then licked my bloody palm and slammed it down in the middle of the sigil of Adramelech on the table. “Sanguis Bibimus!” I yelled and the booth exploded in bright white light.

  For countless centuries Adramelech had me read to him from grimoires, various cuneiform clay-tablets, scrolls and records from the beginning of time. Each word that left my lips, symbol my fingers caressed over, and page I committed to memory, taught me the forbidden arts, and as the years went on, it was honed to levels that females weren’t permitted to reach. Adramelech wasn’t my teacher, and most of the time he’d fall asleep listening to me read aloud, but somehow the forbidden arts registered with me on a level that Adramelech never mentioned, and he allowed me the freedom to independently study as much as I wanted.

  Most of the other concubines were pissed off because when they left Adramelech’s bedchamber they were covered in bruises, claw marks, had broken bones, and on occasion, a new leather outfit. I left with arms full of books and always in a new lace and silk gown. I blame Adramelech for my love of clothes. That demon dressed me in some of the most breathtaking garments I had ever seen.

  “You always have to dress the part,” Adramelech said. “It does not matter if your soul is as black as death or if it is the purest of whites like the angels, you have to dress to match what is on the inside. And you, my precious Zion, are not like the others. Yes, you look beyond words in black and red leather, my prize possession in a sea of jewels, but when you are dressed in soft pinks, lavender, ivory, creams and whites, lace and
silk...even the angels would bow before your beauty if they ever had the privilege of gazing upon you.”

  Adramelech was an amazing person. Sometimes he was fatherly, and at other times he was an advisor and mentor without taking the time to train me in the forbidden arts. I couldn’t deny that I missed him. He was the only father figure that I had ever known.

  One time I asked him why he kept me around since he wasn’t attracted to me. In classic Adramelech nature, he smiled and kissed the top of my head and said, “Because I have what all others covet. What kind of Lord would I be if I simply allowed the most beautiful gem in all of Heaven and Hell to be tarnished?”

  I couldn’t argue with him, and compliments were always welcomed. Adramelech was notorious for being a collector, borderline hoarder, hence the reason why his harem was so ridiculously large. Yes, he had others that weren’t of his sexual liking, but he still used them to entertain himself with; usually in two to fifteen girl-on-girl slut-fest exhibitions. I was excluded from those activities as well, but still spent a lot of time with him. The others were relentless and vicious, and that was how I learned to defend myself. They wanted me dead, and it was only a matter of time before they succeeded.

  Hell, especially a demonic harem, wasn’t like this big sorority. It was Hell. Plain and simple. Hair pulling, knives in the back, literally, countless attempts on your life, and beatings...the list was impressively long. But what do you expect from the bitches in the world of fire, sulfur, death, agony, torture, pain, and hidden agendas? I could totally picture it on Bravo; The Real Housewives of Hell—Jersey and Orange County don’t got shit on these bitches.

  Heaven was the same way I suppose, only more clandestine and it was torn between those that followed their father’s directive to the letter and those that thought they were. Those that later became to be known as the Fallen did what they wanted while using the excuse that they were doing what they interpreted from God’s silence, and that his silence was nothing more than a test of their loyalty...or some shit.

  It doesn’t matter really. Hell is Hell, and I never wanted to go back there. Sometimes I felt as if I was never meant to be there to begin with. Then again, I suppose that’s what all demons say. Not many got out of Hell with a free pass. I didn’t have a free pass, not even close, but the fact that my master never came to claim me was practically a get out of Hell free card and I was fine with that.

  But none of that explained what in the hell happened and where I was.

  With much reluctance, I attempted to open my eyes, but it was damn near impossible since I was unbelievably comfortable, and at the moment, I didn’t care about any of the drama and the attempted repo on my soul. So someone was trying to repo me, big deal! I was comfortable in quite possibly the soft sheets I’ve ever wrapped myself up in, stretched out on a pillow top mattress that had to be made of clouds.

  I knew I wasn’t home. The thread count of my sheets weren’t that high, thought they should have been. The room didn’t smell like home either. It smelled...I didn’t quite know what it smelled like, but I did know that I didn’t like it.

  Through blurry eyes, I struggled to focus on the movement on the other side of the room. I couldn’t make out the person, or whether or not it was friend or foe, but I could distinctly see the overhead light reflecting off of the silver knife in their hand.

  I tried to summon a weapon, but I couldn’t feel my body and my head was swimming in a thick incoherent fog; I think someone drugged me. And here I was just starting to think that my day couldn’t have gotten any worse if I tried. If I woke up without my liver or a kidney or something, I was going to get a body count real quick.

  Clawing with the hand I could feel, my fingers dug into the bedding, and I slowly pulled myself along, centimeter by painstaking centimeter, until I maneuvered to the edge of the bed. My foot slipped off first, hitting the floor, and my ridiculously heavy body quickly followed. The cold concrete would have hurt if I could have felt my body. Though I was numb, I was vividly aware that my entire body, and I mean everything, was pressing against the cold floor.

  Where are my clothes?

  My cheek was pressed against cold concrete and my eyes struggled to focus on the bare feet suddenly in front of me.

  “If you are trying to make a run for it, I would strongly advise that you wait until you can feel your legs,” an all too familiar, overly annoyed, voice informed me.

  I tried to tell him to go fuck himself, but instead I mumbled a bunch of shit that even I didn’t understand.

  “When you are ready to pick yourself up,” he mumbled under his breath then returned to whatever he was doing across the room, “feel free to do so.”

  And it was official: I hated angels.

  The two I had the misfortune of dealing with that day effectively put the entire race on my permanent shit list. One was trying to annoy me to death, and the other was trying to repo my soul...which was ridiculous since repo men couldn’t enter into contracts! Accredited repo agents, because it’s a conflict of interest, obviously, couldn’t enter into any type of contract that would put into question their integrity or lower their Edom credit rating. That was one helluva clerical error. I was one of their best Agents. There was no way that someone didn’t see my name, there was no way around it. It would, literally, caused alarms to go off and would have nullified my batch. I was already carrying five of the six, the high priority was still tied up in contracts.

  In addition, why would they have contracted me to a goddamn angel? What I did know was that Karael wasn’t a local agent, and he confirmed it when he said that he was called in specifically for an outsourced acquisition. Angels were boastful and liked to brag, and the prick was bragging that he was about to take my soul.

  How could I have been so blind? Angels don’t like demons. Men don’t like demons. Only demons like them and even that’s a crapshoot. That’s just lovely. Now I’m back to my depression kick about how no one will love me and I can’t screw my way out of a wet paper bag-boohoo pity party for one.

  Was it really only two-weeks ago that my life was seemingly perfect? Shoes, shopping, debt, an appetite, therapy—that part sucked but it was better than the alterative—and hanging out with my best friend while I played the role of his penis-less rainbow wingman. It seemed like it was so long ago...many lifetimes ago, and now it was no more. I couldn’t have it again. Someone was trying to repossess my soul. I didn’t know how to fix that particular problem. And of course that problem presented many more: I couldn’t go home, or to any of the places that I loved and liked because Captain Winged Asshole Karael would be monitoring them and looking for me. It didn’t matter which spectrum I was in; I was screwed, and not in the cool I needed my hair pulled and ass smacked sort of way either. This was the hardcore, you will die a painful and miserable death because some desk jockey, paper pushing, bitch messed up, kind of way.

  “Why is this happening to me?” I mumbled, making absolutely no attempt at picking my naked ass up off of the floor.

  “What exactly is happening to you?” Angelus countered from the other side of the room.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, trying to keep from crying like the emotionally unstable bitch I suddenly felt like.

  His feet appeared in front of me. “Are you just going to lie there all night?”

  “Oh, Heaven forbid you have to look at the disgusting, fat assed, skanky, whore demon sprawled out naked on your floor while she catches pneumonia and dies before that asshole little buddy of yours can finish the job!” I yelled then started crying.

  Honestly, I didn’t know why I was crying, but it felt like the right thing to do in the current situation and at that moment. I hardly ever cried. The last time I cried was when some bitch spilled a drink on my beautiful silk Coco Chanel dress that was a present from Adramelech when we crossed paths in the nineteen-twenties. I cried like an emotional bitch over it. I cried even harder when I realized that I shouldn’t have cut the bitch’s head off because the w
ine would have washed out from the white silk, but the blood not so much.

  I’m well aware that I had issues.

  “Are you menstruating, is that why you are so damn emotional?” Angelus surmised from next to me and I screamed in frustration.

  Why was it that every time a chick cried anything with a penis chalked it up to menstruation? Seriously, I still don’t get it. I should have punched him in the nuts and bring him to tears.

  Stupid fanatic. He was probably a eunuch so he could maintain his celibacy to please daddy-dearest. When this was over, I was going to stage a one-woman war against everything that fell out of Heaven. I would take no prisoners! Zion was going to singlehandedly start the war between Heaven and Hell, again, and this time they wouldn’t see it coming!

  “Why am I here?” I grumbled.

  “You really want to have this conversation with your fat ass hanging out?” he countered.

  Sure, why not? It wouldn’t be the dumbest thing I’ve done all day, nor would it be the most compromising position I’ve been in.

  My silence answered for me, and he groaned then folded himself down to the floor in front of me so I could see him. “A meteor fell from the sky, landing in Turtle Pond in Central Park,” he said in the worst possible explanation in the history of the world.

  “Huh?”

  His head tilted to the side, his amber and black eyes moved over my face many times, until he seemingly found what he was looking for. “Central Park is a public park in the heart of Manhattan in New York City, with approximately twenty-five million visitors each year. It is the most visited urban park in the United States. The park was first opened in eighteen-fifty-seven, on seven-hundred-seventy acres of city owned land, then in eighteen-fifty-eight, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan. Construction began the same year and was completed in eighteen-seventy-three.”