by Danae Ayusso
I slammed the door shut behind me and sulked away from the number thirteen; shirt bloody and torn, booty shorts caked with blood, one flip-flop on, hair all messed up as if I was coming off of a bender. It was just lovely and the perfect way to end a really shitty week.
What made it worse is that I felt as if I just broke up with someone that I wasn’t even dating! That angel was confusing the hell out of me, but it went beyond just messing with my head, he was somehow emotionally effecting me. Why was I feeling like that? Why was I crying over Angelus of all creatures?
In a daze, I limped to the only place that could remotely help me now, where I knew that someone would watch for another bearing his mark as our master would demand.
The packed diner fell silent when I walked in, and Mrs. Miles’ tray of water fell from her hand and crashed to the floor.
“I need some pie,” I sniveled before I started sobbing hysterically.
She hurried around the counter and wrapped her arm around my shoulders then escorted me back to the small area where the employees stash their stuff before their shifts.
“Good God, child, what happened to you?” she whispered.
“I think I just broke up with someone that I didn’t even know I was dating,” I choked and between sobs.
“Sweetheart, how is that possible?” she asked with a chuckle.
That was a good question, one that I didn’t have an answer for.
“I don’t know,” I admitted with a sniveled. “But I think I did. And that asshole, the one you hit, tried to kill me so I killed him, and I think I destroyed an early nineteenth-century church in the process and might have killed a preacher or curator…that was totally accidental though. And then I went and admitted to this bastard, sullen angel that I can’t stand and treats me like shit nearly all of the time, I told him that it’d be better if we went our separate ways...but I don’t want to be away from him but I don’t want to be around him either.”
And I started sobbing hysterically again as I hugged a package of napkins meant to refill the metal napkin dispensers in the dining room, pulling out one after the other to blow my nose on and wipe my eyes with.
“What do I do?” I stammered.
Mrs. Miles sighed and caressed my head. “Let me go get you some pie.”
“Thanks.”
For hours, well past closing, I gorged myself with pie and coffee. Eventually my ride came, but I hadn’t figured anything out by then. I wasn’t actually trying to think about it or Angelus; I was drowning my sorrows in desserts and coffee.
“What in the hell happened to you?” Loke demanded. “Did Hell have a yard sale that you couldn’t pass up?” he asked then cringed, eying my horrible outfit.
I looked up from my banana cream pie and his mouth fell open.
“An angel tried to repo me,” I sniveled.
“Shut up!” he gasped, and blindly sat down on Mrs. Miles’ lap who was sitting across from me. “How in… I mean, are you sure it wasn’t a trickster?”
“Really?” I made a face and threw my fork at him. “Does this,” I waved my hand up and down my body as if that explained it all, “look like the result of a goddamn trickster?” I yelled. “I killed an angel that was trying to kill me. I watched my name that was tattooed on his skin fade away with his last breath. Someone tried to repo me,” I whispered the last part, just now realizing that was what had just happened, and saying it aloud hit me like an iron fist to the gut.
Someone, who knew that it was a clerical error and nothing more, tried to repossess my soul.
“Zee, what in the hell happened? Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days...for over a week!” Loke dramatically informed me.
“I…I, I was...”
What was I? Why was I with Angelus? I could have left at any time. He wasn’t stopping me, but I chose to stay with him. Why?
“I just want to go home,” I sniveled.
“Of course,” he said with a sigh. “You look like someone gave you a Jersey makeover.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a shuddered breath that got stuck in my chest.
Thinking of New Jersey, of the shithole across the Hudson that I would normally never step foot in, made me sad. If I were honest with myself, I didn’t actually mind my time there, even if I was practically being held captive and nearly died of hypothermia out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness, and never got any pie even though I pouted and begged for some every hour. However, I did get the soundest sleep I’ve ever had, and for the first time in my life, despite all of the shit that I was currently facing, that we were facing together by his choice, and the psychotic angel that was trying to kill me, I felt safe.
Something was seriously wrong with me.
I looked up at Loke and sighed. “You have no idea.”
The annoying buzz of flapping leathery wings was annoying me, nearly as much as the look Volac seemingly has etched on his face. Like a little perverted eight-year-old that I was stuck babysitting, he poked around and nosed through everything he could without actually opening the drawers. I knew that if I looked away, he would have started playing dress up in my bras and underwear.
Little perv.
“There,” I said and tossed the remote unloading device at him and he jumbled it in his tiny hands before catching it.
“Damn it, woman,” he complained in a shrill. “This is a delicate piece of machinery!”
“Whatever,” I said and made a face at him then folded my legs in front of me on the bed. “Thanks for coming over, Volac.”
Volac looked between the bed and me a few times.
I rolled my eyes and patted the spot next to me.
The little perv clapped his tiny hands then hurried over and sat next to me. “So are you going to tell me what is going on?” he asked. "Why did you refuse to go to Central Hub to unload? Why you were hell bent on unloading a partial batch? Why did you miss your appointment last week?”
“One question at a time,” I groaned. “I missed my appointment and I’m not going to Central Hub because someone tried to repo me.”
“What?” he gasped then his mouth fell open.
“An angel from another hub, I think one in Europe, was sent stateside specifically to repossess my soul,” I said, speaking slowly, clearly, so nothing was lost in translation. “In trying to get away from him, I was injured and taken in by a Good Samaritan angel, if you want to call him that, and was out of it for nearly a week. You know that church in Harlem?”
Slowly his shook his head in disbelief. “Shut up, you?”
I nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Not really. The angel tired to kill me, but I killed him first, prior to that the angels were beating the crap out of each other and that’s how the church got jacked up. That, and the angel I killed pretty much brought his father’s house down around him. Oops.”
“How, I mean, how in the hell did you get in a church?” he shrieked.
“That’s all you got out of that?” I scoffed, but it was a good question. “I don’t know exactly. The first appointment in this jacked up batch was human priest of the light, and I repossessed his soul in a church,” I explained quietly then sighed, trying to forget about that. Not because it was a human priest that was a good guy, I was over that, I was trying to forget it specifically because that was where I met Angelus.
Volac nodded then looked at his hands. “Zion, I don’t know why someone tried to repo you. I will check into it though.”
“Discretely,” I strongly suggested. “You know as well as I do that sleeping with Stolas wasn’t the smartest thing that I’ve ever done, and his crazy ass wife that doesn’t put out has as many connections at the Hub as Stolas does, most likely more. That’s the only thing I can think of; she found out and got her barbwire panties in a twist.”
“I told you not to hook up with him,” he reminded me.
“I know, you told me so, I admit it. I was confused-” I paused and looked over at him. “Why are
we chatting it up like we’re best friends? Even Loke told me to shut up after the first hour of venting.”
Volac sighed and forced a smile. “I thought that we were friends.”
I laughed, and he smiled wide because I got his subtle joke.
“Zion, you always listen to me bitch and you pretend that you care. It’s the least I can do for you for all the years you’ve put up with me, even if I’ve had to put up with your ass at the same time.” He winked and softly knocked into me. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and your batch, but I can tell you that there were some outsourced contracts. Why? I don’t know. But what I do know is there were six on the demonic side, and they have the same type of batch as you do. And I know that Contracts still hasn’t finalized the paperwork for the high priority in your batch. When I know more, you’ll know more. I will have another remote unload device delivered so you don’t have to go to the Hub until we know more. Please be safe.”
This was beyond awkward. “Thanks, that’s very motherly of you.”
“Shut up,” he scoffed. “You are my best goddamn repo man, I can’t afford for you to accidentally get repoed.”
That’s the Volac I was used to dealing with; completely selfish and all about the job and how to make himself look good.
“Remember that place I had you pick up that parcel at that one time?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Utilize that means.”
“Understood,” he assured me—Volac was a smart little man when he needed to be.
I softly kissed him on the forehead and a smile consumed his face.
“I’m going to take a bath, and I’d like to be alone after that,” I said. “While I’m soaking, you can play in my underwear if you want, try not to take more than a couple articles when you leave.” I winked at him, and he gave me a dirty look. “Top drawer, and don’t break up a set.”
“I’m not a pervert,” he snapped at me, but his eyes were darting between me and the burrow.
I tousled his curls up with my hand before I headed to the bathroom.
“I like you, creepy little perv and all,” I called out, closing the door, and locking it, behind me.
For not being a pervert, the little perv sure was giggling loudly from the bedroom.
Trying to ignore the childlike giggling coming through the door, and not trying to think about my problems of the moment, I closed my eyes, slid down into the hot water and attempted to let Calgon take me away...it wasn’t Calgon, it was Chanel No. 5 bath oil with a handful of Peruvian Pink Salt and cost more than six-hundred bucks a bath, but I was feeling exceptionally in need of pampering at that moment.
Softly I hummed under my breath, trying to get in the zone, as my fingers treaded the silky, fragrant water. Volac confirmed that I wasn’t up for repo. That I already knew. If I were, he would have never given me a batch, and if he somehow missed that major thing and still assigned me the batch, when I signed for it the paperwork would have rejected the receipt of contents and my acknowledgement of the terms. So obviously it had a clerical error. But why did someone go to such drastic extremes to hide the error by outsourcing it to someone, an angel at that, from halfway around the world? That isn’t an error, that’s attempted demoncide. That takes some major pull to do something like that. Usually races aren’t crossed, meaning angels don’t repo demons and demons don’t repo angels. The other races are a free for all, except the Fallen, they fall under the demonic category. Thus having an angel as a repo man for a demon was major and scary. That was top-level shit.
It made me curious if it had happened to anyone else or I was special. I could have made some calls, but I wasn’t the most popular person with the other repo agents because, as Volac said, I was one of his best.
What if the same type of error or homicide attempt had occurred on the angel side as well; would that mean Angelus could be at risk? I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him, and wasn’t supposed to be thinking about the way it felt in his arms as he defrosted me from my attempt to freeze myself to death from sheer stubbornness incident in the shower, or how it felt to wake up in his arms, or the overwhelming sensation of contentment in his arm and the safety I felt in the protection of his wings. All of it was nice, better than nice, it was the warm embrace and sense of security that I had always imagined possible in my head, but never thought I’d experience outside of my flight from Hell. The feel of his strong arms around me, the warmth of his skin against mine, the way his callused fingers felt as they absently caressed up and down the center of my abdomen in his sleep….
Just thinking about it was turning myself on.
“I really dislike that goddamn angel,” I mumbled under my breath and opened my eyes and screamed.
“Am I the angel in which you really dislike and do you talk to yourself often?” Angelus asked as his head tilted to the side, his large black and amber eyes working over my face while he waited for my response.
“Do you always break into people’s bathrooms?” I countered, covering my breasts, which he had already seen many times, with my arms. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
Honestly I didn’t care. He was here and I was naked, now I just had to get him completely naked so we could go at like wild animals in heat.
He continued to look at me as if he didn’t understand my question.
“Creepy angel stalker, I thought we agreed to stay away from each other so we could go on our merry way and get back to our lives.”
“I never agreed to that,” he informed me.
“Huh?” I continued to look up at him, not understanding why he was standing in my bathroom while I was trying to take a bath and forget all about him.
“Your home is not secure. I found a winged midget trying on your undergarments and shoes.”
I laughed; that was a mental picture I could have lived without.
“That’s Volac, at least I hope it was,” I said. “He’s the batch manager for the demonic side. He let me remotely unload the partial batch I was carrying.”
“So I should not have killed him then,” he said in a level-tone.
I sat up and spun around to look at him.
“He is fine,” Angelus said, looking almost amused. “When he saw me, he took off faster than I would have thought possible with that many pairs of panties on his head.”
I sighed and rolled to my stomach in the claw foot tub, slid down into the water and kicked my pruned feet in the air behind me. “That wasn’t very nice,” I scolded. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Are you lovers?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Ew. Not even close, however I do owe him a boob grab at the Christmas party, not that it matters at the moment. Volac is going to check into something for me, he agrees with me staying as far away from Central Hub as possible.”
To my surprise, he nodded. “I completely agree. Something is very wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have an appointment that I need to collect, and soon, however it is a High Priestess.”
I laughed but there was no mirth in him. “Are you kidding me?” I choked.
Angelus sat on the floor, resting his back against the tub so I couldn’t see his face, only the back of his head and bare shoulders—the stitches were gone since angels and demons healed quickly with the right medical attention—and I couldn’t help but envision kissing his neck and along his shoulders, dragging my tongue across his skin, coating my tongue with his ambrosial flavor.
“I wish I were,” he said, pulling me from the fantasy I had drifted to in my head. “She is a human, and the High Priestess of the Children of the Black Rose.”
Now I wasn’t laughing.
I got out of the tub and quickly pulled my robe on then sat on the floor across from him. “You can’t be serious. You’re supposed to repo the soul of the illegitimate granddaughter of Lilith? Are you fucking insane?” I demanded.
The look he gave me conveyed just how not insa
ne he was and his extreme disliking of the situation.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Did you sleep with someone’s little sister or something?” I tried to tease, but instead it came out like a jealous demand.
“No.”
“Karmatically you’re screwed.”
“In more ways than one,” he agreed.
Um…there’s a first.
“So what do you need me for?” I reluctantly asked.
Again, his eyes moved over my face many times before he seemingly found what he was looking for. “You are a demon, my target is a High Priestess of Theistic Satanism in a very reclusive Luciferian group, and I cannot simply just walk in their warded doors and repossess her soul.”
Was it just me or did he not actually say how he needed my help, he just repeated everything we already knew?
“And?” I prompted.
“You are a demon,” Angelus repeated.
“And?” I sang; I wanted to hear him say it.
“And what?” he snarled.
“And?”
“You are a demon, it should be rather obvious what it is that I require!” he snapped at me.
Prick. Why can’t he say, ‘Zion, I need your help.’ But no. He won’t. I’ll help him, but not until he asks for my help. A woman needs to know when she’s needed and appreciated.
I licked my lips and nodded my agreement. “Yes, it is very obvious,” I agreed. “But I want to hear you say it,” I informed him then smooched my lips together at him.
His jaw clenched and the tendons went taut as his eyes narrowed.
“Glare at me all you want, Angelus, but I’m not the one on a deadline,” I reminded with a smirk.
