by Danae Ayusso
Wait, hold the phone.
“Why wouldn’t…who knew….why, what?” I stammered. “Why would I, I mean, why wouldn’t you hurt me? You’ve told me countless times that you wanted to kill me for repoing Father O’Malley. So why would I be the only person that you wouldn’t hurt?”
Angelus headed towards the door. “Because you are a woman,” he said.
Bullshit flag.
“You drove a sword through the heart of that Soul Shark,” I reminded him.
“The situation was different,” he informed me. “And it was not a sword, it was a dagger, not that it matters.”
My angel was mentally exhaustive.
I threw myself back on the bed and scowled at the ceiling. “Why would… I mean… Seriously, why would someone bother with all of that? That’s a lot of effort and even more work and connections that I couldn’t even begin to imagine to simply pull something off like that. First, the batch would have to be a suspended open batch… Sonuvabitch,” I groaned.
“What?” Angelus demanded.
“The High Priority, you have one in your batch that is open, ‘stuck in contracts’?” I made quotation marks with my fingers.
“Yes, why?”
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at the angel standing with the door half open. “These batches aren’t waiting for a contract, they are suspended batches. Karael failed in repoing me, so it got passed to Beavis and Butthead. The same with Niles and you, it’ll get passed to someone else. Those difficult and ass backwards repos that we had—priest and a high priestess—they were tests...maybe. It would make sense on some twisted and demented level, but for what reason?”
Angelus closed the door then secured the locks before joining me on the bed. He sat on the edge of it, looking out the window across the room. “I do not know, but it would make sense on one level,” he admitted. “Can you ask your batch manager what was so special about the batch he gave you?”
“I suppose I can. Why can’t you ask yours?”
He scoffed before smirking. “We do not, what you could call, work well together. From what my superiors say, I lack in people skills.”
“No shit?” I laughed. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Really, I thought it was rather obvious, at least that is what all of my reviews state.”
“Is that a joke?” I asked, smiling.
“Yes… No… Call it humor based reality,” he offered.
When he let his guard down, he could almost pass for normal.
“I would have never suspected,” I assured him.
“I am subtle like that,” he agreed.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, a ninja humor assassin of the angelic variety. Can we get some pie now? I’m starving and I think better over a big slice of pie.”
He nodded then stood.
Hallelujah.
“If the falafel vendor two blocks over has pie, knock yourself out,” he said.
Damn it!
“I hate you,” I hissed.
“From what you have been saying, Zion, I think you are in love with me,” he mused.
“Nu huh,” was my brilliant comeback, so I flipped him off. “I would never be in love with someone that only sees me as an inconvenience and a whore, even if I’m not a whore and simply enjoy sex.”
None of that was a lie, but yeah, I think I was feeling something towards, what I considered, my angel, even if it is just a passing thing.
“By the way you speak, and how you are constantly dry humping my leg, I would have to admit that the whore thing seemed appropriate,” Angelus pointed out.
I glared at him. “Enjoying sex doesn’t make me a whore, it means I’m alive,” I retorted. “Sex is fun. Sex is enjoyable. Sex is a great core workout. Sex is something that would be nice to have with someone that doesn’t think that I’m a whore and who might feel the same way towards me as I feel towards them and… You know what, screw you!” I yelled. “You are not getting paid to listen to this shit, even my shrink hasn’t gotten to this layer of Zion’s dysfunctions yet, so back the fuck off, Chief.”
Angelus rolled his eyes. “You keep telling yourself that,” he scoffed then gave me that bullshit smile of his that quickly falls before he pointed towards the door with a scowl.
I rolled off of the bed. “Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives,” I informed him in passing.
A goddamn soap opera was what my simplistic existence had been reduced to; a daytime soap opera. If Dr. Romano busts through the door and tells me that he is my father and that his evil twin brother kidnapped me and sold me as a concubine and that I can’t be in love with my sullen angel because he was really my vampire brother and I have an arranged marriage to the lycan next door, but I’m mysteriously pregnant by my step-daddy’s baby mama…
Okay, no more late nights of downloading free eBooks with Loke off of Amazon anymore; the ridiculously cliché and heavily saturated with literary shit urban fantasy market was starting to warp my brain. Loke would be so proud that I finally admitted he was right.
Speaking of...
“We need to see a rectum ranger about a parcel,” I informed the angel walking behind me, and when he groaned I smiled wide.
“How can you eat that crap?” I complained and covered my nose with my hand. “I can smell the garlic and cayenne from here!”
Angelus smiled at me while he chewed. “It will keep you from trying to rape me,” he informed me with a mouthful of food.
That was marginally amusing, but ew.
I tried calling Volac, a few times, from a payphone while Angelus gorged himself on the disgusting fried balls of chickpeas and fava beans. The irritating batch manager’s mobile went straight to voicemail, and when I called the Hub, Marian was there instead. Marian was a useless bitch so I just hung up on her. I couldn’t remember the last time Volac took a day off, and it was concerning me.
“Why do we have to see that queer?” he mumbled with a mouthful of fried vegetarian balls; I could make a gay joke, but I’ll take the higher road. “This is not his problem.”
I punched Angelus in the arm, smashing him into the stationary mailbox we were passing. “One, you don’t have the right to call him a queer, fag, homo, or any other derogatory term that’s in that Bible thumping head of yours. Loke is who he is and is true to himself. Something you wouldn’t know anything about! He’s been a good friend, again, something you wouldn’t know dick about, so don’t go there.”
“You two have never?” he asked.
He can’t be serious!
“Yes, we have, and I’m the one that turned him gay. I turn anything that gets thrown in me gay, hence the reason why Adramelech never touched me, he didn’t want to turn queerer than a bedazzled three dollar bill.”
Angelus nodded. “I am taking that as a no, and that is not why Adramelech never had sex with you.”
I pulled Angelus to a stop. “How would you know that?” I demanded.
“You have said it yourself; your own master would not touch you,” he reminded me, pulling his arm away from me.
“No,” I hiss and glared at him. “You know something I don’t. I can sense it.”
Angelus cocked an eyebrow. “Are you a fortune teller now? Where is that crystal ball of yours? Maybe it can tell us why this is happening and who is going to try to repossess us next!” he scoffed, and I fought the urge to strike him. “Zion, you are a smart girl. You will figure it out, and when you do, I can only hope that I am not around so I do not have endure yet another of your ridiculous hissy fits of spoiled princess behavior.”
Excuse me? What did this pompous prick just say to me?
“You don’t know anything about me,” I hissed in his face. “When this is over, I never want to see you again.”
“For once we are in agreement on something,” he informed me, and that time the urge to hit him won.
Every time I thought Angelus might be something special or might be worth my effort, he went and did or sai
d something that he knew would piss me off all over again. One minute he was nice and joking—what I had come to believe was Angelus joking, or attempting to anyway—and the next he was purposely saying rude stuff that he knew would piss me off.
Angelus made it so easy for me to hate him, but I just couldn’t do it.
We turned down an alleyway and walked past the line of patrons that had already started to line up outside of Tricky Dick’s in the Garment District on Seventh Avenue.
“Hey Wayland,” I said to the large bouncer.
“Sweetcheeks,” he purred with a smirk. “You’re a little early.”
“Business,” I regrettably informed him. “Is the boss in?”
“When isn’t he?” he groaned, rolling his eyes.
Wayland pulled the door open for us, ignoring the loud complaints from the waiting patrons, and waved us inside.
“Thanks, Sug. Do you have any breath mints?” I asked in passing.
He nodded and handed me a tin of mints.
“Thanks,” I said and caressed his cheek then glared at Angelus, shoving the mints at him. “You stink.”
“Really?” Angelus asked and breathed as heavily into the word as possible.
I nearly threw up.
I ignored the annoyingly rude angel and continued into the dark club, and the door slammed shut behind us.
“Give me your hand,” I said and reluctantly grabbed for it in the darkness, and ended up grabbing something else instead and he jumped. “Sorry,” I didn’t sound apologetic at all, and I got slightly turned on because he was slightly aroused for some reason.
And once again, there was hope for him yet.
“That is believable,” he scoffed and took my hand than squeezed it tighter, but I wasn’t complaining. That strange sense of déjà vu was back, but this time I welcomed it.
“This might be a bit disorientating,” I warned.
Before he could ask, I pulled him through the metal doors in the back of the room. The metal rippled as we passed through it, pulling us from one spectrum to another before finally throwing us into the sub-spectrum of the Norse Gods: Asgard. I pushed through the frosted, back lit, glass doors in front of us and pulled the not-amused-in-the-least angel into the club behind me.
Opaque glass, brushed metal, glossy white and chrome tables, and white leather booths and chairs filled the space. Floor to ceiling glass cylinders of bubbling aqua-tinted water with swimming jötunn females, their naked bodies covered in iridescent and silver scales, long flowing hair floating around them, wrapping around their bodies like loose tendrils climbing up a column, made the club even more surreal. Private leather booths lined the walls, each was filled with laughing and talking patrons. Smaller tables were clustered around the dance floor in the center of the room with standing patrons leaning over them in order to keep conversations going at their table. Cable and glass railings separated the tables from the sunken glass dance floor below that changes color with the music. The dance floor was filled with scandalously dressed couples dancing seductively; practically dry humping the hell out of each other, and the bar was impossible to get to. It was hard to hear anything over the patrons trying to call out drink orders over the loud, sexually charged, techno remake of a rock song that was blaring from every corner of the club.
“Welcome to Valhalla!” I yelled over the music.
Angelus looked at me with a strange expression on his face and it made me smile.
“Try to keep up, and whatever you do, don’t drink the bubbling purple shit!” I warned.
He nodded and held onto my hand even tighter as I pulled him through the crowded club.
Valhalla was on the exclusive sub-spectrum—Asgard—that was reserved for Norwegian Gods, Demigods, Deities, Numens and anything else that you couldn’t battle, and you didn’t want to cross because they got pissed off easily. Honestly, I hated going to the sub-spectrums because I was a total fish out of water, but sometimes it was a nice escape. Loke’s family always treated me as if I was part of the family, that little sister they never wanted, their niece that they found amusement in, an aunty that always was heavily armed. The trips to Asgard were usually a means to vacation and relax, to take a breather from the big city, but that wasn’t the case now. I felt as if everyone was watching us, but that could have been because we were apparently wanted by our own kind.
Then again, it was a strong possibility that Angelus’ paranoia was rubbing off on me. Why was it that I couldn’t get what I wanted of his to rub up on me, but what I couldn’t stand about him was rubbing off?
Yet another thing I couldn’t stand about him.
When we reached the white velvet ropes marking the VIP section, we were stopped.
I raised an eyebrow. “I need to see Loke,” I said.
“He isn’t here,” the burley bouncers responded.
Bullshit, I could hear him giggling over the music.
I licked my thumb and rubbed it against the inside of my left wrist. The burning friction caused a light blue tattoo to rise to the surface then I held it up for them to see my All Access Pass.
“We changed the passcode,” an all too familiar voice teased from behind us.
I turned around and smiled politely. “m'Lord,” I said then curtsied. “Hansel and Gretel here won’t let me play with my best friend. ” I pouted my bottom lip out and ground the toe of my shoe into the floor.
Loki’s slender hand caressed my head, coaxing me to look down at the five and a half foot god. “Well, we can’t be having that, now can we?” he mused, raising an overly sculpted light blond eyebrow. He waved his hand and the guards moved, the velvet rope disappeared, and he wrapped his lanky arm around my waist and escorted me through the VIP section with Angelus in tow.
“You know, Zee,” Loki started in, “I’m a little irritated at you for bringing it to my lovely little boy’s attention that all the gay men in the Big Apple mysteriously vanishing was the doings of his old man.”
I laughed. “Sorry. It wasn’t intentional, m'Lord. I just brought it to his attention that he’s a trickster and there’s only one person that would be powerful enough, which I must say, m'Lord, it was beyond impressive to say the least, to change his perception in both spectrums and on such a grand scale.”
Loki nodded. “Flattery and compliments are always welcomed.”
“Your lovely little boy was commenting that he was going to switch teams since he couldn’t find a piece of ass of the man variety,” I informed him.
He roared with laughter, startling nearly everyone in the VIP section. “Now that I would have liked to have seen,” he said then hugged me tighter against him. “I can only imagine that phone call. ‘Um hey dad, what am I supposed to do with this menacing hairy clam-looking-thingie that smells weird in front of me?’” his Loke impression was surprisingly good.
Angelus snorted from behind us, and I tried to get that mental picture out of my mind.
“Zee, why are you hanging out with angels?” Loki whispered in my ear.
“Long story,” I said, resting my cheek against the top of his head.
Loke smiled when we approached his private lounge, and motioned for everyone to clear out of there. “Zee!” he beamed. “Where have you been? Shacking up with winged pig boy again?” he smirked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I informed him and gave Loki a quick kiss on the top of the head before flopping down next to Loke. Angelus reluctantly sat on the end of the leather sectional, his eyes roaming around the club, studying everyone, committing to memory the layout and where security was, assessing any potential threats.
To my surprise, Loki sat down with us and motioned for drinks, his large, icy blue eyes working over the angel across from him many times. “I am curious,” he started, interrupting Loke, “how is it that you two finally met up?”
“Huh?” I asked.
Angelus glared at him. “Nothing is left to coincidence. Do you know what is going on?” he demanded.
&
nbsp; Loki smiled wide; his perfect white smile reflected the overhead lights, making him appear even less human than he already did. “You have to be more specific, Finder of Lost Souls.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but the look on Angelus’ said that he did.
“Do you know why we are being targeted?” Angelus demanded.
“Yes,” Loki said, continuing to smile, greatly amused at the discomfort he was causing my angel.
“Will you tell us?” I whispered.
“I can’t,” he said then shrugged apologetically.
“Dad, don’t be a dick,” Loke whined. “If this has something to do with Zee, don’t you think she ought to know? Shit, look what happened to those other repo men and that freaky little winged perv they fished out of the East River!”
“Wait, what? Are you talking about Volac?” I demanded.
The look he gave me made it more than obvious that he was.
Loke patted my hand. “After he left here yesterday, he was fished out of the river early this morning. Little jerk took a hell of a beating, straight up mafia style with the cement boots and all. If his ego wasn’t so damn inflated, he would have stayed down there for centuries. Which is strange, I don’t know why he would have come here, especially with his top repo men being mysteriously killed. It seems like he should have been more concerned with trying to keep his numbers up.”
Oh my…holy hell, Volac is dead?
“The parcel?” I whispered, trying to swallow the lump in my throat, and held my hand out.
Loke rolled his eyes then snapped his fingers and the vial appeared in his hand.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” Loki warned, and I looked at him. “If Volac got killed for what is in that dossier, you might be putting yourself in danger.”
“More so than we are already in?” I countered and he gave me that half-ass apologetic shrug of his.
“What’s going on?” Loke demanded.
“I need some pie,” I mumbled, leaning back to study the vial of swirling black and purple liquid.
Loke snapped his fingers and seven pies appeared, covering the table in front of us.
