Divine Fraud

by Thomas Green

  One more thing. I examined the man’s right arm. Steel shone from beneath the torn sleeve. Perfect. I reached into my pocket and withdrew two GPS trackers. I hid one into the folds of steel of his arm and the other into the steel joint that was his left knee.

  If my calculation was correct, the man with misty gray aether would come rescue him. And even if they were to find my trackers, they would do that after they would reach their base.

  I frowned. His leg was a mess, but he could still use magic. Were we to meet again, he would try to kill me once more. I hauled myself to my feet, grabbed my gun and aimed at his left shoulder. All of the man’s spells started with him clapping his hands together. I shot his shoulder. Blood splattered on the floor as the .44 caliber bullet tore apart the joint. Not pretty, but I had to make sure he wouldn’t be capable of fighting me the next time we met.

  Blood kept pouring down from my shoulder and with it, my precious aether. The cut went deep. The cheering from above refocused my attention. Katherine needed help, now. I stumbled back to the door and ascended the stairs.

  I followed the sounds and soon opened the door into the living room.

  Katherine stood by the far end, her back braced against the wall with green flame forming a globe around her. A crossbow bolt was stuck into her side and blood already formed a pool under her. Across the room were four men. One held a crossbow, one had an assault rifle, and two, one of whom was Mohawk, held two bound girls. The men held knives by the girl’s throats and judging by the cuts on the girl’s bodies, they already used them.

  They must have had two of the slaves upstairs for fun when Katherine charged in. They used the threat of killing hostages to stop her. This worked, because she expected me to come help her. But I haven’t come fast enough, so they had enough time to get through her defense. Rage seared through me.

  I clapped my hands, concentrated my aether and slapped the wall. With my aether filling the wall, I made the ceiling collapse.

  Concrete blocks from the ceiling fell on the four men and the two women.

  The impact shattered furniture and crushed them into the floor. They fell to the ground. I limped forward, glancing at Katherine. She lowered her shield and dropped to the ground.

  Five out of the six people lay limp, hopefully unconscious, but one man started rising to his feet. His hair was gelled backward and shaved at the sides of his head. He wore the same collection of chains as the others but was a lot bulkier. He was roughly thirty, shaved and his body was full of yellow aether. This was the man who held the crossbow, so he could use aether well-enough to harm Katherine. From behind his belt, he drew a knife and stepped toward me, his eyes cold and jaw clenched.

  Oh, how I wanted to blow off his head. I controlled myself, clenched my thigh, drew my gun, and shot at his legs. One, two. In a yellow blur, he slid sideways and stabbed. I ducked under the strike, let go of my gun, clapped my hands, and then pushed my aether into the floor. The wooden tiles shot up from beneath the man’s feet.

  His balance slipped. I bolted forward, grabbed his nape with my hands and sent my knee toward his face. Bones crunched upon impact. I shattered his jaw and teeth flew out. I hit him once more and then let his unconscious body fall to the ground.

  I looked at Katherine. There was no need to ask if she was all right. She wasn’t. Pale, breathing shallowly and with a crossbow bolt in her side, she looked ready to die. Panic flooded my veins. And so did darkness.

  Lucifer entered my mind. ‘Get me a look at the wound.’

  I had no energy left to fight him. Tenderly, I helped Katherine lie straight on the ground. With trembling hands, I moved the clothes from around the crossbow bolt. It hit the side of her abdomen, pierced the skin and created a wide laceration. While the bolt made it through, its tip stopped in her coat.

  No major organ was hit, but there was a pool of blood under her already and the cut was too wide to seal itself by clogging.

  ‘Get me a needle and a string.’

  I scanned the room. Heavens smiled upon us and I glimpsed a broken sewing machine among the shattered furniture. The previous owners must have left it there and the new ones hadn’t bothered throwing it out.

  I rummaged through the rubble and found a needle and a spool of thread.

  Katherine was staring at me with wide eyes as I returned to her. “What are you… doing?”

  I focused my thoughts on Lucifer. Well?

  ‘Let me take over. I will help her.’

  A single look at the bleeding Katherine made me not care about whether he was lying. It was worth a shot. I opened my mind, imagining I was opening the door, and the cold darkness of Lucifer filled my every inch. Katherine nearly stopped breathing as she stared at me. My eyes have turned black, haven’t they?

  I ducked above her. “I will now remove the bolt and sew your wound. It won’t be a permanent solution, but it will stop the bleeding.” I didn’t believe my own words.

  “When did you… learn that?” she asked, her voice breaking. She could barely speak.

  “To be a fallen angel, one must first become an angel. And to do that, one must be ascended. I earned my wings when I served as a battlefield medic under Marcus Aurelius himself.” This was the strangest thing I have ever said. Lucifer didn’t take me over, he merged with me. I pronounced every word, felt every heartbeat, and intuitively, I knew what I was saying. “Do you have a rosary?”

  “Just the… necklace.”

  With a careful but swift move, I removed her necklace from her neck, a steel chain with a silver cross pendant. I cleaned off the blood with my shirt, wrapped it around my left wrist and my hands steadied. To put the thread through the eye of the needle felt like the easiest move in the world. With a swift jerk, I pulled out the crossbow bolt. Blood poured out of the wound. I had no idea how to sew a wound. But Lucifer knew, and so did my sub-consciousness. My hands moved by themselves, fast and steady.

  And in this case, it was full-on-magic, done-this-a-thousand-times fast. I sewed the wound within five seconds.

  Katherine stared at me with her mouth gaping. “H… how?”

  “I was the first man ever to receive an angel’s blessing. One doesn’t become the first by being the second best.” I placed my hand on her chest and pushed my aether into her body. It wouldn’t heal her, but it would definitely postpone her death. Aether also worked as one of the two essences of life, so for as long as the body had aether, the soul wouldn’t leave.

  I blinked and the cold feeling of power left me. I shook my head, feeling Lucifer’s presence withdrawing from my mind.

  ‘Get yourself a sword,’ he said into my mind before his presence was gone. The reinforcements Katherine called before she charged arrived in twenty minutes, including a pair of ambulances.

  Chapter 5

  I SAT INSIDE AN AMBULANCE, my shoulder wrapped while a transfusion poured blood into my vein. Katherine sat next to me, a second blood bag already dripping into her. From what the NYPD lieutenant told us, they arrested eleven men, five of whom Katherine must had knocked out before they cornered her and rescued twenty-one girls held as slaves. The police said they never had a case like this, and it seemed the gang had been operating for at most a few months.

  The void the nightmare plague left behind has apparently filled with all kinds of people.

  When they left us alone in the ambulance, Katherine gave me a genuine smile. She hasn’t done that in over a year and I wished she would do it more often. “Thanks… I’m actually not sure what to say.”

  I kept staring at the cross necklace tied around my left wrist. I found no words.

  “You can keep that,” Katherine said.

  “Thanks.” I sighed. “Things weren’t supposed to go like this.”

  She kept her smile. “Yeah, and I’m sure you aren’t going to tell me who roughed you up.”

  No, of course not. The reason Katherine almost died was that I fell for the distraction and called her. Most likely, the man with gray aether notice
d I was following his trail and led me to the sex trafficking gang. When I bit the bait, I unknowingly moved into a position where they could try to assassinate me.

  But only one attacker came, so the gray-aethered man must have seen himself as too important to risk in the fight.

  “Why did he help me?” Katherine asked, changing the topic. “I never thought a fallen angel would want to help anyone.”

  “That an angel falls doesn’t mean they do all the sins all the time.” I conjured a smile. “Some do, of course, but most have only one favorite sin that caused their fall. Lucifer’s sin is murder.” And adultery, but she could live without knowing that.

  We exchanged some more chit-chat and I called myself a cab to take me to my car. I spent the time wondering what it would be like if I laid down my private investigator hat and became a full-time detective of the Church. Katherine would’ve helped me do that and I could survive on the lower wage. But somehow, I knew it wouldn’t work. I have sunk too deep into the dirt of Secret Societies to ever have an honest job.

  My car awaited me near the abbey in Queens. The moon was already dropping from the sky and hell, I had enough of everything. I couldn’t figure out what hurt worse – the shoulder, the ribs, or the feeling of guilt. I dragged Katherine into that villa and wasn’t nearly ready to forgive myself.

  When I put my keys into the door to open the car—yes, it was that old—I heard steps behind me. I filled my body with aether, forming the most impregnable, defensive pattern I knew, and turned, eyeing the man who was approaching me.

  He was tall like me, had a shortly trimmed beard and neatly cut, brown hair. He wore a black suit, white shirt, a black tie, and had a loose coat over it all. His look was that of a man who put effort into looking good.

  I fuelled my eyes with aether and saw his body was full of dark blue aether, all arranged into a defensive pattern.

  “Mr. Johnson, I suppose,” he said in a conversational tone, but his eyes were cold and analytical.

  “Perhaps. Who might you be?”

  “Agent Miller of the FBSI.” He moved the coat to show me the badge hanging on his belt. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Was this about the agents who kind-of-kidnapped me earlier? That would be uncharacteristically fast. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything that could help you.”

  “I think you do.” He put on a professional smile. “Last year, there was an outbreak of nightmares that killed thousands of people. The word has it you were involved.”

  Oh, I was involved… I ended the nightmare plague. But that obviously wasn’t the part he was interested in. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything aside from what I’ve seen in the news.”

  “Are you certain? Because the Dewin Institute has you listed as the man who solved the nightmares by finding the device that caused them.”

  Unlike the previous agents, this man had done his homework. And I needed to have a word with Galen, because that was supposed to be a secret. “Why are you questioning me, then?”

  “I couldn’t see the creator of the device named anywhere, so I was wondering if you might know something that isn’t in the reports.”

  The emotionless face he kept wearing was starting to make me sweat. People usually weren’t this difficult to read. “You’re lying to me, Agent. You must have heard the perpetrator was a Hindu sect, who was arrested by the Church.”

  “True, I did.” He stretched his neck, his joints popping. “But that doesn’t fit. Their leader was a successful doctor, a cancer treatment specialist, who had zero motivation for causing the nightmare plague. And, what a coincidence, your sister was treated at his facility. Makes him look like a scapegoat, doesn’t it?”

  My look turned into a murderous glare. Since then my sister has been taken in by the Devil herself, so she was safe. But that didn’t make me any less angry. “Be careful where you tread, Agent,” I whispered.

  “Was that a threat?”

  “No, of course not.” I stepped to him, my face three inches away from his. “I couldn’t help but remember all FBSI agents in a hundred miles radius died during the plague. How many was it? Two hundred? Perhaps three. Your profession seems to have a terribly low survival rate in these lands.”

  His gaze dropped and face slackened. “I know… my son was among those agents.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “In case you remember something, give me a call.”

  I took the card from him, still glaring. He turned and started walking away. No matter how much I looked, I didn’t see any other FBSI agents. Was he acting alone, going against orders to make peace with the death of his son? Possibly.

  I sighed, my heart dropping into my stomach. The most likely scenario was that Vivian murdered his son as a part of the cover up of Lucielle’s activities. But to tell him about Vivian would be equal to killing him. The former vampire queen wasn’t someone he had any hope of arresting. I pocketed the card and got into my car. I was too tired to deal with this now.

  When he left, I drew my phone and went to my sister’s Facebook page. Three new pictures from today, the first one a picture of a white-sand beach from Shirahama, Japan. The second picture was my sister and Lucielle lying under an umbrella. The third one was my sister dressed in a samurai outfit, holding a wooden sword, standing in a dojo in front of a similarly dressed man. Okay, she was on a vacation with the Devil and thus safe. Good.

  On the way home, I stopped at a gas station to buy a carton of cigarettes and a box of candy bars. My home was a two-room apartment on Bleecker St. in Lower Manhattan. The address was expensive, but I was too used to it to move. I parked on the street and headed for the front door.

  I started to enter the house when I heard Vivian’s heels clicking behind me.

  Why was it so difficult to go home and sleep? Couldn’t the world let me be for today? I turned with a sour smile.

  She wore the usual black dress and an overabundance of jewelry. Her blue eyes shone in the night as she smiled. “My, my… you look like you’ve actually been working.”

  “Yes, I have and no, I don’t have the statuette yet.” I was too tired for games or long discussions.

  She narrowed her eyes. “But you still remembered to buy treats for your pet.”

  ‘For once, I agree with her,’ Lucifer spoke in my mind.

  How about both of you fuck off? I turned with an exasperated sigh. As I opened the door, Vivian’s blazing arms slipped above my shoulders and she leapt onto my back. “Oh, come on, I’m just toying with you.”

  I glowered at her. “You got your report. Is there anything else I can do for you?” I regretted that phrasing the second it left my mouth.

  She grinned, baring her teeth. “Oh, there are so many things you can do for me.” She softly sucked in the skin on my throat, giving me a love-bite. “But you seem to be too beaten up for that. So, we will get back to your question tomorrow.” She pecked me a kiss on the cheek and then paused. “Actually, I can kiss it better.”

  She slid around me like an anaconda, pushing her tongue into my mouth and her aether into my body.

  Not a chance. I forced out her aether with a strong push of my power, grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her off. She tried to hold onto my neck, but I was too tired for this game and much stronger physically. She still scratched me though. I put her on the ground. “Tomorrow.”

  She shuddered and smirked. “Yes, tomorrow.” She slid from my grasp and swayed her hips as she walked to her Ferrari. Hell, I was so tired I didn’t notice Vivian’s car parked in front of my house.

  I watched her drive away and decided not to think about how I would deal with her tomorrow. I mean, I invited her to find the most creative and abusive way to make me entertain her. The stairs leading up to my apartment felt eternal. But the idea of using the elevator came only when I stood in front of the door. Even through its steel plates, I could hear the music from the inside.

  With a smile, I opened the door and entered my apartment. He
at, the scent of cinnamon, and deafening music hit me. Beyond a short hallway, the main room featured a red-brown carpet, a messy kitchen, a gaming table with three monitors, a hi-fi tower next to a large TV with a circle of wooden tiles in front of it, and my table, pushed back into the corner with a turned off laptop. Scattered across the room were about a hundred different crosses, all blessed from the nearby church. They wouldn’t stop Vivian from entering, but they would make her stay unpleasant enough not to linger.

  The TV was playing some advanced dancing tutorial and on the wooden tiles danced Evelyn. Her crimson hair bobbed in an elaborate haircut while she kept contorting her slender body, following the instructions. Her two pet cobras coiled in the carpet behind the dance floor, their bodies postured up and heads bobbing to the music. Evelyn had thin, black and white bracelets above wrists, ankles, and a same-style collar at the base of her neck. She wore a cropped top, dancing pumps and red panties. Yeah, she didn’t dress much at home. She hasn’t noticed me come in, as always. Her body, sculpted by dancing many hours every day, made me stare like an idiot.

  Evelyn and I have been living together for about a year. After she was kicked out by her mother, I offered to let her live here until she got on her feet. The provisory stay has turned into a permanent one, mostly because the billionaire’s daughter found the idea of working for her own money laughable. I mean, when would she have the time for that between dancing and gaming?

  But I liked having her around. Without Evelyn, the apartment was merely a place I lived in. She made it a home. And who would spend all the money I earned? I was sure each individual piece of her clothing cost more than everything I was wearing.

  Yeah, I had a life goals issue. I spent years focusing on helping my sister, who had a lymphatic cancer. Now, my sister was cured, living happily with Lucielle and I became the host of a fallen angel. Suddenly, the future emptied. And making Evelyn’s life better somehow filled that emptiness.