Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

explain the weird experience and showed him to my door. Again, he promised to keep in touch, but this time he gave me a pointed look that meant that I wouldn’t like the next conversation we had. I smiled as if I had nothing to fear and closed the door behind him.
“Why did you let the detective go? He is going to discover what you are.”
I ground my teeth hard enough to make my jaw ache. That was Bres’ voice coming from the direction of my living room. I didn’t want to look. I wanted to walk out the front door and follow Shaw to his car and beg for his protection from the maniac. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the knowledge that the crazy-assed faerie would only find me; probably in a place and time that was the most inconvenient for me. So I let out a pained sigh and I went into my living room to deal with the creature that tormented me.
“I’m not worried about discovery,” I told Bres as soon as I saw him. The faerie was sitting on my couch and flipping through the porno channels on my satellite subscription. He must have found something he liked; because he stopped on a movie depicting two women doing rather awkward things to a man’s genitalia with their mouths. Indignant, I grimaced at the television then whacked Bres on the top of his head with my hand. He yelped and rubbed the offended spot as he gave me a petulant look. “Turn off the damn television.”
Bres did so with a regretful sigh and tossed the remote aside. “I would think that you would be more grateful considering that my geas made it possible for you to heal your wounds so quickly.”
“Oh yes, I just love how you’ve jerked around with my biology. It’s been a real blast,” I snapped sarcastically. “What do you want?”
“I thought that I have given you a task that you might find difficult to complete without some help.” Bres did that thing where he glided over the floor without putting his weight on it and came to stand close in front of me. Not wanting to be within easy reach of the creature, I took several steps back. He did weird stuff to me when he was too close. Bres cocked his head curiously as if he didn’t understand why I moved.
“This should help you get started.” Bres flourished his hand and one of the pamphlets Charles Abernathy had been handing out appeared. He held it out to me, but I did not move to take it.
“Put it down on the couch,” I told him sternly. “Then get out.”
Bres lifted one brow in an eloquent expression and let the pamphlet drop from his fingers. It fell in a rustle to the floor where both of us stared at it. “Aren’t you going to pick it up?” Bres asked mildly.
“I’ll pick it up when you leave,” I snapped.
Bres laughed, making a low, velvety, musical noise that curled in my ears and made me shiver. It was like really good Blues music, both sad and joyous all in one delicious sound. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Damn right I am,” I admitted. After a couple of thousand years, a person learns that stupid things like honor or dignity are fluid concepts that can be detrimental to one’s quality of life, so don’t judge me. “I learned the first time. There is no way I’m letting you touch me again.”
Suddenly, Bres moved and it was like a wrinkle in time and the world went odd and sideways. My eyes crossed and I became nauseated. When my vision sharpened, Bres was nose to nose with me and grinning like a loon. I backed up against a nearby wall, and Bres put his freakish hands up on either side of my shoulders. He smiled as he leaned his body in, closing the distance between us until only a hair’s breadth of space was left.
“How do you know that you cannot tolerate my touch?” he purred with his lips hovering over mine. I could smell the earthy scent of moss with the sharp bite of fragrant herbs radiating from the heat of his body. It did nothing for the condition of my rebellious belly. “There are maidens who beg for a single moment of my favor. Despite your immortality, I know that there are not many differences between you and them. What makes you think you can resist my charms if I don’t want you to?”
“I gotta throw up,” I moaned. If I had been paying attention, I might have been terrified or even a little turned on. But that quick move trick Bres did had given me a nasty case of vertigo, and all I could think of was my roiling stomach.
Bres pulled back with a fiercely disgruntled expression. “Very well, then. Get to work. There are fairer maidens than you to entertain me.”
What an ass. I would have told him so, but I clapped a hand over my mouth and made a mad dash for the toilet. I emerged many minutes later, sweating and reeking. To my delight, Bres was no longer in my apartment.

Chapter 9

I stopped for dinner before dropping in on the six p.m. service of the Immortal Church of God. I watched the rush hour traffic of one Atlanta’s dozens of Peachtree Streets through the tall restaurant windows as I munched at a club sandwich and fries. I love food in a way that I enjoy little else. I don’t have to worry about high cholesterol, hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes so I am free to eat what I want, when I want. But I can get fat. There have been decades when I grew enormously rotund and had to lose the weight if I wanted to move my arms and legs, but other than that, there isn’t much to deter me from gluttony.
My waiter discreetly refilled my sweet tea and disappeared to tend to other diners and to clear away tables. I took quiet note of this and continued with my solitary meal. After the events of the last two days, I was taking nothing for granted. I was in a state of hyper awareness that I haven’t been forced into since ninety years ago when I was embroiled in the Chicago crime families. I’d been married to a made man then, and he had been an ill-tempered and violent lout. That marriage had been a difficult one that had ended when I shot my husband in his bed after I had finally snapped. The family he had worked for had not taken his demise well, and they had hunted me until I faked my death in a public display of fire and flying car parts.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure wind his way through the rows of tables toward me. I had replaced my usual leather wrapped club for a pair of collapsed spring batons that were easily hidden in my belt. I’m not entirely sure what the concealed carry laws regarding the weapons are, and I don’t care. Most cops don’t consider the weapons as much of a threat, not when they constantly have to deal with gun control. So they don’t notice them unless I give them a reason to. I placed one of the batons next to my plate and eyed Alejandro warily as he slid into the booth across from me. The waiter had noticed his approach and was there to offer service before I could tell Alejandro to go away. He ordered a soda and accepted the menu the waiter offered him, but never opened it. Instead, Alejandro set it down on the table in front of him and folded his hands on top of it.
“What now?” I demanded with open hostility.
“Nothing. I’m back on your shadow detail.” The bruises and swelling on his face had faded a great deal so that I could make out the pure ethnicity of his Hispanic features. It was a good face, with high cheekbones and broad nose over a full mouth and thin, black moustache. If I didn’t know who he was, I would have believed the well-meaning, amiable façade he was projecting at me as hard as he could.
“Then go back to the shadows and leave me the hell alone.” I fingered the baton next to my plate as a subtle hint that I could get violent if he didn’t do what I wanted. Alejandro pretended not to notice as the waiter returned with a soda and left.
“The Great Bard wants to know if you have given any thought to his proposal.” He said plainly.
“I’m not joining the Children of Orpheus,” I snapped.
“Don’t you understand what we’re offering you?” he asked, lowering his voice and leaning forward so that none of the nearby diners could hear us. “You would be surrounded by people who know what you are and wouldn’t hound you for it. The Children can protect you from zealots and super naturals in ways the police can’t. Think of what you could do with the peace and shelter we would give you. With our resources and your immortality, you could make significant changes for the better. How can you refuse that?”
“Look, I’ve been around for a very long time,” I retorted into Alejandro’s earnest face. “And if I wanted to make significant changes, I would have done it by now. I do not need or want anything the Children of Orpheus has to offer. Accepting it would be submitting to slavery. If you were very smart, you would quit the Children and find a life of your own. Whatever the Children are up to isn’t good for anyone.”
“You’ve allowed us to follow you around for more than a thousand years,” Alejandro snapped back. “You know us as well as we know you. Have you ever seen us do anything that was evil?”
I couldn’t answer that. I’d ignored the Children of Orpheus as much as possible. They were a fun distraction when I wanted it, but otherwise they are one more piece of background. If they ever did anything other than watch me, then I didn’t know it. I hadn’t wanted to know. With knowledge came responsibility, and I worked hard to beholden to no one. Forever is a long time to be responsible for large groups of people I barely knew and liked even less.
Alejandro took my silence as an admission of defeat and he leaned back in his seat with a smug smile. My sandwich sat half-eaten and cold on my plate. I had lost my appetite during the conversation. I checked my watch and decided that it was just as well. The evening service at the church was looming, and I had to go if I wanted to make it. Fuming, I called the waiter to retrieve my bill.
“Do you know that the men from the Cellar are following you?” Alejandro asked as I signed the credit card receipt and handed it back to the waiter who stared at me in alarm.
“Figures,” I muttered. I supposed Bres didn’t trust the geas