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

his seat and then slapped him. “You behave yourself now,” he said firmly as if he was speaking to an unruly child. Shaw glared hatred at the man and spat at his feet. Baja slapped him again, hard enough to leave him reeling. Oh my, this wasn’t going to go well for him at all.
Baja paused next to the couch Kootch had collapsed in and persuaded him to get up and then badgered him out of the door and left us alone. As soon as the door shut, Shaw began to struggle, fighting to break the strips of plastic holding his arms together. I let him go on like this for several minutes until he wore himself out and sat panting and fuming in his chair.
“You finished wasting your energy?” I asked. “Or do you want to spend more time trying to hurt yourself in an act of futility?”
Shaw looked at me like I had appeared out of the thin air, and his expression darkened until he realized that I was just as tied up as he was. He let out a frustrated sigh and stomped his feet on the floor. “What is going on?” he all but screamed from between his clenched teeth.
“I might know why I’m here, but I have no idea why they grabbed you,” I said. “Did they say anything to you?”
“No, they jumped on me the moment I got home and hauled me off.” Shaw shook his head in disgust. “The men are the same ones you identified as your abductors. Is that why I’m here? Because I’m the cop working your case?”
It seemed possible, but unlikely. Yes, Shaw was getting ready to arrest Bres’ favorite thugs and he probably had all the evidence he needed to put them away for a long time. But thugs and lackeys are easy to come by, and as far as I had seen, Baja and Kootch were not remarkable in any way. Those two are not worth the kind of heat that would come down by kidnapping a cop.
“Are you okay?” Shaw asked after I didn’t answer the question. “Did they hurt you again?”
“I’m okay,” I answered. “I was just slapped around a bit. Nothing you haven’t been through too.”
“Did they get you in your home again?”
“No, they were waiting for me in the parking lot. How’d they get you?”
“I was waiting on the front porch for my ex to drop off my kids for the weekend. They stuck a gun in my ribs and tied me up.” Shaw was really looking around now, examining every detail of the room. I could see his mind rolling around in his skull, working to find some way out of this mess.
“Did they throw you into the trunk?” I asked, thinking about some of the smells I had endured.
“No, I got the back seat. I take it that they weren’t so friendly with you,” he replied.
“I stabbed Kootch again. It pissed him off.” I shrugged, feeling a little jealous. Nothing like knowing for a fact that you weren’t your kidnappers’ favorite hostage.
Shaw stopped his search to give me a wry smile. “You’ve nailed him twice now, haven’t you?” He laughed. “Dumb assed redneck, you’d think he’d learn.”
“You’d think,” I said dryly. “But then a learning disability kinda comes with the white and trashy DNA.”
“Did they tell you what they wanted this time? Or are you going to lie to me again?”
“I didn’t lie to you,” I protested. Nope, I had simply left out a few details. Some people, especially bitter old shrews, will call that lying through omission but they’re wrong. Technically, it’s concealment. See, not the same thing at all.
“You didn’t tell me everything.” Shaw made a face to show me what he thought of that. It wasn’t a pretty face. “So why don’t you tell me now? Maybe then I’ll understand why my children are standing on my porch wondering why their Dad doesn’t open the door for them.”
Bringing up the kids was a cheap shot, and I glared at him for it. If there was one group I have a soft spot for, its children. Much to my great disappointment, I have never been able to conceive a child of my own, though the gods know I have tried with great fervor. I’m a sucker for their chubby cheeks and sticky faces and the wide eyed innocence that colors everything they do. When a small child feels joy, it is utterly profound for them because they have nothing better to compare it to and that joy is shared. When they feel pain, they are truly experiencing the worst thing in their short lives, and so the anguish is truly awful. I love them, and I have adopted or fostered hundreds of them. It grated on my nerves to think that two such creatures were feeling abandonment for something I had a part in.
Suddenly, Bres made a flamboyant entrance flinging the door open wide and, I kid you not, posed in the doorway like it was a frame built specifically to showcase his beauty. After he was sure we had seen and admired him, he came prancing in and flopped gracefully onto a lounging couch that seemed designed exactly for that purpose. I breathed a little sigh of relief. Happy people don’t usually kill or mutilate. We might still get out of this relatively healthy.
“Why didn’t you kill Ryerson when you had the chance?” Bres asked flatly. His big green eyes glittered feverishly, contradicting the pretty smile on his face. Alright, so he might kill or maim after all. I felt Shaw’s eyes like a slap on my cheek as his jaw dropped and hit the floor from Bres’ casual admission. There was nothing to do about that, so I kept going like Shaw wasn’t there.
“You didn’t tell me he was demonic,” I shot back.
“Killing is killing,” he scoffed with a dismissive flourish of long fingers. “If you poke enough holes in anything, it will eventually die.”
“No, there are things you can cut into little pieces that still come back to get you,” I retorted. I had never encountered any of these things personally, but I heard the stories like everyone else. With a faerie sitting in front of me, I had to consider the idea that those stories might be true too.
“Things like you?” he sneered.
I wasn’t going to acknowledge that comment with a mortal in the room. With any luck, he’ll miss it in the flurry of confession to several crimes, or better yet, he won’t believe it. “You should have told me the man wasn’t human. It makes a difference in the approach.”
“Have you ever killed a demon?” Bres asked. That ass hat knew that I never had. Hell, I didn’t believe the things existed until I encountered Ryerson.
“No.” I sighed.
“I have.” He leaned forward and pressed a finger to his chest for emphasis. “I can tell you that a demon can be killed in the same manner as a mortal. You aren’t trying hard enough.”
“Great. You can do it then.” I sat back in my chair and glared at the man in open disgust. It wasn’t an easy thing to do with my hands tied behind my back.
“I’ve had enough of you for the moment,” he snapped and turned his attention to Shaw. “You present quite an unusual problem for me.” He told him.
A lot of people would have whined and begged when confronted with a foreboding statement like that. People like Bres had a way of dealing with unusual problems that often left bodies on the ground. Shaw didn’t beg for his life or drop subtle hints about how much his children needed him. He remained silent with his eyes on the floor. I think he’d already accepted that he was going to be killed, and he was going to meet that fate with as much dignity as he could. He was stoic and I liked him better for it. I saw curiosity burning in Bres’ eyes as he waited for Shaw to do something to surprise him.
“Who has put their mark on you?” Bres asked. He flicked those long fingers and Baja came forward with a switch blade. He made sure that Shaw saw him loosen his gun at his hip, a silent warning to keep the other man behaving, and he cut Shaw’s bonds with a sharp jerk. Shaw rubbed at his wrists and rotated sore shoulders and glared defiance. Then he went back to staring at his knees and keeping his mouth shut. Bres slapped the arm of the chair to get Shaw’s attention.
There was confusion mixed with the anger in Shaw’s eyes. He didn’t know what Bres was asking him, and he didn’t know what would set Bres off. That made two of us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said softly.
In a huff, Bres jumped to his feet and snatched Shaw’s wrist and stretched his arm out. A bandage was wrapped tightly around the limb from elbow to wrist that Baja sliced delicately away with his little knife. Underneath was a vibrant tattoo of a fairy star in an energetic blue with the Celtic representations of the seasons and the earth woven in green and gold throughout. At each of the seven points of the star were runes for the seven most powerful healing herbs known by the Celts, and within the seven arms of the star were runes representing the metals and elements that ruled the plants. The whole thing would have been beautiful, except for a series of welts and blisters bubbled the glory of the art.
“This is a mark of favor among us,” Bres told him. “Someone has claimed you. Who was it?”
Shaw looked at Bres like he was insane. Bres is, but not in the way Shaw understood it. “No one. I got this in college.”
“Do not play the ignorant fool with me; no one can have ink like this engraved in their skin without knowing who or why. Give me the name of the one who claimed you!”
There was nothing he could say that would not piss off Bres, so he pressed his lips tightly together and refused to say another damn thing. With an effort that was painful to watch, Bres managed to calm the rage that was contorting his features and plastered the smile back onto his face. “Please, tell me the story of how you got the tattoo.”
“I met a girl,” he replied as if that explained everything.
“And?” Bres pressed impatiently. “Was she an extraordinary beauty? What did she look like?”
“She had red hair, green eyes, and freckles. She was just a beautiful girl who was into paganism. I don’t think there was anything special about her beyond that.” Shaw was thinking hard, trying to figure out where Bres was going with this and whether or not he was endangering an innocent person.
“That