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

stupid. The urge to yell at the perfectly nice man so that he wouldn’t like me quite so much was nearly overwhelming. My reasoning went over his head as he traced his fingertips along the curve of my cheek down to the line of my jaw. With a finger under my chin he gently tilted my face up to him so that our mouths were almost touching.
Our breaths mingled while the practical part of my brain insisted that I was behaving like a lunatic. At best, Shaw would manage to live for another sixty years before he dropped dead of old age and broke my heart. The lonely romantic in me delighted in the thrill of the moment and begged to go along so that she wouldn’t be alone anymore and the consequences be damned. It has been so long since the last time I felt this way, and my need for it haunted me the way an addict craved heroine. Maybe this time I would find the strength to endure while my love wasted away into old age and moved to the afterlife. I threw caution to the wind and closed the distance between us to feel the velvety caress of his mouth.
The sharp knock at the door brought a frustrated growl from Shaw. I sighed in disappointment and glared at Mabel Fortuno as she stepped into the room. She giggled at catching us in an embrace and closed the door behind her with a soft click.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I found something of yours and I thought you would like to have it back.” Mabel held out the bronze medallion in her fingers.
“Thanks.” I snatched it from her and stuffed it into my pocket. “Is there anything else?”
Mabel glanced around nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot. “There’s a woman called Mab here to see you.”
Shaw let out a curse while I groaned in dismay and fell back onto the bed. Mab is one of the most famous and enduring figures of the Seelie Court and a particularly nasty one at that. As a member of the Morrigan Mob, Mab had once been the preferred deity of beefy Celtic warriors as the goddess who held domain over sex, death, and booze. A wild party girl, Mab liked to hold festivals that encouraged large, muscled men to drink themselves retarded and then battle each other to the death in hopes of claiming a place in her bed. As the years rolled by, Christianity demoted her from goddess to faerie and now she was nothing more than a vindictive slut with a whole lot of mojo.
“What does she want?” Shaw asked resentfully.
“She didn’t say. Mab is very adamant about talking to you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her to piss off, but the air was suddenly charged as if lightning had struck and I sat up in time to see a delicate redhead flounce into the room. Like all faerie she was a lovely thing, with large blue eyes and long curly hair that had streaks of black mixed with the red. Her clothing held to the emo-goth style Morrigan and Far Dorocha favored, but with a slutty twist all her own. Her black, low-rider jeans were so low that I could almost make out her pelvis bone, and her black string bikini top did very little to contain her enormous breasts.
She glared viciously at Mabel as she posed on high, six inch stripper heels. “You’re done, now get out,” she snarled at the girl in a rolling Irish accent. “I’ll know it if you tell anyone that I’m here. Then I’ll see to it that your pretty face gets some very ugly scars.”
Mabel paled and squeaked in terror as she fled from the room. Mab turned her cold eyes on me then let out an exaggerated sigh that made her impressive boobs heave.
“Oh good, you’re already dressed. Get up and let’s go.” Mab pointed at the door impatiently. We gave her blank stares and stayed put. Her harsh black and red make-up was made fiercer by the scowl contorting her pretty face. “Are you deaf? Get your asses moving!”
Shaw and I exchanged a look. “Where are we going?” he asked innocently.
“I’ve got work for you to do and time is wasting,” was all she would say.
“Does Bridget know that you’re trying to make off with her property?” I asked. I figured that if Morrigan had backed off of Shaw on Bridget’s say so, then maybe Mab would do the same at the mere threat. I was wrong.
“I don’t give two shits what Bridget knows,” Mab bellowed. “Now get out of the door before I burn you to a blackened crisp!”
To prove that she meant what she said, Mab’s hands burst into flames as she reached for me. I watched her come, thinking that I had three choices. I could scream for help and end up in the Conservatoris’ “protective custody” for the rest of their lives. I could fight Mab off and get incinerated for my trouble, or I could do what I was told and maybe get my life back when it was over. Guess which choice I made.
“Calm down, I’m coming.” I exclaimed as I danced out of her reach.
Mab’s mood flipped from pissy to pleased in the blink of an eye. She gave me a brilliant smile that made her face glorious and would have melted me down to my toes if I was inclined toward women. She turned that glory on Shaw and expected him to fold under the weight of it. He sat in stunned disbelief for a heartbeat and shook his head in resignation. Then he stood up and followed us out of the door.
The safe house was buzzing with excited Children of Orpheus and lurking Conservatoris, making it difficult for us to get out without being noticed. At first Mab ignored the conversations coming from the floor below us while she searched for a way out. Then a slice of a frantically spoken sentence caught her attention and froze her in place.
“Stay here, I’ll be back in a minute,” she said. Before our eyes, Mab’s beauty melted away and she became a sullen faced girl with a dumpy figure and small breasts. She used the cloying shadows of the hall to weave herself a shirt that she pulled over her head. Mab sauntered off, leaving me and Shaw staring after her in wide-eyed astonishment.
“Did you know that faeries could do that?” I asked softly.
“I knew about the shape shifting, but I had no idea that they could make clothes from shadows,” he replied. His expression turned from surprise to curiosity as he turned to me. “What made you decide to go with what Mab wanted to do?”
“It seemed like the best option available.” I shrugged. “What about you?”
“I didn’t want to get my ass kicked by a faerie woman half my size. My ego can’t handle it today.” He frowned and rubbed the bandage on his arm like it itched.
I listened to the commotion downstairs, straining my ears to catch some hint of what was going on. The excited buzz had died down into a frightened murmur, and then came an anguished cry. I heard Howard Steven’s voice speak urgently, but the house’s odd acoustics made a jumble of his words.
“We have to leave.” Mab materialized out of the shadows like she was born from them. “Trouble has come here, and it’ll get worse before it is better.”
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing that the Children can’t handle on their own. They always manage something. Come along.”
Mab opened the first door she came to, revealing a linen closet. As closets go, it was huge and it seemed to hold all the bedding and table clothes the Children of Orpheus would ever need. There was a bare wall at the back where Mab drew a seven pointed star and with a double circle around it. She tapped the center with a cherry red fingernail, and the whole thing glowed a shimmering blue.
“Go on now.” Mab told us with a look that she wouldn’t tolerate any hesitation from either of us. I was tempted to defy her to see what she would do, but quickly changed my mind. Mab has a very nasty reputation and I didn’t really didn’t want to know how much of it was true. I gave a nonchalant shrug, took a deep breath, and walked through the wall. I heard a mighty roar as wind rushed past my ears, and then all went dark.


Chapter 24

The first thing I did when the world felt solid again was to count my fingers and toes and make sure I could feel them all. I always wonder at my natural tendency to be sure of all of my digits first, as if my fingers and toes were the most important thing in the world, and everything else in between was just gravy. I let out a sigh of relief when everything was as it should be and waited a few more seconds for the ringing in my ears to stop before opening my eyes. Wishing I hadn’t done that I snapped them closed again, but it was too late. I’d already caught enough of a glimpse of the spinning sky to send my stomach rolling and cramping.
Shaw was retching painfully into the grass somewhere nearby. I lay as still as I could manage, waiting for him to finish and for my nausea to pass.
“Get up, we’ve got to go now,” Mab insisted, nudging my ribs with the toe of her stripper heels.
“Give me a minute to get my act together,” Shaw moaned pitifully. “I feel like someone pulled my guts out of my mouth.”
“Walk it off, you’ll feel better,” she snapped and jabbed me harder with her foot. “Quit pretending to be dead. We all know better.”
I opened one eye and glared bitterly at her with it. “I hate you so much.”
“Bully for you. Now get up, King Finvarra wants a word.”
I rolled onto my hands and knees where I endured wave after wave of dry heaves. Shaw was right; it did feel like someone was yanking my insides out. After a few minutes, I was able to straighten up and look around. I found that I was in an open field full of tall grass and big chunks of junk. The sun was taking its first steps westward and gave off enough light to hint at the wet heat that would come when summer set in.
Several yards away was a shabby trailer park of the type commonly associated with white trash and illegal aliens. Most of the mobile homes were old and dirty with patches of rust dotting each one. Most of the hard packed red clay was covered in a thin layer of rust colored gravel. A few lots boasted a tiny patch of weeds large enough to be called a yard, and two residents managed to coax small, colorful flowers out of the packed earth.
“I wouldn’t have