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

against my head and tried to process what had happened. To my knowledge, a geas is a kind of magical binding, compelling the person under its control to do exactly as they promised. In the old days, no magic was required to make someone hold to his word. The old codes of honor and valor kept most people in line, but there have always been tales of magic being applied to some unsuspecting mortal, forcing them to commit acts they wouldn’t otherwise do. I had blown off those stories as cautionary tales designed to make a person stop and think before they promised something they couldn’t deliver. Now I’m not so sure of that opinion.
Bres leaned against a corner of his desk and gave me a smug grin as he watched me try to suppress my agony. Then he twisted in place and touched something on his desk and spoke. “Please have Baja come in and escort Miss Calden out. Make sure a cab is waiting for her.” He released the button before there was a reply. “You may go now.”
Baja showed up a few seconds later and hauled me off of the floor by the collar of my shirt. He kept one heavy hand on my shoulder and escorted me outside to a waiting taxi. He paid the driver to take me home, and he walked away. He had not spoken to me the entire time, not that I was in the mood for chitchat. My eyes were still heavily tearing so that I was all but blind, and my head throbbed so that I was not inclined to talk. I ended up sitting in the back of a cab that smelled thick of tacos and curry, and waited for the pain to stop.
The cabby dropped me off at home with an offer to take me to the hospital instead. I refused and began the long, painful walk up to my apartment. My neighbors were crowding the hallways with eyes a little too wide and making fearful whispers as they hunched together in little clumps. They fell silent and gawked at me as if I was returning from the dead as I slowly appeared on the landing. Mrs. Atwater, my neighbor across the hall, broke from the herd near her door. She was a middle-aged woman with bleach-blonde hair and a brand new facelift that made her look like she was perpetually caught in a wind tunnel. She was immaculately dressed with a thick layer of careful make-up painted on her skin. She flapped her hands frantically as she hurried toward me with an expression of intense relief on her face.
“Miss Rebecca!” she exclaimed, engulfing me in her arms and the heavy scent of her sickly sweet perfume. “Bless your heart, we thought the worst! What happened to you?” She had taken my face in her manicured hands and touched my bruises. I flinched and pulled away and continued to my apartment. All I wanted to do was overdose on pain relievers, take a hot bath, and then get some sleep. Mrs. Atwater kept up with me, continuing her diatribe of concern driven by her need for juicy gossip.
“Everything is fine,” I told her. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
“That was quite a misunderstanding! I heard gunshots and the police are saying that you were kidnapped! You need to go right on in there and tell them what happened to you.” Mrs. Atwater seemed to think I was a lost soul who needed a mommy and she was bound and determined to fill that role for me. I wished she would go have a tawdry affair and leave me alone.
“There are still cops in my apartment?” I asked. That was weird. I could have sworn I’d been gone for the better part of the day at least, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been much longer. “What time is it?”
“It’s noon. Oh bless your heart, do you need a doctor?” Again, Mrs. Atwater had to touch my swollen face. I think she was trying to hurt me. I scowled at her and pushed her away. She didn’t take offense to it. If anything, it worried her more. She turned to the group watching us a few feet away. “Ed, go call for the paramedics.”
“Don’t bother Ed,” I called to the aging man moving toward Mrs. Atwater’s door. “I’m fine.” Mrs. Atwater immediately contradicted me and threatened Ed in a loud and creative way. Caught between his fear of his wife, and his respect for the personal space of his neighbors, poor Ed froze like a deer in headlights and waited for one of us to win the argument. Luckily, one of the cops who had been lurking inside my home heard the commotion and stuck his head out to see what was going on.
At the appearance of the uniform, Mrs. Atwater forgot about forcing medical care on me and focused on the police officer and why he was there. She grabbed me by the arm and hauled me toward the man and called to him in a loud, shrill voice, “Officer! She came back! Rebecca Calden is back!”
A plain-clothes detective appeared at her shouts and watched open mouthed as Mrs. Atwater brought me forward. He waved me inside and closely followed me, disappointing the annoying woman by not inviting her along. She stood at my threshold staring after me with big eyes and a promise to look in on me later. Since my front door was still lying on the floor of my entranceway, the detective led me toward my living room for privacy from nosy neighbors. In the kitchen there was blood pooled on the floor where I had stabbed Kootch, and a couple of technicians were digging slugs out of my cabinets and walls. Moving carefully around the mess was a photographer, meticulously documenting evidence before it was gathered into plastic baggies and taken away.
Cops stopped what they were doing to watch me go by. I think that they are so accustomed to victims of violence turning up dead days or weeks later, if they turned up at all, that it shocked them to see me hours later and alive. Stranger things have happened though, and they usually did when I’m around.


Chapter 6

There are two kinds of cops in the world: the competent and the criminally lazy. The lazy ones are usually corrupt, cruel, and capable of great acts of self-interest. My life is easiest when law enforcement is burdened with a plethora of these apathetic, slovenly louts. For the most part they leave me alone, and when they do have to deal with me, a thin stack of cash usually makes them forget that they ever met me.
It’s the competent cops that are bothersome. They are smart, ambitious, and relentless while their pesky ethics keep me jumping through hoops to avoid their suspicions. Those individuals see too damn much and draw conclusions that come uncomfortably close to the truth. I think the only thing that has saved me from discovery every time is the detectives’ pragmatism. Immortality defies the logic of reasonable men, and they tend to discard the evidence that contradicts their assumptions of reality. A few have come close to accepting the impossible, but I’ve always managed to disappear before they could talk themselves into altering their perceptions.
I stared at the broad back of the detective leading me toward my living room and I prayed that he was lazy. But as I studied his appearance and bearing, I knew I was screwed. From the top of the man’s clean cut brown hair to the bottoms of his polished shoes, Philip Shaw screamed anal-retentive competence. Even the precise length and grooming of his fingernails proclaimed his obsessive attention to detail. He offered me a sympathetic smile that warmed his pretty blue eyes and opened up the even features of his face. I gave him a weak smile in return and knew that I would have to choreograph a pretty tap dance to stay off of this guy’s radar. Why was it that there was never a dirty cop around when you wanted one?
At least he was handsome, that always made interrogations easier to endure. He was average enough at first glance, but once his personality animated his features, he was suddenly striking. He wore a blue tie and white shirtsleeves that hinted at a strong body underneath. He moved with a kind of gentle grace that said that he was strong and aware that if he wasn’t careful, he might hurt someone. I found myself pondering what he looked like underneath his clothing and wondering how difficult it would be to convince him to let me see. It’s always astonishing how time has done nothing to diminish my interest in an attractive man. Philip Shaw made me consider the wisdom of badge bunnies, those women who perpetually hang around cops and firefighters in the hopes of getting the attention of one of these men. If more public servants looked like the detective, I might join the bunny ranks myself.
There was a black evidence case sitting on my dining room table with various bagged samples tucked inside of it. Shaw paused beside it and pulled out one of those cold gel packs that people use as compresses and to keep their lunches cold and offered it to me.
“For your face,” he told me gently. “It will help with the swelling.” I thanked him politely and pressed the smooth plastic against my cheek, flinching a little as the chill soaked into my tender skin. With a comforting hand on my shoulder, he led me to my living room where he asked me to sit down and inquired if I would like something to drink. I told him I was fine, and settled back into my comfortable couch and waited for the questioning to begin.
I admit that I didn’t pay much attention to what Philip Shaw was asking me. I was too busy thinking about how pretty he was. I did focus enough to tell him a story that covered all the evidence that was already in front of him. Other than that, I played dumb and lied through my teeth. He seemed to buy it. There were no long pauses while he scribbled on his pad of yellow legal paper, and he didn’t give me any penetrating looks that meant he thought I was full of shit. He did ask me questions about details, and I either answered them, or I lied. It didn’t bother me to do it. I’ve been lying to people for a very long time and now it was just one more thing I do to get by. The trick is to stick as close to the truth as you can, and to stay consistent.
My real trouble lay with Eochu Breas, the geas he had put on me, and what it meant. I was fairly certain that I was going to be pushed around for decades to come, and that pissed me off. I’ve already done the slave thing four times, and I do not like it. It made me angry enough to go on a bloody rampage; nothing I haven’t done before, and eliminate anyone who wanted to keep me on a leash. The moment I thought of cutting down Bres, I felt sharp agony streak through my brain. I gasped in shock and pain, pulling Shaw’s eyes up from