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

the notes he was writing.
He swore under his breath as he jumped from his seat and reached for me. “Call an ambulance!” he shouted at my kitchen. A passing patrolman spoke rapidly into a microphone attached to his shoulder.
I scowled at Shaw as he leaned over me, pulled the ice gel pack from my cheek and took my face in his hands. “What is wrong with you?” I snapped, pushing him back. He fell off balance and hit the edge of my coffee table with the small of his back. A red film covered my vision and all I could think was, ‘Oh crap, I just assaulted a police officer’. He didn’t seem to take offense at it. He looked frightened as he reached for me again.
“Are you okay? Do you feel any pain?” he demanded. What was wrong with this guy? He was entirely too close. He was good looking, but I hardly know the man. If he had been some random pretty boy I didn’t have to deal with on a regular basis that would be one thing. But Shaw had been questioning me about a crime thirty seconds ago, and I wasn’t in the mood to get frisky. I tried to tell him to back off and stop touching me, but all that came out of my mouth was “Ava bah auuugh!”
Ah shit, now what? Shaw was well and truly frightened, and he forced me to lie down on the couch while he shouted at the men crowding into the room. I could feel blood running across my cheeks and jawline and I rolled onto my side to avoid letting it clog up my sinuses and choking me. Shaw helped me move, touching me delicately as if he thought I would stroke out at the slightest jolt. I lay there calmly, watching cops cluster around me to watch me die, and silently cursed Bres and his damn geas. It had to be the source of the blood, since Baja had not hit me hard enough to make me hemorrhage.
I got to go to the hospital in an ambulance whether I wanted to or not. The downside was that I had become an unresponsive, floppy, puddle of flesh. I couldn’t speak or respond in any way when paramedics showed up and completely over reacted. They started an IV and pumped me full of fluids and medication that made feel giddy. Not that I could laugh. Something had happened in my brain that made me unable to respond to anything. All I could do was lay there and stare at the ceiling while I plotted slow and horrific ways to kill Bres. On the upside, Philip Shaw rode in the ambulance with me and held my hand the entire way with a look of sympathy on his handsome face. What a nice man.
After I freaked out emergency room doctors who scratched their heads and wondered why I was still alive, I ended up in a CAT scan. I was settled onto the scanner bed and slid into the machine while I prayed that the radiologist was a blind moron, and my doctor was strung out on morphine. Otherwise, I was going to have to try to explain why I had blood leaking out of every orifice in my skull without showing evidence of death. I didn’t have to worry about this kind of issue in the Third World. They didn’t have the money for the CAT scans, and half the MDs still believed in magic. Perhaps it’s time to make a move.
I walked out of the hospital after signing an AMA (Against Medical Advice) paper and agreed not to sue the hospital should I die once I left their care. Needless to say, the doctors were unhappy about it. They had diagnosed me with a severe brain aneurysm that killed or crippled anyone else, and they wanted to know why I was recovering. I wanted to know why too. I’ve had aneurysms before, and while any potentially fatal damage is repaired with blinding speed, the rest healed mortal slow. I should still be lying in a hospital bed and staring blankly at the ceiling as the doctors predicted my imminent demise.
Alejandro had pulled up at the curb as the nurse pushed me out of the exit doors. I stood up and thanked her politely as he jumped from the driver seat and hurried around the front of the car to open the passenger door for me. I gave him the fierce look he deserved, noting that much of the beating that Kootch had given him was still apparent on his face. The nurse made one last attempt to convince me to go back inside with her, and for a moment I was tempted to do it. I didn’t want to deal with any of the Children, and I certainly didn’t want to accept rides from them. But I also wanted to find out what was going on inside my body, and that meant a conversation with Bres. I was certain that he had something to do with it, and I doubted that I could get him to explain anything if my stalkers were around.
I started to refuse the ride Alejandro was offering me, but his bruised face darkened with a scowl, and I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The nurse had paused in her retreat to give the man a suspicious stare. To avoid a scene, I got into the car. The last thing I needed was another visit from the police. This much trouble for one person was unusual by normal standards and the cops would want to get involved more deeply than I was comfortable with. Although, if the cop in question was Philip Shaw I wouldn’t mind so much, provided that he didn’t put me into jail at the end of his investigation.
Alejandro waited until we were on the freeway headed north to my apartment in Buckhead when he finally spoke. “You should have let the Children of Orpheus send the body guards. It would have saved you a lot of pain and trouble from the cult.”
“The cult didn’t put me in the hospital,” I muttered angrily. “If any of the Children had been there when it went down, they would have been killed.”
“What went down then?”
I remembered Bres and his geas and I didn’t answer. While I could trust Alejandro enough to keep me out of a hospital if I had another brain aneurysm, it didn’t mean I wanted to have another one for talking. “It wasn’t the cult.”
“I heard that they planted a bomb on your front door,” he said flatly.
“It wasn’t a bomb.” I stared out of the window and saw my exit go by. “Hey, you passed the off ramp.”
“I’m not taking you home,” Alejandro answered.
“Why the hell not?” I demanded. I didn’t need this. My head still ached and all I wanted to do was prop my front door back into place, take some aspirin, and go to bed. I did not want to go on some adventure or quest cooked up by Alejandro and the Children of Orpheus.
“I’m taking you to the safe house.”
I was already closer to these nut bars than I wanted to be, and I certainly didn’t want to shack up with them. I eyed the temporary concrete median that was erected for roadwork, and I thought about grabbing the wheel and driving the car into it. That would sufficiently incapacitate Alejandro, if not kill him, and allow me to escape. Unfortunately, rush hour traffic was congesting the lanes, and my odds of making a break for it without getting hit by a speeding car were bad and getting worse. I was once struck by a vehicle doing eighty-five while I was hitchhiking along the Pacific Coast Highway in the 1960s. That Manson guy was a real bastard with a lead foot.
“If you grab the wheel I’ll knock your damn teeth out,” Alejandro growled, interrupting my thoughts. He took his eyes off of the road long enough to throw me a mean look and gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. I could only sit in stunned silence. “I mean it. I will kick your damn ass.”
There was a strange pause in his speech pattern, as if he wanted to use filthier language, but didn’t dare. What did I care if he dropped an f-bomb? I’ve used them plenty myself ever since I saw those crazy fornication plaques on the doors of houses in 13th century England. It was fun to say.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” If there were faeries in the world, why couldn’t there be mind readers as well? I believe that science fiction writers call them telepaths. In old times, we called them witches or prophets of God, depending on where I was living at the time. I always wondered how those people always managed to get themselves caught by the Inquisition. After all, if you knew what other people were thinking, wouldn’t you know to get out of town? And people wonder why I don’t believe in psychics, although I’m willing to change my belief system in light of recent revelations.
“The Children have an extensive library about you. There is a story from the 1920s where you were taken hostage in a bank robbery and you grabbed the wheel and hit a tree while running from the cops.” Alejandro explained.
Oh yeah, I remember that. The bank robber had flown right through that windshield. The cops had swooped down on him and kicked the poor crook within an inch of his life before they hauled him away for another nasty beating at the police department. I had escaped during the one sided battle, taking the loot with me.
“Why are you taking me to the safe house?”
“The Great Bard wants to meet you and ensure your safety while we get the mess with the Immortal Church of God sorted out,” he explained. He took the Turner-McDonald Parkway exit and sped us further away from Atlanta and into Roswell. Before the Civil War, Roswell had been a wealth of cotton plantations and mills, until the Federal army commanded by General Garrard captured it. Under orders from good ole General Sherman, the city’s mills had been burnt to the ground in an effort to force the Confederates to fold under economic pressure. Most of the homes and grand plantation manors had been left standing and a great many still remain, dotting a modern city with elegant symbols of old and brutal southern elitism.
“What if I don’t want to sit around the safe house and talk about a crazy cult with the Bard?” I demanded. Technically, this was my second kidnapping of the day and it was getting tedious. I couldn’t remember the last time so many people were this hot and bothered over me. If it hadn’t already proven so inconvenient, I might have been interested enough to go with the flow.
“You aren’t being given a choice,” he replied in a low, angry voice.
“How are you going to stop me?” I snapped.
Alejandro remained silent, letting the tension fill the car until the air stank with it. He wasn’t going to talk to me