Heaven can Wait Page 10

  She was just contemplating whether it would be that noticeable if she slipped her left hand down the front of her trousers, her right was better with a gun in it, when the powerful man that had so diverted her attention helped to bring it back on track. Mr X, for want of a better name, had passed through the crowd and was approaching the door to the room where they had taken Eric.

  She moved through the crowd, who had gone back to their dancing rapidly forgetting their brush with power, to keep Mr X in sight. The man on the door made no move to stop him, rather he gave a shallow nod of the head and pushed open the door to let him inside, closing it after him before Selene could get a look inside.

  She moved herself through the crowd, drawing only slightly on her supernatural abilities to avoid bumping people. She noticed that she caught the attention of the goon on the door as she got to the fringe of the dance floor. The goon's gaze was inscrutable, he could be watching her because he was bored, because he liked what he saw, or out of professional concern. He gave nothing away.

  Selene was saved from having to come up with a reason for moving over here, just in case the goon was evaluating her as a threat, by a guy who had decided to try his luck.

  Selene let the guy try to chat her up for a few moments, just long enough to turn the goons attention away, and then she casually brushed him off. She turned back to check on the door to the office and a two ton anvil landed on her head and turned her brains to mush.

  Selene got herself up off the floor, having no recollection how she got there. Her would be suitor was offering her a hand up so she hadn't been down long but it had been enough for it to be noticed.

  Selene shrugged the help off and fought to think past the throbbing in her brain. Whatever that burst of power had been it hadn't been a direct assault, at least not on her or not intentionally. If it had been the attacker would have taken advantage however briefly she had been out of it and she would be dead.

  Selene had started to the office where they had taken Eric almost without thinking. It couldn't be a coincidence that she felt a being as powerful as Mr X and then a burst of power like that. Whatever was going on behind that door it couldn't be good.

  The door came open as Selene approached and she changed direction even before the goon outside had turned to see who was coming out.

  It was Eric who barrelled into the goon. Or at least it had been Eric. The screeching wretch who ran out of that room with skin flaking from his body was more skeleton than man. The others in the room were in as bad a state or worse. Gleaming bone shone through on several of the poor bastards showing up too well in the club's strobe lighting.

  It took Selene a second to take it all in. To realise that all those she might have had a grudge against were dead or soon would be. And that Mr X, whoever he might be, wasn't in there. Selene was almost out of the club by the time the screaming began.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I got the rest of the water blinked out of my eyes and stared up at the intruder. He was indeed clad in a sandy-brown cloak with a deep hood pulled up over his head, hiding some of his features in the dark shadows caused by the folds of the material. The intruder loomed over me.

  My lower half was now tastefully concealed beneath a combination of water and bubbles, my legs having been pulled back into the water when I sat up. But my upper body was now completely exposed instead. The water running down my skin had taken the concealing bubbles along with it. The only covering on my stomach, breasts, shoulders and arms was a sheen of moisture and a few strands of soaking hair that clung to my skin. The cool air still had my nipples hard and was just starting to draw goose-pimples on the rest of my flesh. I should have been scared.

  "Will you close the door please, that draft is cold?"

  The intruder pushed an arm out from inside the cloak and pushed the bathroom door closed for me. With that done he used the same motion to put the hood of the cloak off his head. The face he exposed, all sculpted cheekbones and piercing eyes, was one any leading man would pay a fortune to possess. The thick blonde hair that topped it off, just brushing his shoulders, would be envied by the leading men and ladies alike.

  "I bring a message from the Elders," the intruder spoke to me in English with an accent that originated from no country on earth.

  I had lost my accent some time ago, although I heard it creep back sometimes, just a little, when I was very emotional or stressed.

  "What, Halberd, you had to deliver this message right now? Couldn't you just leave me a note?"

  Halberd was looking down at me but doing his best not to look at me. Not an easy task when it was someone as developed as me sitting naked in a tub. "I would have preferred a less . . ." he hunted for a word, I was sure he was specifically avoiding using the word intimate, he settled for; ". . . enclosed environment."

  Halberd was a liaison, an angel permitted access to multiple realms so that he could communicate the will of the elders to mortals and those like me who had given up our place on the immortal plane. Though he had access to the mortal realm he was ill at ease with certain aspects of this realm that I had come to accept, some I had even started to enjoy.

  For those of us who remained exclusively apart from mortal realms my nudity wouldn't have posed a problem. We covered ourselves when we were up there not out of a need for modesty but because that was how we had been instructed to behave. Sexual urges were considered something of a deviancy. Poor Halberd had spent enough time in this realm that he reacted with embarrassment to nudity, but too little time for any of the more normal drives that would affect a mortal man faced with a nude woman.

  To tell the truth I was feeling pretty uncomfortable myself. The bubbles and the water meant that he couldn't really have seen anything had Halberd even wanted to. But still I was naked down here.

  "The Elders wish-"

  "Hold on, I can't have this discussion like this," I interrupted him, my head tilted back so I could look at his face. "It's a literal pain in the neck."

  Halberd stopped talking but he just stood there sort of looking at me.

  I rolled my eyes, "A little privacy? Turn around please."

  Sheepishly he did as I asked, turning to face the door. I placed my hands on either side of the bath and helped myself up. I stood there for a moment with the water up to my shins. The remaining covering of bubbles and water sloughed down my skin and back into the tub but enough suds remained to cover up my more intimate areas as well as any set of underwear would. I raised a leg and lifted it over the edge, water trailed down from my thigh and twisted around the back of my calf before coming back around along my foot and dripping off my toes onto the floor. I set my foot down carefully on the bathroom floor before bringing my other leg out of the tub.

  Halberd stood watching the door doing his best not to see anything out of the corners of his eyes. Had he been mortal I would have been worried that he might try and sneak a peak. With it being Halberd I was not.

  I just stood there, almost calmly nude with a soap sud bikini the only thing maintaining my modesty, directly behind Halberd. If he had had any desire to see me fully naked he only had to turn his head and I would be exposed.

  Halberd was frozen rigid and instead of getting more comfortable I was going the other way. I grabbed a towel from the rail on the wall in a rush. Stepping back I brought the towel off the rail out from beside him. With a deft movement it was tied around my body. I let a smile blossom fully at the relief on Halberd's face when I told him he could turn around. Even just knowing I was naked in such close proximity had made him uncomfortable. He would have probably been less worried if I had put a gun to his head.

  The towel wasn't large enough to cover me fully. It was tied closed across my breasts and it reached down to just above mid thigh, another drawback to being on the taller end of the scale. There was a visible split from where I tied it all the way down, but with the way sit was fixed it ran up along my side and it wouldn't show much unless I moved too quickly or leaned carelessly. H
alberd seemed much more at ease with the towel covering what it did.

  I let him stand there embarrassed for a moment, but however hot it still might be outside or in the living room, in here I was wet and getting cold. Teasing Halberd was only fun when I was comfortable, I'm not just talking about the cold. Besides, as fun as such antics could be, I wanted to know why he was here, although I had a pretty good idea.

  "You said you have a message from the elders," I prompted.

  Halberd blinked and focused on me again. "I . . . oh, oh yes, right. The Elders sent me to extend an invitation for you to return-"

  I turned away too quickly, I ended up flashing him at least a lot of leg. "I've heard this one before."

  "Well, ah, yes. However, the Elders would like to-"

  "The elders would like a lot of things," I interrupted again without turning around, you can't put forward an angry front when you keep exposing yourself. "Personally I think it does them good to have somebody refuse them now and again. It wouldn't do to let them get things their own way all the time."

  Halberd harrumphed and I felt a moment of triumph. Halberd, like most of the others, didn't often express his feelings, a side effect of living amongst empaths maybe, shielding ones emotions so strongly you shielded them even from yourself. Anyway, whatever the reason, it was difficult to get an emotional reaction from somebody like him, other than embarrassment of course. I must really have worn him down.

  "You should come back to us, Celestiluma. You don't have to live like this."

  "I choose to live like this, the elders haven't taken away the right of free choice," I said. "And the name's Faith down here."

  "You choose to live in a world where you are feared and mistrusted. The Elders are not running some oppressive regime that forces you to seek asylum here." Halberd looked at me, he really didn't understand.

  I turned again, using a hand to keep the towel in place and my modesty intact this time. I studied Halberd's face and wondered whether I should try and explain it to him. In the end I decided to give him the abridged version, the very abridged version. Maybe if he understood me I could get him to accept my answers a little bit faster.

  "Here I can make a difference."

  "What more difference can you make here than at home?"

  I had been right, he didn't get it. "This is my home now, Halberd. Go back and tell the elders that."

  Halberd shook his head, but out of a lack of understanding rather than rejection. "Very well, if that is your decision."

  "It is."

  Without another word Halberd opened the door to the bathroom and was off. I waited a moment and closed the door, Halberd wouldn't be leaving through the front door and I wanted to get back to my bath.

  The water had gone tepid. I got back in anyway. I hooked the chain that linked to the plug between my toes and let some of the water drain away. I let the suction of the water draw the plug back into place. I brought my feet out of the water to turn on the hot tap and get the water back up to temperature.

  I had turned off the tap and was just leaning back when the bathroom door was pushed open. Selene strode in twirling my gun around her finger. She was all tight trousers and creaking leather. A long leather coat hid the arsenal of weapons that I knew would be on her body.

  "You're the second person to come in on me while I'm trying to have a bath. What if I was doing something intimate here?"

  "That's what this is for," Selene said dropping the weapon at the side of the bath.

  "What? To keep people like you out or to be intimate with."

  "Either, both," Selene retorted with a smirk. "A little imagination, have some fun. But if you do decide to use a gun like that make sure it isn't loaded first, unless you need the extra danger to get you off."

  I shook my head, where Halberd was easy to embarrass with Selene that would be impossible. I was generally the one to be embarrassed when the two of us got together. Right on schedule my cheeks were burning as Selene stared at the gun and raised her eyebrows suggestively at me.

  "What use is a weapon if you don't have it on you? Or in you."

  I ignored the question, deciding to treat it as rhetorical. I got myself wrapped in the towel again and pulled the plug on the bath. So much for a little relaxation.

  "What do you want, Selene?"

  My visitor had the audacity to turn an innocent look on me. "Why do I have to want something?"

  I let an exasperated half-smile turn up the corners of my mouth. "Come on, Selene, where's the hook?"

  The half-demon bounty-hunter returned a half-smile of her own. "It's no use claiming I just stopped by to have a chat with a friend then?"

  I shook my head, reminding myself to tie my hair in the smaller towel at the same time.

  "Fine, I need your help with something."

  I listened as the bounty-hunter explained what had happened earlier at the club.

  "Whoever that Mr X was, he wasn't human that's for sure."

  I had perched myself on the edge of the bath, Selene had declined the offer of a seat on the lid of the toilet.

  "I don't know what you expect me to do," I told her. "You have better contacts throughout the community than I do. You can find this guy without me."

  Selene shrugged. "Maybe, probably. But it would be easier if you were with me. I have a lead down in the Zone and I want you to come with me when we meet."

  "Why?" I asked bluntly, Selene wouldn't take offence.

  "My contact says this guy doesn't trust things like me."

  I laughed. "I am a thing like you."

  Selene shook her head. "No, I am a half-demon. You are an angel."

  "Most don't consider there to be a difference. Non-human is non-human."

  "Well this guy does."

  Baths aren't meant to be comfortable unless you are in them, my backside was beginning to go numb from sitting on the side of the bath. "How can someone who is stuck in the Zone end up with ideas like that?"

  Selene watched me fidgeting to try and relieve my pained backside. "You really have been out of touch. They aren't just keeping full-on unnaturals like us in the Zone until they decide whether we get to live among them or just get eliminated. They have been shipping in lycanthropes along with the vampires and other infected. Word has it that witches, necromancers and anyone who is otherwise human but who dabbles with the occult and shows any talent for it will be next. It won’t be long until the Zone is getting packed with all manner of clairvoyants, mediums and spiritualists."

  "I though necromancy was legal," I said absently.

  Selene shrugged, "Laws can change. If the Registration Act ever goes through things will switch the other way."

  This time I nodded. The Supernatural Registration Act, or more accurately the amendments to it, would require all unnaturals to be given rights almost identical to those of the average citizens. There would be no more exclusion Zone ghettos and shooting on sight.

  "So this lead is a new arrival?"

  Selene nodded. "Been there a few weeks, maybe a couple of months no more. I'll come around and pick you up tomorrow afternoon; I have some other things to look into first."

  She turned to leave and I said, "Wait, if I'm going to be helping you I think you should return the favour."

  Selene turned back, smiling with a malicious glint in her eye. "You want me to take care of a little problem for you. That guy who was here before me or those cops who dropped you off, perhaps."

  I couldn't help it, my eyes widened and I tried to cover my shock by shaking my head, it wouldn't fool Selene, "Nothing like that, sorry to disappoint you."

  Selene shrugged it off easily, "So what can I do for you?"

  I told her about the crime Braun had called me in on.

  "I know any number of things that could do that to a person," Selene said. "Can you narrow it down for me?"

  "Whatever killed them did it without feeling. I mean, they felt nothing while they were tearing that person up. Do you know anything that
could kill like that, without any emotion at all?"

  Selene nodded and I had a short-lived moment of triumph.

  "I know someone who could do it," Selene said. "Me."

  "Did you?"

  Selene didn't look at all offended by the question.

  "No, I don't do humans. There's no challenge in it."

  I didn't want to press to make sure that was a joke, because I was afraid it wasn't.

  "I'll ask around for you while I'm looking into this mysterious Mr X."

  "If you hear anything let me know right away."

  Selene gave me a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I had two messages on my answer phone when I came awake. I had turned the machine on and the volume on the phone down so that I could get some solid undisturbed sleep. Having to sleep in the living room made you take precautions like that. One of the coaches ferrying the night working non-humans back to their 'homes' in the Zone rumbled past outside as I stumbled across from the sofa bed to set the machine playing.

  "Hey, freak, why don't you piss off back to your own kind? We don't want your sort here. This is our-"

  I hit a button to move on to the next message I had heard more than enough, it looked like it was time to call the phone company and get the number changed again.

  "Ms Jones, this is Detective Braun. We have another scene for you to look at. This is too much too close together you need to give us somewhere to start looking for this bastard. I'll send a car around to pick you up at eight-thirty, that will give our guys time to finish up here. Be ready."