Heaven can Wait Read online

  My office was on the second floor of a squat building that cowered under the imposing presence of a pair of much taller buildings on either side. A balcony walkway opened out directly in front of the office bordered by a slightly creaky rail that I had never trusted enough to put any weight on. It was probably just asking for a law suit from a client one of these days. The balcony led to a set of stairs that ran down the side of the building where I had heard the motorbike a few moments ago.

  The rest of the building, underneath the office and some of the space that was cut off from it at the back of the upper level, was owned and used by a Pakistani family. They ran a nice little restaurant/take-away, that, like probably a million others across the country, was called an ‘Indian’ just to keep it familiar for the ignorant natives who called everyone an Indian when they were getting food from them and a ‘Paki’ when they wanted to put them down. Being a non-human I could relate to being the victim of prejudice pretty well.

  Everyone who worked in the restaurant was related by blood or marriage. One of the owner’s younger sons had joked to me on more than one occasion that they pretty much spent all of their time together. When they weren’t at work they were all living in a pair of semi-detached houses that had had the dividing wall broken through to make a single large house. He made it seem like a chore but I could see he liked it that way. I figured I would probably have liked that too, to have a family that was that close. Unsurprisingly angels don’t exactly have the standard family unit, since I had been cast out I no longer had any family unit conventional or otherwise.

  It was still early but the smell from the restaurant kitchen had hit me as soon as I stepped outside. It probably seeped into the office as well but I got so used to it that I didn’t smell it any more until my nose was exposed to the stronger aroma outside.

  My car was parked around the back of the building in the restaurant’s car-park. It was a beat up little rust bucket but it was my beat up little rust bucket. The bodywork was pockmarked with dints and prangs and the paintwork was flaked. The inside upholstery was the very definition of threadbare and one of the tinny sound systems speakers was hanging on by the wiring and electrical tape. Black electrical tape also kept the sole remaining wing-mirror in place on the driver’s side door and kept the rear bumper from scraping sparks on the road. It started up on the second try. Where Selene’s bike had purred and growled like some majestic big cat, my car coughed and spluttered to life with all the grace of an asthmatic mongrel dog.

  I grabbed a quick bath when I arrived back home. I usually either preferred to be able to linger and soak in a bath for a good while, after all what was the point in running all of that water if one was not going to be able to take the time to enjoy it. If I just needed to get clean quick I would hop in the shower. Since I didn’t know when exactly Selene would come around to collect me and I didn’t want to have to go out with wet hair, I only risked a quick dip. To say Selene wasn’t the most patient of people was a bit of an understatement. Hence I slipped into the bath with my long hair tucked up on top of my head and out of the way. If it didn’t get washed in the morning it would be a greasy unmanageable mess. If this business with Selene took so long that I missed that I hoped the other woman would appreciate the sacrifice, but somehow I very much doubted that Selene would care.

  The next thing on my agenda was food. If I had thought about it I would have picked something up from the ‘Indian’ restaurant below my office on the way back home. It would have saved me the time preparing it and doing the washing up. Of course it would also have been quick making its way through me as well, I had never really become accustomed to spicy foods. If Selene would be pissed off at me for wasting time sorting out my hair Selene would be doubly so if I interrupted whatever the work was to make a few toilet stops. In the end I settled for a microwavable pizza, hardly five star cuisine but it would do.

  I found myself pacing around the apartment waiting for the knock on the door that would signify Selene’s arrival. I knew my activity was down to anticipation, I told myself that it was nervous anticipation, not wanting to admit it even to myself that I was also a little excited. People could say what they would about Selene but being around her was never boring. Horrible, terrifying, appalling, but never boring. My day job would never be described as standard nine-to-five stuff but Selene’s was in another league entirely.

  I forced myself to calm down. What was needed was something to occupy my attention. I ducked into the narrow kitchen. There on the sideboard across from the sink was a ledger that I used to work out all my business and personal finances, I could have done with a proper accountant really but that would just be another way for cash to slip out in the wrong direction. Next to the ledger was a slightly dog eared paperback. My hand hovered over the ledger and the novel, drifting between the two. I wanted to read the book but needed to get on with the work. To hell with it, I thought and grabbed up the paperback, if I was going to be working over-time already tonight I might as well get some pleasure in while I could.

  When I walked back into the living room I realised I wasn’t going to get any time for pleasure after all. There, spread out on the sofa/couch, Selene lay waiting for me. A glance at the door showed it was still closed and all of the locks were still in place.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I complained. “Why can’t you knock and wait outside until you’re invited in like anybody else?”

  Selene pushed herself up to a sitting position on her elbows and smiled. “Where’s the fun in that? Besides you might not invite me in.”

  “And there’s my point.”

  “Oh come on, don’t be like that,” Selene said getting to her feet. “You enjoy these little jaunts of ours really. Put a little bit of excitement in your life, get your heart beating faster, and remind yourself you’re alive. You haven’t got a man in your life so you need something to get those juices flowing.”

  I didn’t want them to but my cheeks went red, I guess that’s why they call it an involuntary reaction. “You don’t have anybody either.”

  Selene winked. “So I know what I’m talking about, and that’s my point.”

  I genuinely believed that Selene got off on what she did. It gave new meaning to enjoying your work, but it did not do it for me. I was not entirely sure what would do it for me since those sorts of feelings were still very new to me. Up there the kinds of urges Selene was talking about simply never came up temptation was for down here with the humans, part and parcel of the whole free will thing.

  “Come on, time to get down to business.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You really need to scrap this heap and get yourself something with some grunt.” Selene put real feeling behind it when she said the word grunt.

  I had flat refused to go out on the back of Selene’s motorcycle so the two of us were driving along in my beat-up little car. I was doing the driving and Selene still hadn’t told me where we were going. The only instructions so far had been to head towards the edge of the city. Given that my apartment was located about midway between the inner-city and the surrounding districts, I had set the vehicle on a course towards the closest edge. Selene didn’t complain so I figured I was taking us in the correct direction.

  Selene was rifling through the selection of unboxed CD’s that I kept in the glove compartment. The sound system was the only thing in the car that was less than a decade old. Selene snorted her disgust at some of the CD’s in the collection, mostly those that contained some cheesy pop. My taste in music was eclectic to say the least, I could listen to and enjoy just about anything depending on my mood or what I wanted my mood to be. If I was feeling a bit down some cheery pop music was sometimes just the thing required to lift my spirits, whether the artist performing it had become successful because of looks more than talent was irrelevant. To the best of my knowledge I didn’t have any music where harps featured on the instrumentals so get that stereotype thrown out.

  Eventually finding s
omething that fit in with her own ideas of what good music should be, loud vocals, swearing and anarchic guitars, Selene slipped the disc in the player and started to crank up the volume. I kept most of my attention on the road but took a hand off the wheel to turn the music down to a much quieter level.

  “This sort of music is designed to be played loud,” Selene complained.

  “But not when a conversation needs to be had.” And not when I was driving.

  “Why do we need to have a conversation?” Selene inquired.

  “Where do I start?” I said. “You still haven’t told me where we are going-”

  “I’ll give you better directions when we get closer.”

  “-and you haven’t given me any idea of what to expect when we get there. Are we going to be looking at a crime scene? Questioning witnesses, what?”

  “A bit of both,” Selene said, her hand was creeping back towards the volume control.

  I went to slap the bounty hunter’s hand but hit only empty air. Selene’s reflexes were too good for that, but she got the point and put her hand back in her lap and left it there.

  “Don’t start playing games. I’ve agreed to help you so start talking or I’ll turn this car around and you can sort this out on your own.” Yay for assertiveness.

  “Okay.” Selene dragged the word out so that it was almost a sentence in its own right. “Chill out, Faithy.” She took a quick look out of the windows to get her bearings. “You need to take us further around to the far side of the Zone, into the industrial sector.”

  I should have guessed, the Zone was always involved one way or another. I had managed to get an apartment a short distance from the Zone and it was in what had once been a pretty good area but I had been one of the lucky few. When I was with Selene we would either end up close by the Zone because something wanted out or farther into the city because something had actually made it out. If it wasn’t something unnatural Selene didn’t usually bother, humans were no challenge apparently.

  The Zone, it had some stupid official title that I could never properly recall but everyone just called it the Zone, which was when they chose to acknowledge its existence. Being that the Zone was basically a ghetto, where the cities authorities had chosen to hold the abnormal members of society pending their clearance to join the rest of society proper and start making contributions, that is paying taxes, such acknowledgement didn’t happen all that often. Abnormal included individuals cursed with diseases such as lycanthropy or genetic mutations that gave them peculiar abilities, I was lucky that my own heritage didn’t come with any telltale physical abnormalities that couldn’t be hidden under a shirt or blouse, I could pass. There were also the more unusual beings, vampires and assorted semi-demonic races that could almost pass for human. Monsters and creatures that were natural to the earth but not easily explained by science were tucked away alongside magical and fantastical creatures that had somehow found a way across the space between realms, or like me had been banished. The Zone was where this myriad assortment had to live whilst they were taught the rules of how to behave in a civilised society. After their education was complete they would be given the opportunity to move into accommodation within the city proper and branch out into different jobs. After that it was down to how successful and enterprising each individual could be as to how far they would get, in theory at least. The tabloid press had already decided it wouldn’t be five years before somebody ‘other’ than human was elected to a decent governmental position. Some of the more liberal papers had started backing candidates but most presented the news as a horror story or were running outrageous campaigns meant to inflame the general public’s paranoia and ensure that it never happened.

  “What do we want out in the industrial district?”

  “We’ll be there in a few minutes and you can see for yourself.”

  I decided it wasn’t really worth pressing the issue, Selene was correct, we would be there in a couple of minutes. If past experience was anything to go by, I would probably learn more than I wanted to about why we were there then. I flicked the indicator on and prepared for a right turn.

  “It’s just through there.”

  Selene stood to one side of the door. There were still the torn ends of yellow and black crime scene tape flapping about the door frame. There were wooden boards covering a couple of the windows in the warehouse’s side and a few glinting fragments of glass resting on the floor. Faded spaces in the area above the entrance marked out the places where letters had fallen away from the sign work. A tenacious trio of letters ‘ELD’ were all that had managed to cling on.

  Selene was obviously waiting for me to open the door and enter first. I had my hand poised on the handle but was reluctant to go inside. I could already sense that some very bad things had happened in there. A black aura of pain and death clung to the building like smog. If I concentrated I could almost see the oily cloud seeping through the brickwork to shroud the warehouse. There were red sparks of hatred and extreme violence shooting through the blackness. There was something else there as well, an undercurrent that infected everything else I was feeling but that I couldn’t immediately identify. All this was before I had even set foot inside the building, whatever Selene had brought me into it was bad.

  At least some of what I was feeling must have shown strongly on my face or in my body language.

  “Are you alright?” Selene asked.

  I swallowed and turned my head slightly so that I could see the bounty hunter. There was concern etched in the other woman’s face, I must have looked as bad as I felt for Selene to show her concern like that. Those looks were usually reserved for when Selene had dumped me in a life threatening situation, gladly something which hadn’t happened often.

  I attempted to work moisture into a suddenly dry mouth so that I could respond to the question. “I’m picking up some really strong residual emotions from this place.”

  Selene nodded knowingly but didn’t speak again.

  I gathered my courage and pushed the door handle down, steeling myself for whatever lay inside. Selene had obviously brought me here so that I could read the lingering taint of the place. That would be bad enough in itself, it was one of the reasons why I considered my empathy more a curse than a talent. But with what I had already sensed . . . there would be some sights inside that would be coming back to visit me in my nightmares in the future.

  I opened the door and entered the warehouse. Whatever horrific sight my imagination conjured to explain the taint that my ‘talent’ had picked up on would have to be the one that came back to haunt me in my sleep. Whatever had gone down in this place someone had been through and removed all trace. Well, almost.

  “The NIRU cops and their crime scene investigators came in late last night. When they were through the cleaners came in and did their thing.”

  I nodded slowly as I looked around, only half listening to Selene.

  The ‘cleaners’ were more concerned with removing any trace of potentially contaminating or contaminated biomatter than they were with making things clean in the popular sense of the word. The main tools of their trade were blowtorches and flamethrowers. Fire was their all purpose disinfectant and one couldn’t argue with their results.

  Because of my empathic ability I knew something really bad had gone down here but any physical evidence had been well and truly eliminated. The floor of the warehouse was covered in a layer of ash that crunched underfoot. I tried not to think about what some of the ash had used to be but too late, the thought was already there.

  “It looked a lot worse than this yesterday,” Selene said. She spoke normally, so matter of fact that I was startled.

  “You were here?” I spoke in a whisper, this place felt like a graveyard and instinctively I treated it with the same respect that I would give any final resting place.

  Selene strode forwards casually. She kicked at the carpet of ashes with the toes of her boots.

  “Yup. They’ve done a good job, I left t
hem quite a mess.”

  What?! I whirled on her. “If you did this then what did you need to bring me here for?” I was forgetting myself and had raised my voice. The sound came back to me, bouncing from the lofty ceiling and walls of the warehouse. It seemed to bounce around in the upper rafters. There were still lights working up there, they were metre-long strip lights which cast the interior with an even, lifeless glow. The walls were marked with carbon scoring and clinging ash.

  Selene pirouetted around on one foot to face me.

  “I did this. The demon I executed here wasn’t up at the top of the food chain. It was working for something else, something that by definition has to be worse.”

  I sagged. “You know I can’t talk with dead demons. Even if they have something that equates to a soul they are so different from ours that they are unreachable. If I start reaching out for them I risk summoning something into this realm that should never be allowed to come here. I can’t question this thing for you.” And even if I could I wouldn’t, I so did not want to talk to something like that.

  “I know that,” Selene said. “If I wanted to question the demon I would have done it myself before I eliminated it. The demon and its bodyguards were feeding on humans. Human captives that they held here. If the thing this demon was acting for ever came here one of them should have seen something.”

  Again I shook my head, no. “Those people had to have been terrified.” I corrected myself. “I know they were terrified. Even without trying I can feel their terror, their despair and their agony. Do you know how long it can take to come to terms with even a normal, God, a natural violent death?”

  Selene made no answer to the rhetorical question.

  “It can take a lot longer than any of these poor souls have had to deal with it,” I answered for myself anyway. I hadn’t moved from the spot I had come to stand in for a short while and now that it came to it I was loathe to disturb the ashes anymore.