Heaven can Wait Read online

  "Here we are," the police officer driving the car said as he pulled it over, as if I wouldn't recognise my own street.

  Neither officer had bothered to introduce themselves. I realised with a start that, despite being called in to consult with the police on over a half a dozen separate cases I knew only a very few police officers by name. So much distrust and bigotry still at work.

  "You'd better get yourself straight inside, Ms Jones. You wouldn't want to be caught out on the streets after curfew." This from the second officer.

  I got out of the car and carelessly slammed the door closed behind myself. I couldn't bring myself to thank the two men, even though I knew a good way to defeat prejudice was by presenting a friendly front in the face of ignorance.

  The officers remained parked in the car and watched me walk across the street to my building. I kept my barriers up so I couldn't tell if they were motivated by a desire to see me safely home, which seemed unlikely, if they were just doing what Braun had instructed, more likely, or if they were like Perkins. Sitting there admiring the way my ass moved under my skirt or the gentle bounce of my breasts as I jogged up the steps to my floor, imagining screwing me not just because I was attractive but because it was taboo. I realise that I sound bitter, even in my own head, but what is a girl to do. When the admiring glances a girl gets turn to something else when the one aiming them her way realises she isn't just what she seems, bitterness seems to follow. And to be thought of as a sex object can be bad enough, but to be thought of as a sex object by a person who thinks it would be perverted to have sex with you, is so much worse.

  I rounded a corner and moved up to the next level. There was assorted litter on nearly every other step, and a drying vomit stain on the first three steps up from the first floor landing. Scrawls of graffiti, most of it obscene, decorated the walls. The only good thing about the graffiti was that I could read it, which meant the lights were still in working condition.

  All of that was normal for my apartment building. As were the boarded up doors of the first two apartments. For as long as I had lived here those apartments had never been occupied. Too close to the border with the Zone for comfort for most 'people'. And there just weren't enough of those like me who had made it out of the Zone and into the wider community. They were allowed out of the Zone to go to work at their menial jobs. Some of the coaches that took them to the factories rumbled past my flat early in the morning and late in the evening.

  The door to my flat opened out onto a walkway/balcony overlooking the street. I looked back across the street before I opened the door. I offered a wave to the police car and the officers who were inside, no doubt still watching me. Let them make of that what they would. I turned and opened the door. I heard the police car pull away as I stepped inside.

  My flat isn't much but it is home. It was pretty much just three rooms, a small kitchen, a bathroom and the living room with a sofa that turned into a bed if you wrestled with it. Non-humans got a fraction of the social security that humans could draw. There had been protests to take even this meagre benefit away. I had my consultants job to help with the rent, and I had a semi-steady inflow of funds from another source. But lots of the others who had made it out of the Zone needed those benefits just to get by.

  There was no hall or entryway, my front door simply opened into the living room-come-bedroom, but I had put up a set of hooks at the side of the door for my coats and jackets. There was a low coffee table on the opposite side of the door with a combined telephone-answering machine perched on top. I had been out all day, there were no messages.

  There was an uneven stack of journals at the foot of the table. They covered various aspects of various supernatural beings, angels only got a mention as a single footnote in one article which mooted us as an offshoot of a faerie race. All of the journals had been written by humans although many contained interviews with subjects from the race being discussed. I had never been approached for an interview. The relatively small number of us who chose to live in the mortal realm made angels easy to ignore to explain away as a type of faerie. I suppose it stopped the religious debates and the questions from people desperate to know what they should believe. I have been approached by people wanting to know which religion has it right, I always sent them away disappointed. If I tell people what to believe it isn't belief. Faith has to be based on something the believer knows is true in their heart. If I started giving away the answers I would be robbing them of their reward. Besides I didn't have access to all of the answers, maybe the elders knew different but I could only offer advice based on the same messages that had been passed down to humanity.

  I untucked my blouse from my skirt and wafted it back and forth to get some airflow to my skin, the one small window in the living room didn't open anymore, if it ever had, so my place was hot.

  I dropped onto the bed, I rarely had visitors and I could sit on the thing when it was in bed form as well as I could when it was a sofa but this way I didn't have to mess around when I wanted to get some sleep. There was something uncomfortable digging into my rear where I was sitting. I shoved a hand under my backside and pulled out the offending object. A revolver style handgun. I had been given it as a gift by Selene. She would have argued against me leaving the weapon at home, probably with some comment like: 'What fucking good is a gun if you don't have it with you?’ Trouble was, if the cops searched me and found the weapon I would be in a whole world of trouble. Selene never sweated details like that. Being a half-demon bounty hunter gave a person plenty of other things to worry about.

  I dropped the revolver on the floor at the side of the bed and rubbed the top of my nose, between my eyes, with my finger and thumb. All that hassle I had gone through today and I hadn't really been able to help. Braun at least would keep my advice in mind as the investigation progressed but how did the knowledge that the killer had done all that without feeling a thing help him. What, should he start looking for some sort of emotionless robot killing machine? The world was a far-fetched place sometimes but it was not that far-fetched. Not yet.

  I started rubbing at my temples and decided I needed to do more than this to get myself relaxed. I made sure the door was fully locked on the way past, sliding bolts home top and bottom to make it fully secure. It was a legal requirement that any non-human residences be separately listed and such lists were freely available and I wasn't one to take chances. That was why I had accepted the gun from Selene.

  As with the rest of my flat the bathroom was small. A standard tub against one wall that could be used as a shower, a sink basin on the back wall and a toilet on the other. Everything was getting old and a number of the tiles on the wall were cracked. But everything worked well enough and I kept it all clean. I turned the taps on in the bath and took a pair of small blue spheres out of the box on top of the cabinet that was screwed into the wall above the sink. When I tossed them into the steaming water they dissolved almost instantly. The chemicals in them foamed in the roiling water from the taps, filling the water with bubbles and adding fragrance to the steam.

  My shoes were the first clothes to be removed, the blouse and skirt quickly joined them under the edge of the basin. I bent down in just my underwear and jewellery at the side of the bath and trailed a hand in the water. I liked my baths hot and adjusted the flow out of the taps accordingly. If the water wasn't just the right side of scalding it wasn't good enough. When the tub was about half full I pealed my body out of the bra and other underwear. Where I came from originally bras weren't necessary. Even someone as well endowed as me wouldn't have to worry about sagging. Perky breasts just seemed to be natural for beings us angels, however big we happened to be. But now I was here living among the humans. I didn't know what effect this environment could have on my body after an extended stay and I wasn't taking chances. I hadn't noticed any adverse effects yet. What I had noticed was an uncomfortable tendency for the straps to rub on the little nubs on my shoulder blades. Those nubs were the only, easily concealed,
physical difference that would identify me as a non-human. I suppose my near waist long pale blonde hair, perfect complexion that would stay that way long beyond the human norm, and my well endowed perfect figure, were all more subtle indications of my heritage. But there were plenty of very attractive human women as well. And unless I let myself go so that my physical differences were a lot more pronounced I didn't glow anymore.

  With the taps turned off I stepped into the bath. I would start the hot one up again as the water cooled to keep it hot. I leaned back to let my long legs slide into the water. The liquid touched the backs of my thighs and up the sides. My buttocks touched the steaming liquid next as I sat down in the water. It came up over the rest of my thighs and the front of my body. As I slowly sank into the water, letting it creep oh so slowly over every centimetre of my pale skin, up my flat stomach to my chest, the latter not quite covered as the liquid moved up my neck. Leaning back I lowered my head and my long blonde hair into the scented water. I placed a foot to either side of the taps at the end of the bath to make room for me to submerge the whole of my upper body. The bubbles crackled in my ears until I dipped my head fully below the surface so that I was fully submerged. The water buoyed up my hair and it moved of its own accord about my face, my shoulders, my neck and my breasts. I stayed like this for a long moment until I felt a shadow cast over me through the water, even with my eyes closed.

  I raised myself slightly out of the water. The tips of my breasts broke the surface and a cool draft passed over my nipples making them tighten. There was definitely someone here. Here I was, naked in the bath, my long legs spread so I was fully exposed and vulnerable should the intruder be of a mind to take advantage of the situation. My gun was on the floor in the other room.

  With limited options, not to mention air, I sat myself up in the bath and blinked the water out of my eyes. The first sight I got of the intruder was of a tall blurred shape, possibly hooded and cloaked, standing at the side of the tub towering over me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The door out of the bathroom led into a corridor ending on one end with the access to the fire exit that Selene had seen outside. The other end of the corridor terminated in a beaded doorway that separated it from the main section of the club. Music and a layer of smoke which clung to the ceiling and muted the lights passed through the wooden beads.

  Apart from the fire exit and the door through which Selene emerged, there were two other actual doors leading off the corridor. A plain green door was on the opposite side of the corridor. On the same side as the bathroom Selene had come through was a similarly coloured door marked out by the sign three-quarters of the way up which indicated that it was the women's bathroom. And standing just outside that door, giving Selene a dirty and superior look, was a young woman who had just come out of that bathroom.

  Selene smiled mock sweetly and spitted the woman with a look of her own before adjusting her trousers on her hips and rubbing the back of her hand and forearm across her lips. The woman made a disgusted noise, turned her back, and headed through the beads and out into the main part of the club. Selene wasn't far behind her.

  The main area of the club was roughly oval in shape. The small foyer and main entrance were located towards the front at one tip. A couple of steps led down from the entrance to the dance floor. The bar ran almost half the length of the left-hand side of the club ending just short of a small stage where they could sometimes get a band in to perform live music, but which most nights was occupied by the DJ tucked away in a small booth. The music was pumped out through a pair of large speakers that made up either side of the stage.

  The flashing multicoloured lights, that made the darkness of the ceiling behind them impenetrable, gave the assorted dancers who were jammed in the remaining space an otherworldly aspect. Or they could have had Selene had less dealings with things that truly were from other worlds. Whatever evils the people behind the club also had their hands in they were of a purely mundane and human nature.

  On the opposite side of the club from the bar and stage was a narrow walkway cut off from the dance floor by a waist high railing. Three doors, all marked with signs indicating restricted access and each with a goon in a suit standing beside them, opened off the main area.

  Selene had a good idea of the sorts of things that went on behind each of those doors although she herself had only ever been through one. It was unlikely to be a coincidence that the door Selene had been ushered in through when contracted by the owners of the club was the same one that Eric stood waiting outside now along with a pair of minders. Where Selene was, just to one side of the curtain of beads that lead to the toilets at the rear tip of the oval, she had no fear of him noticing her. As well as being separated by quite a fair distance there were just too many other bodies between them and the lighting wasn't good enough for him to see her. Selene on the other hand found them to be only minor problems and easily overcome.

  The door closest to Eric came open. The smaller doorman who had brought him inside the club stepped halfway out and waved Eric to enter. The weasel shuffled his shoulders and rubbed his hands over his clothes, as if by that small effort he could somehow make himself look presentable. He slipped easily past them man still half in the doorway who subsequently nodded at the two goons who had been minding Eric and stepped back inside closing the door.

  The angle of the door combined with Selene's vantage point conspired to make it impossible for her to see inside the room during the time the door was open. So she had only her previous visit from which to draw an idea of what she could expect when she got in there. What she could definitely expect was trouble from the goon standing outside when she made to get into that room. At least the two extra men who had been with Eric were now moving off.

  But that still left three close enough to see what Selene was doing and to be on her in seconds. She could take the three without any trouble but doing so would create a lot of commotion. Other doormen would be drawn into the fight against her and maybe even some of the civilians in the club. All of that would combine into a situation that might take her several minutes to deal with. And in that extra time the men she had come here to confront would be able to slip away and they might even bring in some law enforcement to try and deal with her. Again Selene wasn't worried about the police, she had had plenty of run-ins with them and had always been the one who ended up walking away. But to go to so much effort and have nothing to show at the end of it . . .

  The considerations took just long enough for Eric's minders to get to the foot of the steps leading back out into the foyer.

  Selene was debating whether or not she should rush the guy on the door when she heard a murmur hush through the club. The music was still thumping away, the beat reverberating in the hollow space inside her chest. Most of the visitors were still dancing or drinking away in their own little worlds. But not all of them. Some of them had noticed whatever was making the fine hairs on the back of Selene's neck stand on end.

  Selene moved away from the edge of the crowd and mingled. Luckily her leather getup wasn't that far removed from the outfits some of the other women, no-one in here herself included could rightly be called a lady, were wearing so she could blend in.

  Whatever had just entered the room Selene couldn't see it from where she was. The crowd was too thick between them and Selene was grateful to have them there.

  She closed herself down until she was using only her mortal senses and still it was there. Whatever it was, and Selene knew this thing qualified as an it and not a person, had a powerful aura that beat against her shields. Even the full mortals had sensed the power this thing gave off.

  Her hands went automatically for the guns at the small of her back. She struggled not to call on her demonic blood but it was only by damping down her unnatural powers that she kept off this things radar. If, when she had got a look at what she was up against and knew that she had to go up against it, if it came down to a confrontation she would give it all she had
to throw against it. But for now her anonymity would work to her advantage.

  A portion of the crowd parted and she could feel that aura moving closer. In a few moments it was close enough, and the crowd between them had thinned enough, that she got a look at what could throw off so much energy. She was careful when she looked at it that she didn't make eye-contact. That sort of contact would possibly be enough to give her away, and occasionally powerful beings could snare a person with their eyes. Selene wasn't sure that either possibility was likely but better to be safe than sorry. She was headstrong and confident in herself, some would probably say arrogant, but she wasn't stupid.

  The powerful being's appearance was a bit of a letdown but Selene should have known better than to be surprised at a simple appearance, at first glance she hardly looked like a tough as nails demon slaying bounty hunter. This power was contained in a vessel a little taller than Selene but that was only because he was male. For a man he was just about average height, average build. He was the most nondescript man Selene had ever seen. If she looked away now she wouldn't really be able to describe him. If she was looking at mug shots the moment he left the room she wouldn't be able to pick him out.

  But she didn't have to be able to identify him by his physical appearence to recognise him again, she couldn't imagine coming across anyone else with an aura anything like this. It wasn't just his power, but that was a large part of it. There was a flavour to the aura that called to her. And the part of her that it called to, a place low in her body, reacted to the call. She reacted involuntarily with a tightening of things between her legs. There was a sudden heat in the crotch of her leather trousers. Selene was grateful that the leather would keep the damp patch from showing. The points of suddenly hard nipples struggled to make themselves seen through her top.

  She still had her hands on the butts of her weapons but she kept the guns holstered and hidden at her back. She swivelled her whole body to keep the power in sight. She made sure her legs were pressed together at the thighs as she moved so that the leather at her crotch rubbed her just so. If she was going to be this aroused she had to get a little relief. Selene was suddenly bothered that there was so much company around that she couldn’t do anything more overt to get her off, surely she wasn’t in enough danger to warrant more than one hand on a gun.