Chapter 8
Imogael
I thought I had fixed him, but I guess I was wrong. He was still moping, still boring, still frustrating.
What was I going to do? I had sort of thrown all-in with him. I didn't know where I would go if things didn't work out with Scott. Plus, I wanted them to work out with him. I didn't want to leave him all alone while he was suffering.
That bit of empathy was so strange to me. Why did I care what happened to him? I would have normally been torturing someone like him. Instead, I felt bad for Scott, and I wanted to ease his burden.
Did I want to ease it for him, or for me? Was I being selfish?
That I even cared was stressful. The human body I had been given must have been poisoning my mind, forcing me to care about things that I shouldn't have been. I just wanted Scott to be fun again. I wanted him to go and beat some assholes up.
I did understand, of course, on an intellectual level. What he was going through had to be hard. I felt bad for being selfish about him again.
I'm not at all interested in staying with someone who was just going to sit around in the basement all day. He was handsome and usually interesting, plus I liked his motorcycle, but the newfound depression was too much for me. I was about ready to tap out.
I missed Hell. I knew I was growing too attached to a human, when I could be yanked back down to hell at any moment. I did love his hair and his face and the way his thoughts invaded my mind. I wished he would come upstairs then and let me run my fingers through his hair some more.
A sound turned my attention away from myself and to the window. I heard that fluttering of wings once again, the familiar sound. Seraniel. Had he come to take her back? To apologize for leaving her, for sending her to be with the humans?
I stood and went to the front door, my heart pounding against my chest. What would I say to him if he asked to have me back? Would I let him take me home? Would I argue with him, and goad him into fucking me the way he used to? Or would I tell him to fuck off, leave me to stay with Scott?
I wasn't sure which outcome seemed better. Somehow, I wanted all of them at once.
When I opened the door, I found no one. For a second, I worried there would be another dead body, but the porch was completely empty. I heard the flutter of wings again, above me that time. Like it was coming from the room.
Stepping out onto the porch, I moved into the front yard and looked up. The roof was empty. No one. Nothing. The sun was setting, but there was still enough light to see that whatever had made that sound was gone. Or maybe that it had never been there at all. Maybe it was all a hallucination.
Deciding to search around the house, I started on the left wall and then traced it all the way to the right wall. There, near the back fence, I found a pile of feathers. Large, black feathers, exactly like the ones Seraniel would have had.
It answered nothing. I was sure there were birds that could have had feathers like that too. I tried to look for more evidence of Seraniel, but found nothing. Absolutely nothing.
What in the world was going on? If Seraniel was trying to take me back, why would he have been flitting about, hiding from me? Was he watching me, like some kind of strange guardian angel?
A horrible thought crossed my mind. What if he was the one behind the murders? Would he have killed those humans? Why? To punish Scott for taking me in?
It was possible. Angels were wrathful, capable of causing great harm. It was rare, but it did happen. An angel that wasn't getting his way would very likely act out. Seraniel was no stranger to tantrums, and it seemed that most of his anger was always aimed at me.
I hoped, I wished, I even prayed that I wasn't the reason Scott was suffering. I would hate myself for all eternity if I was.
And if he was there to take me back home, I realized, I wasn't interested. I would get back to Hell on my own terms. Not with the help of some bratty angel, and definitely not with the help of an angel making a human suffer because of her.
That thought was funny, to me. I had no real attachment to Scott, and yet I was so fond of him that I would forsake a chance to go home to punish Seraniel, as childish as that punishment would be.
What was it I was feeling? Fondness, warmth, compassion, desire. Was it love?
Scott
Another buzz in my back pocket finally irritated me enough to force me to look at my phone. I felt bad for telling Elise to leave the basement. She wasn't trying to make me upset. That was all me, stupidly reliving the worst days of my life.
I would have to apologize to her. She didn't seem like the kind of woman to hold grudges for very long, but I would feel bad for a long time if I didn't.
It was amusing to me that I cared so much about what she thought or felt. Was I starting to like her? She was goddamn hot, and she was a great fuck, but I wasn't sure I was capable of having real feelings for a woman. Not anymore.
It seemed like that would have been unkind to Etta's memory. Like I was spitting on her grave, or forgetting her. Would she have wanted me to one day move on?
Was Elise even the kind of woman I would want to move on with?
My phone told me I had missed 9 calls. 5 voicemails and 7 text messages awaited me. I chose to listen to the voicemails first. The first one was one of the girls from The Black Diamonds. I recognized her, she was one of the girls I had been with most often. She was a strong girl, usually, with a good head on her shoulders. She was the one who convinced Starr to start dealing in meth.
Alright, so maybe she didn't have that great of a head on her.
She was freaking out. “We don't know what to do, Scott. Who's supposed to lead us now? Without Starr, we're aimless. Please come help us.”
The next call was her again. It came an hour after the first one. “Scott, it's Danielle again. I was calling you to let you know that, for now, we have things figured out. We just ran a sort of quick election. I guess it was decided I would take Starr's place. I hope you and I will be able to have the same professional relationship you had with Starr, and that you'll guide me through this transition.”
She would do just fine, I thought. I would walk her through what I knew about Starr's job and her alliances with the gangs and other clubs in our area next time I went out to see them.
The third call was Antonio, back to business as usual. No time for sympathy. He got that from his father. When Antonio's mother died of cancer, he didn't even take more than an hour away from the job.
So Antonio needed me to do a drug run in a small neighborhood to the south, where he was trying to expand his business so he wasn't butting up against Saejima so much anymore. The fourth call was similar, but came from an unfamiliar voice.
It was the president of a club from Oklahoma, hoping to open up trade routes with Antonio and, through him, Saejima. I would have to call him back in the next few days to avoid causing him trouble.
Finally, the fifth call. I wasn't prepared for what I was about to hear. Not at all.
At first it was just sniffling, and then a cough. An attempt to compose oneself. Then Saejima's voice.
“I just received some texts,” he said. His voice wavered. “I forwarded them to you. Once you get them, come find me. I need your help.”
Brief, but terrifying. Closing out my voicemail, I went to my texts. The first photo was of a finger, severed and on a cement floor. The second was of a leg, again severed. Covered in sticky, red blood, sitting on top of some sort of industrial machine. Each photo became progressively more gruesome, showing off more of the dead person's body, until finally it revealed a face.
Jin's face.
No wonder Saejima had been crying. “Fuck,” I said. That hatred, that anger, was coming back to me. I would find the bastard doing this, and I would kill them. I would fucking kill them.
There was that same flame tattoo, the one that Starr had on her chest. Jin had it under his eye, and unlike Starr, I knew that Jin had no tattoos at all.
It was a message from the killer.
I dialed Saejima, who picked up after only one ring. “Scott. Are you on your way?”
“I will be soon, but first I need to know what you have planned. What should I bring?”
“Joachim and Boaz, plus whatever else you've got. I got in touch with Dan down at the police station, and he told me there's been some suspicious activity around an old abandoned factory.”
“How do you know that's where we'll find them?” I asked.
“I don't, but I have a hunch. You saw the machinery, right? It's gotta be some kind of factory, even if it's not that one. We have to go, just to check it out. We're just gonna check it out with fully loaded guns in our hands.”
It was sound logic. I just worried that Saejima would kill an innocent on accident. We didn't need more unnecessary deaths on our hands. “Fine. I'll be there soon.”
“Good. You probably shouldn't bring Elise with you, though,” he said.
The thought of leaving her alone scared the piss out of me. She could get attacked while I was gone, but she was guaranteed to get hurt if she came with me. “You're probably right.”
“I am. Be here by 10, and we'll ride there together. I have most of my men coming, but I'm leaving a few to keep watch.” He paused. “Just in case.”
“Then I might have Elise stay there with your wife,” I said. Saejima agreed, and then we both hung up. Finally, we had the possibility of dealing with the problem. The deaths might stop, and I might be able to move on.
It seemed unlikely, but it was definitely a possibility.