Fallen Angels, Part Eight - Kisses From a Demon
#8 of Fallen Angels
Chapter Seven
Kisses From a Demon
Like a rare bubble of clean air can rise to the surface of a festering mire, a wave of clarity washed over my mind, if only for a second.
Please, I begged some uncaring god, don't let me do this. I don't wish to hurt anyone.
But the moment lasted scarcely a second, before my drug induced bloodthirst returned full strength, and with it, my hatred for all things human. I scouted for prey, cocooned in my safe dreamlike state. I felt invincible. Human faces with stupid smiles crowded around the _Big Eli_Ferris wheel, and I wanted to slam my fist into them all. To claw at them and revel in the pleasure of shattering their bones and tearing through their soft tissue and crunchy cartilage.
To protect humankind from creatures escaping the abyss - and from themselves?
Really? REALLY?
The words flashed by like a faint echo from a past life. If I had once lived by those words, I had surely been a fool. Nothing beat the satisfying crunch of fist meeting flesh. Back at the police office, when Quinn showed me the photos of last night's aftermath, I did not understand why the army boys had gone berserk. But now I fully knew what drove them, and I loved every second of it. Now Quinn was the only one left behind, ignorant. He should have been here with me, and together we would tear up this place. Wolf and demon. I would teach Quinn the true meaning of springtime fun. Even with the werewolf form at his disposal, I had never known him to put it into any proper use. He was wasting his rare gift, running on all fours, howling at the moon and lapping up spring water. He probably tiptoed around with flowers between his hind claws and hugged trees, too.
Screw guilt. To hell with empathy. When they try to catch you, then you strike. If they do catch you, you strike harder.
"Look at that skinny dude," a passerby with slick brown hair in a ponytail and Chelsea boots whispered to his wife.
"He's really fucked up!"
The wife tut-tutted and whispered back Il fait nuit dans son grenier. She wore bright red lipstick and a floral perfume that made her smell like a Paris whorehouse. I smiled with grim satisfaction. Not only was I looking for an excuse to unleash my wrath. Now, these two lovebirds had given me not one, but two damn valid reasons to kill them. He had called me skinny and his wife didn't even have the decency to talk behind my back in my own language. The couple had wandered off, but I had all night to find them. And find them I would. I had been wrong all along, believing Crane to be a madman, when it was perfectly clear he was a genius, deserving of nothing less than the Nobel prize. Thanks to ARF-1, I was fearless, invincible and all powerful.
The chase was on.
I would hunt down the creep who dared call me a skinny dude, and his French poodle too, and they would know my claws as I tore into....
Surprised, I looked at my two very human hands.
I had not shifted. Maybe I had the mindset of a raging demon, but I was stuck in the frail body of a human.
I was momentarily distracted by the sound of two boys struggling to get a helium balloon out of the branches of a tree. The younger boy was in tears over the loss of his precious blue bauble while the other boy pried it from the tree with the sugary end of a cotton candy stick. Finally, the younger boy climbed onto the shoulders of his older brother and lifted the balloon from its nest in the branches, like some wounded bluebird. The kids were all smiles, and the empathy between the two brothers dulled my anger for a split second. This unexpected chink in my armor of fury allowed a forgotten drive to emerge from the dark pits of my mind.
I was on a mission more important than mayhem.
Half of me had sworn to serve as a protector, long before I was born.
This was the task, unseen powers once bestowed upon my demon half, and I'd already saved the humans once, against the sonic weaponry created by the MI-16 [*]. But now I faced a threat, much more personal:
I needed to protect them from my own, human self.
Obligation to duty struggled to overpower my urge to kill. This brain was mine - a human thing of flesh and fiber and running rampant on a synthetic compound created from one hundred eighty one amino acid residues. If I wanted to escape without blood on my hands, the only way out was to leave my human half behind. I staggered into a deserted penny-arcade and leaned against a slot machine decorated with white circus horses. The games were turned off for the night, but illumination from outside poured in through eyeholes in the tarpaulin and reflected changing colors in their chrome cabinets. Their polished metal frames warped my reflection beyond recognition. Staring eyes set in dark recesses reminded me how little sleep I'd had for the past week, yet my heart was pounding like a conga-line of taiko drummers.
I'll become, I decided.
"Don't! do it" I heard Karen complain quietly. Only, this time she was almost pleading.
I knew what she was saying, though.
Too many shifts and I wouldn't be able to shift back.
My demon half had sworn an oath to kill only in self defense. But my human form had taken no such vow, and right now my human form was on a synthetic prowl. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to shift. The row of polished slot machines reflected my changing face as I walked past them, and a large feline head with twisted horns and vicious fangs looked back at me. My body grew to twice the size of an ordinary human and my skin grew a thick striped fur. My arms extended almost to the ground and ended in three-inch claws that knew the sensation of tearing into human flesh all too well. My shirt tore, my pants split and I kicked off my shoes and dug furrows into the dew-moistened soil with clawed feet.
My fevered breathing turned into a soft growl that soothed my fury. The urge to destroy drained into the void like tepid bathwater and petrified into little shards of frozen malice. In my demon form I no longer hated mankind, but I knew I was forever a stranger among them, and I knew I needed to get away from the Spring Faire. I peeked out of the tent opening. A crowd of humans intoxicating themselves on soda and sugar surrounded the tent on all sides, and an unnoticed escape seemed impossible.
"Hey! Can I take your picture?"
Outside, a ten year old girl waved her smartphone at three humans wearing Star-Wars costumes.
"Sure thing, sweetie," replied Princess Leia and posed between a storm-trooper and Chewbacca. The girl snapped a photo, and the trio went on their way. I quickly left the tent and trailed behind them.
"Far out, man! What are you supposed to be?" slurred a drunk stranger in a bold Hawaii shirt.
"I'm in the sequel!" I roared and walked away, fast without breaking into a run. The stranger didn't follow me, but kept staring with his mouth agape, while a strand of cheap beer and vomit yo-yoed off his chin.
What did he see?
Did he see me the way I saw myself? A horned feline demon? Or was my mind playing tricks on me again, and everyone saw me only as a bare-assed nutcase?
I stopped a short distance away from the faire. The cool evening breeze brushed through the fur on my face and my neck and I began to relax.
It was time to unbecome.
My demon half resisted when I changed back into human form, something it had never done before and I had to struggle ever so slightly to unbecome. I shrugged it off, knowing I had done the right thing, and I hasted back to the place where Crane had dropped me off. Here I found my denim jacket by the wayside. It was only a short jacket that didn't cover much, and certainly not the parts that could get me into trouble. I wondered if I was better off without it. Fully naked I could always claim to have been mugged.
I'm afraid again, I realized to my great relief.
The ARF injection had worn off and I began to laugh. For the first time in my life I was happy to be afraid. I sneaked towards a growth of bushes where I could hide and think. I searched the pockets of my jacket for my cellphone, but Crane had taken everything, including my wallet and my car keys. My cigarettes were still there. Lucky me, so I lit a Pall Mall and pondered my next move. I also found a small plastic button in the same pocket as my cigarettes. It had the size of a Stelazine tablet, but coated with a dark rubbery substance. I didn't recognize the thing, so I threw it away. It sailed in an arc over the bushes and disappeared somewhere in the grassy field.
Exhausted, I collapsed on the ground and curled up into fetal position, covering myself with the short jacket. I decided to wait in the bushes until the fair closed for the night. When everyone had left, I'd sneak home in the buff. But a few minutes later, I heard footsteps approaching my hiding place. I looked out and saw a pair of legs wearing Armani trousers and expensive shoes. He was searching for something on the ground and circled around the bushes.
Quinn?
I called out his name in disbelief and could have embraced him for finding me here.
"When you have the nose of a wolf," he said. "Your scent isn't difficult to track."
"Plus," he held up an electronic device that looked like a large remote control. "I slipped a GPS transmitter into your pocket back at the station."
"The little plastic button is a tracking device?"
Quinn shrugged. "It's... not like I needed it."
I smiled at my friend. "Of course not. Not with that beautiful werewolf nose of yours."
Quinn threw me a plastic shopping bag containing a fresh set of clothes.
"When you didn't report back I guessed you'd had to shift. So, I brought you some decent street clothes."
Werewolf or not, I was relieved to see him and I emptied the contents of the bag on the ground.
"Armani?"
"It's all I could find in your size."
Back home, I slumped into my couch. This had been the craziest day in my life -and I'd seen a few.
Crane was dangerous and we had to stop him, but we had no hard evidence to hang him on. Collecting evidence for this case was like catching fish barehanded -everything slipped through your fingers. Apart from Irene having seen Gill bring a human brain to Crane's lab, we had little to go on. She hadn't taken any pictures, and she could have been wrong. Any attorney would claim the brain could have been a pickled cauliflower, or a plastic brain for teaching purposes. Every piece of evidence in this case was as unreal as any of my hallucinations. Touch one and they pop like soap bubbles.
"But he injected me with synthetic ARF. You can't go around doing shit like that to people." I argued. "Just take a blood sample and have the lab look for it." But Quinn quickly dispelled that idea. The forensics had no tests for a compound this new.
"But Crane knows the sequence in his sleep," I insisted. "He told me so".
"We won't find it written down in his lab then." Quinn was blunt, speaking from experience.
"Except in the Bioneer system," I said. "He would have to punch in the sequence."
I got off the couch and turned on the stereo. Music always helps me unwind, but I had a nagging sensation it would do me no good tonight. The ARF chemical had shown a new, violent side of me. A side I didn't know I possessed, and a side I didn't care to know.
Based on my recent listening history, Spotify suggested another album by Miles Davis. A pretty brown nude model on the cover was about to get blown by an oversized trumpet. "Big Fun" read the title.
"Big fun...Sure!"
I was about to press play, when a car stopped outside my apartment, and I flinched.
What if Crane had returned to finish the job?
When I peeked through the curtains, I only saw the neighbor across the street returning from work. I eased back into the sofa, shaking my head. Crane didn't know where I lived. I was growing paranoid and needed to sleep. But every time I drifted off, the nightmarish image of Crane hovering over me, syringe in hand startled me awake.
"We'll meet again," he crooned. "Some sunny day."
I was awake in a blink. That line came from a wartime song by Vera Lynn. Crane seemed to have an obsession with the British octogenarian, and he'd referred to Irene as the modern day Vera Lynn. If Crane suspected her of working with us, she could be in serious danger.
It was almost midnight and closing hours for The Phantom Cat, when I called the place from my landline.
"You have called the Phantom Cat outside opening hours, please leave a message..." said the disembodied voice of Jesse Juliano.
"Irene!" I shouted. "Get the hell out of there."
I cursed Crane for stealing my cellphone. Irene's number was in the call log and I wanted to call her. Then my blood turned to ice; what if she had tried to call ME? Then Crane would know of us working together.
My car was still parked outside Crane's lab, so I called for a cab to drive me to the nightclub.
"That place is closing up, man" grinned the cabbie when I told him to step on it.
"I'm with the band."
"Dude, you're sure late for the gig."
The cab screeched to a halt and I slipped the cabbie a twenty before rushing to the door. To my relief, it was still open.
"Jesse!" I called out. The lights were dim and a solitary band member was closing his guitar case. He was tall and square-jawed and I knew I hadn't seen him with the band before.
New guy?
A pang of jealousy hit me hard. I knew Irene had invited me to be the new guitar in the band. I knew I had missed band practice at four, but hiring this bald dude in my place didn't seem fair.
"Irene!" I shouted at him. "Is she upstairs?"
The new guy looked at me, confused but said nothing. I didn't afford him time to answer and I leaped up the stairs two steps at a time. Irene's door was ajar and I threw myself through the opening without knocking.
"Irene, we gotta get you out!" I shouted.
She didn't reply but the lights were on, so I stood in the doorway, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.
"You there?"
Then I heard a soft groan from her bedroom, and that's where I found her on the floor. She was bleeding from a bullet wound to the chest and her breathing was shallow and labored.
"Irene!" I cried and knelt by her. I took her pulse like I'd seen them do in movies. It was very slow and I had no clue what to do in a situation like this. The first aid course I'd taken a few years back with my driver's exam never mentioned gunshot wounds.
"Don't move!" I looked around for a phone. "I'll call an ambulance."
"Too late", she whispered. "He got me good".
"Bullshit!" I cried. "You're not going anywhere."
I touched her hands and feet, they were cold and I realized she was fading fast.
"Do one thing for me, will ya?" She asked.
"I'd do anything for you, Irene."
"Then show me."
"You want me to shift?"
"I got to know if it's for real."
With no time to spare, I became without a second of hesitation, and the Armani shirt exploded into confetti as my body grew to superhuman size. Buttons rocketed off my jeans and the legs split at the seams from my feet to the crotch. I kicked off the tatters and towered over Irene.
She flashed me a weak smile and moved her lips, as if trying to speak but I couldn't make out the words. They sounded vaguely like feline_or f_eeling fine and my heart raced.
I knew I was a mean-looking feline with oversized horns in my demon form. Did she see me like that?
-or was she feeling fine because she was now beyond pain?
I wrapped a giant paw around her frail hand, but got no response. She was cold and limp, her heart running on fumes.
There's energy in the void. Maybe I could siphon some of it into Irene to keep her alive. Only, I didn't know how. I looked at my paws and in that moment I hated what I'd become. These claws knew only how to kill, not how to heal. I reached into the alternate dimension I knew only as "the abyss" and inhaled long breaths of the energy only my demon half understood. It was like having a second pair of lungs. Only, this second pair sucked energy out of the void and breathed it back into the lifeless body of Irene.
Was this helping her in any way? I wondered.
I inhaled and exhaled dark energy, but with every breath my demon self seemed to manifest itself a little firmer. With every lungful, my demon half grew stronger, while my human half was left behind like a spectator to a carcrash.
With my senses now sensitized, I grew aware of the lingering stench of gun smoke in the air, and that of the stranger who had fired the weapon. The scent was vaguely familiar, something I had barely noticed in my human form. But now I recognized the body scent of the new guitar player in the band. The killer never left The Phantom Cat; he was still here and waiting for me, downstairs, with a loaded rifle. A surge of rage washed over me for the second time that night. Only this time it wasn't chemically induced. The bald guy had taken something precious from me, and my hatred for him grew as deep and cold as the abyss itself.
To protect all humans from the abyss, and from themselves?
Well, I'd sure fucked that one up, and Irene had paid for my slip-up.
From the bottom of the stairs I could see into the nightclub and into the tiny office. Jesse Juliano was on the floor, covered in blood. I could smell it coagulating. The killer had shot Jesse before heading upstairs to take out Irene. Maybe the sound of my taxi had alerted him and caused him to run for the exit. But right now, he was hiding in the depths of the nightclub, breathing lightly and sweating a little. This dude was a professional, waiting for me with a loaded AK-47.
He fired his rifle, the moment I stepped into the nightclub. It gave off a muffled crack and a bullet hammered into my shoulder. I winced from the pain but the metal slug couldn't penetrate my fur and it dropped noisily to the floor like a miscast metal pebble. The bruise stung like an angry hornet and only fueled my fury. I headed straight for the bald hitman, shoveling tables and chairs aside with both paws like I was plowing through a thicket. He held on to his rifle with both hands and tried to reload it while I advanced on him in a steady stride.
"What do you see?" I commanded.
"A monster or a naked human?" The hitman only stared at me stupidly with his eyes wide open and mouth agape.
"Tell me!" I roared, but when he remained silent, I grabbed him with both paws and lifted him off the ground like he was a life-sized dummy.
"You...killed...Irene," I growled and slammed the back of his head into the wall with every syllable. The sickening crunch of skull against concrete didn't bother me, nor did the rivulets of blood that now matted my paws. Again and again I bellowed the same three words and pounded his limp body against the wall, caring little for my sworn duty of protecting mankind. As man and beast, I loved Irene, and this human had robbed her from me.
I finally let go of his corpse and it dropped to the ground in a broken heap. Then I called Quinn from the office phone.
"Get your ass over here," I bellowed in a voice that was too deep and much too guttural to be human. "Irene's been shot. I need an ambulance, a meat wagon - and a new set of clothes. Human size."
"Is she alive?" asked Quinn and I went quiet. I longed to return to Irene and wrap her in my arms again, but I knew it wouldn't change a damn thing. My claws only knew how to take a life, not for returning it. My mouth knew how to tear out throats, but it didn't know how to kiss.
I didn't want to remain like this.
I let out a desperate wail that bore no resemblance to any sound made by earthly creatures.
"I'm sorry," said Quinn, when he heard me sobbing. "I'm on my way."
I slammed the receiver back on the phone and breathed deeply.
Time to_unbecome_ and leave the demon form behind, I thought and did my best to relax, to concentrate and get my familiar shape back. But something was wrong, and I was horrified when nothing happened.
I couldn't shift back.
[*] in Havana or Hell