Faith of the Divine Inferno by Leslie Thompson (e textbook reader txt) 📕

Cindy had enough. She clutched Clay to her chest and ran screaming from the kitchen, going out the back door and surprising the crap out of the men lurking just outside. They watched her speed past with their mouths open, and then they traded looks with us.
“Oh shit,” Shaw murmured and raised his gun. The men reacted by raising the rifles in their hands and shooting at us. Shaw scrambled to get out of the line of fire, dragging me along behind him while he fired three poorly aimed shots over their heads. They ducked back outside while we made it to the living room and cowered behind a wall. By some miracle, we managed to avoid getting shot. Or perhaps it wasn’t miraculous and these guys are that incompetent.
“Give us the woman and we will let you live,” called one of the men from the kitchen. “We’ll even speak with your supervisor and get you off the suspension without a mark on your record.”
Shaw opened the revolver’s cylinder to count bullets and said nothing to them as he snapped it back into place. “How are you doing?” he whispered to me. “Can you hang in there?”
I nodded, trying to shift my weight so that I was more comfortable. The shafts hurt with every shuddered breath, but shock was setting in and I wasn’t feeling quite as much as I was before. That meant that I was going to pass out from blood loss soon. We had to get away before that happened. Otherwise I might wake up with my head separated from my body. I hate it when that happens.
I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at the empty space under the couch. I thought I saw something catch the light and reflect it back in a dull, yellow burst. Curious, I plucked it from the shadows and examined it. My wandering mind was fuzzy, so it took me a minute to realize that it was one of the strange brass discs I’d found hidden in my apartment.
“You don’t know what she is, detective!” A man bellowed, bringing my attention back to the danger of the moment. “That woman is an abomination, a creature in open defiance of God’s natural laws. By protecting her, you are subjecting yourself to the eternal fires of Hell!”
Shaw gave me a look of disbelief and he shook his head in disgust. “What did you do to these people?”
“Not half as much as I’m going to do to them,” I croaked. The sharp pain was evolving into a profound ache, and I tried to push myself up into a sitting position and failed. My body refused to cooperate with me, and I was forced to remain as I was. Had one of the projectiles pierced my spinal column and left me paralyzed? The thought wasn’t terrifying, I’d taken that kind of injury before so I knew that I’d eventually recover, but it does make life terribly inconvenient in moments like this. I concentrated on each of my limbs, feeling the rough fibers of carpet against my arms and fingers and then the tight binding of my shoes over my feet. I wasn’t paralyzed, so the only explanation for my lack of ability was that I was bleeding out, and my brain had shut down the connections to my limbs in order to stay awake.
“We ain’t warning you again, detective. If you don’t walk away from this now, we are gonna be forced to assume that you have made your deal with the devil and send you on your way to meet your fate. We know you’re a good upstanding man who can still be saved. No one wants to see you burn.”
“Can you walk?” Shaw asked me, ignoring the lunatic trying to appeal to him.
My lungs chose that moment to collapse, leaving me writhing painfully and fighting for every breath. Blood flowed up to fill my mouth, choking me and making lights burst before my eyes. I was vaguely aware that Shaw touched my throat to check for a pulse. He swore violently as he pulled on my arms and pressed his shoulder against my belly and lifted me off the floor. The movement brought renewed pain, and I managed a strangled moan that soaked his back in streaks of my blood.
I don’t know how he got us out of the house without getting shot or getting caught by the police. I vaguely remember hearing the thin sound of sirens and thinking, ‘Cindy managed to call the police. I wonder when they’ll get here?’, right before I fainted on our way to the front door.


Chapter 19

I opened my eyes on a strange room. The walls were painted in a dark, rich plum and there were large bouquets of fragrant flowers and herbs set in large, antique vases sitting on every available surface. I was lying in a large bed with an arching canopy and hung with heavy, velvet drapes tied to the posts with strips of satin. Across the room was a large picture window that took up most of the wall and granted a sweeping view of a flowering garden crowned with lush, exotic trees.
I pushed back the quilt and sat up. I discovered that I had been dressed in a white, cotton nightgown cut in the old Victorian style that covered me from neck to ankles. The nightgown had delicate lace trimming the cuffs and collar, and there were seed pearls decorating the satin slippers on my feet. I have never awakened in a strange place wearing strange clothes and had it end well. I scowled at all of this, wondering what fresh, new Hell I’d awakened to now.
“You’re awake.” Shaw was sitting in a small chair beside the bed. It was a delicate piece that was unable to contain his tall body, so he had been forced to slump in it with his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles with his elbows propped against the arms. His face was tired and haggard so that even his luminous eyes looked dull and gray.
“Where are we?” The room had the same kind of flare that Bres favored, but it was more subtle and homey than anything that maniac would come up with.
“We are at Bridget’s house.” Shaw said with a haunted look.
“Bridget from the faerie mound?” I asked. “What in the world made you think it was a good idea to bring me here?”
“I didn’t. One minute I was putting you into my car and the next my college girlfriend was suggesting that it would be better if we hide out at her house. It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said, making an unhappy face. “How do you feel? Are you all healed up now?”
“I’m all better,” I said unbuttoning my collar to look at my chest. There were two new, shiny, pink scars where the cultists had shot me. “I wonder why they used sharpened sticks if they had guns and ammo.”
“Maybe they think you’re a vampire,” Shaw shrugged. I thought about it and agreed with him. It’s hard to say what kind of assed-backwards logic cult members used. These are the kind of people who talk to burning bushes and try to heal leprosy by hoping really hard. “You know, it’s bad enough that you’re immortal, do you have to heal like a comic book super hero too?”
“I don’t usually do this well. I think my speedy recovery time is a side effect of Bres’ magic.” I slid out of the bed and looking around for a way out. There was a door a few feet away, but I wasn’t going to trust it. It has been my experience that the female of any species tended to be more aggressive and ruthless than their male counterparts. I did not want to see how much crazier Bridget was than Bres.
I went to the window and looked out, wondering if we could smash the thing and make a run for it. I didn’t see a fence or guard dogs or anything potentially dangerous, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t there. I’ve learned that it doesn’t pay to take anything associated with the fey for granted. They had way too many tricks up their sleeves.
“By the way, I’m sorry about last night,” Shaw began awkwardly. “We’d been up for three days and I had way too much to drink.”
“It’s fine,” I told him absently, still examining the exotic plants beyond the window. I touched the glass and felt a pleasantly warm and tingling sensation slide along my hand and arm. I was suddenly wrapped in the smell of freshly baked vanilla cookies and spicy pumpkin bread. Of course all of my alarm bells went off, but I was too content to pay much attention to it. It was nice to relax for once. “It’s happened to me before, and it’ll probably happen again. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’d like to have a chance to make it up to you.” I felt rather than heard him approach me from behind. He was close enough that I could feel the heat of his body and that a hard thought would press him against me.
“We’ll have to see what the future brings,” I said coyly smiling to myself. My cool melted away as he ran his fingertips lightly up and down my arms. I shivered and leaned back against him and he wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips against the curve of my neck and shoulder. I cuddled against him and tilted my head to the side so that he could kiss as much of my neck as he wanted.
Things got a bit sweaty after that, and in retrospect, I realize that it had been a dumb thing to do. It’s rude and tacky to do that kind of thing in someone else’s house, not to mention that it was dangerous under the circumstances. If anyone wanted to fill us both full of holes, we wouldn’t have noticed until damage was done. At least this time I got most of Shaw’s clothes off of him before Bridget came barging into the room. She pointed and laughed while Shaw swore and glared at her and tried to salvage his shredded dignity.
“I know that you two really needed this down time, which is why I put both of you in here,” Bridget said as if a half-naked man wasn’t glaring daggers at her. “But the Morrigan Mob is dropping by for dinner and I thought it was best if the two of you weren’t here when they arrived. They don’t like anything they can’t kill, and they most especially hate men. Now get out.”
Bridget was wearing her human form, which meant that she had toned down her faerie attributes such as glittering and her beauty was somewhat less hypnotic. She still remained recognizable, though. Her red hair was still long and luxurious and her large green eyes were still luminous. She did have eclectic taste in clothes, though. She wore a thin linen top that had seen better days with its sleeves ripped away and a tear in the neck line that left half