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

served to force the water out of the reservoir and through the spout. Whoever had built the bomb had glued silver crosses all around the interior and the bottom.
Dumbfounded, I tossed the whole thing into my bathroom sink and noticed a bit of white paper jutting out from underneath the timer. It was a handwritten series of words in an ancient dialect of Hebrew that I hadn’t encountered in over a thousand years. It took an effort, but I managed to remember enough of it to understand that the note was a magical incantation, begging angels to destroy the creature the bomb was intended for.
I can’t claim that I wasn’t warned. Alejandro had told me that a religious cult was out to get me. But I had been right to deny the protection the Children were so eager to offer. Cults tend to be a bit loony so I had expected them to come at me with guns and knives, or if they were very cowardly, poison and incendiary devices. The holy water bomb was preferable to any of those things so I supposed I should simply be thankful and get on with my day, but I wasn’t. I was annoyed. The cult was full of idiots. Only the insanely devout would think that something like holy water would do anything but soak my clothes. Did they think I was a demon?
Now that the assassination attempt was dealt with, it was time to get ready for the day. I threw the bomb into the trash compactor in my kitchen with its cherry wood cabinets and stainless steel appliances. Then I hurried back down the hallway with the closet that contained my washing machine and dryer, then into my master bedroom. I moved past my four poster, king size bed and went into the massive master bathroom. I stepped into my walk-in closet and contemplated the wealth of clothing and shoes I held in there.
I can admit I am a clotheshorse. I love the soft fabrics, vibrant colors, and styles that were available in this modern era. In the past, I was restricted to long skirts and dresses, sometimes with a low cut bodice and other times I was forced to cover myself from neck to toe. Now I can wear trousers like a man and no one ever looked at me twice. I was also allowed to wear tank tops and shorts that exposed my long, slender arms and legs and no one cared. So long as my nipples and genitalia were covered, I could go around wearing any damn thing I wanted. I am a whole lot more comfortable in these modern styles.
I chose a pair of low rider jeans that flattered my perky butt and slim hips and showed off my legs. Underneath, I put on a thong because the jeans were too tight and panty lines are tacky, and I wore a matching bra that pushed my boobs up and forward as if they were on display. To avoid looking completely trashy, I donned a long, lilac boyfriend t-shirt that hugged my torso and ended just past the low waste of my jeans. I slid a pair of brown, leather boots with a cute high heel on my feet, and felt good about myself.
These days, women go out of their way to appear as if they did nothing to make themselves beautiful. They use an assortment of curling irons, flat irons, gels, hairsprays, and a strange thing called putty. I never saw the point in all of that unless I needed an elaborate hairdo. So I simply ran a brush through my long dark brown hair and left it alone.
Since no respectable woman within the social elite I had infiltrated ever left the house without make-up, I had to wear that too. The trick is to wear tons of the stuff without looking like I wore any of it at all. I had a mineral powder that matched my olive complexion and a blush that was soft enough to return the rosy glow to my cheeks that the base covered up. I applied a thin line of black eyeliner over my thick lashes and applied black mascara to enhance my purple eyes.
When I say purple, I don’t mean the kind of purple eyes that are actually a very dark blue. I mean the color that was once the exclusive right of Roman emperors. The shade of my eyes had once drawn all kinds of trouble to me when some priest decided that they marked me as an inhumane creature that needed to be destroyed. However, thanks to advances in modern medicine, my eyes rarely drew much more than raised eyebrows. People today assume that the purple color was the result of contact lenses, and believe that my eyes are a more mundane color like brown. I’m fine with that. Twenty-five centuries of hearing about my eyeballs was more than I wanted to endure.
Once I was minty fresh and pretty, I straightened my bathroom and went across my apartment to my study. There were a few stocks I wanted to check on, and then I would begin a new search for another item I wanted Harry to find for me. As I moved past the kitchen, I heard something pound on my front door three times before it exploded inward in thick pieces of wood. Surprised, I stared down the length of my entryway and saw Baja and Kootch crossing my threshold carrying a battering ram and pistols.
Put out because I was going to have to buy a new door if I wanted to avoid eviction, I glared at the men stepping into my home. “You could have just knocked you know.”

Chapter 4

Kootch snarled as he threw the battering ram into the wall beside the door and left a big hole in the sheetrock. His hand went behind his back and drew a pistol. Baja lifted his own gun, holding the 9mm sideways in the badass gangsta grip. I never could understand why punks hold their guns like that. If the weapon had a hard recoil, the shooter ends up punching himself in the face and breaking his nose and looking like a fool. Baja should have known better than that. Kootch had more brains when it came to his weapons. He held a semi-automatic pistol in a two-handed tea cup grip with a wide stance for balance. Perhaps Kootch had been a military man once upon a time. I wonder what happened there.
“The boss wants a word with you,” Baja said evenly. He wasn’t angry which is good, but that wouldn’t stop him from shooting me, and that is bad.
“Yeah… I don’t think so.” I replied. If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that if someone else’s boss wants to talk to you, you generally don’t want to talk to them. Baja and Kootch were talking instead of shooting, so there was a chance that they had express orders to deliver me unharmed. I liked the idea that I could beat the crap out of them to my heart’s content and they would have to take it. I took a step back toward my bedroom where I keep most of my weapons.
“We are not here to debate with you,” Baja said, interrupting whatever semi-coherent comment Kootch was about to make. “You just come along with us now.”
“Why would I do something as stupid as that?” I took another step back. The men followed me. “People who go off alone with you two have a nasty tendency to reappear dismembered or full of holes. Tell your boss that if he wants to talk to me, he can call me on the phone, or knock on my door once I get it replaced.”
Neither man answered. They simply continued toward me, guns aimed and ready. I shouldn’t have tried to reason with them. Everyone knows that good flunkies always follow orders to the letter or else they didn’t live very long. Kootch and Baja were survivors and very good flunkies indeed, so if I wanted to avoid meeting their boss, I would have to kill or cripple them. I didn’t mind those options.
My favorite weapons are batons and I kept those in the bedroom when I’m not using them. I have guns, but I don’t like to use them unless I absolutely have to. Fighting and killing are intimate things, and should never be done when the enemy’s health could be left to doubt. When I kill, I do it up close and personal so that I know with certainty when they die. Projectiles also make it much easier to kill by accident. Bullets tend to breakup or ricochet inside the body, causing a lot of damage that the shooter might not intend to do.
If I cannot have my batons, I prefer edged weapons. My swords were currently in storage or on loan to museums. Most of them were more ornate than functional and all of them were valuable. Those are not pieces I wanted in my home as a beacon of temptation to thieves. I did have various daggers and switch blades but they were stashed next to the batons. I glanced into the kitchen and saw the wooden block holding my cooking knives, and decided that they would have to do.
Both men yelled angrily as I vaulted over the island counter between kitchen and hallway and they opened fire. Bullets whistled over my head and banged about as they hit the pans hanging from hooks in the ceiling and ricocheted off of the metal. My kitchen cabinets spat chunks of wood on me as I yanked my knife block to the floor and crouched behind the counter. After a few seconds, silence filled the air and I heard the harsh metallic sound of clips being ejected from the guns and new ones inserted. I pulled two blades from the block and prepared to counter attack.
“The boss wants you alive, but he was not specific about how healthy you had to be,” Baja called. “Don’t make me hurt you Becky, ‘cause I will if I got to!” Kootch followed the statement with high, wicked laughter similar to a hyena cry. He muttered maniacally, and I thought I could make out words that implied that he looked forward to doing unforgivable things to my body.
Baja usually controlled those impulses in Kootch, but today he let the redneck work himself into a hideous frenzy. Baja wasn’t bluffing. If I fought them too hard, he would find a way to get me, and then he’d let Kootch do whatever he wanted, so long as I didn’t die. So much for my theory that the men weren’t allowed to hurt me.
I contemplated my defense strategy while I listened to their shoes moving across the carpet, making soft crunching noises whenever they stepped on broken wood. They had guns and I had knives, and no matter what Kung Fu movies claim, you cannot win a gunfight with blades. Besides that, both men were heavier and stronger than I was and no amount of time spent lifting weights in the gym was going to make a difference. I could have overwhelmed them simply because it’s terrifying to face an opponent who refuses to lie down and die. But Kootch and Baja are prolific gossips and I don’t want my immortality to become common knowledge.
“Listen to me Baja. You broke my door down and shot my apartment full of holes. This is a rich neighborhood full