"None of that will fit you," I snapped as she hugged my favorite t-shirt to her chest.
"Sure it will. My boobs are bigger." She swiped my shirt and raced from my room.
Her boobs were not bigger and a week and a half of community college on Earth had worn me out. Playing dumb, trying to move slowly and making sure my eyes didn’t turn red was hard--plus nobody liked me. Myrtle, an outcast in Hell, had joined a sorority and had a boyfriend. Cute Guy, aka Timmy Smith the necrophiliac, was her man.
I was not asked to join a sorority and I was not popular. I was more of a smart nerd, but even the nerds seemed wary of me. I was grudgingly tolerated by the mean girls because I was Myrtle's
cousin.
They still thought I was after their gross human boyfriends. As if. I had a boyfriend. . .a soul mate. At least I thought I did. I was counting the minutes until I was allowed communication with Hell.
Even though Myrtle seemed quite happy being popular, a Demon was still a Demon. Besides playing dead in public places, she was also practicing her other bizarre hobby on Earth—shaving and dyeing people’s pets in the dead of night to look like wild animals. I had spotted a number of dogs and cats in town resembling lions and tigers and skunks. The townfolk of Eden were stymied. She also joyfully appeared to be pitting the popular mean girls against each other. I couldn’t say I minded that one.
As I wandered to my closet I hid my favorite t-shirts. "No way she's swiping these," I muttered to no one, since being alone seemed to be my new MO.
I missed home so much it physically hurt. Thoughts of Hayden made me feel short of breath. He was in my every waking thought. And my dad. Oh, my dad. Thinking of him made my heart ache. I knew he hadn’t abandoned me, but the irrational side of me was still hurt and angry. I was sure he was visiting me in my dreams, but in the morning when I woke everything was too hazy to remember.
So here I was, in a place I had no desire to be, with no friends and nothing to do but go to
community college
, come home to get my ass kicked by Carl during fight training and wait for the Balance of Chaos, Angels or the evil Rogue Demons I was supposed to kill. Good times, good times. I used to drive a Porsche, have gobs of friends, family and invitations to everything. This sucked.
I missed my Porsche, but dad had set me up with a cool little Mustang convertible. Driving around Eden had become my new hobby. I had to keep moving or I’d find myself a portal to Hell and go home to be with Hayden. I knew that was the worst thing I could possibly do. My dad would be furious. I owed it to him, myself and Hayden to be brave and do whatever the Hell I was supposed to do.
Again to say Eden, Kentucky was beautiful was an understatement of epic proportions. It was loaded with gardens. Exquisite flower gardens. Every residence, business, school and park boasted landscaping that left you breathless. I wondered if they tested potential residents for green thumbs. Blanche loved the gardens.
Speaking of Blanche, Grandpa hadn’t been surprised in the least that the book with the heartbeat turned out to be my invisible best friend. He thought that it was a lot more convenient to have someone tell me the rules instead of having to read them. I explained to him that she hadn’t taught me anything and I had no idea where she was and he laughed. Laughed. I almost punched him in his cute little head. However, he did show me how to cloak myself in invisibility and how to transport without a portal. Janet thought it was hilarious that I kept ending up in the bathroom no matter where I tried to transport. She thought possibly my magic system might be clogged. I turned her skin lime green for two hours for that lovely pun. If I was any kind of decent Demon I would have left her green for a week.
I might be a wussy Demon occasionally, but I certainly wasn't a wussy driver. Ever. I topped out at ninety-eight as I made my way down the long country road into town. I needed to kill a couple of hours before I got my ass handed to me by Carl, so I decided to go shopping.
***
The candle shop was cute. The whole freakin’ downtown area was cute. “Light My Fire”,
I’m not kidding,
the uber kitschy candle store was empty. So much for a bustling economy in Eden, Kentucky. It did smell lovely inside. I moved immediately to the grapefruit, lemony-smelling candles and started sniffing. I could spend hours in a candle shop sniffing every candle in the entire store. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I loved them all. Of course I’d leave with a raging headache and reeking of cinnamon and vanilla, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Stella and I used to do it at least every other week. Hades, I missed Stella.
“Can I help you?’
Crap, I knew that bitchy voice. That voice liked me about as much as I liked it. Damn it, now I wasn’t going to be able to sniff my way into a migraine. She was such a buzzkill. I willed my eyes to stay gold as I turned to find Blondie, aka Lucy Adams, glaring at me. Hands on her popular hips and peaches and cream complexion all flustered. All American golden girl and a big fat hairy bitch all rolled into one.
“I don’t know, can you?” I narrowed my eyes and considered teaching her a lesson. I had never done anything to her and she was as mean as a snake. Maybe I would give her a gnarly case of acne or perhaps relieve her of her blonde flowing locks. She was so nasty at school I was itching to do something ugly.
“What do you want, Dixie?” she sneered. “This is my dad’s store, among others, so of course I can help you. Do I want to help you? No. Do I have to? Yes.”
“What in the Hell did I do to you to make you act like such a gaping hole?”
She stopped dead in her tracks and looked confused for a moment. “I don’t know.” She shrugged to hide her confusion. “I just hate you.”
“Well, that’s lovely,” I retorted with cold sarcasm. “At least I have a reason to hate you.”
“Why?”
Was she serious?
“Because.” I smiled and flicked her golden locks. “You’re a bitch.”
She opened her mouth to impart some kind of sage wisdom but got cut short.
“Lucy Adams,” a male voice roared from the back storeroom. It sent a chill up my spine and I was from Hell.
“You should leave,” she hissed as she frantically pushed me toward the door.
“Can I do anything?” I whispered. I was desperate to get her out of this place, not to mention myself. My fingers tingled. I could feel my power increasing, feeding off the anger, fear and imbalance in the shop.
“Get out,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “My father is not your problem.”
“But,” I started.
“Out.” She colored fiercely. “You’ll make it worse.”
She was about to cry and I was completely undone. My fists clenched at my sides and the tingling in my fingers increased. Why was there such a sense of evil in this place, and why hadn’t I noticed it when I walked in? My heart pounded furiously in my chest as I turned to leave.
When she was satisfied I was going, she turned and ran into the back room. I plastered myself against the wall by the entrance and waited. What was I going to do? I had no idea, but I knew I couldn’t just leave.
The first thud and gasp made my stomach roil. The second punch and the crying and moaning made my heat rush through my body with a violent jolt. The third made me go numb. Fathers didn’t do this to their daughters. Rage flew through my body and burned for release. I knew I could stop this Hell on Earth. I cloaked myself with invisibility and carefully made my way to the back room.
The sounds were bad, but the visual was far worse.
Lucy Adams lay in the corner of the storeroom curled into a ball. Her lip was bloody and her eye was swollen shut. She clutched her stomach and moaned quietly. Her eyes were glassy and she stared into nothingness. She looked like a beautiful broken doll.
“When I call you,” her father shouted as he gritted his teeth in fury, “you will come.” He stood about six feet tall and was a big burly man. He’d probably been handsome in his youth, but the years and anger had ravaged his looks.
“We had a customer, Dad,” Lucy whispered faintly.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” he said harshly and laughed. He reared his foot back and slammed it into her stomach. He seemed sickly comfortable with the move.
Her eyes rolled back into her head. She bit down on her lower lip, drawing blood, but refusing to scream.
He glared at her. “You’re as useless as your mother was.”
Her lower bloody lip trembled as she returned his glare. “She’s lucky she’s dead.”
“Well,” he growled, “we can certainly remedy that.” He went to kick her again with his steel-toed boot.
My power had reached such a frenzy from all the evil and hatred and fear, it was use it or lose it.
Still under the cloak of invisibility, I pointed to his stomach and shot a massive dose of acid-like energy there. He screamed in shock and doubled over, slamming his head on the table as he went down. That was an unintentional bonus. Blood gushed from his hairline. I knew the excruciating stomach pain would last about four hours. How did I know that? No clue. . .I just did. Four hours of Hellish pain wasn’t enough for a bastard like him, but it would have to do for now. I couldn’t give myself away, but I wasn’t quite through yet. I pinched my fingers together like little chompers. I repeated the motion, gaining speed and grinned delightedly as he started to slap at his body while still writhing around the floor in agony.
The feeling of slimy pinching bugs would stay with him for about twenty-four hours. I was tempted to go farther, but the utter shock on Lucy Adams face made me stop.
She stood slowly, a bloody bruised mess, and cautiously made her way out of the storeroom, never taking her eyes from the revolting man she called her father. The minute she hit the shop she ran and she didn’t look back.
I stared in disgust at the human pig on the floor and I knew why Lucy Adams was so mean. How could she not be, if she lived with this on a daily basis? People thought Hell was bad? It was nothing compared to what I’d seen on Earth.
I gave a last fleeting glance to the pile of shit on the floor, turned and left.
Chapter 21
I really wanted to go home. At least evil was defined in Hell. Bad was bad and good was good. The lines didn’t cross like they did on Earth and you didn’t get away with it in Hell. True evil was punished. On Earth? From what I’d seen, not so much. Lucy Adam’s dad just beat her and would probably get away with it. It did not seem like an isolated incident. I didn’t like her, but I needed to find Lucy. She needed a hospital. I ran out of the shop and tripped over a big pile of fur.
A dog lay bloody and whimpering in front of the candle shop. What in the Hell was wrong with this town? Fathers beat their daughters and people hit dogs with their cars and drove away? His battered body lay half on the bricked sidewalk and half in the street. I quickly shed my invisibility and knelt down next to the poor creature. His breathing was labored. Looking up and down Main Street for an owner, a person or a car proved futile. The town was deserted. How was it that nobody was out and about at four in the afternoon?
I ran my hands through the fur that wasn’t bloody. The animal’s body was tense. It didn’t trust me. “Dear Satan, what are you?” I couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a wolf. It kind of looked like both. Even through the blood I could tell the animal had a beautiful golden coat. It had to be a dog.
The dog-wolf thing wagged its long tail and gasped from the effort. His body was still coiled tight, but he seemed to understand I wanted to help. Although there was no collar he didn’t look mangy or flea bitten.
“Okay, big doggie or wolfie, I need to find you a vet. My powers are getting better, but I don’t think I can fix this. Plus, I just used a buttload of magic to put a daughter-beating asshole into agony.” He looked pathetic lying bloody and mangled on the ground. “You sure picked a Hell of a place to live,” I told him. “Full of child abusers and animal killers.”
The dog-wolf stared into my eyes for an unusually long moment and then relaxed his body. A spurt of delight shot through me at his acceptance. I wasn’t sure what I said or what tone of voice made him happy, but I didn’t care. So many people on Earth didn’t like me—I wasn’t sure if I could take animals not liking me either.
I tried to examine his wounds to figure out the extent of his injuries, but there was too much blood and one of his eyes was swollen shut. Even if I did know how to fix him, I really had temporarily depleted my magic on Lucy Adam’s abomination of a father. And I didn’t think this animal had the time for me to go find some evil or angry people to refuel.
“Okay buddy, I’m going to pick you up and find a vet.”
He sighed and closed his one good eye. I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that but it worried me. Was he close to death? I moved in closer. Most people wouldn’t go near a bloody injured dog-wolf, but most people weren’t immortal Demons. Short of the thing taking my entire head off, a few bites and scratches might sting but they wouldn’t kill me.
As I bent to pick him up my body locked and I was paralyzed with a vision. Oh shit no, please tell me Black Magic didn't include visions. Sloth's life was a living Hell with her visions. . .Knowing fighting was futile, I closed my eyes and went with it.
In a hazy stream of light Hayden appeared. My breath caught in my throat and I reached out to touch his beautiful face, but my hand went right through him.
He wore all black and his face was sad.
"Hayden? Are you here or have I truly lost it?"
"I'm here, Dixie."
"Why?" I asked. "I thought everyone was forbidden."
"It's not a social call."
I shook my head in confusion.
"The wolf, Dixie. I'm here to take the wolf."
"No," I said, realizing he was acting as the Angel of Death. "No, absolutely not. You can't seriously tell me you take animals to wherever animals go when they die."
"That's correct. I don't."
"Then leave," I yelled. "This is my wolf. He's an animal and I'm keeping him." Why was he being such an asshole? If this was his way of getting around my father's rules to see me it was stupid.