Playing With Fire by Christine Pope Read Free Book Online

happening.”
    “Unfortunately, shit is happening. More to the point, it’s happening to you.”  
    Samael had never enjoyed what came next; millions of repetitions over the years had never made the process palatable. Still, a job was a job.
    He laid a clawed hand against the dying man’s temple. At once the man began to thrash. Unknowing onlookers would only think he was suffering some sort of seizure as the life drained from his body. They couldn’t know it was the last struggle of a soul that had suddenly realized its destiny lay in a dark, unwanted place.
    Souls came in all colors, from pale gold to utter black. The dying gangbanger’s soul was a rusty brownish-black, the color of spent motor oil. It writhed in the darkness, unable to escape Samael’s grip.
    The demon didn’t bother to say anything else. This one needed to be dispatched quickly so Samael could return topside to provide additional backup if needed.
    An eternity, and a blink of an eye. That was how the trip to Hell had always felt…a return to darkness at once interminable and yet precipitous. In the gloom, sullen winds fanned flames that never spent themselves.
    One pool of blood was as good as another. Samael released his captive and watched the dark, vaguely man-shaped form plummet downward into an expanse of the viscous liquid. A scream rose from the soul just before its head was buried forever.
    At once Samael lifted his face, intent on his return to that shabby suburb of Los Angeles. Powerful wings drove him upward through Hell’s roiling clouds, through unending darkness. And then he was back topside. The faded streetlights on the rundown L.A. street almost blinded his dark-adapted eyes. He blinked.
    “It’s done,” Abigor said. He’d kept his human form; dark blood glistened on the sleeve of his windbreaker. He scowled. “That last little fucker bled all over my limited-edition Jordan jacket. Asswipe.”
    “What happened?”  
    Abigor fished what looked like a leftover fast food napkin from his pocket and began wiping at the blood on his sleeve. “Told you what happened. Guess the girl whose party it was had a brother in a gang. Rival gangbangers thought it’d be a great idea to shoot the shit out of the place. I could’ve handled the first two, but then they started shooting back, and the body count started to go up. They only hit one more, though. I probably could’ve taken care of the situation after all, but thanks for getting my back.”
    “No problem,” Samael said automatically, then wondered if he really meant it. Sure, it had been a dicey situation, but, as he said, Abigor probably could have taken care of things on his own. And now Samael had to try to slip back into Felicia’s apartment, crawl into bed next to her, and hope she was a heavy sleeper. A really, really heavy sleeper.
    “Bad timing, huh?”
    “The worst.”
    Abigor’s teeth flashed in the half-hearted light from the street lamps. “So you did nail the redhead. Congratulations.”
    “Thanks.” Samael saw no reason to deny the fact, but he also didn’t see why he should go into any details.
    Sirens began to howl from a few streets over. It figured. Do a re-enactment of the OK Corral in a dumpy neighborhood in known gang territory, and the LAPD took its sweet time getting there. Have someone’s purse snatched outside the Beverly Center, and the whole damn department would be down there like a plague of locusts.  
    Some things never changed.
    “Any collateral?” he asked.
    “Nope.” Abigor wadded up the bloody napkin and tossed it on the ground. No worries about the police collecting it for evidence; the only DNA residue they’d find would be from the man who’d bled to death on the demon’s jacket. “A couple of the bystanders got winged, but nothing critical. We’re done here.”
    With any luck, that would be it for the rest of the evening. Most likely several more people in L.A. would be earning themselves a one-way ticket to Hell later