My strength was leeching away fast and I could hardly stand. I wasn't even sure if the voice I'd heard was real or some hallucination created by my sick mind. The damp wash cloth certainly was real at least. It lay discarded on the floor beside where I'd collapsed. Could I have imagined it? The warm thighs that my head had rested upon. The tender caresses meant to soothe but now I felt terrified and uncertain.
Someone had known that I was sick. Someone had came into my apartment and told me things that they shouldn't know about. Why did he want me to go to O' Donovans'? I was so terribly weak I didn't think I could walk across the room let alone call a cab and make it to the street.
I had nothing to go on and if Michael was truly captured by the same demon who had the weapon that could kill him I couldn't afford to ignore the mysterious visitor.
It took me an agonizing ten minutes before I could control my trembling muscles enough to enter the cab company's number and another ten minutes before it arrived. Once I'd reached O' Donovans' I'd started having violent tremors throughout my body. I scared the shit out of the cabbie when I tried to pay him and my arm jerked wildly sending a handful of bills flying in his face.
The strip club appeared vacant; closed for a few days after Armed Forces Day for clean up and vacation time for the girls. Nothing out of the ordinary so far. I tried the front door expecting it to be locked and to my surprise it opened. Maybe Phil or Dave had popped in?
Clutching my shoulder trying to calm my unresponsive muscles I limped inside. A light was on coming from Phil's office and I started in that direction. A shadow fell across the wall cast by Phil's desk lamp and I froze. Another shadow joined the first and appeared to be thrashing wildly. Low hushed tones could now be heard from within and I moved in closer.
"Do you want to keep your fucking job? Fucking answer me, slut," Phil hissed.
"Please, I-I don't want-" a second female voice answering him in trembling, frightened tones.
"You don't want WHAT?" he bellowed. "You don't want to fucking WORK HERE? I'm not going to ask you again you fucking bitch."
"Ask me what.."
"You know what. Put it in your fucking dirty hole and suck."
It was from that moment on that everything seemed to move as if in a dream. Me stepping over the threshold and seeing Phil holding Sara painfully by the hair forcing her to stay on her knees. Her lips parting allowing Phil to force the head of his cock into her mouth.
"Oh yeah, baby," he groaned obnoxiously.
Somehow all I could focus on were the finer details and perhaps now that I think about it, it was because my higher brain was refusing to accept what was happening. How Sara's mascara had created long black streaks down her face from her tears. The tiny beads of sweat that formed and trickled down from Phil's temples wobbling momentarily at his jaw before landing on his shoulder.
His infuriated scream as Sara bit down as hard as she could and refused to let go. He started hitting her over and over until she collapsed. It was then that he finally noticed me and I saw the bloody ring around the base of his dick as he turned. Everything dilated as my hand closed around his throat lifting him off of his feet, the feeling of his heart pounding against my fingers.
When he had gotten too weak to fight me I threw him back onto the desk sending empty beer bottles and magazines crashing to the floor. My canines elongated, my need to feed overwhelming everything as I lost myself to the hunger that gnawed at my spine.
My teeth brushed over the tender flesh, his life blood running thickly underneath, so hot and so very tempting. But I somehow stopped myself despite my condition, despite what I'd just walked in on. Every cell of my body screamed desperately for me to drink from him and satiate the unbearable hunger.
I swung hard hitting him under the eye and he went limp straight away already weakened from his obvious drunkenness and oxygen deprivation. I sat down on the floor supporting my head in my hands, the steady pounding of a migraine forming behind my eyes.
"Fuck," I said to the two unconscious forms.
I called the police and fabricated an excuse as to why I'd found Phil and Sara together not that they seemed to care much about my reasons. One of the cops told me that I should have beat his fuckin' head in and not just knocked him out. I nodded meekly knowing that I didn't possess the strength to beat a mouse's fuckin' head in.
By the time it was all over I was starting to shake and hugged myself tightly trying to make it stop. I felt like an idiot. No one would have cared if I'd killed Phil O' Donovan. Hell, no one could have even speculated as to what had actually happened. It would have been written off as a freak animal attack. Even if I could leave dna evidence I wasn't in any of the databases.
I noticed a spot on the back of my hand and tried to wipe it off but to my irritation it wouldn't so much as smudge. To my bewilderment I soon realized that it was actually a liver spot. I was beginning to age. No longer could I hold back the effects of time. I was deteriorating faster than I had been earlier that morning.
"Miss?"
A news reporter approached adjusting her earpiece, a look of concern on her heavily makeup covered face. I didn't so much turn my head to look over rather than just letting it fall to one side. There was a fresh coppery odor of blood that hung around her and my mouth involuntarily watered.
"Are.. you okay?" she ventured, trying again. I noticed a line of red that stained the collar of her blouse and she reached up to touch a long scratch on her throat that had created it.
"Damn cats," she muttered thoughtlessly. Unknowing that the very sight of her blood was causing such a visceral and savage reaction within my failing body.
"Fine," I grunted, making myself look away. She seemed to shrug in a "what a weirdo" fashion before returning to the gathering onlookers. I staggered into the alleyway next to O' Donovans' out of sight before falling to my knees, wincing in pain as the concrete tore my skin.
I wondered why or even how I could still exert so much self-control over my hunger. I didn't have to kill anyone but I had a feeling once I let my demon take over for the feeding I wouldn't be able to stop myself from going too far.
"Goddammit," I shouted, just to let out some of the over-flow of emotions.
I couldn't die when Michael's life was in the balance and I was the only demon, weak as I may be, crazy enough to go after him before the Seraphim arrived. If that happened there would probably be another purge and hundreds if not thousands of demons would be sent to hell regardless of the lifestyle they followed. Even me and Art wouldn't be spared.
The only reassurance I could cling to was that the Seraphim didn't know that their prince had been captured. At least not yet. Even that slim hope was paper thin as all Angels shared a mental link. I didn't know how much time I had to find the Archangel but I couldn't do it in the state I was in. There were very powerful players involved here and if some half-assed imp showed up at their front door they would have a good laugh right before obliterating me.
No, I had to think of another way.
*~*~*
