My Angels Have Demons (Users #1) (3 page)

Carter offered no resistance as a DEA agent grabbed him by the wrists, and roughly forced him to his knees, but Big was not so accommodating.

"Hey, God dammit! Quit being so rough," Big demanded as the agent grabbed him by his tree trunk thick arm and tried to tug it behind his back.

"Quit resisting!" the agent yelled; but he had to drop his AR-15 to grab Big by the wrist, it now hung from a lanyard around his neck pointing towards the floor.

Big spun on him, grabbed the agent's sidearm from the holster, and put the barrel under the agent's chin.

"Don't move mother fuckers!" Big announced to the rest of the room.

The agent's eyes went wide with terror and the room stopped.

"Everybody just stay calm," a mustache wearing DEA agent, probably the head of this task force, said.

The agent approached Big and his hostage, taking slow, even steps.

"Stay the fuck back!" Big said. "Drop your guns or I'm gonna paint the walls with this mother fucker's brains!" The hostage went stiff as Big put an arm around his throat and moved the pistol to the side of the agent's head, just behind the ear under his helmet. "I said drop your guns! I mean it! I'll do it!"

"Just do as he says," the hostage said.

"Son of a bitch, everyone lower your weapons," the lead agent said.

The agents, almost twenty in all, lowered the barrels of their guns, and slowly bent down to place their guns on the floor at their feet. The agent to Carter's back had to let go of his wrist to set his gun on the floor, and Carter cursed himself silently for getting into this position. If Carter let Big walk out the door with the agent, he knew the agent would never be seen alive again.

Carter let out a long sigh.

Lifting a pointed finger, Carter let loose the fire building within him. A flame shot like a blow torch from his finger in a solid stream to hit Big right in the face. Big recoiled from the biting fire, and Carter used the distraction to dive head first into the agent, knocking him from Big's grasp.

"What the fuck was that?" Big asked.

Big's facial hair was singed, but he was otherwise no worse for the wear. Carter, lying on top of the agent, made a fist igniting the pours on his skin and making a ball of flame. Carter threw the burning ball, hitting Big in the chest and knocking him back, but Big hung on tight to his pistol, and patted out the flames with his free hand.

"You're one of those users!" Big looked to the junkie. "You brought a user into my house?"

"I didn't know," the junkie said.

"No matter," Big said, "now he's going to die."

Carter rolled back and popped up onto his feet, drawing the gun's aim from the prone agent still on the floor. Indeed, he found it hard to deny Big's claims that he was about to die. Carter couldn't deflect bullets, he didn't have super speed to dodge them, and he was just as vulnerable to being shot as any other human being.

Carter was pissed, he was wearing his favorite pair of jeans, and his hair had grown out to a length he could actually do something with, but finger torches and fire balls weren't going to do it with this ogre of a man.

"You don't want to do this man. Just put the gun down and we all walk away from this," Carter said, but his attempt to talk Big out of doing something foolish was in vain.

He sighed again as Big leveled the gun in his direction.

The anger and anxiety inside him welled up, and he unleashed the fires of hell upon Big. His pours opened up from head to toe. His clothes were the first to go, lighting up like dry grass. Then the hair on his legs, chest, and head caught fire, and before Big could pull the trigger, Carter's entire body was engulfed in dancing flames.

It hurt. God damn it, it hurt. Anymore normal person would have been suffocated, burned alive, and dropped dead, but the fire was apart of him to the very core of his being. His very heart was a fiery inferno. Carter spread his arms wide. Then he clapped his hands together, pushing the flames out from his chest and arms, and dousing Big with a wave of fire.

Finally, Big dropped his gun as he thrashed about wildly. His arms flailed and he screamed shouts of excruciating pain. Big ran about, setting small fires on the floor until the flames overtook him.

Big dropped dead. A moment later the fire burnt out, leaving a heap of charbroiled and crispy Big lying face down on the floor. Carter also put his flames out, and stood motionless in his birthday suit, his junk hanging out for all to see. The agents mouths, one and all, hung agape at the scene that had just played out before them. Stunned, they hadn't even gone for their guns yet, but they needn't. The only thug left standing wanted nothing to do with Carter and his fiery inferno.

"Can I get a blanket please?" Carter asked.

Chapter Three

Part 2

Part 2

Prologue 2

"So that's how you got all of the bruises?" she asked.

"No," I said. "That was a different fight."

She sighed again. The arm on the clock over her head had only moved fifteen minutes. Time was dragging and having to stare at a clock behind her wasn't helping.

"How many fights did you get in since last we met?"

"A few," I answered coyly.

"Do you find these antics of yours funny?" she asked, folding her stubby arms over her chest.

"Kinda." Honestly I didn't, but I wasn't going to let her win the verbal joust we had going back and forth.

"Six years you've been coming here, and in that time you've made great progress, but you let losing your girlfriend take you this low. I thought we were beyond that?" The silence was broken only by the ticking clock as I searched for the right thing to say. The woman had been my anchor after all, and I hadn't had many positive female influences in my life until she came along, and by many, I mean none.

"I thought so too," I said. I truly did, but some part of me knew deep down that I was a codependent junkie. If it wasn't the drugs it was something else, or someone else. It had to be something. I just wasn't okay with being me, and I doubted that was ever going to change. No matter how many hours I spent in front of a shrink, how many days of rehab, how many years of sobriety under my belt, in the end, I just wasn't happy with who I had become.

"What about your safety net? What about the steps? You could have called someone," she said. She just had to go there, spouting off that N.A. crap. And it wasn't that I didn't believe that the steps could work, it was all their touchy, feel your emotions, hug it out bullshit that drove me crazy. I hadn't gone to a meeting in years, but I hadn't told her that. I needed my meds after all.

"I guess I dropped the ball on that one," I said. There was really nothing else too say. I had dropped the ball and big time.

I fidgeted on the long couch, my skinny butt taking up only one of the three cushions, as she inspected me with a gaze that told me she wasn't buying it. I had to do something quick, but what?

"So did you get those bruises in jail?" She continued to prod.

"In jail?" I echoed in surprise. When would I have been in jail?

"I assume you were arrested." She wore a smug expression as if she had just figured it all out.

"Oh, you mean the cops? No, they were grateful as hell for what I did." She seriously thought the cops would care that I wasted some deadbeat drug pusher? Just goes to show you that a fancy education can't buy you street smarts. The cops didn't give two shits about big, and why should they? He was the type of guy that made their lives a living hell, he kept them in business, but the cops would rather be out stepping on some harmless pot dealers neck, than dealing with a gun toting heroin dealer.

"But you were there to buy drugs!"

"Oh, I smoothed that over too," I said with a sly wink. She stared at me straight faced to let me know she wasn't amused.

"I can't wait to hear this," she said sarcastically.

"In hind site it wasn't the best decision I ever made," I said, and boy it wasn't.

#

Chapter 3

Carter sat in the back of an ambulance with a gray blanket, draped over his shoulders and wrapped around his chest to cover his naked body. Just like in the movies where some innocent victim ends up wrapped in a blanket, only my blanket was keeping my dong from flapping in the breeze. Even with the thick wool police blanket, a normal man would have been shivering in the cold night air, but Carter never got cold. He could withstand sub zero temperatures wearing little more than a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. The night was silent, the rain from earlier had stopped, and a low fog had rolled in off the waters of the Puget Sound.

"You okay?" the agent whose life he had saved asked.

"I'm fine. Happens all the time," Carter said.

"Ha, funny," the agent said misinterpreting what Carter said as a joke.

Blue and red lights spun all around them, painting the walls with an eerie light display. It was the kind of light show that would have normally sent shivers up Carter's spine, not that Carter didn't trust the cops, but when you've spent as much time as a criminal as he had, well...you sort of get used to avoiding them at all costs.

"I'm truly grateful you saved my life, but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions before you can go," the agent said. "Obviously you're a user."

Carter couldn't tell if he was referring to using drugs or using powers. They were both labeled with the same tag, and ironically both seemed to have the same effect of ruining your life.

"Since I was born," he said, guessing he was referring to his ability to catch fire.

Carter ran a hand over his now completely bald head and sighed.

"And what's your affiliation with the drug cartel? Are you a pusher or just an addict like your friend over there?" The agent pointed a finger to the junkie, scared out of his wits, but still in one piece, sitting in the back of a cop car.

"An addict," he said.

"When is the last time you were high? Are you high now?"

"What? No, I've been sober for years," he said.

The agent raised one eyebrow as if his bullshit meter had just shot through the roof.

"I mean it. I haven't done drugs since, since...a long time ago."

"Then what were you doing in a known drug house, with this dragon chaser, who's obviously in serious need of a fix; and in a room full of members from a local cartel?" The agent stood in silence, eying him for even the slightest tick, or twitch that Carter might be deceiving him.

Carter knew he had better make this good, or he'd be spending the weekend in lockup at the local county jail, and with his record he'd probably be looking at some time, even with his act of being a good Samaritan and saving the agents life.

"Look, I wasn't going to say anything, but I used to work with the All Americans."

The agents eyes lit up at Carter's mention of the elite of the elite of powered teams.

"I'm not currently a member, but I still do work on my own, and I've been casing these guys for weeks. You and your boys actually busted in the door right when I was about to find out who their supplier is," he lied, but the agent leaned in wide eyed and eager; he lapped up the lies without question, like a dehydrated puppy after a long run.

"I'm using my powers to work my way to the top of the cartel's food chain; to find the city's biggest drug dealer. I plan to stop the supply of drugs at their source."

"What did they call you?" the agent asked and excitedly awaited his answer, his head bobbing as if on a swivel.

"What did who call me?"

"When you were on the All Americans, what did they call you?"

"Oh, that..." Carter was embarrassed to answer, but didn't want to disappoint the DEA agent. "Ash."

"Ash?" he asked. The agents eyes narrowed and his lip curled in confusion. "Why did they call you Ash?"

"Because when I was done with you, there was nothing left but ash," Carter said.

The agent wore a toothy grin at his answer, but quickly composed himself as Carter stopped talking.

"I'm going to need to see some sort of permit. We can't have vigilante justice being doled out in our city on a whim an-"

"Here's the thing, I'm kind of working undercover, so if you could keep it on the hush hush...that would be great." Carter sincerely hoped he was smiling right, and that his facial expression was convincing.

They sat in silence staring at one another for a long moment.

"I think I can do that." The agent turned from side to side to make sure no one was within earshot.

"Most importantly, let's just keep this between us." Carter leaned in to whisper to the agent.

"No problem, just between us." The agent winked.

"Am I free to go?"

"You are."

"Can I borrow the blanket?" he asked hopping down from the back of the ambulance. The pads of his bare feet were cold against the wet concrete, but he simply adjusted the heat in his body, sending just enough hot blood to his toes to keep them warm, without actually setting them on fire.

"You can keep it."

*****

That night he slept alone for the first time in ages. Despite the rickety bed and his crummy apartment, he slept like a rock. Having used up so much of the heat within him left him feeling drained and his temperature was almost comfortable for a change. Maybe he needed to use more often. Maybe draining all that heat was a good thing, but that left him with another problem. Where would he use it? Become a serial arsonist like the guy last year who went around burning down half built construction sites. Would he just have to get used to the fact that in order to be comfortable he was going to have to burn off his hair on almost a daily basis.

He rolled to his side and pulled the bed's comforter tight around his shoulders. He felt at peace and was enjoying it, even if it wouldn't last for more than a few hours. He closed his eyes tight and tried to avoid the reality that when he awoke, he was alone, he was broke, and he had almost been arrested the night before. But the light through his bedroom window was beckoning him to awake, and after many moments passed, he finally rolled out of bed. Groggily, he lifted his heavy eyelids, and stared at the cheap shag carpeting covering his bedroom floor.