Underworld Queen (9 page)

Audray leaned into him so that her face was no more than five inches from his. At first there was no reaction, but then his eyes became wide.

“Bumblebee. My little bumblebee.”

Audray looked up and out the window. It should have hurt, this reminder of what he used to call her in perhaps happier times before the rape. She noticed her heart was completely stone cold.

“That all you can say to me after you what you did?”

“I’m sorr… I couldn’t help…”

“I’m not here for an apology. You’re beyond redemption.”

She blew on his face, grimacing down at him.
It doesn’t hurt a bit. Not anymore.

“You want to live forever just like this?” she asked him.

His eyes contained nothing but questions. Audray continued. “Yes, that could be one solution. I could let you live forever in a bed, hooked up to a tube, your ass wiped not as often as it should be so it gets nice and red.”

“Wha?”

“Or I could cut off your pecker with a pair of scissors I bet I could find. Maybe then the government might try to sew it back on, maybe backwards. I could arrange that if you like. Or make you leak like a punctured garden hose, hmmm?”

She found a small pair of nippers for cutting surgical tape. “Now these look good. Nice and dull.”

Burt was trying to scream, but was having difficulty mustering the energy, from the whoosh of air she deposited to his face. A buzzer started going off. Someone in the room was beginning to have tachycardia. It didn’t matter to her who it was.

“I had more than enough reason to kill you. But yesterday, I found out you also killed my sister.” Audray reached under the sheets and pulled his hairy unit, yanking it sharply to the side, twisting it. Burt’s face got bright red, the veins in his neck and at his temples bulged, but no sound came out of his mouth as his eyes crossed.

See what it feels like to be helpless? Can’t save yourself? Should I kill you?

She released her grip and watched him fall back into the bed. She thought about leaving him alive to experience the bruising and pain in his cock with every muscle he tried to move, every breath he tried to take until his last day, which was coming up very soon. It wasn’t eternity, but it was the best she could do, and not nearly what he deserved. He wasn’t worth killing. Much better to let him suffer out the rest of his miserable days.

She gave him a dose of her dark energy, causing his heart to start racing, which set off more alarms.
Oh, how I wish I could rob ten years from you like you robbed me of mine.
With satisfaction, she witnessed his grimace as his pecker began to harden, making a mound in the sheets at his lap. His eyeballs were bulging, but she’d silenced his tongue so his feeble efforts to speak only frustrated him more.

“You won’t live out the day, but every minute of it will be in pain. You reap what you sow, Burt.”

She heard staff coming down the hall so she shifted through the wall of the adjoining room, setting off another series of buzzers as the three older male patients were all awake watching the TV mounted on the wall above the spot she’d just walked through.

Audray quickly took the other way around and back out to the lobby, passing the now-vacant reception area. She knew that he wouldn’t survive the heart attack that was racking his body. In those last few minutes, he’d be in the most excruciating pain of his miserable life, and he’d be lying there knowing she did it, got even, and wouldn’t be able to tell a soul. She hoped their attempts to resuscitate him were long and equally painful, and that he would die slowly.

There was a guest bathroom down the hall, where she washed her hands to rid herself of any remains of the sack of flesh known as Burt.

The red Maserati
growled through the gates of Central Valley Cemetery, rumbling up the drive to the top of the hill. Her mother had said to look for the big Guardian angel statue holding a little lamb—the section where her sister was buried, next to her father.

She parked the car under a hulking willow tree, its ancient branches hovering over and touching the red beast, hiding it in shadows. The afternoon’s heat was coming to a close. Puffs of dandelion seeds blew in the breeze, dotting the air, dancing with moths and flying insects, against the ever-present background noise of the freeway.

It took her several seconds to exit the car. She saw no one, but she felt watched. Stepping out into the light of day, she noted the birds had stopped chirping. She expected something, not sure what it was. The hairs at the back of her neck and on her forearms bristled. She’d gotten her revenge, and it felt good to have that chapter of her life closed forever. But she also had the eerie feeling someone had been following, watching her every move. She felt like a target.

Her lunch, what little of it she ate, hung undigested in her stomach. Her red boots ascended the crown of the hill and stopped just before the looming statue with wings, which protected the little lamb. The white marble had turned gray and was streaked as though crying. Birds had dallied there and an abandoned nest sat in the crook of the large angel’s arm next to the body of the lamb.

Audray had never experienced grief before. This emotion had always been just out of reach. But the devoted expression on the face of the angel moved something inside, and she was surprised to find tears rolling down her cheeks.
Something has been lost. Something is gone forever.

She bit her lower lip as she leaned forward to read the inscriptions on the ground. To the left she read:

Lt. W. Michael Steele

December 25, 1945 to June 4, 1980

Rest in Peace. Your earthly work is done.

Husband, Father, Soldier

Guardian of the Weak

Protector of the Weary

Audray’s eyes moved over to the right, and she gazed upon the gravestone of her sister:

Claire A. Steele

February 14, 1970 to June 1, 1992

Gone to be with her father,

Who will protect her throughout eternity.

Rest in Peace, Little Guardian

The warm wind caressed her cheek, chilling the tears streaking down her face as she realized something perhaps her psyche had known all along: that she loved her sister, who had given her life to protect her. In turn, her sister’s love for Daniel gave her a second chance as a human, and the love of the man Audray had tried to take away from her.

“I am so sorry, Claire,” she whispered as she bent down to brush the dried leaves and debris off her sister’s name. She traced the letters on the cold stone. Her heart felt cold as she relived the pain she’d caused them both. Had she known, would she have acted the same way? Done Josh’s bidding to try to plunge Daniel into darkness?

Kneeling on all fours, she looked up at the face of the Guardian above her, basking in the gaze of her sister’s protector. She couldn’t remember ever being loved like this by anyone in her life—anyone but Jonas.

Perhaps Jonas has awakened this part of myself I never knew was there.
She wondered what her childhood would have been like if someone had cared for her like this Guardian, if someone had looked down upon her like this stone angel watched over her sister. She searched her memories and she saw Claire’s face again, smiling down at her.

If Claire had lived, would I have become something other than a dark angel?

Were there seeds of goodness that went unwatered?

She lowered her lips to the cold stone and kissed it. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life,” she whispered.

Audray stood up and dusted her palms against her thighs. She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands and straightened her clothes, brushing her hair back off her forehead. A funeral procession was making its slow way up the hill, but at the last minute, the black hearse diverted to the other side, a long trail of cars following behind.

Someone else’s family in pain.

She took one last look as her car passed by the gravesite. No one would ever know that a dark angel had stopped, kissed the stone of her long-lost family and was humbled at the thought of an ever after filled with warmth and love.

She knew, if she had to make the decision today, she might choose a different life for her and Jonas.
But that’s silly. Dark angels don’t have hope. They just have forever. We have forever to be together.

And for the first time in her life, she was full of remorse for her actions.

It was getting
dark when she drove down the freeway and came to the Riverbend exit. A large traffic jam impeded her progress, so she was stuck on the two-lane road, searching the horizon. A pyre of smoke ahead of the string of waiting cars told her an accident had happened. She checked her watch. She wanted to get this meeting with her mother over with as quickly as possible. Then she could get out of this dusty town.

Should I tell her I took care of Burt, that I found Claire?

Audray thought about Burt and what her mother had told her.

“Because of your little wings. You used to dance around all the time with those little wings. Sometimes, you’d get so furious at Claire when she made you take them off for bed.”

She’d forgotten this until today. She heard the buzzing and some giggling and for the flash of a second saw a young beautiful face with short blonde hair smiling at her.

Claire. I do remember you. I loved you once. I love you still.

A car horn interrupted her reverie. The trail of cars began to move and there was a gap. Her Maserati roared to life, and she soon exited. A handsome uniformed policeman gave her a polite bow and smile as she passed.

The smoke was not coming from the freeway, but off in the distance a short way. Like a beacon, her car followed. It was on the way to the trailer park. The closer she got, Audray realized it was coming from the park itself. Red fire trucks had blocked the entrance, and men in yellow slickers were running like ants all over the area. A white Coroner’s van with flashing lights pulled in front of her and was admitted to the park.

Audray stopped in the middle of the road, causing a loud cacophony of honking behind her from impatient drivers. But she barely noticed. She was staring at the sight of her mother’s trailer, fully engulfed in bright orange flames, sending thick black smoke up to the darkening sky above.

C
arl finished up
his third class at two o’clock, and had the urge to pop in at the library unannounced in order to see Molly. He thought about calling her first, but was afraid she had changed her mind or decided he was too old for her.

Ten years. That’s not too old.
And the way he felt right now, he was up for anything she could dish out, perhaps more. The day was brighter as he sprinted over, his laptop case flapping against his rear in the warm afternoon sun. He removed his bowtie, slipping it into his pocket and then unbuttoned the two top buttons of his shirt.

He zipped his card through the security monitor, and with a sucking sound the automatic doors opened.

He thought he could smell her already. It was a thrilling but ridiculous thought. He searched around the reference desk, between shelves of books in the area. He closed his eyes and yes, he could smell her.
Is this some new power she has awakened in me?
He couldn’t wait to feel the moist softness of her lips slathered with cherry lip balm, or to delicately pucker her white flawless skin just under her left ear; cause her a bruise with his passion.

His dream was rewarded by the feel of her breasts against his back, as a soft perfumed hand snaked its way between the buttons of his cream colored shirt and worked lower. He whirled around so his eyes wouldn’t miss a single second of her look of lust for him.

God! How I need that look.
His arm encircled her waist and he pulled her into his chest, lowering his lips to hers as he burst into flames inside. She was his. His in every imaginable way and he willingly became lost in the folds of her clothes, the tendrils of her fiery hair and the smell and feel of her flesh pressed against his.

The long feeding kiss was beginning to attract attention as he heard someone clear her throat. He stared into the disapproving jowls of the head librarian, standing not more than ten feet from the two of them.

“Professor. This is not the place.”

Carl looked from her stern face to Molly’s. “No, it’s not,” Molly agreed, smiling.

“I’m sorry,” he barely got out before Molly grabbed his hand and led him in the opposite direction. The librarian’s body stood rigid. Carl knew he would hear from the Dean about this.

But I don’t care anymore.

Molly slipped them through a side door into the stacks room she opened with a pass card. He reached for the lights, but she grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast. The smell of old books and curled yellowed sheaves of paper sent a thrill up his spine. He felt called to adventure, daring, young and bold. The perfect place for a tryst, second only to his own bed.