The Angel of Zero City: Part 17

An urban-fantasy novella. It is an untold story between the chapters of its parent book: The Gauntlet of Maltese.

The Detective

 

 

Joseph trudged into his dark apartment and flopped face down on the couch. He moaned as his bruises throbbed, and he realized that the door was still open. After losing a mental argument, he roused himself from the couch, shut the door, and locked the deadbolt. He rubbed his face and shuffled back to the couch, and somehow he still felt electric despite how much his heart was telling him to be sad.

Joseph thought, maybe getting over a divorce makes regular breakups less painful? So, what now? Watch TV? Sit in silence? He was beginning to relapse from a lifestyle that he had gotten too attached to.

Joseph slapped the stereo remote, and the jazz station from the Uptown college was playing Dianne Reeves’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” He was going to go to the fridge, but then he remembered that the rainy-day beer hadn’t been replaced.

“Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?” Joseph whined to nobody.

The minutes turned slowly and the music kept playing. As the sense of loss started to erode his sanity, Joseph regretted not taking any extra case files home to keep him busy. There were a few warrants that needed judicial signatures, some evidence that needed lab work, phone numbers that needed to be tracked, calls to be made, reports to be written, and reports to be read. He had gotten a bit behind in his work since dating Esmeralda, and the devil on his shoulder wanted to blame it on her.

“Hello. It’s been a long time,” spoke the voice of a calm, young man.

Joseph’s skin jumped. He was flat on his back and hadn’t noticed his window being slowly opened from the outside. “It’s you, isn’t it?” he asked modestly.

The Angel’s shadow on the wall implied he had moved toward the radio. “Yes. It’s me.”

Joseph assessed the room: exit points, where his gun was, where his bullets were, how quickly he could move, how far away Finlay was right now, and it all seemed pointless. “You can leave me alone, ya know. I won’t chase you.”

The Angel chuckled.

Joseph chuckled too, and he sat up to meet his murderer. “Of course, first we’ll have to put on a good show. It can’t just look like I let you escape.”

The Angel looked like he was in his early twenties, with thin features and scraggly, wavy black hair. He was holding Joseph’s Ramsey Lewis cd and looking at the rest of his collection. For a second, Joseph reconsidered going for his gun, but the Angel carefully put the cd back and turned toward him. “Don’t worry, Joseph. I need your help.”

The detective was stunned. The Angel looked like Mr. Vincent, only with his hair disheveled and a spider-shaped scar on his cheek. “My … help?”

“Yes. There’s a man on the edge of Hell who’s been kidnapping people and torturing them. His name is Cavan DeMeco, and tonight I need your help to end him.”

“The stand-up comedian? Why can’t you … take of it? You seem good at … removing people from society.”

The Angel turned off the radio, and the room became silent. “Because I have an empathic connection to those I’m near, and Cavan’s mind is so disturbed that it tortures me to get close to him. Right now … I can feel in your heart that something must’ve happened between you and your lady friend. I’m sorry.”

Joseph stood up and eyed the Angel as he strode across the room. “How am I supposed to believe this? You’re telling me you can psychically feel other people’s emotions?”

“That also helps me locate them,” the Angel replied.

“What’s with the hamsa drawings?”

“They’re called spy-drawings. I can see through them, but if you touch the drawing I get a psychic message.”

“Why do you kill people?”

The Angel paused and spoke very clearly. “Without a human sacrifice the universe will end, and the closest we’ve gotten to that was the day the red lightening was in the sky, when I almost let it happen.”

The detective was now extremely skeptical. “How do you kill people?”

“I suck out their souls.”

Joseph blinked and stood his ground. “How?”

“I don’t know if you can see this, but….” The Angel lifted his right arm and Joseph recoiled.

“What am I looking at?”

“There’s a leather gauntlet on my arm, with a gold disc on the back of the hand, and a red marble in the palm.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Right….” The Angel lowered his arm. “I’ve yet to meet someone else who can. So, will you help me? I came to you because you seem like a good cop. I know most of the others won’t even go near Hell, but you … you’re not like them.”

Joseph paused to look at the map of Zero City on his wall. Why had he come here? Why did he want to be a big city detective? Was it just a romantic dream? At times it all felt like a game, riddled with hard beats and bad rolls, but … he really was a big city detective.

Joseph moved toward his desk. “How many hostages are there?”

“At least three.”

The detective drank from a mug of cold, stale coffee and choked it down. “Three damned souls…. Angel, if you know where we need to go I think we can work out a plan.”

Author's Note

This is a 19 part story. All of which are completed and are expected to be posted.