Morag was handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the back room. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she sported a beautiful bruise across her cheekbone, spreading into a discolouration around her left eye. She barely looked up as we entered.
Through the red mist that appeared in front of me, I saw Michael had been scribbling on a notepad. He dropped the pen on the desk when he saw us.
“I hope that’s your will,” said the Beast.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you suicidal?”
As I stepped forward, not sure whether I was going to free Morag first or leave that until I’d killed everyone else in the room, I noticed Damien leaning back in a chair against one wall, drink in hand. That wasn’t right. He wasn’t supposed to be there. My killing spree hit a temporary speed bump.
Michael stood up, with a gun in the place of the pen. But his arm remained calmly by his side.
“There’s no need for more violence,” he said. “I’m sure we’ve all had enough of that for one day.” He also had a black eye, and his lips looked swollen and bloody. His shirt had been torn away from his neck, and there were still a few drops of blood decorating the chest area. See? The trend hadn’t taken long to catch on.
“I never laid a hand on her,” he protested. “She was already bruised when your friend brought her to me. But we had to tie her to the chair in self-defence, while we waited for you guys to come collect her. Of course, this gives us one last chance to reach some kind of agreement on how we can all work together.”
I wasn’t listening. Apart from the main players, three of his black-cloaked creepies stood around the room, their attention focused on the Beast behind me. My eyes hadn’t moved from Damien.
“I have to admit,” I told him, “seeing you here has thrown me a bit.”
He shrugged. His nose had been broken recently, and a new scratch ran down the side of his face. And yes, he’d jumped on the bloody shirt bandwagon. But with more blood than I would have expected from a broken nose.
“Hollis Brown here decided to give me this one last chance,” Mike explained, “just as everyone else deserted me. He appeared out of the blue with your beautiful friend, so we could all try to salvage something from this situation, for the sake of all humanity.”
Another speed bump. This was the serious kind, with steep sides that would destroy your shock absorbers and rip the guts from your car if you hadn’t seen it coming.
“?”
The question was unspoken, but Damien understood it well enough.
He shrugged again and shook his head. His voice was empty, flat. “They’re gone, John. I didn’t know what to do. She was going to leave me. And take the baby. I couldn’t let that happen, John. They’re all I have. Then things just…”
He shook his head again, before taking a long drink. I turned to Morag, who was trying to bore a hole through him from her position in the center of the room. Her left eye was now swollen half closed. But that had no effect on the intensity of her gaze.
Instead, it brought the red fog back into my own eyes.
Michael made the mistake of speaking next.
“And that’s exactly the kind of tragedy that I want to prevent. If you’d just – .”
The desk was the only thing keeping him alive. I moved to one side, planning on going around it rather than over it or through it. Although those had been my first instincts. Mike responded by moving in the opposite direction, raising his weapon as he went.
“Look. Wait. Let’s talk.”
But all I could hear was a buzzing in my ears as my peripheral vision vanished and Michael became the centre of my universe.
I moved faster, crossing the far side of the desk as he backed away. He joined his hands together to get a steadier grip.
“Don’t come any closer. I’m warning you.”
Buzz buzz buzz. The insect was making defensive noises as I prepared to swat it. Maybe it would sting me in its death throes. Just another reason for me to swat it hard and fast, before it could do so.
Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning
Till next time. Cheers.
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