Present Day . . . Chicago, Illinois
Wisps of smoke dispersed as I manifested into the Pissing Cockroach. The place was just as low-rent as the name implied, a dingy biker bar with cigarette-stained pool tables and an unmistakable waif of urine in the air. Consumed by their cheap beer and full ashtrays, not a single cretin noticed my otherwise grand entrance.
I flagged down the young but hardened blond bartender with a raised gloved finger. Heavily applied makeup failed to conceal a nasty purple bruise swelling up the side of her face.
As Sugar—or so her name tag proclaimed—drew nearer, her anxious eyes clouded over and desire engulfed her body. Her mouth curved into a sultry smile as she drank me in.
“Hey there, stranger.” She leaned forward, bracing herself on the worn bar rail. “What’s your poison?”
“Whiskey, neat,” I answered, indifferent to her advances. My attention was elsewhere, on the group of angry-looking bikers glaring from the opposite end of the bar.
“Sexy accent,” she drawled. “Where ya in from?”
“Hell, and it’s better than this place.” I tapped the naked cocktail napkin in front of me. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Aren’t you the sweet talker.”
As she turned to make my drink, a rather large biker rose from his stool and lumbered toward me.
I checked my watch. Five minutes.
“Are you flirting with my girl?” the enormous man bellowed.
“Earl, you think everyone’s flirting with me,” Sugar interjected with a nervous laugh, sliding my whiskey toward me. “He’s not hurting anyone. Let him have his drink and be on his way.”
“Stay out of this, Sugar, or you’ll get more of what you got last night,” Big Earl snarled.
Sugar cowered back a step, subconsciously touching her swollen cheek. Leather creaked as my fingers curled tight.
“Listen closely, you hooded freak,” snarled Big Earl, invading my personal space. “The last person who hit on my girl has yet to come out of his coma.”
His breath reeked, as if he’d dined on rotting animal carcass and washed it down with urine.
“What did you do?” I took a swig of my drink. “Breathe on him?”
A vein pulsed on Earl’s broad forehead. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
His posse of bikers detached their sorry asses from their seats to surround my stool.
Taking another pull of my drink, I set the glass down with a clink. “I’m Death.”
“I bet you’re dumb too.” Big Earl laughed. He leaned in over his giant stomach, “I SAID, WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, FREAK?”
I snatched Big Earl around his throat with one gloved hand. His eyes bulged and his sausage fingers clutched helplessly at my forearm as my vise grip tightened.
Rising to my towering height, I lifted Big Earl’s body two feet off the ground. “I said, I’m Death. Not, deaf, you fucking moron.”
Collective gasps filled the room. I cocked my head to the side, admiring his hopeless, sweaty face. “What’s the matter, Earl? You look a little blue.”
Big Earl’s pulse jackhammered through his thick neck. I fantasized about smashing his skull into the bar, cracking it open like a chocolate Wonderball, when my watch went off with a series of beeps. Damn it. I needed to stay on schedule and keep my anger in check. My last “incident” with the humans had gotten a little too . . . messy.
Besides, I was at this bar for a different, delicious event.
Releasing a wry snarl, I flung Big Earl across the room, where he tumbled into his biker friends. I downed the rest of the whiskey, wiped the corners of my mouth with a napkin, and left a very traumatized Sugar a hefty tip. She quickly stuffed the cash into her bra and hightailed it through the kitchen door.
“Sorry, boys, I can’t play tonight. I’m working.” The entire club gawked, stunned by what had happened. I slid out a hand-rolled cigarette from inside my cloak. “Anybody got a light?”
On cue, the bottles of liquor along the back of the bar ignited one by one like fireworks, until the building itself exploded in a glorious apocalypse of flames. Howls of pure agony ripped from the dying mortals’ throats. I raised my hand and, like a relentless infernal beast, the fire intensified, tearing viciously through the club, charring the humans to little remains.
I stood alone in the midst of death and glowing ash. From their demise came energy, moreish souls that swirled up into the air like ribbons of cerulean water.
Balancing the now lit cigarette between my lips, I approached what was left of Big Earl’s twitching body.
“How do you like your private club now?” I slammed my boot into the seared flesh of his windpipe and crushed the remaining life out of him.
Fire licked at my cloak as I stalked around. I moved into the paths of the rest of the souls, consuming them. A wave of euphoria radiated through my body. Eating souls was a high unlike any other: a heightening of the senses, an intense pleasure that roused the insatiable beast within. Skimming over the ribbons of souls, I trimmed off the pieces Hell desired and devoured the rest.
I fed fast, left nothing behind. A single thought sent their essences straight to Hell.
All in a day’s work.
Satiated, I barreled through the flaming remnants of the front door and prowled into the cool night air, embers of the incinerated Pissing Cockroach raining down around me. Across the street, I propped a shoulder against a telephone pole, a vicious grin plastered on my veiled face.
The rooftop neon cockroach sign crashed into the hellish depths of the burning bar. I took a drag of my cherry cigarette. “Nothing like a good smoke after a tasty meal.”
My break was short-lived.
Thunder cracked the barriers of the night sky, drawing my eyes upward as the silhouette of black wings plunged to the ground. My talons twitched against my gloves at the sensation that someone was now directly behind me.
“There he is—the cat that ate the canary. Barbecue and I wasn’t invited?”
Grinning, I turned and faced a figure in a bloodred cloak, a regal garment, fashioned from luxurious fabric that framed the lethal creature beneath.
“Yet here you are anyway.” I exhaled and snuffed out my roll-up.
“Big Earl and his big mouth turned a simple boiler explosion job into a whole thing. I got a little carried away. Doesn’t matter, thirty-two were dying tonight, one way or the other.”
“Don’t you mean thirty-one?”
I followed his gaze down the road. In the far distance, Sugar stumbled as she ran away clumsily in a total panic.
“No wonder I didn’t get a ‘thank you, come again.’” I raised my gloved hand to smite her down when she tripped and fell face-first into a puddle of mud. I had to laugh. “Now, that’s funny. You know, good bartenders are hard to find . . . ”
Even Lucifer smiled. I let her live.
“Local bar explosion kills thirty-one,” Lucifer quipped. “Details at eleven.”
“Why are you here, old man?”
“You’re being assigned, kid.”
“Assigned?” I poked at a serrated tooth with the tip of my tongue.
“To what?”
“To whom,” he clarified. “The girl you spared ten years ago.” My face fell faster than a mortal at my touch. “It’s time to carry out the plan.”
“Is her soul as powerful as the prophecy claims?”
“Unknown,” Lucifer said cryptically. “Not according to the tabs we’ve kept on her, at least. If she is the one, she remains dormant.
But I wouldn’t take any chances, she could be of great use to us.”
He paused as the wail of police sirens undulated in the distance.
“No funny business. Under no circumstances is she to be consumed, eaten, or otherwise harmed.”
“You’re making me hungry. Is she meaty?”
“Death,” Lucifer snarled.
“Kidding.” Partially. Biting back another vile smirk, I bowed my head. “Your wish is my eternal command, Your Majesty.”
Lucifer made his flaming exit. The fire trucks rolled up and it was time for me to leave as well. I faded into the night with a single thought: this is going to be fun.
