Kassern (Archangels Creed) (2 page)

Rage blinded Troy, and his
Jui-Jitsu
training kicked in. With a growl, he grabbed a handful of
T-shirt
and yanked. The large guy flew several feet and landed hard on his front.
Incapacitate the disgusting bastard
. The thought launched him onto the fallen man's back, and Troy locked the
creep's
head in his arms
until the
raspy grunting and flailing
gave in to his crushing choke hold. T
he guy
went
limp
and
Troy gave one last squeeze and growl for extra measure
before
climb
ing
off the still body
. He
star
ed
at it for several seconds in amazement. He
'
d never done that. Trained for it, but hadn't needed to use it.

At first he didn't recognize the
new
sound. Turning, he realized the woman was sobbing--huddled
in the corner
against the building, arms covering her head.

He hurried to her and crouched down, not sure what to say or do.
"
You
'
ve suffered a trauma.
"
God, he sounded like Robocop. He reached a hand out to
reassure
her, but she flailed blindly at him, eyes squeezed tight.
He'd studied the signs to be expected in someone who'd been
beaten or abused
, and
even
though he'd never seen them in real life, she displayed severe ones.
Someone had damaged this woman terribly.

The rage from earlier returned and Troy glanced back at the guy on the ground, fighting the urge to kill him.
One less piece of filth to hurt innocent people.
His breathing accelerated with the thought of what that creep had planned for her.
I could do it. Easily. I could kill that man.
The realization stunned him.

He turned back to the woman, shocked to find her standing. He stood too, examining her face for marks. There didn
'
t seem to be any obvious injuries, but it was dark.

"
Did he hurt you? Are you okay?
"
Troy pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. He turned and eyed the guy while he spoke to the dispatcher. The man lay unmoving, exactly as Troy had left him. Had he killed the bastard after all? He finished the call and turned.

She was gone. He searched the empty alley.

Dammit.

****

Troy flipped on the bathroom light, ready to wash the smell of that nasty man off of him. He peeled off his shirt, aware for the first time of the huge scrape on his elbow. Thank God he knew how to defend himself or it could
'
ve been a lot worse. Thank God for her sake. He emptied his back pockets and something red fell to the floor.

What in
the world
? He stooped down and picked up the odd piece of material.
"
Oh shit!
"
He threw th
e fabric in the sink like it
'
d burned him. Thong panties?

T
he odd feeling of another
presence
hit him
and he peered out the bathroom door
. He released a shaky br
eath and regarded the red thing
in t
he sink. Where the hell did it
come from?
Who would
'
ve shoved underwear in his back pocket while he was on the corner? Could it have been the woman?

Not possible
.
H
e would
'
ve felt something like that, surely. The man in the alley? He stood there, thinking, nothing making sense. He finally opened the medicine cabinet and got his razor then used it to pick up the sorry excuse of feminine clothing. His upper lip crawled up as he made his way to the kitchen trash and tossed them in. As far as he was concerned, that scrap of material was the epitome of
that woman's
sad life.

He stared at them in the trash for a few seconds and was hit with the disgusting urge
to
smell
them! He slammed the lid down and stepped back.
Get behind me Satan.

He spun to the sink and pounded on the soap pump.
One
,
two
,
three.
He speed
-
washed his hands the standard three times; in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and one last time in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Fully pr
epared to do the habitual cleansing of
his entire body, he headed to the shower, snatching his toothpaste from the medicine cabinet as he turned the water to a purifying temperature. He got under the scorching spray and began cleansing his spirit space with the first hymn he could think of, loudly singing around the lather of toothpaste and toothbrush in his mouth.
"
Will the circle...be unbroken...by and by Lord, by and by.
"

Thirty minutes later, he climbed in bed
, ashamed that he
'
d fallen back into the compulsive cleansing habit he
'
d worked so hard to kick
.
Well, not entirely ashamed. If ever there was a logical reason for the OCD behavior, it was those red panties.

He
got his Bible out and let it open where it would. The woman weighed on his heart so heavily.
Lead me, Father. Show me your will. What should I do?

His gaze zeroed in on the passage of the woman caught in adultery. He read through it and paused at the end, repeating the words, feeling something stirring inside him.

Jesus straightened up and asked her,
"
Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?
"

"
No one, sir,
"
she said.

"
Then neither do I condemn you,
"
 
Jesus said.
"
Go now and leave your life of sin.
"

He shut his eyes and his Bible. Exhaustion hit him and he put the beloved worn Book on the bedside table. An hour later, he finally slept. And dreamt.

But the things he dreamt were like a sweet, tormenting, nightmare. He dreamt of
her.
Of doing things with her.
Sexual things.
Things he had never known how to do, or even imagined were possible. But he
knew
in that dream. Like a sixth sense, he knew every pleasure the body could experience and performed them with an exquisite rhythm. Her ecstasy was the most arousing thing he
'
d ever known. The sound of her voice, the way she moved under his touch, the way she
moaned his name,
all combined into the most powerful intoxicant
.

He woke in a sweat, his entire body literally aching with need from the vivid dream. He groaned, clenching his eyes, wanting so badly to touch his
erection
, relieve it.

What was
wrong
with him? How could he have such a blasphemous dream? Th
at
by itself was damning enough, but for it to be about a poor destitute woman in need of salvation?

Troy growled through the agony as he turned on his side and gazed at the empty pillow next to him. 

He bolted upright and stared down. The air around him became supercharged with a strange energy until his head felt light.

"
Jesus,
"
he breathed, backing out of the bed and away. Away from
red panties
lying neatly on the pillow.

What in the
hell
was happening?

Chapter Two

The low light at the rear of the bus made keeping an eye on all the other passengers nearly impossible, but Devyn gave it a good effort. Maybe the job would've been easier if her body didn't keep threatening to shake itself to bits. Every time the
wracking
tremors submitted a little to her control, someone would move in her peripheral
vision
, and start it all over again. If she wasn
'
t careful, she
'd
spray an innocent person right in their goddamn eyes with the
pepper spray
she held in a death grip. She didn
'
t care who saw it or what they thought, she just cared that people stayed the fuck away from her.

At some point, all the passengers wore the face of that son
-
of
-
a
-
bitch from the alley
, at least in her imagination
. The bus moaned
through
its familiar gear
-
down, hopping and skipping over a pattern of potholes, alerting Devyn
to the stop
she normally welcomed
.
For the first time ever, s
he almost wished the cross-town bus took longer. Once off, half
a
block separated her from the safety of her apartment
. Of course, every inch
would
feel
like a mile.

The need to run all the way to the six
-
story building that had seen better days in the 1970
s nearly overwhelmed her. I
n that neighborhood, a running woman flipped the predator switch for some men, especially in the middle of the night. She'd already had her fill of being viewed as prey for one night.
Pepper spray ready to blind the first threat, she forced herself to walk with confidence.

All the trying in the world didn
'
t keep her from taking the last level of stairs leading to the fourth floor two at a time, though. Inside, with the door's locks securely engaged, her knees collapsed, dropping her to the floor in a quivering heap. Earth
-
shattering sobs wracked her body, echoing through the small, sparsely furnished apartment.

Three full sobs later, Devyn swallowed it. Cold. To give full vent to so much fear and horror would risk revisiting the nightmare that came so close to endi
ng her life four years earlier.
 
Forcing the emotions into a bag and tossing it, she dragged herself to her feet.

Deeper in the apartment, the shower shut off, signaling Devyn to head to the kitchenet
te. By the time her best friend/
roommate, Karly, padded into the room wearing her rolled down boys' boxers and cut off wife beater, Devyn had the
bread and packaged lunch meat
on the spindly little table. Turning away, she poured the iced sweet tea into their mismatched glasses while Karly
scavenged
further in the
nearly bare
fridge.

Devyn sat in her usual chair, careful not to lean back and get dumped on her ass by the flimsy back rest. How long would it take Karly to notice something had happened? Probably not long. She'd been more attentive the past few months,
since she got
clean,
as if aware the positions Devyn put herself into to keep a roof over their heads.

"How did the end of shift go?"
Karly opened a crumpled white paper bag and
sat,
mindful of her chair's tendency to topple if a sitter put too much weight on the left
.

"The usual, too many jerks wanting lap dances." Devyn pulled her hair free of the ponytail holder and let if fall free around her face. Maybe that would disguise any marks left from the encounter enough to get past her friend's sharp gaze. Devyn turned her attention on the white bag in Karly's lap. "What's that?"

Karly glanced up. "Mrs. Jordan stopped me on my way up. Her daughter brought
her some pumpkin pie. And Mrs. Jordan hates pumpkin pie.
" She held her prize up with a triumphant grin. Karly set the tray on the table abruptly
,
her
grin
gone
. "What the fuck happened to you?"

Shit. Of course she couldn't hide anything from Karly. She'd never
tried, until recently
. "Nothing. Just an asshole that got touchy-feely. Carlos bounced him, no problem." Devyn rushed to assemble a sandwich and take a bite so she could legitimately stop talking.

"Bullshit." Karly took Devyn's sandwich right out of her hand. "Don't try to
lie
to me, girl. I know you too well. Now what happened?"