The Angel and the Devil

My heart was beating like a triphammer, and beneath my hand I could feel that Virginie’s was doing the same. I held her close, heard her let out a deep gasp of relief, and then she started to cry. I turned her around towards me, and the panic I saw in her wet eyes very nearly broke my mind.

She sobbed against my chest. ‘What just happened? What happened?’

‘Someone tried to shoot us,’ I said. I couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t just occurred. I didn’t tell her that it appeared as if whoever pulled the trigger knew what they were doing.

‘What was that light?’ Her voice was muffled against my chest, my skin wet with her tears.

‘It was a laser. Used for aim.’ As I spoke a chill ran up my spine. For a brief moment it had occurred to me that it may have been the scruffy bastard that had approached her earlier, but that was ridiculous. That was just a horny fan, this was the work of a professional. I felt the chill again as another thought struck; a professional doesn’t like to fail. They tend to finish the job off.

That was what got me moving. I kissed the Virginie’s hair and stroked her back, hating the sadness that were coming from her, and scanned my eyes across the dark room, not seeing what I was looking for.

‘Honey, where’s the phone?’ I said quietly. She didn’t answer, just continued to cry quietly against me. I pulled her away from my chest as I sat up, and her shoulders were visible shaking as I looked at her. I spoke firmly.

‘Virginie, listen to me. I’ll keep you safe, I swear on my life. But I need you to get it together right now.’ She sniffed and looked downwards, and I lifted her face with my hand underneath her chin.

‘I need you to help me, okay?’ She nodded, and at that moment I may well have fallen in love with her, at least to the depth that I understood that emotion. She rubbed the back of her hand across her tear streaked face and sniffed again, and while the fear didn’t leave her eyes I saw that it was battling against another something else; determination. I’d seen it from her throughout the day, and I was overjoyed to see it now. She nodded again and almost gave me a smile, and I knew at that moment we were going to be all right.

‘First, are you hurt?’

She blinked and then shook her head. ‘No. I think I’m okay.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Now, where’s the telephone?’

‘In the bedroom, by the dresser.’

‘Good.’ I climbed on my haunches and stopped her as she attempted to follow me. I wrapped the blanket tightly around her until only her face and feet were visible, and told her to stay still. I’d pushed us away into the corner of the room away from the window, and I knew that as long as she stayed where she was nobody would be able to see her from the street or the window.

‘Stay here,’ I ordered. ‘Don’t follow me, and don’t turn a light on, right?’

She nodded. ‘Be careful, please.’

My lips brushed hers, and I stood, feeling a muscle protest in the small of my back. I could also feel blood dribbling down my ankle, but there wasn’t enough light available to see the extent of the injury. I took a cautious step forward and the ankle felt okay, so I kept moving.

I knew the front door was locked; I remembered watching Virginie snap a bolt home after we’d stepped inside, so if anyone tried to enter the apartment I’d hear and hopefully be ready for them. The stereo had stopped, and with the broken windows the sounds of the city were amplified and wind came through the shattered panes and whipped the pages of a magazine across the coffee table. I shivered, still naked and now feeling it, but Virginie would be warm in the folds of the blanket. I gave her a thumbs-up and a grin, which she returned, and then slunk into the bedroom.

The room was just as dark, but my vision had adjusted enough to the blackness so I could see well enough. The window in here was smaller and would show less of the bedroom interior, but I still stayed crouched low as I shuffled across to the large oak dresser that was opposite the bed. I looked at the bed quickly and tried not to think how the night might have worked out; the thought of lying next to Virginie until the sun had risen was too painful a thought, and I dismissed it. The phone was in an old-fashioned style, the receiver hanging from a cradle, and I snatched it up and punched zero for the operator.

The line was dead. Not humming or clicking, just totally silent. I held the receiver to my ear and hammered on the cradle a few times, and was rewarded with nothing more than dry air. I threw the phone and ran my hands through my hair as an unwanted burst of panic ran through me. Before I’d reached the telephone I could have accepted, however improbable, that whoever pulled the trigger of the gun was just some crazed fuckup looking for targets. Unlikely, but not totally out of the question. Now however, the evidence was just too solid. Laser scope, silenced rifle and communications down led me to one conclusion. Somebody was deliberately trying to kill Virginie. An actress with a high profile in the city, a seemingly untouchable young woman. A beautiful girl who in the last few hours had reminded me of the man I could become again. But why?

I didn’t know and didn’t have time to come up with scenarios. Instead I slinked back across the room and through to the living area again. Virginie was in the exact same position as when I’d left, her eyes wide and her knees clenched to her chest.

‘Are there windows in the kitchen?’ I asked, reaching down and pulling her to her feet. She clamped a hand around my forearm and leant against me.

‘Skylights, not windows. I didn’t hear you talk on the telephone.’

‘The phone’s dead.’

‘What?’ I heard an understandable note of fear in her voice again.

‘It’s dead. Off. Listen, I said I’ll keep you safe and I will, you believe me don’t you?’ She nodded quickly and I knew that apart from anything else I’d earned her confidence. ‘I’ll be amazed if whoever had the gun hasn’t vanished, but if he knows that the phone line is down he may still be watching for us, so we’ve got to be careful. We need to get dressed, because not only am I freezing but I look a lot better covered up.’ She laughed nervously at that, and I was glad, it was something I needed to hear myself.

I took her hand and we entered the kitchen. There was a long line of sunken skylights in the ceiling, and when I looked up all I could see were stars and moonlight, which reflected against the white tiles on the floor and gave us enough light to see with. Virginie moved quickly, throwing open the door of the clothes drier and retrieving my formerly damp clothes. I held out my hands and she threw them to me, and the cloth was warm and soft against my skin as I pulled my shirt around my shivering shoulders. While I dressed Virginie tossed the blanket to the floor and opened the lid of a wicker basket that stood in the corner of the kitchen. She pulled out a pair of small panties and I watched as she slipped them up her legs and over her butt, the white material almost glowing as the moonlight bounced across it.

‘Have I told you how gorgeous you are?’ I whispered, and she looked up from where she was rooting through the basket, and again I saw how determined she looked. Still frightened, as was I, but definitely thinking straight. She shook her head.

‘No.’

‘I won’t forget again,’ I said, wriggling into my jeans. I could still feel the blood on my ankle, but there was no time to deal with it. As I buttoned my shirt I saw a impressive display of knives hanging in a rack against the wall, and I snatched up a medium-sized blade. Chances are I wouldn’t need it, but holding something solid and potentially deadly in my hand made me feel more confident. As I reached for the knife I also saw a small bottle of Scotch sitting on the shelf, the seal unbroken, obviously there for some time. For a couple of seconds I literally couldn’t take my eyes of it, and at that moment my whole body genuinely craved that bottle. To tear the cap from the neck and spill firewater into my throat, to feel the burn as it hit my stomach, to lose myself in the pure destructive mess that was alcohol. Had I been alone, I may have done so, and any potential assassin could have walked into the kitchen and pumped me full of holes as I lay in my usual fucked up state in the corner.

Virginie must have seen how I’d frozen, and only when she spoke my name did the spell break and my craving fall away. I looked at her to see she had dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt. She came to me, her hands circling my waist.

‘Are you okay?’ Her tone was questioning, and I kissed her as a reply. She looked down at the knife in my hand. ‘Are we going to need that?’

‘No,’ I replied, and hoped that was the truth. ‘It’s just to make me feel better.’

Back in the living room I made Virginie stand against the wall while I ducked across the bedroom again and grabbed my boots and some shoes for her. As we sat on the floor pulling on our footwear I could see a large gash in my ankle, the blood clotting around the wound and appearing black in the low light. I laced my boot over it before Virginie noticed, wincing as the pressure of the leather stung sharply. I’d live though, and it could have been a lot worse.

I was fairly positive that the shooter would have been well clear of the opposite building. It had been a good five minutes since the gunshots, but I was taking no chances. We crawled across the floor towards the door, me on the window side of Virginie, and only stood up when we were inside the hallway with the door to the living room closed firmly behind us. With no window it was pitch black, and after asking if it was okay to do so Virginie reached out and felt for the light switch. I grabbed my jacket from the peg that she had hung it on earlier, not more than four hours ago but now seeming like another lifetime, and she closed her knee length black coat around herself. As she did so a sudden and obvious thought struck me.

‘Do you have a cellphone?’ How the hell hadn’t I thought of that before?

She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t believe in them.’

I chuckled at the irony. ‘Neither do I.’

‘Let me rephrase that. I didn’t believe in them, until tonight.’

I switched the knife to my right palm and took hold of her hand. ‘Who else lives on this floor?’

‘Only an old lady, Miss Balibar. Jeanne. She lives on the other side of the elevator.’

‘Do you think she’ll be at home?’

‘She never leaves, just paints and takes care of her little dog. She’s an amazing artist.’

I took a deep breath and interlaced my fingers with her own. ‘Right, here’s the plan. Down the corridor, get into her place, hope they didn’t knock out her line and call the police, Okay?’ She nodded quickly. ‘No matter what happens, stay with me.’

Her fingers squeezed me tightly. ‘Do you think something will happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied truthfully. ‘If it does, I’ll deal with it.’

********************

The hallway was exactly the same as when we’d walked along it earlier; the antique lamps were still glowing and the air was silent. I could see that the elevator was resting on our floor, and at least that was in our favour. If anything happened at least we wouldn’t have to wait for it to reach us.

We walked as quietly as we could, and I kept hold of Virginie’s hand but kept her behind me as we moved. The knife I kept at waist level with the blade curved upwards, a position that enabled me to bring it up quickly through the air should something or someone come at us. We passed three of the lamps before we reached the area where the corridor widened to accommodate the elevator, the mechanical workings disappearing into a beautifully patterned ceiling. No one was either in the cage or waiting with a weapon, and I felt my breathing ease as I stopped and Virginie pressed up against my back. There was only one other way to go apart from down, and the corridor across from us was identical in style and length to the one we had just come from.

‘Down there, to this Miss Balibar’s?’ I said quietly.

She nodded against my shoulder, and I started moving again, circling around the elevator, and though I peered down the shaft I couldn’t tell if anyone was on the other floors. I started down the other corridor, trying to keep one eye infront of me and one over my shoulder. I was positive that it wasn’t possible for someone to sneak up behind us, there was no other approach except from the elevator, but I still kept looking. In a few moments we reached the door, as large and solid as the one that secured Virginie’s apartment, and I squeezed her hand once again before I stepped forward and knocked sharply on the wood.

The door was heavy and only moved a couple of inches inward as I rapped my knuckles on it, and my hand hung suspended in the air, still gripping the knife, as I realized it was already open. A shaft of light escaped from behind the door and illuminated the dark carpet of the hallway. No sound came from within.

I tensed and moved back against the wall, Virginie gripping my hand and arm tightly, her breath shallow against my face. Holding the knife high once again, I stretched my leg forward until my boot reached the door, and after a moment of hesitation, pushed it open.

I’m thirty-three years old, and in my life I’ve seen some things that have imprinted terrible images on my mind and my subconscious, images I wouldn’t wish to share with anyone. Earlier that day Virginie had said that I looked haunted, and that was as good as description as I’d ever heard for how I felt.

What I saw as I looked inside that apartment would stay with me for a long time.

At first I thought the floor was red, red and shiny, until the unmistakable copper stench hit my senses and my vision seemed to focus. The old lady was lying twisted in a rapidly spreading pool of her own blood, her dress bathed in crimson, torn away from her body, and her torso was scattered with deep puncture marks. Her eyes were mercifully closed but her mouth was wide in an everlasting scream of silence. Littering the floor around her mutilated body were torn canvases, originally depicting beautiful images of Paris but now splattered with gore. And to the left of where she lay, a small dog, it’s tongue lolling uselessly from it’s mouth and a spike through it’s tiny body, pinning it to the floor. There was more, but I can barely bring myself to describe it.

I saw this in around two seconds, the length of time it took for the door to swing fully open and click audibly against the frame. The sound was sharp, and I looked up from Miss Balibar’s corpse as the man standing facing her window span around on his heel. Virginie saw him at the same time as I, and she let forth a tiny scream of shock and gripped my arm even tighter.

Apart from his tanned skin he was all black. Suit, shirt, tie, even his hair was the color of coal, like an undertaker, or how I’d imagine a twenty-first century incarnation of the grim reaper might have looked. In his left hand, a hand that was sickeningly painted with red, he held a curved blade of a style I didn’t recognize. His features were Oriental, and as he saw the two of us he produced a smile that was constructed from perfect white teeth. When he spoke it was with good English but laced with an Eastern accent.

‘There you both are,’ he said with a leveled tone that didn’t suggest he’d just committed murder. ‘I was wondering how long I’d have to wait.’

I had a strong idea what he was waiting for, and had no desire to have my thoughts confirmed.

‘Get to the elevator,’ I hissed as I glanced at Virginie.

Her voice was shaking, ‘I’m not going with-’

‘Do it!’ I shouted, finding my voice and pushing her abruptly away from me. ‘Go now.’

If she hadn’t turned and ran right there I think we would both have been killed at that moment. No sooner had she started down the corridor than I heard a deep-throated cry come from within the apartment, and I looked back just in time to see the Oriental come flying across the room at me. He moved fast, leaping the body of the old woman and throwing himself through the doorway, the wicked blade arcing down towards my face like a diving hawk. I threw my body to the left and felt a rush of air as the blade missed me and sliced into the wall, and as I dived I managed to kick my leg out and connect with the Oriental’s thigh. He grunted and fell to one knee, reaching for the weapon, and that gave me the time I needed to roll over and to my feet. I readjusted my grip on the knife as he stood, his own blade shining against the lamplight of the hallway.

Behind me I could hear Virginie as she reached the elevator, her hands rattling against the cage, but I knew that if I now turned and ran after her the Oriental would be on my back instantly. As long as I could keep myself between him and Virginie then she had a fighting chance.

He grinned at me insanely. ‘Prepare to die.’

The bastard was fast, whipping the curved blade towards my eyes like a striking rattlesnake, and I threw my head back to barely avoid a blinding. The speed at which he’d used the blade had thrown him forward, his arm sailing past me, and I stepped into his body and drove my knife upwards with as much force as I could muster. It was an inch away from sliding between his ribs when he caught my wrist, and his grip was strong, clenching against my bones. I barely even saw his own weapon as it fell behind me, and I threw out my other arm and somehow managed to catch hold before it tore through my jacket and flesh. We strained against each other for a moment, spinning around and smashing against one of the antique lamps, glass shattering at our feet.

The oriental bought his face in close to mine. His eyes were as black as his clothing, and I saw that he was much older than I, maybe fifty. Strong as a horse though; I could barely hold his wrist as he twisted against me. His breath was stale when he spoke.

‘You haven’t got the first fucking idea what you’re getting into boy,’ he snarled. ‘Just let me have the bitch and you might live.’

I saw red, felt a scream of pain and anger lodge in my throat, and I slammed my head forward, bringing my brow down across his nose and feeling a satisfying crunch as the cartilage split under the blow. He yelped and I pushed him hard against the wall, droplets of blood spitting from his nose and over me as I looped my leg through his and pushed him off-balance. He tottered briefly, and then my weight sent him to the floor and I landed on top of him. The vulgar blade he held left his grip and I watched it slide across the carpet out of reach. I pulled myself up and straddled him, both hands on the handle of the knife, and he looked up at me with dead eyes, his nose a smear of red across his face.

‘Do it. Do it, fucker.’ There was no emotion in his voice, no fear or regret, nothing more than a flat tone. ‘You’re dead anyway, might as well take what pleasure you can from the rest of your life.’

I raised the knife high, gripped it tightly, and bought it down. Behind me I heard Virginie call out my name, the shock evident in her voice, and I smashed the metal handle of the knife against the side of his temple. His head snapped to the left and his eyes fluttered shut, and after his body had jerked beneath me a couple of times he lay motionless. I held a finger by his half-open mouth and could feel breath on my skin.

‘Fuck you,’ I whispered, and climbed off him, standing on shaking legs and rubbing the sleeve of my jacket across the blood that dotted my face. I turned to see Virginie standing by the elevator, her arms wrapped around herself in a thin embrace and her eyes full of tears. I walked quickly down the corridor towards her, feeling pain in my back and legs, and as I reached her she clasped herself against me and hugged me hard. It was the best feeling I could ever recall.