By the Light of the Moon
Chapter 6

Copyright© 2010 by Shin Eris

"So tell me about this Yeni Vet place," he said after making a turn into North Hill Street.

"What?"

"Yeni Vet, or whichever way you pronounce it. The place where there's more of your kind."

"My kind? I really don't like your tone, Chris. That's racism." I looked away, feeling slightly offended.

"I'm not a racist! Remember that time in high school when I dated that black girl ... erh ... what was her name..."

"Shawna Thompson," I reminded him with a glare.

He leered at me. "Oh, I thought you didn't want to have anything to do with me back then? How come you knew her name?"

I gave him a sharp look. "It's hard not to notice when you started playing tongue tennis with her in the hallways everytime I walked past!"

He grinned without looking at me. Not the adorable, childish grin that he made at the parking lot, but the evil, 'I-got-you-now' kind of grin. "My my. Am I detecting a certain jealousy in your voice? I think someone's ready to admit her fee~lings."

I frowned at him. "Keep quiet and drive! I don't want to hear a single word out of your lips until we got home."

"Cool, your home or mine?" Chris quipped.

"Mine ... hey! I go back to my place. You go back to your place!"

"But that's just the thing, babe. My home is yours too. Your mom bought it for us."

"Okay then. Following that reasoning, the house should be mine. So I'm kicking you out. There." I crossed my arms ad made a satisfied smirk.

"Oh boy, that's just mean. Too bad it won't work though. The house is under my name."

"Then keep ... why is it dark?" I said, referring to the Starbucks in question, which appeared to be closed.

"What do you expect? It's two in the morning. Why didn't you just agree to meet at 7-Eleven, for example?"

"But she clearly told me to come here..." I looked at my watch, " ... around this time. Maybe she's waiting in her car."

"Or maybe, she stood you up."

"Shut up ... maybe she's just running late. I'll call her cell," I said as I whipped out my own cellphone.

"Excuse me," I heard Shaina's voice as she poked her head at my window, "but you're the one who's late. I've been waiting here for the past five minutes."

"Shaina? Where the hell did you come from? Where's your car?" I started looking around.

"Not here. I didn't drive here. I just blinked. My cousin put me on house arrest."

Chris leaned over to my side of the car and said to Shaina, "Hey, Freckles."

Shaina's eyes bulged out. "Why'd you bring him here?"

Before I could answer, Chris said, "Comes with the car, baby," he grinned, "Are you going to come in or just stand there like a hooker?"

Shaina's left eyebrow ticked twice. She then stepped back and opened the back door.

"Great Mother, you stink!" she said, immediately after her butt hit the seat.

"Hey, in my defense, I fought off five big guys two hours ago. I've been taking care of grumpy here until she woke up and broke my nose."

"I broke your nose?"

"You damned near did."

'Should've put more strength into it," I muttered under my breath.

"Come again?"

"You wish!"

"I hate to break up your lover's quarrel, but I wasn't actually referring to you," she pointed a finger at Chris, "I was actually referring to you," she pointed at me.

"Me?" I smelled my sleeves, no particularly strong smell. I hesitantly sniffed at my ampits. No strong smell there, either.

I turned my body to face her in the backseat. "But I don't smell..."

It was about that time that Chris's fingers pushed the hair at my neck away and pressed his nose to the nape of my neck. "Pat's right. I don't smell anything," he said.

I elbowed his kidney with my right elbow in response. When he pulled back in pain, I turned to face him and shoved him to his side of the car, hard. Probably too hard. I winced hearing the loud sound of his back hitting the door.

"Ow, ow, ow! You better wish my spine's not broken. Else I'll be announcing my wedding vows in a wheelchair," he said. Judging from his voice, I could tell that he was in a lot of pain.

"You shouldn't have done that! Especially when we have company! Besides, when did I ever agree to marry you?" I pulled him by the sides of his chest, "Turn around."

"What?" he asked, pain still obvious in his voice.

"I said turn around. Don't make me repeat myself."

He turned around, making some pathetic pained noises as he did. I ran my fingers across his back, poking here and there to determine which part of his body was in pain. I covered my fingers with pinkish healing glow as I massaged his back under his verbal guidance.

First he told me to massage somewhere below his shoulder bones. Then he told me to go lower, a few inches below what I would call wing bones. I did as he asked even after he told me to massage the sides of his torso, going slowly to the front. I continued my massage when he told me to go lower, and I couldn't help but admire his six-packs. Mine was pretty much always flat.

Then he told me to rub lower, and that was when I smacked him on the back of the head. That caused his forehead to hit the glass of the window.

"Ow! What the hell was that, Pat?" he cried, covering his forehead with his left hand as if expecting another punishment.

"That's what you get for being a rat-bastard," I said, turning the other way.

"I'm sure this is all pretty amusing," Shaina said from the back seat, "And I can understand why he can't smell it. But you, you're a lili, how can you not smell that?"

"What am I supposed to smell?"

"Oh, you're hopeless," she said as she pulled my left hand roughly.

The next thing I knew, I was looking at myself from the back seat. Freaky. But that wasn't the worst of it. Immediately I smelled the stench of rotten meat, the kind of smell you'd get if you let a dead rat's carcass rot on its own without the aid of maggots. I wanted to cover my nose, but I couldn't control her hands.

That wasn't all, however. I also noticed a shifting darkness around me, I mean my body. At first I thought it was just tricks of the light, but then I noticed the darkness was flowing. Flowing like black smoke from one part of the body to the other. Constantly, as if it was no different from my own lifeblood. Maybe it was my own lifeblood, this foul black smoke with a heavy rotten stench that lingered in one's nose. I never thought I could smell so bad.

She let go of my hand and I found myself back in my own body, with the bad smell and nausea nothing more than a bad memory.

"What the hell was that? How can I smell so bad?"

"Oh, don't feel so bad. I've smelled worse. My friend Ledria smells like rotten fish and another friend smells like she crapped on her own head everyday," she said, probably trying to make me feel better.

I wasn't really listening. With my hands on each side of my head, I mumbled, "Oh, how can this be? How can I stink so badly? Have I always smelled this bad?"

"Actually, you didn't stink this badly last time. When I first met you in your apartment, your aura was turbulent, but at least it smelled like flowers. You only started to stink ... oh my ... you have his smell. You slept with him, didn't you?" she said that last part with genuine shock.

For some reason, I just knew that the 'he' that she mentioned wasn't Chris. Apparently, Chris came to the same conclusion because he was glowering at me intensely while his cheek muscles kept jumping like kangaroos on a race.

It just felt like I should offer some explanation, there's no telling what Chris would do if I just let his rage boil. "Calm down ... honey," I said that last word with a bit of difficulty, "I swear I haven't slept with anyone other than you and Vicky (at least not in human form). She was just spouting nonsense..."

"But you must be!" she interjected. Totally ignoring my evil eye look, she continued, "That explains everything, like the change in your aura, this disgusting smell and the reason you weren't kicked down to Papua New Guinea."

"Shaina, this is a good time for you to stop..."

"What's this about Papua New Guinea?" Chris growled. If not because I knew how bad his tempers often ran, I would probably consider his growls as delicious.

Shaina, the loudmouth, replied with, "Well, it's common knowledge that only angels of death and dead humans are allowed to enter Purgatory. Anyone else gets kicked down to Papua New Guinea."

Shaina...

"She's the only one I know who didn't get kicked down to Papua New Guinea."

Stop talking...

"That's why you said last time that Azrael was the perfect gentleman."

STOP TALKING!

"First Hades, then Uriel, now Azrael. How many men were you cheating on me with?" Chris asked in a barely controlled voice. His face dark with volcanic rage. His hands, tightly gripping the steering wheel as if meaning to crush it in his anger.

"No, no. It's not what you think. They're not men, see. They're angels. And they're not different people, they're actually the same angel in different names."

Shaina gasped at that point. "No way! You're lying!"

"QUIET, SHAINA!" I cried at the same moment when Chris pressed the gas pedal. I was thrown back into my seat as the sudden acceleration caused me to lose my balance.

"Hey Chris, come on, don't be this way. Nothing happened, okay," I said as I started to clumsily put on my seatbelt.

"What's he doing?" Shaina asked as she poked her head between us. I couldn't believe she was unaffected by the sudden speed.

"Chris, baby, please stop. Crashing us won't change anything."

He obviously wasn't listening.

"What's the big deal? If he wants to die, let him. It's not like we'll die with him."

I turned to face Shaina. "I don't want to be trapped under a wreckage and had to explain why I wasn't harmed! I can't blink away, I lost my wings."

"Clipped, not lost. I can always tag you with me when I blink away. Bet you didn't know that."

She was right, I didn't know that. But... "That's beside the point..." I turned to look at Chris, whose hands had gone white from gripping the steering wheel too tightly, " ... I don't want him to die."

She looked at Chris, flinched a bit when our speeding ride almost nicked a much slower car and said, "Why would you care? Do you finally have to have feelings for him?"

"What's that got to do with anything? Chris! Slow down!" I cried, seeing him almost hitting the metal railing at my side of the road. My first reaction was to seize the wheel and force him to slow down, but I've watched enough movies to know that it will always make things worse. At least now, we're not hitting anything despite the car cruising at the speed that would make Michael Schumacher green with envy. I doubt though that anything I said would enter his brain.

"It has everything to do with everything. I don't want to take you away if it means letting the man you love to die. Remember the vow? I can leave on my own, but I'm honor-bound to bring you with me."

"So it means that you can't save yourself without me?"

"That is what-ow!" she tried to say before the car swerved and she flew, her face ended up hitting the left window. "I'll kill you, bastard!" she cried.

I looked at Chris's dark face. His eyes were focused forward, as if the only important thing at the moment was to continue driving recklessly. I looked into his eyes and there was no more 'me' in there.

"So do you love him?" came the question I've been dreading.

I looked at Chris again. "But ... this is just ... so sudden ... I can't."

"Time's running. Ten seconds and we're out of here."

"What? I can't..."

"Eight."

"Come on, I need..." she cut in by saying, 'six', " ... to sort out my feelings."

"Four."

"Wait ... I ... I..."

"Two." She grabbed my shoulders.

"Okay! I love him, okay? I love him, stop counting!" I shouted at her.

"You love me?" came the voice I thought I'd never hear again.

"Err, you were listening?" I said, feeling slightly embarrassed. Although it was true, sometimes at least, but I wasn't ready for it to become public knowledge yet. I especially wasn't ready for him to find out about it. That was why I kept looking at him just now.

"You owe me big, bastard," Shaina said as she let go of my shoulders.

"Won't forget it, Freckles. Yes, of course, babe. I was listening the whole time. Totally fooled you, didn't I?" He punctuated it with a laugh. For a second there, I thought we were about to hit that old lady's car. She was so shocked, she didn't even hit the horn.

"So you ... weren't really mad?" I was feeling a bit, how should I say it ... cheated.

"You kidding? I believed you the first time. I knew you wouldn't cheat on me. I was just messing with you."

Didn't look like that to me.

"You mean that was all an act? And you!" I said, referring to Shaina, "You were in on this? What, you had a telepathic discussion while I was worrying my ass off?" I turned back to Chris, "And why are we still speeding?!"

He eased the pressure on the pedal, causing me and Shaina to be thrown forward a little. " I want to hear you say it again," he said, before pressing his foot onto the gas pedal again, "I want to hear you say you love me."

I told him that there was nothing to love about him and he was just a bully who'd make my life miserable. He responded by pressing hard on the gas pedal, making the car jump so suddenly.

"Great Mother! Slow down!" That only made him press harder on the pedal. "Okay!" I said after seeing how determined he was to hear me say that again, "I love you, okay? I love you! Now stop the car!"

He grinned, made a 270 degrees drift and drove the car into a smaller road. I bet that if the windows were down, I would be able to smell the stench of burned rubber.

I was still holding on to the dashboard and the window when Chris pried my pale and petrified fingers and held it in his own.

"Thank you, Pat. You have no idea how long I've wanted to hear you say that again."

"Let me guess, since last Christmas?"

He chuckled. "Yet you insisted on pretending that last Christmas didn't happen. Didn't you know you were breaking my heart every time you denied that we had something special that night?"

Shaina suddenly poked her head between us, which Chris quickly shoved to the backseat with his left hand. "Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we have coppers incoming. Just stay cool and let me do all the talking."

Just as she said it, I saw the blue and red lights of the patrol car at the bend, followed by the car itself. "How did you know they're coming? I only heard the siren when they got to the corner," I asked.

"I sensed a change in the air turbulence before they arrived. They've been following us for a few minutes, barely keeping up. If you didn't stop just now, they'd be left behind."

"I knew I shouldn't have stopped the car," Chris complained.

"This is L.A. If they couldn't keep up with cars, they'd use choppers," I countered.

Chris was about to say something when Shaina shushed and said, "Quiet! Ilyse, open your mouth."

I only managed to let out a "Why..." when she shot something powdery from her forefinger into my throat, causing me to cough a few times. It felt like that blasted thing wrapped itself aroung my vocal box.

"What the fu..." I immediately noticed something different, "What the hell did you do to my voice?"

"Much better. Your voice was pretty androgynous before, but now there should be no doubt as to your gender," she replied, referring to my more feminized voice.

"My gender? I'm a dude!"

"Not for the moment. My glamour will show that you're a dudette."

"WHY?!!!"

"I must say, Pat, this voice fits you better," Chris grinned. I responded by smacking his forehead.

Then there was a knock on Chris's window.

"Good evening, officer. Is something the matter?" Chris said after his window was lowered.

"Don't play coy with me, boy. You know damn well you were driving over the speed limit. License, please," said the police officer.

I didn't think he was old enough to call Chris 'boy'. He was a dark haired guy, with macho-ish demeanor and sporting a rather obvious pot-belly.

Shaina lowered her window while Chris fished out his driving license. I noticed that he was taking his time.

"Hey there, big guy. What-choo doin' here so late at night?" Shaina cooed excitedly. She sounded like a drunk prom date.

"Well ma'am, it's Officer Mal ... co ... lm" was what he managed to get out before his voice trailed off and finally going silent. I leaned closer to Chris to sneak a look through his window. I took a look at the officer's face and noticed his blank expression.

"Oh my, Officer Malcolm, ya must be tired, havin' to work the graveyard shift."

This Officer Malcolm was looking shy when he said, "Naw, it's all part of the duty, ma'am."

 
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