Premier James sat in Lucky’s, drinking vodka from a bottle that Lucky had left at his table.
The scream of Luc’s supercharged engine and the protest of his tires proceeded him bursting through the door. He made a bee line for the Premier's table. Sweeping the table aside and flinging the bottle with it, he grabbed the shorter man by his collar and lifted his face close to his own. "Tell me what you know about Charlene." he yelled into the Premier's face.
The Premier threw back his head, laughing and sobbing at the same time. "You didn’t know. Charlene is a devil. A real devil who works here for Satan himself. She writes contracts for him. She wrote one for me so that I could become a more powerful man. Not that it’s worth anything now."
Luc shook him again, "What do you mean?"
The short man stammered, "Charlene must have done something to piss of the Devil because her contracts are all being liquidated. Liquidated..."
Luc dropped his grip of the Premier and stood back stunned. The older man took a long pull of the vodka still in his glass.
"So you mean all these people that have died since yesterday are being killed by the Devil?" Luc asked.
"Well, he never acts directly. That doesn’t matter much to the dearly departed. (Muttering) Does’t matter much to me..."
Luc stood back and let his head drop. "So you and all her other clients are going to Hell?"
"That’s the deal. Eternal damnation, pits of fire, you know the whole nine circles..".
"And Charlene? Where will she go?" Luc demanded.
"I can’t imagine that she would go anywhere else."
Luc let go of the Premier and sat down heavily on a stool at the bar. "Lucky, can you do me a favour? Get me a whiskey and call the cops."
"Why the cops?" Lucky asked.
"Just do it friend."
As he sat there nursing his whiskey, the Premier went to the bar to refill his vodka.
A climbing siren stopped abruptly just before the two Constables came through the door.
Luc took one last pull of his drink and then moved behind the Premier. Pulling and opening a folding knife from his pocket he drove the blade straight into the side of the man’s neck, then pushed the blade forward as he had been taught in Special Forces.
He held the collapsing body up for a moment, then let it drop to the side and rushed towards the approaching policemen with his knife still dripping blood and gore.
He fell backwards as the sixth bullet entered his body. He dimly perceived the din of a dozen more shots reverberating through the old bar.
Lucky ran from behind the bar, lurching on his artificial leg. He held Luc’s head as his heart failed and heard Luc's last words.
"I’m coming baby."
A flash of white light blinded Lucky and the policemen just as the life left Luc’s eyes.
Luc’s eyes opened from blackness to a swirling collage of green and grey, blue and burning orange as he tumbled through air. As he roused, he realized his new wings were causing him to spin. He reflexively pulled them tight to his back. Using them to steer his descent, he aimed for a fiery cauldron below, filled with writhing, burning forms.
With vision like an eagle hunting a field mouse, he spotted Charlene buried under bodies and ash, burning herself in perpetual fire.
He spread his wings wide to slow his descent just in time. Through her burning, boiling eyes Charlene saw Luc, glowing white with an eldritch energy, reaching out for her, pulling her whole from the flames.
"Come on baby. We have work to do."
~~~~~
