Hell's Angel

Hell's Angel By Allykat

Chapter One

"Eight ball, right corner pocket," Logan said and shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. He mentally blocked out the noise in the crowded bar, leaned over the table and sighted down the cue stick. To sink the eight ball without scratching he had to give the cue ball a bit of English. A tricky shot, but he'd done it before.

His opponent, a biker named Jack, grimaced and nodded. Jack seemed decent enough, but there was something about his scent that set Logan's senses on edge. He couldn't say why, except that under a faint smell of cigarettes and laundry soap on his clothing, the guy smelled like something dead and putrid. At times the smell had been so strong, Logan found it difficult to focus on the game. Maybe he just needed to take a shower more often. Logan shrugged off the oddity as all his other senses told him the guy was normal even if he was a bit of a low-life asshole. Jack was a little too rough and sarcastic toward women for Logan's tastes and he certainly didn't mind taking the guy's money. 

Logan slid the cue stick through thumb and forefinger and gently tapped the cue ball. It rolled across the table, clipped the eight ball and rolled it into the corner pocket. Logan stood up, took a puff of his cigar, exhaled and squinted through the smoke.  "That's fifty bucks you owe me, bub."

"Damn. Luck of the devil," Jack grumbled, pulled out his wallet and began to count out fives and tens.

"The devil ain't got nothin' ta' do with it, bub."

The bar door opened and Jack casually looked up, then did a double take. His hands froze, his eyes growing wide.  "Oh, shit." He took two steps back. "How the hell did she find me?" A wave of fear radiated off him and struck Logan almost like a physical blow.

"Looks like you've just seen a ghost," Logan said.

"A ghost?" Jack replied with a strangled laugh. "This is much worse."

Before Logan could comment, an odd scent wafted toward him. It was pure, fresh, and a scent he associated more with the open air of his beloved Canadian wilderness than with humans. He turned and saw that a woman had entered the bar. She was dressed oddly even for a Hardcase patron. She wore camouflage tucked into black, airborne-laced combat boots. A scruffy brown bomber jacket covered a military-green tank top and a set of dog tags hung around her neck from a silver chain. Wavy, jet-black hair fell down her back and over her shoulders. For a moment she paused to survey the crowd until her gaze lit on Jack. Like a tactical missile, she locked on him and started forward.  Sweat broke out on Jack's forehead and his body twitched once.  Logan raised one assessing eyebrow; maybe Jack had smacked around the wrong woman. Logan had known women just as beautiful, like Mariko or Silver Fox, but there was something different about this one that he couldn't put his finger on. An aura of purpose radiated from her, determination set the angle of her brows and her cat-like eyes. Logan could detect no anger in her demeanor. Whatever she had for Jack, he could discount anger, but there certainly wasn't any misplaced affection.

"That yer old lady?" Logan joked, at the same time wondering how a jerk like Jack could end up with a woman like that.

"Uh, no man, she ain't my old lady."

That was a relief. "Friend of yours?"

"This chick ain't got no friends." With that enigmatic reply, Jack stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. "Uh, I'll be seeing ya' later.  If there is a later." Spinning about on one foot, Jack bolted for the rear exit

Like a hunting cat on the scent of wounded prey, the woman crossed the room without increasing her purposeful stride and ignored the wolf whistles and stares that followed in her wake. When she drew close to him, he detected a faint whiff of gun cleaner. Under her bomber jacket she was packing and judging by the two almost imperceptible bulges at her sides, she was packing double.

"I didn't know Jack had an old lady," commented one voice.

"She looks primed to whup his ass but good," another said. "Maybe he was getting something on the side."

It appeared to Logan that she had something more final in mind for Jack than an ass whuppin'.

"She looks like a wild-thing to me, I don't think I'd be looking for anything on the side if she were mine," said a voice from the back.

"I wouldn't want to tangle with her," said a heavy shouldered biker playing darts.

"I would," shouted the voice from the back of the room, laughter followed.

The woman didn't acknowledge any of this, not so much as a blink or a twitch, almost as if these men didn't exist. She passed by the pool table on her way to the rear exit and Logan's hand shot out and grabbed her left wrist. Her skin was smooth and her arm slender under the jacket's sleeve.

"I don't know what Jack did to get you all riled like this, darlin', but maybe you should just hang out an' think about it. How 'bout you join me an' I'll buy ya' a beer?" Something moved under her hair, rippling the thick locks. Logan thought he heard a tiny giggled then it was gone.

"Let. Me. Go," she said, enunciating each word slowly as if speaking to an imbecile. Her soft voice held a hint of a threat and no fear. Dark blue eyes studied him and Logan had the feeling they didn't like what they saw.

"Do you know what yer doin'?" he asked, disconcerted. He didn't let it show.

"Do you?" she answered. Her gaze never wavered. 

Something that felt like a jolt of electricity struck the hand Logan had clamped on her wrist. Liquid heat traveled up his arm, it felt like his blood were boiling and his skin scorched. The sensation sped up his arm and settled across his chest. Logan inhaled a strangled gasp. Sharp twisting stabs of remorse and guilt pierced him.  The things he had done over the course of decades were magnified while quick pictures flicked through his mind like a slideshow. For the first time, Logan questioned those things he had done, making him doubt every death decision he had made. His knees sagged.  Her gaze continued to hold his. He could not look away. Logan had never felt so exposed or vulnerable, it was as if the locks securing his soul had been torn away and his life's deeds bared for all to see and judge. A silent snarl lifted his lips. Was she a mutant? He couldn't pull away from her and he clenched his free hand. Let's see how she dealt with adamantium, a shame to have to do this in Hardcases's place.  Then the woman leaned closed, her face inches from his.

"I can sense that inside, you're an ethical man, a brutal but just man, but in this instance your concern is misplaced," she whispered, her breath fanned against his cheek, her lips almost brushing his earlobe. "This is none of your business. Let's keep it that way." Another jolt of hot current raced through Logan's arm.  She pulled her wrist from his weakened grasp and continued unmolested though the bar and out the back door.

"And he strrrr-rikes out," a bar regular who knew Logan, hunkered down like a ball player and swung an imaginary bat.

"Looks like Logan met his match," Hardcase commented from across the room.

"Not even Don Juan scored every time, bub," Logan replied, hiding his uncertainty. He popped up a middle finger in Hardcase's direction.

"'Pears to me like that's the one thing you ain't getting tonight, buddy, at least not from her."  Hardcase brought up a bottle of whisky and a shot glass.  "You might as well have another drink, this one is on me."

"Later," he said, and looked toward the exit.

"Don't go there, Logan," Hardcase said. "It's never a good idea to get involved in a domestic dispute. Maybe Jack'll get his due and she'll kick his ass--she looks like she could."

"I don't believe this is domestic." Logan pushed away from the pool table and managed to walk to a small bar table without falling on his face. Guilt was a burden he rarely confronted and the strength in which it had struck left him reeling, barely able to think straight. He stared at the half-full mug. He slugged down the rest of the tepid beer then grabbed his leather jacket. This was none of your business, he reminded himself as he headed out the back door. She had to be a mutant and if she was a mutant bent on trouble, well that was what the X-Men prevented. I'm doin' my duty, he told himself. Ah hell, I ain't fooling no one, I want to know what she did to me.

Outside, the rear alleyway behind the bar was deserted, lit only by the dim overhead glow from a bare bulb that had attracted a posse of buzzing moths. Their distorted shadows flitted about on the broken pavement. Logan paused and breathed deeply. He could detect the petroleum smell of automobile pollution, trash from a nearby dumpster, and underneath it the woman's unique scent and the putrid scent of Jack. The two weren't difficult to track and he started off at a jog.

Logan tracked them four blocks south of Hardcase's bar into an area of abandoned buildings and found both in a short, dead end alleyway. Jack cringed against a far brick wall, scrambling against it, ripping the flesh from his fingers in a frantic attempt to escape the woman. The woman advanced and on her shoulder sat… something, Logan couldn't tell in the dim light. It might be a bird, but the silhouette reminded him more of a tiny bat and its scent was odd, like Jack's scent. It squeaked and darted under her hair.

A dozen feet from Jack the woman stopped, reached inside her jacket and pulled out a neat little .22 fitted with what appeared to be a homemade silencer snugged to the barrel.  Serious, he thought. Professional hitman hardware. Quiet and efficient. He had just seconds to diffuse this situation before it turned lethal, but her next words made him pause.

"Spiritui Sancto, estote meum castellumque preaesidium contra omnium hostes," she began.

What the hell? Latin? Logan thought.

"No!" Jack cried. "I've cleaned up… I've changed.  Is… is this about those women? I didn't mean to kill them, they asked for it, they were just whores and I was havin' a bit of fun. Please don't!" Jack's screech of fear was inhuman, and Logan suppressed an urge to plant two fingers in his ears.

"Your transgressions are not mine to judge," the woman replied.

"Yeah, you're only the flamin' judge, jury and executioner," Logan muttered under his breath. He'd seen dozens like her in his life; the only different is they didn't spout Latin before putting a bullet in their victims' heads. And you couldn't be accused of the same? commented the tiny voice of conscience that Logan decided to ignore.

"Magnificant anima tu in quisque magnicium opum. Gloria in excelsis Deo" the woman continued. Jack howled in pain, his eyes squeezed shut, his body frozen in mid-movement as if held by an invisible force.

Definitely Latin. Where was Elf when he needed him? Logan did know Spanish, so he could translate a little of it--something about magnifying the Lord or some such mumbo jumbo hocus-pocus bullshit. Maybe she was one of those crazy right wing religious freaks like that whack-out priest he'd heard of who axed up a few punks who came to confession [See Ennis's "Punisher"]. Logan couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret that she wasn't something more than a back alley assassin. Time to pull Jack's ass out of the fire, he said to himself.

The woman held up the gun and took aim.

"I think you should reconsider, darlin'," he said, stepping fully into the alleyway. "Maybe we let the authorities deal with him. What do ya' say?"

The woman flinched toward him and the thing under her hair climbed out and darted into the air. The woman's momentary distraction seemed to release Jack from whatever spell held him, and he gathered himself and launch forward. The woman recovered, fell to one knee and pulled the .22's trigger. At point blank range, the bullet ripped into Jack's check and neck, tearing out fist-size chunk of flesh and muscle. Blood flew in a red spray. The wound should have been mortal, she'd hit the jugular judging by the amount of blood, but he just staggered back, hunkered down like a wounded animal and snarled, his lips stretching over sharp canines.

"May God have mercy!" the woman shouted, and took aim again.

By this time, Jack was no longer Jack.

Jack's clothing split and ripped, and his skin fell away in long strips like soggy, rotten bark.  The thing that emerged reminded Logan what he'd seen when he was whupin' butt on the N'Garai. Jack's skin was greyish-brown, smooth and hairless and he stood upright on dog-like hind legs. Tusks curved from a lipless snout and spikes poked up through his spine and rippled down his back. Fingers elongated into talons and eyes enlarged and bugged from a vaguely human-like skull. A set of leathery wings shot through the skin on his back, tearing through flesh and rising, talon-tipped, into the air.

"Motherf--!" SNIKT! Six adamantium claws sprung from his knuckles, and he fell into a combat crouch.

Logan didn't know what the woman expected and wouldn't have been surprised if she ran screaming from Jack—or whatever he was—but she seem more dismayed than surprised or frightened by the transformation. The flying thing that had been on her shoulder swooped down toward Jack and hissed.

Jack attacked the woman and the tiny creature, reaching for them with sharp talons and a gaping maw lined with needle sharp teeth. The woman leapt backward, landed on her back and skidded past Logan and all the while emptied the .22's clip into the thing then drew a Baretta 92 FS from a body rig and emptied that clip. In Logan's quick appraisal, the bullets did nothing except to piss off Jack.

Jack flew by, ignoring Logan, his focus on the woman and the little creature. Logan took advantage and sprung onto the thing's back and with a downward jab, sank his claws up to his knuckles into its neck. Something black and dusty gushed from the wounds and its foul stench felt close to burning the hair out of his nose.  He turned his head, and hung on. An angry high-pitched screeched nearly busted his eardrums. Gritting his teeth, he struck a second time into the back.  Using his claws in the creature to maintain his balance, he twisted at the waist and raked a left hand through the membranous area of a leathery wing.

The creature yowled, trying to dislodge Logan with a clawed hand while it snatched at the woman with the other, grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to pull her head into its mouth. The woman's little creature darted down and latched itself onto the things face and held on, tearing out chucks of flesh. Shrieking again, Jack drew back and pawed at its face. Out of the bomber jacket sleeve the woman popped out a tiny gun and shoved it into the creature's mouth and pulled the trigger as rapidly as she could.

Jack screeched, fanned his wings and rose up the woman in his talons, Logan on its back and the little creature on its face. He flew erratically trying to use his one uninjured wing to gain altitude. Ten feet up, the creature then released the woman, did a belly roll and dumped Logan then flapped away.

"Oof!" Logan hit the pavement on his back next to the woman.

He lay for a second to catch his breath, then sat up and sheathed his claws. The wounds from the creature hurt like hell, and his healing factor seemed to be having a hard time. He checked himself and finding nothing that wouldn't heal given time he looked at the woman. She lay motionless on her side in a pool of blood, her thick hair falling over face—if she still has a face, Logan amended remembering that Jack had been doing his best to munch it off. Logan touched her back then pushed aside her hair, felt for a pulse on her neck and found none, her skin cold clammy.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered.

The woman was dead.

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Latin translation: I haven't had an opportunity to practice much Latin since college, so I apologize if this isn't perfect. "Sancto Spiritu, estote meum castellumque preaesidium contra omnium hostes. Magnificant anima tu in quisque magnicium opum. Gloria in excelsis Deo": Holy Ghost, be my fortress and defense against all enemies. My soul magnifies you in every magical work. Glory to God on high.