A/N: Yeah, I know I took a while. Cut me a break, will ya? It took me a few tries to get this chapter the way I wanted. Seriously, I wrote at least three different versions, depicting Jesse as everything from a womanizer to a psyochotic mass-murderer...um, yeah, well, don't worry, Jesse's ok in this chapter. Really.

Chapter 9

"You scream, you die," the person whispered in my ear. I instantly recognized the sickeningly feminine voice.

"Bianca!" I gasped. "You-why, you little-" I was cut off as the blade sunk into my throat just enough to draw a trickle of blood.

"Yes, I am a little *bitch, now get over it," she said, and we both started glowing this weird black aura not unlike Paul's or Jesse's.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, knowing this wasn't doing any good for my already heavily damaged psyche.

"We're taking a little trip," she said flatly, and my room vanished as we dematerialized.

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I can't keep it from Susannah for much longer. Soon, she will notice…I'm no longer the man she once knew. There is a monster inside me, slowly blackening my heart…and I can do nothing to stop it. Even now, I feel the dragon stirring…

"We'll warm all you cool cats out there with a little of Eminem's number one hit, 8 Mile," the radio announced, and immediately after the surly beat began, which I took a strange liking to it. I turned it up and pounded the gas pedal. Suddenly, I was speeding down the dark highway at 120 miles per hour, all the windows down, sending a stinging wind in to whip my hair in all directions. I picked up a beer bottle from the cooler beside me, popped the top, downed it in one monumental swig, and tossed it in the back with the rest.

I felt so…free…wicked…the music was pumping in my blood…the corvette was racing to nowhere…and all I wanted to do was kill someone.

Kill? No, no-where did that thought come from?

Yes, yes-I want to kill someone. I want someone to walk right in front of this car and splatter all over the windshield like a bug-

"No! *Fucking NO!"

I pounded the gas even harder, the car practically breaking land speed records, and I couldn't even see anymore. My vision was suddenly blurry. I was thinking of Susannah…and a life of eternity without her. Where would I go? Back to Hell, I suppose. Bianca would welcome me into her house, but I wouldn't stay with her. I knew what she wanted. She wanted…well, me. And I couldn't give myself to another woman, not after Susannah. But would I really be to able to stand watching her grow and live her life, and maybe even meet another man? I would have to, though…for her own good. She had no idea what I was becoming…and I didn't want to tell her.

I want to…so much…but I can't be her husband.

I would…destroy her. Maybe not physically, I could never hurt her. But…in her mind and heart, I would shatter her…like a precious diamond…

I couldn't see anything anymore. There was an indescribable blackness beyond the blinding glare of the headlights, which seemed to be bobbing back and forth, back and forth. Was I drunk? Did I have too many beers? Fifteen or so…maybe a few more, who knew? All I knew was, there were Susannahs-three Susannahs, dancing in front of the headlights…they were beckoning to me…and there was a voice in my head… "Hit them…hit them…destroy them…" …and the music was getting louder and louder, and my vision was blurring, and the car seemed to be shaking, faster and faster, the wheel was running away, the wind seemed to be blowing my face off, and suddenly I heard a roar-a loud, angry roar, and I realized it was me…I was screaming, I was roaring furiously, I was shouting every obscene word I knew into the blackness, I was wondering where it had all gone wrong, why would the goodfuckinglordalmighty take away the only thing I ever held quite so dear, and that I truly was damned and forsaken in his eyes, and now Susannah's eyes, too, and-

And there she was. Susannah, with a bright light coming from her body, her wings stretched out around her, looking at me…and her wings were stuck at odd angles, bloodied and ruffled, and her dress-the same one she had worn on our date-was tattered and practically falling off, there was a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth, and she had a look of indescribable terror on her face, as I sped closer and closer to her, seeing but not daring to believe, too dumbstruck to hit the *fucking brakes, too drunk to realize that I was about to kill her.

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

"Why are we here?" I said, and I'm sorry to say my voice was shaky.

"You'll see," Bianca said with a smirk. "I want you to stay right there, and don't move."

I glared at her. "You-want me to-to stand in the middle of a highway at night. And you-expect me to-stay still?"

"Precisely. And if you move an inch, you'll be dead before you can say, 'I need a mediator'. So do yourself a favor and stay there," and her hatefully pretty face vanished as she dematerialized, leaving me alone in the middle of the highway. I shivered. Not that it was cold…but she had just tied me to a tree and beaten the crap out of me. I didn't even want to turn and look at my wings. I knew they were both broken.

"B-bit-ch," I muttered, my teeth chattering, and I hugged myself from the odd chill that had decided to grace my body with its presence. "C-coward…I couldn't-ev-en…fight ba-ck…"

My body was shaking now. I felt my stomach turning over…she probably gave me some internal bruises or something. It felt like winter…my body was getting colder and colder, like my body heat had suddenly been sapped away. And then there was the little matter of me being abandoned in the middle of a highway…at night. I had a pretty good idea of what she was hoping to accomplish through this.

"B-#####!" I shouted. "Do y-you hear me-ee? You're a-"

I suddenly convulsed in a fit of coughing. Not normal coughing, either…wet coughing. Like I was choking on something. And a fine mist sprayed from my mouth every time I coughed, wet stuff flying out of my mouth. Now, that couldn't be good. I wiped some of the stuff from the corner of my mouth. Blood. I was coughing up blood.

"*Shit," I muttered. She must've bruised my lungs. That…that could kill me. I gave a pitiful moan. "I hate her, I hate her…" Every time I breathed in, it felt like my windpipe was full of flem, only it wasn't. It wasn't flem.

"I'm gonna die…" I whispered.

It was kind of ironic, if you think about it. I mean, I had always helped the dead, fought them, cursed them out, fallen in love with them, kissed them, punched them…hell, I had even been one for a while! But now, I was about to join their legions permanently…be it from choking on my own blood, or being hit by a truck, I was about to die.

And all I could think was, Mom'll never get over it. She'll be mourning me for the rest of her life…

And then I remembered Jesse, and an overwhelming sadness swept through me. I mean, we were finally a normal couple! We were going to get married, have kids, make love every night, grow old together, and die in each other's arms, just like all those romance novels, where everyone gets to live happily ever after.

But this…this was just *fucked up! It was a fuckin fractured fairy tale!

My whole life is a fractured fairy tale, I thought with a sigh. This is why I don't believe in God. I serve him my entire life, apparently as one of his "angels", sent to earth to do good in his name, or whatever…and this is what I get. Dying cold and alone on a highway…roadkill. That's what I am right now. Roadkill.

I could almost hear Jesse's voice saying, "Susannah, I can't believe you would give up so quickly! You always find a way out of situations! Ok, well…I'm usually there to help, but that's not the point! You're a good mediator-well, you're an ok mediator-or maybe you're an angel-or, well, you can't really be an angel, but, um…wow, you're screwed."

Ok, well, maybe that's not Jesse's voice I'm actually hearing there, but…pseudo-Jesse has a point. Well, not the part where I'm screwed (well, actually, I have been screwed, ha ha, ok, yeah, bad joke there), but the part where I can't give up. Ok, Suze, let's recap this delicate situation. You are in the middle of a highway, slowly dying of a bruised lung, or something like that. If you move an inch, a Bianca, the deranged demon, will come back and slit your throat. If you somehow managed to defeat Bianca in your badly beaten state, you will have to contend with Paul, who will no doubt still want to make you his eternal bride.

Ok, Suze-any good ideas?

I was still thinking of some way to escape the highway without actually moving an inch when I heard it. Music…rap music. Really loud rap music. And then two really bright lights came up from over the rise in front of me. For a second I squinted at them, wondering moronically if Eminem was coming in a limo to rescue me. Then I realized the car was going really, REALLY fast, and I would be dead in a few seconds. Not only that, but it was weaving back and forth across the road, like the driver was really zonked out on ###### or something. Then the car turned from side of the road, heading straight for me, and all I could do watch the two lights getting bigger and bigger…

Time was slowing down. Is this what happens when you're about to die? Do you notice every single detail of the world around you with inhuman clarity? Do you see the birds flying overhead, do you see the rain just starting to fall from the overcast sky, do you see every crack in the pavement that you're about to kiss? Do you wish you could have had just one last cookie before you were whisked away to your death, leaving the whole box to your ungrateful stepbrothers?

Ok, well, maybe that's not your last wish, but I'm…unique. *cough, cough*

And then something lifted me up, something that I couldn't see, and I was flying above the lights, watching them fly through the spot where I had been standing…I wondered if this was an out-of-body experience or something, but my body still ached, and I doubted I would have a body to ache in an out-of-body experience, since that's kind of the whole point…no, something was grabbing my arms and lifting me up as I watched the lights pass underneath me, heading straight for a tree off the side of the road. And then, just before that car that had almost killed me hit the tree, I recognized it. I knew who's sexy black corvette that was.

And I screamed.

There was the sickening crunch of smashing glass and metal against splintering wood. And me, screaming like it was me in that car, and not the person that meant the most to me in the entire world. The thing holding me up by the arms was laughing, I was screaming, and the car was being crushed into a dense ball of twisted steel.

And then I was falling to the ground, still screaming, just slipping away and crashing onto the pavement with a loud crunch, knowing something was broken but not caring, only seeing that huge fireball that had once been Jesse's car, which was now melting away into nothing, with him in it…

And then he jumped out of the fire, like it was nothing, like he couldn't even feel the flames, like he hadn't just been in a lethal car accident.

"Great, now I have to get another one," I heard him say, and, despite how painful it was, my face broke into a huge grin, and I let out a scratchy little moan that was supposed to come out as "Jesse, I'm so happy you're alive!" but instead came out as, well, a scratchy little moan.

He turned toward the sound, and when he saw me lying on the street in a crumpled heap, he did a comical sort of double-take, blinked like he couldn't believe I was real, then in a flash he was at my side.

"Que-querida?" he said, his voice trembling.

"Hi," I croaked out. Could I get any lamer?

He just stared at me. "You…did I…hit you?" he said, his voiced cracking.

"No," I managed to get out. My wrist was strangely numb. "No-she lifted me out of the way-" I was barely above whispering from all the screaming I had done a moment ago.

"Who, querida?" he said, voice full of sorrow. He lifted my head off the ground, and I felt myself slipping out of consciousness…hopefully no farther than that. "Who did this to you, then?"

I tried to stop it. I really did. I tried to shout, "Jesse, turn around, Bianca's behind you, and she's about to ram a huge piece of glass through you-!!!" Because as soon as he said that, I opened my eyes…and there she was, smiling down at me, with this chunk of windshield lifted over her head, ready to kill Jesse…

But he didn't understand the strangled cry that rose from my lungs, turning into another coughing spree that sprayed blood right onto his agonized features.

And a moment later, Jesse's mouth opened in a silent scream as the glass pushed through the front of his stomach.

A/N: OH, NO! THERE GO JESSE'S PERFECT ABS!!!! *cough cough*, yeah, um...I kind of liked the way that chappy turned out. But of course, that just means that it probably sucked. Oh, well. This story's going to end soon. One or two more chapters, tops. I've decided to make this into a trilogy, so there will be one more sequel after this one. I've decided to call it...oh, I dunno..."Suze's Big Adventure!"...ok, ok, that sucks...well, whatever. Oh, wait--how about, "Of Heaven and Hell"...or "Of Angels and Demons"...or--um, anyway...yeah. Just make sure you REVIEW. I'm not updating until I get...7 reviews. HAHAHAHAHA--one more than the last time!

Wow, this A/N is way too long. I don't know why, I just feel like babbling. OH, NO--I'M TURNING INTO SUZE!!!!! Lol, ok, I'll shut up now.

Oh, and REVIEW. Did I say that already? Ok, well I said it again.

Wow, I'm a moron.

TTFN

P.S: Ummm...I forgot why I put P.S. there...I think I'm drunk or something.