Hell Hath No Furies Like a Waitress Scorned
an excerpt

“The murders, the serial killer,” I clarified, just so that the demon couldn’t wiggle out of telling the truth. “What do you know about the person committing the crimes?” I asked. I sensed Derek come up behind me and look over my shoulder. “Stay away, Derek,” I warned, not looking away from the demon underneath me.

“You want to know more about the murders?” the demon I was pinning down asked suddenly. “Ask him,” he yelled and vanished from underneath me. My knees hit the ground after having fallen the remaining distance to the floor as I whipped my head around to see my boyfriend looking very guilty.

“What did he mean by that?” I asked suspiciously, getting to my feet but keeping my blades in my hand. My mind was rejecting the ideas that the words had brought forward but my body wasn’t dependant on my brain’s functionality to keep advancing on him.

“Aren’t all demons crazy?” he asked. “I don’t know what he meant.”

“Liar,” I hissed as my blade whipped up to his throat. The fireball flaring into existence near my face made my draw my blade back just in time to keep from killing him and the fireball stayed in his hand. “Fine, kill me if you dare, demon,” I spat, angry for allowing myself to be tricked like I had been. My boyfriend was a demon.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Meg,” he said quietly.

“If I didn’t know any better, demon, I would say that you cared,” I said venomously. The thing about being a Fury was that death by demon was inevitable and we had long since stopped being even remotely polite to the demons who managed to capture us long enough to possible kill us.

“I do care, Meg, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you,” he said tiredly.

“Tell me that you killed my mother,” I finished bitterly. “Of course not, why would you? Tell me, demon, was it fun?”

“I didn’t kill your mother, Meg,” he said in the same tired voice. “I- I loved her.”

“Why should I believe you?” I challenged. “You killed all of those women before and you’re killing even more now. Was I just another woman on your list, Derek?” I asked angrily.

“I’ll tell you everything that you want to know if you put down the knives,” he stipulated.

“Extinguish the fireball and I will.”

“On the count of three, then. One. Two. Three.” The light in my eyes vanished as the soft clatter of my blades on the concrete floor reached my ears.
“Yes I killed all of those women,” he started, raking a hand through his hair. “But I didn’t kill your mother and I am not behind the recent attacks. Your mother and I met before she even knew that we had. She was assigned a time and a place, and I happened to be at it. Somehow I managed to run away but she ran out the door after me before I could shift away so I pretended to be a bystander. You were two at the time. We- we fell in love I guess, and started up an affair. When she finally caught up to me in regards to the serial killer case we had been together for too long, in love for too long. Neither of us could kill the other. She felt betrayed, like you do now, and trapped so she did what she thought was best: she jumped,” he said, nodding over my shoulder to the small ledge surrounding the perimeter of the roof. “She liked roofs as well,” he said with a wistful smile.

“So why are you here now, then, if you loved her so much?” I asked loudly.

“It was her dying wish that I should look after you and I kept my promise to her even though I wanted to throw myself off the roof after her. I had a duty now, and I couldn’t afford to live, or die, with myself knowing that I hadn’t fulfilled it. I instantly repented my sins.”

I couldn’t help but make a disbelieving noise. He looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. “I don’t believe that creatures like you can ‘repent’,” I said scornfully.

“We are all beings with free will, Meg,” he said in a lecturing tone. “Demons are simply predisposed to violence, murder and lies just like Furies are predisposed to demon hunting and revenge. It is possible to overcome the predisposition, and I had an excellent motivator. So I’ve looked after you ever since and I haven’t killed since. Whoever your killer is is a copycat or they want to get to me,” he explained.

There was a lengthy pause during which I thought about what he had said. Did it make sense? Yes. Did I believe it? I wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know what to believe,” I confessed. “I don’t believe that my mother would throw herself off of a building for a demon.”

“I understand that,” he said. “I wish to God that you were right. I know that I can’t get revenge on her killer, since I as good as killed her, but I want to help you with the psycho who is doing it all now,” he added sadly. “Just let me live for now, and I will help you. You can kill me later if you’d like,” he added.

I was won over by the apparent lack of cons to this suggestion. “Fine,” I said. “But one strange move and I kill you no matter whose side you’re on.”

“I couldn’t expect more from you than that, Meg,” he said simply.

“So where do we start?” I asked waspishly. If I was going to have to wander around with a demon then I wanted to be done with the whole ordeal as quickly as I could. He led me back into the building and down to the car.

“Mind if I drive?” he asked sheepishly. I threw the keys at him, probably with a little more force than absolutely necessary. He didn’t seem to mind. “I get that you’re mad at me,” he said when the doors were closed and we were pulling out of the paring structure.

“Do you really? What gave you the idea that I’m mad at you?” I fired off quickly. Mad was the polite term for what I was at that moment.

“Yes, I get it. I can see the pain and anger in your eyes. Your mother would be proud of your drive, you know,” he said.

“Don’t bring my mother into this, Derek,” I growled.

“She is a part of this and I can’t change that, no matter how had I try,” he said rationally. He seemed to have no problems with keeping his anger in check.

“Maybe you could have kept from screwing her in the first place, then,” I pointed out.

His mouth formed a small ‘O’. “So that’s why you’re so upset,” he said to himself. I still heard him.

“And why is that, Doctor Phil?”

“You’re upset because you are dating your mother’s lover,” he said simply.

“Among other things,” I admitted. “How does that work out for you, anyway?”

“Demons can control how they appear, so I didn’t age at all. Your mother told me to look after you so I got as close as I could. I wish I could have done it differently,” he confessed.

“Well it seems like you have a lot of regrets, then,” I said, losing a part of my anger. The rest of the car ride was silent, and I got out of the car without a word to him when he parked in front of the biggest park in the city.

“Now it’s your turn to sit back and watch me work,” he said with a grin, leading me deeper into the large grouping of trees that I had loved to play in when I was little.

Judging on the short amount of time it took for a demon to appear I could guess that he was a fairly high-leveled demon. Against my usual line of thinking I was kind of proud to find that I had landed such a high-ranking demon for a boyfriend. I supposed it was the geeky girl in school landing the football captain/quarter back. The second it appeared Derek grabbed it by the throat and threw it up against a tree. The demon’s feet strummed uselessly against the tree.

“Tell me what you know,” Derek growled feraly, a fireball appearing in his free hand.

“I don’t know anything,” the skinny demon protested. The fireball in Derek’s hand flared even brighter. “Fine, fine, I’ll tell you what you want to know,” it screeched.

“Good,” Derek purred.

“I don’t know who is actually committing the crimes,” it babbled frantically, words spilling out of its mouth so fast that I could barely understand them. “But I do know who is organizing the whole thing. For all I know there could be several people working for her.”

“Wait,” Derek commanded and instantly the demon went silent. “A female is behind this?”

“Yes, sir,” it responded quickly. “And not just any female either. The one behind this offensive is Helcta.”

“Where did she get the power base from?” Derek asked angrily.

“I don’t know,” the demon squealed. “Please, that’s all that I know!”

“Fine,” Derek growled. “Get lost!” he added, releasing the demon and extinguishing the fireball. The demon had shifted away almost before the words had come out of his mouth.

“So who is Helcta?” I asked casually. I really couldn’t care what Derek did with his demons.

“Helcta used to be the driving force behind the entire Underworld’s operations, but that was several thousand years ago. She fell from power over a war gone horribly wrong; the denizens organized a coup over the losses. If she’s organizing things again then she must have gotten some foothold back into her old power. It should be impossible but obviously The Powers That Be have a twisted sense of humor.”

“So now we get to track down the ex-Queen of the Underworld?” I asked snidely. “Goodie, my favorite pastime.”

“Maybe this is a good thing for you, but disgraced or not Helcta is powerful and taking her down, as you so quaintly put it, will not be easy.”