Amanda huffed. “You needn’t be.”
Something about the way she had just said that raised the hackles on John’s neck. He felt a sudden stone of dread in his guts. “What do you mean by that?”
Amanda laughed and walked away. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“No,” said John, following back after her. “What are you talking about? Why would I not worry about my own goddamn daughter?”
Amanda spun around and looked at him with a hatred that John hadn’t realised she’d had for him. Their marriage really was over, he realised. The suffocating sadness that he felt was lessened slightly by the relief that also took root inside of him. He didn’t care about any of that right now though. He wanted to know what Amanda had meant. She told him.
“She’s not even your daughter,” she shouted at him. “She never has been. I was fucking one of the neighbours when we lived in Burnley.”
They’d lived in Burnley at the start of their marriage, almost twenty years ago and left five years later. Jess was seventeen. Amanda sat back down on the sofa and stared at the television as though she hadn’t said anything. John felt a loathing for his wife now that was almost boundless.
He stood in front of her, blocking the television. “Say that again, and if you’re lying…”
Amanda scowled upwards at him. “If I’m lying, what? What the fuck you going to do? Just get out of this house and don’t come back. Jess isn’t your daughter so you’ve got no reason to be here.”
Rage took a hold of John as if his entire body was merely a marionette on a flimsy set of strings. Without thinking about it, or even realising he was about to do it, John picked up the half-full bottle of red wine and walloped it over his wife’s head. Amanda fell back, stunned, blood already seeping from a crack on her forehead. The bottle had not broken, so John swung it again, hitting her in the temple. The shock left Amanda’s face and was replaced by a look of bewilderment. Still the bottle did not break. Infected with an unbridled rage, down to his very soul, John swung one last time with all his might. This time the bottle shattered, smashing off Amanda’s forehead with an almighty crack!
John had never seen a dead body before, but he knew he was looking at one right now. He was glad. Now his wife would not become the full-blown monster she was threatening to become. The decaying rot of her spirit had been halted by death and she would pass on with her memory intact. A tear escaped John’s eye as he realised he would get to remember his wife as the woman he had loved for so long.
John picked up the wine-soaked dead body from the sofa and started dragging it to the front door. The plan was to dump her somewhere, close by, on the estate. Later he’d call the police and claim she hadn’t come home. Until then, he would dump the body and return, sit back and wait for his daughter to get home. He looked forward to raising Jess alone.
WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER
The snow was really falling now. A nervous person might even say that the weather had become unnatural. With every minute that passed, the temperature dropped and water froze. The cold was enough to kill a man stone dead – but not the man that currently stood beneath a blinking streetlight on a desolate council estate.
Although, in all honesty, he wasn’t really a man.
Lucas looked up at the moon and saw that it was full. There was something happening tonight, that much was clear. He just hoped it wasn’t the thing he was starting to suspect. Four-thousand years of existence was a long time, but Lucas wasn’t ready for it to end yet.
I haven’t watched the latest series of Dexter, for one.
Lucas walked forward, feet resting on the surface of the snow as if he were weightless. He’d never visited this particular town, it was without any notable history, but there was a lot of supernatural energy suddenly leaked into the world and he had traced it to here. Now he just needed to find out the source.
It wasn’t long before he found it. Lucas stopped walking across the snow and turned around. Behind him was an old friend, from long long ago.
“Gabriel?” Lucas raised an eyebrow. “I take your being here to be a bad sign.”
The Angel Gabriel stepped forward to approach Lucas and shook his head. “On the contrary, Lucifer. I would say that my presence is an extremely good sign. It signals the end of the decadent cesspool of this humanity. The Lord’s patience has worn thin and He has sent forth his armies to-”
“Still towing the company line, huh?” Lucas interrupted without his Irish accent. It was unnecessary in the current company. “You don’t seriously buy into the whole apocalypse thingy-majig, do you?”
“It is His will.”
Lucas sighed. “So it’s really happening then? I’d worried as much.”
“The scales have tipped. A sinner was chosen and failed to redeem himself…and therefore his species.”
Lucas took another step towards Gabriel. It wasn’t confrontational – the war between Angels was a one-time event never to be repeated – he just wanted to read the other Angel’s expression. “I always hated that contingency – from the very day Michael dreamt it up. It’s perverse to pin the world’s hopes on a single individual. So who is it anyway?”
Gabriel took in a breath that he didn’t need. “The sinner? Harry Jobson.”