C.L. Stegall

Since I have been oh-so-lacking in my updates, I thought I would get back to the Fri­day Writ­ing cat­e­gory and share a lit­tle of the upcom­ing Prog­eny novella, Given No Halo. This one is inspired by my late, great friend, Angel. I promised her I would make her a demigod char­ac­ter and I keep my promises. It is told from her per­spec­tive and this is just some raw writ­ing, so take it as such.

The story is about the daugh­ter of Ares, the Greek god of war. Only Angel doesn’t keep the fam­ily tra­di­tion very well. Still, her nature and moti­va­tions sure as hell keep her in the thick of things. When she inter­venes in a domes­tic vio­lence sit­u­a­tion, what begins as a sim­ple warn­ing turns into a des­per­ate fight for the sur­vival of hun­dreds of thou­sand s of inno­cent lives at the hand of one of Angel’s old ene­mies. The past can some­times catch up to you in the worst pos­si­ble way. Hope­fully, Angel will sur­vive to tell the tale.

GIVEN NO HALO

Excerpt: “Beaten”

 I fum­bled with the lock and let my weight fall against the door. It gave way and I strug­gled to main­tain my foot­ing. Christ! I hurt every­where. Those bas­tards were going to pay for this. I should’ve known he would behind it all. I should’ve killed him when I had the chance. All those years ago, I would never have thought he would come this far. He had at least twenty men at that com­pound. I was stu­pid. Those are the kind of mis­takes I can’t afford to make.

I wiped the blood from my mouth, brush­ing it along the rear end of my jeans like some half-assed painter. I needed some ice. Stum­bling for the kitchen, one eye swollen almost shut, I fum­bled at the buckle of my hol­ster belt with the fin­gers on my good left hand. I knew at least two of the ones on my right were bro­ken. I’d have to reset them before the heal­ing kicked in. First, ice.

I let the belt fall to my calves as I fid­dled with the leather strings hold­ing the hol­sters to my thighs. It fell with a muf­fled thump and I moved to the refrig­er­a­tor. Shov­el­ing a hand­ful of ice into a damp hand towel, I tied the ends together and eased it to my face, breath­ing a sigh of minor relief.

How the hell did Sofia get tan­gled up with that guy. Shit. This was going to get messy. Not that it was any walk in the fuck­ing park as it stood. At least I was alive. Barely.

I plopped down on the sofa, lay­ing back and clos­ing my eyes beneath the cool cloth. Sit­u­at­ing the icy cloth over the bridge of my nose, I felt the fin­gers on my right hand. The mid­dle one and the pinky fin­ger, both bro­ken. I gri­maced and jerked them back into a decent sem­blance of nor­mal­ity, huff­ing out the pain through my blood­ied mouth. I felt the blood fly off into the unseen dis­tance. Great. I was going to need some seri­ous clean­ing in this place, now. Maybe I could hire one of those crime scene crews with­out too much hub­bub. Worth a shot.

I was drift­ing off, let­ting the heal­ing begin when I heard the door swing open. I got ready, retriev­ing the Firestorm I kept hid­den in the sofa cush­ions. Call me para­noid, but one can never have enough guns stashed for a rainy day. To my sur­prise, it was Sofia. I sup­pose I was really a sight to see, all beaten and blood­ied. She gasped, her hand over her mouth and rushed to my side.

“What hap­pened?” she asked, one hand reach­ing out but stop­ping just before touch­ing my split lip, while the other dropped her purse by the sofa.

“Grist hap­pened. It was a set up.” It was funny hear­ing my words, all wet and slurred. I needed rest and time to heal. “What’re you doing here?” I won­dered how she even knew where I lived. Not that it wasn’t a pleas­ant sur­prise. Those mocha eyes stared into mine for a long moment.

“I got your address from Con­nie. I just wanted to thank you.” She paused, star­ing at me from head to foot. “Why can’t you let things go?”

“Not in my nature, toots,” I replied. Some­how I had not noticed, but I felt that a few ribs might be cracked, as well. When I get my hands on Grist…

“Well, at least let me take care of you. Where is your first aid kit?”

“Under the bath­room sink. Down the hall to the left.” I lay there and bled while she retrieved the over-utilized kit.

“Not much left in here,” she com­mented, as she rum­maged through for some anti­sep­tic pads. “You might want to restock.”

“Right.” It was all I could man­age. I could feel my body begin­ning the heal­ing process. Thank the gods for deific par­ents. At least I got some­thing out of the whole thing. I won­dered if he could see me now. Prob­a­bly not all too proud of his daugh­ter at the moment, I bet.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my body begin­ning to relax after all of the adren­a­lin and stress of the last cou­ple of hours.

“Some­one has to take care of you,” she replied with a strange tone in her voice. “And, I’m just the per­son to do it.”

I was about to thank her, when I felt the nee­dle go through my jeans and enter my thigh. I jerked awake, fling­ing the cloth full of ice at Sofia, knock­ing her back­wards. That should end up a very nice black eye. I stood, ready to kick her ass even in my cur­rent state when I felt the drugs. What­ever she used, it was damned pow­er­ful. Most seda­tives don’t have much effect on me, with my her­itage and all. But, I sure as hell felt this stuff. Damn.

“Why?” I asked as the world spun and I fell back onto the sofa. She stood and looked down at me. She was fad­ing into the dark­ness of my unconsciousness.

“I had no choice. He made me do it.”

Her lovely face was lost to the blackness.