Sorry for the double-post. I was hoping someone would respond to my awesome preview of Chapter 7 (I'm estimating that that's where it'll go), but no such luck, sadly. 😞
Anyway. I would really appreciate people's comments about Chapter 2, which I have now finished and is posted below. Everyone (Lilith excepted) was incredibly helpful with the previous chapter, and I'd be much obliged if they now turned their critical eye(s) to this latest installment. There's a few things I'm not too sure about with this one, but I'll leave it up to my 'Beta Testers' to point out what could be improved. 😉
A coupe of you have been waiting for this, so here we go. Enjoy!
Daniel Jordan - Between Angels and Devils
Chapter 2 - Back in Action
The next fortnight was unusually quiet for Daniel. In all, he’d only taken on two cases, both of which had been his normal fare of ‘my partner is cheating on me and I want you to obtain proof so I can divorce them without giving them any money’. In all honesty, Daniel had been glad of the quiet life. The previous few months had been much busier, and several times he’d only survived intact by the skin of his teeth. Private Investigating was a dangerous business, and he was glad of any breaks that he could get.
He’d spent the downtime doing some essential housekeeping. He’d tidied up the small 4-roomed apartment which he’d lived in since leaving home some 3 years ago, and had re-organized his case files, currently sitting in an ugly filing cabinet in what he called the study. His bedroom had needed some serious cleaning, and he’d vacuumed the front room. The kitchen, he’d decided, didn’t need anything done at all. For the past 6 months he’d lived on take-out food and microwavable dinners, though his hectic lifestyle had helped to stop the weight from building up.
Once he’d finished tidying (which, given that he’d been interrupted twice, had taken several days), he took it easy. Catching up on his favorite TV shows, playing with his new Wii console, reading the few books he’d picked up that he hadn’t gotten round to yet... it had been a fairly relaxing time.
Perhaps it was a good thing that it had suddenly been ended. The knock at the door had only interrupted the Bond book Daniel had been reading, and the woman who had barged in as soon as the door had opened slightly hadn’t even given him the chance to say anything before making herself at home and sitting in his recently vacated chair. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair as he closed the door and addressed her.
‘Can I help you?’
The woman turned to him, the look on her face exclaiming the obviousness of the question. There was obviously little point in treating her as unintelligent.
‘Yes. I need you to find someone.’
The hand went through the hair again, this time pausing to rub the back of his neck. ‘Who?’ he asked, his mind slowly creaking back to life after the time off.
‘My brother’ came the response, along with another look of superiority. ‘Shouldn’t you be writing this down?’
‘I’ll remember it. When did you last see him?’
She shook the hair out of her face as she spoke. ‘Years ago. Our parents divorced, and he went with our father.’
Daniel sighed. It was going to be an irritating case. ‘What was his name?’
‘Michael. Michael Hargraves.’
Wandering over to the nearby table, Daniel grabbed his notepad and withdrew the pen jammed into the rings at the top. Skimming to the first clean page, he asked the woman to spell the surname, and he wrote it down as she did so. Asking for her name, she put her well manicured hand into her coat and pulled out a calling card, which she gave to him. Reading it, the name Sophie Richards leapt out in horrendous gold leaf on top of a somewhat hypnotizing pattern of leopard-print. The cards must have cost a small fortune to have printed. He took another quick look at her.
Shoulder-length brown hair half hung over her face, almost concealing her heavily made-up face. Her dull blue eyes looked bored, and the clothes she wore, all expensive, top-of-the-line labels, conveyed that this was a woman who was used to getting what she wanted. Having handed her card to Daniel, she was now looking at her nails, waiting for him to respond. He did so.
‘What was your father’s name?’
She stiffened slightly. ‘John, James... something like that.’
‘Why do you and your brother have different surnames?’
‘I took my mothers, he took his fathers.’
So, he was looking for a Michael Hargraves, or, failing that, a John or James Hargraves. That was something, at least. He probed further.
‘Anything else you can tell me? Where he was last seen, any other family members, that sort of thing?’
She looked up at him. ‘No, nothing. That’s what’s made this so frustrating.’
Yeah, I’ll bet, thought Daniel as he put the pad of paper onto the table. Of all the people to shake him out of his holiday, he had to have a spoilt rich kid who didn’t understand that she couldn’t always get everything she wanted at the click of her fingers. He was tempted to not even bother - just call her sometime next week, saying that he’d found nothing.
Almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he inwardly cursed himself. Why would he do that? People like this pay the bills. He looked over at Sophie, who was once again checking her nails. He may not like it, but few people ever really liked their jobs. He was luck to enjoy it most of the time. He walked over to the door and opened it.
‘Ok. Well I’ll look into this and get back to you if anything turns up. If you think of anything else...’
He picked up one of his own business cards from the small table beside the door and handed it to her as she approached him. Unlike the lurid slight of hers, his cards were plain white with black text on. His sister, having achieved her childhood dream of being a graphic designer, had designed them for him when he’d announced to the family that he was becoming a Private Investigator. Thinking about this, Daniel realized it’d been some time since he’d last spoken to his sister. He decided to give her a call once he’d had a preliminary check into Mr. Hargraves.
Sophie looked at the card and then glanced back up at Daniel, the disapproval written all over her face. ‘Yes. Well, I hope to hear from you. Soon, if possible.’
In the back of his mind, Daniel saw her fingers snapping. He shoved the image away. ‘Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ve nothing else on at the moment, so this’ll have my full attention.’
‘Glad to hear it. ‘
She walked out the door and Daniel closed it behind her. She had been relatively polite to him, and yet he couldn’t wait to have been rid of the woman. He hadn’t even talked about his going rates with her. As if she cared, he told himself. She probably had more money then sense anyway.
Walking into the kitchen, he reflected on the afternoon before checking his watch. Nothing was on TV tonight, so he’d have a quick look on the internet for his Mr. Hargraves, and if nothing came up he’d give his sister a call. It’d be good to talk to her, he reflected. She had a bubbly side to her that was infectious, and he’d become too routine lately. A good pick-me-up lecture would probably do him some good. He grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge and then headed back into the study.
An hour and a half later, Daniel gave up. His usual web-haunts had failed him, and he’d already e-mailed his two other contacts that might be able to help him. Plenty of Michael Hargraves lived in UK, but none of them could possibly be the ones he was after. One was a DJ in Liverpool, another was a Barrister up in London and a third, he was surprised to find, worked in the same company as his sister.
He reached for the phone to give her the promised call when he saw his watch. Nearly 6:00. He decided to hold off from calling her until he’d caught the Six o’clock news. Walking into the front room, he grabbed the remote from the sofa and promptly collapsed into it the way his parents had never let him when he was younger. Thinking of this, a slight smile spread across his face as he aimed the remote at the TV and turned it on to BBC1.
10 minutes later, Daniel got up and went back to the phone. Much to his irritation, the biggest story that evening had been that of a new best-selling novel. Watching the story, Daniel realized that he recognized the author of ‘For God’s Sake!’. Paul M. Stepson had used to run a burger bar just outside where he’d gone to school. Flipping buns to flipping off Catholics by claiming God didn’t exist... Daniel shook the sheer lunacy of it out of his head as he picked up the handset and dialed his sister’s number.
‘...hello?’
‘Hey Natalie.’
‘Daniel! Ah, it’s been ages! How are you?’
A smile spread across Daniel’s face. He could picture her as she was talking. It may have been a while since they’d last seen each other, but he could clearly remember her. ‘Ah, I’m alright. Just looking at the cards you did for me and got all nostalgic.’
‘See? I told you they’d come in handy!’
He pictured her smiling. ‘That you did. So how are you?’
A faint thump came from the background. His mental image of her had suddenly sat down in a chair. ‘I’m good, actually. Got some big project that I‘m not allowed to talk about.’
‘When are you ever?’
‘I know, I know... one of these days I’ll get something I can share with you, honest!’
Daniel laughed. He loved his sister, but not that much. ‘No rush, please.’
Now it was her turn to laugh. ‘Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were discouraging me!’
‘Then I guess it’s a good thing you do know me, isn’t it?’
Another laugh. ‘Yeah... Hey, listen. I don’t suppose you’d mind doing me a favor?’
Without hesitation, Daniel replied ‘I don mind, thank you very much.’ His last favor for her had ended up with him plunging into the swimming pool belonging to one of her friends, along with a cold that seemed to last for a month.
‘I promise, it’s nothing as bad as last time.’
‘That’s exactly what you said LAST time!’
She laughed again. ‘Oh, come on! Please? Pretty please?’
Daniel couldn’t help but give in. He’d do anything for her, and she knew it. ‘...tell me what it is, and I’ll think about it.’
‘Yay!’ she squealed, knowing she’d won. ‘Thanks bro. I’ll make it up to you, promise.’
‘What is it?’
‘Ok. So, recently I’ve been getting all nostalgic lately, right? And I decided to get back in touch with one of my old friends, ‘cause we used to be BFF’s or whatever. With me so far?’
Daniel nodded as he confirmed that he was.
‘Ok, so I gave her a buzz over MSN, and she came back saying it’d been ages since we’d last seen each other, blah blah blah. So we agreed to meet and just, y’know, hang out.’
Picturing the scene, Daniel smiled. He’d had a best friend back in school, but, of course, they’d grown apart. Ian was in insurance these days, he believed.
‘So we were gonna meet yesterday at that place we always meet up. Remember the one?’
‘What, the AGN? Yeah, good times’
Another laugh. ‘Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, she never showed up, and I can’t get her back on MSN or anything. Just wondered if you’d mind tracking her down for me, since that’s what you’re so good at these days.’
Daniel moved over to the computer and moved the mouse. The screen-saver turned itself off and revealed the results of his last search. ‘Ok, I’ll give it a go. What’s the name?’
‘Dana Lucile.’
Sitting down, Daniel passed the phone over to his left hand as the right went for the mouse. He clicked the cursor into the search bar and the hand moved over the keyboard. ‘Ok, D-A-N-A...’ he spoke as he typed.
‘L-U-C-I-L-E.’ he sister told him as he continued. Hitting enter, he waited for the results of the search. One struck him in particular - a blog. He clicked the link and the screen turned almost completely black, except for the text, which was a hard-to-read shade of purple, and a picture of, presumably, Dana.
‘Black hair, brown eyes, looks kinda like a Goth?’ he asked.
‘I dunno, I never saw her, remember?’ came the reply.
‘She never sent you a photo or anything?’ He highlighted the text to make it legible and started reading it as he spoke.
‘Oh yeah, she did. Hang on.’ Another dull thud as, Daniel imagined, his sister put the phone onto the table. He continued reading the blog and found the text somewhat disturbing. After a minute or two, he heard the phone being picked back up.
‘Yeah, that’s her.’
‘Well, I’ve found her blog, and it’s... well, it’s an interesting read, I’ll say that much.’
A note of worry set into the voice. ‘What’s it say?’
‘Uh, hang on, lemme read some to you.’ He scanned the page, trying to find something that would convey Dana’s thoughts. He found a section and read it out.
‘Ok, here we go. ‘Last night I found the ritual. Soon I will summon him, and he and I will be together forever. I’ve waited so long for this; I can’t believe I finally found it! Can’t wait to try it out.’ Sounds pretty weird, huh?’
His sister paused for a minute. ‘Is there an address?’
Daniel scanned through the text. ‘There’s an e-mail address if that what you meant, but nothing else. Sorry.’
‘What’s the e-mail?’
Daniel gave it to her. Once he’d done so, he continued to scan the text.
‘Ok, I’ve got it. I’ll give her a buzz. Thanks Dan, I owe you big for this.’
‘Hmm? Oh yeah, sure.’
Concern filtered though the phone. ‘You Ok?’
‘Yeah, just reading more of this. There’s some pretty serious stuff here, Nat.’
‘What’s the URL?’
Daniel was about to give it to her when, as he scrolled down further, he saw several very inappropriate images. ‘...actually, I don’t want you reading this.’
‘Why? Does she slag me off of something?’
‘No, there’s just... Ok, there’s images of demons doing really nasty things to women, and to be honest, I like your state of mind right where it is.’
Natalie laughed. ‘It can’t be that bad!’
‘Yeah, it can. There’s one with like three demons, one woman and so much blood I’m not gonna sleep for a week.’ Much as he wished he was, Daniel wasn’t exaggerating. The images were seriously disturbing.
‘Really? Oh, now I gotta see them.’
‘NO.’ Daniel almost yelled the phrase into the phone. There was a pause as Natalie thought of what to say. After almost a minute, she started talking about something completely different, all bad blood between them suddenly brushed aside. Daniel smiled again. She had a habit of doing that, but it was an endearing one.
The two talked for almost half an hour before Natalie closed off the conversation. Wishing her a good night, Daniel hung up and placed the phone back into its station. As he did so, his gaze turned back to the image displayed on his screen. It really was horrific.
He moved to close the window, before pausing. What if there was an address somewhere here? He closed his mind to the disturbing imagery and scrolled further down. All of a sudden, there it was. Right at the bottom of the page, in the second entry. A road. Pentaview Lane. That was enough. He reached for the phone again and got in touch with another old friend.
If someone could please post and stop this thread from going under, I'd appreciate it...