Angel of Vengeance Read Online Free Page B

pressure. The result is a disquieting full-body numbness. On the bright side, less nerve endings mean a much higher pain threshold. Where living flesh would give up under the influence of severe pain, dead flesh won’t. The less pain you feel, the more you are capable of enduring. The more you can endure, the stronger you are. So there you go.
    I decide to get by on brawn. I grab hold of two wrought-iron rungs and pull. One breaks. The other bends. It’s enough. I squeeze my gaunt frame through the gap, careful not to snag my best suit. Feeling tired and dizzy at the expended effort, I brush off and climb the tiered green banks of grass to join the party.
    I step through coved French doors into a set-decorated room of another era. A better era. My era. Across the room, over the talking heads of the guests who mingle in the dramatic step-down living room, I see a turreted entryway and a spiral staircase leading up. Expensive prints—they can’t be originals—cover the walls. Most of the furniture has been moved out of the living room, but I step down into it to get a better look at a tile fireplace with an interesting Mayan motif which is tucked back into one wall. My head swims. The Tropicana, Reesa, Canter’s, and now this place. Everywhere I go tonight, I seem to find myself hunting ghosts.
    Oblivious to the magic of the place, and the lesser for it, guests mingle and drink under the high barrel ceiling. So far as I can tell, they are a bland gumbo of Hollywood screenwriters, directors, producers, executives and semi-recognizable actors, each of them believing themselves vastly more interesting than they actually are by virtue of working in the movie biz. I shake my head. This is California. Where’s a good earthquake or mudslide when you really need one?
    I snare a flute of champagne from the tray of a passing cocktail waitress. Sipping it, I walk up to an aging, Botoxed actress who stands gazing sadly out of a nearby picture window on the distant city lights. I only recognize her because she happens to be the daughter of an actress I used to have a bit of a thing for. Her face poisoned into a death’s-head grin, I smile, hoping my eyes don’t reflect the horror I feel. She smiles back, but then she doesn’t really have a choice.
    “Loved your last movie,” I lie, not because I didn’t love it, but because I didn’t see it. Though I’m sure I would have hated it if given the chance.
    “Oh thank you, that’s so nice of you to say.” She takes my hand. We shake. “I still can’t understand why it went straight to video.”
    “Well there’s no accounting for taste in this town.”
    “True.”
    If possible, she smiles wider. Okay, enough bullshit. I decide to get to the point before she decides she wants to jump the bones of her last fan on the planet.
    “Have you seen our host around anywhere?” I ask, this being my clever way of getting Vin Prince, who I’ve never seen, pointed out to me. I’m good like that.
    “Oh yes, I just saw him. Let’s see,” she turns and looks over at the makeshift bar that has been set up on the ornate tile near the front door. “There he is at the bar.”
    I look along the curve of her French-manicured nail to see a guy in a tailored Armani suit hand a drink to a fake-boobed blonde twenty years his junior. I dislike him on sight, and not just because his tan is much too dark for the time of year and he wears sunglasses despite being indoors at night. He does his best to hide it, but I know his type immediately. All the money in the world can’t scrub slime off a slug. It takes salt to do that.
    “I should probably go say hi,” I tell the succubus. “Pleasure talking to you.”
    “You too,” she says, trying to be demure, trying to be her mother. “Why don’t you come find me later so we can... get better acquainted.”
    “I’ll do that,” I lie.
    She smiles as I walk away, but then she doesn’t really have a choice.
    I obstacle course my way across the