Hell's Rayne (Book 1)

Chapter 1

The deep bass thudded through my ears and the thin, plasterboard walls shook from the reverberation of my neighbours deafening dubstep music. She insisted on playing the noise round the clock – or at least she had ever since I'd taken up the tenancy in the flat next door. One solid week of noise and no sleep; to say it had made me grouchy would be an understatement.

 I slumped over onto my back, the bedsheets a tangled mess around my legs, and groaned. I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes, willing away the headache I could feel brewing, and I yelled back above the noise. “Don't you ever shut up! I can't sleep through this fucking noise.”

 I don't know for sure if she heard me or not, but the music just increased in volume in response to my complaints – typical. I let out a cry of frustration and hid my head under my pillow in an attempt to muffle the noise. Just a few hours sleep that's all I wanted.

 Screwing up my eyes I tried to find a quiet place, an imaginary retreat where I could shut out the world and just rest a while. This job had been taking longer than I had anticipated and the lack of sleep had started to wear at me. It had to end, had to end that night. But until then, just a little sleep.

 A shrill buzzing suddenly cut through the air, drowning out the endless thudding of electronic base. I groaned again, dragged my head out from under the pillow and, with bleary eyes, randomly smacked at the top of the black plastic alarm clock, but the noise failed to stop.

 “Pile of crap.” I muttered bitterly as I grabbed the clock and hurled it at the wall in frustration. The plastic crunched satisfyingly and it fell to the floor with a clatter, the batteries rolled across the bare floorboards and hid themselves somewhere under the bed. Damn, now I really did need to end this job, I didn't want to go out and buy another alarm clock.

 I dragged myself out of bed and stretched my aching limbs, trying to breathe some vitality back into my body. What I needed was the warmth of Hell and a familiar bed surrounded by silence in which I could sleep. But whilst my soul bounty remained outstanding I was stuck. Souls could be tricky, and the guy I was hunting was proving to be most awkward. I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to to intervene, give him the little push that he needed to poke a toe over the line, throw off the balance, so that I could swoop in and 'save the day' as it were. Sounded like a glamorous job on paper, the reality tended to be very different.

 It must have been about 7pm. I couldn't know for sure, having killed my only clock, but I'd set my alarm for seven, due at 'work' for half eight. I'd taken a job as a bartender in the club where my target worked as a bouncer. Having to work another job on top of the one I already had was annoying, not to mention tiring, but it was necessary for my cover story – and the only way I was getting anywhere near to Shane. Needs musts, as the saying goes.

 I wanted to shower before heading out. Normally I wouldn't bother, not before going to the club, that place was so smoke filled and grimy that I'd spend about an hour trying to rid myself of the stench once I'd returned to the flat after a shift. But, if all went well, I wouldn't be going back to that rat hole at all and I wanted to look my best for my return to Hell, or as good as I could look given the circumstances – appearances counted for something everywhere, and looking like a human in Hell, I was already at a disadvantage.

 I wandered the short distance to the broom cupboard that passed for a bathroom and turned on the shower. I let if run for a few minutes, vainly hoping that the water would warm enough to actually stand under, and took a quick glance in the mirror. A week on Earth and already I had started to look haggard. My cheeks were more hollow than they'd been when I started this job – demon blood or no even I couldn't survive on a diet of flat, sugary soft drinks and coffee for long. The odd greasy kebab to sway the hunger was far from choice cuisine, but I couldn't cook and the club wasn't paying me on a nightly basis. Tips would only stretch so far.