Fan Fiction ❯ Ruby Midnight ❯ prologue ( Prologue )

Ruby Midnight was headlining at the Velvet Wire, three nights only. Officer Job Mayfair sat at a table, right up front, watching the group. The world was complicated, and it wasn't. He was a prophet of god. She was a witch, but not just any witch, a witch possessed by an old goddess, the one that had been there before the apple. He was a police officer. She was a violinist in a music group that he couldn't even identify the style of. It could have been country, or Celtic, and a couple songs back she'd gone fast and screaming on that damn violin of hers. It might have been heavy metal with all the demon summoning association, Job wasn't real sure.

The audience was quite enthralled with the singer she was doing back up music for. With long black hair, flowing loosely around his body, which was covered up in something that could have been female lingerie, tight black satin up his legs, silver chain around his hips, a tiny silver lock and a ruby cut in the shape of a heart bouncing against his slender hip. He wore a gauzy white poet's shirt, another ruby heart at his throat. Dano Saikuru held his arms out and drowned the club in music so steeped in love and lust that even Job couldn't resist the seductive lure of thinking of carnal pleasure.

Behind him, on keyboards was a girl, probably not more than 18 or 19, with short bobbed hair dyed bright pink, a heart stenciled in red on her cheek. In sparkly red jeans, a bikini top and the word love written on her body in various languages, Job was able to dismiss her as a minor demon of lust. She was nothing at all like the ruby haired woman with the antique violin.

This woman was what he was, a prophet. A mortal woman who was a portal to the world beyond the matrial veil. To the audience she might be the most sedate of them all. She stood there, her cheek pressed to the old style white violin, just an acoustic of white satin-birch wood, she almost reeked of innocence. Ruby curls, not pink, but not a normal red either, lay around her heartshaped face, curled up towards her full blue painted lips. She wore a pair of black jeans, a tee-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a white rose tattooed to her arm. She knew he was in the audience. He knew she knew.

Her eyes opened and looked right at him. Ordinary eyes, he decided, taken a back a little, as he'd been expecting something exotic, violet or impossible blue, not just grayish hazel. She smiled, those blue glazed lips then drawing together to blow him a kiss.

His whole body went tight, shoulders drawing up, body pressing back into his chair. One touch of her hand could defile a true prophet. It had happened before, turned them into fallen angels. Still, he couldn't take his eyes off of her, as she let her tongue slip between her lips, playing that cursed violin into deeper notes, taking it down into the slow lingering notes of building passion. The singer turned to look over his shoulder at her, all that black hair swirling around him, then he took the microphone down and held it so close to his lips as he switched songs right in the middle.

His voice became low and sultry, singing of passion and love eternal, of sex with the spirits because the heart could know no separation, and Job half expected some long pink tongue to come out and swirl around the round head of the microphone. The man was the embodiment of carnal sin! Job shifted in his seat and sipped water. The club had gotten too hot, by far. Maybe he could kill them all, save what might be left of their mortal souls.

After that song ended, the singer, Dano, announced that they'd be taking a half an hour break. Job thought about running, just fleeing the club, trying to meet with Ruby on another day, another place. He didn't though. He was a knight of god, a prophet of god and this was the place that he'd been told to meet her.

She came off the stage in a cloud of laugher and hugs, the pink haired girl standing to close that they were about shoulder to shoulder and Job got the complete impression that they were lovers. It made his stomach feel too small for the dinner he'd had. The keyboardist was taller than the violinist demon, he saw and it was the keyboardist around her shoulders and pulled her a little closer before kissing her ear and whispering something that Job completely did not want to know about. Ruby laughed, smiled like the world was brand new and stepped away. She pointed towards where he sat, held up two fingers, looked back, then held up five before shrugging. She thought he was a five minute conversation. He was going to kill her, yes, yes he was. There was a divine right and wrong and she, this Ruby Mayonaka was defiantly not divine right. There was no middle ground, no blending. It was heaven or it was hell.

She sat down at his table, a smile on her face, the tee-shirt not hiding her rapid breathing or the full breasts. She swirled her finger around the edge of glass that wasn't there, until her finger completed the circuit. Ice cubed clinked as she lifted her tumbler to her lips.

"Demon, why do you pervert the rules of nature for something as small as a drink?" He snarled, trying not to think about her girlfriend, about the thin, slightly sweat darkened tee-shirt.

"Oh, little saint, why do you think nature is so small to be by the shifting of a few molecules?" She leaned back in her chair, one hand still on the drink. "Did your master send you to offer his surrender? Surely he can see the logic of it?"

Job scowled, heartburn starting already. "He sent me to make you an offer. A contest, if you will, to save all the blood shed of an out right war."

"Yes, dreadful the way it went down last time, but then, you're not old enough to remember that, are you? Job, is it? That's a very fine name for you. You don't remember the burning of the defeated, do you?"

He sighed. Rebellious souls never understood what was good for them. "There was a purge. It is written. That the people of the Lord arose, that all those who answered his call were to wipe the defiant disbelievers from the world. They missed a few demons though, I think, because you're here, to ruin Eden."

"Yes," she agreed, "They missed a few. It's different now. Five thousand years is enough time to make things different, don't you think? All that lovely order and 'Eden' are fading away. And as for a contest, to minimize bloodshed? I don't think so. Your side is still well known for purges, for purity. And you have that nasty two sided god that keeps you from seeing how things truly are."

"Demon," he hissed. Talking to her was like chasing a drunk cat. "There is only one god and one devil. I follow the light and you are a creature of darkness, a child of the devil and only the fires of purification will save you from hell."

"Tsk," she said, sitting up and taking another solid drink of her soda. "Your god and your devil are nothing more than the dis-associative personalities of my Great Mother."

She continued and he was just sure he could see the polished ruby horns at the top of her head. Her lips seemed so full and soft, as she leaned closer, breath like sweet vanilla spice, he thought he ought to run now. "Listen, little man, I know you see things in light and dark, but that's not the way the world really is. Also, the winning side doesn't propose little contests, so enjoy your perfect white bliss whist you can, for we're going to end the delusion soon."

"God is eternal! How can you speak like that?" He snarled, furious with her ignorance and foolish blindness! He understood what she was talking about though. God had gently offered her side a fair contest, the promise of gentle guidance when they lost. She had responded with a threat to kill God. "Nothing can save your soul!"

She stood then, her glass disappearing. "My soul does not need saving. Yours does though."

Then she touched him. When saints fall, when they tip irrevocably away from the light, there is a moment, sometimes, when they hover between light and dark, in a place of self-acceptance and confusion, and then guilt demands they complete the crossing. He understood better then though, understood the abandonment of god, how it wasn't his fault, but that God had abandoned him anyway, as this demon had touched him, excited him, defiled him. He pulled his police pistol, aimed and fired.

She grabbed her stomach as she went over backwards, into the chair, then down towards the floor. Her pink haired lover screamed. The violin she'd played seemed to scream on a high note somehow. The former saint and officer lifted the pistol to his head and sealed his own damnation. And thus did Crystal City get another demon it didn't need.