Hell Bound (The Immortal Balances- Book 1)

Chapter Three: Breathing Blood

Rachel's house was smaller than how it had looked when I'd watched her before through the crystal ball. Her entire house was in fact smaller than my bedroom back home in Hell, consisting of only two bedrooms, a rather tiny bathroom, and a conjoined kitchen and makeshift front room. The house was half empty with barely any furniture bar the essentials, but made slightly homely with a grey secondhand sofa, a fridge that had definitely seen better days, two beds and a small box TV. Whilst to Rachel this was her home, to other Livings her age, this would have been a pretty good representation of Hell.

"Make yourself at home," Rachel told me, dropping her bag on the small two seater sofa before making her way into the kitchen. After successfully getting Rachel to invite me to stay, I'd made a quick detour to a small charity shop where I managed to take enough clothes to last me a few days, and stuffed them into a gym bag that was marked with the word Addidas, whatever that meant. The lady running the shop hadn't known much English, and when she had tried to tell me to stop, her accent had rattled my bones so much, I had snapped her neck.

That was before I decided to steal all the money in the till and take a second hand phone, knowing that in this world, if you wanted to fit it, you needed those two materialistic things.

Rachel on the other hand had been none the wiser to my horrific actions, and when I had met up with her again at the beach, she'd even commented how I didn't seem as on the edge as before. Little did she know, I'd been in this world for less than a day, killed a woman and stolen from the poor. I personally couldn't be more thrilled with today's turn out.

I set down the gym bag full of clothes I now owned next to the sofa, and took in the scent of the room. Being an ex-demon, my senses were still of a rather high quality, so I could detect anything I should be concerned about at the fastest speed. But I didn't need my amazing sense of smell to get a whiff the potent vodka stench in the air, soaked deeply into the fabrics of the room.

Back in Hell, it was a necessity to get drunk: Every night there may have been one hell of a party, but more of the souls needed something constant to help them get their mind off the fact they were actually dead and in the underworld. Of course, myself and my siblings had gotten drunk often and I enjoyed it, probably more than I should have, yet while I was here alcohol was off the menu. I'd seen the effects it had on the Livings, so I couldn't take any chances of spilling my real identity whilst in my new mortal flesh.

Rachel soon returned to me carrying two mugs of what looked like watered down mud. When I seemed quite sceptical about it, she assured me it was 'coffee.'

Never having ever heard of 'coffee,' I put the almost clean mug to my lips and gulped down the strange liquid. My throat was one fire.

"Unholy fuck, are you trying to destroy me?" I accused, quickly aware that Rachel might have seen through my ruse. Although my reaction might have frightened her so, because her mug fell to the ground with a scream, spilling the deceitful 'coffee' all over the dull wooden floor.

"Now look at what you made me do," she sighed, kneeling down to pick up the shattered mug pieces. Suddenly feeling awfully guilty, I retreated to the kitchen where I recovered some paper towels, and went back to soak up the coffee mess.

Rachel only glared at me though when I offered her some help. How dare she.
Rolling my eyes, I pressed the tissue into the now lukewarm liquid and allowed it soak it up into the paper.

Refusing to admit I was sorry, I attempted to strike a conversation with the bane of my existence. "I've never had coffee before," I told her, making sure I pronounced the new word as she had. My accent clearly wasn't from around here, but I'd tried fixing it to make it sound as if I was at least American. I was still attempting to stick to my 'Keep Away From Attention' plan.