Heaven's Crime (gxg) ✓

thirty-one. my girlfriend burns down a church

                  I really don't know what I was expecting from a meth lab beneath a church, but it wasn't this. 

                  My lab coat is really, really out of place.

                  After climbing down a damp, musty stairwell, the last thing I expected was a freaking club. Neon lights. Pulsing music. Velvet curtains.

                  And there is a long, long line.

                  I am at the very end. The walls on either side of me are narrow, almost shoulder to shoulder. 

                  I do not  fit in here.

                  Actually, I look exactly like the kind of maniac that is planning to sneak into a scientist's lab and steal their secret formula.

                 I quickly tug off my coat and toss it into the shadows. Ahead of me, I see a bouncer standing at a tapered stone doorway. Music and light and life vibrate from within that room―and I am suddenly curious.

                   There is a club in the basement of the Asakusa Temple.

                   Fine, I can be blasphemous sometimes―but this is a whole other level. This is hell's party, and it has rainbow strobelights. 

                   How . . . fitting.

                   I bounce back on my heels. I feel like I'm in a fever dream. When I closed that heavy stone door, sealing myself into the dark, I thought I was headed towards some kind of secret lair. Somewhere with a white lab and glass walls and high-class technology.

                    Honestly? I didn't picture a party. 

                    Beneath the lab coat, I am wearing black. A tightly-clinging turtle-neck shirt. Fitted pants. It must have been Maiko, I realize. 

                     I have to get into this party, but with a line-up that looks like it'll take another three hours . . . I'm out of ideas.

                     The girl in front of me is tall and thin, with raven-black hair. When she turns around, it takes me a moment to recover my breath. She is classically beautiful, and I swear I've seen her before.

                     "Hey," I say quickly. "Why is it so busy tonight?"

                     It seems like a safe question. It's not like I can ask, Where's the meth lab?  Or, Why is everybody lining up for a VIP club in Hell?  Or, How do so many people know about this place, when Okami has literally slaughtered a dozen people to hide the formula of this drug? 

                     Nope. Can't ask any of those.

                     The girl gives me an easy grin. I swear I've seen her before. The Japanese features, the ivory skin, the glittering black eyes . . . 

                     She reminds me of a panther.

                     A predator.

                     She says, "It seems like you've never been here before, then."

                     I think she recognizes me, too.

                     I see it in the way her eyes flicker, almost imperceptibly, and the way her smile becomes slightly sharper.

                     But I can't back down now. No matter who she is, I have to do this.