Thinking about that, he figured he knew the answer.
The demons probably hoped Dags would come back for it. If the Kara-demon really was looking for him, the Mustang might have served as a form of passive bait.
Feeling Phoenix glare at him, he turned to her, exhaling in frustration.
“Look,” he said. “The important part for now is, I wasn’t always like this, okay? I was normal. Like you. I didn’t glow. I didn’t have fucking wings. I even looked different, okay? Some of that might be age, but the big things… the things you care about, the things you’re asking me about right now… those started all at once. I had what you might call an ‘awakening.’ I think these demons want to avoid that happening to you.”
Staring out the window, he refolded his arms tighter, muttering, “Hell, I want to avoid that for you.”
“What caused it?” she said. “For you. What caused your ‘awakening’?”
“Datura,” he said promptly, looking at her. “Datura. Magic mushrooms. Knowing Uri, probably some pot. Maybe some LSD sprinkled on top.”
She stared at him like she thought he was pulling her leg.
Dags nodded in the direction of the mansion’s driveway.
“Uri cooked it up. Him and Jade, and another friend of ours, Gordo. We went out to Death Valley like idiots and did a shit-ton of drugs because Uri wanted to experience a real-life Native American dreamwalk. And I was dumb enough to let him talk me into going with him.”
Thinking about that, he scowled.
“Asshole.”
There was a silence where they both just sat there, in her Jeep.
Dags leaned against the bucket seat. He continued to scan the sidewalks and houses, focusing on cars whenever they passed as he fought to remember everything the demons said that night.
“But you’re Native American, right?” Phoenix said, cautious.
Dags glanced at her. “Partly, yeah.”
“And you still went along with⏤”
“You heard the ‘asshole’ part, right?” he said.
Her mouth pursed. Then she shrugged.
“I wasn’t sure if you meant him or you.”
“Me,” he said, giving her another look. “Definitely me.”
Phoenix nodded, but Dags already saw her thinking about something else.
“So you don’t know how else I might wake that thing up?” she said. “That other part of me? It doesn’t sound like they’re worried about me doing a bunch of drugs.”
He shook his head, once. “No idea. There must be other triggers.”
“Nothing they said might have given you a clue?”
He frowned, thinking.
He stared out the Jeep’s windshield, still looking for auras and cars, even as his mind replayed things he remembered the demons saying.
“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” he admitted. “Like I said, a lot of that night is a blur. The only thing I can think is, they’re worried more about when you might wake up, not whether you wake up at all. I got the impression their leader, this person they called ‘the Father,’ has some kind of staging plan, and you and I are on it. The timing for when you go through the Change is on it. It might even be an important component in some way.”
“The Change?”
He looked at her. “That’s what I call it. In my head, anyway. That’s what I call what happened to me.”
Exhaling in frustration, he refolded his arms, adding,
“I have no idea why I think this, but my gut tells me this ‘Father’ didn’t want us to meet when we did. Like somehow, me running into you a few months back, being in your life, even for that short amount of time, screwed up some element of his plan. It’s made him more cautious of both of us. Maybe because this ‘Father’ guy is worried about waking you up.”
Seeing Phoenix open her mouth, he shook his head.
“Don’t even ask,” he said. “I have no idea why I think that, or what that means.”
She closed her mouth, her lips firming in disappointment.
She opened her mouth again, about to speak, but Dags held up a hand.
A car was pulling up in front of the mansion’s driveway.
Dags watched it slow, then come to a stop, engine idling.
He thought maybe the people inside were lost, or had the wrong address, but then the back door of the sedan opened, and someone slid out, straightening to his full height. Dags watched him lean down to say something to the driver before he shut the door.
“Damn it,” he growled. “It’s Uri. He came.”
Chapter 19
Bad Friend
“Hey!”
Dags called out sharply to the lanky, suntanned man with the sun-bleached hair as he was about to enter the driveway. Dags tried to keep his voice low as he looked up towards the house, scanning the gate for cameras.
“Uri! Don’t go in there.”
Uri turned, frowning in disbelief.
He watched Dags jog up to him, his eyes growing more and more incredulous.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he said, bewildered. “How did you even know where to find me?”
Dags glanced over his shoulder, making sure Phoenix was still in the car.
He’d asked her to stay there, to let him handle this, and she’d agreed, more or less, but he could tell she didn’t like it. Dags saw her watching them now through the windshield, her expression tense, one hand gripping the steering wheel. From the placement of her other hand, she was holding the key in the ignition, ready to turn the engine over.
“You took a ride share here?” Dags said, turning back to face Uri. “Why? Why wouldn’t you wait for me? Hear me out?”
“You were acting weird, man.” Uri followed Dags’ gaze back to the Jeep, and frowned, squinting, holding up a hand to stare at the woman in the driver’s seat.
“You’re still acting weird,” Uri muttered, still staring at the Jeep.
His eyes widened as recognition flashed from his eyes.
“Hey. Holy gods. Is that⏤?”
“Yes,” Dags growled. “Uri. Look. You don’t understand. I’ll help you get Jade back, but this isn’t the way. You don’t understand what’s going on here. You don’t understand how dangerous it is for both you and Jade. I can’t let you go inside.”
“You can’t let me?”
“No. I can’t.”
Dags glanced at the house, still feeling uncomfortably conspicuous.
It struck him that he hadn’t thought this through at all.
He should have just grabbed his friend, dragged him out of here.
Better yet, he should have stayed in the Jeep, had Phoenix pull up to Uri, then jumped out and grabbed Uri and thrown him in the back seat. He and Uri could be having this conversation while Phoenix drove them the hell out of here.
He’d started it here instead, in full view of the house.
The same house where a few dozen demons overpowered him once already.
Worse, he’d let it turn into a debate.
When Uri started to walk away, Dags grabbed his arm, stopping the other man’s progress towards the open gate and the long, snaking driveway.
Uri shook him off angrily, giving Dags a disbelieving stare.
“Get your damned hands of me,” he said, his Russian accent thick. “Who the hell do you think you are, Jourdain?”
“Does this make any kind of sense to you?” Dags snapped, motioning around at the street and the mansion. “Think, damn it! Why would a L.A.P.D. homicide detective tell you to come to a house in Brentwood to pick up your missing, possibly-kidnapped girlfriend? Not a hospital. Not the police station, Uri. Just some random rich guy’s house in the suburbs. Are you going to tell me nothing about this seems off to you?”
Uri paused, just long enough to glare at him.
“How is this your business?” he said, his jaw hardening. “Look. I get it. I came to you. I wanted your help before. But I got this now, okay?”
“You don’t have this,�
�� Dags growled, moving to directly block his path. “Trust me when I tell you, Uri. You don’t have this.”
“You want me to trust you?” Uri stared at him, his gaze turning colder. “You know, when you first disappeared, everyone told me you’d gone off the fucking deep end, Jourdain. I said no. I said you were just going through some things, that you’d be back. I said, hey… it’s Dags. He comes back. Always. He is loyal. He loves his friends.”
Uri’s jaw hardened more.
“But like seven years passed, man. Seven years. Seven years where you don’t give a shit what happens to me, or to Jade. Or to Gordo. Just like that. Poof. Dags is gone. All those years of friendship? Gone. It was just time to move on, I guess. Off to bigger things. You talk to Kara Mossman now. But not to me. Not to Jade. We are just dead to you.”
Anger burst from Uri’s normally calm voice, a kind of simmering rage.
“I mean, what the fuck, man? Who does that?”
Dags stared at him, taken aback.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the other man cut him off.
“Then Jade goes missing. Even after all this time, I figure you care about her enough at least, to help me with this. I expect you will be worried about her… that you will give a crap. A few years back, Jade and I heard you were a big-shot P.I. now. We knew people who knew people who’d hired you. I figure you had to be pretty good, with that fancy place up in the hills and the Hollywood clients. I think, this is Dags. Of course Dags will help me. Dags will help Jade. Dags loves Jade. He used to love me. So I try not to take all the years personally. I swallow my pride like this, you see? And I go to you. My old friend. I ask for help.”
Uri’s hands clenched as he stared up at Dags.
“But you don’t really look. You don’t really care. You are fucking movie stars in closets… you don’t seem very interested in Jade at all. Still, we are lucky. Jade comes back to that club. We find her, together. But can I reunite with my precious girl? NO. No, I cannot. You tell me I cannot, that I must go away. You are fucking movie stars in bathrooms and I can’t bring my wife home?”
“Wife?” Dags blurted. “Is she really your wife, Uri?”
“Yes! My wife! I married her! Which you would know, if you give half a shit about our lives anymore! You would have been best man at my wedding, if you hadn’t made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me. With either of us⏤”
“That’s not true,” Dags began.
Uri talked over him, his Russian accent growing even stronger.
“So we find Jade, and I go away, like good little soldier. I believe you, that you will take care of this. I think maybe you do know something. That she is brainwashed or drugged. I worry someone is sex trafficking her, and you know who these people are, and have to handle this delicately. I think you are doing this to keep her alive. My mind comes up with all kinds of reasons… because I want to trust you. Because I do trust you. Even now, after all this time, I trust my good friend, Dags.”
Uri took a step closer, his jaw clenching before he went on, louder.
“But you don’t help Jade. You just fucking disappear. For days. For days, I think my Jade is dead. I think you, Dags, my oldest friend, is dead, too. I don’t hear shit. I don’t hear shit from you. The police know nothing⏤”
“Uri!” Dags growled, holding up a hand.
The Russian spoke over him.
“⏤I am going crazy for days. When I feel like I have given up hope, someone calls me. They tell me my wife is okay. They tell me come get her. And then you call, Dags. You call and tell me I can’t do this, that I cannot go to my wife. But no. No more. I won’t wait for you. I can’t wait for you. So here you fucking come again. Here you are, in my way again, telling me I can’t bring my wife home. What kind of fucker are you now, Dags? Because I trust Kara more than I trust you. Kara at least helps me find her. Kara does not give up… she keeps looking.”
Uri raised his voice, his eyes blazing.
“So fuck off, Dags! You hear me? Fuck. Off. I’m not doing what the great Dags Jourdain tells me to do. You are dead to me. You are dead now, like I was to you all those years. There is no more trust. Trust is gone.”
Dags stared at him, feeling his shoulders tense.
Looking at Uri’s face, at his too-bright eyes, he felt a hard pain in his gut.
He understood where Uri was coming from.
He really, truly understood.
Yet it didn’t change anything.
Dags still couldn’t let him walk into that house.
He was going to have to pick Uri up and take him out of there by force, which definitely wasn’t going to go over well. Dags had no choice, though. If he let Uri go inside, it was highly likely Uri would end up possessed by a demon.
Dags couldn’t let that happen. Even if Uri hated him for it, he had to stop him.
Dags stared at Uri for a beat longer, his hands on his hips.
Exhaling, he began to speak, regret in his voice.
“Uri, I’m really sorry about this⏤”
It was as far as he got.
Something hit him from behind.
Hard.
It threw Dags forward, even as the blue and green light ignited around him, filling him with heat, blinding him.
It happened completely outside his control.
It happened so fast, it sucked every particle of air from his lungs.
Everything in Dags’ mind dragged sickeningly in the opposite direction, throwing his thoughts into a kind of stasis, a kind of hyper-slow motion. He had time to look down at his chest, watching something explode out the front of it, feeling it burst out of him, moving so fast he saw it only as a blur, a dark-gray object covered in his blood.
Then it hit him, what had happened.
He’d been shot.
Someone just shot him.
Chapter 20
Down Again
He’d seen Uri’s face, his mouth open as he screamed, rushing for Dags.
He’d seen his hand go out, reaching for Uri, fighting to speak, to warn him, seeing the dark forms coming from the house behind him.
Now Dags lay on his back on the road, gasping.
He had no memory of falling, or of hitting the pavement. He could only stare up, gasping, watching shadows overhead in a sickening déjà vu, seeing them move around him, without seeming to notice he was there.
He looked for Uri. He felt a part of himself reach for them, wanting to ask about Uri.
He needed to help Uri.
He wasn’t sure why he reached for them. He knew they weren’t Uri. They weren’t friends, or even sympathetic strangers. He just knew they had something of his, something that belonged to him, something really important to him.
Something he needed back.
Something he badly needed to protect.
Dags was still lying there when a face bent over him, scowling.
“He’s still alive,” she snapped. “Damn it.”
Dags blinked up at her, gasping.
It was Kara.
“Get the hell away from him, Leticia,” a harsher female voice said. “If you touch him, I’ll kill your human body where it stands.”
“Whatever,” the Kara-demon said, rolling her eyes.
She backed away, though, holding up her hands.
A face Dags recognized bent closer to him, peering into his. “He’s bleeding like crazy,” the female demon said. “Do we call an ambulance? Even with all the angel light coming off him? Or do we just leave him here?”
When no one answered, she straightened, walking back a step, calling out to someone else, someone Dags couldn’t see.
“Get Gisele out here. Rupert, too. And someone bring Leticia back inside. Tell them she and Molokai just shot the Father’s pet angel⏤”
Dags fought to breathe. He felt like his chest was slowly being crushed. He couldn’t breathe right. He couldn’t get enough air.
He stared at the female demon, Mara, where she stood in the middle of the road⏤
⏤when something slammed into her from the side.
It hit her so hard, what happened next didn’t look real.
She flew up in the air, staying airborne long enough that Dags grew confused.
Then she slammed back to Earth, crashing into a windshield, but not the one belonging to the car that hit her. She landed on a car parked on the side of the road instead. Dags watched, still fighting to breathe, as she smashed in the safety glass, leaving a dented-in spider-web of cracks and broken chunks.
She rolled off the top of the parked car, and onto the road.
Dags watched the whole thing.
He stared at her broken body, gasping in panting breaths.
Everything around him still moved excruciatingly slow.
He watched as the car that hit the woman skidded to a stop, fishtailing in the road not far from where the demon fell off the parked SUV. Whoever was driving threw it into reverse, slamming their foot down on the gas, making the wheels skid again before they caught, hurtling the car in the opposite direction.
Dags didn’t notice Kara Mossman standing in the middle of the road until that precise instant. Her demon-possessed body turned, hissing at the reversing car that had just crashed into the other female demon.
To Dags, it seemed slow, but it must have happened fast.
The Kara demon didn’t have time to get out of the way.
The car’s driver slammed into her, accelerating backwards.
Still accelerating, the Jeep threw Kara probably twenty feet.
She slammed into a tall stone wall, two houses down.
Dags stared, watching Kara Mossman’s body crumple to the ground.
She was already moving, which reassured him and horrified him at once.
Dags heard yells around him, then another face appeared directly over him.
Green eyes, long dark hair hanging down on either side of high cheekbones, a full mouth, a sharp jawline. She grabbed the front of his shirt before he could let out a sound.
Without waiting, she hauled him forward and up, using all of her weight to pull him more or less upright. Letting out a thick gasp, he struggled to stay on his feet, to regain some kind of balance, but she was already moving with him, half-dragging, half-carrying him back to the yellow Jeep, which he only now recognized.
Bad Angel Page 16
