“What did Mary Jane call him—Yaz? Well, why doesn’t good ol’ Yaz just go look for her himself? I mean, not only is he an angel, while we quite obviously are not, but he’s a Grigori! So is she.”
“But he’s fallen.” Remi mulled that over a moment. “He’s been in hell. Lucifer’s pal, and all. Maybe he really can’t find her. Maybe he’s banned, in some way.”
I snapped my fingers. “Bruno Mars.”
“What?”
“Remember? When we first met him? He said that once. The Bruno Mars song. He’s locked out of heaven.”
Remi looked weary. “Maybe we are, too. Locked out of heaven, I mean. Ambriel has made it pretty damn clear we’re good for nothin,’ just little baby bugs on the windshield of life.”
I shot him a glance. “That’s—poetic.”
“Let’s go.” He hooked a thumb toward the truck. “Let’s go on, get back to the Zoo. Grandaddy ain’t calling us, but that don’t mean he won’t pay us a visit. And anyway, we both need sleep real bad.”
I agreed, turned to head back to the passenger side, stopped because Remi, staring beyond me, put a delaying hand on my arm. “What?” I asked.
“You seein’ that?”
I turned, saw, emitted a drawn out ‘uhhhh’ of baffled disbelief, then added, “That would be a yes.”
Burton Mossman, aboard his red horse, came riding up the shoulder of the road going in the direction we’d just come from. The horse had an easy swing to his walk and a head that bobbed loosely. Mossman came up even with us, reined in.
“Pleasure to see you boys again,” he said. “Thought you’d be gone by now.”
Neither Remi nor I could say anything immediately, just stared at the ghost cowboy on his ghost horse. Finally I scraped together some form of reply. “There and back again . . . sort of.”
Mossman nodded. “You boys seen any loose cattle hereabouts?”
I shook my head. “Only a loose angel.”
“And a dog,” Remi said, “Mangey ol’ critter good for nothin.’ You seen it? Screams his heads off.”
Mossman shifted in his saddle. “More likely coyotes. Well then, if you’ve not seen any cattle, I will be on my way.” He touched his hat briefly, clicked his horse into motion.
Remi and I watched him ride by and head on down the road’s shoulder. He’d gone maybe ten yards when he and his horse faded away.
I stuck a finger into the air. “Remember when I counted off everything we’d seen today? The bit about the stalker-demon, Jack the Ripper, Cassandra of Troy, and so on and so forth? Then you added an earthquake?”
“I do remember that.”
“We’d better add a burned-up angel and a rerun of the ghost cowboy and his ghost horse.” I headed for the truck, climbed up inside. As Remi positioned himself on the other side of the console, I yanked the door closed and fastened the seatbelt. “I gotta say, my life was far less interesting, in the Chinese curse sort of way, when I was in prison. And God knows there were some very, very strange people in prison. But none of them was a ghost.”
Remi turned the engine over. “Or an angry angel.”
“Or an angry angel.”
* * *
—
It was around three a.m. when Remi and I pulled up behind the Zoo. Fortunately Ganji had given us keys, so I didn’t have to lockpick my way in. I managed to trip over the threshold and jam my hip, which caused me no little trouble climbing the stairs. I should have let Remi go ahead of me, since I was delaying him up.
At the top landing he asked if I was going to be okay. I told him of course I was going to be okay—and then limped off to the bathroom to dig up some ibuprofen. I swallowed three, did my business, staggered to my bedroom. I dumped boots, got out of my jeans carefully, since it was my hip and the road rash bothering me, but I didn’t bother stripping out of boxer briefs or t-shirt.
I’d told Remi I wanted to fall face first into my bed. Well, I was as good as my word. Except I was barely settling in with a long, loud, relieved sigh when my door got tapped by knuckles, pushed open, and my light was flipped on.
I rolled over, scowling. “What?”
Remi shrugged. He was still dressed, other than having a hatless head. “Mary Jane’s not here.”
I stared at him, rubbed my brow. The door to the common room had been closed; I simply assumed she was in there asleep on the sofa. “Well . . .”
“I wanted to see if she was settled in,” Remi said—possibly leaving out something of a more intimate nature, but I didn’t call him on it—“and she’s not there. The sofa bed’s pulled out and made up, her daypack’s still there, but no Mary Jane.”
“Check your phone.”
“Did that. Nada.”
I sat up, grabbed my phone on the nightstand, now fully charged. “Nope.” I frowned at him. “No note, I take it.”
“Not in the common room, not in the bathroom, not in the kitchen.”
“Did you call Ganji?”
“No answer.”
I sat up, hooked my legs over the bedside. “Mary Jane said something earlier about Ganji going up the mountain. Maybe he’s still up there. Or maybe he took Mary Jane up there with him, to make sure she was safe.” I rose, grabbed jeans, pulled them back on, and boots. “Let’s go check his office back by the kitchen, see if there’s a note.”
We didn’t make it as far as the office. Out front we found a couple of tables and a few chairs overturned, and the big door unlocked and standing open by several inches. We hadn’t noticed it when turning onto the property because the door was only partially open, and hadn’t noticed the overturned furniture because the stairway was back by the pool table alcove and we hadn’t gone any farther.
“Oh, nonono,” I murmured, dread rising. I went out the front door to check the porch and surroundings. Remi righted the tables and chairs, and searched the floor for some kind of note or other sign.
Ganji would have been here when the place closed down. All the tables and chairs would have been put in their places for the next day. This resembled some form of altercation, someone being taken through the chairs and tables against her will.
I hated to think of it, but I went through the bar area and into the back office, afraid of what I might find. But no bodies. After a quick check I wandered back out of the office onto the floor, where Remi was still checking corners. As he looked at me, I shook my head. “No Ganji in any shape or form, no note that I could find.”
“Nor Mary Jane.” Remi looked at the front door, which I had closed. “You know, it could be either of them.”
“Either of who?”
“Jack the Ripper, or Shemyazaz.”
“If the Ripper’s a demon, he can’t come in here. Or any of his little hell minions. But Shemyazaz?”
Remi nodded. “He wants Ambriel.”
I realized Remi was hoping that was exactly what had happened, that an angel had taken Kelly rather than a demonic murderer who butchered women.
“Among other problems, there is this,” I said. “I’d have no compunction about handing Greg over to Shemyazaz in exchange for Mary Jane, but we don’t know where Greg is, how to find her, or how to prevent her from using whatever angelic power she has to stop us. For all I know, she could turn us into a pillar of salt.”
“That was God.”
“And Shemyazaz doesn’t strike me as sane in any sense of the word.”
Remi’s tone was stark, devoid of emotion because what he felt was too much emotion: “If Jack the Ripper found a way to grab her, she’s likely dead.”
I knew that possibility was likely. “Would she have gone home for any reason? She said she had no spare clothes. Might she have figured she’d just grab a ride-share home, stuff some clothes in a bag, come right back, only to get snatched?”
“Maybe so. But you don’t usually upset tables a
nd chairs and leave a door standing open if that’s what you intend to do.”
I nodded. “And she knows how dangerous it is. She’s not stupid, like in the movies where the female protagonist ignores the hero’s warning and walks right into a trap.”
Remi was staring at the floor, thinking. “He would have had to send a human.”
“Or a god.”
Remi lifted his head, frowning. “What?”
“Ganji’s here. Lily’s been in here. Clearly gods can come and go at will. Now, Ganji and Lily are on our team, yeah, but that doesn’t mean other gods aren’t on Lucifer’s team. In fact, I’m certain of it. Hades is here. Mythologies of multiple cultures are full of gods and goddesses who screw with people, even kill them. Look at what Apollo did to Cassandra just because she wouldn’t sleep with him. And Hera was a dyed-in-the-wool royal bitch. In Egyptian mythology, Apep was the ultimate evil.”
“How the hell are we supposed to deal with gods?” Remi asked. “Ambriel flat told us we couldn’t.”
“Ambriel told us we shouldn’t,” I clarified. “Ambriel, I get the impression, probably believes we’re incapable of brushing our teeth. But I have an idea. Let’s try to hunt down Shemyazaz. Either he’s got her, or he doesn’t, and if he doesn’t he may be willing to help us rescue her from Jack the Ripper, who”—I emphasized it loudly to shut down his reply before he could make it—“isn’t going to kill her right away.”
“Why not?”
“Because my gut tells me he would rather have us living in fear of what he might do to her, what he will do to her, and when he’ll do it. We don’t know who the woman in the latest picture is. He didn’t write her name on the back; she could be anyone. But if he’s got our Mary Jane Kelly, then he’s got a real Mary Jane Kelly, and I think he’ll want to keep this ugly, sadistic headgame going awhile.” I pulled my phone. “You call Uber, see if they’ll say whether they picked her up. I’ll call Lyft, ask the same. Then we’ll try taxi companies.”
Remi shook his head. “They won’t tell us anything because of privacy laws.”
I smiled broadly at him. “My dad’s a cop; I know what to say to sound convincing. You, on the other hand, can probably pull off being a Texas Ranger whose daughter ran away and he’s handling this on his own. Be creative. Improvise.” I paused a moment. “You learn how to be real good at that in prison.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
While we both shied away from discussing whether it was Jack the Ripper who’d abducted Kelly, it was nonetheless a real possibility. So we called hospitals. I nixed calling the cops, though. Too easy to get tripped up. While the police wouldn’t take a missing person’s report yet, they’d want our contact info. And if we faked that, and if the worst happened and Kelly turned up dead, it would raise red flags about us. Anyway, they weren’t about to tell us if they’d found a body. And since we still hadn’t been able to reach Grandaddy we couldn’t count on him to get us out of any official trouble.
Regardless, everything we tried came down to the same answer: No one knew a thing about Mary Jane Kelly. Neither ride-share nor taxi drivers, nor even logged contact. Which left us discussing our next steps.
“We should go up on the mountain,” Remi said. “If it’s Shemyazaz who has her, I’m betting he’d take her up there.”
“Why up the mountain?”
“He’s been two places in Flagstaff, that we know of: here at the Zoo, and the mountain. Ganji took him up there that first night—to calm him, he said, remember? And that’s also where Yaz met Mary Jane.”
“In the rain and hail.” I nodded. “Good point. Plus if it’s Jack, he’ll find us, and that will be answer enough.” I didn’t even want to think about what the Ripper might do to Kelly if he decided to expand his game and keep her alive just to play with. “But we don’t know where on the mountain Ganji may have taken Yaz. I think he said there are caves up there, didn’t he? That would be ideal for hiding Mary Jane as well as himself.”
“Plus we don’t know where on the mountain Ganji is currently,” Remi said. “But we know he walks to the foot of the mountain from here, so that’s a starting point. I’ll drive us as close as I can, and we’ll hoof it from there.”
“Or we can go back to the trailhead by the RV camp, go up marked trails to make it easier on ourselves, and then go off-trail to look for her. We went up that way when we met her.”
He considered that and agreed. “I’ll check maps online,” he said. “It’s an organized trail system—there’ll be topo maps and others. The caves’ll be marked.”
I floated the suggestion that we wait until daylight but expected to be voted down. And was. Remi noted that sunrise was maybe three to four hours off, and not only could we get a good start if we left now, but the longer we waited the more danger she would be in. So we went rooting around in the Zoo to dig up whatever might prove helpful on a climb up the mountain at night.
We loaded ourselves with weapons, heavy-duty lanterns, a pair of belt-clip walkie-talkies—overkill, maybe, since we each had two phones, but cell phones have a habit of dropping calls—and grabbed jackets as well, plus found a modest gear bag and tucked into it as many first aid supplies as we could, plus a couple of water bottles and energy bars.
“Man, I wish we knew what could harm an angel.” I tucked a couple of extra lantern batteries into my jacket pocket. “Which sounds hella bloodthirsty, but hey. Yaz is not all there, mentally, and he might well harm her without actually meaning to.”
“You know—he could even be a relative.”
In the midst of jotting down a note for Ganji, I didn’t pay Remi much attention. “Who, Shemyazaz?”
“Yes.”
“Our relative?”
“Have you forgotten the whole bit about us being the offspring of celestial energy? So is he. Just a hell of a lot older energy.”
I scribbled my name at the bottom of the note. “Well. I guess. Which is weird to think about. Are we related to all angels? Do they have spawning season? Hibernation? A school prom? Do we all climb out of pods, like Neo in The Matrix?”
“No, our little sparks got put into sickly newborns, remember? And I don’t reckon our mamas considered themselves pods.”
Dying newborns, which still left me feeling a little squicky. Grandaddy had been clear that the human-born infants would not survive, possibly not even last an hour, and that when the parents prayed for divine intercession, as nearly all of them did, those prayers were answered. They raised healthy infants to adulthood, and then we got conscripted into the heavenly host.
I pushed open the screen door. “I guess we’re sleeper agents, too.”
Remi followed me out. “What?”
“Sleeper agents. You said maybe some demons are here on earth just hanging out, waiting for the signal to go live. Well, you can say the same about us. Because you and I sure didn’t know a damn thing about being heaven-born, or that we’d be called to arms, until a few nights ago. And now we’re running around exploding black dogs, burning up cockroach-like demon remains with the dreadful power of our spit, and being yelled at by Switzerland.”
Remi locked the door. His voice went high. “Switzerland?”
“Greg,” I said. “Neutral, remember?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Though the least neutral, neutral I’ve seen, hauling Cassandra off somewhere.”
We piled all our extra stuff on the back seat floorboards, settled ourselves in, and Remi started the truck. “What was it she said, back at the chapel?”
“Who, Greg? Nothing particularly kind.”
“No, Cassandra. She said something to you, remember? She went over to say goodbye, something about your skull not getting crushed in the near future.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “I don’t know what she said. It was in Greek. I think it was Greek. Didn’t sound Latin, I don’t think.” Hell, sometimes we hea
rd Lily and Ganji in English, and other times in their own languages. Now Shemyazaz and Cassandra. Yet another question I had for Grandaddy. I think I was at twenty million, now. I tried to recall the syllables. “Something like theeoy . . . gyno . . . allergies.” I shook my head. “I got nothin’.”
Remi turned onto Route 66. “‘Eíhe oi theoí sas dósoun kalí gynaika, pollá paidiá áfthones kalliérgeies, ploúto, timí, sofia, omorfiá, kali ygeía’?”
I shrugged. “No clue, dude. You lost me around four words in. Sounds a little like it, though.”
“‘May the gods bestow upon you a good wife, many children, abundant crops, riches, honor, wisdom, beauty, good health.’ It’s an old Greek blessing, an evlogía. And so you are makarios. Blessed.”
“Cool beans.”
“Of course to be makarios, you have to be dead.”
I snapped my head around to stare at him. “She wished me dead? What happened to no skull crushing?”
Remi waxed eloquent. “I think it’s more like a pre-game blessing. You know, just in case something bad happens, like the star quarterback breaking his leg mid-game in the Super Bowl.”
“That’s a cheerful picture.”
He shrugged. “Warriors were expected to die, and if they lived well and died bravely, the gods rewarded them. That’s a consistent belief system throughout most cultures worldwide. I mean, Valhalla’s a great example. And do you remember the Spartan saying?”
I did. “‘Come back with your shield—or on it.’”
“So Cassandra is very aware that we’re involved in a battle, on the cusp of something greater than ourselves. You ‘did her a solid,’ you might say, by finding her, taking her to safety. She’s grateful. Gave you a blessing.”
I nodded as Remi swung into the left-turn lane. “It’s too bad Greg dragged her off so soon. I’d have liked to talk with her about which parts of Greek mythology are just that, myths, and which are partial truths.”
Sinners and Saints Page 20
