Grim Tidings

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Leo grimaced. “Let’s get back to the road and get the hell out of here.”

  I helped him up, and we leaned on each other. “I’ll always be here,” I told him quietly as we picked our way up the rock slope. “No matter what happens.”

  Leo gave me a flash of that smile again, as we started limping down the shoulder of the interstate to the next exit.

  I looked back once, but shadows and their master had gone, not even a footprint to show they’d been anything but a bad dream.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Leo and I checked into the first crummy nonchain motel we saw off the exit—the closer to the interstate you get, the fewer questions people generally ask. The clerk barely looked away from the talk show squawking on the lobby TV when he checked us in.

  Leo let out a sigh when he flopped back onto the shiny bedspread. “Home sweet home.”

  I helped him take off his jacket and shoes, pulling an extra blanket over him. The first night we’d ever spent together was in a motel room just slightly worse than this. I’d just killed Gary, was masterless, alone, and had no idea what was coming next. I never expected Leo to stick around.

  As I watched his chest rise and fall under the blanket, sleeping off the crash, I still didn’t know what I expected. Everything had gone so much further sideways then I could have imagined when I sank my teeth into Gary’s throat.

  Leo and I had this little slice of time, sure. But when we got to Minneapolis, it was all going to change. He was the top of the reaper food chain, and I was still a hellhound, just another dog in a pack of thousands.

  I looked out the steamy window and saw blinking neon across the parking lot. Pulling my boots and coat back on, I slipped out into the blistering cold. Making sure the door clicked shut quietly enough that it didn’t wake Leo, I stomped through the slush toward the bar. After the day I’d just had, I deserved a drink.

  The bar wasn’t anything special—and “nothing special” was a hilarious understatement. Dive bars are all the same. They’re dark, they smell like stale beer and bleach, every surface is sticky, and there are between four and ten chronic alcoholics holding down the booths and stools.

  I let the wind blow me inside and kicked the door shut. The kind of people who’d brave this weather to get drunk on cheap domestic beer wouldn’t pay me any attention—I blended in with the pitted walls and buzzing beer signs to the point of invisibility.

  I asked the bartender for whiskey and he gave it to me without a word, accepting my cash with a grunt. I downed it, and two more just like it, finally starting to feel warm again. Before too long I’d go back across the parking lot and crawl into bed with Leo. We’d be in Minneapolis tomorrow, and whatever happened there wasn’t anything I could control. A fourth whiskey should make me stop worrying about it.

  I held up my cloudy glass to the bartender, who finally deigned to lift a shaggy eyebrow. “Maybe slow down, sweetheart.”

  I glared at him until he shrugged and refilled my glass. One of the drunks at the far end of the bar got up and walked crookedly over to an old jukebox against the far wall. He popped in two quarters and after a minute “That Old Black Magic” drifted from speakers that looked older than I did.

  The point between my shoulder blades tightened up. I don’t know much, but I did know for a fact that no jukebox in Hicktown, USA had a ready selection of Glenn Miller. Especially not that song.

  When the drunk sat down next to me, I was ready for him. You lose a fight two ways—and not being willing to use whatever you have at hand as a weapon is one of them. I tightened my fist around the pitted tumbler of whiskey. “In three seconds you’re going to be wearing glass splinters in your face, so how about you get out of mine?”

  The drunk let out a low sigh that sounded like rocks dragging over bigger rocks. “You always had a way with words, Ava.”

  My world tilted for a second, Glenn Miller going fuzzy. Nothing to do with the booze either, dammit. I took a second look at the scarred, bald head sunk down inside the drunk’s padded jacket, the white lines where skin had been inexpertly knitted back together from eye socket to collarbone gleaming under my gaze.

  “Wilson?” I said softly.

  He turned to face me, the one milky eye rolling off in its own direction. To say Wilson was ugly was to say that truck stop speed made a person a little jumpy. He’d been torn apart by shifters and put back together by sheer force of being too mean to die. He used to be Gary’s chauffeur, errand boy, and general punching bag, before I made Gary dead and Wilson unemployed. You’d think he’d at least be grateful enough to leave me alone, but Wilson was a miserable bastard long before a pack of shapeshifting hillbillies rearranged his face.

  “You look like shit,” he said.

  “You’d know,” I told him. I didn’t let go of the tumbler. I’d jam a shard of it into my own throat before I went down under Wilson’s teeth and claws.

  “We need to talk,” he said. I cocked my head.

  “You been practicing since I cut your chain?” I said. “Last I heard you preferred grunts and hand gestures.”

  Wilson’s good eye fixed me. “Something has happened.”

  “A lot has happened,” I snapped, slamming back the last of the whiskey. “One of those things? I don’t ever have to waste another second looking at your face just because the same jackass holds our note. So have a nice life, if that’s even possible for you.”

  Wilson grabbed my arm and held me in my seat. I tensed, and he tightened his grip, so hard it would leave bruises. “Stop that,” he growled.

  “You started, you stop it,” I said, matching his tone. “I swear if you do not let go of me they will be cleaning both of us off the walls.” The second way you lose a fight is not being willing to get your ass kicked. I never had that problem with Gary and his pack of guard dogs.

  Wilson let me go, and smiled, which was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen him do. “Good,” he said, pulling himself upright and brushing off the worn-out canvas jacket he wore. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your edge, darling.”

  I backed up fast, off my stool and out of range. “You’re not Wilson.”

  He dipped his head in assent. “Sit down. We do need to talk and your propensity to cause a scene won’t help with that.”

  I sighed, shoving my face into my hands to muffle any involuntary screams. I just wanted to get drunk in peace. Was that so much to ask? “Men’s room, now.”

  I slammed open the door decorated with a wood cutout of a guy in a trucker hat pissing, and locked it behind me and Wilson. A dim set of bulbs flickered above us, and when my eyes adjusted Wilson’s ugly mug was gone, replaced by one of the few faces I wanted to see even less.

  Uriel wrinkled his nose. “It reeks like a Boston gutter the morning after St. Patrick’s Day in here.”

  “Welcome to the mortal realm,” I said. “It smells bad.”

  “I apologize for using your friend’s guise like that,” the angel said. His shiny shoes squelched on the grimy tile floor and he made a face.

  “Wilson is not my friend,” I snapped. “And I don’t want your apology, I want you to leave me alone.”

  “We both know that’s not feasible, Ava,” Uriel said. He turned and adjusted his tie in the mirror. He was wearing a pale gray suit and a white shirt, the kind of soft tones favored by CEOs, TV preachers, and the favored host of the Kingdom of Heaven.

  “You said you’d leave me alone,” I ventured. Uriel straightened up and gave me one of his patented Ken-doll smiles, so fake it squeaked.

  “I said once our business was concluded you and I could part ways. Not before.”

  I sighed, slumping against the dripping sink. “I don’t know if you noticed but I’ve been through a lifetime’s worth of shit since our little business meeting. A lot’s changed.”

  “Strange, I’d think you’d want to help me,” Uriel said. “After what Lilith and Gary and the Fallen have put you through. An employee of the Host is bet
ter than a slave of the Hellspawn, in my book.”

  “So I’m your fucking executive assistant now?” I said. “You want me to fetch fugitive fallen angels, or just coffee? Got any typing and filing for me?”

  Uriel tilted his head at me. “Ava, I’m not Gary. I’m not going to make you fetch anything.”

  I spread my hands. The bathroom was tiny enough to make me feel trapped, even if I hadn’t been within arm’s length of an angel. “Then what? The deal was, I find the rest of the Fallen for you white-shoe assholes and in return you never, ever accost me in a men’s room. Why are we even meeting? If the Fallen catch wind of this it’s gonna be lights-out for me and I don’t appreciate it.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t an emergency,” Uriel snapped. “I am not an idiot. Something has happened, like I said, and you’re the person I need looking into it.”

  “Why me?” I said. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of worker bees up there in the Kingdom who are more competent than I am.”

  “Lots of underlings, yes,” Uriel said. “Competent, a few. But none who have your skills and contacts—and none who are the Grim Reaper’s personal hound.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Please don’t call him that. Not unless you want me dead of secondhand embarrassment.”

  Uriel reached up and tapped the bare bulb in the ceiling fixture until it stopped buzzing. “You’ve been alive a long time, as far as humans understand time.”

  “Just over a hundred years,” I agreed.

  “In that those years, you once encountered a serial killer called the Walking Man, yes? He worked the Midwest in the 1940s. Kansas, Nebraska . . . all those flat places where everything looks the same.”

  My breathing slowed as my heart rate picked up, just another defense mechanism you pick up when you live in a world where the slightest display of fear is an invitation to be beaten, or worse. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I know all about him.”

  “Well, he’s back,” Uriel said, pulling open the restroom door. “And since you’re one of the few people to see him and live to tell about it, I’d like you to look into it. For all our sakes.”

  I lunged forward and slammed the door shut again. Uriel lifted one of his perfect eyebrows. “Problem?”

  “You can’t just drop that bombshell and walk away,” I said, bracing the door with my good arm.

  “I don’t see the problem,” Uriel said. “Please let me out. I feel like a thousand showers can’t erase the miasma I’ve picked up in this bathroom.”

  “You know damn good and well there’s more to the Walking Man than a scary hitchhiker on the side of the road who likes to hack up motorists,” I said. My fast heartbeat was making my voice sound high and hysterical, and I gulped down a deep breath. “And if you know that then why the hell are you messing around with him? Leave him in Tartarus where he belongs.”

  “I am ’messing with’ him as you say because the Walking Man in fact escaped from Tartarus and I’d dearly like him back.” Uriel fixed me with his clear, unreadable gaze. His eyes weren’t dead, like a demon’s, but they missed human by a mile. It was like staring at the surface of a pond that never moved.

  “Hundreds of human souls did a runner when Lilith broke that place open. If you want me to help, be honest with me, because I figured out that the Walking Man wasn’t human a long time ago.” Even saying it out loud filled me with shivers all over again, like we were standing back out in the cold.

  Uriel sighed. “Lilith packed Tartarus so full of human souls partly to power the engines of Hell, and partly to obscure that which isn’t . . . exactly mortal, shall we say?”

  “She always liked to have eight or nine knives ready to stab you in the back,” I agreed. “So she hides the Walking Man in among the riffraff for . . . what? Her own personal amusement? If you’re so worried,” I said, “you must know what he is.”

  I waited, not breathing, to see if Uriel had the answer, not at all sure I wanted it.

  “There are parts of Tartarus so deep that even I don’t know about them,” he said. “Whatever he is, he doesn’t need to be walking around here on earth.”

  “For once we agree on something,” I said. Uriel cocked his head.

  “May I exit now?”

  I got out of his way. “Go nuts.”

  Uriel stepped out, the door swinging back in my face. When I shoved it open again he was gone, like I tried to blink the exhaustion out of my eyes and when I opened them he’d vanished, like he’d never been there.

  The whiskey hadn’t helped with the whole wanting to sleep for months thing, and I started for the parking lot. Even Uriel’s bad news couldn’t put a dent in the fatigue weighing me down.

  Healing up from catastrophic injuries always took it out of me too, which is why the person waiting in the shadow of the snowbank outside was able to step behind me and slide a hand over my mouth.

  I didn’t scream, just opened my jaw wider and bit down, my teeth tearing through flesh and hitting bone. Blood spurted, the hot red kind that meant whatever had hold of me was something with a beating heart. Whoever it was let out a surprised grunt, but they didn’t let go. We stumbled backward into the bulwark of snow, me throwing an elbow into their gut that did absolutely no good. I felt the sting of a needle in my neck, and whatever the syringe held was even colder than the air around us. Ice spread through my veins, and everything was still and cold and white, silent as freshly fallen snow.

  CHAPTER

  3

  BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

  DECEMBER 1944

  Even the snow was gray. Not turned gray by the churned mud beneath it, crisscrossed by boots and jeeps until it was a vast plain of frozen sludge. It was like the flakes fell from the sky already muted and stained. In this place, even the snow had given up.

  I’d begged Gary not to send me. Give me a dirty trench in a French farmer’s field, a clear night in London with rockets falling—even the ghettos packed wall to wall with humanity, crushed together by sandbags and barbed wire, spotlights and dogs, were preferable to this. Gary had just smirked at me, brushing a piece of lint off his vest. “We all have our duties, Ava. There’s a war on.”

  Wilson chuckled at me, downing his fifth or seventh pint. Gary favored a rickety little pub in Knightsbridge for handing out assignments, which were fast and furious these days—every third-rate warlock who could draw a halfway decent summoning spell was itching to sell his soul to rake in more power before it all came crashing down.

  “Not for much longer,” I muttered. Unlike most of the hounds, I occasionally glanced at a newspaper. The Third Army was pushing across the Rhine and deep into Nazi territory, like a knife blade sliding closer to your heart inch by inch. Soon enough, all those German warlocks and Italian brujeria begging Gary to trade with them were going to turn off like a faucet. I kind of hoped I was around when it happened, just to watch that tight little smirk fall off his face.

  “All the more reason to collect while we can. Herr Colonel Kubler has had a nice run with the bargain he made.” He flipped his ledger shut and stood up, fixing his tie in the mirror behind the pub’s bar. “Need I remind you that if he meets his end by bullet or rope before I can collect, then I get nothing?”

  I looked down at my shoes. They were covered in dust from the last time we’d all had to dash for the nearest bomb shelter. We were resilient compared to the people who huddled all around us, but nobody, including Gary, wanted to end up on the wrong end of a V-2. “No,” I murmured.

  Gary smacked me on the rear with a ledger as he gestured to Wilson, who slammed down his glass and grabbed Gary’s coat, scurrying after him like a pedigreed terrier. “Good girl,” he said. “Enjoy your time with the master race.”

  I fought the urge not to itch all over as I slogged through the gray, slushy snow, keeping my head down. I’d snagged the uniform from one of the bicycle couriers who spent all day pedaling between the vast acres of the camp complex, their leather satchels full of communiqués and cables
for the officers. The bicycle courier herself was in her underwear somewhere south of the complex. If she were lucky, maybe somebody from the town out of sight behind the curtain of snow would pick her up. If she wasn’t lucky, well. Not my problem. Her uniform, crisp and spotless though it was, was made of wool that itched like fire ants and smelled like a wet dog.

  Colonel Kubler was a science officer. That much I’d found out from going through the duty rosters in his camp section. The low block of buildings was set off from the others, behind its own fence. The guard shivering outside the gate barely looked at me before waving me through. I tried not to look around either. If I let myself see the filth, smell the overwhelming stench that rolled out from the deep trenches gashed in the earth even though everything around me was frozen, see the hunched, skeletal forms in pale uniforms that had been striped at some point in the distant past, I knew I wouldn’t be able to move. I’d stand there paralyzed while the hound took over, like a moth transfixed by an open furnace. Then nobody would be safe, and the people who didn’t deserve it would be food the same as the uniformed Germans in the building I stepped into, stamping the snow off my feet.

  No brow-shirted guard jumped up to greet me, which was a little odd. The closer the Americans and the Red Army got, the jumpier these assholes became. This Colonel Kubler would never have promised his soul to a reaper even a year ago, but now the writing was on the wall. The war wasn’t going to last, and when it was over the warlock who made the best deal would be the only one left standing.

  “Hello?” I called out cautiously. My German was for shit but it wasn’t like I was here to take notes. Hello, good-bye, the reaper you gave your soul to says it’s time to pay up—that about did the trick for the Nazi’s mother tongue.

  The whole place was quiet, which in and of itself made me shiver a little. These places were scream factories, and even when they didn’t have a fresh crop of prisoners inside they bustled with normal everyday sounds of a field hospital.