Pop, pop, pop.
My knuckles crunched under his boot heel. The sound released me from the trance I had slipped into, and I reacted by pulling my gun. Broken and slick with blood, my fingers gripped the metal with complete calm.
“Don’t make me do it.” I chambered a round, aiming the weapon at Samuel’s pretty-boy head.
He laughed a malicious sound that echoed off the blood-splattered walls.
Fuck it. I fired the first round into his heart. Boom, boom, boom. I fired until the click of metal against metal filled the room. A neat circle of bullets, dead center of his chest, flowed with blood. His eyes went wide and he dropped to the floor.
Revenge was sweet, but short lived. One of the remaining seven thugs smashed a tire iron into my skull. Bolts of light flashed behind my shattered eye sockets. A hollow ping echoed in the depths of my brainpan.
Blackness closed in, but before I died, I prayed the kid was safe.
~ * ~
“Owww!”
“Remain still.” The angel soared above me.
A warmth spread through my frozen limbs as my heart began to beat again. I blinked, trying to focus. Where was I? It smelled like rotting flesh and urine. Rats squeaked, fighting over putrid garbage, and cold wetness seeped into my clothes.
Was I in the alley behind the club, tossed away like trash?
Those bastards.
“This job sucks.” I flexed my busted fingers. My bones and organs healed, scabbing over before my eyes as the angel placed his hands on my body. Why had I agreed to this? It wasn’t like I didn’t have a choice. I could have walked away. I could have slammed the door in the angel’s face when he showed up eight months ago.
“The final reward will be worth it,” the angel promised.
Yeah, right. I’d never see the pearly gates. After all, I’d broken every single commandment and six of the seven deadly sins. Okay, who was I kidding? I’d committed all seven sins, sometimes at the same time.
“What happened?” I changed the subject, not wanting to get into a philosophical discussion of Heaven, pearly white gates, harps, and fluffy white clouds, blah, blah, blah. Sounded somewhat lame if you asked me, but of course, no one had.
“I do not know what happened to you.” The angel paused, touching his hand to my head. “I found you here an hour ago.”
“I’ve been dead for an hour? Why didn’t you bring me back sooner?”
It was an odd thought. Not the death part, I’d long ago come to terms with the Reaper, but the fact the angel had brought me back, again, sent chills down my fractured spine. I’d had enough of this supernatural shit. I felt like a zombie in those late night horror flicks. Would I now develop a taste for brains?
“I tried to restore your life light, but at first your soul would not comply.” The angel shrugged, as if my soul’s wishes were of little consequence. “Not until I promised it a cookie.” From his robe, he pulled out a chocolate chip cookie and handed it to me. “You must have made someone exceedingly angry,” he added, scooping up bits of my brain and stuffing it back inside my head while I carefully chewed my soul’s reward.
“No more so than usual.” I touched my skull, feeling the oozing wound. “But something weird did happen. What do you know about this place?” I gestured to the club.
“It is a pit.”
While it wasn’t my kind of club, I wouldn’t have called it a pit.
“Don’t be such a snob. I’m sure they serve Zima.”
The angel flushed. “Not that kind of pit. A hell’s pit. A den of inequity. Satan’s lair.”
Anger washed over me. “And you’re telling me this now? That information might have been useful.” I paused for effect. “Oh, I don’t know… two hours ago.”
“You did not ask,” he huffed, placing a healing hand on the hole in my head.
Once he let go, I shakily rose to my feet, ignoring the buzzing sound inside my brain, a side effect to reanimation that disappeared in a few hours.
“Once I find the kid, I’m going to kick the feathers out of you.”
“If you find the child.” His words reverberated in my ears the entire scooter ride home.
Six
We arrived back at my apartment at two in the morning. My front door stood open. I reached for my nine-millimeter realizing two things, one, I was out of bullets and two, whoever was inside didn’t care that I knew they were there. The rational part of my brain suggested I proceed with caution.
So instead, I charged the door. Not the smartest of moves, but fifteen minutes ago, rats had feasted on my brains, so I wasn’t exactly functioning on all cylinders.
The intruder slept the sleep of the innocent on my stained sofa, her black hair spilling across a cushion. One arm wrapped around her knees like a child, Lilith looked peaceful and beautiful in the patchy moonlight.
I kicked the couch, sending a plume of dust mites into the air. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Getting killed had changed my opinion of women in general, and Lilith in particular. Fucking her was the last thing on my mind. Well, maybe second to last. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now.
She cracked an eyelid. “It’s been a rough night. Can this wait until morning?”
“Rough night?” I booted the couch again. “Your boyfriend tried to rearrange my face, and you had a rough night?”
She sat up, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “I see you survived.”
That was it.
I lunged for her, wanting to wrap my hands around her skinny neck and squeeze until her eyeballs popped out of her deceitful head.
She twisted away seconds before I made contact, leaving me groping at thin air as I tumbled head first against the cushions. The sofa struck the wall with a bang, and knocked a large chunk of plaster from the ceiling.
“There goes your security deposit.” The angel pointed to the falling debris.
Could this night get any worse? It was a stupid question to ask, because no sooner had it formed in my mind, then Lilith unsheathed a wicked looking dagger from her garter belt. My eyes dropped to the creamy skin of her thigh, roaming over the pale, toned flesh like a man dying of thirst.
“You should work on controlling your baser impulses,” the angel stated. “Lust is a sin.”
“So is duct taping a certain entity to a chair and shaving his head,” I threatened, never taking my eyes from the girl with the knife. “What are you doing here?” I asked her, as my last threads of energy and anger waned.
She held the knife in front of her, seeming leery of my sudden change in demeanor. “I wanted to see where J.C. disappeared from.” She paused, giving me a small smile. “I also wanted to apologize and make sure you were all right.”
My rage surfaced again. She’d left me to die and now wanted to play nice? And how the fuck did she know where I lived? “Don’t fucking lie to me. You set me up, and now you’re here to finish the job your lover couldn’t.”
She flinched. “No. Look, I’m sorry about tonight. I thought that if Samuel saw me with another man he’d let go of the idea of us.”
Oh, he let go all right, about the same time my third bullet had burrowed through his chest. “So you used me.”
“So I used you. I’m sorry.” She gave me a slow once over. “It all worked out though. You don’t look any worse for wear.”
“Yeah. I’m feeling just great.” I took a breath, weighing how much I needed her help. I couldn’t find the kid on my own. Damn. “No harm, no foul.” She would pay, one way or another, but for right now, I’d hold my tongue.
“Really?” She tilted her head. “I had you pegged for being stubborn.”
“Naw, I’m a pushover.” What I really was, was tired. Bone achingly so.
“So can I stay?”
“Yeah.” I yawned, glancing at her filled to the brim duffel bag. “But you’ll have to toss a coin for the couch.” I grinned, gesturing between her and the angel, pretty sure who would come out the victor.
The angel
started to argue, but I closed my bedroom door in his face, and fell onto the bed. What was the harm in letting her spend one night?
~ * ~
“Morning.” Her cheery voice rang inside my head like a bad seventies laugh track.
I looked around the kitchen and grunted. Yeah, it was morning. The bright glare of the sun peeking in my grimy windows gave it away.
“Nice pj’s.” She glanced at me and smiled.
I blinked and followed her eyes downward, nothing but skin. I shrugged, not caring one way or the other. It was too damn early for modesty, and my head was stuffy from the night before.
“Coffee?” I sniffed the air, searching for the scent of roasting beans.
She stood, pulled a mug from a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, and poured me a cup.
“Thanks.” Taking the cup from her hands, I noted the odd symbols and shapes tattooed into her skin, a combination of Arabic and Sumerian script. Exotic and beautiful, much like Lilith herself.
I took a sip of the dark brew, and spit it out in a spray of hot liquid.
“What the hell is this?”
She shrugged. “Black tea.”
“Tea?” I closed my eyes, remembering why I’d divorced my third wife. She made me drink tea, said it was good for my mental health. I found out later she’d been spiking it with anti-psychotics.
“I’ll make you a deal. You put on some pants and I’ll make coffee.” She gave a vague wave to my genitals. “It’s too early in the day to face that over the breakfast table.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be right back,” I said, disappearing into the living room. On the floor, the angel laid curled next to the heater. I kicked him in the butt as I passed. “For God’s sake, you’re a fucking angel and you couldn’t win a coin toss.”
He rubbed his sleep-crusted eyes. “She hit me. I offered to flip a coin, but she growled and struck me like some kind of animal.”
I liked this girl more and more. Too bad she drank tea and dated demonic assholes.
Inside my bedroom, I searched through a pile of dirty laundry until I located a pair of Levis that didn’t smell like baby puke and alcohol.
Five minutes later, I arrived in the kitchen, awaiting my promised caffeine fix. Lilith sat at the table, twirling a shiny object in her fingers. A cup of rich, black coffee sat across from her. She gestured for me to sit, which I did. The table wobbled, and coffee splashed over the rim.
Dammit. I looked down.
“Looking for this?” She tossed a gold heart shaped medal at me. It skidded across the table, and landed face up. The noble face of General George Washington stared up from the purplish inlay.
I picked the medal up with a smirk and stuck it back underneath the too short table leg. Once in place, the table stopped wobbling, a regular Mr. Fix-it.
“Better.” I took a sip of my coffee and wiped the spill up with the edge of my shirt.
She looked at me as if I was crazy. “That medal is a Purple Heart.”
I nodded.
“Is it your Purple Heart?”
I nodded again.
“Care to explain?”
I shrugged. “I was in the Army. I got hurt. They gave me a medal. Hell, they give them out to guys who stub a toe.”
“How long were you in?”
Why I answered was beyond me. I didn’t owe this girl shit, least of all my life story. “Since I was eighteen.” It felt like a lifetime ago. I’d been a career soldier, a killing machine. Then suddenly I wasn’t.
Lilith shook her head. “I can’t see you taking orders.”
“I grew up in a small farm town, so it was either join the Army or drink myself to death.” Which reminded me, I opened a cabinet door and poured a healthy dose of whiskey into my coffee. “I stupidly joined up and the rest is history.” Recent history since I had only been discharged three years ago and still I hadn’t quite adjusted to life on the outside.
“How did you get hurt?” Her eyes flashed with compassion.
“I.E.D.” I swallowed, thinking back to the day an improvised explosive device changed my life. It had been a routine assignment, a simple sweep of the area until a roadside bomb exploded.
It was my second tour in Iraq. The first, Desert Storm, went off without a hitch. No one shot at me or tried to blow me up. I was golden.
The second tour, ten years later, was a far different story. The first week of the invasion, I lost seven men in my platoon to a roadside bomb and ended up in a M.A.S.H unit with my brains scrambled. It was touch and go for a while, but I made it through. Or, so I thought until the voices started.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and for a second I believed her.
“Yeah well, shit happens.” I took another drink. “I was lucky.” Was it luck? Would I have been better off dead? I had been asking myself that question for over two years.
Shrinks and doctors tried to stop the rising tide of voices inside my head, but to no avail. I was labeled paranoid, schizophrenic, dissociative, and depressive. I’d taken handfuls of pills, swallowing lies and half-truths fed to me in hopes of quieting the voices. Nothing worked.
Then eight months ago, I sat on my couch with my nine-millimeter pressed against my temple, ready to end it all. The rush of voices urged me to the Promised Land. Do it, they shouted in chorus. I chambered a round, and prepared myself for death.
Goodbye cruel world.
My finger grasped the trigger, applying a subtle pressure, enough to blow the back of my head off.
Ding.
The doorbell rang and the voices stopped. For the first time in over two years, my head was my own.
“It’s better to be lucky than good,” she said, bringing me back to the present.
“That better be true, because I’ve never been any good.”
Seven
“How do you suggest we find the kid?” I broke the quiet that surrounded my last comment. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, nor was it unwanted. It felt sort of friendly. As that notion popped into my head, I jumped to my feet and paced. I didn’t want to be friendly with her. I wanted to hate her. Hate her for using me, hate her for getting me killed, and hate her for tempting me. Hate was easier.
“I thought I’d check in with some of my buddies on the NYPD, see if they’ve got any leads.” She stressed the word I.
“They don’t.”
She closed her eyes. “Because you never filed a report.”
I nodded.
“Why the hell not?” Her eyes heated, turning to molten amber. “The cops can help you.”
“No, they can’t.” I paused, trying to think of a rational explanation that didn’t include angels and God’s favored son. “The cops and I don’t exactly see eye to eye when it comes to what constitutes legality. In order to find the kid, I have to work outside the box, and that means outside the law.”
“Fine,” she gave in. Much too quickly in my opinion, which only made me more suspicious. She added, “In that case, I’ll have to consult some of my less desirable informants, but it’s going to cost you.”
Seeing as how I didn’t have shit to pay her with in the first place, adding to the bill wasn’t a problem.
“When do we start?”
Lilith smiled. “We, is it?”
I nodded, not really liking the term. It was almost a declaration of partnership, one that meant trust and disclosure, or at the very least, dinner, and a movie.
“Now is as good a time as any.” She pushed herself from the table and winked. “Give me ten minutes to freshen up and we’ll roll.”
Why did I feel like I had just made the biggest mistake of my life?
~ * ~
Twenty minutes later, I stood outside my apartment door, glaring at my watch. The smell of sulfur fumed around me, and I turned to the source.
“What’s taking your friend so long?” Lilith blew out the match she’d used to light the end of an expensive Indian cigarette. The aroma of rich tobacco and vanilla filled the hallway.
&nbs
p; “I wouldn’t call us friends.” I paused, thinking about ways to rid myself of the angel. “And I have no idea what’s taking him so long.” He was probably preening in front of the mirror again. I should just shatter it and solve the problem, but I was afraid he would start ogling himself in my spoons, which wasn’t sanitary.
“If you’re not friends, why does he follow you around?” She inhaled a stream of smoke, her neck muscles flexing with what I assumed was pleasure. “Do you know what’s weird? I don’t even know his name.”
Shit, neither did I. Did angels have names? Of course, they did. Let’s see, there was Gabriel, Michael, Raphael…Donner, Dancer, and Blitzen. I was bad at this. Why had God chosen me, I wondered for the thousandth time.
Lilith brought me back to the present. “So what’s his name?”
“Angel.” Not good under pressure, the name burst from my lips.
She tilted her head. “Angel? Really? He looks more like a Harry or maybe Bob.”
Bob. Damn it. Now why didn’t I think of that? A moment later, Mary saved me from answering. Lilith turned to the sound of Mary’s apartment door opening and the subtle scent of sage creeping into the hallway. Lilith’s hand slid toward her dagger. I raised a finger, indicating friend not foe.
“Mary.” I smiled at her, eyes roaming her supple skin.
She stepped into the hallway. The single light bulb bathed her in a heavenly glow, caressing her. “Jace? Did you find little J.C. yet?”
“No.” Her concern was palpable as she stared at me with big, violet eyes. My heart beat faster. I licked my lips, wanting to taste her.
“Well, this is cozy.” Lilith cleared her throat.
Mary’s gaze fell on Lilith, dismissing her with a quick once-over.
The difference between the women amazed me. Blonde, sweet, and tanned, Mary was the girl next-door. Actually, the girl down the hall and to the left, but that was semantics.
In retrospect, Lilith looked like a cartoon figure, with huge yellow eyes and pale skin. Vampires and succubae came to mind when I glanced at her black hair and blood red lips. She was darkness to Mary’s light. Funny, I wanted them both, and in such different ways. Dark, dirty ways.
Holy Socks and Dirtier Demons (v1.1) (clean fmt) Page 3
