Envy fa-3

by J. R. Ward

  If Eddie were here, he thought, the guy would have been pissing in his pants. Too many openings for a good assslapping.

  Shit, Eddie . . . why hadn’t he been the one with the nine lives?

  At that moment, the face of every Adrian grew tight, those mouths that he knew so well flattening out, those pierced brows lowering . . . until he was surrounded, literally, by his own grief.

  The sound of slow clapping brought their collective faces up and around. Colin had come out of the apartment and was standing on the top landing of the stairwell.

  “Well-done, lad, well-done.”

  “I had help.”

  Huh. None of the other Adrians spoke up, so this had to be him—and what a thing to be relieved about.

  For fuck’s sake, this shit was going to give him a disorder.

  “I would have joined you,” Colin said as he floated down the stairs and then walked across the steaminglack-stained ground. “But as you pointed out, I am here to take care of our dearly departed.”

  “Eddie okay?”

  “Yes.”

  Ad shook his head. “Thank God you were here.”

  “Indeed.”

  As the archangel strode through the remains of all those minions, his boots remained pristine even though the ground was a sloppy mess.

  He and the other Adrians all looked impressed. And then he realized that they were steaming: Every Adrian had tendrils of smoke rising from their shoulders and backs, the corrosive blood eating through the leather, heading for skin.

  On that note . . . Adrian ripped off the duster—

  Not even a split second afterward, a chorus of flapping went off, like a flock of geese had gotten goosed and taken to the sky. And then the Adrians tossed their coats down on the ground with disgust just as he had.

  Colin stopped in front of them all. “Would you like to keep your little friends?”

  Adrian looked around at himselves. “They’re great backup—I wonder if they do windows? And if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you pull this off?”

  Colin extended his hand. At some kind of command from him, the surface of the inky sludge covering the driveway and lawn began to vibrate, and then here and there, tiny objects rose, dripping with—

  They were shards, Adrian realized, as they shed their coating of minion. Glass—no, mirrored shards.

  “Tricky, tricky,” Ad murmured.

  “Say good-bye to your crew, mate.”

  He glanced around. And found that he wanted to tell himselves thank you—

  In perfect synchronization, all of the other Adrians put their right palms up to their hearts, those dark heads dipping gravely.

  And then they were gone, along with their coats.

  “Can I have them back if I need them again,” Ad asked. “Like if I have to lay some carpet, or move a piano.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  “I do.” He reached out, but then dropped his hand when he saw the condition of his gloves. “I gotta know something.”

  “What.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “You were going to lose.”

  “Are you going to tell Nigel?”

  “Probably. I subscribe to the notion that it is better to apologize than ask permission.”

  “Know that one well.”

  There was a period of silence. “Thank you,” Adrian said roughly.

  The archangel bowed with grace. “ ’Twas a pleasure. Now, I think we should get this cleaned up. Not many neighbors about, but it would be hard to explain, don’t you think?”

  Good point: If there was just a skirmish, there wasn’t a lot of reason to worry about the icky aftermath. God knew that humans left plenty of oily messes around, and smudges on the ground soon disappeared with enough sunlight. This?

  “The only option,” he muttered, “would be to tell people the oil tanker exploded on the front lawn.”

  “And does that not require a permit or some such?”

  “Probably. As well as a lot of gunpowder.” He shook his head. “Damn, we’re going to need a lot of—”

  Cleaning solution was the term he was going to use, as he started to wonder how much of that witch hazel concoction he could pull together. Enough for a fire truck would do the job.

  Colin, however, took care of it all: Sweeping his hand in a circle, he disappeared every trace of the tremendous fight.

  Adrian whistled under his breath. “You wouldn’t be in the market for a second job, would you?”

  Colin smiled with a dark edge. “That would be against the rules, dear boy.”

  “And God forbid we bust those bitches.”

  Adrian yanked off one of his gloves and matched the archangel’s cynical expression as the pair of them clapped palms and shook hard.

  “Jim’s probably waiting for me,” Ad murmured, glancing up toward the garage.

  “And at the moment, I have nothing better to do.”

  The relief that Eddie wasn’t alone was so profound, he was tempted to hug the motherfucker. “Then I’ll just get back to work now.”

  “And so shall I.”

  As Adrian nodded and took to the air, he was prepared for Devina in ways he hadn’t been before.

  Good thing, as it turned out, considering what he walked in on when he got to Veck’s.

  CHAPTER 45

  When Veck’s phone went off at quarter to nine, he was so keyed up, he almost didn’t bother answering the fucking thing.

  He’d been marching around his house, waiting for something, anything to go down with Heron, that he was practically vibrating off the floor, all live wire with nothing to plug into.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it,” Jim asked from the other end of the kitchen. The angel had been smoking quietly in the chair he’d sat down in, like, frickin’ days ago.

  Okay, it hadn’t been days. This stretch of nothing happening felt like decades.

  As the ringer went off again, Veck glanced over. He’d tossed the cell on the counter and it was on vibrate, the thing inching closer and closer to the edge with every trembling ring-a-ding-ding.

  He was quite content to let the POS walk itself right off into a free fall. Except then he saw that the screen had one word on it: Reilly.

  Veck all but dived across the countertop. “Hello! Hello? Hello!?”

  He had no idea why she would be calling him, but he didn’t care. Maybe she’d misdialed, or maybe she needed the pizza guy’s number. Or, hell, even if she just wanted to cuss him out, he was down for—

  “You sound so pent-up there, DelVecchio.”

  He frowned at the male voice. “Bails?”

  “Have I told you how much I love your name? DelVecchio . . .” The guy drew out the syllables. “Mmm, just the sound of it gets me off.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “DeeelllVeccccchiooo.”

  Abruptly, Veck felt a shot of blind aggression nail him in the heart. “Why are you on Reilly’s phone?”

  Although it wasn’t as if he couldn’t guess. Christ, here it was again, he thought. Another snow job by someone he’d assumed he could trust—only this time, he was terrified of the consequences.

  He looked over to Heron, who had put his cig out in the ashtray and gotten up—as if this was what he’d been biding his time for. “Why, Bails?”

  There was a grunt and a scraping noise . . . the kind of thing that a pair of feet made over the earth.

  “Sorry, just moving the body.”

  Veck squeezed the phone so hard, one of the dial keys went off with a screech. “I’m going to kill you. If you hurt her—”

  There was a slapping sound. And then a groan. “Wake up, bitch. I want you to talk to him.”

  “Reilly.” So help them both, Veck was going to rip Bails’s head off his shoulders and bowl with it. Then he was going to disembowel the body and cut off the arms and legs.

  But first, he’d castrate the motherfucker.

  “Reilly—”
<
br />   “I’m . . . sorry . . .” a weak voice said.

  Veck closed his eyes. “Reilly, I’m going to get you—”

  “I didn’t . . . believe you . . . so sorry . . .”

  The words were slurred, as if she had a swollen mouth, or maybe—God forbid—had had some teeth knocked out.

  “I’m going to come and get you. Don’t worry—I’ll—”

  She cut him off. “I know . . . you didn’t . . . do it. . . . Bails . . . lied—”

  Her scream was so loud, Veck had to jerk the phone away from his ear.

  “Reilly!” he shouted, his voice ringing around his kitchen. “Reilly—”

  “Sorry,” Bails cut in. “I had to introduce her to my girlfriend. They’re going to have some fun together—at least until you come join us.”

  “Tell me where you are, motherfucker.”

  “Oh, I will, but I have someone who wants to say hello first. But not to you. She says for you to give Heron the phone now.”

  “Fuck that—”

  There was a rustle and then a female came on the line. “Hello, little Tommy.”

  Oh, shit, that voice was . . . all wrong. Like someone had one of those distortion filters over the receiver. But that wasn’t the only problem.

  His father had called him that when he was young.

  “Now listen, Tommy, I want you to give the phone over to that big, beautiful man who’s standing across your kitchen from you. Then I want you to grab your coat and get nice and armed—I’m talking your guns, your knives, whatever you like. By the time you come back to where you’ve been pacing around for the last few hours, Heron will tell you where to go.”

  “Who are you?” he gritted out.

  “You know exactly who I am.” The laugh that followed was blade-sharp. “One note, by the way—those towels you keep putting up? They might stop you from seeing me, but it’s not a vice versa kind of thing. I’ve always had my eye on you.”

  Veck shifted his stare over to Jim. The angel was shaking his head from side to side slowly, as if he knew exactly what was being said even though the cell was all but stapled to Veck’s ear.

  “Before you throw the phone to Jim,” the woman, or whatever the fuck it was, said, “you should know that if anyone comes with you, I’ll kill her. I’ll take the knife I have right now in my hand and I’ll start with her face. Are you aware of how long someone can live without a mouth? Long time. Ears? Teeth? She can be alive, but praying to be dead if you know what I mean. And I won’t stop there . . . I’ll go down to her fingers. Just to the first knuckles. I’m good at walking the line, keeping them alive if I want to—who do you think taught your father all of his tricks?”

  “If you touch her—”

  “Who said I haven’t already. Now be a good boy and throw the phone.”

  “Catch,” Veck barked, as he tossed the thing over.

  He didn’t wait to see whether there was a safe landing. Racing for the stairs, he took them three at a time, the soles of his shoes squeaking, especially as he hard-cornered it on the second-floor landing.

  The closet in his bedroom was full of weapons. Guns, ammo, knives—how that bitch knew about it all, he didn’t want to think—

  “Motherfucker!” he shouted as he opened the doors.

  The shelves were empty.

  But of course. The police had come and taken everything he had into evidence.

  “That’s not what you’re going to need.”

  He wheeled around—and recoiled. Standing in the doorway of his room, Heron’s partner, Adrian, was looking like a hot mess: His shirt had been rotted through in places and . . . Christ, the smell.

  Whatever, though, the guy was alive and breathing, and with the way things were going, that was the only data screen that counted.

  “Guns aren’t going to work,” Adrian said.

  “The hell they won’t.”

  Rushing out of the room, Veck pushed past the man, his eyes watering from that acrid stench. Downstairs, he checked the other two obvious places he’d kept autoloaders: in the kitchen under the sink, and under the couch.

  Gone.

  Only one stash left.

  As Jim Heron’s angry voice drifted in from the kitchen, Veck went into the utility hall that connected the garage to the house. The washer and dryer were behind a pair of louvered doors, and he busted both sides open before squatting down. The dryer unit had been dropped during his last move, the bottom panel becoming loose enough so that if you knew where to press, it . . .

  Snapped. Right. Off.

  And there they were. Two nines with fully loaded clips, with everything stored in plastic bags to keep them lint free.

  “Thank you, Jesus.”

  “Those are not what you need.”

  Veck looked up. Jim was standing over him, that cell phone in his hand. The angel was so pissed off, a flush had ridden up his throat and nailed him in the face, but that wasn’t the only glow he had going on: There was a fierce light emanating from his body, like he was a Lava lamp in the on position.

  Veck leaped to his feet, images of Reilly being defaced giving him a very precise picture of what in fact was required. Ripping the guns out of those Ziplocs, he double-checked their actions, and then went down low again for the two extra clips.

  “Where is she?” he demanded as he loaded up his pockets.

  “If you go in there half-cocked, you’re going to choose the wrong path.”

  “Fuck that, I’m fully cocked.” He grabbed the guns, and shoved Heron out of the way.

  His spare holster was hanging from the coatrack by the back door, and he slipped the straps over his shoulders. Both weapons went in perfectly, because he was a one-size-fits-all kind of guy, and then a light windbreaker covered the show.

  “Where is she,” he snapped.

  “We need to talk first.”

  “Not on my list of things to do. Sorry.”

  At that, he unsheathed the pair of autoloaders and pointed one barrel at Jim Heron’s chest and the other at Adrian’s.

  “Now, where is my woman.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Well, this was going fucking great, Jim thought, as he stared into the business end of a nine.

  “You tell me where she is,” Veck bit out, “or I’ll shoot you.”

  The guy meant it: He was cucumber cool, icebox ready. Kinda made you respect the bastard. Except he wasn’t thinking straight, was he.

  “You kill me,” Jim pointed out levelly, “and I can’t tell you where to go. You kill him”—he nodded in Ad’s direction—“and I’m going to strangle you with your own colon.”

  There was a brief pause and then the gun pointed at him shifted no more than a millimeter to Jim’s left.

  The SOB pulled the trigger and buried a bullet into the molding right by Jim’s ear.

  “Who said anything about killing?” Veck subtly moved the muzzle lower. “Pain works wonders on tight lips. Besides, I’ll bet if I did a callback they’d pick up.”

  Triangulating where the next bullet was going to land made Jim fear a new career as a falsetto—assuming he didn’t want to take for granted the whole bullets-can’t-touch-me thing. Then again, at least it wasn’t Adrian’s’nads on the line—given how much that guy could not sing.

  “You might think this shit over, Jim,” the other angel muttered. “We know the guy’s got good aim.”

  Jim shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re walking into, Veck.”

  “Have I mentioned time is flying? God only knows what’s happening to her.”

  “True, but she’s not the one I’m worried about.” Jim glanced over at Ad. “And I need to go with him. Any clue how I can do that?”

  The other angel cursed softly. “That was Eddie’s department.”

  “No one’s coming with me,” Veck barked. “Or that woman is going to kill her. And will you stop wasting time—”

  “Devina is not going to do shit to her! She needs you there, and Reilly alive is the onl
y way to make sure you show up. Now will you give me a moment to think, asshole?”

  As Jim began pacing, Veck started spouting off, all, “Stop moving or I’ll shoot,” but he ignored the guy—

  The second shot went into the floor at Jim’s feet, and halted him. Pegging the Clint Eastwood motherfucker with a glare, he said, “That was, like, an inch from my boot, man.”

  “Next time it’s your goddamn ankle.”

  “Better than your balls,” Ad pointed out.

  Jim turned to face the detective, ready to paint the true picture of Devina . . . when he happened to glance down at the guy’s bifurcated shadow on the tiled floor.

  That pair of dark patterns looked like two trees in the forest . . .

  And you could stand behind trees, couldn’t you. Hide behind them. Camouflage yourself to appear to be part of the environment such that anyone, like, say, your enemy, could look around . . . and notice nothing.

  After all, Devina had seemed to suggest she couldn’t find him—but was he really willing to take a chance on something he didn’t quite get?

  Except then he thought about that shit with the badge. Granted, it had nearly split his own self in two, but was there any other solution? Short of sending this pistol-packing, pissed-off sonofabitch into the showdown alone?

  “I have to get inside you,” Jim said in a deep voice.

  Veck frowned hard. “Sorry, you’re not my type.”

  “We could put a wig and a dress on him,” Adrian suggested. And as he got the hairy eyeball from everybody in the room, the angel shrugged. “They gotta make that crap in tarp size, right?”

  “And to think I’m actually glad your smart ass is coming back,” Jim muttered before refocusing on Veck. “I’ve got to come with you—and she can’t know I’m there. So if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  Jim closed his eyes and instinctively let the corporeal part of himself go, shedding his suit of skin and bones until he was nothing but the light source that animated his body from within.

  The dissolve went off without a glitch—it was exactly what he had done but hadn’t been able to control down in Devina’s lair when he’d exploded in fury at her.