“Good luck, sister,” the bum called as I followed Viv into the motel. “See you in the spring.”
Viv slammed and locked the door behind me, peeking out the blinds before she dumped her groceries and glared at me. “Look who decided to come back.”
I sat down on the bed. Sticky comforter or not, it was better than anything I’d slept on recently. “Don’t!” Viv snarled. “This is my room, not yours. You’re not my boss, and I don’t owe you shit.”
“Fine,” I said, moving to the hard chair next to a little table holding cardboard ads for a strip club and a wing joint. “You don’t owe me and I don’t owe you but I’ve had a really shitty morning already so I might just decide you’re the person I beat repeatedly in the head to deal with my emotions surrounding all this if you keep shit-talking me, Viv. And because I’m not a sociopath, I don’t want to start punching people for no good reason, so how’s about I take a chill pill and you start acting like you’re housebroken?”
Viv growled, and I didn’t even look at her this time. After what I’d seen in Kansas, she was about as intimidating as a Chihuahua in a pink fluffy sweater. “Is Leo here? And where’s Raina and all of them?”
Viv rubbed her hands over her face. Her Mohawk drooped and she looked like she hadn’t slept since I’d left. “They found the farmhouse,” Viv said. “Owen’s goons, I mean. Some of us got away. Raina . . .” she sighed. “Raina didn’t make it.”
I felt sick. I’d let Leo convince me he’d be fine without me, but that hadn’t been true. I’d let myself get lured away. I’d let our enemies divide us.
It turned out that Uriel’s little trick had gotten me back to Minneapolis way ahead of Leo, and Viv was so relieved that she let me stay in her crummy motel room while I waited for him.
“Can I ask you something?” she said as I unwrapped a toaster pastry and shoveled it in my mouth. I was still starving.
“Do you think Leo can take down Owen?” she said. She cracked her knuckles as she talked, staring at them. “I mean, we’re all hiding and scattered and Owen and them are still at headquarters, with all the ledgers, doing all the collections . . .”
“Leo can take down Owen,” I said, putting a stop to her ramble. “The Grim Reaper can kill anything.”
“Not if he doesn’t have his Scythe,” Viv muttered.
I got up, ignoring her doomsaying. I was tired of waiting, and tired of feeling like shit for what I’d said to Leo. And for what he’d said to me.
I’d fallen into the trap again—my own trap of being passive Ava who was afraid of all the walking ghosts dogging her steps.
That wasn’t me anymore. As I got dressed, I pointed at Viv. “Do you have any friends left inside Headquarters?”
“Maybe a few hounds . . .” she said hesitantly. “But none that will risk their lives.”
“All I need is a face-to-face with Owen,” I said. “Preferably a surprising one.”
Viv’s expression went slack. “Are you crazy?” she demanded. “The last time—”
“This won’t be like the last time,” I said. “Can you do it or not?”
She nodded. “I don’t like it, but for the Grim Reaper’s hound, we’ll do anything. You know that.”
I did, and I felt almost lousy exploiting their loyalty, but I was done watching my life expectancy circle the drain while the world went to shit. I could do something for once. I could not be afraid of what might happen and just fix things for Leo and me.
I tried calling Leo’s burner but it sent me straight to voicemail. I left him a message telling him to get his ass back to Minneapolis and then aimed my stolen car toward Headquarters. I didn’t feel shattered and exhausted anymore. I felt clear. Maybe it was the sleep and food after two weeks being held hostage. Maybe I was just so far around the bend I was past caring about what happened to me.
I kept trying Leo, all the numbers I had for him, leaving messages where I could. He was going to piss himself when he found out what I’d done, but it wasn’t like he could get any angrier at me.
Viv’s hound friends were good as their word—the door was unlocked and stairs were where they said. I just hoped they weren’t currently being tortured for their efforts.
The floor of offices was quiet this early in the morning, and only one light was on. I hung back, staying silent, and waited until Owen crossed the hall, whistling to himself, and pushed through a swinging door. I followed noiselessly, catching the door before it could swing back and stepping into an executive washroom that looked to be designed specifically for coke binges and hookups with your assistant. Lots of gold, black, everything reflective.
Not that Owen noticed me as he stood at the urinal, still whistling as he shook himself off and adjusted his briefs.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for tighty whiteys,” I said. Owen yelped and spun around, his pants falling to half-mast.
“What the fuck!” he screamed.
“It sucks being accosted in the bathroom,” I said. “Trust me, I know.”
Owen started to laugh as he zipped up his pants, shaking his head. “You little whelp bitch,” he said. “You are in so much fucking trouble. I am going to take you apart.”
He took a step toward me and I snarled. The sound rolled around the little bathroom like we were inside a thunderhead, and Owen stopped, fear swimming up into his eyes for the first time. “You can’t touch me,” he said, but his voice held about half the sass it had a second ago.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. This time it was my turn to take a step. “You know good and well what happened to my first boss. Gary. The one who doesn’t have a windpipe anymore.”
“So what?” Owen said, just above a whisper.
“So the Grim Reaper needs his Scythe to become Death, it’s true,” I said. “But I don’t need a Scythe to kill, Owen. And I don’t need Leo to kill one punk reaper who’s gotten a big head. I don’t need a reaper at all.” I bared my teeth. “I can take care of you all on my own. And nothing would make me happier.”
Owen backed up then. He stumbled over his own foot and fell back into the urinal, scrabbling for purchase. “I’m sorry!” he shouted. “Okay? I’m sorry! It wasn’t my idea!”
“I think it was at least partly your idea,” I said. “Because you’re a venal little bastard who wants power but doesn’t want to work too hard for it.”
“It’s true,” he gasped as I kept him pinned against the pissstained urinal. “I am a bastard . . .”
“Shut up, Owen,” I snapped. He clamped his lips together, his eyes wide and his jaw quivering. “Leo needs to prove he’s the Grim Reaper,” I said. “No argument there. But you don’t need to be around when he does. This game you’re playing is making me real fucking mad, so how about you stop hindering and start helping before I decide to turn you into a human sprinkler the way I did Gary?”
I was so tense I was vibrating, not sure how much longer I could keep this up. Threatening people really takes it out of you, whether it’s pretentious vampires or asshole reapers.
“You can talk now,” I said when Owen just kept staring at me.
“What do you want?” he squeaked.
“I want to know where you got that angelic blade, for a start,” I said. “And the name of the Fallen who gave it to you. Then I want the spell that lets you handle it.”
Owen cocked his head. “You want to use it? Why . . .”
“Because there’s an immortal monster who I have a powerful desire to stab until he is dead,” I said. “Name. Spell. Now.” I snapped my fingers in his face.
“The spell is on the inside of the case,” he said in a rush. “Just write it anywhere on your bare skin and you can handle it for a little while. Too long and it’ll burn, even with the magic.”
“Great,” I said. “Now tell me which Fallen convinced you to keep the Scythe from Leo. And tell me where it is.”
“I don’t know,” Owen said, swallowing so the tendons in his neck stood out. I shook my head.
“I gave them the Scythe and I don’t know where they took it!” Owen said. “Why would I want to know?”
“So you can get a pissed-off hellhound off your ass?” I said. Owen sighed.
“Not a problem that I ever anticipated, let me tell you. I am a Reaper.”
“And you’re doing a shitty job,” I said. “If you can’t give me a where I’ll settle for a who. Tell me the Fallen’s name and somebody will take care of them.”
Owen narrowed his eyes. “Fallen is way above your pay grade, doggie.”
I slammed his skull hard into the porcelain, and he yelled. “I didn’t say I was going in guns blazing, moron.”
Owen held up his hands. “Okay, okay. They contacted me about a month before I heard about your little, heh, dog-and-pony show . . .”
“You’re pushing it,” I warned him. “I want the name of the Fallen and it’s the last time I’m gonna ask you.”
“Fallen,” Owen said, letting out a small giggle. “Yeah, the Fallen. It’s—” He choked, his face twitching, and a little black blood dribbled out of his mouth.
“Shit,” I said, backing off from him. Owen’s eyes rolled back as he fell to the floor convulsing, and then they snapped open again, pure black like they’d had ink spilled in them.
“Owen?” I said cautiously. He shook his head mechanically.
“Guess again.”
I raised my chin. “Who are you, then?”
He let out another one of those high-pitched laughs. “I know something you don’t know . . .”
There was something about the voice, even filtered through Owen’s smarmy mouth. It cut right to the center of me. It was a frightening voice, one I’d tried hard to forget over the past months with Leo.
“Come back and see me, Ava,” it said with Owen’s tongue. “And maybe I’ll give you what you want. Maybe. If you have something I want in exchange.”
The door to the bathroom banged open before I could say anything else and Owen went limp, eyes open as he stared up at the ceiling. The black drained away, and his chest rose and fell slowly.
Leo crossed the floor and stood between us, head swiveling. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking off the shock of what I’d just seen. “I mean, I beat him up a little but that was not my doing. Why are you here?”
“You left me like fifty messages,” he said. He bent down and felt Owen’s pulse. “He’s alive,” he said. “What a shame.”
I looked at Leo and stayed quiet as he stared at me. “I don’t even know what to say. You come busting in to the one place you shouldn’t be and—”
I grabbed his face in my hands and kissed him, hard. After being gone for so long I just needed him to know that I had cared I’d been gone, that I was sorry. Leo returned my embrace after a minute, wrapping his arms tight around me. “I’m sorry,” he muttered into my hair. “I was a dick before.”
“You think?” I said. He stepped back, holding me at arm’s length.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the initiative. But kicking in doors isn’t really your style, so what’s going on?”
“You were right,” I said in a rush. “I should have stayed here and helped you. It was a stupid move to let Cain take me again.”
“Yeah, it was,” Leo said. “But not the stupidest thing either of us has ever done, so let’s just forget it.”
“Somebody wanted you without a Scythe,” I said. “They took it and hid it so you couldn’t stop what Cain set in motion. They tried to sideline me by giving me to him. And Owen was gonna give me a name, until he went all Scanners on me.”
Leo waggled his fingers in front of Owen’s slack face and glassy eyes. “Yeah, nobody’s home in there.”
I shrank inside my coat, even though the bathroom was stuffy. “I thought this would at least get us some answers.”
“Doesn’t look that way,” Leo said. He stood up, rubbing a bit of the sticky blood that had come from Owen’s nose on his fingers. “This isn’t a Fallen, either,” he said, sniffing it. “Demon magic smells.”
I pressed my hands over my face and then gave Leo an agonized look. “It can’t be.”
“She did say she’d see you again,” Leo told me. I shook my head, still unwilling to believe that my luck could get this much worse.
Lilith, Gary’s demon BFF.
“Assuming this is Lilith,” I said quietly, “what could she want?”
“I think there’s only one way to find that out,” Leo said.
“Okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. “Let’s go ask her.”
Leo decided that there was no way to disguise the fact that I’d put Owen in a coma, so he called in the other reapers, who stared at the two of us like we’d just taken a leak in their morning coffee.
“Why?” the one in the red dress asked. “Owen just wanted you to prove yourself. He was protecting us.”
I was pretty sure the only thing Owen had been protecting was his own ass, but I held my tongue. A mouthy hellhound was just gas on the fire with this many reapers.
“You assholes listen and you listen good,” Leo thundered as the voices crowding the little room grew to a roar. “I tried to jump through Owen’s hoops, and I came to him today to let him step aside with no hard feelings, and this is the result. If anyone else wants to test me then come on ahead.”
The group of reapers went silent at that, all looking at each other.
“But you can’t hold the Scythe,” the one in the red dress ventured. “You don’t have any more right to lead than Owen or Gary did.”
“You all know that Scythe is bullshit,” Leo said. “What I’m hoping you don’t know is where Owen stashed the real deal, because if one of you does, you’re probably looking at life with eight fingers or less.” He scanned their faces, and nobody could meet his eyes.
“I don’t have any illusions that one of you will try and take me out the first goddamn chance you get,” he said. “In fact, I’d be a little disappointed if you didn’t. But Owen’s out, I’m the Grim Reaper, and now I want you to stop all this shit and go do your goddamn jobs.”
After a long second, the red dress reaper and her friend Polo Shirt nodded. “Fine,” she said tightly. “Seeing as how you iced the only one of us willing to stand up to you.”
“You want some, sweetness?” Leo asked. “Come here.”
Shockingly, the red dress suddenly didn’t want to mouth off anymore. A couple of reapers collected Owen and the rest milled around nervously, watching Leo and me.
“What now?” I murmured to him.
“You need to chat with a demon, right?” Leo said. “This is one of the few places in the world with a direct conduit to Hell.” He snapped his fingers at the nearest reaper. “Show me the conduit.”
There are places in the world where things are thin—places of suffering and disasters, places where bombs ripped the atomic structure of the human world apart. Those places are nexus points where all the balls on the table line up with the cue—where you can hop from one to the next without expending enough power to collapse a star. The Nevada Test Site was the only one in North America I’d been aware of before all of this. It was a far cry from an empty basement room in Minneapolis, but it had the same feel, of standing in a place so empty even the air had deserted you.
I wasn’t one hundred percent sure how transiting the conduits worked, just sure that it did work, because the last time I’d been taken to Tartarus for my trouble. I’d gone willingly, too—I’d been looking for Leo. He’d died, and I wasn’t ready to let him go.
I still wasn’t.
The other reapers refused to even go into the room with us, and I didn’t blame them. It looked like a room, but it clearly wasn’t—passing through the door sent prickles all over my body.
“Only Gary used this place,” said Polo Shirt, before he slammed the door behind us. “And you’re not Gary.”
“Well, that’s something,”
Leo said, flicking on the row of lights along the low ceiling.
“Are you sure about this?” I said. Leo shook his head.
“I haven’t been sure of anything since I woke up a reaper.” He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “But you’re here. I’m not worried.”
The lights flickered as we stepped into the center of the room, and I felt a harsh wind, not borne from any place we could see, slide over my face and through my hair. One by one, the bulbs in the ceiling started to blink out.
“Here we go,” Leo murmured.
I waited. Lilith had told me things weren’t over between us and if there’s one thing demons are good at, it’s grudge holding.
More of the bulbs blinked out, faster now, and the wind kicked up icy and smelling of ashes. When the last light went out with a pop of glass, I heard an expensive shoe clack on the cement behind me.
“It’s pathetic what some women will do for their man,” Lilith said. I turned around, one eyebrow going up.
“I’m pretty sure I’m speaking to the person who staged a jailbreak in Hell just to get her boyfriend back,” I said.
She walked over to me, and I instinctively backed up. It was like standing in front of a cobra wearing human skin—something about the way demons move, too fluid and quick to be anything flesh and blood. The eyes too—they never blink, not even the ones who spend a lot of time pretending to be people.
“What do you want, Ava?” she said, the hiss of her voice blending with the wind. “And what’s with the muscle?” She looked Leo over, her tongue flicking out. “Didn’t I kill you?”
“It didn’t take,” Leo said. “Now how about telling me where my Scythe is before I peel that pretty fake face off and see what you really look like?”
“Just because I can’t kill you again doesn’t mean you frighten me,” Lilith drawled. “But if it’s a dick-measuring contest you want . . .”
“I got your invitations,” I said. “Both of them. You might not have convinced Owen to hide the Scythe but you kept me from finding out, so what do you want?”
“I want things to be the way they were before I ever laid eyes on you,” Lilith snapped. “But not even I can go back in time, so I’ll settle for fucking with you until the end of time. Have a nice day.”
Grim Tidings: Hellhound Chronicles Page 18
