The Grimrose Path

by Rob Thurman

  “Damn fine kaboodle it is too,” he confirmed.

  “That it is.” Legs crossed, I let myself fall backward to stare up at the sky. It was well worth staring at, and I did so happily until I heard two voices in unison say, “It’s you.” I propped myself up on my elbows to see Azrael and Eligos standing shoulder to shoulder and regarding each other with mutual disdain. Azrael had some disgust mixed into the pudding, but Eli seemed more glum, which was hardly like him.

  “I can’t believe I was replaced by you,” the demon said. “It’s embarrassing. They couldn’t have gotten a flamingo or a canary? Both would be less insulting. The Canary of Death. It has a much better ring to it.”

  “You were an Angel of Death? Why does that not surprise me?” I snorted, sitting up and brushing the rest of the kaboodle from my hands. Cronus was gone, but suddenly the wingless demons remaining were more of a threat than they had been. Here was hoping we had a standoff between what was left of the angels and the demons. The cold war was over on Earth, but it was still thriving Above and Below.

  “Not an Angel of Death. The Angel of Death. If I’d been around for the Ten Plagues, darlin’, well”—he grinned, the curve of a sickle carved in the shape of a smile—“why stop with Egypt when it comes to firstborn? Show a little initiative and enthusiasm for your work. Santa Claus can visit the world in one night. So can I.”

  “You have changed none with God’s punishment, grown no wiser but only more arrogant. I am not surprised, but I am the Angel of Death now, fallen. We could take you and your pathetically neutered brethren at this very moment.” Azrael’s sword wasn’t of heavenly origin as he’d stubbornly claimed, but it worked all the same as it flared to life between them.

  Eli, dressed in that brown leather jacket he was so fond of and a new hat that was made for finding myth in the desert per movie legend, let his dark grin widen. He pointed at the other demons and then jerked his thumb downward. They vanished instantly. He ran a finger along the fedora, then tugged it low over his eyes. “All right then, Az. Here’s your big chance to take on your ex-boss. Let’s see what a pretender can do with the title.”

  Azrael hesitated, scanned the approximately twenty-five remaining angels, then flared his wings and silently took to the air before disappearing into it, leaving a fury so thick you could taste it. He thought he was hot shit and he was, but if Eligos had been the first Angel of Death, experience and seniority did tell. I knew it told me something as all the other angels followed their leader. Eli had once said that Hell had worse demons than he, demons who couldn’t leave, who would burn the earth beneath them with every step if they did. I didn’t want to meet one of those. More powerful than Eli?

  I didn’t want to see that.

  True or not, I didn’t let Eli see it. “Where’s your whip? You can’t rob a desert tomb without a whip.”

  The smile shaded into something almost affectionate, if death itself could be said to have that softer emotion. “You’re right. There is so much you can’t do properly without a whip, Trixa-of-my-heart, you couldn’t begin to believe it.” He laid a hand over my own heart as Zeke and Leo growled behind me, but stayed put. They knew if I needed help, I’d ask for it. “You took out a Titan. First Solomon and now this. You keep getting more and more entertaining. I haven’t had this much damn fun in centuries. I take my hat off to you.”

  He did. He disappeared, but the hat stayed behind, falling to the dirt beneath. I picked it up and put it on, giving the brim my own flick of my finger. “Here’s for staying entertaining.” He was still going to try and kill me someday; that was a given. That day wasn’t this day though. This day was good.

  My optimism was renewed. Life wasn’t always sweet or true, but it was now.

  Sweeter than sugar.

  Chapter 17

  Spilt milk, it couldn’t be undone. That’s what they said. They were wrong. Anna was proof of that. No good deed went unpunished. They said that too. That could be one they managed to get right.

  I was in Leo’s guest room, with my brother’s picture. Curled up in the covers, I watched the play of light on the wall. I had a lot to think about: arranging for Trixsta to be rebuilt, getting used to the fact I actually had a home, being human . . . a trickster, yes, but a human one for the time being. Those were big things, enormous in my life. Then there was Leo and my excuse that we were too much alike, but he was the same as a home—something I wasn’t supposed to want. I was told not to want. Shape-shifters were raised to change more than our appearances. Ours was a culture of the ephemeral. We moved from shape to shape, place to place, person to person.

  We were the wind. That’s the way the story went as long as any of us could remember. Who was I to change it?

  Me. I was me. When had I let anyone tell me what to do? Except for my mama. I groaned and yanked the covers higher. These, especially Mama, were all things I wasn’t going to solve overnight. It was going to take time, a few days, maybe a trip to Valhalla. There was time.

  Once I got something wrapped up. That good deed coming back to bite me in the ass. I’d known Azrael would hold a grudge against me, Zeke, and Griffin. I’d known it from our first meeting. He couldn’t bear that we lived; he couldn’t tolerate our existence. He couldn’t tolerate Zeke for rejecting Heaven and Griffin and me for who we were. Griffin, an abomination. Me, a mouthy abomination who consorted with his former superior. I did think the mouthy part was what had gotten to him most. I knew he’d start with me. It was only a matter of time. I had thought he’d wait at least a few nights, but patience and pride often trip up each other. He’d only waited hours. I believed Eligos was a better Angel of Death, the finest predators had infinite patience. Azrael had none.

  “I see you, Azrael,” I said quietly, staying on my side with the covers pulled up beneath my chin. Every little boy and girl believed their sheets and blanket could be armor against the monsters in the dark. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? “You think death has never come for me in the night before? That I wouldn’t recognize it?”

  He stepped out of the corner, although his wings and his hair stayed part of the darkness. His eyes I could see. They didn’t look any different than a demon’s. “Your kind did this, nearly destroyed us all. Who are you to think you can walk away from that? Who are you to think you do not deserve punishment?”

  Cronus had been païen, but that didn’t make him my kind. He hadn’t been anyone’s kind in the whole of reality. Azrael knew that, but it was a good excuse to do to me what the Angel of Death was meant to do. If Cronus hadn’t been païen, Heaven’s own would’ve found another justification for what curled dark within him. Demons killed with a hot passion and Azrael killed with a cold satisfaction. Hot or cold, they both enjoyed their work far too much not to let it spread. Work, hobby, life. They lived to kill. Azrael wasn’t Eligos, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at what he did, only that he wasn’t the best. Now that I was human, it didn’t take the best to kill me. It didn’t take much at all, I’d discovered.

  “Are you going to hide under the covers like a child?” Azrael stepped closer. “It wouldn’t make a difference if you were. I have pity for no one, least of all you.”

  No, he had pity for no one, certainly not for me. It made it easy to have no pity for him in return.

  “Eligos was right. You can’t begin to fill his shoes,” I said with a dose of contempt Azrael would find difficult to swallow and impossible not to react to. Releasing my hold on the covers, I shifted onto my back. As Griffin had risen, I thought it was time for an angel to fall. “And you’re not half as smart as you think you are. You’re certainly not half as smart as I am.”

  He was on me then, without a word. It was the same when he impaled himself on the sword I pulled from beneath the sheets. Not the Lethe sword, as that was gone, but Leo had let me borrow a nice steel one. Heavy and brutal in battle, those Norse roots couldn’t be denied. “Heaven must be so disappointed in you.” I looked up into the cold, sculpted face that hung
above me and found nothing worth saving. “I know I am, and I know they are too.”

  They were the other angels who appeared out of the corner. Four more archangels, and they’d brought Ishiah with them, the only one still right with Heaven that I trusted. I’d told him Azrael would be coming, and he’d told others. Azrael had helped to save Heaven, but he’d done it without risking his own life—only the lives of his brothers. It was his way, self-serving, which I didn’t think had gone unnoticed in the past. I thought his was a reckoning that was a long time coming, the battle the final straw. It helped as well that Ishiah had dropped a word in the right ears, pointed out that while Azrael had helped to sacrifice others in the service of Heaven, in the end I was the one who had destroyed Cronus. Killing me, that lowered Azrael to païen behavior . . . or worse, the demonic kind. Azrael had rank, but he had no friends among his fellow archangels, ones with the most will on high. With that will, they could make decisions Azrael wasn’t going to like.

  “You don’t deserve to live,” he hissed. “Life is wasted on the filth that is you.”

  “Is that any way to be?” I tsked. “You deserve to live, Azrael, for all time, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  The hands of the other archangels fastened onto his arms as he reached for my throat. They pulled him up and off the sword. I dropped the weapon to the floor; I waggled my fingers at him in a mocking good-bye. “Send me a postcard from Down Under, that is if Eligos doesn’t eat you.” It didn’t take the best to kill me anymore, but you at least had to be good. Azrael didn’t meet either definition of the word.

  The angels left, taking Azrael with them . . . Ishiah too, although I assumed they’d drop him someplace nicer, such as home back in New York. Other angels, Ishiah had assured me when I’d told him what Azrael would do, had been watching over Zeke and Griffin, as little as they’d liked it. That was Heaven’s problem, not mine. If I saved reality, including their feathered asses, they owed me one. Keeping my boys safe had been that one. At least it had turned out to be only one night under the crystal eyes of Heaven’s guardians. Trying to sleep knowing they were hanging around . . . It was worse than sneaking in past curfew when you had a mama with a hand quick to swat trickster butt.

  Long-gone days.

  I hit the pillows to plump them up and watched as Leo came out of his closet, leaving his shotgun behind. I trusted Ishiah . . . some, but trust or not, it was always smart to have a backup plan.

  “Exactly how many men in a bedroom does it take to satisfy you?” The raven tattoo on his chest flapped its wings, which actually meant Leo was flexing. Men and gods, the vanity never ended. Sometimes you had to love that about them.

  “That’s an odd question coming from a man who just came out of the closet,” I pointed out as I pulled the covers back for him.

  He slid under them and wrapped his arm around me as I turned on my side, facing him instead of the picture of my brother. “Did you notice this time?” His hair was loose and far longer than mine, but that wasn’t what he was talking about.

  Men and gods and one who was both.

  “That you were going to take on Azrael nude?” I moved my hand under the pillow and pulled out the raven feather I kept with me always. I hadn’t lost it with Trixsta. I didn’t think I could’ve lost it if I wanted to, but I could give it back. “I noticed.” I put the feather in his hand and folded his fingers around it. “I don’t think I need this anymore.”

  He tightened his fingers and hand into a fist, then opened it. The feather was gone, home inside him. “We are the same, you know. In all the ways that are right. Our differences, they are what brought us together in the beginning. Our spots, faded or not, make us whole. They don’t separate us.”

  “From one leopard to another?” I asked, skimming fingers through a fall of hair suddenly full of black feathers.

  “From one leopard to another,” he confirmed before kissing me.

  It wasn’t sun and warmth. It was dark and cool, shadows and tricks, the echo of the end of the world, and the potential for the same locked deep inside. Locks can be broken and trust was nearly a fairy tale to me, but I knew if Leo’s lock ever did break, it wouldn’t matter. My trust in him never would, whether I was trickster or human.

  And I did like being human, vulnerabilities and all. It made seizing victory and grabbing that gold ring more difficult, but all the more satisfying for it. Yes, I definitely liked this human life. I might come to love it. Only time would tell there, but for today? For this moment, drowned in feathers, silver silk, and the faintest scent of honeysuckle from a Tennessee summer night?

  Life was sweet all right.

  Sweet as it came.

  About the Author

  Rob—short for Robyn (yes, he is really a she)—Thurman lives in Indiana, land of rolling hills and cows, deer, and wild turkeys. Many, many turkeys. She is also the author of the Cal Leandros series: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse , Deathwish, and Roadkill; a stand-alone novel, Chimera; and a story in the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. She is also the author of Trick of the Light, the first book in the Trickster Novels series.

  Besides wild, ravenous turkeys, the velociraptors of Indiana, she has a dog (if you don’t have a dog, how do you live?)—one hundred pounds of Siberian husky. He looks like a wolf, has paws the size of a person’s hand, ice blue eyes, teeth out of a Godzilla movie, and the ferocious habit of hiding under the kitchen table and peeing on himself when strangers come by. Fortunately, she has another dog that is a little more invested in keeping the food source alive. By the way, the dogs were adopted from shelters. They were fully grown, already house-trained, and grateful as hell. Think about it next time you’re looking for a Rover or Fluffy.

  For updates, teasers, deleted scenes, and various other extras, visit the author at www.robthurman.net and at her LiveJournal.

  Read on for an exciting excerpt

  from the next Cal Leandros novel

  BLACKOUT

  by Rob Thurman

  Coming in March 2011 from Roc

  I was a killer. I woke up knowing that before I knew anything else.

  There was a moment between sleeping and waking where I swung lazily. The dark was my hammock, moving back and forth. One way was a deeper darkness, a longer sleep. But there was more than darkness there. There were trees past the black, hundreds and thousands of trees.

  And an ocean, blue as a crayon fresh from a brand-new box. A ship rode on its waves with sails white as a seagull’s wings, flying a flag as black as the seabird’s eyes.

  There were dark-eyed princesses named after lilies.

  Waterfalls that fell forever.

  Flying.

  Tree houses.

  It was a place where no one could find you. A safe place. Of it all, vibrant and amazing, the one thing I wanted to sink my fingers into and hang on to for my life was that last: a safe place.

  Sanctuary.

  But all that disappeared when I swung the other way, where there were sibilant whispers, an unpleasant clicking—insectile and ominous—and a cold, bone deep and embedded in every part of me. If I’d had a choice, I would’ve gone with sleep, safe in the trees. Who wouldn’t? But I didn’t have that warm and comforting option. Instead I was slapped in the face with icy water. That did the trick of swinging me hard in the wrong direction and keeping me there. I opened my eyes, blinked several times, and licked the taste of salt from my lips. It was still dark, but not nearly as dark as when my eyes had been shut. There was a scattering of stars overhead and a bright full moon. The white light reflected as shattered shards in the water washing over my legs and up to my chest. It looked like splinters of ice. It felt cold enough to be. There was the smell of seaweed and dead fish in the air. More seaweed was tangled around my hand when I lifted it, the same hand that held a gun. A big gun.

  A priest, a rabbi, and a killer walk into a bar . . .

  A killer woke up on that beach, and that killer was me. How did I know that? It wasn�
�t difficult. I slowly propped myself up on my elbows, my hand refusing to drop the gun it held, and I took a look around me to see a stretch of water and sand littered with bodies, bodies with bullet holes in them. The gun in my hand was lighter than it should’ve been. That meant an empty clip. It didn’t take an Einstein to work out that calculation. The fact that the bodies weren’t my first concern—it was pissing and food actually, in that order—helped too. Killers have different priorities.

  I could piss here. I wasn’t a frigging Rodeo Drive princess. There were only the night, the ocean, and me. I could whip it out and let fly. But the food? Where would I get the food? Where was the nearest restaurant or take-out place? Where was I? Because this wasn’t right. This wasn’t home. I dragged my feet up through the wet sand, bent my knees, and pushed up to stagger to my feet to get my bearings. I might have been lost. I felt lost, but I only needed to look closer, to recognize some landmarks and I’d be fine. But I didn’t. I didn’t recognize shit. I had no idea where I was, and I was not fine.

  I was the furthest from fine as those bodies on the sand were.

  That’s when the killer realized something: I knew what I was, all right, but I didn’t have a goddamn idea who.

  I reached for me and I wasn’t there. I took a step into my own head and fell. There was nothing there to hold me up. There was no home and there was no me. Nothing to grab or ground me—no memories, only one big gaping hole filled with a cliché. And that—being a cliché? It bothered me more than the killer part. That part I took so much in stride that I’d automatically used my free hand to start dragging the bodies further out into the water, where they’d be carried away. Out of sight, out of mind. The killer in me needed no direction. It knew it wasn’t Joe Average, law-abiding citizen. It knew it couldn’t be caught with bodies and definitely not these bodies.