by Reine, SM
“Jesus, Neuma.”
“I think I need a witch,” she whispered. Half-demons were fragile creatures. They couldn’t heal on their own—given a few hours, they could bleed to death from a paper cut. “Treeny, up in Craven’s—cocktail waitress for the sport’s bar—she can do a little hocus pocus.”
Elise pulled Neuma’s arm over her shoulder and supported her as they limped into the hallway. The facial injury wasn’t the worst of it. The robe gapped to show a missing chunk of flesh in her thigh.
They took the stairs to the manager’s office, slowly and carefully.
“Tell me who attacked you,” Elise said.
“Name’s Zohak. This thing, this demon—he took all our money, and I couldn’t do shit about it. He bit my leg and fucking laughed at me.”
“You couldn’t have fought?”
“I did,” Neuma said. “But half the bouncers left when David Nicholas died. There’s nobody left to help during the day anymore.”
They reached the office, and Elise helped her sit on the executive chair. The room was empty aside from a single filing cabinet and paperwork scattered on the desk. Neuma had been trying to keep up on bills and taxes, but she didn’t have the organizational skills.
“Wait here,” Elise said. “I’ll find Treeny.”
It wasn’t hard to locate the cocktail waitress. Most of the employees had worked for Craven’s when Elise and Death’s Hand destroyed half of the casino, and they were properly intimidated by her. She ordered the first demon she spotted to send Treeny to the office, and they scurried off to make it happen.
The waitress met them upstairs a few minutes later. She wore a tiny dress that barely covered her butt, hugged an empty drink tray to her chest, and trembled under Elise’s scrutiny.
“What’s up?” Treeny asked. To her credit, her voice didn’t shake nearly as much as her knees. A pentacle ring sparkled on her thumb. It danced with silver light in the corner of Elise’s vision, which meant it was enchanted.
“I’m told you can heal,” she said, wiping her hands off with a tissue. She had patched up the wound on Neuma’s thigh to slow the bleeding, but the bartender’s skin was ashen, and she could barely lift her head.
Treeny’s face lit up. “Oh. Yeah. A little, if I have time for a ritual. But I’ll need supplies.”
“You’ve got fifteen minutes to get them. Go fast.” The witch ran off, and Elise helped Neuma to the bathroom attached to the office, and the bartender washed the blood off her bruised face. “I don’t think you’re stripping tonight.”
“No kidding. That’s not sexy at all, huh?” Neuma tilted her head to study the damage in the mirror. “Forget it. I’ll have to call someone in, if I don’t die first.” She heaved a sigh. “Thanks for helping, doll. Is there a reason you came to see me? Are you covering my shift tonight?”
In the aftermath of the attack, Elise had completely forgotten that she visited Craven’s for a reason. “I got some cash, so I wanted to pay my bar tab. What am I up to this week—eighty bucks?”
“Nothing. It’s on the house.” Neuma tried to smile, and failed. Her skin had completely lost its usual glow. “It could be on the house forever if you would help me.”
Elise’s mouth twisted. Neuma had been trying to talk her into taking over Eloquent Blood and Craven’s casino—which continued to operate only by habit and the force of Neuma’s will since the overlord died—for the last several weeks. Every time she showed up for a drink, it was the same thing again. Help me, and, I need you.
It was getting on her nerves. Elise couldn’t help them—she couldn’t help anyone.
But the half-succubus’s eyes were wide and pathetic. It was getting harder to resist her pleas. “I just can’t handle this alone anymore,” Neuma whispered when Elise didn’t respond. “I thought it would be better if we could get rid of David Nicholas. I thought I could keep up on it myself. But I can’t, and everything’s falling apart. With the Night Hag gone…”
“How many times do I have to tell you no?”
“Please. You could protect us, at least. This isn’t the first time someone’s rolled in to screw with us. If we could stop getting attacked for a few weeks, maybe we could find someone good to take charge. Maybe—”
Elise slapped two fifty dollar bills on the desk. It only left twenty for groceries, but she had been living off dried beans and rice for weeks anyway. “That’s for my tab.”
“Don’t go! Zohak will be back—he said he would.”
“I have stuff to do. Try not to die. I’ll see you later.”
“Elise!”
She left the office without looking back, and bumped into Treeny on the stairs. Elise didn’t need to see Neuma—that pathetic stare was stamped permanently on the inside of her skull.
It was hard being asked for help. It was even harder to deny it.
The walk to her new apartment was short—just two blocks from Craven’s. But even that distance was miserable in the afternoon sun. It was the kind of heat that melted the rubber on shoes and turned metal into a searing brand. Elise bumped the crosswalk button with her hip.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she crossed the street. She ducked under an awning’s shade to check the screen.
When she saw the number, her heart stopped. It took her two tries to speak. “Hello?”
“Hey, Kavanagh,” responded a masculine voice. “It’s McIntyre.”
Elise knew immediately that he was calling for help—and this time, she wouldn’t be able to say no.
III
Lucas McIntyre wasn’t a patient man. He didn’t have to be. He lived life on his own schedule, and he liked to be in constant motion—jogging in the desert behind his mobile home, or lifting weights, or doing whatever chores his wife assigned that day. It was how he lived since he gave up on high school at the ripe age of fifteen and moved to his grandma’s trailer outside Las Vegas.
He wasn’t the most educated man, either, but he took care of his family. Always working, always surviving. Waiting was foreign to him.
Yet he found himself in the parking garage outside McCarran International Airport at eleven fifty-five at night, sitting on the hood of his 1983 Ranger, and trying not to go crazy while he waited for help to arrive.
McIntyre dug under his fingernails with a flip knife. The blade was damaged—etched by the ichor spilled by spider-demons the size of his truck.
They had wandered out of the north and tried to kill him. All the bad stuff came from the north.
He flicked dirt, dried blood, and dead skin onto the pavement and checked his watch again. The scratched face said only a minute had passed. He flipped the knife shut, then open again. He put it in his pocket. Took it out. Checked the time.
Still eleven fifty-six.
Finally, he caught a glance of the person he was waiting for on the other side of the walkway. He raised an arm to catch her attention. She strode over with some guy he didn’t recognize.
Elise Kavanagh had aged and softened since the last time McIntyre saw her. She used to be a hard motherfucker—all hard lines and scars and barely-bridled fury. Years later, she looked like any other woman. Lots of brownish hair. A few more scars that she tried to cover with a long-sleeved blouse, fingerless gloves, and knee-length shorts.
She didn’t look anything like the person who helped him take down a centuria of demons in the Grand Canyon eight years back.
They gripped each other’s wrists in greeting. There was something hard under her sleeve—knife sheaths. So she hadn’t changed that much after all.
“Security fucked up on that,” he said by way of hello.
“Checked baggage. I put them on after I got off the plane.” Her speech was more precise than it used to be. Elise had gotten educated.
He jerked his chin at the man behind her. “The hell is this? Where’s James?”
Elise swayed on her feet and put a hand to her forehead. She took a deep breath. After a beat, she straightened again, and gave no sign of
her momentary weakness. “Lucas McIntyre, meet Anthony Morales. He hunts with me.”
Anthony set his suitcase on the ground and shook hands with McIntyre. “I’m her boyfriend, actually.” His skin was creamy brown, and a cowlick made his hair stick up in front. There wasn’t a visible scar on his body.
McIntyre chewed on the corner of his mouth as he studied both of them. By the way Elise stood two feet away and barely acknowledged Anthony’s existence, they looked about as intimate as a lion and the gazelle she would have for dinner. Leticia was going to have a field day with them. “All right,” he finally said. “Put everything in back.”
He opened the camper shell. They had only brought a suitcase and a backpack. Anthony threw the first one in, but Elise hung onto the second as they climbed into his truck.
“How’s Leticia?” she asked. He could tell she was just trying to be polite. That was new for her, too.
“She’s in a good mood,” McIntyre said. He threw the truck into gear.
Elise arched an eyebrow. “At least that’s one of you.”
He hadn’t been in a good mood since the doctor told him that fluid levels were low in his wife’s womb—whatever the hell that meant—and that her cervix was opening. Those two things were bad, apparently. She’d been on bed rest for weeks, and they had an induction scheduled if she didn’t “stabilize,” even though she wasn’t due for another month.
She hadn’t stabilized. Her induction was in five hours.
It was silence in the truck as they got on the highway. Elise’s supposed boyfriend was staring out the window with puffy red eyes. She hugged the backpack to her chest and picked at her thumbnail.
The road out of Vegas was long, and they had to go through a lot of suburbs to get there, but traffic was pretty much dead. It wasn’t long before the downtown lights receded.
“Thanks for coming,” McIntyre said after a few dozen miles of listening to static-filled country on the radio.
Elise gave a slight shake, like she was clearing her head. “You called in a really big favor to drag me down here. I had to borrow three hundred bucks off James to even make the flight. So let’s get to it—what do you need?”
“I emailed all the info I have to you.”
“Anthony and I got on the plane an hour after you called. I didn’t have time to read your six attachments,” she said. “Give a recap and save me a few minutes.”
McIntyre blew a breath out of his lips. “Okay. The summit runs tomorrow through Sunday afternoon. You sign in at—”
“What summit?” Anthony interrupted. He sounded more annoyed than interested.
“It’s this thing they hold every fifty years,” Elise said. “Angels and demons hash out their issues while kopides make sure nobody dies. It’s between the Reno and Vegas territories this year, but I wasn’t invited. I didn’t plan on going.”
“That’s because everyone thinks you’re dead,” McIntyre said. “Anyway, they only invite the best of the demon hunters.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m think I was invited because I know most of the kopides alive right now. But Tish is going into the hospital in the morning.”
Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Elise watching him. Her skin glowed in the street lights as they soared past. “So what? You want me to go to the hospital and hold your wife’s hand?”
“I want you to go to the summit and pretend to be me.”
She laughed. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her laugh before, and it turned out that it wasn’t a particularly nice or happy sound. “Are you serious?”
“You’ve got to do it. There’s these guys at the summit called The Union of Kopides and Aspides—’The Union’ for short. They’ve taken over the whole thing.”
“Great. If the Union’s got things covered, you don’t need to attend.”
“These guys are trying to become a big player. They got half of the European territories under control in the last couple of years, and now they’re taking over of all of goddamn North America. They’re turning kopides into soldiers. You surrender your territory, get enlisted, get trained, and get reassigned to somewhere new. And they’re matching every kopis who doesn’t have an aspis to a witch.”
She frowned. “That’s impossible. I would have heard about that happening.”
McIntyre took the exit off the freeway. The road noises grew softer as he slowed, and it filled the car with ominous quiet. “You’ve been out of it too long. They’ve got Mexico. French Canada, too. The US is a big nut to crack, so they’re starting with this summit. If I can’t make a good show and get them to back off, they’ll take Vegas.”
“Can they make you enlist?” Elise asked.
“I hear they’re pretty convincing.” McIntyre stopped at a four way intersection. It was completely dead, but he didn’t go through. He took his hands off the wheel. “They could take everything I’ve got. You’re the only one who can help me.”
“They’ll know I’m not you.”
“Sure, they would. But this guy can pretend to be me, and he’s nobody. He won’t be recognized,” he said, waving at Elise’s boyfriend. “I get around with the local demons, but I’ve never met the Union; as far as I know, they don’t have any pictures on file. So your boyfriend is me, and then you say you’re Leticia.”
Elise’s mouth twisted like she tasted something sour. “It’s a bad idea.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Anthony didn’t seem concerned about Elise’s decision. He went back to staring out the window, even though there was nothing to see—they were beyond the last of the manicured suburbs, and there were trailers on one side and empty desert on the other.
The Elise he used to know would have refused. She wasn’t one for sympathy. He could only hope that saving her ass a half dozen times would be enough to coerce her.
But she didn’t need to be coerced. “Fine,” she said. “I’m already here anyway.”
He didn’t thank her. He knew she wouldn’t like that. But he nodded, and she nodded back, and that was more than enough. McIntyre stepped on the gas and everyone in the truck went back to ignoring each other.
McIntyre’s plot of land was in the hills at the end of a long, narrow dirt road flanked by the silhouettes of Joshua trees. When they pulled up in his truck, a cat darted out of the space under the stairs and disappeared beyond the pool of light from the spotlight over the door. Even at night, Elise could tell that their mobile home had been through a lot of battles since her last visit. The side panels had been replaced and patched several times. The lattice skirting was broken in a few places. One of the windows had plastic over it.
Leticia waited for them on the front steps. She had to grip the rail to haul herself to her feet. Her hair was a faded shade of pink that had grown out to show natural dirty blond at the roots, and her belly was so big that it stuck out of the bottom of her tank top.
“Hey!” She waddled over to hug Elise, but faltered mid-step when she saw Anthony. “That’s not James.”
The very mention of his name made Elise’s forehead ache, and for a confusing moment, she was no longer in the Nevada desert. Instead, she saw the vaulted ceiling of a moonlit condo in California, and a pair of hands much larger than hers cupping the leather spine of a book as gently as an infant. James was on vacation to meet his girlfriend’s family, and he wasn’t sleeping.
She had gotten used to the disorientation of having her mind split by her aspis’s consciousness. She recovered faster every time. “James is busy,” Elise said with a small shake to clear her vision. “This is Anthony. Anthony, this is Leticia McIntyre.”
He grunted as he grabbed the suitcase out of the truck.
“Nice guy,” Leticia said dryly. She stretched up on her toes to peck McIntyre’s cheek. “Dana’s sleeping in our bed. We can put them up in her room.”
Sleep in a child’s room? It sounded about as much fun as trying to have a decent conversation with Anthony. “I don’t need to sleep,” Elise said.
Leticia rolled her eyes. “Don’t pull that kopis ‘constant vigilance’ bullshit on me. I don’t think it’s as cool as you do. Come on, get inside. Walk quiet. If we wake Dana, she’ll be up all night.”
Although the mobile home was small and old, Leticia kept the inside tidy. Their sixty-inch flat screen took up one entire wall and played a superhero movie on mute. It smelled like new paint inside the trailer, and the paneling was a cheerful shade of gold.
Leticia leaned her massive girth against the arm of a white leather couch backed by ram horns. It looked recent, too—there were imprints in the carpet where an older, smaller couch used to sit.
“You’re doing well,” Elise said.
McIntyre almost looked embarrassed. “We get pretty good tithes.”
“You’re tithing from the local demons now?”
He shrugged by way of response. “Put your stuff in there. That’s where you’re sleeping,” he said, pointing at a door as Anthony entered.
Anthony took the suitcase into waiting bedroom, shut the door, and didn’t come out again.
Both of the McIntyres looked at Elise. She didn’t feel like trying to excuse him—he had been like that for weeks—and remained silent.
She moved to sit on the couch, but changed her mind when she noticed there wasn’t any room. Leticia had taken over half of it with a nest of pillows and boxes of leftover Mexican food.
“How much are the tithes?” Elise pressed.
McIntyre just shrugged again and got two beers out of the fridge. He opened both of them with his pocketknife.
“Two and a half percent,” Leticia said. “Those demons were always harping on us for mediation. I figured we might as well get paid for it, so we set up a contract. Now when we broker a deal with a demon that wants to build a new casino or something, we get paid, too—and then some off the top of their profits. Protection money sounds mercenary, but we earn it.”
