I reached across the driver and grabbed the guy by his shiny lapel, dragging him through the window until he landed on his ass in the dirt. “I guess I don’t know what’s good for me,” I said. “Possibly because I’m not a lady.”
I ejected the clip from the pistol and worked the slide to pop out the bullet in the chamber. I pulled the firing pin for good measure and tossed the gun next to the thug. “Take your buddy and get lost,” I said.
The guy squirmed through the dirt toward the gun, and I put my boot down on his hand. After the shitty morning so far, the pop of his first and second knuckle was more than a little satisfying. “I don’t know if you’re deaf or dumb or both, asshole.”
He mumbled out a scream and I bore down with the ball of my foot. “Pack up your pal here, go out to the interstate, and stick out your thumb.” I lifted my foot away as a show of good faith. “We clear?”
The guy jumped up and got his buddy up with his good hand. “Bitch,” he spat over his shoulder as they limped away.
I got into the Lexus and pushed the button to move the seat forward. The driver had a good six or seven inches on me.
Hurting him felt good. I usually didn’t stomp all over humans like that unless I was working. I certainly didn’t go tossing around gangsters twice my size. I could still throw out my back or rip a tendon, but I didn’t care right now. I pulled into the parking lot of the diner. Gravel sprayed from under the car’s wheels. The interior smelled like leather and cigarettes and musty Russian aftershave.
I decided I liked the driver’s seat of one of these a lot better than the trunk.
Clint stared at me as I climbed out. “What did you do?”
“Got us a new car,” I said, shoving the keys into my pocket. “I was tired of our thighs touching. No offense.”
I climbed the creaky steps to the diner and pushed open the metal door. It was oval and coated in riveted chrome, like the hatch of a spaceship. Clint followed me, narrowly ducking the door as it swung back. I was a tiny bit disappointed it didn’t smack him in the face, but maybe it was just the mood I was in.
Leo was sitting in the last booth, nursing a chipped brown mug. I slid into the booth next to him. “Your dad sent two guys to give you a ride back to his place.”
He started to jump up, but I shook my head. “I took care of it.”
“For the record, I did not ask you to do that,” Clint said, sitting down across from us. “I especially didn’t ask you to commit grand theft auto.”
“Instinctively, I sensed that you wanted me to,” I said. “We have that kind of relationship.”
Leo massaged a point between his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I knew Sergei was pissed off, but I didn’t think he’d send a crew.”
“Wasn’t much of a crew,” Clint admitted. “They ran off pretty quick.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Leo said to me. “For all you know, he might have sent a couple of guys to throw blood conjuring around and you’d be dead.”
I shrugged as the waitress approached with coffee. “You had blood conjuring on your side and I still kicked your ass.”
“I didn’t use it on you,” Leo muttered. “And at most it was a mutual ass-kicking.”
“You’re grumpy before you’ve finished your coffee,” I said, smiling at him. Even though I still hurt, bone-deep aches all through me, the mental fog of Lilith’s nightmare was starting to lift. I almost felt like it wasn’t a hardship just to be breathing, which was something I hadn’t felt in a handful of decades.
Leo smiled back over the rim of his mug as our waitress put two more down and poured coffee. She’d washed her pink uniform so many times it was almost white, and the name tag was as chipped as the mugs on our table. It said her name was Naomi. She was young but worn-out, just like her uniform and her off-white corrective shoes. Her hair was bleached until the blond hit an abrupt DMZ of dishwater brown about two inches from her scalp.
She smiled, though, and it reached her eyes. “What can I get you folks?”
Leo lifted his mug. “Just a refill, hon.”
“Eggs,” Clint said. “Sunny side up, and some plain wheat toast.”
Naomi scribbled away and then turned to me. I tried to smile at her, but the adrenaline of beating on the Russians was gone, and what occurred to me was to curl up and sleep in the booth for a few hours.
“Just coffee,” I said quietly.
“Be right back with all that,” Naomi said, pouring and walking away. I sipped the coffee and winced. It wasn’t so much coffee as mop water that had at one point in its storied history come in contact with coffee grounds.
I spit it back into the cup. “This is shit. Being tailed by a couple of stone killers is actually preferable.”
“How did those men find us?” Clint demanded of Leo. “What did they want?”
Leo shrugged. “No fuckin’ clue. I’m guessing they were going to practice some light bondage on me and drive me back to Vegas to have a conversation with my father.”
“Veronica,” I said quietly. Leo shot me a sharp glare.
“She wouldn’t. She and I have an understanding.”
He’d also said she had her own girls and house to protect, but I let it go. It wasn’t my business. I didn’t get involved with humans. Leo would see eventually there was no point in sticking with Clint and me if he wanted to keep breathing.
I hoped he’d land on his feet. I imagined he was good at disappearing, and I hoped he found a place where he could forget about how wrong things had gone for him since we’d collided in that alley behind the strip club. I always hoped that people like Leo got away clean, although more likely he’d end up in the foundation of a new casino on the Strip about the time Lilith was peeling me like a grape.
Naomi set down Clint’s plate and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Give me a holler if you need anything else, okay?”
He gave her a radiant smile and she blushed as she walked back to the counter. Aside from a couple of ancient truckers as weather-beaten as the tires on their rigs, we were the only people in the diner.
“So are your friends in Denver going to sell us out as well?” Clint said to Leo, shoveling eggs into his mouth.
“Veronica isn’t your problem,” Leo growled. “Worry about Lilith and let me worry about my old man, all right, Clarence?”
“Speaking of that particular devil, Ava never did answer my question,” Clint said, turning to me. “Lilith spared you.”
“Lilith tortured her,” Leo said. “Sent her out into the snow to freeze. Let it go, for fuck’s sake. She could have dimed your ass out anytime. You should be thanking her, not complaining.”
“Torture, I have no doubt. Lilith excels at extracting every last drop of misery from a person, body and soul. Yet Ava’s alive,” Clint said. “So the question remains: why?”
The horrible coffee soured in my stomach. I didn’t care that Clint didn’t trust me—hell, I sure wouldn’t trust me if I was sitting on his side of the table—but all I could think of was the expression on Lilith’s face, the thin-lipped determination that reminded me of the warlocks I chased. Across ice, down the polished halls of mansions, through dingy Hell’s Kitchen alleys that reeked of piss and day-old garbage. That face was always the same. They still thought they could win, and they were more than willing to go through me to cling to a few more minutes of life.
Sooner or later, they realized they couldn’t cheat Death. The ones who never did were dangerous.
I slid out of the booth, boots thumping on the lumpy vinyl floor. “Excuse me,” I muttered, making a run for the bathroom.
Naomi stared at me until I slammed the door in her face. A light clicked on above me, filling the tiny space with the kind of harsh light that makes you look two steps from dead even if you’re not on the wrong end of twenty-four hours with no sleep and a demon rooting a
round inside your head. I sat on the lid of the toilet and pressed the heels of my hands into my burning eyes. After a minute, Leo knocked on the door. I grabbed a wad of tissue and swiped at the dampness on my face.
“Go away.”
“Come on, Ava,” he said. “He was being a jackass. Don’t let it get to you.”
I reached up and flicked the lock off. Leo stepped in and shut the door behind him. There was barely room for the two of us in the tiny space, even when he leaned against the wall.
“We can’t keep this up,” I said quietly. “She’ll find us sooner or later.”
“I told you to just give up the parakeet out there,” Leo said. “You don’t deserve this. Whatever he did, let him suffer for it. Why should we have to be involved in a slap fight between Lilith and some Fallen?”
“Because if I hand him over, Lilith will have no use for me, and she’ll kill me,” I grumbled. “I don’t like the guy either, but me being a line on Clint is the only assurance I have Lilith won’t skin me for what I did to Gary.”
“If he was such a big loss, trust me, Lilith would have already snapped your head off like a Pez dispenser,” Leo said. “Maybe we do turn him over, and we both walk. That’s what a smart deal would be for Lilith.”
“Lilith’s smart,” I agreed, “but she’s also clinically insane. Sticking with the angel is the right thing to do.”
Leo sighed, but then nodded. “Okay. You’re the one who hangs around Hellspawn. I’ll stick with you, but if he gives me one more side-eye I’m going to stick him in the throat and watch him drown in his own blood.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I stood up and opened the door. Naomi eyed us but was smart enough to keep her opinions to herself. Clint watched me carefully as I came back and sat in the booth. “I apologize. I was out of line.”
“Yeah, you were.” I rolled the bundled napkin/silverware back and forth with my index finger. Clint looked like he wanted to say something else, then sighed.
“I appreciate what you did, more than you know. Lilith has a talent for getting under your skin and digging around until you’re just a broken pile of flesh. I should have remembered that.”
“She’s pretty pissed at you,” I muttered. “What’d you do, break up with her in a text?”
Leo snorted, and Clint’s mouth turned down. “It’s a long story. I’m sorry she threatened you, and I’m sorry she made you dream-walk. Demons aren’t as powerful here as they are in Hell and they like to piggyback on those who can more easily move across barriers and conjuring.”
“She didn’t threaten me, exactly,” I said. The sensation of Lilith in my head was still there, like I had an empty spot behind my eye socket that was slowly filling up with poison, drop by drop. I didn’t know if I’d be able to forget her face as she’d dug her nails into the skin of my neck. I was sporting a crop of scratches this morning like I’d tried on a tie made of barbed wire.
“She doesn’t have to say much to terrify people,” Clint muttered. “She’s got Hell’s most impressive set of crazy eyes.”
“All she said was she’d worked too long to let me and Gary keep her from the spotlight,” I said. “I have a feeling she’ll say more to you.”
Clint’s fork dropped from his fingers and clattered against his plate before it flipped off the table onto the floor. Naomi hurried over to pick it up, and he shooed her away. “It’s fine,” he said tightly. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Leo watched Clint like he’d just jumped up on the table and started singing selections from West Side Story. “What is your problem, man?”
Clint ignored him and leaned across the table until he was close enough that I could see the tiny lines around the black holes of his eyes and the two days’ worth of stubble sprinkling his jaw. “Tell me exactly what she said to you,” he growled. “Word for word. Don’t leave anything out.”
I tried to draw back, but Clint grabbed my wrist. Leo jumped up, but I shook my head. Clint would hurt him, and I didn’t want Leo to be hurt. Especially not because of me.
“She said that she had worked too long for a hellhound with delusions of grandeur to keep her out of the light,” I said quietly, trying not to squirm at the pressure of his fingers on my wrist. “And she said she’d get what she wanted from you one way or another. Then she told me my dreams were depressing her and I woke up because Leo was yelling at me.”
“I was yelling because she was screaming in agony, for the record,” Leo said. “Let go of her, Clint. Now.”
Clint released me, flopping back against his seat and shoving his hands through his hair. “That bitch,” he whispered. “That crazy, crazy bitch.”
He leaned forward again, scrubbing at the skin on his temples. I realized I was sitting tensed up, waiting for him to hit me or explode. I wouldn’t put money on either. I’d said something that I didn’t understand the significance of, and that usually meant Gary was about to smack me around until he was less frustrated with his own shortcomings.
I also realized, almost as an afterthought, that I wouldn’t let him. Maybe it was having Leo there, maybe I just didn’t care anymore. But as Clint buried his face in his hands, I curled my fists and waited for the slap. I didn’t know how I’d respond, but I was done covering my head and praying for it to be over.
Clint moved his hands after a time, but he didn’t reach for me. He shut his eyes and then took a deep breath. “Lilith was the first,” he said.
“The first what?” Leo asked. “What is going on here, Clarence? Why are you lying to us?”
“I’m not lying,” Clint said. “I just don’t feel the need to share every little thing with a criminal I barely know.” He looked to me. “You know how I told you the Fallen were scattered to the four corners of Earth?”
I nodded. Naomi and the line cook were at the other end of the diner, chatting, and the two truckers paid up and left. We were as private as we were going to get.
“We didn’t go willingly.” Clint sighed. “When we left the Kingdom, Hell was a barren place. No life, no light, nothing. It was a penal colony. There weren’t many of us, not compared to the ranks who still believed.”
“If you’re going to tell me that a big angry sky man with a beard threw you into jail,” Leo said, “please spare me. I don’t believe and before that I was mostly raised by my very Jewish mother, so you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“The Host rule the Kingdom,” Clint said, narrowing his eyes. “Nine generals who give the orders. There’s nothing higher than them, so you can relax.”
“Okay, so you and your buddies had an argument with your bosses and you quit,” Leo said. “Great. Why does this matter to Lilith?”
“Because we made them,” Clint said quietly. “All of them.”
“Demons?” I said. He nodded. He looked ashamed, like I’d just gotten him to admit Lilith was after him because he’d run her over and just kept driving.
“We needed help. Labor, companionship, a real chance at having a life, even if it wasn’t the one we’d left in the Kingdom. So we each put our blood and our bone into a vessel. We mixed it with the earth of Hell and pooled our magic.”
His words faltered, and Leo offered him a fifth of vodka from inside his jacket. I was starting to think Leo’s ability to procure booze was his true magical skill.
Clint took a pull, screwing the cap back on with shaking fingers. A tanker rumbled by on the road outside and he practically flew out of the booth. Whatever he was telling us had him spooked, and that got me spooked. Leo had probably been right—I should have washed my hands of Clint back in Wyoming.
Too late for regrets now. I’d tried to jettison most of them when I died. If I didn’t, they’d weigh me down until they crushed me.
Clint swallowed the vodka, made a face, and propped his elbow on the cracked plastic tabletop. “Lilith was the first. Then there were others.
We intermarried, gave rise to hybrids, and then the demons bred with one another. Eventually . . . eventually there were hundreds of them for every one of us. There was violence . . . horrible things done to the Fallen, and to the demons as retribution. There were some Fallen who could never reconcile what we’d done to survive who believed they should be exterminated, and as for the demons . . .”
His voice was so low I could barely hear him, and his hands shook until he put them flat on the table. I waited, trying to be patient, but I felt like I’d leap out of my skin at the slightest sound. “They resented their very creation, and they attempted to crush us entirely. We Fallen found the deepest part of Hell. We decided we had to confine the demons there, for our own safety. But we’d been betrayed.”
He went silent, and I traded a look with Leo. Clint had to see how creating a slave race and then shoving them into a hole in the ground when they got troublesome wasn’t going to work out in his favor. I’d thought Hellspawn were arrogant, but the Fallen had them beat by a mile.
“They came for us,” Clint said. “They tore us from our home. They created their own abominations, the reapers and the . . .” He trailed off, not looking at me.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know I’m an abomination.”
“When they took over, they used the Pit to contain the damned, the human souls the reapers collected,” Clint said. “Hellspawn can’t enter, and the damned can’t leave. The spokes of Hell turn on the axle of the Pit, the power the damned emanate when they cross into Hell. The only place in Hell with light.” He drew a deep breath. “The Fallen call it Tartarus.”
“All right,” Leo said, holding up his hands. “Look, story time is fun and all, but the fact that Lilith is pissed you people enslaved her is so far from mine or Ava’s problem, it’s in the next fucking state.”
“I’m not finished,” Clint growled. “Tartarus is sealed. Only a human soul can pass through the gates. If the gates ever opened, there would be chaos. And chaos is what Lilith loves more than life itself.”
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