The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Reyes hadn’t noticed me noticing the handcuffs. He was pretty deep in thought, though I had little doubt he not only knew I was there, but also knew where my mind had wandered.

  Refocusing on his office, I scanned the photos he still had up. I’d been surprised the first time I walked into it last week after being gone for so long. Everything else in our lives had been upgraded, but the bar and grill he’d left exactly as my father had kept it. Still, it was one thing to leave the restaurant the same. It was another to leave the office the same.

  Then I noticed one tiny change. He’d actually removed several of the pictures my dad had scattered here and there. The only ones remaining were the ones with me in them. I didn’t even have to be the focal point of the picture. I could’ve been in the background, as I was in a beach photo we’d taken in SoCal when I was in grade school.

  The picture was supposed to be of my sister, Gemma, showing off her lopsided sand castle. But there I was in the background, pulling my mouth as wide as I could with my fingers and sticking out my tongue. Oh, and my eyes were crossed. No photobomb was complete without crossed eyes. Not my best look, but Reyes seemed to like it.

  “Come to shower me with ice again?” Reyes asked.

  I turned back to him. He was still poring over a stack of papers and hadn’t looked up.

  “Shower you with ice?” When he didn’t answer, I asked, “What are you working on?”

  “My will.”

  I walked around the desk in alarm. “Your will? Why do you need a will?”

  He looked up at last. “Surely, you’re joking.”

  I started to argue, but he was right. We did lead a rather hazardous life. To deny that would be ludicrous. Then again, ludicrous was my middle name.

  “I have a plan,” I said, steering the conversation away from places I was not comfortable going.

  “Does it involve my death? If so, you might want to wait another day or so. I need to get this back to our lawyers.”

  “We have lawyers?” That was cool. I’d never thought of myself as a lawyer-y type person. “Never mind that. I have a plan to get our daughter back.”

  He finally gave me his full attention. He put down the pen he’d been holding and sat back in his chair. The movement was so small, so everyday, and yet it sent a tiny rush of excitement spiraling over my skin.

  He’d rolled up his sleeves, exposing his corded forearms. His strong hands. His long, capable fingers.

  He noticed me noticing for sure that time, but instead of reaching out to me, instead of inviting me into his personal space, he waited. He simply waited. For me to speak? For me to act? I had no idea which, so I went with the former.

  “Yeah, so, for this plan to work, we are going to need a dozen syringes, a case of nitrous oxide, a serial killer, and a tank.”

  He didn’t respond, and I stood a little confounded when he didn’t mock my shopping list. He didn’t even question it, so I clarified the last item on my list.

  “You know, from the military.”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice low and smooth. “I know what a tank is.”

  “Right. I just thought you might be leaning toward a fish tank or a septic tank.”

  “No, I got it.” His gaze shimmered as he took me in, and I could see the interest sparkling in their dark depths. I wanted to shift, just a little, to straddle the other plane and see him in his supernatural form, but I got the feeling he knew when I did that, so I stopped myself.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” I asked.

  “Your plan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t actually heard it. I’ve only heard the physical requirements for it.”

  “Oh, of course.” I tried to shake out of the carnal desire racing through my veins and pooling with zero regard to my sanity in my abdomen. When I failed miserably, I walked to the other side of his desk and sat opposite him. To put some distance between us. And a large piece of wood. It didn’t help. Probably because I knew what he could do to that piece of wood to get to me if he wanted to. Clearly, however, he didn’t want to.

  I took a deep breath, but instead of relaying my plan to him, I asked, “Can you tell me what’s bothering you?”

  He didn’t move. His expression didn’t change in the least. He simply stared, his long lashes making his irises shimmer all the more in the low light.

  “We have company.”

  “And that’s bothering you? The little boy in the ceiling?”

  Before he could answer, Osh, or Osh’ekiel as he was known in the celestial realm, walked into Reyes’s office. Just strolled in like he wasn’t supposed to be somewhere else.

  “Osh,” I said, alarm rocketing through me. “Why are you here?”

  He bowed his head a moment and stuffed his hands in his pockets. As usual, he was wearing a short black top hat over his shoulder-length black hair. But today he also wore a long duster, just as black as the rest of his attire, and heavy motorcycle boots.

  Reyes stood and waited for his answer as well.

  “We had to move her.”

  A blast of heat scalded my skin as Reyes lost control of his emotions. My emotions, however, took a different turn. They pushed my heart into my throat and poured adrenaline by the bucketload through my nervous system.

  “Where is she?” I asked, stepping closer to him.

  He pulled his shoulders up to his ears and jammed his hands deeper into his jeans pockets. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  I was on him before I even had the thought. No matter that he was the deadliest Daeva—lower-level demon trained for fighting—that hell had ever seen. To me, he was a nineteen-year-old kid who knew more about my daughter than I did, and I suddenly found the situation intolerably unfair.

  I had him against the wall with one hand around his throat. He held my arm with both of his hands but didn’t try to stop me.

  Reyes was at my side in an instant. “Dutch,” he said softly, placing a hand over the one I had wrapped around Osh’s throat, but unless he planned on helping me choke the life out of the kid, he was of no use to me at that moment. So my free hand went to his throat. He raised his chin, almost as though he welcomed the contact.

  I needed to know where my daughter was. Why they had to move her was one thing, but not knowing where she was gave me few options should I need to help her.

  Valerie, who Cookie told me was one of Reyes’s servers, stopped wiping off a table, glanced inside the office, then scurried off, presumably when she noticed her boss’s ire.

  “Dutch,” he said again past the tightness in his throat. I’d slipped to the other plane and looked on as Osh’s aura spiraled like vapor around me. He didn’t fight me in the least. He still held my arm with one hand but had moved the other to my shoulder. He was lightning quick and just as deadly, so I had little doubt he was forming a plan.

  The darkness surrounding Reyes billowed around him. The flames that perpetually bathed him leaped out at me. Normally, they would have scorched. Blistered. Seared. But today they only annoyed.

  “Where is my daughter?”

  Osh simply shook his head, carrying out his orders, obedient till the last. And it was about to be his last; that much I could guarantee. My anger shook the walls around us, and I heard a high-pitched scream from the kitchen. Probably Valerie, the server.

  “Dutch,” Reyes said, “he can’t tell us. You know that.”

  “Then he’ll die wishing he could.”

  If I’d been paying closer attention to my husband, I would have seen the sideways glance he offered Osh a microsecond before my face was planted into the wood floors of his office. They had turned the tables so fast, I hadn’t seen them move.

  They’d slowed time.

  And I’d stood there like a lunatic on too much lithium. I could only hope I didn’t drool.

  “Do you understand?”

  I blinked, groaning under their weight, trying to remember what they’d said
. Whatever it was, I felt yes would be the appropriate answer.

  “Yes,” I said from under a ton of limbs and torsos. Holy cow crap, they were heavy.

  “What did I say?” Reyes asked. Damn him.

  “That the two of you are going to get the fuck off me, and Osh is going to tell me where my daughter is.”

  “Wrong.”

  The weight multiplied, and I groaned, the agony of defeat almost too much to bear. As were its muscle mass and bony elbows. They had to weigh like five hundred pounds. Each.

  They had my arms locked behind my back, several knees lodged there for good measure, and one arm—Reyes’s, I assumed—was wrapped around my neck while the other one held my head down, keeping my face planted hard against the floor, so close I could see every splinter in the wood grain.

  And, sadly, I was going nowhere fast. If I could’ve spoken more clearly, I would’ve cried uncle. As it stood, I couldn’t even get enough air in my lungs to cry, period.

  “We are going to let you up if you promise not to kill anyone.” When I only groaned, I received another fifty pounds per square inch of pressure on my midsection.

  “Okay,” I half groaned, half squeaked.

  Slowly, as though to make sure I didn’t lose it again, they eased their weight off me but kept my face planted to the floor. Probably hoping I’d germinate. Sprout roots. Why else plant something so thoroughly?

  A soft feminine voice penetrated the fog of oxygen deprivation. “Is—is everything okay?”

  “No—” I started to say, but a strong hand clamped over my face.

  “Yes,” Reyes said. “Thank you.”

  A deep laugh came from behind Valerie. It had to be Sammy, the head cook. Also known as the traitor. I was clearly being subdued against my will, but did he care? Hell, no. Like the men holding me down, he probably belonged to the League of Extraordinary Assholes.

  “It’s okay, Valerie. They do this sort of thing all the time,” he said. Completely overstating the fact.

  “Oh,” she said, unsure.

  I saw feet through my tear-blurred vision as Sammy led her away.

  Then I was up. I took a lungful of air, grateful for the fact that Reyes had pinned me to the wall as a precaution. I would have fallen otherwise.

  “No fair slowing time,” I said, leaning my head back and panting.

  “You did it first,” Osh replied. He was doubled over, one hand on a knee, the other massaging his throat. Testing it with hesitant pokes from his long fingers here and there.

  Reyes had pressed his entire body against mine. It was the most action I’d seen all week, and I basked in the feel of it. The warmth as the tips of his flames licked across my face and saturated my skin.

  Then I realized what I’d just done. I’d threatened the life of one of my best friends. One of the few beings on Earth who could help protect Beep. One of the even fewer beings on Earth who would give his life to do so.

  Guilt rocketed through me. I’d never lost control like that. Or had I? Was that why the archangel Michael had tried to kill me in the diner in New York? Did I truly have no control over my powers?

  Osh coughed and then straightened, falling back against the wall kitty-corner to me. He rested his head on the wood paneling as well. Closed his eyes. Drew in long, deep breaths.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Reyes.

  He wrapped his long fingers around my neck and buried his face in my hair. He smelled like a lightning storm. His emotions electricity. His body the desert after a rain. Fresh. Starkly beautiful. Dangerous.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his breath warm on my neck.

  “I am now.”

  He pulled back, took one look at my face, then stepped out of my embrace and turned away from me. I lifted a hand to my cheek and whirled around to face a picture, trying to see myself in the reflection of the glass, but I could only see a blurred outline of my features. Still, they looked pretty unremarkable. What was so wrong with me that my own husband would turn away?

  “Your eyes,” Osh said, practically reading my mind.

  Reyes growled at him, but he’d never seen my husband as much of a threat. I wondered how he would feel if he knew he was a god. Then again, he may already know. He was there, after all. When Lucifer created his one and only son, siphoning the energy from a god to mold him, using the fires of hell to temper him. To make him strong. To make him indestructible.

  Before I could ask about my eyes, I heard Cookie tearing down the stairs. She rushed through the restaurant, stumbled into the office, took one look at me, and knew something was wrong.

  “What happened?” she asked, a hand over her heart.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  I stepped over to Osh, and he stiffened. Guilt flooded every molecule in my body, dousing it in acid, the taste bitter in my mouth. What had I done?

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him. I reached up and put my hand on his throat. He didn’t fight me this time, either. In fact, he practically leered.

  “Oh yeah?” he asked, completely ignoring the man behind me. The one I was married to. A slow grin raised one corner of his mouth. “How sorry?”

  He took hold of my shirttail and pulled me closer, and even though he was deflecting, drawing attention away from the fact that I’d just attacked him, I raised my arms and pulled him into a hug.

  “Very,” I said into his ear.

  He wrapped his arms tight around me. “I’m sorrier,” he said, and he meant it. He truly did wish he could tell me where my daughter was, but we’d decided. No one would know her location but Osh and, naturally, the Loehrs, since they were her caretakers for the time being. Beep’s guardians knew, too, of course, her army of the ragtag sort, but they were never to leave her side.

  And her side was a sight to see. She had my dimension’s version of an archangel, the man I used to call Mr. Wong, a skilled warrior and leader. She had the three bikers who swore loyalty to Reyes and me. And she had twelve huge, ruthless, and completely adorable hellhounds known as the Twelve.

  She had an army, and still they’d had to move her.

  My chest tightened again with the thought, and I tamped down a wave of dizzying anxiety.

  I slid out of his hold and wrapped an arm in Cookie’s. “Okay,” I said to him. “I won’t ask where she is again. For now. But can you at least tell me why you had to move her?”

  Reyes stepped behind me, and I inched back until we were touching.

  “The signs were all there,” Osh said, eyeing Reyes as though he’d personally fucked up. “Bodies started showing up, one by one. The first ones were two counties over. Then they started getting closer, like something was homing in.”

  “The bodies?” I asked Reyes.

  “Is this about Beep?” Cookie asked.

  I nodded. “They had to move her.”

  Cookie’s worried expression mimicked the fear thundering through me. I led her to a chair and sat her in it before sitting in the one Reyes held for me. “What do bodies have to do with anything?”

  “You want to tell her?” Osh asked Reyes.

  He took a knee beside me, and I wondered if he thought I’d lose it again. I wondered even more if I would.

  “We have something of a checklist. An outline of things to keep a lookout for. It’s how we know the gods are getting close. And one of the signs is dead bodies. But how did they look?” he asked Osh.

  “I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t fit the criteria.”

  Reyes bit down and cursed under his breath before coming back to me. “A supernatural entity can’t just shift onto this plane carte blanche. It doesn’t have that kind of authority. In order to be able to interact within the parameters of the plane, it has to be able to shift fully. And the only way to do that, as you may have noticed, is to inhabit a human.”

  “But,” Osh said, “a human’s body is too fragile to hold a god for more than a few hours. It begins to decompose instantly and at a much faster rate than normal
.”

  “But demons can do it,” I argued. “They’ve possessed people for years at a time. They’ve even kept an injured or sometimes a dead body going for months.”

  “Yes,” Reyes said. “A demon can do that. Pretty much any supernatural entity from any dimension that can find its way onto this plane can possess a human to shift fully.”

  Osh pushed off from the wall and turned to look out a high window. “But while a demon can keep a human body in a state of animation for an eternity, a god is simply too powerful for a vessel as fragile as a human to hold.”

  He turned back to Reyes. Let him take over. “A god can only keep a body animated for a little while before its cells eventually begin to disintegrate and meld into one another. Until it no longer looks human.”

  “And what happens to the person it possessed?”

  “Nothing that hasn’t already happened. He or she will have died the instant the god hijacked the body. It’s like putting the core of a nuclear reactor inside a human and watching the person melt around it.”

  Cookie’s hands curled into fists around the fingers I’d laced into hers. She was shaking visibly, her pretty brows drawn into a severe line.

  Osh didn’t notice. “If there is a god in the area and he is using and discarding bodies at will, he is onto Beep’s scent. And like any good bloodhound, he won’t give up until he has his prey firmly between his jaws.”

  Cookie inhaled sharply, and Osh finally realized how distressed she was. I think, in fact, my worry for her was keeping my own stress-induced hissy fit at bay. I wanted to rant and rail and crush a few larynxes until somebody came up with the location of my daughter. But I couldn’t do it in front of Cookie. I couldn’t upset her any more.

  “And the bodies?” Reyes asked him. Still kneeling beside me, he had one hand on my leg and one around the arm of the chair. The arm cracked with the pressure he was putting on it.

  Osh nodded. “They’re … decomposing at an unnatural rate. Not to mention the fact that the hounds were getting restless. Pawing the ground. Sniffing the air. Itching to hunt.”

  “But what could they do against a god?” I asked.