“Oh.” The pancakes were fascinating. I kept my eyes on them. “But…you had a reason…?”
“I’m late, Jess. I…” In the corner of my vision, I could see her rake her fingers through her thick hair. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to be sure.”
“Oh.” In the back of the house, Chunk started barking, a precursor to the deep bellow he’d have when he was full grown. I tried to tune him out.
Annabelle was six years old now. She was destined to be an only child. After three miscarriages, Mira and I had accepted that. Mira’s magic took such a toll on her body…well, the pregnancies had always been over before we even knew it was happening. We’d never really talked about not trying anymore, it had just…happened.
The pancake was burning, and I dumped it out of the pan. “So…”
Mira sighed at me again, turning to lean against the counter, hugging her arms around her. “So, yes, it is still a possibility. I…if the test is negative again, I’ll have Bridge do a blood test. We need to know as soon as possible, right?”
“Right.” Okay, I gave up on pretending to cook. I was sucking at it anyway. Reaching over, I caught her around the waist and pulled her into my arms. She tucked her head under my chin, fitting perfectly. “Do you want the test to be positive?”
“I don’t know.” We stood there for a long time in silence. Well, as silent as it could be with a dog yowling in the background.
How different this was from when she told me we were having Anna. We’d been younger then. Married just a couple of years. So excited about this whole new “baby” part of our lives.
That was before. Before my brother Cole sold his soul to a demon. Before I’d gathered up an impressive collection of scars. Before I knew magic was real, before the forces of Hell had put a hit out on me. Before.
Mira’s thoughts were the same as mine. I knew her well enough to know that. The part of her that desperately wanted another child warring against the side that knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, and majorly unwise on top of all that. I held her closer, silently telling her that those thoughts were okay. I was having them too, after all.
I had to ask myself, if Mira was pregnant…what the hell kind of world was I bringing a baby into?
And the dog was still barking.
“Estéban, would you shut the dog up,” I yelled. It came out harsher than I’d intended, and I winced, adding “please” belatedly.
Chunk didn’t shut up, and his clamor almost drowned out my daughter’s tiny voice. “Daddy?” She peeked around the corner at me from the hallway, her hair in haphazard pigtails. Well, at least Estéban had tried.
“What is it, button?”
“The funny man is knocking on the door, Daddy.” One little hand pointed at the sliding glass door behind me. “I put Chunk in my room, because Chunk doesn’t like him.”
I turned to look, and firmly pushed Mira behind me. Funny man, indeed.
He looked human, I’ll give him that. My height, almost as skinny as me, blond hair cut into a Mohawk. More piercings than I could shake a stick at. But he was also standing on my patio dressed in just a T-shirt and jeans, despite the fact that there were four inches of snow on the ground. He wasn’t even pretending to be cold. Mindful of the magical wards my wife had placed on our doors, he tapped at the glass with a stick. Tink, tink, tink.
When I was in a good mood, I called him Axel. When I was in a bad mood, I had more…interesting names for him.
I murmured quietly to Mira, “Take Anna in the back. See if you can get Chunk to quiet down.” I knew now why the dog was going apeshit. There was no dog in the world that would tolerate Axel’s presence. Hazard of being a demon, I guess. Gee, everybody’s got their burden to bear.
“Jesse…” Mira hesitated, her fingers knotting in the back of my shirt.
“Do it.” I glanced at her over my shoulder and gave her a small smile. “Please. It’ll be okay.”
In the hallway, Estéban appeared, his worn machete in one hand. I shook my head at him, holding up a hand to stop him before he stepped into Axel’s view. “Kid, take the girls. Stay with them.”
He wasn’t happy with that, but he gave me a short, tense nod. Mira wasn’t happy with it either. I could tell by the way her green eyes went dark and the muscles in her jaw got all tight. But she nodded. “Yell if you need me.” She scooped Anna up as she vanished into the hallway. “Come on, button, let’s go get ready to play in the snow!” Obediently, Estéban followed them back down the hall, even if he did keep casting uncertain glances over his shoulder at me.
I waited until they were out of sight before I looked back to the man-demon still tapping on my door. “You know I can see you, right? You can stop knocking.”
He grinned at me through the glass. “Gotta get my annoyance quota in early.” Even through the door, he sounded like me. I mean, exactly like me. I was getting a little tired of the demon borrowing my voice whenever he felt like it. That was like…borrowing my underwear. You just don’t do that.
I wasn’t even sure if Axel and I were friends or not. I mean, we weren’t, ’cause he was a demon and that would be bad, but…I guess what I meant to say was, I wasn’t sure if we were enemies. The events of the last year had started to muddle my very clear view of what exactly “good” meant.
I grabbed my bomber jacket and slipped on my sneakers before I stepped out the door. Axel may be impervious to winter, but I wasn’t. Even bundled up, the snow-cooled air snuck past the leather, and I shivered as I shut the sliding door behind me.
The man-demon stepped back, probably glad to be away from my wife’s anti-demon magic, and I couldn’t help but notice that his footprints began and ended in a two-foot space, like he’d teleported there. Which he probably had. “That’s subtle. It’s broad daylight, Axel, what if someone saw you just blink in like that?”
He looked around, squinting in the morning sun. “They didn’t.”
“But they could have.”
“But they didn’t.”
I deliberately took a deep breath, in through my nose, out through my mouth, concentrating on why I was not going to reach out and punch him in the face. Because I knew I could now. Despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been able to cause harm to each other without a formal contract in place, one little experiment last fall had proven that those restrictions were no longer as firm as they’d once been. That made dealing with Axel a lot more unpredictable. It also meant the temptation to reach out and tag him was harder to resist.
“Here, put a coat on. You look conspicuous.” I reached back in the door long enough to grab my snow-shoveling coat, some ratty denim thing, and tossed it to him. And yes, the puppy was still having a cow in the back of the house.
He eyed it for a moment, then shrugged it on. “If you say so.”
We stood and stared at each other for a minute, while I shifted my weight as the snow trickled into the tops of my sneakers. “Listen, if you have something to say, can you do it sooner rather than later? I like my toes, they’re one of the few parts of me I haven’t broken. I’d hate to see them freeze off.”
He stuffed his hands in his—my—coat pockets, rocking on his heels a bit. “I came to ask a favor.”
“A favor, or the favor?” Because I owed him a favor, you see. A few months ago, I’d been desperate, alone, and to save the lives of my best friends, I’d offered him an unnamed favor. And in the grand tradition of negotiating with demons, if I didn’t pin down just what kind of favor this was, I’d owe him forever.
“The favor. It’s a big one.” He scuffed his boots in the snow, drawing a little design with his toe. “I need you to do something for me.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “You’re going to ask me to do something awful, aren’t you?”
Axel snorted. “No. At least, I don’t think it’s awful.”
“Then you do it.” Ha, had him there.
He shook his head, the sunlight sparkling off all the metal in his face. “No can do.
My ice is thin enough as it is, I can’t get involved in this one.”
“Y’know, I’m getting damn sick of fighting your battles for you. At no point did I agree to be your pet champion.”
Axel’s eyes flared red for a heartbeat. “No, but you did ask for my help. So now I’m asking for yours. Tit for tat, Jesse. You know how this works.”
Boy, did I. The fact that I’d come out of this so far without a nasty black demon brand down my arm and my soul in Hell’s pawnshop was a constant amazement to me. My own ice was dangerously thin, to be brutally honest. “Fine. What’s the favor?”
“I need you to go to Los Angeles. There’s a girl there, and she’s in danger. I need you to protect her.”
I admit, I stood there and blinked at him for a few moments. Of all the things I expected him to say, that was…well, pretty far down the list. Maybe in the footnotes, or something. “Is this girl…a special friend of yours?”
He gave me a puzzled look until he realized what I was asking, then made a face. “Ew! No! What do you take me for?”
“You really don’t wanna know.” I frowned a bit, thinking it over. “You realize that it’s the holidays, right? If I take off, Mira’s gonna be pissed.”
The man-demon snorted. I realized that his breath didn’t fog in the air. What the hell did that mean? “Your holiday was yesterday. I waited.”
“And your thoughtfulness touches my heart, really.” With a sigh, I brushed some snow off the patio table so I could lean up against it as we talked. “Are you going to give me any more information, or do I have to bargain it all out of you?”
“I can tell you most of it. The pertinent bits, anyway.”
I guess that was as good as I was going to get. “Okay. Tell me about this girl. What’s so important about her?”
“She’s soulless. I’ll tell you that right off. But this isn’t a champion request. I don’t need you to get her soul back.”
“Good to know. I guess.”
“She sold her soul years ago, and she sold it so that she could be beautiful and famous for her entire life.” Axel shuffled his feet in the snow, making a nice packed-down space that was going to be a bitch to shovel later. “Only, as part of her contract, she also agreed to collect souls herself, to store them until the time of her death.”
“You can do that?” I’d never heard of that before. Didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, just…taking other people down with you? That was kinda dick.
Axel nodded. “It was more common in the old days, but…yeah.” The old days. Which could be anywhere from the 1960s to biblical times. “Currently, she is holding within herself two hundred and seventy-six additional souls, mostly from men she’s seduced.”
I had to whistle lowly at that. That’s a helluva lot of seduction. “Damn, who is this girl?”
“Gretchen Keene. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her—”
“Gretchen Keene, the movie star? Seriously?” Heard of her? Hell, you couldn’t flip on the TV without some news or entertainment show dribbling her name all over themselves. I think she had four movies come out last year, and another couple due for the summer blockbuster season coming up. “Blond” and “bombshell” were the words most frequently associated with her.
“Oh good, you know her!” Axel seemed delighted.
“Well, not personally.” The whole seduction thing made a bit more sense now. I mean I’m sure there were easily two hundred and seventy-six men who would sell their souls to spend the night with Gretchen Keene. I was honestly surprised it wasn’t more. And a demon contract did explain her meteoric rise to fame, starting about five years ago. It explained a lot. Dammit, didn’t anybody get by on their own merit anymore? “That makes her like a succubus or something, right? Using sex to get souls?”
“More or less. As you know the word.” Axel nodded agreement. “For one of us…one like me…that many souls equates to a tremendous amount of power.”
“When she dies, what happens to those souls then?”
“Well…that’s the kicker.” Axel rocked on his heels, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “See, the demon who made her contract was fairly inexperienced. He left an amazingly large loophole, and really those souls are going to go to whoever can be there to claim them when she dies.” For a moment, he shook his head with a faint expression of awe in his eyes. “That kind of power…that power wins wars, Jesse. Or loses them.”
Axel never did anything for purely charitable reasons, and I’d been confused about his motives up until this point. Now things were starting to become clear.
There was a war brewing in Hell. At least, that’s what I’d managed to piece together from stray Axel comments and a bit of research. Axel was on one side of the conflict, I’d gleaned that much. I had no idea who was on the other, or even which side was the “good” one. I mean really, when they’re all demons, is there a good side?
“You basically have a loose nuclear weapon, and you don’t want the other side to get their hands on it first.”
“Roughly, yes.” Axel mulled that over for a moment, then nodded. “A rather apt analogy.”
“So why send me to play bodyguard? Why don’t you just go yourself and collect the extra souls?”
He drew a breath through his teeth, making a soft hissing sound. “It’s…complicated. If I were to go myself, it could tip some things, and I have no way of knowing if it would be in my favor. Thankfully, the other side is in the same position. They can’t send one of their own, so they’ll send someone else. Something else.”
Leaning on the table like I was, the snow was melting and soaking through my jeans. I shifted position uncomfortably. “Do you think their man’s in place already?”
“I have no way of knowing. Assume someone is already there, and then you won’t be surprised if they are.”
There was a lot to mull over in Axel’s simple little request. I sat quietly for a few moments, and he just watched. “What exactly is it that you want me to do, Axel?”
“Just keep her alive.”
“For how long? I mean, how long do you expect me to play babysitter? I have a life here, Axel. I can’t just pick up and move to L.A. for the foreseeable future.”
“No! No no, it wouldn’t be like that,” he hurried to assure me. “I only need you until New Year’s Eve. Either I’ll have something else arranged, or it’ll all be decided by then.”
“What happens at New Year’s, Axel?”
“Honestly?”
“If you can.”
“I have no idea. I just know that it’ll all be done by then.” I think he could still see my reluctance. “If it helps, I’ll cover your expenses.”
That made me blink at him again. “Where do you get money?”
“Investments. Like anybody. Where do you get yours?” He grinned at me then, and I still have no idea if he was kidding or not.
I rolled my eyes at him. “I need to talk to Mira about it.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t really a ‘choice’ kind of thing, Jesse. You owe me, and this is what I am asking for.”
Fuck. I couldn’t even argue with him on it. I had agreed. “When do you need me to go?”
“Your flight leaves tomorrow morning.” Reaching inside his coat—my coat!—he produced an envelope, handing it over with a snap.
“How did…?” I changed my mind. How he yanked a large envelope out of a coat that wasn’t even his was his business. I wasn’t going to ask. Examining the contents, I found a plane ticket to L.A., hotel information, and a credit card with my name on it. A company card, I noted. I was apparently an employee of “Axel Rhodes, LLC.”
“Axel Rhodes? Really?”
“Hey, you named me. I just ran with it.” He gave me a small smirk. “You should go start packing.”
I sighed, knowing he was right. I did, however, have one last question. “So why me? Why not someone more sympathetic to your cause?”
“Honestly?”
Y’know, it probably says a lot about
him that he had to keep asking if I wanted the truth or not. “If you can without choking, sure.”
He smirked at that, chuckled even. “Because you’re the only one I can trust not to steal those souls for himself. You’re the only honest man I know.”
And how do you argue with that, really? “I’ve never been to L.A.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll have someone meet you at the airport. Everything’s arranged, you just have to get on that plane.”
And explain to my possibly pregnant—Holy crap, possibly pregnant!—wife why I was running out to guard the body of a really hot movie star instead of staying home with the family for Christmas break. There was no way this was going to end well for me. No way out of it, either.
“Will I be seeing you out there?”
“No. I need to be as far away from that city as possible. Establish an alibi, that sort of thing. I can’t be connected.”
I snorted. “If you didn’t want to be connected, you shouldn’t have sent me.” Somewhere, in some big demon library in Hell, my name was down, with Axel’s right next to it. He’d marked me as his soul to claim, if he could. We were definitely connected.
“Desperate times.” He shrugged. “I’ll see you when you get back.” And with a gust of sulfur-tainted air, he was gone.
The bastard took my coat.
3
I hollered “All clear!” as I came back in the door, stomping the snow off my sneakers, but they already knew. Chunk had fallen silent, and in fact the puppy came galloping out on his dinner plate paws to jump up on me, tail wagging happily. “Good boy, Chunk. Very good boy.”
The fawn mastiff rolled his eyes in ecstasy as I scratched his favorite place under his chin. I didn’t care if he raised hell every time Axel showed up. That’s why we had him, after all. He’d protect my daughter, no matter what. Y’know. Once he got bigger.
Annabelle wasn’t very far behind the pup, waddling her way into the kitchen all decked out in her snowsuit. “Ready to go play in the snow, Daddy?”
“I…uh…button, I gotta run out and do some stuff.” Her face fell and my heart broke. I crouched down to look her in the eyes. “I’ll try to get back as soon as I can, okay? We’ll have hot chocolate and go out again this afternoon.”
A Wolf at the Door Page 3
