Crave fa-2

by J. R. Ward

  Although considering how much money the U.S. government had put into training him, he’d have to be a total tool not to crack skulls like eggs by now.

  And weren’t all those skills, as well as so many others, going to help him stay AWOL.

  God willing, that was, he thought as he stepped into the building.

  Tonight’s poor-man’s MGM Grand was about sixty thousand square feet of cold air anchored by a concrete floor and four walls’ worth of dirty windows. The “octagon” was set up in the far corner, the eight-sided ring bolted in and surprisingly sturdy.

  Then again, there were a lot of construction guys who were into this shit.

  Isaac went past the pair of thick-necks who were handling the gambling and even they paid him respect, asking if he needed anything to drink or eat or whatever. Shaking his head, he went to the corner behind the ring and settled in, his back to the juncture of the walls. He was always the last to fight because he was the draw, but there was no telling when he’d be up. Most of the “fighters” didn’t last long, but every once in a while you got a pair of stayers who pawed at each other like two old grizzlies until even he was ready to yell, Enough, already.

  There were no refs and things got stopped only when there was a heaving, red faced, walleyed idiot who was flat on his back with the winning urban warrior Weeblewobbling next to him on sweaty feet. You could go for anything, liver and family jewels included, and dirty tricks were encouraged. The one restriction was that you had to fight with whatever the good Lord gave you at birth: You couldn’t bring brass knuckles, chains, knives, sand, or any of that crap inside the wire.

  When the first match got rolling, Isaac panned the faces in the crowd instead of what was doing in the ring. He was searching for the out-of-place, for the eyes that were on him, for the face he knew from the past five years instead of the five weeks since he’d been gone.

  Man, he knew he shouldn’t have used his real name. When he’d gone for the fake ID, he should have chosen another. Sure, the social security wasn’t his own, but the name . . .

  It had seemed important, however. A way to piss on the territory he was in, mark this fresh start as his own.

  And maybe it had been a little bit of a taunt. A come-and-find-me-if-you-dare.

  Now, though, he was kicking himself. Principles and scruples and all that ideology bullshit were not nearly as valuable as a viable heartbeat.

  And he thought the promoter was a schmuck?

  About forty-five minutes later, Kinko’s number one customer got up on the chicken wire and cupped his hands to yell over the crowd. The promoter was trying to be all Dana White, but Vanna was more like it in Isaac’s opinion.

  “And now for our main attraction . . .”

  While the mob on the floor went wild, Isaac took off his sweatshirt and hung it on the outside of the octagon. He always fought in a muscle shirt, loose track pants, and the requisite bare feet—but then again, that was his whole wardrobe.

  As he went in through the octagon’s gate, he kept his back to the corner of the warehouse and waited calmly to see what tonight’s entrée was going to be.

  Ah, yes. Another Mr. Tough Guy with delusions of the glandular variety: The instant the opponent ducked in, he started bouncing around like he had a pogo stick for a colon, and he capped off his pregame show by ripping his T-shirt in half and punching himself in the face.

  Fucker kept it up and Isaac wasn’t going to have to do anything but blow on him to put his ass on the ground.

  At the sound of the air horn, Isaac stepped forward, raising his fists to chest level, but keeping them tight to his torso. For a good minute or so, he let his opponent show off and throw air punches that snapped out with all the aim of a blind guy with a garden hose.

  Piece of cake.

  Except as the crowd pressed in, Isaac thought about how many copies a Xerox machine could make in sixty seconds and decided to get serious. Snapping out a left jab, he nailed the guy in the sternum, temporarily freezing the heart that beat behind that bone. Follow-up was a right hook that caught Pogo under the chin, clapping the man’s teeth together and knocking his head back on his spine.

  Cue the tap-dancing: Mr. Tough Guy went Ginger Rogers and twinkle-toed it backward into the chicken wire. While the roar from the kibitzers filled the open space and echoed around, Isaac closed in and worked the poor bastard out so that he was Pogo no mo’, nothing but a staggering drunk whose head was spinning too fast to organize his body. And just when it looked as if there was a whole lot of dead faint coming on, Isaac backed off and let the man recover his breath.

  To get an extra grand, he had to make sure they lasted more than three minutes.

  Walking around, he counted in his head to five. Then he came back at—

  The knife swung in a fat circle and sliced across Isaac’s forehead, catching him just at the hairline. Blood streamed out and effectively clouded his vision—the kind of thing he would have called strategic if the guy had had a clue what he was doing. Given the way those punches went, however, it was obviously just a lucky strike.

  As the crowd booed, Isaac flipped into business mode. An idiot with a blade was almost as dangerous as somebody who actually knew what he was doing with one, and he wasn’t about to get a nip and tuck from this motherfucker.

  “How’d that feel?” his opponent hollered. Actually, it came out more like, “Hof thath fill?” given his fat lip.

  Last three words the guy said in the ring.

  As Isaac spun a kick into the air, his own blood splashed the crowd and the impact blasted the weapon from the guy’s grip. Then it was a case of one, two . . . three punches to the head and all that swagger went down harder than a side of beef at a packing plant—

  Which was precisely when the fine men and women of the Boston Police Department swarmed into the warehouse.

  Instant. Chaos.

  And, of course, Isaac was locked into the octagon.

  Jumping over his dead-fished opponent, he clawed up the six-foot-high side of the ring and vaulted over the top. As he landed on both feet, he froze.

  Everybody was in full scramble except for one man who stood just off to the side, his familiar face and tattooed neck speckled with Isaac’s blood.

  Matthias’s second in command was still tall and built and deadly . . . and the fucker was smiling like he’d found the golden egg on Easter morning.

  Oh, shit, Isaac thought. Speak of the devil. . . .

  “You’re under arrest.” The cop’s hi-how’re-ya came from behind him, and less than a heartbeat later, he was in cuffs. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a . . .”

  Isaac spared the officer a glance and then searched out the other soldier. But XOps’ number two was gone as if he’d never been.

  Son of a bitch. His old boss knew where he was now.

  Which meant the fact that a Boston PD unit was all over his ass was the least of his problems.

  CHAPTER 2

  Caldwell, New York

  As Jim Heron stood on the front lawn of the McCready Funeral Home in Caldwell, he could picture the inside sure as if he’d already been in the brick two-story: Orientals on the floors, paintings of foggy flower arrangements on the walls, bunches of rooms with double doors and lots of floor space.

  From his limited experience with them, funeral homes were like fast-food restaurants—they all kind of looked the same. Then again, he guessed that made sense. Just like there were only so many ways to doctor up a burger, he imagined dead bodies were likewise.

  Shit . . . he couldn’t believe he was going in to see his own corpse.

  Had he really died just two days ago? Was this now his life?

  With the way things were going, he felt like some godforsaken frat boy who’d woken up in a strange bed going, Are these my clothes? Did I have a good time last night?

  At least he could answer those: The leather jacket and combat boots he had on were his, and he had not had a good time the night before. He wa
s responsible for battling a demon over the souls of seven people, and although he’d won the first contest, he was gearing up for the next one without knowing who the target was. And he was still learning the tricks to the angel trade. And, hello, he now had wings.

  Wings.

  Although maybe bitching about that was a lie, as his pair of magical feathered flappers had gotten his ass here from Boston, Massachusetts, in lickety-split time.

  Bottom line? As far as he was concerned, the world he once knew was gone and the new one in its place made his years as an assassin in XOps seem like a desk job.

  “Man, this rocks. I love the creepy shit.”

  Jim looked over his shoulder. Adrian, last name Vogel, was precisely the kind of whack job who’d be into a bunch of stiffs having a lie-down in refrigerator units: Pierced, leathered, tattooed, Ad was into the dark side—and given what their nemesis had done to the angel the night before last, it was a two-way street: The dark side was into him as well.

  Poor bastard.

  Jim rubbed his eyes and glanced at the saner of his two backups. “Thanks for the assist. This won’t take long.”

  Eddie Blackhawk nodded. “No problem.”

  Standing in the stiff April wind, Eddie was his usual biker-ass self, that thick braid of hair running down the back of his leather jacket. With his square jaw, and his tanned skin, and his red eyes, he reminded Jim of an Incan war god—fucker had fists the size of most men’s heads, and shoulders you could easily land an airplane on.

  And what do you know, he wasn’t exactly a Boy Scout, even though he had a heart of gold.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” Jim muttered, knowing that the infiltration was outside the scope of his “employment” so they’d better shake a leg. But at least his new CO hadn’t had a problem with it: Nigel, the tight-ass English archangel, had given permission for this morbid diversion, but there was no reason to take advantage of the leeway.

  As Jim and his boys dematerialized through the brick walls and took form in . . . yup, yup, a big open foyer with a chandelier and a bunch of dour rugs and enough space for a cocktail party . . . he looked around, wondering where the hell the bodies were kept.

  And just standing in the place reaffirmed the fact that this was a diversion he simply had to make. He might be in the business of saving souls, but right now a man’s life was on the line: Isaac Rothe had bolted from the XOps fold, and Jim was supposed to kill him for it.

  File that under Fuck No.

  Except here was the problem: The way Matthias the Fucker worked, if Jim didn’t off the AWOL soldier, someone else was going to do it . . . and then an operative would come for Jim.

  Little late on that one, boys—he was already dead.

  His immediate goal? Fake out his former boss and find Isaac. Then he was going to get that soldier out of the country and safe . . . before returning to his day job of going head-to-head with Devina.

  He hated the delay because no doubt that demon was already gearing up for their next battle. But stepping out of one life and into another was never simple and never cut-and-dried. Inevitably, there were tendrils of what had gone before that you had to snip and cast off, and that took time.

  The truth of it was: He owed Rothe. Back in the desert two years ago, when Jim had needed help, the man had been there for him, and that was a debt you didn’t walk away from.

  It was also probably why Matthias had given Jim the assignment. The fucker was well aware of their connection and of what had transpired that night on the other side of the globe: At the time, their boss might have been in and out of consciousness, but he’d tracked enough during those dark hours of transport and flight and medical intervention to know who was around and what was doing.

  Right. Focus. Where were the stiffs?

  “Downstairs,” he said to his boys as he strode over to an Exit sign.

  On the way to the stairwell, the three of them walked past all manner of motion detectors without setting the things off, and then they ghosted through a closed door one by one.

  Bringing Adrian and Eddie on this little excursion was safer, because God knew Devina could be anywhere at any moment—plus Jim was still learning all the tricks that came with being a fallen angel, and Eddie was the master at them. Spells, potions, magic—that wizard and wand shit was Blackhawk’s forte.

  He’d clearly gotten his PhD in Abracadabra and didn’t that make the SOB handy.

  Down on the cellar level, everything was stark and clean, the cement floor and walls painted gray. The sweet smell of embalming fluid drew Jim to the right, and as he strode along, he felt like he’d jumped back in time. Fucking weird. This sneaking-around routine was exactly what he’d excelled at for all those years with Matthias—and precisely what he’d been determined to get away from.

  Yeah, well, all the best-laid plans of mice and men, yada, yada, yada . . .

  In his first battle with Devina, he’d required some information—and Matthias the Fucker had been the only place to go for it. Naturally, when it came to that bastard, things were strictly quid pro quo, so if you wanted something, you had to give something and the “quo” had been killing Isaac. After all, there were no pink slips for the fired or gold Rolexes for the retired in XOps—you got a bullet in the head and, if you were lucky, maybe a coffin for your corpse.

  And yet he was curiously grateful: Being assigned to assassinate the guy was the only way to help him; otherwise there would have been no way to know that Isaac had taken off and was now a hunted man: Jim was the only one who’d been let out free and clear.

  But then his situation had put the “by your short hairs” in Matthias’s “extenuating circumstances.”

  He stopped in front of a pair of stainless-steel doors marked STAFF ONLY and looked over his shoulder. “Keep your hands to yourself, Adrian.”

  God knew the angel seemed willing to fuck anything that moved—which made you wonder if not moving would be a rate-limiting step for him.

  With a curse, Adrian went all holier-than-thou. “I only touch if they ask.”

  “What a relief.”

  “But you know, reanimation is possible.”

  “Not tonight it isn’t. And certainly not in this place.”

  “Man, you could suck the fun out of a strip club.”

  “Pass.”

  Ghosting into the large, clinical room, it was damn obvious why horror movies used morgues for settings. Between the green security lighting, the rolling gurneys, and the drains in the floor, the place was the perfect backdrop for a case of the heebs.

  Even though he’d died and gone to heaven and all that crap, his adrenal glands still waved its flag well enough. Then again, the twitches were probably less about the other dead guys and more about the fact that he was going to look his own corpse in the face.

  As he headed for the massive refrigerator unit, with its rows of cold flats, he knew exactly what he was doing. When he didn’t kill Isaac on schedule, two things were going to happen: Someone else would and somebody would be sent out looking for Jim.

  And that was the reason they were here. His old boss was going to want to make sure Jim had bought the farm, so to speak: Matthias didn’t believe in death certificates, autopsy reports, or photographs because he knew all too well how easy it was to fake that kind of documentation. He also didn’t trust funerals, burial sites, or weeping widows and mothers, because he’d substituted too many bodies one for another over the years. Face-to-face verification was the only way to be sure in his book.

  Usually Matthias sent his second in command to do the double-check, but Jim was going to make certain the big man himself was the one to do it in this case. The bastard was hard to flush out of hiding, and Jim needed his own face time with the guy.

  The only way to make that happen was to use his own frozen ass as a lure.

  And a little of Eddie’s magic.

  Checking the nameplates set into the holders on the front of the doors, he found himself between D’Arterio, Agnes
, and Rutherford, James.

  Flipping the latch, he opened the three-foot-by-two-foot door . . . and pulled his dead body out of the refrigerator. There was a sheet covering him from head to foot, and his arms had been neatly tucked in by his sides. The air that wafted out of his hole was cold and dry and smelled like antifreeze.

  Man, as many stiffs as he’d seen over his violent and bloody life, this skeeved him out.

  “Give me my marching orders,” he said to Eddie grimly.

  “Do you have the summoning object?” the angel asked, coming to stand on the other side.

  Jim reached into his pocket and took out a small piece of wood that had been carved many, many years before in the tropics on the far side of the planet. He and Matthias had not always been at odds and Matthias hadn’t always been the boss.

  And back when they’d both been grunts on the floor level of XOps, Jim had taught the guy how to whittle.

  The miniature horse was done with surprising competence, considering it had been the first and only thing Matthias had carved. If memory served, it had taken about two hours—which was why it was being used: Apparently, inanimate objects did more than just collect dust. They were sponges for the essence of whoever owned or made or used them, and what lingered in the space between the molecules was very useful if you knew what to do with it.

  Jim held the horse up. “Now what.”

  Eddie whipped the sheet off Jim’s gray, mottled face. For a moment, it was hard to concentrate on anything but what he looked like forty-eight hours dead. Holy hell, the Grim Reaper was no makeup artist; that was for sure. Even Goths had better complexions.

  “Hey, don’t be harshing on my peeps,” Adrian cut in. “I’d do one of us way before some SoCal bimbo with plastic melons and a spray tan.”

  “Stop reading my mind, motherfucker. And you’d do the bimbo anyway.”