by Rob Thurman
Now that was the thinking of an archangel . . . and a demon.
“Tell us what you would not tell Ishiah.” The sword in his other hand sputtered to flickers of flame and disappeared. “Those who sent him are satisfied to stay in the dark for a while longer, but others of us are not. Tell us and we will go.” His tone turned suspiciously mild. “For now.”
The angels were disagreeing over how to face the Cronus crisis. That was interesting but not surprising. God had withdrawn from them, present but silent, and given them free rein to develop free will at their own pace and make whatever decisions they wished with that will. Some of those decisions had turned out to be not so different from the ones humans or demons themselves would make, and being an angel didn’t mean you automatically agreed with your canary compadres. Heaven’s history was full of strife. That free rein God had given the angels, sooner or later, would end up the rope by which to hang more than a few by.
“Fine. If it’ll get you out of here. I didn’t tell Ishiah because I didn’t want to ruin what could be his last days. You, sugar, I don’t have that problem with at all.” I kept my shotgun pointed at him. He might come over mild as milk and smooth as syrup, but he wasn’t called the Angel of Death for passing out lollipops. He killed; that was his sole purpose, and from his history, he was more than pleased to do it—a very righteous and enthusiastic work ethic. Didn’t that just figure. “Cronus wants Lucifer’s power.”
“Obviously,” said the other angel, not nearly as impressed by the two bullet holes beside his head as he should’ve been. I shot him in the leg to reinforce the point.
“Don’t they teach you manners in Heaven?” I asked, dropping the shotgun and pulling the Smith from its holster. The angel, leg already healing, started to move toward us until Azrael dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“Go,” he ordered. “Now.” The angel didn’t hesitate, vanishing. Some angels were disagreeing with Azrael, but the ones with him didn’t have that kind of guts. “I apologize.” He didn’t bother to try for a hint of sincerity. “Continue.”
It was the best and quickest way to get rid of him . . . besides shooting him, and while Zeke had nailed the one angel, Azrael was far quicker and more clever than his companion had been. “With Lucifer’s and Hell’s power, Cronus will start taking over every world that exists. He’ll have Hell. Then there’s Heaven, Earth, Tartarus, the Elysian Fields, Hades, Tumulus, thousands of worlds, dimensions, and afterlives. They’ll all fall like dominoes. Who knows in what order? You might get lucky and be far down on the list. But as closely as you are related to demons?” I pretended to give it consideration. “I don’t think so.”
“He is païen. Why do your gods not stop him?” Azrael demanded, his wings reminding me more and more of a cemetery’s weeping angels, the color their wings would turn when Cronus blotted the sun from the sky and ashes would fall instead of rain.
“Because they are gods, what there are left, and he is a Titan. If you don’t know what that means, go home and ask someone who does. We’re rungs on a ladder, you and me, but Cronus is standing on top of Everest.” I used the barrel of the Smith to point to the glittering heap beside him. “If you don’t know that, you’re no more use to Heaven than your friend was.”
Unhelpful to the end, Zeke added, “There’s some superglue in Leo’s office. You know, if you’ve got the time to put the asshole back together.”
Either he didn’t or gluing a shattered angel back together wasn’t an option. “I’ll take this news to my brothers.” Azrael’s human form began to fade to an ice sculpture. “Or I’ll find a Titan and tell him where a demon’s wings can be found. Gold as Solomon’s crown, quite easy to see if one knows where to look.” The ice melted away, leaving his last words behind. “I will return and in a much less forgiving mood.”
Angels, fallen or not, did love to get in the last word.
“Eh, Schwarzenegger said it better and in only three words.” I lowered the Smith after he was gone.
“You think he’ll tell Cronus about Griffin?”
Zeke tried not to sound too concerned, but I would bet my new decorative pile of angel shards that he was thinking about breaking out the handcuffs again. “No, Kit. He’s not putting Cronus one wing closer to Hell, and Griffin’s wouldn’t work anyway. He’s not a demon.” Not that Cronus would be able to tell the difference, but the logic was sound. Azrael was a dick, as Oriphiel before him had been, but he wouldn’t endanger Heaven for vengeance. Anything else, yes, but not Heaven.
But on to business. The plan didn’t stop because a heavenly asshole popped in to make a bad day worse. It only slowed it down slightly.
“All right. Someone grab the DustBuster from my closet and clean up what’s left of Daffy here.” I holstered my gun. It was time to act on what I’d thought earlier. Only a select few could get into Greek Hell now. Hades was dead as were all the Greek gods I knew of except Dionysus, and finding what table he was passed out under would be impossible. The only other free pass into Hell rested with one particular segment of the population—the deceased. “And then let’s find ourselves a medium.”
Chapter 13
The dead . . .
The thing about the dead—how best to put this? Annoying? Yes. Self-centered? Sure. A pain in the ass? Most definitely. But the worst thing about the dead?
They would not shut up.
If you could find yourself a genuine medium and that medium could cast a mental net and snare a human soul still hanging around life like a bad aftertaste—best to pack a lunch, because you were going to be there a long, long time. First they wanted to tell you why they hadn’t gone to the light, and it was usually something so piddly and insignificant that you’d roll your eyes as you ate the tuna fish sandwich you’d made for the trip. It never, contrary to ghost lore, was anything evil. If you were a murderer, you didn’t get to flit around the ether giggling insanely or something equally trite. If you were evil, hell scooped you up in a heartbeat. If your religion had a hell. If you were evil and atheist, too bad, a hell would still get you—it just wouldn’t necessarily be the Christian hell.
After they told you their big sob story, then came the messages. Tell my mother this. Tell my father that. Tell my girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband I love/hate them. One even demanded I tell the post office he was dead, so they could stop his mail. If they were long dead, and everyone they knew was gone as well, then they just wanted to gossip. Did they ever catch Jack the Ripper? The Beatles split up? JFK is dead? Rudolph Valentino? We won World War II? There was a World War II? Did Pet Rocks and leg warmers ever catch on? War of the Worlds was just a hoax? Damn it, I killed myself so the aliens wouldn’t get me.
It was an ordeal. The medium should have to pay a client to sit through it. It was good there were no such things as ghosts that you could see or hear or you’d be nagged by them day and night. Luckily you needed a medium and money to arrange for that irritation and eventually you could leave, slamming the door on their questions, An actor was president? The Terminator is governor? There were certain things impossible to explain to a dead soul, because you couldn’t explain them to yourself.
We stole a car. Leo’s was as dead as they came. Only an automotive medium could help that situation. Mine was lost and Griffin didn’t remember where he’d left his. Head injuries will do that . . . an hour to even days before the smack to the cranium, was gone, maybe forever. When we found a suitable car and it came to the actual stealing part, Zeke unexpectedly balked.
“Stealing is wrong.” He folded his arms in the strip club’s parking lot. The club was three blocks down from the bar. They say don’t piss where you live, but I was in a hurry. This was convenient and quick and I was all about both at the moment. “It’s a rule. Another rule.”
Great. When we could least afford it, Old Testament Zeke was back, somewhat recovered from Griffin’s disappearance. “Didn’t you steal a car to go look for Griffin?” I asked, bending down to take a closer look at the door. Ho
w you broke into a car depended on when it was made, if it had an alarm system, if getting in without the key remote meant it would lock up the steering column, and, last but not least—I reached over and opened the door—if it was locked. Yet another good deed on my part. This guy wouldn’t forget to lock his car again. The keys were in the ignition too. I liked convenient, but this wasn’t fun at all.
“Yeah, but rules don’t apply if it’s Griffin.” That was Zeke reasoning for you and I didn’t fault him for it. “When it’s not for Griffin, stealing is wrong.”
“Fair enough. But if the entire world is taken over by Cronus, there’s no telling what will happen to Griffin, and that’s why we’re stealing a car.” I would’ve gone for the good-intentions excuse, but that wasn’t the path to Hell, as they said. It was an express train if you didn’t know what you were doing. Get out your ice skates, because it was a slippery slope if ever there was one. Not to mention I’d seen Griffin literally bang his head against a tabletop at Trixsta trying to get the concept across. Zeke wasn’t ready for good intentions versus future bad outcomes. He was still working on good intentions versus immediate bad outcomes. It was a complicated theory to grasp. I wasn’t completely positive I had the hang of it yet, although it didn’t stop me from a whole lot of practice to prove that theorem.
“So don’t think of it as stealing to save the world. Think of it as stealing to save me.” Griffin was already climbing into the back to lie flat with knees up to make sure all of him fit. It was pain-pill time from the looks of it. I was still stiff and sore, but Griffin didn’t look like someone had taken just one baseball bat to his face and head, but rather two or three.
Zeke didn’t seem completely convinced, but he got into the passenger seat. “I’ll have to think about it.” He had a bottle of water with him, which was unusual for him. He preferred his drinks to jack him up on sugar and caffeine—as if he needed more jacking up. He held the bottle over his shoulder to Griffin. He’d need it to wash down his pills. I’d seen Zeke walk into the bar wearing two different shoes before, but his guns were always immaculately clean, and he always had what Griffin needed.
Leo was the same. He never forgot my birthday; he never let me down. My brother had never remembered my birthday and stood me up more times than he turned up, but he never let me down either—not when it truly mattered. Love was love. It came in too many forms to count. . . . Sometimes it was a bushel of apples celebrating that first trick and sometimes it was as simple as a bottle of water.
“Thinking about it, that’s a good idea,” I replied as I adjusted the seat, humming, tuning the radio, and checking the mirror to make sure my hair wasn’t an advertisement for electroshock. “You should think about lying too. It’s a good way to make sure Griffin can’t ever fool you that way again.”
Swiveling in the seat, Zeke glared into the back. “Lying is wrong.”
I grinned at Griffin’s plaintive. “Are you trying to kill me? Jesus, when I bought my car, he threatened to cut out the salesman’s tongue for lying.”
“Did he?” I asked, curious, as I zipped the car out of the parking lot. I didn’t mean “Did he” as in did he actually say that. I meant “did he” as in did he go ahead and cut out the man’s tongue. With Zeke, there really was no predicting how that had ended up.
“He settled for washing the guy’s mouth out with a urinal cake. It was not a pretty sight.” I heard the rattle of a pill bottle and the slosh of water. “Zeke, you are not washing out my mouth with any kind of soap, you understand?”
“I understand.” Zeke faced forward again, his voice placid. “I’m not putting anything in your mouth for a long time. Very long. Months. And vice versa.” He whispered an aside to me. “Is that an appropriate punishment?” Zeke didn’t often ask. He almost always knew exactly what punishment should be doled out . . . in his mind. Unfortunately, he hadn’t reached the fifty-fifty mark on being correct yet, but Griffin was different. If ever he was tempted to let someone off with a warning, it would be Griffin, but, in this case, Griffin needed more than a warning, considerably more. He had to learn.
“Perfectly.” I tossed a phone book onto his lap. “Stick by your guns on it too. If anything will teach Griffin or any man a lesson, no sex is it. Now look up mediums for me. There’re enough of them in Vegas—one has to be the real deal.”
We drove past address after address. I didn’t have to stop the car and check them out face-to-face. I was human, but I had enough of a tiny speck of trickster left in me to detect the genuine article—they pinged on my shield the same as telepaths and empaths. I drove past their places of business. Hovels of business. Séance/meth labs of business. Sometimes three combined into one. As we moved from one to another, Zeke had turned the tables on Griffin. I’d told him in the hospital it was his time to be the student, and I wasn’t wrong. Zeke was taking him to school and educating him old style.
“Okay, think another lie at me,” he demanded as he kept thumbing through the yellow pages. “Hurry up. I have to get this right.”
Griffin groaned. “We’ve been at this for almost an hour.”
“And I haven’t gotten it right yet. I have to be able to tell. I have to see through them. Lie to me again.” Licking thumb, turning page. “Trixa, West Sahara. Griffin, go on. Lie.”
“Isn’t it enough to promise I’ll never lie again?” Griffin sat up, the lines in his forehead now eased, his pain pills having kicked in. More than contrite, more than humbled, he affirmed, “Because I never will. Whether I think it’s for your own good or to prove myself, no matter what the reason, I will never lie to you again.”
Zeke’s gaze slid toward the back. “You mean it?”
“I mean it. I won’t do that again. If you want to punch me for doing it to begin with, I don’t blame you, and I won’t lift a hand to stop you.” Griffin was sincere, almost heartbreakingly so—his hair, smelling of my shampoo today, hanging forward, his face set and solemn. He had seen the error of his ways, and he was man enough not only to admit it, but to never repeat that mistake. He wouldn’t leave Zeke in the dark, accidentally or not, again. It was a moment of such truth that you could almost pluck it from the air like a lazily flying butterfly. Gloriously bright. Real enough to touch.
“Yeah, that’s sweet. You’re like a prom date, you’re so sweet.” Zeke was eyes forward again and back at the page turning. “Lie. Now.”
And I thought I was skeptical. I swung the car onto West Sahara as Griffin gave in and snapped, “Fine. You can cook. You help me with the laundry. You love thy neighbor. I’ve had better sex than with you.”
“You’re not trying at all, are you?” Zeke said with disdain.
I cut the lesson short, my audience part of it—which was too bad as it was distracting me from thinking about Cronus making Armageddon look like a toddler play-date. I pulled the car into one of three parking spots by a cracked-stucco one-story building with one profoundly dead dwarf palm planted by the door. “This is it. Only damn real medium in Vegas apparently.” I could feel him or her, bouncing off my radar. “A black thumb and can talk to the dead. It makes sense. You two can stay in the car. You’re having too much fun. I don’t want to break that up.”
At first Griffin looked as abandoned as a five-year-old his first day of school—not a good look for a grown man. Then he frowned darkly in a manner most certainly not prom-date sweet. He regretted what he’d done to Zeke and still did, but me? The regret was fading fast in the face of being the victim of the newly patented Zeke tutorial. I slammed the car door and tapped the back window just as you weren’t supposed to do on fish tanks. “Live and learn, sugar. Lie and learn too.” I heard the locks snick fast, trapping Griffin inside. Zeke’s grin was as dark as his partner’s frown. Ah, for the ability to be in two places at once.
I gave up on my voyeuristic wishes and walked to the glass door and opened it. There was no old-fashioned tinkle of bells but there was the smell of burning sage. Someone was cleaning out the bad mojo or thought
they were. Burning sage was an old custom and who was I to say it didn’t scrub out the invisible stain of foul intentions, but I did know it had never kept me out of a building or a village, and my intentions? That all depended on whom they were focused on.
I also smelled dog. Lots and lots of dog. A truly massive amount of doggy odor overpowering the sage.
The office was one small room but with very little furniture, making it seem roomier than it was. There were two chairs against one wall and a tiny round table in the middle. Opposite the wall the chairs were parked against was the Dog Wall. I wasn’t terribly surprised. There were at least thirty pictures of dogs. If you studied them, you’d see they boiled down to about six dogs. There was a gray-muzzled hound, a mutt (I had a soft spot for mutts) with a small head and big fat belly, a cocker spaniel with about four teeth left and the inability to keep its tongue in its mouth, a three-legged Siberian husky, a Chihuahua with an underbite (if there were hellhounds, Chihuahuas would be fighting for the job), and a German shepherd. I hoped the last wasn’t the one I’d tried to pick up while drunk in New York. Werewolves versus German shepherds—add a few gallons of alcohol and it was a mistake anyone could make—even another werewolf.
