The Devil Walks In Blood: Nick Holleran Private Investigator Book Two (Nick Holleran Series 2)

by David Green

  “He’s not so special,” I say, and I’m not lying. Devil Worshippers like him are a dime a dozen.

  She lets out a relieved sigh. “Y’know, just when I thought me and Nick Holleran could have a normal date like regular people, you get a tail. Okay, fine, but make it quick, or I’m compensating myself with your half of the cake.”

  I could kiss her, but Marv’s watching and so’s the kid. She might not take it well anyway. It’s been awhile since we had that kind of access to each other and we need to work back to it, I know. I wink instead, and get to work.

  I’m carrying my Ruger, so I didn’t take my jacket off. My fingers rest on the grip as I head to the restroom. I see Marv following me as I glance in a mirror outside.

  Nice.

  Pushing my way into the restroom, I form a quick plan. I’ve got seconds.

  “Anyone in here?”

  No answer. Excellent.

  I’m handy, but Marv’s a giant. The Devil-worshipping creep could toss me around like a rubber ball before I could land a punch. So I need an edge. Opposite the restroom door is a stall, unoccupied. I slide against the wall and draw the Ruger.

  Marv pushes his way in. In one movement, I grab his arm and pull. He loses his balance through sheer surprise. The door slams shut behind him. I hammer the barrel of my Ruger against the back of his neck. Marv grunts, still falling forwards. Now, I’m steering him, head first into the door of the stall.

  The frame shakes as he collides with it. He falls, catching his forehead on the ceramic bowl. I follow him in, kicking the door shut behind me and locking it, before putting my whole weight on Marv’s back, pinning him to the floor as I straddle him, trapping his arms with my knees. I jam the business end of my Ruger against his cheek.

  Cozy.

  “Thought I told you to stay away, Marv.” I flick the safety off the Ruger. “Caught you lurking around my office—twice—and now you’re following me here? Seems like we’re gonna have a problem. Are we?”

  Marv hasn’t said a word since his collision with the stall door, but he’s breathing. Big, wet, ragged lungfuls of air. Now he’s wheezing, and it takes me a moment to realize the crazy bastard’s laughing.

  “If you won’t help me, Mr. Holleran, I’ll take what I need.”

  I press the Ruger harder against his face. It just makes him laugh more. “What the Hell d’ya mean by that, huh?”

  “I saw the Nephilim watching you. Talking to you. I’m willing to wager the Devil wouldn’t want to see you harmed, Mr. Holleran. Why go to all the trouble otherwise?” The sonofabitch places the flats of his hands against the floor and pushes, teeth gritted, and fuck me if he doesn’t lift me off the ground. I smack him on the head again, not hard enough to cause real damage, but enough to get his attention. He quakes with laughter. “You caught me by surprise tonight, Mr. Holleran. Perhaps I underestimated you. I will not make the same mistake again.”

  I stick the Ruger in his ear.

  “I see you again, Marv, I won’t need to surprise you.”

  Marv’s stalked me halfway across Haven and now he’s crashed my date and threatened my life. If he comes after me again, even Butler and Gavin would be hard-pressed to say I wasn’t justified in putting him down.

  “And don’t forget, your ghost won’t be safe from me either. I want you out of this restaurant, right now, or I’m calling the cops. Sounds like they’ve got an interest in you.”

  “Everyone is interested in something, Mr. Holleran.”

  Snarling, I lift the Ruger, about to hit the sorry sack of shit again. The opening of the restroom door stops me.

  “Last chance,” I hiss, climbing off him and unlocking the door. “I’m warning you.”

  Marv chuckles, turning his head so he can see me. His face is a mess. A ragged cut oozes blood down one side of his face, staining his teeth as he leers at me.

  “Be seeing you, Mr. Holleran.”

  I back out of the stall, Ruger trained on him but hidden by the door. Diana stands just inside the restroom, hands on hips, pits fixed on me. Wonder if anyone saw the door open and close all by itself?

  Like I said before, ghosts can interact with things in Hell; chairs, glasses, the living. They don’t have to touch things either. Some can use their minds—people call `em poltergeists in the movies and whatnot—but they gotta focus. The force she exerted on that door, Diana must have put some serious effort into it.

  “Come on,” I say, jamming the Ruger into its holster. “Don’t want anyone seeing me leaving, especially if they get a look at Marv’s mug.”

  “Nick,” she hisses, voice thick with rising panic, “the mist’s getting worse. I can hear them, howling, snarling. We can’t go outside.”

  Shit.

  “I’ll handle it,” I whisper.

  I head back to Rosa. She smiles as I sit down and points to the half-eaten chocolate fudge cake with its melted vanilla ice cream topping. I smooth down my hair, jostled by my altercation with Marv, and adjust my jacket. My heart’s thumping something rotten, like a hare banging his old bunny feet against the ground.

  “Saved you some. I must like you more than I thought.”

  “You finish it,” I say, glancing around for a waiter. “I know it’s your favorite.”

  “Nick Holleran,” Rosa grins, “you never fail to amaze. Everything okay with your stalker?”

  Marv strolls by as I’m picking up the check and asking the waiter to call us a cab. He meets my eyes, and his black, shark-like orbs glitter with malice. A wad of paper pressed against his forehead, blood on his collar. There’s no smile this time, no look of adulation. Marvin Clancy flat-out hates my guts. I watch him till he leaves Tony’s and merges with the thick mist.

  “I took care of it. Pretty sure he got the message.” A thought occurs to me as we leave our table. “Say, you still doing Aikido?”

  I’m pretty confident with the Ruger and my fists and feet, but I’d feel better knowing Rosa’s still a practicing martial artist. We’re about to head out on the street and there’s a Devil Worshipper on the loose, and Lord only knows what else.

  “Nick, I teach Aikido now. So, this guy got the message, but he’s not going to back off, is he?”

  “He will. I was just wondering, is all.”

  She raises an eyebrow. There’s no fooling this woman. “Come on, Nick. Don’t start jerking me around now. You only just started being straight with me. You’re worried about this guy, right?”

  “Look, I told him next time I lay eyes on him, I’ll call the cops. They’re interested in him, anyway.” She gives me that look again, makes me raise my palms, all defensive-like. “Rosa, I promise. Got the PD on speed-dial. I so much as smell him, that’s what I’ll do.”

  She nods. “Okay. I’m going to believe you on this, Nick. Maybe I had too much wine, huh?”

  We make small talk in the lobby and I try to appear engaged, switched-on and not as fucking anxious as I am. Rosa collects her jacket when the cab arrives. Diana’s stuck to my side like a shiver as we head out onto the sidewalk. I can’t see shit in all this fog, though Rosa doesn’t notice it at all. I feel a weight on me again. Something’s watching, out there in the mist. Beyond it, I hear the snuffling, the growling. The stench of rot.

  Flesh… Fresh blood… Sweet, sweet meat… It calls to us… So hungry… It gnaws… Stop the pain… Feed us… Free us…

  I open the cab door. Diana flows into it, her face pressed up against the window on the far side as she peers into the thick, grey gloom.

  “I’m not going home with you, Nick,” Rosa says, thumping me on the arm.

  It almost makes me draw my Ruger. Shit, my nerves! That…presence. What is it?

  “Ah, no, of course not,” I stutter. Rosa laughs. Reckon she thinks she’s caught me in some caddish ploy. “Give you a ride?”

  “Nah, I’ll get my own. Y
ou’ve given me a lot to think about tonight. But you should go home and get your beauty sleep, okay?”

  She presses her hands to my chest, like she did five years ago when she held the blood inside my body. This time, it’s gentle. A caress. Rosa reaches up and presses her lips on mine. For a moment, I forget about the mist, Marvin Clancy and whatever else lurks out there.

  Just for a moment.

  “I’ll see you in the week?” Rosa asks, as she pulls away.

  “Sure,” I say, catching her fingers with mine as she lets her hand drop from my chest. “Anytime.”

  Rosa laughs. “I’ll call you.”

  “Hey, you know what? Why don’t you take my cab?” I smile, trying to stop my eyeballs from darting around. “I’ll pay. Least I can do if I can’t take you home myself.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ll get the next one.”

  “Why, Nick. Such a gentleman” Rosa laughs as she hops into the back seat without a worry. Jamming my hands in my pockets, I pull out a handful of notes and toss them to the driver. “Anywhere she wants to go, buddy.”

  The lights of the cab merging with the mist mesmerizes me as it pulls away, until a piercing howl sends me slamming back into the wall of the restaurant beside Diana. She clings to me, and I ignore her biting cold as it floods across my body.

  Another cab drifts past, cutting through the fog. I whistle my damned loudest and my sudden good fortune holds out when its tires screech.

  “Where to, Nick?” Diana asks, her voice high-pitched and so childlike.

  I rack my brains. Marvin Clancy’s watching me. He knows where I work, maybe found where I live. Can’t go to The Styx, either. The Devil Worshipper and the cops are both watching my regular haunts. Somewhere unexpected then, far away from here.

  “You know Redwood and Maine?” I ask the cab driver. He nods into his rearview. “Take me there on a long, winding route, pal.”

  Diana grows still next to me. Redwood and Maine. That’s where she used to live. The kid hired me to do a job, and if I can’t go home or back to my office, then I may as well get started. It’s somewhere Marvin Clancy and whatever’s hunting me won’t think of. I just hope to Him upstairs this mist doesn’t follow us there too.

  As the cab pulls away from the sidewalk and into its lane, I stare out the window. A face appears in the fog.

  Marvin Clancy’s.

  The freak’s eyes lock with mine, and this time, he grins, his crimson teeth shining through the murk. The cab leaves him behind, and the howls and screams in the mist dim as we head to Diana’s old home. She takes my hand, grips it tight.

  “This okay, kid?” I whisper. “Redwood and Maine. Couldn’t think of anywhere else.”

  “Yes,” she nods. “No time like the present.”

  She falls silent, but she doesn’t let go. Not that I blame her. She’s just a kid, and in my experience, going home’s never fun.

  TWO OF US

  “Why’re you stopping, pal?”

  The frown forms when the cab comes to an abrupt halt. We left the mist behind miles back. It took us a while, but now we’re in a part of Haven I’ve never seen before. Outside, washed-out ghosts loiter. Lots of `em, but not much else—no buildings, no cars, no nothing. My hackles, which only just settled down, think it’s party time again.

  “Redwood and Maine,” the driver drawls. He taps his GPS to prove it. “You getting out or just sightseeing? It’s forty-four dollars either way.”

  Diana’s got her face pressed to the window, hands flat against the glass. Her back’s to me, but I recognize the tension. This ain’t right.

  “Not staying long,” I say. “Leave the meter running, yeah?”

  “You’re the boss, man.”

  Stepping out of the car, a biting chill sinks its teeth into me. Weather’s gone to shit in Hell of late, but I’m not sure if the temperature plummeted or my body’s trying to tell me something. Full moon’s hanging in the sky and stars are piercing the velvet night. The sight should set anyone at ease. Not me.

  Redwood and Maine’s a wasteland. If anyone lived here, decades have gone by since. And the ghosts… It’s not often I see so many in one place. Must be about thirty of them, none of them Aware. Diana’s fingers lock with mine again. I’m getting used to the sensation when she does it.

  “Kid, something bad happened here.”

  So I’m Detective Obvious again, but I gots to say something.

  “I can feel it. So much grief and fear. It’s everywhere, and it’s so hot.”

  Hot? Now she says it, I can almost feel the lick of flames warming me, but it’s distant. The grey form of a ghost wanders by, and on instinct, I turn Diana’s face away so she doesn’t have to look at what I see.

  He’s a boy, a teenager, just like her. I can tell he’s black from the skin on his forearms, but if he wore a sweater instead of a plain white tee, I wouldn’t know it. His face is a mess. Skin’s melted right off and one eyeball’s missing too, though I reckon the heat popped it before he died.

  This kid burned to death in a fire.

  He screams, and Diana drops into a ball, covering her ears. I want to do the same, but I’m transfixed by the boy. He’s howling, and there’s so much goddamn pain as his skinny arms wrap around his body. It doesn’t last long. He flickers and disappears. Caught in a loop, doomed to exist this way for all time. The boy’s screams echo in my mind.

  “How could you fucking do this?” I mutter, staring up at the Heavens. I hope the Big Guy up there’s listening. “What could a kid do to deserve this fate for eternity, you sonofabitch?”

  Across the sidewalk, I see the boy reappear and begin making his way over.

  “Diana…” I kneel so I’m face-to-face with her. “We can go. We don’t have to stay here. I can do some digging, find out what happened, and I can come back another time, alone. But we should go. That kid’s coming back and I ain’t gonna let you hear that again.”

  I don’t realize how much I mean that until I say it. The kid’s seen enough. She’s been through…Hell.

  “It’s so much! The screams, Nick! I can hear the flames popping, surrounding me, hot fingers clutching at me. There’s so much death. But… I can’t go. Nick, I need to know. Momma, my sisters. I have to find out. Please, help me through this.”

  I take her hand again and pull her close.

  “Let’s do it then, but stay close. And if I say look away, do it.”

  We pass the burning boy and I follow my own advice, keep my stare fixed ahead. Other ghosts are milling around, all locked in this nightmare. Men, women and children of all ages congregate across the street on a concrete clearing, where the intersection meets.

  “There,” Diana says, pointing ahead. “That’s where our tenement used to be. Took up this whole block.”

  Makes sense. Most of the ghosts are crowding where the kid says, like they died inside their apartments. But something leveled the place. If a fire broke out, turned the joint to rubble, no one bothered to rebuild it. They swept it clear and forgot about it.

  Until yesterday, I hadn’t heard of Redwood and Maine in Haven, though we’re so far out I’m not sure we’re even in the city. This place was a dirty secret, scrubbed from the face of Hell. Bile floods my gullet.

  “Fire! Fire! Please, help! Save my babies!”

  I freeze and close my eyes. Diana stops too. Breathing in deep, I crack an eye open, hoping to Christ above the woman screaming for her life ain’t the kid’s mom. I know Diana’s family are dead, and I reckon she does too, but I don’t want her seeing it. I don’t want them trapped in Hell for God’s fickle reasons.

  The woman’s hovering above us, on an upper floor that no longer exists, like she’s yelling through a window out at the street.

  “Kid…”

  She cuts me off. “No.”

  I let out t
he breath caught in my chest. Still, I watch the woman. Watch her burn. She’s still screaming for help, but a deep agony and panic fills her cries. She yells two words. “My babies!” That’s it. Over and over, until it hits me. Folk must have stood on the sidewalk, watching the whole place raze to the ground.

  “What the fuck happened here?” I ask no one in particular.

  Diana shrugs away from my hand and moves amongst the other ghosts. I should stop her, but I don’t. She needs this. I realize she might know some of these folk. From the way they’re dressed, I’d put my Mustang on this fire happening in the 60s. Must have been after Diana died, since she thought this place was still here.

  Related? I’m believing less in coincidence.

  “Fateless.”

  I shoulda expected Charon to show up. I didn’t feel that presence watching me again, the one that’s dogged my steps since I left my office with Diana last night. Guess I can rule out the Ferryman as the cause. Even so, my anger just needed a spark. And Charon, that bastard, has provided it.

  “You escaped with your life again, I see. I thought the Amarok or the mist might bring you into my arms, but not to be. This time.”

  I spin, grab the smug sonofabitch by his lapels and pull him so close his Clint Eastwood-looking face is almost touching mine. I force myself to meet his eyes and what I see there…it knocks the anger out of me.

  Centuries—no, eons—of cold disregard peer back at me. Those eyes, they don’t see the way ours do. He’s not a demon, but I’m not sure what he is. There’s humanity buried in there—ancient, almost forgotten—and a dull, faded color now turned to grey, like someone tried to affect some semblance of humanity. But there’s a void of conscience, of feeling.

  There isn’t a soul hiding behind those eyes. Not one someone like me can comprehend anyway.

  “All these people, Charon. Dead, and for what?” I’m pleading, like I need a reason—any goddamned reason—for all this. “You just let `em linger here? Children, you bastard. This is all they’ve got? To die over and over again?”