Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

I looked at Grandaddy. “How do you drink that shi—stuff. It’s like motor oil. Used.”

  He smiled benignly and ignored me. “Now, raise your glasses and toast this man, for he is like none you have ever met.”

  “Angel?” Remi asked.

  “No, indeed,” the bartender said. “And I thank you for your courtesy.”

  Grandaddy, McCue and I clinked glasses, then we each took a swallow. The Scotch went down smooth. Our grandfather—or whatever the hell he was—said, “He’s an Orisha.”

  The big guy nodded. “I am Aganju. Our pantheon is ancient.” His dark eyes slid in Remi’s direction. “But even you, with your doctorate, won’t know me, or the others. We are forgotten.”

  McCue looked right back at him. “You said pantheon. The word refers to a collection of gods.”

  “And so it does.” The big man smiled. “Orishas are of Africa.”

  “Huh,” I said thoughtfully. “What’s an Orisha?”

  “A god.”

  “A god?”

  He nodded, going solemn. “I am Aganju, warrior king, and lord of volcanoes and deserts. This place is my responsibility, you see. The volcano behind us, though it sleeps, and all the others; and the desert surrounding us.”

  “This is a desert?” I asked skeptically. “There are pine trees all over.”

  Grandaddy said, “It’s what known as ‘high desert,’ here. But go two hours south toward Phoenix, and you will see a true desert.”

  Remi sounded thoughtful. “The Morrigan and an Orisha.”

  Aganju nodded. “Many of us are here, those made for war. We have been freed from banishment. Men long ago stopped believing in Orishas. But now they shall worship again.”

  I remembered Lily’s impassioned speech about wanting the same. Apparently this was a regular thing for old gods and goddesses, this needing to be worshipped.

  “Finish your drinks,” Grandaddy said. “We’re going upstairs.”

  Remi and I exchanged puzzled glances, then knocked back what was left in our glasses, put them on the bar, and followed Grandaddy to a dark area against the wall. There was a stairway, and while not truly hidden, neither was it obvious. Just—out of the way. I guess the one the woman fell down and broke her neck, thus becoming a ghost.

  And I guess Aganju’s presence explained why there’d been no questions about demon roach remains. But where the heck had he been when that was going down?

  Oh yeah. A test. He could have been watching, for all I knew.

  The staircase was narrow, with steep risers. As we climbed after Grandaddy, it became clear that Open Mic Night was over. The jukebox was playing again, and a thread of music followed us up.

  At the top landing, Grandaddy led us down a hall, indicating various open doorways. “Common room. Kitchen. One bathroom, two bedrooms.” He stepped across the threshold into one of the bedrooms, and we followed. Smallish, but with a bed, a dresser, closet, desk. The north and west walls were constructed of large-diameter chinked logs, the others paneled in flat, grainy wood.

  “Okaaay.” I frowned. “What are we doing here?”

  Grandaddy said, “This apartment is where you’ll live. You can’t stay with Lily, as she has her own missions and cannot always be here. For now, your territory is Arizona, so this will be both headquarters and home. And when you are ready, you will be responsible for all of the Southwest. No rent, no mortgage; free food and drink, if you choose to eat downstairs. TV. Wi-Fi.”

  It was muffled, but now and then, depending on volume, the jukebox downstairs was audible.

  Oh, hell no.

  I shook my head. “How about not here? How about a motel, or a rental house? I can live in a motel, no sweat. It’s still better than a cell.”

  “Here,” Grandaddy said.

  I said with no little urgency, “I’d really rather not.”

  Remi was frowning at me. “What’s wrong with here? Nice bedrooms, a kitchen . . . free room and board.”

  I glared at him and said with great clarity, “It’s a cowboy bar!”

  He didn’t get it. “Yeah. So?”

  In a strangled tone, I said, “They play country music!”

  Grandaddy sounded inordinately cheerful. “Every night but Sunday, when the place is closed. Live music Friday and Saturday nights, Open Mic Mondays.”

  McCue, the bastard, was laughing at me. “Guess you’ll be learning plenty of good ol’ country songs, then. And maybe a little respect.”

  “I don’t think so.” I appealed to Grandaddy. “Please say you’re joking.”

  He was amused but adamant. “Here.”

  I took two steps to the bed and dropped ass, planted elbows on thighs and leaned forward to grasp my head in disbelief and despair. “Shit. Shitshitshit. Just kill me now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Grandaddy took his leave. Remi wandered off to tour the place while I sulked on the bed. He came back and said, “There’s beer in the fridge.” He offered a bottle. “Drown your sorrows.”

  I took the bottle but didn’t crack the top. I just kind of stared at it in a daze. “It’s too much.”

  “What, the beer?”

  “No. Everything. Angels, gods, that Grigori chick—”

  Remi interrupted. “To be accurate, the Grigori are angels, too. So are Nephilim, though admittedly they’re also half human.”

  I began again, this time poking thumb and fingers into the air one by one to enumerate. “Angels. Other angels. Demons. Gods. Goddesses. What the hell else?”

  “Creatures out of folklore. History. And, I guess, literature, from what Grandaddy said.”

  Now I opened the beer and downed half of it in two huge swallows. I looked at McCue in silence, then drank the rest of the beer. “If an African god works here, how come surrogates managed to establish a—what did they call it? Domicile?—without being killed off by this Aganju? I mean, he appears to be working for our side.”

  Time for more pointed questions. Remi smiled slow as honey. “Well, let’s go downstairs and ask him.”

  I rose, set down the empty bottle. “He is a very large man.”

  “Big as all hell and half of Texas.”

  Colorful, but true.

  We trooped downstairs into music, laughter, raised voices, the clack of billiard balls, which reminded me of the angelic trio, Rick, Dick, and Candy, who did have names like porn stars no matter what they said.

  “How the hell are we supposed to live here?” I complained to Remi, who descended ahead of me. “Country music or no country music, the place is loud. And we’re supposed to sleep above all this racket?”

  He stepped off the final step and threw a comment over his shoulder. “I reckon you’ll get used to it.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You got used to prison, didn’t you? A man can adjust to anything.”

  Well, that shut me down. I followed him to the bar in disgruntled silence.

  Remi and I found two stools at the very end of the long slab of bar counter and sat down. Aganju was in the middle of a discussion with one of the patrons, an ancient, weathered cowboy who was going on and on about something. Aganju just listened and nodded, spoke a time or two, though I couldn’t hear what was said.

  “He an angel?” I asked.

  “He’s a god.”

  “No, not him. The old man.”

  “Well, if he is, he’s got his cloaking device up and running.”

  I roll-tapped my fingertips against the bartop repeatedly, impatient. And eventually Aganju came down to us.

  Before he could ask what he could get us, like any normal bartender would do who wasn’t a god, I wasted no time. “Why was it you didn’t clear this place of surrogates?”

  “Ah.” He nodded, as if he’d expected the question. “That requires angels. It is of opposites, you see.
Black and white, good and bad. Angels and demons. I am not of your heaven.”

  “Well, then why are you here? You said you are an African warrior-king-god.”

  “And so I am. My day will come, and I shall wade through blood. But it is not the time.”

  Wading through blood, huh? Not exactly on my bucket list. “So, why are you here rather than in Africa?”

  His teeth appeared again. “The war here will be of greater consequence than the petty coups of Africa. And nowhere else boasts six hundred volcanoes.”

  It was startling. “Six hundred?”

  In his deep voice, he said, “Now they answer to me.”

  Holy shit.

  Aganju continued. “Yes, I may kill demons. It is only the domiciles that are not in my purview.”

  I considered him. “Do you, what—smite them?”

  He looked a little surprised. “Oh, no. That is for angels. I have a sword, you see. I take heads.”

  “Ah. Like the Highlander, movie and TV versions? Do you have Quickenings?”

  The big man smiled. “I do kill them quickly.”

  “No, that’s—” But I waved it off. “So, where is it?”

  “My sword? It is here.”

  “You mean, beneath the bar? Like a baseball bat or a shotgun?”

  Remi shifted on the stool next to me. “Are you done yet with your interrogation? You wanted to know why he didn’t clear this place, and he’s answered.”

  But I wasn’t satisfied. “Could you have helped us with the ghost-demons? With the demon-cop?”

  Aganju was solemn. “These things are for you to do.”

  That figured.

  He added, “I go up upon the mountain when I am not here.”

  It was McCue’s turn to question him, if with a little more decorum than I. “And what do you do up upon the mountain?”

  His teeth shone pearlescent against dark skin. “I sing to her, and worship. But she sleeps, so she says nothing. I hope to wake her soon, and the others.”

  After a moment of arrested silence, Remi got there before I did. He straightened abruptly on his stool, tight as a bowstring. “Hold up. If you mean you want it to come back to life and erupt, you’ll kill people, destroy the town.” His sweeping gesture encompassed the bar. “These people right here. That old man you were talking to.”

  Aganju was unperturbed. “Such a thing will destroy demons, stop the Lucifer, and save the world. This is a good thing, is it not? To be victorious?”

  McCue just stared at him, apparently struck dumb by the realization that Aganju was a bloodthirsty son of a bitch.

  “Victory is good,” I agreed after a moment, “but not at the cost of all these people.”

  “Men die. That is war.”

  Remi’s tone was pointed. “And women and children.”

  Aganju said, with a weird sort of serenity, “That is the cost of war. We must all bear it.”

  Neither I nor McCue spoke as the big man went to another customer, but I could sense the cowboy’s tension echoing my own. I was reminded yet again of the Asian woman, the Grigori, warning me that not all angels were on the same page, that humans would die.

  And this guy, this Aganju, wanted to wake an extinct volcano.

  Had Grandaddy brought Aganju and other gods of war to the here and now merely to serve a purpose without regard for the risk to humanity?

  That made me uneasy. Very uneasy.

  The Grigori had told me, At this moment you and Remiel are innocents being set up for manipulation.

  “They’ll do anything,” I said, and felt a chill. “Everyone involved in this. Anything at all.”

  “It’s Lucifer himself,” Remi said. “It’s the End of Days. Yes, I think they’ll do anything, because everything’s at stake.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance. “And us?”

  He stared down the length of bar at the African Orisha. “I have a feeling we’ll probably do anything the angels tell us to.”

  Well, hell. “I would suggest, with all gravity, that we are well and truly fucked.”

  Aganju came back to us, set down a tumbler of scotch for me, tequila for Remi. “On the house. As all drinks and food are, for you. Call me Ganji; it is easier. And we shall be seeing a great deal of one another.”

  Oh, joy.

  “And yes, you are.” His gaze was unblinking as he stared at us both. He was certainly the kind of man who’d intimidate others easily—big, black, shaven skull—but that wasn’t what he intended at the moment despite his size. He was perfectly matter-of-fact.

  I was wary. “We are what?”

  “Fucked.”

  Remi and I waited till Ganji was serving other patrons before we looked at one another. When we did, McCue’s expression was a mixture of resolution and concern.

  He said, “He’s dark as the devil’s riding boots—and I ain’t talking about the color of his skin.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  We departed the roadhouse after that, keeping our silence. I’d mentioned to Remi that if we had to stay at the Zoo, we ought to collect our clothing from the motel, and my bike from Lily’s rig. So we climbed into his truck and headed north.

  “Six hundred volcanoes,” I pondered aloud. “I had no idea Arizona was so active back in the day. Or that this area had pine trees, for that matter, instead of big-ass cactus. Still doesn’t look like a desert to me, high or low.”

  He didn’t say anything until we turned onto the motel parking lot, and then he sounded subdued. “I don’t like it. Not at all. But, like I said, we may have no choice ’cept to do what they tell us to. And what happens down the road? Grandaddy said we weren’t angels yet. Suggests that if we live long enough, we might could sprout us some wings.”

  That was not a happy thought. “And we’ve got no idea how long this war is supposed to last, or what happens if Lucifer does get out of hell.”

  “I think that’s what Lily and Ganji are for,” he said, “and any others tied to this mess. Demons are the target now, but if Lucifer goes bustin’ out, I reckon the angels and all these gods and goddesses will unite to destroy him.”

  I mulled that over a moment. “Cannon fodder. That’s what we are.”

  “Canaries in the coal mine.”

  I muttered a curse, unlatched the truck door and shoved it open. McCue did the same on his side, and together we walked to our respective rooms.

  I had very little to collect beyond toiletries. When saddlebags are the only option for carrying stuff, you limit what goes into them. I had a pair of jeans, tactical BDU pants, a few tees, couple of Henley shirts, underwear. My world on a bike.

  I’d done eighteen months in prison. Throughout, the bike was parked at my parents’ house. When I went to collect it, my father—ex-military, current cop—gave me a piece of his mind about what a big disappointment I was, and did I know how embarrassing it was for him to deal with questions at his station about his imprisoned son?

  I’d been a little busy trying to survive inside, so no, I really didn’t spend any time thinking about my father’s disappointment and embarrassment.

  My mother visited a couple of times. He did not.

  * * *

  —

  Remi and I met back at the truck and headed up the road to the RV campground. As we arrived at Lily’s rig, I was astonished all over again by how large it was. Multiple rooms that slid out from the chassis, and that garage. I wondered how often anyone was banged up enough to use the cot, the medical equipment in the back end. I wondered, too, how much Lily knew about field medicine. She was in the business of war, not in saving lives.

  Lily wasn’t there—and then she was. She walked out of the trees with the wolfhound at her side. I heard the crow overhead.

  It was dark because the campground was studded with massive pines that blocked much of the mo
on, but she had exterior lighting on the big motorhome. Her face was shadowed, then it came clear as she walked out of darkness into the sphere of light. I noticed again how the sleeve tattoos seemed to move on her arms.

  “Have you seen the apartment?” She climbed the steps and swung open the door. She held it there, then stepped aside so the crow could fly in. The wolfhound followed, and Lily gestured for us to climb in behind her. “We’ll hope it brings you better luck than the last two of you.”

  That grabbed my attention in a hurry. I stopped short just inside the doorway. “Last two? What last two?”

  “The two boys before you,” Lily replied. “Did you think you were the first, then?”

  Remi poked at me to suggest I move, which I did, then he stepped in, removed his hat and hung it over a window valance. “Okay, so we’re not the first. What happened to our predecessors?”

  Lily’s eyes were bright. “They were killed by demons, so no heaven for them. Now, shall I pour you some Irish whiskey?”

  At the roadhouse, we’d consumed most of a pitcher of beer and a couple of tumblers apiece of tequila and scotch, so we both refused. “I thought you said this all began with the hell vents opening,” I reminded her. “The earthquakes, and so on. That’s only been a matter of a few months.”

  “It doesn’t take so long to die, now, does it?”

  I wanted to raise a salient point as comeback, but a wave of weariness reminded me I was way overdue for a decent night’s rest. Besides, I didn’t want to think too much about those two guys who died before us. I pushed back the sleeve of my jacket to check my watch, noted it was almost two. Last call, back at the Zoo.

  Remi felt as I did. “We need sleep.”

  I nodded. “You know, it’s going to be difficult for us to rest with all that racket going on. Hard to sleep, hard to stay sharp.” I tried to turn it into a joke. “Maybe the reason the other two guys died was for lack of sleep.”

  Lily walked into the garage, came back with a small zippered duffle that she dropped on the floor by the door, and two sawed-off shotguns. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “They died because they were stupid. They enjoyed success for a while, but got cocky. They were torn into pieces by a demon, then eaten. Raw.” Her smile was odd, like the death amused her. Well, maybe it did; she was a creature of war. “This is why you both have come to be here. Your predecessors died in the line of duty. Horribly. So there’s a lesson for you: Lead with humility.”