Grim Tidings

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “I mean, I’ve got a lot of bad dreams,” Leo continued. “But not as many as you.”

  “I’m lucky like that,” I muttered. My nightmare reels, after all, weren’t supposed to include my life before I died and became a hound. Amnesia was one of the standard benefits of becoming a reaper’s slave. No loved ones to miss, no memories of your usually violent and premature death to obsess over.

  But I got the whole package, because I was meant to pair up with the Grim Reaper. Just like red wine and steak, that was me and Leo. A former mob cleaner and a girl whose boyfriend stabbed her to death in a swamp, reborn as Monster Sonny and Cher.

  I was pretty sure I’d been right to get us away from that farmhouse, but as we drove back toward Minneapolis I wasn’t sure this was a good idea either. That overwhelming need to run and never stop crept over me again, until I felt pins and needles in my legs from the urge to just start sprinting.

  I’d had a lot of nightmares, sure. But this particular nightmare made me feel like I wasn’t really awake, even as the car groaned along the highway. I felt like I was still back there, and I shivered. I didn’t ever want to go back there.

  “Sweetheart, you need to relax,” Leo said as we rolled to a stop across from the squat gray building. “And I mean that in the least condescending way possible. Relax and act like nothing’s bothering you when we walk in there. I don’t want that son of a bitch Owen thinking he’s rattled either of us.”

  “Well, he hasn’t,” I grumbled. “This has nothing to do with Owen and his alarming overuse of hair products.”

  “I know you better than that,” Leo said. “And considering you’re one of the least rattled people I’ve ever known, how about you tell me why you’ve had a thousand-yard stare since you woke me up.”

  “Do you even want to be the Grim Reaper?” I demanded. I felt a little bit like I was drunk—the lack of sleep and the dream hangover making me blurt like three glasses of tequila. “I mean, what happened to the two of us just driving off and surviving any way we could? Why mix ourselves up with more assholes who are forever jockeying for a seat on the back bench in Hell? These people think they’re living in Game of Thrones. What’s next, pulling a sword out of a stone?”

  “Ava.” Leo stopped just before we went through the salt-streaked glass doors of the grim municipal building that hid the reaper’s little kingdom. “These people are idiots, sure. But do you really think we’d last long out there, surviving, knowing what we know?” Leo put his hands on my shoulders. “Ava, we saw what Lilith was planning. We were told by a freakin’ angel that we were meant to put things right with the reapers. To anyone who likes the status quo like our buddy Owen, there’s a giant target painted on us. We don’t have a choice. We have to be here.”

  “This blows,” I said as he went inside, the door swinging back in my face. “Just for the record.”

  Leo was halfway across the lobby when I followed him in. The floor was scuffed with slush and boot prints, almost the same color as the nicotine-stained walls. Two elevator doors barely showed me my reflection, they were so dented and scratched. The whole place looked like a DMV from the seventies, complete with the crushing hopelessness and the surly receptionist who glared at us over a romance novel. “Yeah?”

  Leo leaned down into her face. “Get Owen.”

  She sighed, putting a finger in her book and looking him over. “And what is this regarding?”

  “Don’t be cute with me,” Leo said. “If you could actually do your job you wouldn’t be riding a desk, so tell your friend with the cheap suits I’m here before I use your head to press that elevator button.”

  “Tell him yourself,” she sighed, rolling her eyes and opening her book again. “He’s on three.”

  Leo jerked his head at me and I followed him to the elevator, even though it was pretty much the last place on earth I wanted to be.

  “This is way too easy,” I murmured as the contraption groaned upward.

  “It’s always easy right up until it’s not,” Leo said. The door rolled back, and I felt my shoulders tense.

  Owen met us, flanked by three other suits—one of them was the woman in the red dress I’d seen before. I smiled a little when I saw that her eyes were still rimmed in red.

  Her lip curled back from her teeth. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “Welcome,” Owen said to Leo. “You look well.” He stuck out his hand, to which Leo shook his head, huffing a short laugh. “Come on,” Owen persisted. “No hard feelings. We had to be sure you were made of the right stuff.” He held out his hand to me, and I looked at it, then him, and narrowed my eyes.

  “Listen, if you’re really supposed to be the big man around here, far be it from me to stand in your way,” Owen said. “I’m not interested in a turf war.” He straightened his tie. “Between you and me, Gary made this place hell on Earth. He convinced us you didn’t exist and he wasn’t shy about liquidating folks who didn’t hit quotas.”

  My instincts said that Owen was full of shit, but Leo cocked his head. “So, what, you wanna be friends now?”

  “Far from it,” Owen said. “I want to get back to work. If we’re fighting each other, we’re not out collecting. I don’t want to be sitting on my ass in Minnesota any more than those malcontents who no doubt have been filling your head full of crap about how I’m a bad man.” He raised his arms to encompass the low cement ceilings and the green carpet ground down under decades of shoes, the faded cubicles and the peeling paneling on the office doors at the far end of the large room. “Let’s make this work, if you are who you claim. What do you say?”

  “You don’t want to know what I’d like to say,” Leo said. “Where’s this piece-of-crap Scythe I need to fondle?”

  “Direct, aren’t you?” Owen smirked. “That serve you well back at Coney Island or wherever you’re from?”

  “Oh, I see what you’re doing.” Leo smiled broadly. “Reminding all your boys here that I used to be human, and therefore I’m not fit to shine your shoes, and you’re saying it all nice-nice so I won’t put your lights out.” Leo stepped closer to Owen, tapping the center of Owen’s chest. “You think just because I used to have a human heart beating in here that I ain’t played this game? You think a Jewish kid from Brighton Beach with a junkie mom didn’t have somebody just like you trying to make him feel like shit every minute of every day?” Leo smiled, and it wasn’t the genuine one he only let out around me. This was the smile everyone else saw, the hollow mask that hid his intentions. “Guys like you used to piss me off, Owen. Made me feel lower than dirt. But you know what I learned? Take away the suit and the fake watch and the hundred-dollar haircut and guys like you are all the same. Human or not, you’re all weak. And you all die screaming.”

  Leo stepped back, adjusting his tie. “Then it’s up to guys like me to mop up your blood and dump your limbs somewhere in Red Hook. Because guys like me, we’re not weak. And we don’t die easy.”

  Owen’s mouth was white all the way around, but Leo had finally wiped that Ken Doll smile off his face. “Let’s get on with this,” Owen said, his voice tight.

  “Great idea,” Leo replied. “Lead the way.”

  Owen unlocked one of the office doors, ushering us and his little entourage of creeps inside. He held up his hand, buffed nails under my nose close enough for me to smell the clear polish and moisturizer. It smelled manly, like sandalwood or maybe men’s gym shoes. I’ve never been very good at that stuff. “No dogs,” Owen said, giving me another one of those fake smiles that practically dripped corn syrup. “Sorry, love. You understand.”

  “Get your fingers out of my face or you wasted money on that manicure,” I said.

  Owen pursed his lips. “You know, Gary would talk about you, but I never believed he’d let any of his bitches be so willful. Guess I was mistaken.”

  “Excuse me,” Leo called from inside, forestalling my desire to choke Owen unconscious with his stupid pinstriped tie. “Either she comes in or I’m leav
ing and you can all sit around jerking each other off for all I care.”

  Owen’s jaw ticked, and I felt a little bit of corn syrup dripping off my own smile at that. “Move it along,” Owen grunted at me, and slammed the door, almost catching my ass in it.

  He repeated the fussy unlocking procedure with a safe taller than I was, black iron bulk taking up a corner of the room. I expected the usual things people keep in safes—cash, guns, porn, big piles of paper that don’t mean anything to anyone except their owners—but there was nothing inside except a black case, the kind that bad guys carry bombs around with in spy movies.

  Owen removed the case and flipped the locks, looking at Leo across the dented metal desk painted that particular shade of olive green that thankfully lived and died with disco. “This is the true Grim Reaper’s Scythe,” he said. “It’s unique because it’s the only Scythe that doesn’t change depending upon the reaper. If you’re the real thing, you’ll be able to hold it. If not . . .”

  Leo waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah.” He reached out and flipped the case open, pulling back the piece of black velvet covering the blade inside.

  I didn’t really expect anything impressive, but the Scythe was even less exciting than I’d imagined—the handle was plain, short, and slightly bulbous at the end for grip. The blade itself was flat and triangular, a little shorter than my forearm. More than anything, it looked like a railroad spike gussied up with a handle.

  Leo stayed expressionless as always. The man had a poker face that would make a statue weep. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered as he reached for the blade. I was the only one who heard him, and I reached out to grab his arm.

  Being a hellhound doesn’t really give you special senses—it more fades you out of the world than tunes you in. You disappear from normal people’s radar, becoming visible only to other nightmares or the rare sensitive human. I can’t sense auras, feel magic, smell magic, even, unless I’m the hound. If I had dog senses when I was on two legs I’d drive myself insane within a week. The world is loud, and a lot of it smells terrible.

  But when Leo reached for the Scythe, I felt something shift inside me, that shot of chemicals and nausea your brain emits as an earthquake hits or a twister touches down in your trailer park.

  I missed pulling Leo back by a split second. When his fingers touched the handle, he was fine, for half a breath. Then he arched backward, jittering like he’d been struck by lightning. The blade lit up molten, and smoke started to rise from Leo’s palm where he gripped it, from his feet where he stood on the carpet, from his chest where the buttons from his shirt touched his skin.

  A boom shattered the air around us, cracking the grimy windows of Owen’s office into spiderwebs. Leo flew across the room, slamming into the concrete wall and tumbling like he was a GI Joe somebody had gotten bored with and thrown away.

  The Scythe thumped on the carpet, turning the fibers into slag and filling my nose with the thick smell of burning plastic. I pressed my hands over my ears, but the feedback from the explosion just got louder, the pressure building inside my skull until I was sure blood was pouring out between my fingers. I watched Owen pick up the Scythe with the most delicate touch and place it back in the case, once he’d retrieved it from the floor. Things were going blurry, and I knew from experience I was a few seconds from passing out.

  Leo pulled himself up the wall, singed and wincing but alive. He saw me, and stumbled over, lifting me without any apparent effort. He kicked the office door open and we retreated, the screaming in my head growing a little softer with every step.

  By the time we got to the emergency exit I could see, although opening it kicked off a whole new set of alarms and lights. We got down to the lobby and out onto the sidewalk, into Viv’s smelly car and away before I finally managed to move. When I did, I tipped my head forward and vomited onto the floorboards.

  “Keep it together,” Leo rasped at me. “I need you to drive.”

  “I can’t . . .” I croaked, acid squeezing my throat. “I can’t . . .”

  “You have to,” Leo told me. “My arm is useless. I can’t move it.” He reached for me with his good arm. “Ava—”

  “I don’t think I can,” I squeaked.

  “He can’t hear you.”

  I jolted up and away from Uriel, who looked at me from Leo’s former seat. “What the fuck now!” I snapped, whipping my head around. We were moving, Leo in the driver’s seat, but the snowy city was gone, replaced by the flat blue sky of open fields and endless flat blacktop.

  “What did you do?” I said. “You can’t just drop in on me! You said Leo would never know and doing this in front of him is so fucking uncool . . .”

  “You’re not in front of anyone,” Uriel said. “You passed out right after you upchucked everything you’ve ever eaten. Right now your boyfriend is trying to drive with one arm and losing his mind with concern.”

  He rested one arm on the open window, and I saw us passing serene fields, still pale yellow-green with the first growth after planting. Sweet air filled the car and for the first time in months I wasn’t freezing cold. “Demons and psychics aren’t the only ones who can drop in while you’re dead to the world,” he said. “We just tend to show off less.”

  “This is really not a good time,” I said. “Leo tried to use the Grim Reaper’s Scythe, and something happened. This sound . . .” I shivered, the pain flooding back into my skull. “Ever had a flashbang go off in your face? Or been in an air raid? Like that, all happening inside my head.”

  “In case my subtle hint about the psychics didn’t clue you in to why I’m here,” Uriel said, “you need to be in Kansas City. The Walking Man isn’t something I was kidding about, Ava. He escaped Tartarus, and I want him back, and if you’re reluctant to help just imagine how unpleasant an actual conversation with Leo about me would be.”

  “Leo’s the reason I can’t help you!” I said. “He’s not the Grim Reaper, and we’re in deep shit and we have to get out of Minneapolis fast.” I jiggled the door handle, trying to unstick the lock. “Much as I’d love to play monster cops with you, Uriel, I have my own problems and since Leo’s not the Grim Reaper, I’m not some special edition hellhound. I’m just a normal hellhound whose life is fucked, and therefore I’m off the hook.”

  “So your solution is to bail out of a car going sixty?” Uriel said. I glared at him, still yanking the handle.

  “If I die in my dreams I wake up, right?”

  “Would it interest you to know that isn’t a reaper’s Scythe Owen keeps locked up in his office?” Uriel said. The wind had ruffled his hair, and he smoothed it back.

  I let go of the door handle, slumping. “I hate you.”

  “I know,” he said. “Give me your word that when you wake up you’ll go to Kansas City.”

  “Tell me what Owen’s doing and I’ll consider it,” I retorted. Uriel massaged his forehead.

  “I’ve fought legions of demons from Hell and you are still the biggest pain in my ass,” he said. “There’s six thousand other things I should be doing besides chatting with you in dreamland, so here it is: where have you heard and felt what you did in Owen’s office before?”

  That stopped me for a second. The pain, the bright intensity that was like holding a high-tension wire in my teeth, feeling like the air was vibrating off my skin, hitting me like a rain of gravel.

  I’d met someone before, somebody Lilith had tricked me into thinking was a soul to collect. Gary’s last soul, after I’d killed Gary in Las Vegas. Except the man she forced me to find didn’t have a soul, and when I sank my blade into him—

  “An angel?” I squeaked at Uriel, surprise stealing the part of my voice that made me not sound like a cartoon character. “A fallen angel,” I amended.

  “That is your primary job, in case it slipped your mind,” Uriel said. “First Tartarus, then the Fallen.”

  “And then you leave me alone forever,” I said wistfully. “What a great day. I’m going to celebrate with a who
le pitcher of margaritas.”

  “You love me,” Uriel said, never altering his Perfect Angel mask. “And before you get nostalgic, your little buddy Azrael isn’t the one who’s giving Owen these toys. Azrael couldn’t power a lightbulb, never mind an actual weapon wielded by a soldier of the Kingdom.”

  I sighed. Azrael wasn’t a bad guy. Sure, he was a liar and a disgraced angel who’d been kicked out of the club for consorting with demons, but he’d always treated me fine, and I had shown up trying to steal his nonexistent soul. “Not Azrael. Who then?”

  “Somebody with the brains to hang on to their smiting stick when they fell,” Uriel said. “That’s what it is, you know—it’s a blade that can only be held by us. If Owen can handle it, one of the Fallen has imbued him with some powerful protection magic. Otherwise he’d fry like a squirrel on a power line.”

  “And because he can in fact handle it like he’s working a hibachi grill?” I said.

  “The Grim Reaper can kill anything,” Uriel said. “Including a member of the Fallen. I’d say the more . . . visible . . . among their number would be extremely interested in keeping your boy down on the farm. You’re a bright girl, Ava. I’m sure you can find some way to work that to your advantage.”

  The car slowed, gravel crunching under the wheels. “In the meantime, enjoy Kansas City,” Uriel said. “See some modern art. Eat some barbecue. Find the Walking Man.”

  “I still hate you,” I said as we rolled to a stop.

  “I like to think that someday your hostility and my antipathy might blossom into a beautiful indifference,” said Uriel. “Until then, do as I ask.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, finally able to open the car door.

  “Ava,” Uriel said before my boots touched the dirt. “I am on your side. Or we’re on the same side. For what it’s worth.”

  “Enemy of my enemy,” I said. Uriel nodded.

  “Exactly.”

  “Sorry, Clarence,” I said, slamming the door. “The way I see it, I’ve still got an enemy on either side of me.”