I took the gun away from her skin but didn’t stop aiming it at her. Her grandson whined on the floor behind me. The thought crossed my mind to shoot him again and put him out of his misery.
“You angered a very old, very powerful priestess. She embodied your soul and used you to slay your friend. Your murder, your sin, your penance for spilling her blood. That wasn’t enough, so when your friend’s soul left her body, you sent her to Hell. As her murderer, you will be connected to her forever. As her mother gave her life, you took it from her. It is not your love that keeps her by your side. It is what you took from her.”
My arm shook and lowered the gun, unable to hold it up and keep my composure any longer. “No,” I breathed. “No.” I shook my head and sniffed back tears. “You’re lying.”
“No. This is not my information; it’s yours. I only found it hidden inside that head of yours. You have all the knowledge. You choose to keep it hidden.”
“Why is this thing coming for me now?” She looked away from me. “You let it in,” I accused. “You did it.”
“Ha! No. It was you. Making enemies wherever you go.” One hand flung in the air toward me, an exaggerated expression only a mother could replicate.
“Who now?” I whined and swung the gun haphazardly with my own exaggerated expressions.
“Well,” she guffawed, “I just, humph.” She fussed with her apron and pulled out a cigar.
“What?” I pulled the gun back up to aim at her. “What?” I said through my teeth.
She lit her cigar and took a few puffs. “You know, you did whatever you did; I didn’t force your hand.” She brushed imaginary shit off her lap. I took a step closer to her and tilted my head, waiting for her to spit out whatever she was scared to tell me. She huffed. “You just can’t do anything without pissing someone off.”
It clicked. Finally, I got it. Everything made sense. Honestly, I was a tad disappointed in myself for taking so long to figure it out. “You fucking bitch!” I growled and dug the barrel into her skin again. “You sent me on a mission for the head of your own kin and in turn pissed off the very people you killed him over. It was a fucking kamikaze mission. You knew. You knew what they were and you didn’t bat a fucking eye sending my naïve ass across the state to fetch your castoff. They did this, didn’t they?” I shoved my tattooed arm in her face. “It was them.” I shoved the gun against her head, pushing her head backward, and held my finger precariously over the trigger.
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “Aye.”
“Fuck! Fuck!” I stomped in a circle and wanted desperately to kill something. “You opened the door to my soul and they stepped right in.” She held a finger up to rebut and I rephrased. “Oh, sorry, you flipped on a fucking floodlight. They sent this thing after me because of what you made me do, and you fucking helped them do it!” I felt my cheeks flush with fear and rage and every other emotion that had bottled up and squatted deep down inside me for years.
“I didn’t know. How could I?”
“That’s why you were so eager to help me. You felt guilty. You could have told me. You could have warned me. I stood right here yesterday and you lied to me. You sent me on some mission for dirt.” I remembered what the dirt had done to the beastie.
“It will help you. You have to wait. It’s not time.” Her brows creased, her eyes nearly pleading.
“Oh, it’s time all right. Time for you to get your shit; we’re leaving.” I thought it was a good idea to add kidnapping to my rap sheet.
“You’re not taking her anywhere,” the grandson said from the floor.
“You really going to question me?” I pointed the gun at him. He was expendable. I didn’t need him for anything.
“You’re going to help me fix this.” I wiggled the gun at Lupe. “All of it. First, Tatum is with that…thing. It said it devours her. I can’t let that be. I did it. I couldn’t stop it and I have to fix it now. If Azelie was powerful, I fucking know you’re the damned Martha Stewart of magical bullshit. Figure it out. Then, get this mother-fucking thing from Hell off my ass. You owe me, and you damn well know it.”
My chest rose and fell with my heavy breaths. Lupe contemplated what I asked of her; she shook her head a few times and licked her lips. Looking at both of her eyes told me she had the power I needed to make it all better, even if it was borrowed from a hundred-year-old lion dude.
“Get a bag,” she said finally.
“Abuela, no,” the grandson begged.
“Shut it.” She pinched her fingers together like a duckbill. “You look at me. When the policía come, you tell them a man tried to take money and shot you. You’ll heal.” She flicked her hand at him, shooing his pain away.
She pointed strong fingers at what she needed and I packed as quickly as I could. Candles, books, charms, dried things I didn’t ask about. She directed; I followed. She very well could have been instructing me to collect items needed to send me straight to Hades permanently. My choices were limited as far as magical assistance was concerned. There wasn’t an eight-hundred number for it or anything.
“I’ll have to call Cyrus to bring his SUV. I can’t fit your chair in my hatchback.” I cringed when I realized I really had never put his number in my mom’s phone.
She waved an unconcerned hand my way. Pinching her smoldering cigar between her lips, she flung the blanket covering her legs off. One at a time, she lifted her feet from the stirrups and placed them on the floor, the left obviously heavier than the right. Standing, it became apparent what had kept her bound to the motorized chair. Her left leg was a wooden replica of her right. I’d never seen a wooden leg before in my life, so of course I stared.
She looked down at her own legs. “I thank the d’Entremontes every day for this log.” She knocked on her leg. “I do owe you. You took the life of my long enemy, something I could never do. There is a fighter in you that I admire. I’ve been on this Earth long enough to grow tired of civilities. I have no time or need for it. You do for me, I do for you.” She nodded. “Now, I do for you.”
It was the best I’d get from her, I was sure. I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw that damn wooden leg, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Unless I was willing to allow the soul I sent to Hell to fester there for eternity and subsequently forfeit my own to the same fate. Not fucking likely.
“Let’s go then.” I scurried toward the once-curtain-covered opening.
“One more thing we need. Privacy. Security from prying eyes and curious ears.”
Shit. I thought hard about where in the hell we could go to escape the hullabaloo of the city. “I have a place. Come on.”
She hobbled and clanked along behind me. Modern medicine could have provided her with a more manageable limb, but she chose to clomp around on a wooden stump. Maybe it had been a nod to the eye patch.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed the number I knew could help. “Los Angeles,” I said to the operator on the other end. “I need the number for Embrace.” I waited while the woman with a Texas accent connected me the old-fashioned way to my knight in shining man panties.
“Where are you?” the worried voice on the other end asked without saying hello. He had to have been waiting for my call; otherwise, he’d have never known it was me on the calling end of the line.
“I need you to meet me at Sween. Can you do that?”
Without question, Cyrus answered. “I’ll be there. Call Mike.” He hung up without another word.
A moment later, before I could redial and ask for it, a text message dinged through with the address I needed. I didn’t know how he’d gotten my mom’s number, nor did I care. For all I knew, he had the FBI in his back pocket scouring for information in the background. In light of the situation at hand, it was at the bottom of the list of priorities. Saving the number for good and forwarding the message to Mike, I simply wrote, “I need you.”
They’d be there. Thick or thin, I knew without a doubt those two dumbasses would com
e running. For all that he wasn’t, Cyrus was a good man at one time, and he seemed to have never lost that over the years. Mike would never be anything but himself, and I didn’t want him to be. It was me who needed changing.
Pulling away from the curb, Lupe and her wooden leg in my passenger seat, headed off to a place most called Hell. I wondered if I’d ever get a chance to make the changes I needed. I decided at that moment if I died fixing a fuck-up, that was change enough for me. I was happy to have the balls to admit to fucking up in the first place.
No stop signs…speed limits…
Chapter 15
The tree-lined drive, which led to Sween, or whatever it was called since Malcolm bit the dust, welcomed us with pitch-black hospitality. That Daylight Savings Time really threw a wrench into trying not to be scared of shit that lurked in the dark. As if my haunted life weren’t already terrifying enough, I squinted my way down the narrow dirt road and prayed I didn’t drive off the edge of the Earth.
A single light, like a beacon of sanctuary, peeked through the thick trees. As my shitty old car crunched along the gravel and dust, Cyrus’s white SUV came into view, and I let out a portion of the breath I’d been holding. At the very least, I had an ally in the midst.
There was a pang of disappointment deep in my stomach when Mike’s car was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he just hasn’t made it out yet. Lupe’s eyes had been closed from the moment I squealed away from the curb. I didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t bother to ask. I figured she was either terrified of my horrific driving or she was on some sort of power-save mode.
I pushed the shifter to park and cranked the key over. The quasi-pirate in my passenger seat awakened and surveyed her surroundings. She pulled a cigar from a clip-top pouch and lit it with a cheap, yellow Bic. Puffing away, her lips crinkled and smoothed with each drag.
“This will do,” she nodded.
The old woman pulled herself from the seat and hobbled slowly across the dirt. I gladly hefted the overstuffed bag filled with the many things that could either save me or kill me, glad I’d remembered the place where I’d first laid eyes on Malcolm McTavish. I reveled in the fact that I didn’t have to see his stupid ginger face ever again. In the same thought, I missed Tatum. I’d have slept in the same bed as the man for the rest of my shitty existence if it meant bringing her back.
“What? What is it?” Cyrus’s frantic voice echoed from the porch.
“Settle yourself, boy. We have no time for pussies.” She waved him out of her way and stiff-legged it up the steps.
I snickered as I passed him. It was also no time for goofing off, but she’d basically said what I’d wanted to say for months in one gruff quip. As far as I could tell, good and bad, Lupe and I were more similar than we were different. He followed us in and slammed the door behind him.
“Well?” He folded his arms over his chest.
I plopped the heavy bag down onto the first step of the stairs. “Shit just got real.” Lupe’s heavy leg dragged loudly across the ancient hardwood and I wondered if they’d been formed from the same tree.
He looked quickly to Lupe and back to me. “How?”
“Eh,” she grumbled and flicked her hand, shooing him. Then she spun her finger around her temple as if to insinuate I was a nutcase.
I watched the exchange while my lazy hamster lollygagged on his wheel. “You knew?” I asked, surprised to say the least.
He ran his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “Only just.”
“What the fuck, Cyrus? How could you lie to me again? Cocksucker!” I slammed a fist in the center of his chest. I hadn’t meant to refer to his gayness, but if the shoe fit…
“Dylan.” His tone was stern. “What would it have changed? You had to wait your time. I knew if you were aware the beast that haunts you had been sent after you by those you crossed, you’d only have made things worse.”
“Ha! Shows what you know. That’s a few pegs down on the list of important shit. I sent my best friend to Hell. She festers in a place I can only imagine and I did it to her. You think I would sit idly by for a second once I learned that juicy tidbit?”
“What?” He looked at Lupe. “You didn’t mention this.” He tilted his head, concern plastered across his face.
“This girl is a mess. I can’t keep track. I owe her my help and that is what she’ll get, but when I am finished that’s it. I want nothing more to do with you or that jodido disaster.” She pointed at me.
She was full of shit, but I didn’t have time to argue. I had a date with the devil, and I sure as hell didn’t want to piss off my tour guide. “Can we get this show on the road before I chicken out?”
Lupe was digging around in her bag of tricks by the time Cyrus figured it out. “Oh, I don’t think so.” He stormed across the space toward her and snatched whatever she held away from her. “You will not be helping her with anything but protecting her from those who seek her harm. You owe her that, nothing more. She doesn’t know what she asks of you. She doesn’t know enough to make this choice.”
“She is a grown woman and will make whatever choice she wants. The only control you have is if you’ll still be standing by morning. She put a bullet in my grandson; I think she is serious.”
“Ha! She put a bullet in me months ago.” He held his gut where I’d shot him accidentally. “Do you see me complaining?”
“Hello? Can we stop talking about me as if I’m not right here? No, I don’t know enough. I don’t know shit, and I can blame that on the two of you. What I do know is something shitty is happening to my friend because of me, and something shitty is happening to me because of you. I killed the last shitty thing to happen to me. Where do you think that leaves us now?” I stared at them both as best I could.
Cyrus watched me with careful eyes. Lupe waited a moment before grabbing her doodad back from him and went back to rummaging through her bag. I didn’t say another word to Cyrus as I let my eyes focus on his longer than I ever had. The metal of my pistol rubbed against my skin and sweat pooled under it. I waited. Not moving. Not blinking. I didn’t know what I was doing and I was grateful for that. I worried if I did, I wouldn’t do what needed to be done.
Finally, Cyrus closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. He’d realized my resolve and, unlike Mike, allowed me to be an idiot without a fight. Silently, he gave up his fight and allowed us to continue with things as planned.
“I need a table and a few other things from the kitchen,” Lupe told Cyrus with her hands on her hips.
He took one last look at me before he nodded and showed her to the kitchen. I’d only ever thought of the building as a business; having a kitchen seemed odd. But it was, after all, a converted home. A weird antebellum plunked down in the middle of the Hollywood hills, but I wasn’t about to begin that line of questioning.
Clanking and rustling in the dark half of the lower level caught my attention. Cyrus and Lupe were dragging things around in what I figured was a formal dining room just off the sitting area I’d waited in the one and only other time I’d stepped foot in the place.
They shoved a large table to butt up against the wall, leaving the center of the space free of clutter. Lupe’s wooden leg thudded against the floor when she walked. It was weird seeing her up and about. I couldn’t believe the mojo she and Cyrus had created while I was out. If his blood could de-wrinkle that old bitch and fix up that old eye, what could it do for the medical world? He was right when he said they’d be medical experiments, only when he said they he really meant him. He really was something that shouldn’t exist. I wondered if he knew about Sandorus, if he knew the love of his life had allowed him to become an immortal and condemn him to eternity on Earth.
“You’re getting around nicely,” I said to Lupe.
“Ha! You can get your thick butt over here and do this grunt work,” she huffed.
I chuckled at her reference to my large ass and made quick work of the last two chairs that sat around the fringes of the room. Lu
pe disappeared into the other room, thudding along the way.
“It really is amazing,” I said, pointing in the general direction of the woman and her wooden leg.
“Yeah,” Cyrus responded without looking at me.
“One day, you’ll have to tell me all about it.” I tried to keep it light, but sounded more nervous than anything.
“Dylan, whatever it is you’re trying to do right now, just stop. I am in no mood to chat with you about the magical workings of my blood. You are making a choice I cannot support. I know you are an unstoppable force and recognize that my trying to stop you would only result in you doing it anyway and probably without me, but you should be aware I am not in any way supporting anything that is bound to occur tonight.” He stopped long enough that I thought it was my turn to speak. “No.” He stopped me. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say unless it is to tell me you have changed your mind.”
“Hey, it’s not like you’re the dude with a mystical mojo résumé. How are you so certain what I’m about to do is so fucking dangerous?”
“How are you so certain it is not?” Touché. “I know enough to know there is a list of dangers surrounding you, and this, the one thing you have control over, is at the top. I understand you feel guilt over Tatum, and rightfully so. That is in no way your responsibility.”
“Could you do it? Could you knowingly allow someone you love to spend eternity in Hell?” I let my eyes search his.
“Humph, Hell. You are clueless. Hell is in the minds of man. A fiery pit of brimstone and pitchforks. The place you are seeking is nothing like what you are expecting, I can guarantee you.”
“Then enlighten me, oh, wise one.” His lack of knowledge in the occult had been extensive. I wasn’t impressed by his apparent insider information.
“Heaven, Hell, these terms are relative. They are one plane of existence experienced on levels according to the soul they belong to. No one person inhabits the same afterlife as the other. One may be content in a solitary blackness while another may cling to the energy of the living. There is no guarantee that when you reach your desired space Tatum will even be there. You could, in theory, be damning your own soul to purgatory. Dylan, you can’t save her. Please, do not try again. A failure at this point could be catastrophic.”
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