The Grimrose Path

by Rob Thurman

  “You’ve been a peri forever now, so get over it,” I grumped. “Do you want to go down to the diner and get some breakfast? I’m starving.”

  “More like lunch, but, yes, that would be acceptable if . . .”

  I raised a hand as I answered my ringing cell. I recognized Zeke’s number immediately when I pulled the phone from my jeans pocket and held it up. “Kit?” I answered. “Is everything all right? How’s Griffin?”

  “Fine, fine, everything’s fucking fine,” came the dismissal. “How do you say asshole in German?”

  “Arschloch, and you’d better tell me you didn’t call me just to ask that,” I demanded, but it was too late. As I’d cut off Ishiah, so had the click of a disconnected cell phone done to me.

  “Problems?” Ishiah raised his eyebrows. Ishiah was the peri who probably did know about Zeke, who’d become a peri by virtue of not retiring but by telling Heaven to kiss his ass, but he certainly didn’t need to know about Griffin, the only peri with demon wings. He might be all right with it; he might not. It didn’t matter. Tempting fate was something I did with my own life, not my friends’.

  “Actually more of a daily routine.” I grabbed my small leather backpack and jacket. I already had my gun on me. It was time for about three pounds of biscuits and gravy. Carbs were good for the brain. Bad for the ass, thighs, and heart, but good for thinking, and with Ishiah here, there was bound to be serious thinking ahead. “Let’s go eat and you can tell me why you’re in Vegas, how you got here. . . . I know it wasn’t with those wings of yours. Was it by bus or plane? And how did you get that sword through security?”

  He had flown . . . by plane. The wings did work, but flying across country would take a while, and he’d bought the sword once he arrived in Vegas. It didn’t do for peris outside New York City to go unarmed. Demons liked killing them as much as they liked killing angels, only peris were more vulnerable. When they retired, they could keep the wings and transform to a human body, but that was it. No zipping up to Heaven, no flashing in and out of existence, no changing from flesh to a crystal statue that was the true form of an angel, one that looked like it belonged in an art gallery and not moving around in real life. Ishiah had been one of the very high and mighty in his day, so he had a difference of such to him. Give him a few weeks of storing up energy and he could give a light show like he’d given me last night. But that was it. A Vegas magician could do a hundred times better. I told him so. Leave the shows to the experts, I’d advised.

  He’d have puffed up those feathers like an outraged rooster if we hadn’t been in public. Keeping them invisible for the moment, he finished up with his food and told me why he was here. I was on my second helping and had a ways to go, but Ishiah was an efficient creature, always had been, and I listened to him as I kept scooping up some gravy with the softest of biscuits you could imagine—the cook had to be from the South. No Vegas cook could make biscuits worth a damn.

  “Heaven sent me,” Ishiah said. He paused—I didn’t know if he expected me to fall to my knees at the privilege or if he was expecting a choir hidden in the diner’s back kitchen to burst into song, but neither happened and he went on. “After what happened last year, they thought you’d be more willing to listen to me than an angel still in good standing.” He frowned. “Though the higher-ups don’t seem to know what exactly did happen three months ago. They know Oriphiel”—now there had been a snooty dick and a half—“never came home and a powerful demon named Solomon was killed. There were some rumors about an artifact of some sort, but Oriphiel didn’t share much about that. He seemed to think that was his mission and his alone. Ah, and someone outed you and Leo as tricksters.”

  That would’ve been Eligos, the only one besides me and mine left standing at the final battle for the Light. “No, Ori wasn’t a pigeon who played well with others, and that’s saying something. Good at bossing, sniffing around where he shouldn’t be, saying what he shouldn’t say, but cooperation—there was a word that escaped him.” I took a swallow of juice and raised it toward the waitress for a refill. “And Upstairs is right. I wouldn’t listen to another of their kind after him. He was such an ass that I didn’t mind watching Eligos play a few head games with him.” I caught a last dab of gravy on my plate with my thumb and studied it. Humans in all their imperfections had created a food so perfect that if a heavenly choir was around, they should be singing about that.

  “Eligos told me once Solomon couldn’t play in his league. Neither could Oriphiel. If he hadn’t wanted a certain something all to himself . . . power all to himself . . . maybe things would’ve turned out differently for him.” I mirrored Ishiah’s frown back at him, but mine was with an eye to a past longer than three months ago. “Your kind, Ishiah, your kind isn’t nearly as careful as they ought be about that. The power. It’s in all of you, that itch. That need. One-third of Heaven falling wasn’t some fluke.” I went on before he could deny it. I’d given him a truth. What he did with that truth was up to him. “So what’s almighty Heaven want to pass on that needed sending you here? Think they could throw a little Aramaic message in some holy ice cubes in my fridge. A postcard from St. Peter at the pearly gates. Something I could sell on eBay at least.”

  He pretended to have not heard my warning or my desire to make some cash on eBay—guns and boots aren’t free, boys and girls—and went to the heart of the matter. “Eligos is here, then.” The long scar on his jaw whitened. “Wonderful. I’m not surprised he’d be involved in anything that had to do with angels dying. And I came because we know about Cronus. Heaven isn’t blind. When more than nine hundred demons die that quickly, Heaven keeps an ear open. Demons talk, so the fact that the wings were being taken wasn’t a secret long. All angels know what can be done with those wings. Cronus wants Hell and Lucifer, but we don’t know why. But nothing good can come of it. I’m here to find out what I can and to let you know that now, in this particular case . . . Heaven and païen can stand together on this—to stop Cronus.”

  “Cronus is païen. What makes you think the rest of us don’t stand behind him?” I asked. “Would rather stand behind him any day than have anything to do with a bunch of cloud squatters, present company excluded.”

  “You bunch are crazy, but none of you is as crazy as Cronus,” he answered. It was a valid enough point, except that I didn’t think Heaven would be much help.

  “Maybe.” I held up my glass for the waitress. “It’s a nice gesture and all, much obliged, sugar. I just don’t see that your former place of business has anything to offer. I wish they did, but unless we get . . .” I stopped and let a thought somersault around my brain for a second. It might not work. Ninety-nine point nine percent it wouldn’t. Talk about your real hate-hate relationship. No, no bookie in Vegas would take that bet, but it was worth thinking on a little more.

  “Trixa?”

  I waved the unvoiced question away. “Never mind.” I didn’t think Ishiah would betray me by spilling a seed of a plan—we were on the same side in this. But while that was true, you could plan all you want, but know at the end something will either go wrong or, worse yet, go right at the wrong moment. Angels, real nonretired angels, were mostly windup toys. If you burdened their brains with a plan and someone, theoretically speaking, blew up the bridge they were supposed to cross, they’d cross anyway. Splat splat splat. If I needed their help, I’d tell them what I needed precisely when I needed it. There was much less chance of their screwing things up.

  Then there was the saying, an oldie but a goody, that loose lips sink ships. Ishiah said demons talked and Heaven had listened. That’s how they’d found out about Cronus and his quest for the map to Hell. Demons weren’t the only ones who talked. Ishiah was no gossip, but someone Upstairs had sent him here. He’d report to them and then there was no stopping it. Secrets by their very nature fought not to be kept. Put something in a cage and it wanted out . . . just like with Pandora’s box. No, I’d feel better if I kept the key to the box that held my ghost of a plan to
myself—ghost of half a plan. It was safer for everyone. Smarter as well, and I did so pride myself on being smart.

  It could be Ishiah was right. I was vain, but how could you expect others to appreciate your brilliance if you didn’t appreciate it yourself?

  I sucked the bit of gravy off my thumb and slid the check to Ishiah’s side of the table. “Oh, there is a tiny thing, you should know about. Very small.” I held my thumb and forefinger barely a half inch apart and gave an encouraging, pep-rally smile to show how very tiny a thing it was. “I lied to Eli about what Cronus wanted and conned him into turning a hundred thousand or so souls loose from Hell. I’m not sure he knows yet, but when he does, you might not want to be around for that.”

  “You lied to Eligos?” The check in Ishiah’s hand became a tightly wadded ball of paper as his fist clenched. “To Eligos?”

  “I’ve done it before. He seems to find it entertaining.” I pushed my chair back and stood. “But I have a feeling when his boss, the big boss, finds out he was cheated out of that many souls, Eli won’t find me quite as amusing anymore.”

  “Tricksters.” Ishiah grimly smoothed out the check and stood to go pay. “All of you. Pucks or shape-shifters. Whether you’re the kind with a survival instinct or not, you’ll throw it away instantly for the chance at one good trick.”

  “It wasn’t good,” I corrected, vexed. “It was unparalleled. I saved thousands, maybe a hundred thousand souls.” I didn’t invent the big fish story, but I was sure it was a trickster who had. “I’d think I’d get a sainthood at the very least.”

  “A hundred thousand souls saved, but did they all deserve to be saved?”

  The voice of conscience. I was glad it lived in NYC and not here. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought some of the souls might not be rightfully damned. Abusers, murderers, but I knew, I’d seen that one Rose hadn’t deserved anything close to damnation. Leo had promised to pass along the word via his family. Our afterlives weren’t Heaven or Hell. There was more leeway, more flexibility between what was evil and what was only naughty. Most of the souls would find the home they were due. Justice would be served, and if some did escape to wander alone, unable to touch the real world or any world for the rest of eternity, that was a punishment all its own.

  “Your rules aren’t necessarily our rules. I saved an innocent girl. I tricked Hell—that’s what I was born to do. Chirp away, Jiminy. It won’t do you any good.” He kept the chirping silent, but it was implicit in the way he held himself as we walked back to the bar. Stiff back, tight jaw, braced shoulders.

  At Trixsta’s door—Leo had the glass fixed . . . nice of him—I stopped. “You didn’t ask what Cronus wanted. What he really wanted.”

  “After what you did by conning Eligos, truthfully, I’m afraid to ask. You put yourself in Hell’s crosshairs. Made yourself the target of every demon alive. I don’t think you could survive that, trickster or not. That makes me think you took a huge risk because you know what Cronus wants and it’s something you aren’t going to walk away from . . . that chances are good that no one is walking away from. Plus, if you were going to tell me, you would have by now, and I know how impossible it is to pin down an uncooperative trickster. Heaven won’t like it, but I know better than to think I can do anything to change that. You’ll tell me when you want to and no sooner.”

  He was right . . . about it all. I took his arm and turned him from the door after calling for Leo. “Leo will take you to the airport, Ish. Go back home to New York and sex up Goodfellow five ways to Sunday. Hold on to what you have now. There’s no guarantee the world will keep turning. That’s true of any day, but with Cronus here, it’s even more true . . . so go home. Give Robin my best.” As Leo stepped outside, I asked him if he would take Ish to the airport and he did his pissed-but-I-am-stoic-and-rise-above-it expression. I smiled, squeezed his arm, and urged the both of them toward the alley and Leo’s car. I’d called the restaurant this morning too. My car was long gone—to the tow yard or Mexico. “But whatever you do,” I called to Ishiah, “stay out of his pantry.”

  Puzzlement and annoyed jealousy crossed the peri’s face before he shook his head in resignation. “Tricksters.” He asked one last time, “Are you positive you don’t want to tell me? Who knows? It might save your life.” Against Cronus? I wished Heaven had that kind of power. I wished anyone did. I shook my head and made a shooing gesture as if he were a particularly stubborn rooster and I was all out of corn. “Damn tricksters,” he embellished.

  He was disappearing into the alley when I challenged after him. “So close to blasphemy. So close.”

  The only thing he left behind was his growl to call him when I needed the help—not if, but when. It was irritating that he knew that I would. I almost hoped Goodfellow didn’t give him any.

  A puck not give it up? That would never happen.

  After they left in Leo’s car and I waved to them, I went into the bar, five . . . ten steps. Eligos came up through the floor as if it was nothing more than a hallucinatory mist instead of hardwood—the shattered hole about the size of a well’s mouth. His claws tangled in my shirt, and we kept going up. When we hit the ceiling, it was the same as the floor . . . to Eli. I was in a human body, however, not demon, and it hurt, even with Eli ahead of me—by a nose, like they said at the racetrack, by a nose.

  By nearly a foot, a head, in his case. He was in full demon form—copper scales, thrashing wings, a narrow dragon’s jaw, broken glass teeth, a fury-filled black gaze with swirling specks as brilliant as coins weighing down a dead man’s eyes. I caught flashes of all that as wood splinters, paint chips, and plaster chunks and dust fell around us as we ended up in my bedroom. If Eli hadn’t been leading the way clearing a path, I would’ve broken my neck on the ceiling or crushed my skull or, hell, both.

  We hovered in the air in my bedroom as I all but swallowed my tongue to keep from coughing at the dust or make a sound at the tearing pain in my shoulders that had scraped through Eli’s new “door.” A fully functioning shape-shifting trickster wouldn’t, so I couldn’t. “Lying bitch.” It was calmly said, but the movement that went with it was anything but restrained. I flew through the air and landed on the bed... almost. I never appreciated the difference “almost” could make until I hit the floor on my back. I’d fallen there like an autumn leaf . . . if an autumn leaf weighed a buck thirty.

  Buck thirty-five.

  Buck . . . no one’s goddamn business.

  I had red and gold scarves on the ceiling, hanging like billowing sails or the canopy of the bed of a princess. I didn’t feel much like a princess right then, but I did feel as if I were sailing. On a smooth glassy surface . . . not a ripple—only me and the red-gold of a setting sun as I drifted silently. Then the falling sun was gone and the Fallen took its place—fallen leaves, fallen suns, fallen God’s own.

  Everything fell, sooner or later.

  “Lying, lying bitch. Useless païen filth. Not worth one-fifth the soul of a common whore.” The teeth touched the skin of my face. “Cronus is still taking wings. Giving up those souls accomplished nothing.”

  I had told him this might be the case. A convincing lie cannot be told without some shred of truth to it. I blinked at the plaster dust in my eyes and took a shallow breath, the best I could do after most of the air had been forced from my lungs when I hit the floor. I gave Eligos the best imitation of a triumphant smile as I could, considering the pain and lack of air that, thanks to the reaction to my smile, didn’t get any better.

  Eli hissed and wrapped his hands around my throat. They started out covered with scales and equipped with talons but in a short second turned human—as did the face inches from mine. “Thousands and thousands of souls gone and Cronus didn’t give one good goddamn. Or two or three goddamns.” The hands tightened. I didn’t struggle. If I did, he’d see I was still weak. I could go for the gun in the small of my back, but I wouldn’t make it with his weight on top of me. There was nothing I could successfully do to escape him.
I was hurt, dazed, and I was being choked to death, and there was only one thing I could do that might save my life—use the weapon I’d been born with that required no shape-shifting at all.

  I kept smiling.

  I didn’t let my body buck against the lack of oxygen as it was so desperate to do. I didn’t rip at his hands. If I was turning blue, I did my best to make it look like a good color on me—this year’s must-have—and I smiled up at that impossibly handsome face. His impossible face, my impossible smile, an impossible thing not to struggle for air. But I was out of all choices except one. So I smiled as my lungs burned as if they were torched from the inside out. I even smiled as dark blotches began to slide across my vision . . . from sunsets to storm clouds.

  Then another impossible thing happened. The pressure around my neck eased. I could breathe. I did, in slow and even breaths as if I hadn’t missed a one, much less many. They, mainly Buddhist monks, say you can control your body in more ways than you can imagine—slow your heart, your respiration, fly above the needs of your physical self. That was nice for them, but I still would’ve liked to have seen the Buddhist monk who wouldn’t have gasped for air and tried to claw Eli’s face off right then. The first at least . . . They were better about not seeking vengeance than I was. You don’t see many face-ripping Buddhist monks. Good men, very good, very patient men.

  I sincerely wished I had the strength for some face ripping myself, but I wasn’t necessarily very good. Patient? It depended on how you measured . . . by hours or years. I liked my karma immediate. Face ripping was very immediate.

  “You drive me fucking insane!” He grabbed at the coverlet from my bed and tore it to pieces, silk raining down like dead butterflies. Glaring at me venomously, he spit, “You knew. You knew Cronus wouldn’t stop if we set his Rose free. Or did someone already eat his goddamn Rose?”