“Gary was going to kill me,” I said. I was whispering, but it still sounded unholy loud in the tiny bathroom.
“Ava, you’re going to learn very quickly I don’t like excuses,” Lilith said. She stood, patting her hair in the cloudy mirror that still assured the entire world she was gorgeous. She was tall too, and had a round, angelic face and an adorably upturned nose. Her hair was swept back into a smooth bun, blond and glowing like somebody had cut her out of a magazine. Too perfect to be human, though I doubted anyone besides me would pick up on that before she ripped them apart.
“Not an excuse,” I said. “If you want me to be sorry, I don’t think I can do it right now.”
“I also hate apologies,” Lilith said. “They’re weak. As for Gary, do you really think I’m happy that my employee let his own hellhound ventilate him?”
I stayed quiet, which made her turn back to me, white teeth bared. “Here’s a hint: I’m not fucking happy.”
“Please kill me,” I blurted. “Please just do it here. Don’t take me to the Pit.” I was managing not to cry as I begged, so I only hated myself a little instead of to the core.
Lilith narrowed her eyes, and then she grabbed me and lifted me up so my head cracked the tiles when it hit. “I really hope that you’re less of a pathetic whining waste of air than you come across,” she said, “because if you don’t get it together and do as I say, I will fuck up your day.”
“Okay,” I squeaked. I still wasn’t sure why I wasn’t already dead, but sometimes you just have to accept that the wolf isn’t hungry and walk away.
Lilith dropped me and brushed off her skirt. She was wearing powder blue with a white blouse and pearls. Fucking pearls. I had the insane urge to laugh, but I turned it into choking instead.
“You do realize that a human warlock in possession of a Scythe is the worst thing that could possibly happen,” she said. “Just be glad it wasn’t your friend out there, because I’d rip him a new asshole where his balls used to be.”
I started to talk, but she held up a finger. “I will handle Sergei Karpov. And you are going to get your ass back to work.” She tossed a leather-bound notebook at my feet, and I realized with a start it was Gary’s ledger.
“Gary’s last outstanding collection is in Wyoming,” she said. “He’s been tracking him since the early seventies at least. I wasn’t too happy that Gary never managed to collect from the prick, but now, if you want a chance in any realm of keeping flesh on that skinny ass of yours, you’ll get him, reap him, and bring him to me.”
She pointed to a name amid dozens of others. I wondered how many of those names I’d been responsible for. Gary’s obsessive-compulsive handwriting spelled out Clint Hicks. I risked making eye contact with Lilith, which was like staring at a well-dressed bird of prey. “What’s his deal?”
“I don’t micromanage my employees,” she snapped. “I don’t know why meat sacks choose to sell any more than I know why Gary decided you were worth making part of his hound pack. Which is probably a good thing, because I would have told him to let you rot.”
“I’ve been getting that a lot,” I muttered.
“The last hound Gary sent got sent back on a ventilator,” the demon said. “I understand this Clint Hicks surrounds himself with shifters, and when Gary came to me to track him personally, I found he had measures in place to keep Hellspawn out of the area.”
“This hound,” I said, feeling sickness that wasn’t caused by Lilith grip my guts. “Was his name Wilson?”
“How the fuck do I know what his name was?” Lilith snapped. “For all I know, Gary calls you Sparky, Rover, and Spot. The countermeasures won’t keep me out for long, but breaking them is more effort than I’m going to put into one damned soul who thinks he’s smart, so go and fetch him.”
There was that word again. Fetch. But since it was coming out of the mouth of a thousand-year-old demon, I pretended it didn’t bother me.
I just nodded. Lilith opened the bathroom door and walked out, turning back only once.
“Ava, if you screw this up, do yourself a favor and walk into traffic before I find you. Because if I do, the Pit is going to be a vacation compared to what I have planned.”
She left, and I was still curled up in the corner of the bathroom when Leo came back.
I managed to tell him the deal, in a fairly coherent manner, while he got me off the floor and carried me to the bed. I wasn’t in the place to argue about that.
“Lilith?” he said as he uncapped a plastic bottle of gas station vodka and poured it over the cut on my arm. “Shit. She’s Gary’s head office?”
“Apparently,” I said. “Gary never talked about her except to threaten us with being her purse dogs if we got out of line.”
“Well, Lilith is a big fucking deal,” Leo said. He got a needle and dental floss and positioned my arm flat. “This is going to hurt.”
“What else is new?” I said.
Leo threaded the needle and started sewing, tattooed fingers moving without any hesitation. “You should probably do what she says,” he said. “I don’t think we have a lot of choice.”
“The fuck is this ‘we’?” I said. “You can do whatever you want. You don’t have a shark-toothed bitch from Hell breathing down your neck.”
“True,” Leo said. “But one of the most powerful vory v zakone slash necromancers west of the Mississippi knows I’m gunning for him, so I’m thinking heading to some country that’s inhospitable to both gangsters and deadheads might not be a bad idea.”
“What’s the deal with you and your dad anyway?” I said, gritting my teeth. I wasn’t really interested in Leo’s sad life story, but it was better than sitting in silence watching a needle slice in and out of my skin.
“Warlocks are supposed to pass on their skills to their legitimate kids,” Leo said, eyes never moving from his work. “I’m not, but none of my fuckup half siblings got the blood. He wasn’t happy about that, but he couldn’t kill me, so he devoted himself to keeping me under his boot. Eventually we’ll probably kill each other, but until then, I decided I was through being tied to his whipping post.”
He bit through the floss and poured more vodka over my arm. “All done.”
I examined the tight stitches. My arm already looked less like a flank steak. “You’re pretty good at that.”
Leo tossed the needle and the bloody pillowcase I’d lain on into the trash. “My wife was a nurse.”
The past tense was enough to keep my mouth shut. If Leo wanted to talk about his dead wife, he’d be talking.
“In the morning we’ll find a new set of wheels and go see what this Clint Hicks guy did to put a burr up Lilith’s ass,” Leo said. “In the meantime, I’m starving.”
“I’ll go get us some grease passing for food if I can find a shirt,” I said. Leo’s lips parted in a small smile.
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything.” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off the black wife beater underneath, handing it to me. “Here.”
I lost a few seconds staring at his chest, at the twin stars inked on his collarbones and the death’s-head that took up the space from his heart to his abdomen. The hood and the scythe were a human’s fantasy of Death, from someone who didn’t know what really happened when you met a reaper. Cyrillic alphabet ran up his ribs, and his biceps were covered in roses, spiderwebs, and groupings of tiny crosses and skulls.
The daggers I’d glimpsed were pretty intricate and surrounded by red blood droplets, as if the ink had actually pierced him. Shirt off, I could see where he got his strength—he was all muscle on his thin frame, the kind of body designed by genetics for inflicting damage.
Leo put his shirt back on and buttoned it, not meeting my eyes. “Are you going to ask me what they mean? Because we could be here for a while.”
“They mean the same thing as me having fangs
and claws does,” I said. “ ‘Stay the fuck out of my way.’ ”
Leo poured the last of the gasoline-smelling vodka into a dirty glass and drank it. “Close enough.”
“You really don’t have to stick with me,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything.” Truthfully, I wanted Leo to stay more than I wanted anything, except maybe to have never met Lilith. But he wasn’t going to, so why prolong things?
“I told you, it’s not about owing,” Leo said. “We’re mutually beneficial. You could use a hand and I could use someone who can keep a deadhead off my ass if my father catches up to us.”
I nodded. “Okay. But if you’re gone when I get back with burgers, I won’t hold it against you.”
Leo shook his head. “Thieves like me believe in loyalty, Ava. I get that you probably haven’t had a lot of that, but I’m not going to dump you after all this.”
I backed out of the room and walked out to the county road without saying anything else. Leo was right. I’d never had somebody stick around when things weren’t going their way. I’d sure as fuck never had my loyalty repaid by anything but more orders at best, and a knife in my back at worst.
I’d died because I was loyal. Loyalty was for stupid girls and brainless thugs, and I wasn’t either of those things anymore.
Lilith had me by the throat, so I’d go to Wyoming. I’d do what she asked, but Gary was gone—Lilith showing up in his place proved it for my purposes—and as far as I was concerned my contract was void. Clint Hicks was my last roadblock, and I decided then that when I did find him, pet shifters or no, Clint Hicks was going to be one sorry son of a bitch for getting in my way.
CHAPTER
11
We crept out of the motel room predawn, before day-shift maids started their rounds. I figured not giving a fuck was a prerequisite for employment in a place like this, but Leo insisted.
“My father has a lot of people willing to do a lot of things,” he said, shrugging back into his suit jacket. “Right now, his one and only priority is finding me and feeding me my own nuts. The fewer people see us, the better.”
“Fine.” I shrugged. My arm still twinged with every motion. I hadn’t slept much, waking every few minutes whenever someone in the walkway stumbled to the ice machine or one of the happy customers in the upstairs room moaned.
Leo patted himself down for his crushed pack of Russian cigarettes and a lighter, sticking a smoke between his lips. He lit it while we surveyed the parking lot. “That one.” He pointed at an orange Sprint that was more rust than paint.
I shook my head. The Sprint had left a glossy puddle on the pavement under the transmission, sported expired tags, and probably gulped gas like an end-stage drunk tackling a box of Franzia. “We wouldn’t get fifty miles in that piece of shit,” I said. Leo exhaled a cloud of rank blue smoke in frustration.
“We need something old, without an onboard computer,” he muttered. “Don’t need the electronics playing up if we tangle with more witches.”
I crossed the lot to the far corner, examining an early seventies Volvo wagon parked underneath the one scrawny pine at the edge of the pavement. The back windows were piled with cardboard boxes and stuffed suitcases, a Michigan plate riding below the fat chrome bumper and bug-eyed headlights. It was clean, though, and had a current inspection sticker. Based on the number of stuffed animals and ultraviolent zombie video games I could see stacked in the back, I was guessing college students too poor or dumb to stay somewhere better.
I whistled at Leo, who wrinkled his nose at the sight of the car. “That thing? The Joad family will be coming back any second to claim it.”
I ignored him, popping the driver’s side lock and fishing out the wires from beneath the dash. I also popped the lift gate and gestured to Leo. “Leave their crap, will you?”
He sighed, grinding out his cigarette on the fender. “You kidding me?”
“Leo, they’re just kids,” I said. “We’re stealing their car. We don’t need their entire dorm room.”
Grumbling, he went to the back and started tossing out boxes. “You know, for somebody in your line of work, you’re pretty fucking saintly.”
He slammed the back as I started the motor. It turned right over, grumbling in the snapping cold of the high desert. Leo slid into the passenger seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I put the Volvo in gear and drove for a couple of hours until we hit a faded truck stop on I-80, just over the Utah border near the singularly unremarkable town of Wendover. Leo had dozed off, and I nudged him awake.
“You better change your clothes,” I said. His suit was looking crusty, never mind totally out of place in the land of padded vests, trucker hats, and Mormons decked out in mom jeans. I fished through one of the two remaining overstuffed suitcases on the backseat, pulling out a too-big peasant blouse to cover up the stitches in my arm. I found a fresh pair of jeans and socks while I was at it. The girl whose car this was had feet the size of Godzilla’s, but the rest of her was close enough. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had new clothes, but all my spares were gone, along with my bike.
I checked myself out in the rearview mirror. I was a mess—greasy, pale, undereye circles that would do a junkie proud. No help for it. I’d have to make the crackhead look work for me.
Leo wriggled free of his bloodstained suit pants and coat, and I handed him a pair of baggy, frayed jeans with blue and red paint staining the knees and a faded Psychedelic Furs shirt. His boxers were white, little red and black card suits all over them. In spite of everything that had happened, I smiled a little. Enough bad stuff happens in a short enough time and you just go numb, things glossing over. If it wasn’t for the throbbing, infected gash in my arm, I’d say this day wasn’t going half bad.
I wriggled down my own bloodstained, filthy jeans, shooting Leo a glare. “Do you mind?”
He shrugged, a smile tugging at his lips in turn. “So you’re allowed to ogle me but not the other way around?”
“Don’t get excited,” I muttered, balling up my jeans and shoving them under the seat. I yanked off the shirt Leo had lent me and thrust it back at him. “Humping you is less than the last thing on my mind right now.”
Leo raised one eyebrow as he accepted the shirt. “Good to know.” Cool morning air kissed the V of skin above my bra as he stared. I glared at him as I pulled the blouse over my head and zipped up the girl’s worn-out hippie jeans. They slid down over my hip bones, barely clinging to my ass. Thieves couldn’t be choosers. Leo grinned at me.
“You look cute. Like you’re headed to the Lilith Fair.”
“Fuck off,” I growled, and shoved my car door open.
Leo climbed out after me, zipping up the pot-scented UNLV hoodie he’d found under the passenger seat, and ambled into the truck stop. Aside from the neck tattoos and the hit man stare, he could have been any other good-looking tourist stopping for coffee and a piss on his way to somewhere more interesting.
I gathered up all the cash we had left and followed him, grabbing a fresh pair of underwear and a bra from the little shop between the bleating arcade and the fast-food restaurant. I paid for a shower, bought some shampoo and soap from the dispenser, and stripped out of my stolen outfit. The tiles were slimy under my feet, but the shower was a strong jet, and I stood under it for a long time, letting the water droplets pound on the rooftop of my skull.
Clean for what felt like the first time in months, I felt some of the resolve to find and fuck up Clint Hicks as quickly as possible slipping away. I was only alive because Lilith thought I was useful, but once I found Hicks, then what?
Then I’d just be a stray dog, and a lot less useful.
I soaped my hair twice and let the water run clear, midnight strands sticking to my neck and shoulders like seaweed.
Who was to say I could even track down this Hicks? Gary hadn�
��t been able to find him when he’d skipped out. Wilson had tracked him down and come back with half a face. Maybe this was just Lilith’s little fuck you before she sent me to my death, an extra half twist of the knife in a wound that was already fatal.
I got out of the shower stall, standing now in a world of steam, and toweled off, putting my “new” clothes back on. Everything was baggy on me. I was on the small side to begin with and I hadn’t eaten in a while. My stomach burbled in response, and I wished I hadn’t spent all of our cash on being clean. Who was I trying to impress, anyway? A gangster who stashed dead bodies in fifty-gallon drums for a living?
I found Leo sitting on the hood of the Volvo, a wrapped breakfast burrito next to him letting off steam. He was paging through Gary’s ledger, one side of his lower lip sucked into his mouth, teeth whiter than bleached bone pressing into the flesh until it turned crimson with concentration.
“Thought you’d be hungry,” he greeted me, not looking up from the page.
I unwrapped the burrito and shoved it in my mouth, pointing down at the Hellspawn scrawl against the ledger’s pages. “You can read that?” A piece of jalapeño tumbled down my chin and I swallowed, embarrassed. You’d think after a century I’d have learned a few social graces, even if I did spend a good portion of it running on four legs.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “It’s not impossible for humans to understand Hellspawn writing. I mean, people spend all their free time learning Klingon, so why not this?”
I remembered a warlock in Arizona, the kind who spells magic with a K, real wannabe Ordo Templi Orientis fanboy, who came at me with some kind of replica Star Trek weapon when I showed up on the doorstep of his shitty condo outside Scottsdale.
Once he’d stabbed me with it in the shoulder and it had no discernible effect, the screaming started.
Leo snorted in amusement when I relayed the whole sad story, rifling the pages of the ledger. “Here it is—Louis Turnblatt, December fourth, 1992. Payment for . . .” He raised one thin eyebrow at the page. “Sexual potency and control over the lusts of others.”
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