Black Dog

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Leonid Mikhailovich Karpov is not a good man,” Clint said. “I can see the truth of humans, Ava, and his soul is as black as the deepest part of Hell.”

  I folded my arms. “In the short time we’ve been together, maybe you didn’t get that I don’t really care much about the condition of a person’s soul. They’re either a job for me or they’re not. Leo’s not.”

  Clint went with the light through a makeshift door to the priest’s apartment, and I was forced to follow him or be left in the dark with a corpse. He tried the light switch, and when more sparks showered us he sighed. “I told Colin to ask for donations to fix this place up. He always said the church didn’t need any more money, it needed more faith.”

  “I’ll be sure to drop an e-­mail to the Vatican about his sainthood,” I said. “Why does Lilith have such a hard-­on for you?”

  Clint found a cluster of half-­burned saints’ candles in a kitchen cabinet and lit them, making the miserable, mold-­streaked kitchenette look much better than it had any right to. “The first demons were offspring of the Fallen, twisted images of ourselves. Eventually, there were more of them than us, and in the way of unruly mobs everywhere they kicked us out. Even after we gave them the divine gift of life.”

  “Demons are assholes like that,” I said.

  “The Fallen scattered to the four corners of the earth,” Clint said. In the candlelight, I could easily imagine the angel’s face as a vision of beauty and terror, inhuman as a shark gliding through cold, still waters.

  “But you scattered to Wyoming,” I said. “No offense, but if I had the chance to go anywhere, I would not pick Wyoming. Or anywhere Wyoming-­adjacent.”

  “I’ve lived all over,” Clint said. “Paris, Calcutta, San Francisco. I could tell you about it someday.”

  “You assume I’m some hillbilly who’s never been anywhere but on a tour of America’s more scenic truck stops?” I said. Clint shrugged, spreading his hands. Clearly, angels didn’t give a shit about offending ­people.

  “I’m starting to think Lilith was right about you,” I grumbled.

  Clint gave a grim smile that was more like a sneer. “She hates me. Always has, me and all the Fallen. Her mission in life is to collect us as trophies.”

  “If she collects the box set, does she get a prize?” I said. Clint checked out the narrow window, then pulled the greasy yellow and green curtains tight.

  “She gets to work out her pent-­up aggression on me for the next few thousand years.” He paced the kitchen, but since it wasn’t much bigger than a decent-­size closet, he was limited to two steps in each direction, like a predator in a zoo. “Fallen used to be strong. Not compared to our brothers, but strong enough to take on someone like Lilith. But the longer we’re out of the Kingdom, the weaker we get. And the longer Lilith has to think about how much she despises me . . .”

  “I get it,” I said. “You’re not gonna stick your neck out for me. Are we gonna have a problem now, or are you going to let me and Leo go our own way?”

  “You understand what it’s like to be ground under someone’s heel with no hope,” Clint said. “I’m pissed as hell at you for leading Lilith right to me, but I think we can help each other. You’re going to need me, now that your reaper is dead.” He went into the small living area and lifted the cushions off the sofa. “We don’t have a problem, but I could kill that Leo guy for putting you in that position.”

  “Leo’s not so bad,” I said. “He took care of Billy, and he hasn’t left me, even though he doesn’t owe me.”

  “Situations like Billy are exactly why you need to stick with me,” Clint said, pulling out the sofa bed, along with the stench of mildew. “I stayed up all night making sure you two didn’t die at Lilith’s hand, so I’m beat. Want to catch some shut-­eye?”

  I hadn’t hesitated to share the motel room with Leo, but I shook my head now. I didn’t want to give Clint any ideas. If angels even got ideas. I didn’t really want to think about angelic genitalia or lack thereof right then, or ever. “Somebody should keep an eye out.”

  “Suit yourself,” Clint said, stretching out and pulling an afghan the color of old and new bruises over him.

  I went back to the chapel and sat next to Leo on the floor, pulling my knees up to my chin. He moaned softly in his sleep, and I looked up at him, making sure he hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. Before I died, I’d sat with my grandmother when she took a turn for the worse. The damp air of the bayou clamped down on her lungs, slowly suffocating the life out of her over the years. Now, of course, I could see that the foul cigarillos she smoked almost constantly for my entire life gave her emphysema, and with no oxygen tanks or inhalers to treat her, the decline was sharp and fast.

  I wished more than anything there was something I could do, something to ease the terrible wheezing every time she drew breath, something to speed along the inevitable. In the end I just poured her doses of opium-­laced cough syrup until she slipped off to sleep and never woke up.

  Most days, I was glad she died before I did. If she had ever seen what had happened to me, her heart would have broken.

  I leaned my head back against Leo’s bench, staring up at the dusty rafters of Father Colin’s crappy church. The sheen was wearing quickly on the whole “being free” thing. Even if I managed to convince Lilith not to pulverize me, I was still a woman who’d been dead for ninety years. I couldn’t get a driver’s license or a job. I’d be stuck drifting from one town to the next on the interstate, sleeping in a blur of motel rooms if I was lucky, parking lots and overpasses if I wasn’t. I’d still be nothing to anyone. And every shifter, hound, or reaper I ran across would want to be the one to take me out.

  Leo’s breathing stayed shallow, and he was still so pale I could see every vein under his skin, but his forehead was cooler, and he was in a deep sleep. I stayed with him until the sun was fully up, then stepped out on the loading dock. The sunrise was brilliant orange and pink, rolling forward to touch the Black Hills. My breath frosted when I exhaled and my fingers prickled with cold. I stuffed them into the pockets of my jeans and watched a few snowflakes drift around me, landing and sticking on the cracked, dirty concrete.

  The snow fell faster and faster, piling around my feet. The wind blew in clouds from the plains that swallowed up the sun, until everything was the eerie gray dark of a black-­and-­white movie.

  I shivered and looked up at the sky as a dim streetlamp flickered to life. Squalls weren’t unheard of in the fall up here, but this didn’t feel right. The flakes landing on my skin froze to it, stinging like pinpricks all over my hands and cheeks.

  There were demons who brought inclement weather. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, upheaval among animals and plants anywhere in their vicinity.

  Sure, it was probably just a freak storm. Still, I spun and jogged inside, locking the door behind me.

  I went straight to the now-pitch-­black apartment behind the chapel, flicking on the light and shaking Clint’s foot. “Wake up.” He started awake, hand reaching for his rifle before he saw it was me.

  “What is it?” he said, sitting up and reaching for his boots.

  “We need to go,” I said. “All of us. This place isn’t a safe haven anymore.”

  Clint didn’t question, just grabbed his jacket and bag and rifle and followed me into the chapel. He strode right past Leo to the door, turning in irritation when I didn’t follow.

  “Ava. Now is not the time to be a hero.”

  Leo sighed, shifting the blanket tighter around him. The temperature in the chapel had dropped at least twenty degrees in the last five minutes and I heard his teeth chatter.

  “Either we take him or you can kiss my ass and any help it might provide you good-­bye,” I snapped.

  Clint folded his arms. “This man is directly responsible for you being on a demon’s hit list. Give me one good reason we should let him weigh
us down.”

  Leo levered himself up on one elbow, scrubbing his hand across his eyes. “Because I can get you to an actual safe house.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  Clint wasn’t happy helping Leo out to his truck, but once we were inside, windshield wipers swiping furiously at the driving snow, he relaxed a hair.

  “I’ll call the police from a pay phone, tell them about Colin’s body.”

  “Are you high?” Leo said. His voice was gravelly from pain. “Cops nowadays have software that can trace a call in thirty seconds. Not to mention voice prints, AFIS, and traffic cameras on every lamppost even in a place like this.” He pointed at a four-­way intersection coming up in the twin cones of the truck’s headlights. “Turn right up here.”

  “Then what, I leave him there to rot?” Clint gripped the steering wheel hard enough that the plastic creaked.

  “Yup,” Leo said. “In the twenty-­five years you’ve been on the mountain, the government has developed fifty new ways to spy on your every move. Sucks to be Father Colin.”

  “He’ll be found on Sunday at the latest,” I said, glad I was sitting between the two of them. Clint looked ready to break Leo’s jaw. “Are your prints on file anywhere?”

  Clint made the turn, the back wheels fishtailing on newly slick pavement. “I don’t have fingerprints.”

  Leo snorted. “ ’Course you don’t.”

  I nudged Leo. “Stop it,” I muttered. Leo glared across the cab at Clint but went quiet except to call out turns. I’d have to keep them from killing each other until I could fill Leo in on Clint’s real deal.

  We were practically the only car on the road, passing a few four-­wheel trucks and snowplows, but otherwise the storm had fallen over the Black Hills like someone had turned off the lights.

  Clint stopped the truck across from a three-­story brick town house sandwiched next to a closed-­down movie theater and a convenience store, which was stubbornly still open, even though almost a foot of snow had drifted on the sidewalks in front.

  “What is this place?” he said as we stood on the sidewalk in front, Leo leaning heavily on me.

  Leo coughed, smiling even though I saw fine droplets of blood on his lips. “A whorehouse.”

  Clint didn’t say anything, just pointed up the steps. “Get him inside,” he told me. “I’ll pull the truck into the alley so no one sees.”

  I didn’t think hiding one ugly pickup would do much to keep Lilith from spotting us, but I helped Leo up the icy steps and leaned on the bell. After a minute, the door opened and a sliver of face peered through. “Password?”

  Leo muttered something in Russian, and the guy opened the door wider. He was old, face like a leather handbag and a luxurious silver ponytail curling over his shoulder. His jeans and work vest looked distinctly out of place in the water-­stained Victorian foyer we stepped into. A canvas camp chair sat just inside the door, next to a folding table holding a coffee cup and an overflowing ashtray. I spied a Winchester Model 30 propped in the corner, oiled to a silvery, snakeskin sheen.

  “Evening, sir,” he said. “I’m afraid the lady can’t come in. House rules.”

  “She’s my bodyguard,” Leo said. The guy looked us over, clearly reconsidering his decision to allow us over the threshold. I spent the silence considering how best to drop Leo, relieve the door guy of his shotgun, and avoid anyone getting peppered with buckshot.

  “Sorry,” the door guy said again. “Maybe you should go home, pal. Sleep it off. Try again tomorrow. No use wasting your money on whiskey dick.”

  “Listen, asshole,” Leo ground out. “Go find Veronica. She knows me.”

  “Lots of guys sayin’ they know Veronica come in here.” The door guy folded his arms across his lumpy vest. “Not a single one of ’em is telling the truth.”

  “Leonid is a lot of things, but not a liar.” The silky voice drifted down the scuffed, sagging staircase, followed closely by its owner, a woman wrapped in a Chinese-­style robe, which showcased both her impressively giant hairdo and impressively giant tits.

  The door guy instantly straightened up, looking like he’d just been caught smacking around Veronica’s favorite puppy. “You sure about that, Miss Ronnie?”

  Veronica glided up to Leo, ignoring me entirely. She was about a head taller than I was, and twice as wide at both the boobs and the ass, the kind of hourglass figure that could not only stop traffic but also cause the pavement to spontaneously combust.

  “Look at you,” she said. “Blew in on a storm, as usual.” She removed Leo from my grasp, helping him up the stairs. “Let Mama get a look at you,” she crooned. The door guy and I shared an uncomfortable moment before Clint rang the bell.

  “He’s with us,” I said. “I apologize in advance for any self-­righ­teous­ness or strange rambling.”

  The door guy snorted. “We get more of that than you might think.” He let Clint in and showed us to a set of rooms connected by a shared, cramped bathroom. The place wasn’t exactly modern, but it was a hell of a lot less depressing than Father Colin’s apartment. Clint showed his appreciation by glaring at the sounds of a girl’s screaming orgasm coming through the wall. I didn’t know if he was irritated by the sex or by her terrible acting. Maybe both.

  “You need anything, I’m downstairs,” the door guy said. “Veronica would want Leonid’s friends taken care of.”

  “What’s your name?” I said. Leo was in good hands—­he clearly knew the girls here well enough to strut like he owned the place. Hell, for all I knew, he did own the place.

  “Wallace Bear King,” he said.

  I held out my hand. “Ava.” Wallace took it and shook it gently. A lot of men did, taking my slender fingers and small palms to mean I was more delicate than most.

  “No last name?”

  I shook my head. “Haven’t needed one lately.”

  “I hear that,” Wallace said. He pulled out a drawer in the banged-­up dresser squatting in one corner of the small room and showed me a collection of odds-­and-­ends clothes any self-­respecting hobo would reject. “Take a shower and change. You look like you need it.”

  The door shut, and I sat on the bed, listening to the moans, the creaking springs, and the breathing of a house full of too many ­people, every one crammed full of desperation. I tried not to worry about Leo. This was his territory, and I needed to follow his lead. Some cheap whiskey and cheap ass would probably help him a lot more in the long run than me hovering. It wasn’t like I was going to help him in that department, even if I did wish he was the one in this depressing excuse for a bedroom with me instead of the angel. At least Leo would be more talkative.

  Clint stood in the bathroom, staring at me like he was afraid to cross the threshold. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Fine.”

  Clint sighed, then stepped back into his own room. “I told you not to bring him.”

  “Thanks,” I said as he shut the connecting door. “That’s very helpful. Your contempt has solved all my complex feelings about this situation.”

  I slumped back on the bed, and when I couldn’t take staring at a stain shaped like a Winnebago anymore, I changed out of my clothes into an oversize Timberwolves shirt. The blizzard had made the streetlamps come on even though it was day, bright and golden, and the flimsy, half-­shredded blind didn’t do much to keep the glow of the storm out. I wandered down the narrow hall, listening to ten variations on low-­rent porno moans that seemed to be the gold standard in Veronica’s place.

  The door nearest the stairs opened and I jumped. Leo stepped out, a sheet wrapped around his lower half, and started when he saw me. “Ava. You need something?”

  I shook my head. “Just didn’t want to be cooped up.” Beyond him in the bedroom I saw Veronica rise from the mattress, her auburn hair spilling down her back in a tidal wave. There was an elaborate tattoo on
her back, of a weeping saint whose tears turned into black birds that took flight across both her shoulder blades.

  Leo lit one of his noxious cigarettes with a gold lighter. “I figure we’ll stay here until the roads are clear, figure out a more permanent solution.”

  Veronica wrapped the silk robe loosely around her and sauntered over to Leo, draping an arm over his shoulder. I looked at my feet, dirty, one bruised toenail sprouting off legs that could pass for fence posts. I felt stupid standing there, and ugly. I wasn’t used to it, and it soured my stomach and made my throat clench. I wasn’t used to being noticed by anyone, period, and Veronica was staring at me with what even the most confident of women would describe as a vagina-­melting glare while she ran her red nails idly over Leo’s ink. I could have told her she had nothing to worry about, but I didn’t like her cheap nail polish and, I decided, I didn’t like her all that much.

  “She’s a little more heroin junkie than you usually go for, Leo. You get a fetish for Goth girls while you’ve been away?”

  Leo’s mouth turned down. “I told you that’s not how it is. And just because Ava doesn’t have an ass you could park a truck on is no reason to run your mouth.”

  Veronica pulled away, her robe falling open to where I could see a fresh handprint in the deep valley of her waist. “All signs point to you enjoying my ass just like it is. Dickhead.” She sauntered down the hall to the bathroom and slammed the door.

  I leaned against the wall, tilting my head into the rotting wallpaper and the crumbling plaster beneath it. At least I wouldn’t do too much damage to my skull if I beat my brains against it.

  I didn’t have anything against brothels or the ­people who ran them. I’d spent plenty of time hiding in them, living in them. I tried to avoid actually working, but life didn’t always work out like I wanted it to. It wasn’t like I pulled down any kind of salary as a hound, unless you counted my continued existence. Being alive didn’t exactly cut you checks to pay for food and clothes and a bed that wasn’t also a refrigerator box.