Leo raised one eyebrow. “And what’s that?”
I drew in a deep breath, then let it out. I wasn’t moving to the next spot down the road. This was it. There was no voice in my head except my own. I tried hard not to let that fact terrify me when I spoke.
“We can kill Lilith.”
CHAPTER
20
Leo and Clint both gave me a long stare. “How do you propose we do that?” Clint said finally. “The Fallen had a hard time exterminating demons when they turned on us, and we certainly weren’t powerless in Hell.”
“Gary’s Scythe,” I said, mostly to Leo. He looked back at the dusty SUV.
“My father is not going to give it to you as a loaner.”
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “A reaper’s Scythe can kill anyone. Anything. If I get it and get close to Lilith, I’ll put it right into her heart.”
“How are you going to make Sergei give it to you?” Leo said. “Neither of us are his favorite person right now.”
I hadn’t really gotten that far with the idea yet. I was still back on the part where I stabbed Lilith repeatedly with the Scythe for what she’d put me through.
“Never mind my father, Lilith’s not going to let you anywhere near her,” Leo said. “She’s clearly not stupid.”
“Neither am I,” I said, chafing a little at his skepticism. I’d expected pushback from Clint. Leo was supposed to stick with me. “She’s not stupid, but she’s greedy. I’ll offer myself and the Scythe up. If she thinks she can get something from me—or even torment me—then I have a chance.”
“Pretending for a second I don’t think this is bullshit,” Leo said, “how would Lilith even go about opening Tartarus from here? I’ve seen enough dumb warlocks have conjuring explode in their faces to know the wall between us is unbreakable.”
Clint sighed, and I sincerely hoped he wasn’t about to tell us another creepy story about demon eugenics. “When the Fallen were banished, many died in the crossing from Hell. Reapers and hellhounds and the like can cross over easily, Fallen less so. Imagine jumping from one roof to the next. If you slip and fall, you crash into the alley and snap your neck. Hellspawn have the hardest time crossing over. That’s why they mostly stay down in Hell and let people like you do their grunt work.”
“That or they’re just lazy,” I grumbled. “Gary sure didn’t stir himself unless he had to.”
“There was talk when we were banished from the Kingdom of conduits between our worlds,” Clint said. “Crossroads spanning Hell, here, everywhere. But no one has been able to find them again. That’s why demons needed emissaries with one foot planted here, to enable them to slip in and out of the cracks.”
“Interesting as these fantasies of yours are,” Leo interrupted, “if Lilith does somehow find a crossroads back to Tartarus and we show up for the party, it won’t be with a reaper’s Scythe. My father is even less warm and fuzzy than she is.”
“If you want to live beyond the next few days you need your father out of commission,” I told Leo quietly. “Otherwise you’ll never stop looking over your shoulder, no matter where you go.”
“I can’t just kill my father,” Leo grumbled. “Not only is he guarded better than a head of state, the other vor will ice me as fast as they can to swoop in on his territory. Russians clean house—no spouses, no kids, no family who could interfere left standing.”
“I’m not talking about killing him,” I said. “That’s your deal. I just want him to give back what he stole from you.”
Leo gave a bitter laugh. “Good luck with that.”
“You’re a tough guy, Leo,” I said. “A scary guy. I don’t get the feeling there’s much on this earth that can rattle you. So why are you so afraid of your father?”
Leo pointed at me. “You want to be careful what you say right now. Just because we’re road trip buddies doesn’t mean you know me.”
I took him by the elbow. Touching him was risky—he could haul off and slap me, like all the other macho gangsters I’d known, or just flatten me with a hex, like most of the alpha male warlocks I’d spent more than a few minutes with.
Leo grunted but didn’t pull away. “You gave me a gift, Leo,” I said quietly. “You set me free. Let me do the same thing for you.” I tugged him back to me when he turned away. “When are you ever going to have a hellhound on your side again?”
“Sergei’s survived a long time, and if you think I’m bad, he’s ten times worse,” Leo said. “He taught me everything I know, Ava. Just because you turn into a big scary dog on command doesn’t mean you can toe up to him.”
“Let me worry about that,” I said, and patted him on the shoulder. I walked to the SUV and opened the back, sitting next to the guy we’d grabbed. “If I take that tape off are you going to scream?”
He shook his head wearily, and I ripped it off. He yelped and then groaned, his forehead creasing. “You bitch. My arm hurts like hell.”
“What’s your name?” I said. He was young, without the gun and the tape on his face. He barely even had any smile lines, and I didn’t see any ink on his neck or his hands. That was good. I could work with that.
“Tom,” he said.
“Tom, really?” I leaned in. “Not Alexi or Nikolai or something?”
“If you’re going to kill me I wish you’d just shut up and do it,” he muttered. I shook my head.
“I need you to call Sergei Karpov and tell him his son wants to meet.”
Tom laughed. It was more of a cough and a groan mingled together, but I took it in the spirit in which it was intended. “The only way Sergei wants his son is in a bunch of pieces in a bunch of different garbage bags, scattered randomly in landfills across the greater Reno-Sparks area.”
“I get it,” I said. “But I want you to call anyway.”
He started to object and I reached out and flicked his wounded arm with my index finger. “Humor me, Tom. We’ve both had a long day.”
Tom let out a soft scream. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but he nodded at his chest. “Cell phone’s in my pocket.”
I pressed the number in Tom’s contacts and listened to him speak Russian for a few seconds. Leo was going to be pissed at me, but this was the only way I could think of to get Sergei out of his hidey-hole in Vegas and to a spot where I’d actually have a chance if things went bad.
Tom listened. There was a lot of yelling coming out of the phone, and he flinched. “He wants to talk to Leonid.”
I put the phone to my ear. “Is that you, Sergei?”
“I don’t know who you think you are . . .” he growled.
“I’m the girl who’s saving your ass,” I said. “You want to meet with us, Sergei, trust me. Leave the hardware at home and hear what we have to say. This doesn’t have to be a war for you, Sergei. Hell, you might even end up with all your fingers and toes and earlobes right where they belong.”
“I’m going to find you, dog, and I’m going to skin you,” he hissed. “You’re going to be a rug in my walk-in closet when I’m done.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry, not because I was afraid for myself but because I didn’t want to fuck Leo over if Sergei didn’t go for this. “Wouldn’t you rather have me alive and willing to do you a favor?”
There was a long silence on the other end. “I’m listening,” he ground out at last.
“You’ve got other warlocks,” I said. “Other cleaners. It’s a simple trade. Me for Leonid.”
Another period of quiet while the line hissed. “You fuck me, and I’ll fuck you so hard your ancestors will be walking funny,” Sergei said.
Leo came up the hill, and I punched MUTE. “Text me a location,” I told Sergei. “A public place with a crowd. And speaking of fucking, if I walk into an ambush I’m taking every one of you vodka-scented bastards down to Hell with me. You know I can.” Leo was almo
st in earshot, and I held the phone up to my mouth. “This is not a bluff. Ignore me and get fucked right in the ass.”
I pressed END and tossed the phone back in the SUV with Tom. Leo cocked his head.
“What was that?”
“Don’t flip your shit,” I said, “but I got a meet with Sergei.”
Leo proceeded to do exactly the opposite of what I’d asked, punching the car so hard a dent blossomed. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouted. “Who asked you to do that?”
“I know it’s a lot, but I’m asking you to trust me,” I said. “Just for a few more hours.” I waited. He could hit me or choke me, or decide he’d had enough and shoot me. I’d gotten all of those reactions from various humans at various times. Would I get the reasonable Leo, the one who’d carefully stitched up my arm in that horrible motel? Or would I get the Leo who’d tried to torture me into doing what he wanted, the one Sergei had worked so hard to create in his own image?
“I don’t want to hear another fucking word about my father,” Leo growled finally. Minus the accent, he and Sergei sounded a lot alike. “Let’s just get busy killing ourselves, because that’s all this is. A fucking suicide pact with you, me, and Speedy over there.”
“You don’t have to do this,” I said again. Leo sighed.
“I do. Because if I don’t stick with you two, I’m just gonna be another set of spare parts in the Clark County landfill. Always kind of figured that’s how I’d end up, but you went and convinced me I might be wrong, so this is your fault.”
Tom’s phone buzzed with a text and I picked it up. An unlisted number said:
PROMENADE, RENO. 11 PM.
“You want to drive?” I asked Leo. He pointed at Tom.
“We should probably offload the extra bags first,” he said. Tom started whipping his head back and forth.
“Hey, I helped you! She said I’d be okay if I helped you! I know what you do, man. I don’t want any part of that.”
“Then here’s a tip,” Leo said, grabbing him by his jacket and yanking him out of the SUV. “Stop role-playing that you’re a tough guy and go back to your job at the Circle K. You are not cut out for a life beyond a name tag and a polo shirt.”
Leo pulled out his pocketknife and cut the zip ties on Tom’s feet, then set him upright. He dialed 911 on the cell and dropped it on the pavement. “If I see you again, I’ll cut your fucking eyes out,” he said, and got into the driver’s seat.
I climbed in as Leo laid on the horn for Clint, and we peeled out of the rest stop, getting back on the interstate and moving into the west once again.
CHAPTER
21
Leo and I traded off driving through the day and beyond sunset, following the red streaks in the sky. We were on the downswing of the mountains that led us through Sparks and into the city center of Reno. In another few minutes we’d see the neon of the casinos spiking off the desert floor like enormous plants that only flowered at night.
Clint had mostly stayed quiet, as had I. If I’d wanted to be chatty I could roll out the anecdotes about remember when Reno was just a faded boom town, barely a bump in the horizon. It was flat and brown and the Truckee River put off a distinctive aroma in whichever direction the wind was blowing.
I could talk about going to places like the Bank Club and Harrah’s, sitting at one of the bars and watching people come and go. I could put on a dress and pumps and tease my hair higher than any of them, but there was still a wall of glass between myself and humanity. Only the bad ones seemed able to see through to me, while most people’s eyes glided right past.
I could tell Leo about Sal Peretti, the man who’d taught me most everything I knew about dealing with men like him. Sal was probably as bad as they came, Leo with better manners and a nicer suit. He was handsome according to the criteria back then, which ran more to a thick head of hair and a fancy watch than symmetrical features or quality dentistry.
Sal wasn’t ugly or missing teeth, though. He was an ex-boxer with a nose that broke well, making his face crooked but not ruined. The slightly jarred bones of his face made you want to keep looking, not avoid it. He had warm, honest brown eyes and a radiant, perfect smile that could melt the panties right off most any woman who crossed his path.
It was total bullshit. Sal had gone from boxer to fight promoter to crooked fight promoter who bullied black and Mexican fighters into taking a dive against whatever mediocre prospect his friends were betting on, with sidelines in loan-sharking and whoring. His management style ran to torched buildings and broken bones, and he’d never met a friend he wouldn’t put a bullet in to make another dollar. A lot of people would have liked to see Sal cold on a slab, but he was too mean to die.
He drank and he screamed, but he didn’t hit me. He would talk to me when he was feeling small and maudlin, and explain in excruciating detail how he did his business.
I asked him how he knew I wouldn’t roll on him the minute I got pinched by the local cops, most of whom were either so old they remembered when gambling was illegal or guys who’d just gotten back from the war in Europe and were looking to crack skulls or make a few bucks turning the other cheek.
Sal told me he knew when to trust people by their eyes. People who looked at you straight on didn’t have any fear. If they weren’t afraid of him, Sal reasoned, they sure as hell weren’t going to be afraid of the cops.
Sal’s mom got sick, and suddenly his small-time grifts weren’t enough to pay her bills and keep him in twenty-dollar shirts, a Cadillac, and steak dinners every night of the week. The money he was supposed to kick back up the chain stopped getting kicked anywhere except his habits. Two cars caught him on the road outside Sparks and punched enough holes in the Caddy that you could have turned it on its end and called it a cheese grater. Sal’s friend’s bosses, the men from the outfit in Detroit or Chicago—I never did find out which—knew what to do with desert-rat thieves.
In the end Sal’s most valuable lesson was the one I got when I saw him lying quietly on the white table in the morgue, a sheet covering him to his neck. One of the bullets had gone in under his cheekbone and exited behind his ear. The hole was puckered and blackened from the heat of the bullet. No matter how smart you were and how little fear you had, there was always somebody out there waiting to put you down if you stepped out of line.
The next time Gary called on me, I didn’t try to avoid him. I pawned all the stuff Sal had given me, bought a bus ticket to Omaha, and went back to work.
I didn’t stop seeing Sal’s face for a long time when I shut my eyes.
“I think I should be the one to talk to your father,” I told Leo. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles were white.
“I think you’re absolutely fucking nuts to suggest that.”
I fell back on something Sal had told me. “You and he have a past. We don’t have guys, so we need him off balance. If he sees just me, he won’t know what’s going on.”
“Sergei tends to shoot at things he doesn’t understand,” Leo said. “Fair warning.”
We parked in one of the garages at Circus Circus and left Clint with the car in case we needed to bolt quickly. Leo and I cut through the casinos, his eyes sweeping every face we passed. I kept a watch behind us, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice of me, which was normal. About every third woman and a few men gave Leo a smile or a wink, which also seemed pretty normal. Even after close to seventy years, the tang of stale smoke and the clank of the machines in the main casino were exactly the same as I remembered from my nights with Sal. All of those old casinos were gone, of course. The monoliths you could see from the highway were built on their corpses.
Leo stopped me with a hand on my arm and pointed toward a bathroom when we reached the lobby. “Come with me a second,” he said. I raised one eyebrow.
“Is this some cheap line, Karpov?”
�
�My lines are never cheap, and I never need them,” he said. “I just want to ask you something, in case I don’t get the chance again.”
The bathroom was quiet, dimly lit, almost like they wanted people getting up to no good in there. Leo and I stepped into the handicapped stall and he turned the lock. “I’m trusting you not to fuck this up,” he said. He took his pocketknife from his jeans and flipped the blade open. “You trust me?”
Of course I shouldn’t trust him. Not to put a blade against my skin. I’d learned a long time ago that trusting anyone with your life just made you that much more likely to lose it.
I nodded, and Leo took my arm and laid the blade against it. “Don’t get freaked out.”
I held still, against every instinct and bit of experience I’d collected in my time as a hound. Much like when I’d seen Veronica smile down at Leo in her bed, it was like everything I relied on to keep me going, help me survive, just switched off and something I didn’t recognize took control.
Leo turned the blade so the point rested against my skin. “I don’t know if this will work on you. I’ve never tried it on Hellspawn before.”
I barely felt it when the blade parted my skin and a thick line of dark blood welled. Leo let it dribble into his cupped palm. “Take your shirt off.”
I raised an eyebrow. “This is not how I imagined this going.”
Leo’s mouth lifted on one side. “So you have imagined it.”
I pulled off my jacket and overshirt and stood there in just my bra, feeling like I really was naked in the dim light. All of my scars and bruises showed up in sharp relief, and I tried not to cross my arms over my torso. I must look like Frankenstein’s monster to a guy who was probably used to high-end Soviet Bloc hookers. Or at the very least, women who didn’t look like they’d been cage fighting.
Leo didn’t say anything or even look at my body. He dipped his fingers in my blood, then traced a quick mark on my breastbone over my heart. Warmth radiated from it, like the last vestiges of a sunburn, and I watched it fade until my skin was plain and pale once again.
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