The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  “You’ve had it for over a week?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes.”

  “And you’ve known that I was a god for over a week?”

  “Yes. My father … let me know. He told me you were created from one of the gods of Uzan.”

  “Why would you not tell me about this?”

  I closed my eyes. Lowered my head. Whispered the truth. “In case I had to use it on you.”

  He went completely still. After what seemed like an eternity, he asked, “And why would you have to take such drastic measures?”

  “I didn’t know how much of you was … you and how much was an evil god from a prison dimension.” The irony that he’d been in prison in both his celestial and his human forms was not lost on me. “I didn’t know if you’d be a threat to Beep or not.”

  “That was good thinking.”

  I looked over at him, surprised.

  “I’m not worthy to be a father. I never was. It just took Satan going to the convent, possessing me, reminding me who I was, what I was, to force me to come to my senses. I am worthy of neither of you. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

  “Reyes, that’s not what I meant.” When he said nothing, I asked, “How much do you remember about being Rey’azikeen?”

  His irises glittered under his lashes. “You mean, do I remember you sending me to prison?”

  I glued my lids shut.

  “Do I remember my own brother creating a hell dimension just for me?”

  I said nothing. His pain washed over me. Or perhaps that was mine.

  “No. Not really. I remember my brother being so frustrated with me, so worried for his little dolls here on Earth, that he created a world where he’d hoped I would grow and learn something. I remember a god from another dimension, a god so beautiful the stars would sooner burn out than turn away from her, begging my brother to send me to her dimension. To a kind of prison, yes, but to a place where I wouldn’t be left so utterly alone. A place where I would not slowly go insane.”

  My lids parted. Just barely.

  “I remember her sacrificing her life to my brother. Bartering with him. Offering to be the reaper of his world if he would give me, a selfish piece of shit who wouldn’t give her the time of day, another chance.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to wrest control over his emotions.

  “I remember being so full of piss and vinegar, I studied and studied until I found a way to escape the dimension the beautiful god locked me in so that I could wreak havoc across the universe and, in turn, allowed Mae’eldeesahn and Eidolon to escape in my wake.”

  He was gripping the beer bottle so hard, I thought it would explode.

  “To call Uzan a prison was a fallacy of the greatest measure. It was a paradise that your ancestors created for souls that were somehow lost. Somehow disoriented and adrift. But all I could see was the fact that I was locked there against my will.” He laughed under his breath. “I don’t deserve you or Elwyn.”

  “You don’t think that perhaps you’ve paid for your sins a thousand times over?”

  “How so?”

  “Lucifer? The Dendour? Earl Walker?”

  He studied the bottle in his hands, scraping at the label absently. “Should I leave you two alone?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “He’s taken,” I said, accepting the fact that forgiving himself was something Reyes didn’t do. “Osh. By someone very special.”

  “And who might that be?”

  This might be a little hard for him to swallow. Tact was definitely in order. Or I could just blurt it out and watch his expression go from content to disbelief to horror to a bristly, murderous kind of fury. I chose door number two. “He’s destined to be with our daughter.”

  Reyes’s expression slowly changed from content to disbelief to horror to a bristly, murderous kind of fury. “Oh, hell, no.” He shot to his feet. “A Daeva? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Just like a dad.

  “Yes, a Daeva. But I wouldn’t dismiss him so offhandedly.”

  He whirled around and scowled. Not really at me. Just in general. “What do you mean?”

  I pressed one corner of my mouth together in thought. “Okay, you know how I was the grim reaper all my life, then suddenly I’m also this god from another dimension? And how you’re the son of Satan all your life, then suddenly you’re a god from this dimension? Who does that? Our lives are so weird. I think that maybe Osh is something else, too.” I traced one of the dark lines on his face. “I think there’s more than meets the eye. I see greatness in him, Reyes. I see a power beyond our imaginings. I see him giving his life for our daughter.”

  “Oh.” He sat back down, satisfied. “As long as he dies in the end.”

  I snorted.

  “So, was that another secret?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sorry. I forgot about that one. Speaking of which, would you like to talk about the elephant in the room?”

  “I guess we could since he’s unconscious.”

  “Not that elephant.”

  “Well, we already talked about how you sent me to prison, then tried to trap me in a hell dimension.”

  “I did no such thing,” I said, then chilled when I realized he was teasing me. “No. The other elephant. I’m pretty much out of secrets.” I crinkled my nose in thought. “Yep. I think that’s the last of them. The big ones, anyway. Just don’t ask me about that time I was in college and there was this thing that I thought was a fake eyeball. You won’t eat for a month.”

  “You trapped a god,” he said, unfazed by the eyeball incident. I tried to be glad one of us was.

  “You’re in awe of me, right? It’s okay. It happens.”

  “You’re fucking amazing.”

  Pride swelled inside me.

  “Or insane. The jury’s still out.”

  Figured. “You’re not getting out of it. Whatever your two secrets are, they cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be worse than mine were.”

  “Okay, but how were my secrets an elephant in the room? I was perfectly content, sitting here drinking a brewski—”

  I burst out laughing. “Did you just say brewski?”

  “—watching my wife molest an unconscious nineteen-year-old.”

  “It’s like you were speaking a foreign language.”

  “We’re going to have to rebuild the park,” he said, his desperation growing.

  “I think we can afford it. And stop trying to change the subject.”

  He grinned, and I almost fell for it, but for the barest hint of a moment, it faltered. “How about I tell you tomorrow?”

  I rose onto an elbow. “Or you could tell me today.”

  After a very long pause, he went back to studying his brewski. “I have another gift, if you’d call it that. I’ve always just accepted it. It’s come in handy a few times in my life.”

  “Seriously?” That didn’t sound so bad.

  “I can—I can tell when someone is slated for hell. Marked, if you will, like you can do.”

  “Wow, that’s cool. I think,” I said, twirling a strand of Osh’s hair in my fingers.

  “I can see it the minute I meet a person. If he or she is or is not going to hell. If they’ve committed the act that will put them there yet or not. Because I can see exactly when it happens, exactly when they get sentenced to hell, to the very second they make the decision that will get them sentenced there.”

  I sat up and crossed my legs on the bed. “Are you saying I’m slated for hell?”

  “Hon, you slate. You don’t get slated.”

  “Oh, right. So that’s good for me, because daaaay-um. I could be in trouble.” After a moment of thought, I asked him, “Okay, so who is it? Who’s going to the fiery pits to suffer in agony for all eternity?”

  He rubbed one hand over his eyes and, again, I got worried. When he lowered his hands and his eyes were shimmering with a suspicious wetness, I got very worried.

  “Reyes?”

  “Before I tell
you, I just want you to know, we’re on it. We’re being proactive and—we’re trying to stop his murder.”

  I slowed my heartbeat to better hear him. To stop the sudden rush of blood to my ears. To still my heavy breathing. “Reyes?”

  “It’s your uncle Bob.”

  I couldn’t move. I sat paralyzed on Garrett’s bed, trying to remember how to restart my heart. I’d probably need that sooner or later.

  “When he arrested me for murder, I saw that he was slated to go to hell for an act he would commit about nine years after I met him. An act he committed two years ago, while I was still in prison.”

  My mind reeled, trying to grasp his words, but they fell away before they reached me. I couldn’t quite wrap my fingers, or mind, around them.

  “But when I met him, I remembered him. I remembered that I met another kid when I was going to high school. Grant Guerin. He hadn’t committed the act that would send him to hell, either, but I still saw it. He was going to kill a detective. He was going to kill your uncle Bob.”

  Garrett walked in then and could sense the atmosphere instantly.

  “I’m telling her,” he told him.

  Garrett cursed under his breath. “I thought we were going to wait until we found the little shit.”

  Reyes shrugged.

  “Charles, look, we’ll find the guy. Guerin doesn’t stand a chance. We’ll stop him. We’ve been keeping a tail on your uncle, hoping there’s some early interaction with the guy that sets off a chain of events, but nothing so far.”

  “Why can’t you just find him?”

  “They got him on tape making a drug deal. When they went to arrest him, he bolted.”

  “Why wasn’t he slated for hell then?”

  “It’s not as easy to get into hell as one might think. It’s all about doing harm unto others. Up to the point when he kills your uncle, he’d never harmed anyone but himself.”

  “Why can’t you find him?” Panic was setting in.

  “We will,” Garrett said. “He went underground, but he’ll resurface.”

  “When? How much time do we have? You said you know the exact second when it will happen.”

  Reyes bit down. “We have less than a week.”

  “Why Uncle Bob?” I crawled to my feet and started to pace. “Why does he kill him? What happens?”

  “Your uncle finds him and is about to arrest him.”

  “And?”

  Garrett stepped closer. “Charley, you don’t want to know the details.”

  “I do, actually. Reyes?”

  “When your uncle finds him, the guy ambushes him. He hits him over the head.”

  “And Uncle Bob dies from that?”

  “Yes,” Garrett said quickly. Too quickly.

  “What happens?”

  “He doesn’t die, but he’s unconscious,” Reyes said. “So the guy panics and—” He closed his eyes and turned from me. “He finishes your uncle off with acid and bleach.”

  The edges of my vision rocketed inward. I reeled, and Garrett caught me. Sat me back on the bed. Went for water.

  I couldn’t talk for the longest. The image was in my heart and in my head, and it was there to stay.

  Then it hit me. “Where does he find him? Uncle Bob?” I asked, my voice rising. “Where does he find the guy? Go there. He’s probably there.”

  “We have people posted there. When he shows, we’ll know.”

  “So, we can stop this.” I nodded, calming a little. “We can—wait.” I gaped at Reyes. “My uncle, Robert Davidson, amazing detective, wonderful human being, incorruptible cop, was slated for hell two years ago. Really? And how did that happen?”

  “Dutch—”

  “Don’t. Reyes, just tell me.”

  “He killed someone,” he said from between clenched teeth.

  “In cold blood? No. Two years ago? That shooting? They investigated that. He was cleared. He was shot twice. He fired in self-defense.”

  “Not that one.”

  Garrett had come back with a glass of water, but he looked away as Reyes shifted in discomfort.

  “Are you saying my uncle murdered in cold blood?”

  “Yes. Ice cold. It was rather impressive, really. At the time, I—”

  “Why would he kill someone in cold blood?”

  He lowered his head. He had no intention of telling me.

  I stepped closer. “I can make you.”

  He said nothing. Offered no argument. Or explanation.

  I inched forward and gave him one more chance. “Why?”

  “All you need to know is that he had good cause.”

  “Reyes, I swear by all that’s holy—”

  “For you,” he said, the words barely a whisper on the air.

  “What?” I asked, my voice just as faint. Just as airy.

  “He did it for you. They were—they found out what you can do.”

  “Who?”

  “A low-life drug gang from Colombia, trying to get in good with their boss. Your uncle got a tip from one of his CIs they were going to kidnap you, take you back to Colombia, and present you to him as, kind of, a gift.”

  I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d punched me in the stomach.

  “So, he found their hideout. He had nothing to bring them in on. He didn’t want to risk arresting them, anyway, and them, in turn, telling another member in their organization about you. So, he broke in, took them out one by one, and then set fire to the place.”

  “No way. Uncle Bob would never.”

  “Your uncle knew the drug baron, Dutch. He knew what he was capable of. He’d witnessed it firsthand when he was in the military. He knew he had to kill them all to silence them. If word got back of your abilities, the Colombian drug baron would come after you himself.”

  “Why?” I asked, questioning everything I’d ever known about my uncle. “What does it matter? What would a Colombian drug baron want with me?”

  “He was a collector. Fascinated with the occult. He believed that if he took the souls of those who were gifted by eating their flesh, he would inherit their powers. He’d already killed several people in the villages surrounding his compound, searching for the gift of sight.”

  “A drug baron wanted to eat me?”

  “He would have, if he’d found out about you. He would’ve considered you quite the coup.”

  “Why are people so batshit crazy?” I railed, pacing the room. “Uncle Bob did this for a good reason.”

  “Hell seems to think otherwise. It doesn’t matter that he did it for you or that they were bad. It was lives taken on purpose when there were other options … it wasn’t self-defense. It was a conscious decision.”

  “So, even if you do something bad for a good reason, you automatically get a reservation at the Fire and Brimstone Inn?”

  “Actually,” Garrett said, “you might be able to help us out. Seems the only person who might know where Grant Guerin might be is your new BFF Parker. He was Parker’s CI back in the day, and some think he still is. But he’s not talking.”

  “Parker was a cop?”

  “He started out there.”

  “Parker certainly likes to play by his own rules, doesn’t he?” My mind raced with all the implications. “Okay, first we have to stop this walking corpse from killing my uncle. Then I can worry about what to do with his sentence.”

  Reyes smiled. “That was kind of already the plan.”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t in on it then.” I started to leave to pay Parker a visit when I stopped and turned back to my husband. “Any more secrets? You know, while we’re on the subject.”

  “None that I can think of.”

  “Good to know.” I needed to catch Parker by surprise. And how better to surprise him than by showing up at his house at 3 A.M.?

  I walked back to Reyes and pulled his mouth down to mine. He tasted like fire and salt and lime.

  “Don’t wait up.”

  Garrett called out as I stalked out and closed the door.
“But I got taquitos!”

  29

  Would someone please poke holes in the lid of my jar?

  —T-SHIRT

  I pounded on Parker’s door for ten minutes before he opened it, as furious as I’d ever seen him. He hadn’t bothered closing his robe, and his light blue boxers didn’t hide much. You’d think he’d be blond there, too.

  “Nick?” a woman said from the dark room beyond him.

  “Go back to bed. I’ll be there the minute I have Mrs. Davidson arrested.”

  “You wear socks to bed?” I asked.

  “What the fuck, Davidson?”

  “I need to know where your CI, Grant Guerin, is.”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  “Fine. Educated guess. Where, in your humble opinion, might he be?”

  “You have thirty seconds to get off my property.”

  “Come on, Parker. I just got your college buddy off a murder charge and saved your ass from prosecution for obstruction of justice and whatever else Joplin could’ve thrown at you. He would have nailed your ass, and you know it.”

  “I have no idea where Guerin is,” he said.

  I scooched my mouth to one side in disappointment. “Just when I think you’re all noble and shit, you do something stupid. How do you think I’m so good at what I do?”

  He shrugged, frustrated and tired.

  “I know when someone is lying, and I need to know where Guerin is.”

  “So, you’re like a human lie detector. Interesting. Is this about the warrant? That UC was dirtier than my CI any day of the week. Even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell the likes of you.”

  “Look, we can continue to work together, or we can end our business relationship right here and now. Your call.”

  But that meant nothing to him, and I realized something as we stood there. He thought I’d killed my own child. How else would one explain the hostility? He really was noble in a messed-up way. He was willing to go to jail for his friend for a perceived imbalance in the world. He wouldn’t tell the cops where Grant Guerin was because the whole thing was unfair and/or unlawful in his mind.

  Then again, I didn’t give a shit. Guerin was going to kill my uncle. A good man. And Parker knew where he was. This was going to take some doing. I stepped past him and into his not-so-humble abode.