by Rob Thurman
Zeke went with Griffin for the CAT scan and I waited, pacing—no hard plastic chair for me, no standing still when my boys might need me. I called Leo and filled him in. “Goddamn kid.” He sighed at Griffin’s one-man quest to make up for a past that wasn’t his anymore. I’d reminded him Griffin might be older than Leo was; you couldn’t be sure. Correction, I couldn’t be sure. Leo could. “Older than you, little girl, maybe, but he’s not older than I am.”
“Because you’re forever, ‘Grandpa,’” I mocked, an argument we’d long thrown back and forth between each other.
“Damn close.” He sounded smug. He sounded less so when I told him Hell had set the Roses free. “That’s nice for the Roses, escaping torture and being a demon’s supper, but it doesn’t help us with the Cronus situation or the Eligos situation when he finds out what you’ve done. You managed to kick Hell’s ass and fuck up intentionally all in one. That is quite a trick.”
“But it’s a good one, isn’t it?” I asked, an excitement no trickster could deny sparking through me . . . distant fireworks on a passing Fourth of July. What I’d done was more than good. It was, for one, nearly impossible to pull off. Second, it saved thousands of souls from horror, then nonexistence. Third, and best of all, it screwed Hell itself. You couldn’t ask for a better hat trick than that.
“Yes,” Leo admitted with a mixture of reluctance and an echo of the same excitement in his voice. “You are now legend with this one.” As if I weren’t legendary before this, ass, I thought, somewhat disgruntled. “I’ll be at the hospital as soon as I can. The tourist doesn’t want to go down. Hard digging out this way. I picked a bad spot. But I’ll be there in at least two hours. Griffin will live, won’t he?” He didn’t sound worried, but he was. Griffin and Zeke had been his strays as well as mine when they’d shown up at the bar as teenagers on the run.
“If I had my doubts, I’d be in Hell myself right now, beating Cronus to the punch. Oh, and if you see Beelzebub on the way, kill him for me, would you?” I clicked the phone shut as Griffin was pushed back on his gurney into the curtained enclosure of ER bed 7. Lucky seven, I was fervently hoping.
Zeke immediately took the plastic chair I’d disdained and pulled it up to Griffin’s side. “No hematomas, subdural or epidural.” He might not bother himself over the larger words that made up the English vocabulary, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know them. He did, and when it was important, he could not only use them, but he could amaze with what he knew. “But his Glasgow Coma Scale is seven.” He put his hand very lightly on Griffin’s forehead, the purple bruising feathering up under his palm.
“And that’s not good?” It didn’t sound particularly good the way Zeke said it. Lucky number seven wasn’t so lucky this time.
“No. I made the doctor explain it to me.” I wished I’d been there to see that—what sort of medical equipment had been involved and where it had threatened to be inserted. “It means he won’t open his eyes, he won’t speak, but he does react to pain. He’s in a coma. Deep.” Zeke bared his teeth briefly, as I saw him thinking how Griffin had gotten there, but he recovered his calm quickly in a manner so unlike him, I felt like the one who needed guidance. Tutoring, as his partner gave him. I felt like the one who was lost. When Zeke was more on top of things than I was, I was through the looking glass hanging out with the Mad Hatter. But that was making this about me, and it wasn’t. It was about Griffin and what I could do to help him.
Whisper was a healer I had helped months ago. “Whisper,” I said, “is in Louisiana. I can call her. Get her to fly back.” That was something, and I had to do something. That’s who I was. Created to do, teach, act, save. But forgetting all that, it didn’t matter what I’d been born to do; it was about what I had to do—anything I could. I was already standing and slipped my hand into my pocket for my cell phone again.
But sometimes it wasn’t my place to do.
“No. I’ll bring him back,” Zeke said without a shred of doubt in his voice.
“But, Kit, you’re not a healer.” He was many things . . . some good, some mysterious, some disastrous, but he wasn’t a healer.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll bring him back.”
“Zeke, you can’t pull someone out of a coma because you want to. No matter how much you want to.” I hated to be the voice of reason when it came to this, when what he needed was the voice of hope. But even more than hope we needed a healer, and I couldn’t ignore that, not for Griffin’s sake—not if we wanted him back. “You just can’t do it.”
“You fucking watch me.” Zeke closed his eyes while I watched, and, equaling almost anything I’d seen in my life, he did. He actually did. I would never underestimate the bond between a telepath and an empath. I never had in the past, but this . . . This was some serious tough love if ever I’d seen it—tough and untouchable.
Zeke with his hand still on Griffin’s forehead, a bloodstained hank of blond hair falling across his knuckles, started. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Just as in the abandoned house he had lowered Griffin to me by the rope, hand over hand, he now did in reverse. I could feel him dragging him out of the void, hand over hand, with such power and strength—he was a half reclaiming the rest of himself to become whole. That the air didn’t shimmer with intensity put off by the profound effort surprised me.
For almost ten minutes . . . the air became heavier and heavier until it almost hurt to breathe, and then Zeke spoke.
“I know,” he said softly, a tone I’d never heard him use. But he wasn’t speaking to me. He was speaking to a Griffin who might not yet be awake, but was now having thoughts, if disjointed. Thoughts were good. You can get through life without them—I saw that every day—but there was no denying they were helpful. “No . . . no, Griffin. Not that way, this way. Come this way.” His forehead creased and overhead the lights flickered slightly; then he nodded. “Right. That’s right. It’s morning,” he lied. “Time for breakfast. Time to get up.” This time he shook his head minutely. “No. Nothing wrong. No demons. Just some eggs. With that fancy funny-tasting sauce on them. Your favorite. I’ll even make them.” He paused again. “No, Griff, no demons. No trouble. I promise. Everything’s fine. You can come home, okay? Come home, Griffin.”
“Now.”
“Come home.”
“Come home.”
Griffin’s eyelids fluttered and finally lifted, a confused blue haze wandering from Zeke to me and back to Zeke again. “Wha’ happened? Zeke . . . you . . . all right?” His voice was thick and his lips barely moved, but he spoke. He was awake and talking and Zeke had done that. Quicker than a healer and more certainly than any doctor. I’d seen a lot of things in my wandering days, but I’d not seen anything like this.
I’d always known he was a miracle.
Zeke moved his hand aside to rest his forehead against Griffin’s for a moment, a damn wonderful moment, before straightening. “All right? No, it’s not fucking all right. After what you pulled, I am never speaking to your ass again. You got that? Never.” He swiveled around in the chair to face the wall full of monitors and shelves of medical equipment. “Give me your hand, goddamnit.” He took Griffin’s hand before it had more than a chance to twitch, linked fingers, and then closed his mouth tightly. I didn’t think he actually meant “never,” especially as he squeezed the hand he held—a hand, dried blood under its short fingernails, that gripped back tightly.
Griffin blinked and he opened his mouth. Zeke cut him off, that “never” being somewhat shorter than even I anticipated. “Jackass.”
“Idiot.”
“Asshole.”
“Mega-friggin-asshole.”
“You left me. Damn it to hell, you left me.”
With the last insult on his list, Zeke was right. Griffin had left him. Inadvertently, but he’d left him. He’d left his brother-in-arms, his best friend. Some would call it his best friend with benefits and more than just sexual, but that would be an insult to what they had. The description fell so very
short. Yet Griffin had walked out the door on that and disappeared. That hadn’t been part of his plan, but it had happened.
Worse, though, he’d taken his bucket when he’d gone, leaving Zeke sinking fast. There was no Zeke without Griffin—the same as there would be no Griffin without Zeke. They both had a responsibility to each other that they thought they understood, but they didn’t, not entirely. There was no one without the other and when they fought demons, it was something they had to remember. Saving your partner was pointless if you didn’t save yourself too, because, in the end, it was one in the same.
“Griffin.” I bent down and cupped his cheek before kissing the corner of his mouth. “I had no idea you were such an idiot.”
He blinked a few more times as the thoughts swam in and out behind the blue and the puzzlement began to clear. “Oh. The demons.”
“Yes. Oh. The demons.” This side of his face was un-bruised and pale, faint blond stubble beginning to show on his jaw. “If you keep trying to make up for something you never did, especially alone . . . If you keep trying to prove to us something we already know is true, then you won’t be around very long. And if you’re not, then Zeke won’t be either. Did you think of that when you left this morning when you were lying to Zeke with your thoughts?”
He swallowed and slid his gaze toward Zeke, who was most meticulously not looking back at him. “No . . . wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
Zeke kept his head turned away. “Trixa, tell the asshole he’s not half as sorry as he’s going to be.”
“Kit says not half as sorry as you’re going to be,” I parroted faithfully and somewhat gleefully—the relief was so great. “You screwed up, Griffin, and it’s time to take your medicine. I’m not standing in the way of that. How would you learn if I did?”
“I’m not the teacher”—he coughed a dry cough, the same as you gave after a long sleep—“anymore?” His hand tightened on Zeke’s again.
“Not for a while at least.” I patted his chest now covered in a hospital gown. “It’ll do you good. I think you might’ve forgotten we all have lessons to learn. We’re all teachers and we’re all students, and I’m thinking, sugar, you’re due a little detention.”
“Not a little. A lot. A lot.” The glower was directed at me over a shoulder, and I obediently relayed the message, using my fingers to comb through Griffin’s tangled hair, but the blood and dirt were there to stay until the next shampoo, the hospital version or strawberry scented.
“I almost feel sorry for you when he does speak to you.” I gave up on his hair.
“He is speaking to me.” He raised his free hand to rub unsteadily at his head. It had to hurt. Being pulled out of a coma wasn’t going to change that. “Just because it’s not with words or thoughts”—he closed his eyes—“doesn’t mean anything. What he feels . . .” The hand fell back to the bed as Zeke’s head bowed. No words, but they were communicating and it was heartbreaking to see, as necessary as it was. Now Griffin would have a whole different guilt to deal with. I hope he dealt with it better than the unnecessary ex-demon one.
“I’ll go get the nurse. They’ll give you something for the pain once they get over your practically supernatural recovery. Just don’t tell them quite how supernatural.” I patted him again, his shoulder this time, the same spot I gripped when I reached across the bed to touch Zeke. “I’ll be back in the morning.” I’d only be one in a crowd in the next few minutes. I’d let Zeke have what small amount of extra room there was going to be. Miracles tended to suck the oxygen and space out of a room, and now that I had Griffin back, both my boys safe and whole, there was a catastrophe heading my way—heading everyone’s way. Mama said there was always a catastrophe coming. Someone’s world was always coming to an end. It wasn’t our worry to change every ending, only the endings we could. Know your limitations, girl, else you become one yourself.
This time though, Mama didn’t know. One ending could be every ending this time. One fall could be everyone’s fall.
“Thanks, Trixa, for saving me.” Zeke gave a discontented grunt. “For helping Zeke save me,” Griffin corrected himself.
“My not-so-great pleasure. Don’t get yourself in trouble like that again, not the self-made kind anyway. Besides, I was only along for the ride, to make sure Zeke didn’t tear Vegas down to the foundations to find you.” I paused at the door to look back at both of them, but particularly Griffin. “Remember that. If I wasn’t here, what Zeke would’ve done and I can’t say I blame him. He’s listened to you for all his life”—all the one he could remember—“so now I think it’s time you listened to him for a while.” I held up a finger. “Except on running over grandmas driving tiny ecofriendly hybrids with your big satanic bus. Listen and learn, but there are limits.”
I raised three other fingers to join the first and give them a quick wave good-bye as I left. They needed the time, and I would only be a third wheel to that bicycle . . . or a second wheel to the unicycle. Codependency, it isn’t ever a good thing in the human world, but in the supernatural world, sometimes it could be the very best thing—for some the only thing that kept them sane.
I notified the nurse, who ran for the doctor. I called Leo to tell him to skip the hospital and go home for the night. Then I followed my own advice, ducked under the frame that had once held glass, and walked through my door. Despite the gaping hole in it, I knew nothing would be missing. In this neighborhood, no one except desperate drug addicts tried to steal from me. And if a stranger tried, he wouldn’t leave this neighborhood without an ass-kicking he wouldn’t soon forget. My neighbors loved me. Free-alcohol Fridays made sure of that. As I stood on the shattered glass Zeke had left earlier—one more chore for the morning—all the lights came on simultaneously. The jukebox, which was decorative—it hadn’t worked since about the time they’d stopped making records—came to life, and the sounds of “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen filled the room. It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been “Teen Angel.”
Because that was who was waiting for me, minus the teen part. Shoulder-length blond hair, white wings barred with gold, and eyes the color of the water where the Titanic had sunk. Dark gray-blue. Oh, and he had a sword.
The angel quirked his lips very slightly. “You wouldn’t believe what a bitch it was getting this through airport security.”
I shot the jukebox with the gun hidden in the dead plant by the door, put the weapon back, and then dropped my face into my hands. I liked Ishiah. I trusted Ishiah to a certain point, which was big for a trickster. But I did not need this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t even want to see it. Not now. I was exhausted. I had too much on my plate and I just wanted to sleep.
“Trixa,” the voice coaxed. “It won’t be like last time, my word, not that you have anyone but yourself to blame for that.” There was that attitude. That disapproving, condescending attitude. “I’m here to assist you. Only that. There will be no last time this time.”
Last time. I didn’t want to talk about the last time. I didn’t want to think about the last time. I wished the last time could be erased from time itself altogether, because I would never live it down. Not until my dying day.
Last time. Why did he have to bring it up? I considered taking out the gun again and doing to myself what I’d done to the jukebox.
Hallelujah, my ass.
More like Hellelujah.
Chapter 9
I went downstairs in the morning, late . . . around eleven, but it was a long night and I’d called Zeke around eight a.m. to hear Griffin was doing well, but was still an asshole. Reassured about his physical health if not the lack of improvement in his assholery, I went back to sleep for another two and a half hours. When I did get up, I dressed for success after showering. No sweats or T-shirts for running or the occasional footy pajamas for comfort sleeping. I wanted this particular angel to know I was in business and meant it as well. With a thin long-sleeve sweater in psychedelic swirls of dark red, bronze, and black; black jeans and boots; and a flash
y gold and garnet of earrings to match the tiny stud in my nose.
Leo was there . . . at the opposite end of the bar, staring unblinking at the angel who had taken a stool at the other end. He might have spent the night on that stool, or on the couch in Leo’s office, gotten a hotel.... I didn’t know. Last night I’d walked past him without a word and gone upstairs to sleep. Where he did the same didn’t worry me. He more than could take care of himself, the scar on his jaw told you that. Now he was staring as unblinkingly back at Leo, giving just as good as he got until he heard me. Then he swiveled, took me in, and gave a grave nod. “The new look becomes you. And from Mica to Trixa Iktomi. That suits you as well, but a last name? How human of you.”
Mica had been like Cher or Madonna. One name needed only,for the last time I’d seen Ishiah—who wasn’t technically an angel anymore, although I’d known him when he had been one, making his list of who went into the Roman orgies and who walked righteously by. Stick up his ass the same as all of them. Not worth wasting your breath on with his “Thou shall not this; thou shall not that” sanctimonious attitude. But when he went native . . . retired and became a peri, he mellowed. Slowly, but he had. The last time I’d seen him, the infamous last time, he hadn’t been bad at all, especially considering what we’d done to his bar. At the time, although he was retired, I hadn’t considered him on our side by any means. It was one of the few times I’d been . . . not so much wrong, but not quite right either. When Ishiah had gone native, he’d thoroughly done that deal. He tried to stay neutral . . . like Switzerland, only without the corrupt banks.
No, Ishiah wasn’t a bad guy.
“Swoop your feather-duster ass over here and give me a hug, sugar.” I spread my arms and hugged him hard when he stepped up. The wings had been put away and I could feel the muscle of his back under his shirt. Leo snorted. He was either jealous or playing at being jealous. I did the same for him, both kinds. We were good for each other’s ego that way. But, honestly, a peri and me? No. He might be an expatriate of Heaven, but I could still get a whiff of the holy off him and that wasn’t the best of cologne for turning me on. But he wasn’t bad for a peri and a friend to many païen kind, so I hugged him again before stepping back. “Do I look that different? I can’t remember what I looked like during the Exodus.” So many looks, so many outsides; it was what was inside that made you. It was the inside you had to remember.