The Grimrose Path t-2

by Rob Thurman

  I lowered the window and leaned out. “If you scratched Leo’s paint job, he’s not going to be as cute and sweet to pet when you’re bored.” I’d assumed he wouldn’t pay attention to me, that he wouldn’t see me. I was wrong, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy about that or not.

  Cronus was seeing me and for the first time in my life, I had a huge chunk of doubt that I could trick my way out of something. “The demons are all hiding.” His voice was as empty as it was last time. Checkers all over again, only a dead angel instead of a dead tourist this time. “They can’t hide forever. They can’t hide long.” He was right. Demons could stay in Hell, hide there, and Cronus could go there and try to find them, but Hell . . . Lucifer . . . was vast, almost endless. Cronus wasn’t that patient and he didn’t have to be. The majority of demons weren’t that bright, as I’d thought in the hospital. They’d be back on Earth, fairly soon too, but Cronus wasn’t one who wanted to wait. How many wings did he need to make that map, how many were left? Twenty? Thirty? More or less?

  “Demon.” His attention was back to the right, toward the bar. “In this place. It has been everywhere in this place. I want it. Make it come here.” He rested his hand on the hood of the truck. It sank instantly and a moment later he lifted it back up as metal poured in a liquid stream from the plastic fingers. The same plastic lips smiled. I’d never seen a Titan truly smile, not a genuine smile. I never wanted to see it again. A blank-faced Titan bent on control of everything in existence was one thing; an enthusiastic, happy Titan bent on the same was . . . shit. Just holy shit. There’d once been a god, or what people had thought had been a god. Moloch. They made huge metal statues of him, built furnaces in his grinning mouth, and fed live babies into the fire. Feeding their god. Supposedly. The rumor went. I hadn’t been in that area at the time.

  But if those statues had existed, I think their smiles would have been identical to this one. Full of a heat to suck the air from your lungs, fire to cook flesh, the screams of infants. The screams of parents losing their children, sisters losing their baby brothers. Screams that never stopped, fear and pain that never ended. On and on until you were nothing but a scream yourself. Not a person, only a sound of terror that ripped the air until the end of time itself. And you could hear yourself—hear the scream that was you, the tearing and clawing of it in your mind so loud, so wrong you couldn’t imagine how it didn’t kill you.

  Wishing it would kill you just to escape it.

  “Soon.” Cronus vanished, taking a handful of Leo’s engine with him. That was fine. He could have that engine, as long as he took that smile and the screaming with him.

  “Trixa?”

  I kept my eyes front and center as I put off Zeke for a second. “Hold on, Kit. I’m doing my best not to pee my panties right now.”

  He waited for nearly five entire seconds. “I just wanted to know,” he started, sounding profoundly put upon, “are we there yet?”

  Bending over, I rested my forehead against the dashboard and laughed. I couldn’t do anything else. Here we sat in an alley, in a truck destroyed by one stroke of a Titan’s hand, we could’ve been destroyed ourselves, and Zeke was making jokes. If that wasn’t more frightening than a Titan, I didn’t know what was.

  Leo caught a cab to the airport, while I changed my panties. It was worth it, pantywise. When you can laugh that hard in the face of a horror like Cronus, it was more than worth it. It was beyond amazing, it was extraordinary, and, what the hell, that pair had been on sale at Victoria’s Secret anyway.

  From outside my closed bedroom door, I could hear Griffin and Zeke squabbling as they sat on the top step. It was nice, that touch of normality. I’d told them what was coming, and they’d seen Cronus for themselves, but if you weren’t a born païen, you couldn’t know. You couldn’t truly comprehend what a Titan was, not if it stood right in front of you and nearly screamed the sky down. You simply couldn’t grasp it. They say ignorance is bliss. About now I’d settle for a little plain stupid if ignorance was too much to ask for.

  Unfortunately, my boys weren’t as blissful in other areas as I wished they were. There was a polite knock at the door to get my attention before Griffin asked through the wood, “Was Cronus talking about Eligos? Is that what he meant by a demon being . . . what? . . . embedded in your bar? Tainting it?”

  Eligos had been in Trixsta only a few times—not nearly long enough to put a mark on it, much less taint it. And it wasn’t tainted. What Cronus sensed wasn’t demon—not anymore. “Yes,” I lied in word, thought, and emotion, all the while buttoning my new pair of jeans. I was talented that way. “It’s bad enough that his I-wanna-be-a-big-boy-in-big-demon-diapers Armand stained my floor, but now Eli has funked up my bar with demon BO. I don’t think they make a room deodorizer for that.”

  It was Griffin who had wormed his way to the very heart of the bar. He’d spent several years growing up here, had been in the bar working every day and sleeping every night along with Zeke in what was now Leo’s office. And after Eden House had recruited him and Zeke, he’d still come by almost every day. That was what family did. Years of Griffin were in every nook and cranny of the building; Griffin when he’d thought he was human . . . and, in his mind and his heart, had been human. But it wasn’t his mind and heart that Cronus had picked up on. It was the physical that had lain under the human at the time. Now all that was left of that were wings. Beautiful, glorious wings—Hell-changed to glittering scales and exactly what Cronus needed.

  That, however, was something Griffin didn’t need to know and overprotective Zeke definitely didn’t need to know. I knew. Leo knew too, I had no doubt. That was enough. We were lucky Cronus hadn’t bothered to look past me as he was making his demand and smashing an angel to pieces. Another ignorance-is-bliss situation and I was grateful for it. Cronus saw Leo and he saw me, the ant who dared play a game with him. If we could keep his focus there and only there, it would be good. Very good.

  “So when Leo comes back from Colorado, he might have something that will kill Cronus? That’s the plan?” Griffin didn’t knock politely this time, and he sounded rather skeptical. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  “Colorado? We were going to the airport? I thought we were going to Disneyland,” Zeke grumped in turn. I heard a distinctly disappointed thump against the door. That would be him leaning and sulking.

  “I’m just wishing ravens could fly faster than a Boeing 727,” I said, sliding my shoes back on. “We’ll hit Disneyland next time. Or a gun range.” A gun range was Zeke’s Disneyland times ten. “And, no, Griff, sugar, that’s not the plan. That’s one-third of the plan. I’m the trickster and you’re the Boy Scout. Don’t forget that. If you don’t balance out my devious ways, who will?”

  “We would be happy to fill that role or make it unnecessary altogether.” The voice was musical and flat all in one. Impossible? I would’ve thought so, but I was wrong.

  Another angel. Could this day get any more holy and, consequently, more crappy?

  He stood by the window, forming out of thin air as demons did. The gray light streamed through gauzy gold and red curtains. You would’ve thought that would add some color to him. It didn’t. “Where is Hadranyel?”

  I continued to slip my second shoe on and then straightened while reaching for the shotgun on my dresser. I didn’t bother to hurry or try to conceal the motion. Angels knew very well how tricksters felt about them. They also had a conceit that didn’t allow the realization we could be any kind of threat. “I didn’t get his name. But I think he’s in the alley. I have a broom and dustpan if you want to carry his remains home.”

  The angel stepped away from the window and from his natural crystal essence he changed into a more or less human body with short black hair. His wings were black too with a faint purple-blue barring at the bottom. His eyes were the same purple sheen; it was the shade that dappled a crow’s feather in a bright ray of summer sun. “That is unfortunate.” His wings were pulled in smooth and tight to his back as a h
awk would do to its wings before diving on its prey. “Unfortunate for you. Hadranyel was somewhat more tolerant of your kind than I am.”

  He had short, sleek black hair, the black wings already in fighting position. His clothes were black as well. It seemed as if Heaven had sent down its SWAT team. But why? Ishiah said they knew about Cronus. Heaven, in all its glorious angelic ego, knew better than to take on Cronus, if it could avoid doing so. “And you are?” I knew what he was, but not specifically which one he was. I started backing up to lock the door before the guys could come in. That would only complicate things unnecessarily and they were already complicated enough.

  “Azrael.” The smile, cold and tight, was no brighter than his wings. Both were a gravity suck of darkness that fitted his identity perfectly.

  Azrael, the Angel of Death, was as without compassion as any demon—a soldier and nothing else. He never sang any hosannas above a manger. He was a warrior. He’d been created for killing and only that. Heaven, ego and all, was indeed taking this seriously. When Upstairs threw down their A-game, they didn’t screw around. Azrael was one of the big boys, an archangel, and did that make him smarter, faster, stronger, better, and far more kick-ass than your average angel? Yes, in-frigging-deed it did.

  “Ishiah has already delivered Heaven’s message. I’m a smart girl. I can hold a thought longer than a day. Why are you bothering with the big guns now? Why not wait until I have something to tell you?” I was almost at the door—too late, damn it—which was when Griffin and Zeke came rushing in, their shotguns ready.

  Azrael took in Zeke with a faint lift to his upper lip. He saw what Zeke was. A deserter in Heaven’s eyes. Not fallen, but not right with all that is holy either . . . far from it. Then he saw Griffin and the disdain turned to disgust. Repulsion. Hatred. Eden House, if they rebuilt in Vegas, would never take Griffin back—I should’ve known that sooner or later Heaven would find out. I’d thought Eligos would whisper it to them. I hadn’t thought an angel would be the one to give him up. That an angel would recognize the difference in Griffin between his former undercover body and the one he had now hadn’t seemed likely. They looked identical and the human in Griffin now wasn’t fake as it had been before. But this wasn’t your ordinary angel we were talking about. This was an archangel. Where a lesser angel might be blind, he could see. “What is this? This is not sanctioned by Heaven, never would it be. It’s an abomination.” A sword sprung to life in his hand, one of flames. A fiery sword—with an angel, that was a given.

  Peris Heaven tolerated. But the first ex-demon peri? Fallen was fallen in their eyes and that would never change.

  “Don’t say that,” I warned, my finger already on the trigger. “Angels can die the same as demons, and if you call Griffin that again, you will.”

  “I don’t think we should kill angels,” Griffin protested beside me, his shotgun barrel lowering slightly. “I think in the grand scheme of things that could be construed as not so much wrong but as not especially right either.” It should stop boggling me that I heard these things from Griffin, who had many reasons not to care for angels, but it didn’t. I had to cure him of this saintlike quality, because as everyone knew . . . the quickest way to sainthood was martyrdom. And as martyrdom came from a painful agonizing death, that was best avoided.

  “It’s bad enough what Eligos says about you,” I told him. “I won’t hear it from someone who is supposed to be about forgiveness and redemption. If he says one more damn word . . .” But he didn’t have to. Someone else had already made up their mind; somebody had already pulled the trigger.

  “He started it.” Zeke pumped another round in his Remington, still aimed at what was left of my window. “Asshole. I hate fast assholes. They’re the worst.” There was no denying that Azrael had been fast in disappearing before the slug reached him. I was swinging back and forth between whether that was a good thing or not. In Zeke’s mind—hell, in my mind too, he had started it. Zeke and Azrael were former comrades. Zeke didn’t remember it, but he knew it. He knew he’d been an angel, used by another angel because of his comparative lack of free will, a pawn, and that history wasn’t winning him over to Heaven’s side. What had actually pissed him off though was Azrael calling Griffin what he had—an abomination. For that, the pigeon did deserve to be shot. As the man said, the angel had started it. Not that it wouldn’t, again, complicate things and, truthfully, I’d never killed an angel before. They hadn’t given me quite enough reason.

  Azrael reappeared, this time with some friends. Two more angels, but these had the traditional white wings that marked them as your average angel, no more archangels. That was a good thing, although neither of the new ones looked in the delivering-messages-of-love-and-guiding-us-to-the-Promised-Land mood. They were more of the cast-ye-into-eternal-hellfire frame of mind from the sword in hand and the rage in their faces.

  It had never been quite enough reason before, for me to kill an angel . . . Then again, there was always a first time.

  “You let Cronus kill Hadranyel. You fight side by side with that creature once a demon, now worse than any demon. One that wears the skin and flesh of a mortal. One who doesn’t know its place in this world. Which is not in this world or any world. The demons are enough. Now there is this atrocity—we will not add more monsters to this world of our making. We leave that to you.” Azrael pointed the flaming sword at me.

  “Are you calling me a monster or saying I make them?” Sticks and stones were nothing to me and neither were words full of prejudice and hate, because I had the solution to those. I might not have used it on my behalf, but what Azrael had just said about Griffin, that was more than enough motivation. I shot the angel to Azrael’s left—aiming for the head. This was the kill shot I used with demons. They were one in the same long ago after all, angels and demons. “Could you be more specific?”

  The angel I’d shot at lowered his sword as a warning hole appeared in the wall just to the right and another to the left of his head. I gave Griffin a quick approving nod for his shot that paired mine. He was not an atrocity, and he wasn’t taking this lying down—his face, much less forgivingly calm and reasonable than it had been seconds ago, said as much.

  Zeke, however, had not gotten the memo and neither had the angel to the right of Azrael. Not as quick as his fellow angel and not as wary of our abilities, he lunged at us. Then there was the sound of a shotgun firing, followed by that of bells as glass cascaded, touched here and there with gold, downward to the floor. Church bells—those that rang mournfully for the dead. Attacked, Zeke took the head shot. It was justifiable to him; he had a clarity of vision in this area that Griffin and I lacked. He held angels accountable to the same standards as everyone else, and who was I to say he was wrong? You make the wrong move—attack, and if you end up as a heap of margarita salt, you have only yourself and your tiny angelic brain to blame.

  “Thou shall not kill. He should’ve known that. I know that. Thou shall not kill—unless it’s in self-defense, for protection of the innocent, exterminating demons, or someone taking the last donut. That’s the rule.” Zeke finished reloading with a speed that would make a drill sergeant dab his eyes joyfully with Kleenex and went on to accuse. “You order us around as if you matter. You expect us to eat up your heavenly commands like fucking candy. Now let one more of you sons of bitches call Griffin an atrocity. Just one goddamn more.” Zeke grinned and it was a grin that never would fit on the face of an angel. He aimed at Azrael again. “Because if there’s any here, it’s you, and since you don’t like them all that much, I’ll be happy to blow the rest of them apart for you. Really fucking happy. An eye for an eye, a bullet for a bastard.”

  I didn’t know if Azrael heard that. He was lost in the sight beside me. “An angel. You killed an angel,” he said as he knelt to sift a perfect hand through flakes of crystal. I saw disbelief and outrage as his hand clenched into a fist, but mourning? That I didn’t see anywhere. Brothers-in-arms, but there was no camaraderie, no affection, no
personal loss. As with learning free will from humans, some angels learned how to care as well . . . most often the ones who went on to retire as peris. Azrael had learned free will, but not how to care. That didn’t make him the flip side of a demon at all—it made him worse.

  “You might think because Zeke was only an angel, not a high and mighty archangel, that it doesn’t make a difference that he was used as if he were nothing, ordered about like a slave by one of your kind.” I extended my shotgun and tapped Azrael on the shoulder. “But guess what, doll? That don’t fly, no matter how many wings you stick on it. It matters, Prince of Heaven. If you treat your own as expendable, they will treat you the same.” I tapped harder. “As for trying to kill us, it’s not only boring, but a waste of time. Cronus killed your other angel, and if you think I have any control over Cronus, you need to check out if they have a heavenly rehab, because delusional doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  “Zeke’s right. You are no better than demons and I should know,” Griffin said, and suddenly his wings were there and as bright and blazing gold as Zeke had described. They were brighter than when he’d first become a peri. Of everything and anything that was in this room, they were the only truth and purity that there was. No matter what he said or believed, Griffin didn’t have an ounce of demon in him.

  Shit. But wings were still wings and whether they had been transmuted into something completely new or not, Cronus could still sniff them out. “Put them away,” I told him urgently. “Put the wings away. Cronus barely cares enough to tell the difference between angels and demons . . . between demons and peris, so let’s not give him the challenge.”

  The wings spread until they almost filled the room before disappearing. “Sorry,” Griffin apologized. “They sort of . . . slipped.” I hoped they didn’t slip like that in the future. It was the same as having his fly unzipped. XYZ . . . your ex-Hell-spawn heritage is showing. Azrael had narrowed his eyes at the sight of them, but then looked back at the glittering shards beside him. Ex-angel-on-angel violence and being lectured about it from a far more ex in the ex-angel field to top it all off. Surprisingly enough, it did get through to him—enough so that he didn’t try to attack again. I didn’t chalk it up to logic or a shred of good sense. He was more likely biding his time until Cronus was handled, and then he’d bide his time until the perfect moment to take his vengeance on Zeke and rid the world of the first ex-demon peri, Griffin. Then there was that annoying mouthy trickster. An upstart païen who didn’t know my time had passed. He very well might start there.