by Amy Braun
He grinned, and gave me bedroom eyes that weakened my knees. I knew he’d spend the next hour stripping away my problems. After he stripped off my clothes.
“Good,” he said, taking my hand. “Neither am I.”
Chapter 3
An hour and a half later, Warrick was sleeping beside me. His arm was curled over my ribs, his strong heart beating against my back. We were sleeping on the floor of a spare bedroom deprived of all its furniture, using our clothes as blankets. It wasn’t much, but Warrick’s skin was warming me better than any fabric could.
Despite the comforting heat of him and the gentle breeze of his breath in my hair, I couldn’t fall asleep. It wouldn’t be long before my watch, and all I could think about was what my sister had said to me. No matter how badly I wanted to deny it and prove her wrong, I knew we couldn’t run and hide for much longer. I hated that, because it used to be the simplest thing in the world, even when it seemed like the hardest...
I’d used the last of my money to take a huge risk. If it didn’t pay off, I was going back to that little shack in Holanda to introduce that con man to my hatchet.
On the other hand, the first thing I showed him when I went to get our fake passports was the Blood Thorn tattoo behind my ear.
That got his ass moving pretty quickly.
“We’re next,” Dro whispered.
My sister tugged at the strings of her hoodie. She looked small for a fourteen year old girl. I wanted to tell her this would be easy, all we had to do was stay calm, except that would mean I had to be calm myself. Dro could sense my emotions if she pushed herself, so she knew I wasn’t relaxed.
I was gripping the steering wheel of my stolen car with white knuckles and frequently glancing in the rearview mirror. The passengers in the cars behind me were staring blankly ahead, impatiently waiting for their turn to drive into America. Any one of them could be working for my old boss. Or the new boss. It had been a week since Dro and I left the Blood Thorns. Seven days since I murdered my employer in front of his son, the man who betrayed me. The man I had been stupid enough to love.
I rubbed my right shoulder out of habit. Dro had healed the bullet wound, leaving a small patchy scar on my skin. Less easy to heal was the giant hole in my heart.
I pushed the ache away and put my foot on the gas, easing the car forward. I stopped at the yellow line to wait for border security. The man who approached my car window was almost exploding out of his uniform. He was about two hundred pounds and six feet tall. His shirt strained under a combination of fat and muscle. He wore dark sunglasses with tinted shades that matched short brown hair. He tilted his sunglasses down and looked between my sister and me. His eyes stayed on Dro for longer than they needed to. It made me uneasy, but I wasn’t surprised. Dro was becoming more gorgeous every day. It was impossible for her not to catch the eye of most males. Or the occasional female.
“Passports, please,” he said with a bored Texan drawl.
We took our passports out and handed them to the guard. He read them carefully, confirming the details. My face was blank, but my mind was doing laps around the never-ending What If track.
If that con artist gave us faulty passports, I’m going to shove his head through a wall. Then I’ll have to find someone else who isn’t willing to talk, but who the fuck will that be? The entire city knows I ditched the Thorns by now. Mateo will have a manhunt on for me and who knew how far he’ll reach–
The border guard handed us back our passports. “Please step out of the vehicle.”
My first thought was to ask why. But then I remembered this was standard. I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the car. Dro did the same. The sweltering Mexican sun beat down on my head. I showed my back to the other cars. Dro pulled up her hoodie and shoved her hands in her pockets.
“Where are you and Ms. Raymond coming from, Ms. Horatio?” asked the border guard as he circled the vehicle.
“We were coming from Ciudad Juárez,” I answered.
The border guard raised his eyebrows at me. “Nasty place for two young girls to be. How long were you there?”
“Four years,” I answered. “Visited family.”
It was almost true.
“So where are you going now?” he asked, turning toward Dro. My sister shifted on her feet.
“El Paso. My friend’s family lives there.” Those were the lies.
The border guard turned and looked at Dro. She lowered her eyes.
“Aren’t you hot in that, sweetheart?” he asked.
Dro shook her head. She was terrible at lying, and she was too memorable physically. I would get her something ice cold to drink if we ever got out of here.
“She’s not feeling well,” I said. “She has a fever.”
The nosy guard looked at Dro again. She lifted her eyes just long enough for him to be satisfied, then flicked them back to the ground. The man went back to examining the car, peeking inside.
“Any fruits or vegetables?”
“No.”
“Drugs, alcohol or weapons?”
That almost made me laugh. Drugs? No. I worked for a drug cartel, but I never sampled any of their products. Not after I saw how destructive it was.
Alcohol? No, but I could damn sure use some.
Weapons? Now those I did have. I was carrying my father’s hatchet under my oversized shirt, four throwing blades in my jacket, and had two handguns under the front seat. The guard walked back around to the trunk and asked me to open it. I did so. There was nothing inside.
The border guard looked at my face one more time, then gave me a curt nod.
“Welcome to the United States, Ms. Horatio.”
I nodded to him and got in the car. My sister was already inside, waiting for me. I buckled up and watched the yellow bar blocking us from the States. I felt someone watching me, and looked over my shoulder to the border guards in the booth.
The man I talked to started speaking with his partner, a tall Hispanic man. My windows were rolled up so I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they kept flicking their eyes back to me. I gripped the wheel tightly.
“Connie, the bar’s up.”
I turned my head forward and stepped on the gas. It took a lot of effort not to punch it to the floor and get away as fast as I could, but that would definitely get me caught. So I drove just a hair over the speed limit. About twenty minutes later, the border wall was a faded grey line behind us.
“Are you okay, big sister?” Dro asked me after a long time.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Glad to leave that shithole behind.”
Dro watched me with concerned blue eyes. Ever since she watched me collapse under the weight of Mateo’s betrayal and Emilio’s torture, she’d been waiting for my next breakdown. I didn’t have many. I toughed out the hardest shit and came out stronger. I didn’t complain, and I didn’t hold many regrets, I just did what I had to. Even when my parents were brutally murdered in front of me, I put on a brave face and kept going for my sister. She needed me to be strong, so that’s what I was.
I didn’t understand why Mateo and Emilio had been the exception. They were monsters. Mateo enjoyed hurting people, and it was Emilio’s greatest pleasure. I’d been no better than them. I had liked the power of it sometimes. There was nothing more superior than facing someone who wanted to kill you, and killing them instead.
I knew it was wrong. I knew it would damn my soul. But I did it anyway.
“Constance, pull over.”
“What?” Why was my voice hoarse?
“You’re shaking.”
Instead of arguing, I did as she said. The road we were on was empty so I wasn’t going to hold up traffic. I pried my hands from the wheel. The leather had left a red impression in my palms, flushing my skin with blood. I stared at my hands, watching the blood turn darker and darker, thickening over my hands until it painted my fingers–
Dro unbuckled and threw her arms around me. I jumped a foot in the air, but wrapped my arms arou
nd her. Then I noticed that my breathing was raspy and my pulse was pounding. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
A little while later, I reached up and patted Dro’s shoulder.
“I’m okay, little sister,” I whispered. My voice wasn’t trembling anymore. “I’m okay.”
She pulled back and looked at me, doing her own assessment. I gave her a weak smile. I might not be entirely better yet, but I was at least trying. Dro smiled, and helped me immensely.
“Where are we going now?” she asked, buckling up her seatbelt.
“North somewhere. Any suggestions?”
Dro looked out the front windshield as I pulled back onto the main highway. “Hawaii would be nice. There would be a lot of hot guys there.”
I laughed. Dro always knew what to say to make me feel better. The problem was that I was jaded. It was hard for me to see the good in anything unless I knew I was stronger than it.
“Maybe we’ll get up there,” I said. “Most important thing we can do now is lay low. Mateo will send Thorns past the border.”
And there I went, killing the joy Dro was trying to put in me. She nodded solemnly, and my heart sank. I was a bitch, but at least I knew how to play things safely...
Something was on my shoulder, gently rocking me awake. I jumped and whirled myself around, ready to come up swinging. Warrick– fully dressed, unfortunately– raised his hands and leaned back.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you,” he said without any shock to my actions. “Thought you might want to get up and have some food.”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “Sure. Is it my turn for watch?”
“No, I took your turn.”
I lowered my hands and looked at him. He smiled sadly at me. “You haven’t been sleeping much lately, Constance. You needed it.”
I tried to protest, but he waved it me off. “It’s too late for you to get pissed off because everyone else is awake. We’re all waiting on you.”
Goody, I thought. I pushed off the clothes and stood up to look for my underwear. As I moved around the room with every piece of skin available to the eyes, I felt Warrick watching me. I looked over my shoulder and found him smirking with his laser green eyes fixed on my ass.
“Do you mind?” I asked impatiently.
He kept staring. “Not at all. You have a beautiful body. I’m just appreciating it.”
I snorted. Beautiful, sure. If you don’t count the scrawniness and the dozens of scars from knives, bullets, claws, and fangs.
I finally found my clothes and yanked them on. I could have used a shower, but that would have given Warrick more naughty ideas. As much as I would have enjoyed those ideas, we had problems that needed to be dealt with.
“What’s everyone doing awake?” I asked, pulling on my boots and grabbing my weapons.
“Watching TV,” Warrick replied.
I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
One look at his face told me he was.
“You need to see this, Constance.”
That didn’t sound good.
Chapter 4
Seeing it was worse.
I was barely listening to what the shaky voiced reporter was rushing to say. She was going on about the U.S. government telling everyone in the northern states to make their way south to avoid the massive forest fires stretching from Washington to Iowa. There was also something about Mexican officials willing to open the border for refugees if the American government began erasing some of its debts.
All I could focus on was the images on the screen, the aerial shots of a giant red blaze snaking over mountains and blackening the earth. The next image was of a bridge packed with cars, their owners carrying half closed suitcases and crying children toward wary eyed border guards.
What stuck with me the most was the strung together clips of blood stained streets, demons scampering after fleeing humans, wild monsters smashing through cars and windows to get their victims, thick black clouds that spiraled and drilled into the mouths of anyone unfortunate to be close to them...
I shivered, nearly glad about our split second decision to come to Ciudad Juárez. The States were being completely overrun by demons. The NSA was cautioning everyone to arm himself or herself and stay in their homes. Military units were swamped and doing their best to eradicate the monsters. Hospitals were overcrowded and shutting down because they were perfect targets for hungry demons that wanted easy prey.
“Have you heard from the other demon slayers?” I caught Max’s whisper to Warrick at my back.
Warrick’s sigh was heavy. “No. They’re blocking my calls. Even Jackson.”
All of the other demon slayers Warrick used to work with were assholes, but Jackson was a genuinely good man. He was Warrick’s friend, and if he wasn’t answering his calls, then I had to assume it was because he was either swamped with the chaos we had brought to the States, or he was dead.
I hoped it was the former.
I wondered, not for the first time, if this would have happened if we hadn’t closed the Heaven Gate. After Dro’s blood was used in a ritual to open both Gates to the other worlds, Lucifer’s plan had been to invade Heaven and bring sinners into it, corrupting every soul inside. Alternatively, Heaven’s plan had been to descend to earth and restructure Hell to relieve it of the worst sinners, while simultaneously blocking out anyone else who made mistakes in their life and condemned themselves.
Dro and I destroyed the Heaven Gate by burning paradise on earth. We had locked the Gate and banished the angels on earth to live in their mortal vessels. Their wings and powers were stripped, only the most powerful beings like Dro and the archangels preserving some of their abilities. But those abilities were starting to wane, and it wouldn’t be long before they were totally gone.
However, if we hadn’t closed the Heaven Gate, humans would be caught in a supernatural war that would end in millions, maybe billions, of deaths. As it stood now, when anyone with a decent soul died, angel or human, they could ascend to Heaven through Saint Peter’s Gates. I’d been told that it didn’t hold the majesty of the Heaven where angels had lived, but it was better than nothing.
Maybe if I tell myself that enough, I’ll actually start believing it.
Just as my thought finished, the television and the lights snapped off. We’d closed the blinds in the house to keep prying eyes away, so now we were stuck in complete darkness. My hand immediately went to my hip, my fingers curling around my hatchet.
Aside from Max’s muttered cursing in the dark, we couldn’t hear a thing. He and Warrick left the room to see if a fuse had blown. I sat up and drifted toward the window. The curtain was dark, but shards of daylight were starting to break through. I pressed my back against the wall and slowly moved the curtain.
The street was isolated, except for the trio of electricians in grey jumpsuits who were smashing a power box with crowbars. It didn’t look safe for them, but I wasn’t going to stomp out and scold them. Instead, I curled my hand around my hatchet and ran my thumb up and down its hilt. The blade was silver and the handle was wrapped with black leather. Engraved on the handle were the words ‘Anima potentis, cor sororis,’ which meant ‘Soul of a warrior, heart of a sister,’ in Latin. Sephiel made me this weapon after I lost my father’s hatchet in a cave-in. He’d also blessed it with his angelic powers, making it even more deadly to demons. Now that he was human, I wasn’t sure if the blessing still held. But it killed demons just fine.
The three moronic delinquents became bored with the electric box and decided to run down the left side of the street. I watched them carefully, waiting to see if they would return, or if anyone else would slink out of their houses to assess the damage. When nobody did, my eyes drifted up to catch a glimpse of downtown Juárez.
When we first arrived here, it was in worse condition than I remembered. I was familiar with a muggy, dirty city that smelled like gasoline and salt. Streets that were tightly packed with stone buildings and shops, some of them coated with paint tha
t chipped and faded over the years. Most of the homes were shacks with rusted tin roofs and stucco walls. Smart owners put iron bars over their windows, and cheaper owners left them open and vulnerable.
I recalled shouting vendors, honking horns from cars that belonged in the sixties, and disinterested bystanders walking briskly. I remembered being one of the hungry, homeless girls hiding at night, when the ground was coldest and the gunshots were loudest.
Now it was different. The moment we stepped over the city limits, I saw all that had changed from bad to worse. The sides of the houses had gouges and claw marks scratched along them. Broken glass littered the streets with no one around to pick it up. Gang graffiti painted the worn down shops, some of them missing the padlocks on the doors. Piles of burning tires and barrels sat on every street corner, tinting the streets in dull orange light and making the air smell like scorched rubber and taste like smoke. Fresh, glistening bloodstains covered old ones every hundred feet, some of them no bigger than quarters, some of them the size of tables.