A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) (16 page)

“Give it, Meat. Give it,” whispered a female voice.

“Come and get it,” Charlie said, trying to fight down the greatest case of the willies he’d ever felt. It was like dry ice was being applied to his spine and it was all he could do not to shiver.

The shadow in the drain started to leak out across the pavement, just an inch or so, but he could see it, like the light had changed. But it hadn’t. The shadow took the shape of a female hand and moved another six inches toward the glowing bear. That’s when Charlie grabbed the sword and snapped it down on the shadow. It didn’t hit pavement, but connected with something softer, and there was a deafening screech.

“You piece of shit!” screamed the voice—now in anger, not pain. “You worthless little—you—”

“Quick and the dead, ladies,” Charlie said. “Quick and the dead. C’mon, give it another shot.”

A second hand-shaped shadow snaked out of the drain on the left, then another on the right. Charlie pushed the bear away from the drain as he pulled the cigar lighter from his pocket. He lit the short fuses of four of the M-80s and tossed them into the drain, even as the shadows were reaching out.

“What was that?”

“What did he throw?”

“Move, I can’t—”

Charlie put his fingers in his ears. The M-80s exploded and Charlie grinned. He sheathed the sword in the cane, gathered up his stuff, and sprinted for the other drain. Inside an enclosed space the noise would be punishing, brutal even. He kept grinning.

He could hear a chorus of screaming and cursing, in half a dozen dead languages, some of them running over others, like someone was spinning the dial on a shortwave radio that spanned both time and space. He dropped to his knees and listened at the drain, careful to stay an arm’s length away. He could hear them coming, tracking him under the street. He hoped he was right that they couldn’t come out, but even if they did, he had the sword, and the sunlight was his turf. He lit four more M-80s, these with longer fuses, and tossed them one by one into the drain.

“Who’s New Meat now?” he said.

“What? What did he say?” said a sewer voice.

“I can’t hear shit.”

Charlie waved the porcelain bear in front of the drain. “You want this?” He tossed in another M-80.

“You like that, do you?” Charlie shouted, throwing in the third firecracker. “That’ll teach you to use your beak on my arm, you fucking harpies!”

“Mr. Asher,” came a voice from behind him.

Charlie looked around to see Alphonse Rivera, the police inspector, standing over him.

“Oh, hi,” Charlie said, then realizing that he was holding a lit M-80, he said, “Excuse me a second.” He tossed the firecracker in the drain. At that moment they all started going off.

Rivera had retreated a few steps and had his hand in his jacket, presumably on his gun. Charlie put the porcelain bear in his satchel and climbed to his feet. He could hear the voices shrieking at him, cursing.

“You fucking loser,” screeched one of the dark ones. “I’ll weave a basket of your guts and carry your severed head in it.”

“Yeah,” said another voice. “A basket.”

“I think you threatened that already,” said a third.

“I did not,” said the first.

“Shut the fuck up!” Charlie yelled at the drain, then he looked at Rivera, who had drawn his weapon and was holding it at his side.

“So,” Rivera said, “problems with, uh, someone in the drain?”

Charlie grinned. “You can’t hear that, can you?” The cursing was ongoing, but now in some language that sounded as if it required a lot of mucus to speak properly, Gaelic or German or something.

“I can hear a distinct ringing in my ears, Mr. Asher, from the report of your distinctly illegal fireworks, but beyond that, nothing, no.”

“Rats,” Charlie said, unconsciously raising an eyebrow in a
so are you gonna buy that load of horseshit?
way. “Hate the rats.”

“Uh-huh,” Rivera said flatly. “The rats, they used their beak on your arm and evidently you feel that they have a secret desire for cheap animal curios?”

“So
that
you heard?” Charlie asked.

“Yep.”

“That’s gotta make you wonder, then, huh?”

“Yep,” said the cop. “Nice suit, though. Armani?”

“Canali, actually,” Charlie said. “But thanks.”

“Not what I’d pick for bombing storm drains, but to each his own.” Rivera hadn’t moved. He was standing just off the curb, about ten feet away from Charlie, his weapon still at his side. A jogger ran by them and used the opportunity to quicken his pace. Charlie and Rivera both nodded politely as he passed.

“So,” Charlie said, “you’re a professional, where would you go with this?”

Rivera shrugged. “Not on any prescriptions you might have taken too many of, are you?”

“I wish,” Charlie said.

“Up all night drinking, thrown out by the wife, out of your mind with remorse?”

“My wife passed away.”

“I’m sorry. How long?”

“Going on a year now.”

“Well, that’s not going to work,” said Rivera. “Do you have any history of mental illness?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you do now. Congratulations, Mr. Asher. You can use that next time.”

“Do I have to do the perp walk?” Charlie asked, thinking about how he’d explain this to child services. Poor Sophie, her dad an ex con
and
Death, school was going to be tough. “This jacket is tailored, I don’t think I can get it over my head for the perp walk. Am I going to jail?”

“Not with me, you’re not. You think this would be any easier for me to explain? I’m an inspector, I don’t arrest guys for throwing firecrackers and yelling into storm drains.”

“Then why do you have your weapon drawn?”

“Makes me feel more secure.”

“I can see that,” Charlie said. “I probably appeared a little unstable.”

“Ya think?”

“So where’s that leave us?”

“That the rest of your stash?” Rivera nodded toward the paper bag of firecrackers under Charlie’s arm.

Charlie nodded.

“How about you toss that down the storm drain and we’ll call it a day.”

“No way. I have no idea what they’ll do if they get their hands on fireworks.”

Now it was Rivera’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “The rats?”

Charlie threw the bag in the storm sewer. He could hear whispering from below, but tried not to show Rivera that he was listening.

Rivera holstered his weapon and shot his lapels. “So, do you take suits like that into your shop very often?” he asked.

“More now than I used to. I’ve been doing a lot of estate work,” Charlie said.

“You still have my card, give me a call if you get a forty long, anything Italian, medium-to lightweight wool, oh, or raw silk, too.”

“Yeah, silk’s perfect for our weather. Sure, I’ll be happy to save you something. By the way, Inspector, how did you happen to be in a back alley, off a side street, in the middle of a Tuesday morning?”

“I don’t have to tell you that,” said Rivera with a smile.

“You don’t?”

“No. You have a nice day, Mr. Asher.”

“You, too,” said Charlie. So now he was being followed both above
and
below the street? Why else would a homicide detective be here? Neither the
Great Big Book
nor Minty Fresh had said a word about the cops. How were you supposed to keep this whole death-dealing thing a secret when a cop was watching you? His elation at having taken the battle to the enemy, something that was deeply against his nature, evaporated. He wasn’t sure why, but something was telling him that he had just fucked up.

B
elow the street the Morrigan looked at one another in amazement.

“He doesn’t know,” said Macha, examining her claws, which shone like brushed stainless steel in the dim light coming from above. Her body was beginning to show the gunmetal-blue relief of feathers, and her eyes were no longer just silver disks, but now had the full awareness of a predatory bird’s. She had once flown over the battlefields of the North, landing on those soldiers who were dying of their wounds, pecking out their souls in her bird form of a hooded crow. The Celts had called the severed heads of their enemies Macha’s Acorn Crop, but they had no idea that she cared nothing for their tributes or their tribes, only for their blood and their souls. It had been a thousand years since she had seen her woman claws like this.

“I still can’t hear,” said her sister Nemain, who groomed the blue-black feather shapes on her own body, hissing with the pleasure as she ran the dagger points over her breasts. She was showing fangs as well, which dented her delicate jet lips. It had been her lot to drip venom on those she would mark for death. There was no fiercer warrior than one who had been touched by the venom of Nemain, for with nothing to lose, he took the field without fear, in a frenzy that gave him the strength of ten, and dragged others to their doom with him.

Babd raked her rediscovered claws across the side of the culvert, cutting deep gouges into the concrete. “I love these. I forgot I even had these. I’ll bet we can go Above. Want to go Above? I feel like I could go Above. Tonight we can go Above. We could tear his legs off and watch him drag himself around in his own blood, that would be fun.” Babd was the screamer—her shriek on the battlefield said to send armies into retreat—ranks of soldiers a hundred deep would die of fright. She was all that was fierce, furious, and not particularly bright.

“The Meat doesn’t know,” repeated Macha. “Why would we give away our advantage in an early attack.”

“Because it would be fun,” said Babd. “Above? Fun? I know, instead of a basket, you can weave a hat from his entrails.”

Nemain slung some venom off her claws and it hissed in a steaming line across the concrete. “We should tell Orcus. He’ll have a plan.”

“About the hat?” asked Babd. “You have to tell him it was my idea. He loves hats.”

“We have to tell him that New Meat doesn’t know.”

The three moved like smoke down the pipes toward the great ship, to share the news that their newest enemy, among other things, did not know what he was, or what he had wrought on the world.

C
harlie named the hamsters Parmesan and Romano (or Parm and Romy, for short) because when the time came for thinking up names, he just happened to be reading the label on a jar of Alfredo sauce. That was all the thought that went into it and that was enough. In fact, Charlie thought he might have even gone overboard, considering that when he returned home the day of the great firecracker/sewer debacle, he found his daughter gleefully pounding away on the tray of her high chair with a stiff hamster.

Romano was the poundee, Charlie could tell because he’d put a dot of nail polish between his little ears so he could tell it apart from its companion, Parmesan, who was equally stiff inside the plastic Habitrail box. In the bottom of the exercise wheel, actually. Dead at the wheel.

“Mrs. Ling!” Charlie called. He pried the expired rodent from his darling daughter’s little hand and dropped it in the cage.

“Is Vladlena, Mr. Asher,” came a giant voice from the bathroom. There was a flush and Mrs. Korjev emerged from the bathroom pulling at the clasps of her overalls. “I’m sorry, I am having to crap like bear. Sophie was safe in chair.”

“She was playing with a dead hamster, Mrs. Korjev.”

Mrs. Korjev looked at the two hamsters in the plastic Habitrail box—gave it a little tap, shook it back and forth. “They sleep.”

“They are not sleeping, they’re dead.”

“They are fine when I go in bathroom. Playing, running on wheel, having laugh.”

“They were not having a laugh. They were dead. Sophie had one in her hand.” Charlie looked more closely at the rodent that Sophie had been tenderizing. Its head looked extremely wet. “In her mouth. She had it in her mouth.” He grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter and started wiping out the inside of Sophie’s mouth. She made a la-la-la sound as she tried to eat the towel, which she thought was part of the game.

“Where is Mrs. Ling, anyway?”

“She have to go pick up prescription, so I watch Sophie for short time. And tiny bears are happy when I go in bathroom.”

“Hamsters, Mrs. Korjev, not bears. How long were you in there?”

“Maybe five minute. I am thinking I am now having a strain in my poop chute, so hard I am pushing.”

“Aiiiiieeeee,” came the cry from the doorway as Mrs. Ling returned, and scampered to Sophie. “Is past time for nap,” Mrs. Ling snapped at Mrs. Korjev.

“I’ve got her now,” Charlie said. “One of you stay with her while I get rid of the H-A-M-S-T-E-R-S.”

“He mean the tiny bears,” said Mrs. Korjev.

“I get rid, Mr. Asher,” said Mrs. Ling. “No problem. What happen them?”

“Sleeping,” said Mrs. Korjev.

“Ladies, go. Please. I’ll see one of you in the morning.”

“Is my turn,” said Mrs. Korjev sadly. “Am I banish? Is no Sophie for Vladlena, yes?”