He snorted, “I’ve noticed Leo and
Lenny
are never around at the same time. What are they? Superman and Clark Kent?”
I shoved some money into my jeans pocket and figured my light sweater would do for a sunny November day; it was probably in the high sixties. “There was an incident. Bird crap, vacuum cleaner retaliation. It wasn’t a pretty sight. They tend to avoid each other now, which is probably for the best.” I gave him a quick wave and was gone. I had errands to do and it was a perfect blue-sky morning to do them. I took my car, blazing red as I liked most things in my life—red my favorite color and blazing my favorite philosophy—and drove slowly past the still-smoldering nightclub. I lowered the window to catch a whiff of smoke. A floating memory in the air. Talk about warming your heart.
I did the rest of my chores in a few hours and was back at the bar with four grocery bags of frozen mini-pizzas, potato skins, and fried cheese of varied colors. Lenore was gone, and Leo and Griffin were watching the small TV mounted over the bar. The rest of the bar was empty except for one guy dozing at a corner table.
“What’s up? Did they vote another demon into office?” I demanded, putting the bags down with a loud thunk that said,
Thanks so much for the help
. “Not that they do much worse than humans sometimes.”
“No, someone was eaten at the zoo,” Griffin said absently, still watching. “At least, the vast majority of him was eaten.”
I wasn’t a fan of the zoo. I didn’t like to see animals locked up, but I’d been on occasion. The TV was showing a security tape of a little girl, maybe four, sitting on a bench by herself. She had long, light brown hair, melancholy dark brown eyes that could break your heart, and was dressed in a yellow top, pants, and matching tennies, with a red balloon in her hand. Now, wasn’t that a coincidence. She liked red too, and she watched the balloon float in the air with those wide, wistful eyes. If her parents were around, they didn’t show up. The only immediate adult was a man with a leash and empty collar in his hands. He had a friendly smile, light jacket, and oh . . . how sad . . . you didn’t have to hear the words to know what he was saying.
I’ve lost my puppy, sweetie. I’ll bet she’s so scared. Could you help me find her?
Never mind he couldn’t smuggle a puppy into a zoo and not be seen at some point. But a leash and empty collar fit right in your pocket.
The little girl looked around and static started to fuzz the video. She bit her thumb, smiled back shyly, and held out her hand. Then it was nothing but static.
“Wait until you see this.” Zeke had joined us at some point. He must have shown up after I left and he didn’t look too unhappy. In fact he looked pretty cheerful. Zeke’s sense of humor—such as he had—tended to tilt toward the dark end of the spectrum. “I saw it earlier. It’s good stuff.”
When the static cleared, the video had switched to another part of the zoo. You could hear screaming—throat-rending screaming—see running zoo personnel, and hear the howls of wolves looking for who had invaded their pen.
It seemed a man had been looking for his puppy and now a whole pack of puppies was looking for him. Apparently they found him too. When the zoo personnel were able to recover his remains, what few there were, he was identified as one Richard Charles Hubbins Jr.—a multiply convicted pedophile. No one was going to be shedding tears over him.
I tucked a wild strand of hair behind my ear and started unpacking the bags with a warm sense of satisfaction. “I have to say I love it when a pervert gets what’s coming to him. And the puppies got a nice treat too. It’s a win-win.”
There was one last security shot of the empty bench with the red balloon tied to the armrest. Bright and shiny in the sun, it swayed lightly as if waving at the camera. The police never found the girl or her parents but were asking that they step forward to give statements.
“What kind of statement do they need?” Zeke snorted. “He made a good chew toy?” Zeke wasn’t into clothes like his partner. Black on black was good enough for him, but today he was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt. A completely no-name brand; the jeans probably came from the thrift store. Zeke didn’t care much about all the money Eden House paid. He didn’t care much about material things period. Just killing demons, drinking beer, and beating Griff at pool. Well . . . and guns. He did like guns.
“They’re probably curious to know who tossed the son of a bitch into the wolf pen.” Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t just at the zoo, were you?”
Zeke, copper hair hanging loose to his shoulders, shrugged and reached for the bowl of pretzels. “No. I’d have just shot him. I wouldn’t have thought of anything that fun.” He looked up at the TV again, hoping for another repeat. “Anyone tape it?”
“Fun?” Griffin responded with disapproval, ignoring the tape remark. “Don’t you mean ironic? Poetic justice? His just deserts? Hoisted on his own petard?”
Shaking his head, his partner scooped up a handful of pretzels. “Nope, fun.”
Griffin gave in and took some pretzels himself. I could tell he wanted to ask how Zeke had gotten here . . . what with the entire no-driving thing occasionally slipping Zeke’s mind. If he needed to be somewhere, he could be five miles down the road before he remembered he didn’t have a license. Griffin definitely had his reasons for wanting to know. Bus accidents aside, purposely cutting Zeke off in traffic was grounds for punishment. And our boy? He did not do little punishments.
But Griffin didn’t ask how Zeke had arrived; he wouldn’t do that in front of Leo and me. As tight as the four of us were, Griffin and Zeke were two halves of a whole. Tight didn’t begin to describe their partnership.
But Zeke knew Griffin every bit as well as Griffin knew him. “Jackie dropped me off. We have a job up in Red Rock today. Demon. Maybe.” This meant demon or someone had turned loose their pet iguana.
Jackie meant Jackson “Stick up his Ass” Goodman, as Zeke labeled him. As much as I disapproved of labeling, it was a good one. Very accurate. The FDA would completely approve. Goodman was second in command of Eden House in Las Vegas. There was an Eden House in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Washington DC . . . fat lot of good it did us there . . . and a few other places I’d forgotten offhand. And that was just in the continental United States. Eden House was worldwide and had been around since, hell, nobody really knew, but long enough to have seen the pyramids built, Griffin had once said.
“Goodman brought you?”
Zeke snorted at Griffin’s surprise. Jackson Goodman as second at Eden House was far too important, in his own opinion, for ferrying around people. “Everyone else is out on a job. I offered to take a taxi, but . . .” He shrugged again.
I could see Goodman’s point of view, considering that the last time Zeke had taken a taxi, the driver had tried to overcharge Zeke, and Zeke had quite righteously, from his point of view, put him through the windshield, resulting in shattered safety glass, screaming people, a mildly confused Zeke who explained reasonably to the yelling, howling cab driver that stealing was a crime. In Zeke’s mind, assault with a windshield was apparently not, and only deserved retribution. As for the Jackie thing . . . Zeke, who mostly did as he was told as long as he was told in the line of duty or outside the line by someone he trusted, refused to call Jackson anything but Jackie. I was sure Jackie had made it clear a thousand times that it was Mr. Goodman or Goodman, not Jackson, not Jack, and definitely not Jackie. Zeke’s green eyes would blink and out would come Jackie, smooth as hundred-year-old scotch.
So, on the rare occasion when I saw the anal-retentive stiff waltz in here looking for the guys, which wasn’t often, I called him Jackie to give Zeke moral support. Not that he needed the latter, and the former were so out of the ordinary, extraordinary in fact, that most people wouldn’t understand them. Griffin would glare at my encouraged disrespect of management, Lenore would caw, “Nevermore, Jackie. Nevermore,” and a good time was had by all.
“Going hiking?” I tilted my head at Griffin to take in his expensive casual wear. “That’s not an activity that matches your look today.”
On demon-hunting occasions Griffin did dress down for the hunt. Not for burning-down-club occasions, but scheduled hunts. He did black on black like Zeke, cheap and disposable. Demon blood? It takes more than a little detergent to take that out. Zeke kicked a duffel bag at his feet. “I brought you some hiking clothes, but I didn’t know you were already wearing jeans.”
“These jeans? Hell, no,” Griffin refused instantly. “These aren’t hiking jeans. These cost two hundred damn dollars.”
“That’s sexy, Griff,” I said with mock sincerity. “A demon chaser in two-hundred-dollar jeans. Manly. Very manly.”
He glared a smoldering response, but since I was in the right with the jeans, he went with the other. “Demon
catcher
, not demon
chaser
.”
“Very nice. I like how your voice got deeper there.
Muy
macho,” I said, then asked Zeke, “How are you going to haul the kind of firepower you need without being spotted by a ranger? A shotgun stands out.”
Holy water, crosses, none of that worked on demons; it was all myth . . . maybe because the demons once were angels. Maybe they were already inoculated, so to speak, by their time in Heaven; maybe not. Who knew? They were resistant to the paraphernalia of all religions: Hinduism, Islam, Judaism . . . any of them. So leave your crucifix at home and don’t even get me started on
The Exorcist
. Diapers and a pea soup-free diet and that girl would’ve been fine. For a demon, however, you did need heavy firepower or an angel with a flaming sword, and as angels hadn’t been too enthusiastic about getting their hands dirty for quite some time now, heavy firepower it was.
Shotguns were the usual weapon of choice for the coup de grace, slugs the ammunition. Even demons needed their brains. Knives, smaller guns—smaller than a shotgun anyway—were good for slowing them down, but for taking them out, a shotgun was the best. Unless you were into axes or swords for whacking off the head. My boys used them all, but the shotgun was their favorite.
“Hand grenades,” Zeke said complacently. “They fit in the bag with the knives, guns, etcetera.”
“Hand grenades.” Griffin said it as calmly as he would’ve said,
Watch out for that gum on the sidewalk
. “The ones we keep locked up in the weapons arsenal and have to have Mr. Trinity’s permission to use. Those grenades?”
Mr. Trinity was head of Vegas Eden House. He did not have a nickname. He might not even have had a first or middle name. Mr. Trinity could make Jackie boy pee his pants with the rise of one iron gray eyebrow.
“Yep.” Zeke waved for a beer, the pretzels apparently having made him thirsty, before wiping the salt on his jeans with combat-scarred hands just like Griff’s.
“Did you get permission?”
The green eyes slid uncertainly toward Griffin. “No.”
“Did you break the lock or kick down the door?” Griffin was now pinching the bridge of his nose before slipping on his sunglasses and threading an agitated hand through his hair.
“Kicked down the door. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do?” From Zeke’s tone he’d figured out just now that, no, it wasn’t the right thing to do. It was the expedient thing to do, the black and white thing, but perhaps not the correct thing.
“Never mind. They needed a metal door anyway.” Griffin dropped his hand and dismissed it as if it were nothing, just that quickly, and slung an arm over Zeke’s shoulder. “Let’s go kill ourselves a demon, assuming it’s not just a pissed-off gecko.” Zeke looked mildly relieved and they sauntered out with their duffel bag.
Zeke was going to be in big shit and Griffin was going to get him out of it. Bottom line, Eden House couldn’t afford to lose a telepath. They might only be able to sense surface thoughts, but it was enough to spot a demon—or a robber, but that’s something we found out later.
Regardless, the House knew if they tossed Zeke, Griffin, their empath, was gone too. They couldn’t afford to lose two of their best. They did have a few more telepaths and empaths, but humans with talents were few and far between, at least until evolution picked up a little speed, and Griffin and Zeke were their strongest by far.
Griffin looked back at me, his expression both desperate and fierce. I put a finger to my lips. Their bosses would hear nothing from me. If he thought he could hide the fact that Zeke had done it, more power to him. I wouldn’t give him away.
“Those two,” Leo grunted as he refilled the pretzel bowl with a rustle of a bag a few weeks past expiration.
“They have a long way to go,” I admitted as I watched them pass the window to turn the corner that led to the alley where Griffin parked his car—the same alley where we’d destroyed the demon last night, “but I think they just might get there. As long as they learn Eden House isn’t the be-all and end-all of existence.”
“So it’s not the shit?” he said solemnly, and shoved the pretzels my way—already knowing the answer.
“No, not nearly the shit it thinks it is,” I said absently as I crunched some stale bread and salt, but he already knew that. “Has Robin called back yet?” He’d called last night when I was out. He said he’d call back today. Robin Goodfellow was one of the many contacts I’d made throughout my life. If I didn’t know something, which was rare, he was likely to.