I, on the other hand, had gotten a little less mellow with age. Taking care of Kimano’s killer might take care of that; it might not. We’d just have to see.
My eyes drifted to the picture on the dresser. A stark black and white—it was Kimano in a patch of grass with his arm slung around the shoulders of a grinning coyote and a sharp-eyed raven on his shoulder. Lenore. He’d written
Arizona
across the back of the photo. He always said I had the worst memory for the fun things, the silly things. Maybe he’d been right, but the bad things . . .
Those I never forgot.
The gold bars from the slats in the window slowly passed across the wall, only a shade lighter color than the wall itself. Then night came, later night, and finally by the clock, midnight. I rolled over to face an already-sleeping Leo, wrapped my arm around his waist, shut my eyes, tucked my face against the blazing heat of his neck, and let the new day begin.
Chapter 4
The first customer through the door the next day was Griffin. He looked like he’d had a hard two nights. Between the cops, justifying Zeke to Eden House, and a possible exploded iguana, he deserved the look. He sat down at a stool as I patted the top of his head and said, “Morning, sunshine.”
He swatted at my hand and muttered, “Screwdriver.” I looked up at the clock: ten a.m. I shrugged and served it up. At least he was getting his vitamins. He took a drink, then took his first good look at me, and winced.
“Is that a comment on how I look, Griff?” I bent over, folded my arms on the bar, and rested my chin on them to study him expectantly. “I’d think twice before answering, just for your personal safety.”
“No.” He took another drink. “It’s the way you feel. Sad, angry, and a little hormonal. Is your per—” He stopped, very wisely, and took another drink. “Sorry. It’s the empath thing. Normally I don’t get much off you. Sometimes nothing at all. You must’ve had a bad day and I must’ve had a shitty yesterday to even bring all this up.”
Since he was right and apologetic, I let it go. He’d told me about being an empath a long time ago, when Eden House had come looking for him . . . their own telepaths and empaths picking up him and Zeke. If burning demons worked, the House would probably be out there scouring for their own little Stephen King fire starters too.
About being an empath, he’d said back then, it’s mainly boring. He’d pointed at the people in the bar. Cranky, horny, hungry, horny, pissed off, horny, sad, horny. After a while of that, he’d snorted, it got real old real fast. A thankless talent, I thought. There weren’t too many people running around filling the world with joyful vibes. Being an empath would really, well, suck. But it was useful for the job. Demons, they felt nothing like humans. They had one emotion humans didn’t have, at least not to this degree. It was murder, greed, and a longing, all wrapped up in one single ribbon of emotion so intense that it didn’t have a name. He said when he closed his eyes he could see it . . . dark purple with jagged streaks of bile yellow and blood red.
When I asked what Zeke “heard” when he psychi cally touched demons, Griffin said nothing good. It was all
Kill, eat souls. Weak. He’s weak. He’ll give his up in a heartbeat
. Zeke could only read the very surface of anyone’s thoughts, though. The bigger and badder demons like Solomon . . . the more-controlled demons . . . could and did pass for humans at times. But Zeke was the strongest telepath Eden House had, just as Griffin was the strongest empath. To my knowledge, the only demon they couldn’t pick out
was
Solomon, although they didn’t have to, because Solomon had been bold enough to tell Eden House he was setting up shop. That was before Zeke and Griffin’s Eden House days. Solomon’s human body was probably in his late thirties. A very sexy late thirties.
Yep, they definitely had to pick those bodies out of a catalogue:
Hot Soul Suckers
—check out the discount late-nineties models at the back of the book.
“I heard through the grapevine. Something happened.” Griffin finished the screwdriver and exhaled, eyes clearing slightly. “Something about the Light of Life. Remember me telling you about that a few years ago?” He didn’t wait for a comment, which was convenient for me. “No one’s giving out anything specific. Just that there was a body and no sign of the artifact.”
“Of which you still don’t know anything—what it actually is or does,” I said matter-of-factly. Trinity and Jackson hadn’t told them. Then again, neither had I, but that was one case of the less they knew, the better—for everyone. Not that that made my next comment any less manipulative, but sometimes you have to be deceitful to warn those you care about . . . without blowing your own plans. It still felt wrong, a feeling I wasn’t used to. “Some trust your House gives you guys. Makes you wonder how badly they’re going to paddle your asses if they find out I’ve been going on demon hunts with you.” No House telepath could read them now. Zeke had learned to shield his casual thoughts and taught Griff to do the same. It was one of the few occasions when Zeke was his teacher, not his partner.
Zeke chose that moment to come in. “You must be psychic,” he said matter-of-factly as I rolled my eyes, although for him it was a good effort. “Demon hunt tonight. That tip you gave us looks good. Going?” He ordered a Corona while I considered it. I’d heard there was a bar a few miles from mine where people were getting rich, famous, and laid like crazy. That had soul selling all over it, and I’d passed the news along.
Sitting on the stool next to Griffin, Zeke beat his hands in a slow, hypnotic tempo on his legs and frowned when I put the bottle of beer in front of him. “Where’s the lime?”
I looked over at Lenore on his perch. “Bird, lime.” He flashed a beady eye, flew over, plucked one out of the tray, strutted over, and stuffed it in the mouth of Zeke’s bottle.
“There you go.” I smiled cheerfully. “Enjoy.”
He scowled. “I fight demons. Isn’t that enough? I have to take on bird flu too?” But he pushed the lime on down and took his chances. He took a swig, than glanced at Griffin. “You don’t look so good. You got up way too damn early. Could hear you banging around in the kitchen.”
Griffin and Zeke lived together, a necessity with Zeke’s condition. “Some of us had things on our minds,” Griffin muttered, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Cops, lawyers, court, the House, Mr. Trinity. So sorry I disturbed you.”
Zeke hunched his shoulders slightly. “Oh yeah. Sorry.” And he was . . . sincerely sorry. Not for what he’d done, but for the trouble it was causing Griffin.
“Hell with it. It’ll pass.” Griffin exhaled and ges tured for another drink, just orange juice this time. “And before we get into the demon hunt issue, Trixa, I’m curious. What would the House do if they found out you went on hunts with us? The first thing would be to probably ask us how you know about demons. I doubt they’d approve of us hanging out with a descendant of the worshippers of pagan gods any more than they’d like hearing about the demon hunts.”
“Am I supposed to register surprise here?
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
and all that. I’m not a witch and this isn’t Salem, but people are still people.” I wiped a counter, plastic and cracking, but clean. “And too bad for them anyway. Me and mine might know things even they don’t about the big bad world. Certainly things pups like you are in the dark about.” I gave them a wink as I finished up with the counter.
“Pups”—Zeke shifted closer—“boys, they just can’t help themselves, no matter how many times you remind them, ‘not so much. I’m not fifteen anymore.’ ” He immediately winced at the thought, big and bright, I shot at him that stopped his last word and thought in their tracks. “Ow. Big sister. Hands off. I hear you. You’re
loud
.” He rubbed it away. “But there’s only six years . . . ow. Okay. Stop. Someone out there won’t think of me as a little brother. I’ll find them.” Great, a mission. Zeke on a mission. That was not good. I didn’t call him on the prying as I usually would have, not with this subject. And I knew how to keep my surface thoughts casual and basically bullshit. Griffin had needed lessons; some of us are born with natural bullshitting skills.
“An innocent,” I said, warningly. Zeke didn’t hurt those who didn’t deserve it, but once again . . . with that black and white view of the world, up until now that may have been a case of pure luck. He had to be careful. Who among us was honestly completely innocent? Who among us hasn’t deserved a little punishment once or twice? Trouble was, Zeke wasn’t so good at doing “little.” And with an innocent he would be pushing that luck somewhat less.
“Innocent.” That’s what I said and “thought” very casually in case Zeke was eavesdropping. At a much deeper level I sent the absolute dead-on emotion of utter denial to his partner. If “never” could be an emotion, this was it. Only for a man, any man—even one as unique as Zeke—there was no such thing as “never” in this department. Zeke was no virgin. He’d had his share of one-night stands, and those women had been fortunate. Either as innocent as I told him to look for now or not bad enough to set him off. I wasn’t quite sure what Zeke would do if he ever picked up a murderer, caught a stray thought of something ripe with evil, yet purely human.
Zeke turned to look at his silent partner. “What?” Silent to any onlooker, but not to Zeke. “Oh.” His gaze drifted down to his own hands—hands that could kill with or without a weapon. “I get it.” His eyes clouded for a moment, then cleared as the obvious solution came to him. “I won’t read them. I won’t look. Okay?”
“Yeah, partner, that’s okay. That’s good.” Griffin, who’d obviously had the same thoughts I had, sighed and pushed his glass of OJ back toward me for another screwdriver, because both of us knew it was never that easy. “I changed my mind. Load me up.” As I did, he leaned back and stretched, muscles no doubt stiff from digging Zeke out of that deeper and deeper hole he’d gotten himself into. No wonder he didn’t want to think about any future ones lurking out there. “So?” he asked me. “Going?”
“Maybe,” I conceded. “Leo’s out today, so he can cover for me tonight. A little hunt might be some fun.”
“Good. I can break this in.” Zeke, his thoughts of women and one-night stands vanishing instantly in favor of something he loved far more, pulled a revolver the size of an antiaircraft gun out of his jacket and laid it on the bar. “They confiscated my Glock, so I had to get a new gun from the House armory.” The armory where they didn’t keep grenades, and I was guessing that Zeke actually had authorized access to. “Isn’t it something fucking else?” He smiled down at it, grim and satisfied at the thought of all the demon damage that could do. He was like a kid at Christmas . . . a homicidal kid maybe, but . . . “A Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum. The muzzle flare is vented out the muzzle
and
the sides,” he said, as proudly as if he’d designed the gun himself. It looked like it was as big as my car. I leaned closer and corrected myself. It looked
bigger
than my car.
I gazed at it, then at his savagely content face, and bit my lip. Patting his arm, I managed to say solemnly, “Oh doll, it couldn’t be that small, I promise you. It just isn’t physically possible.”
Zeke didn’t let my psychoanalysis ruin his love affair with his new gun. He brought it that night, concealed in a holster under his jacket. I was surprised the weight of it didn’t have him leaning to one side, since it was as heavy as the anchor on the
Titanic
, but it didn’t.
Dressed in all black with his hair pulled back into a ponytail, Zeke looked like what he was . . . dangerous. Damn dangerous. He lounged against the wall opposite the emergency door with arms crossed. Bait or the hunter. Zeke loved being both.
Griff and I were dressed the same as Zeke and both of us were carrying shotguns as we crouched in the dark alcove between two Dumpsters near the mouth of the alley—keeping Zeke in sight. The only light in the place was directly opposite him and was a dim bulb mounted over the door, but demons didn’t need a lot of light to see. They didn’t need a lot of light to kill either. I was guessing that Hell was a dark, dark place.
“Do you ever wonder why they do it?” Griffin murmured. “Sell their souls? Do they really think a few years of all they could want here could be worth going to Hell? How do they let someone talk them into that?”
“People are stupid, shortsighted, and sometimes just desperate for something more.” I had heard there were souls, besides immature ones, that demons wouldn’t take. They wouldn’t take a soul for a selfless act. Wouldn’t or couldn’t. No trading your soul for your dying husband or wife, child or brother. No trading it for the cure to cancer. No doing evil to accomplish good. The road to Hell wasn’t paved with good intentions after all. “Besides, who’s to say Heaven’s any better? No shellfish, no pork, no hot guy-on-guy Westerns. No sex at all. Think about that. No sex and no barbecued shrimp. How could Hell be much worse?”
“Is there really no sex in Heaven?” Zeke said aloud, sounding worried. He was listening in to Griffin’s thoughts again and being about as stealth conscious as a marching band. We both ignored him.
“Put you one-on-one with a demon and I’ll bet you could have him selling his soul to you,” Griffin snorted at my ear, then added,“If demons had souls.”
“Sweet talker.” I jabbed him with my elbow, then tensed as the door opened and a demon walked out, followed by a girl. She was pretty, but not beautiful. Her breasts were small, a B cup, but so were mine. The last thing you needed when running down a demon was a double D smacking you in the face, but that probably wasn’t her opinion. She was twenty pounds heavier than the magazines told you she should be with an ass a tad bigger than an anorexic starlet’s. In other words, she was normal—which was most likely the worst possible thing to be in her eyes.