Airs & Graces (20 page)

I didn’t respond right away, or return the hug. I wasn’t expecting the response, but now that I’d heard it said, it made a lot of sense. After a few moments, she pulled away, moving back to settle in. “I think I’ve asked enough questions for now,” she said, laying down on the bed. “And I think tomorrow is going to be a long day. But I’ll have more questions later, okay?”

“We can continue any time,” I found myself agreeing despite my typical thorough dislike of Adelaide’s constant questions.

“G’night, Tab,” she said and sniffed. I cocked my head and regarded her still form, turned away from me in the dark.

“Good night, Adelaide.”

***

I suspect Adelaide had been thinking of Medicine Bow as very middle-of-nowhere, or Boulder, Colorado as being a long ways away, since she seemed surprised when we were seeing signs of the city after three hours of driving. Despite having had an awareness of how much the area had changed since I’d seen it last, seeing it firsthand surprised me, too. There was plenty of time to take it all in, though, since traffic was also a lot slower than the last time I’d been here. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to reorient myself on seeing a couple of familiar sights – those places which had stood the test of time on what had been the outskirts of Boulder and had things grow up around them, instead of plowing them under – to find the bank. The building had seen a couple of remodels, but there was still a bank in the same place as last time I’d been there.

I’d had the foresight to make sure that this was something I could access later, so I had the right identification and security information for the safe-deposit box. I took out the money but declined to create any other account. Cards may be easier and quicker, and carrying around that sum might be unusual in this day and age, but paying in cash would make us harder to trace – and less reliant on something that could be shut down or investigated, if the right strings were pulled. For all the jokes made to that end, it was true that Lucifer had allies among any number of law firms.

Adelaide showed some curiosity as to some of the other items in the safe deposit box. I explained them away as artifacts of other times, and not important to us just now. That much was true. I preferred the deed to a stretch of land remain right where it was. Likewise, I had no interest just then in explaining the ring that I’d agreed to watch for someone else, who didn’t want it falling into the hands of greedy relatives after her death. The rest of the things in the box had belonged to Iaoel and Gabriel, and I had even less interest in taking those out right then – or in explaining their meaning.

Instead, I suggested finding somewhere to eat and talk about the next steps. We settled on a burger place we’d seen back near the outskirts of the city. I didn’t want to draw too much attention, or spend any more time around large crowds than we had to, though Adelaide seemed quite happy with having some choices when it came to finding a place. I think, on seeing the amount of money I’d taken out, she was initially thinking somewhere more upscale, but most of those required traveling further into the city, not further out – so we settled on the nicer end of quick and simple dinners.

As it turned out, my precautions weren’t enough. We were just settling into the first bites of our food when Adelaide’s necklace began to react. She was already sliding out of the booth when the big picture window at the front of the restaurant shattered inward. The staff and patrons would just see some crazy people, most likely, but I recognized the Demons right away, as did Adelaide. This time around, there was no screaming – she pressed herself to my chest, and made it easy for me to fold a wing around her, as panic was erupting all around us.

The first one to reach us met my sword, as did the second. Four others tried to keep a little more distance, taking up flanking positions to buy time for reinforcements. I wasn’t sure how many there were, but could hear other breaking glass and shouts from parts of the place I couldn’t see.

Trying to take the fight away from the densely populated restaurant, I grabbed Adelaide and lunged backwards, shielding her with the wing as we crashed through the window nearest where we’d been sitting. I cushioned the impact of the landing with my body, then helped pull her back to her feet as quickly as I could. The Demons came right after us, shouting to alert their brethren. They apparently had not expected us to run.

Why had they expected us here at all?

The first two to leap out after us were dead before they hit the ground. Foolishly, I lunged after the third, managing to take its head, but not without ending up a few steps away from Adelaide. By the time I turned around, she was facing off with three more Demons – the fourth from inside, and two that had apparently been waiting out here, in case. Instead of screaming, or trying to find a way to flee, she headed straight for me again, or nearly so. Assessing them, she actually paused, looking about like a frightened animal, then darted towards me again. I realized what she had just done before they did – the Demons took the bait, pursuing the hapless prey right inside my sword’s reach. The hesitation had been a risk, but she’d shortened the fight considerably by willfully baiting them.

Their screams to alert the others did their jobs, but by the time any more caught up, instead of being surrounded wolf pack style and slowed down, I was able to be in ambush position, cutting them down while Adelaide hid behind me from the new rush. As soon as things quieted – when I’d killed eleven in all – we headed for the car, before the police could show up. With the rush of others trying to flee the chaos, I was fairly certain no one was going to get an accurate description of the car or its license plate.

“So… how the hell did they find us so fast?” Adelaide asked. “You said they’d be tracking me down, but – ”

“But nothing about your past would indicate Boulder. I know,” I said. “And very few people knew about that safe deposit box.”

“So did Lucifer send them? Or Crazy Teeth?”

I shook my head. “Not unless I’m missing something.” Then the realization hit. The Demons had been quickly dealt with. There weren’t enough to pose a serious threat to me, enough to be a serious warning. There had certainly been plenty to pose a serious threat to Adelaide, but I knew that wouldn’t be his primary concern right now.

“Gabriel,” I said.

“What?” Adelaide still had some capacity for surprise in her tone.

“They weren’t meant to win,” I explained. “This was his way of sending me a message: nowhere Iaoel knew about will be safe for long, so we’d better keep moving. He wouldn’t have tipped the Demons off to Medicine Bow and John, but here was fair game. And if one of his anonymous occult informer tricks resulted in there being a few less Demons in the world, then all the better.”

“Hell of a fucking heavenly host you got there, Tab,” Adelaide said dryly. She was then silent until we were out of town, taking time to process things. What she said then surprised me as much as anything else that was happening. “We’re heading west. I know where we’re going next.”

***

I didn’t relax until we’d passed a police car without any sign of attention. There hadn’t been anyone with a clear enough report of the car – or sufficiently detailed descriptions of us – to have us on any kind of watch. West was a vague enough direction for a little while, while Adelaide studied a road map from the glove box, before she finally informed me of her plan.

“So, we’re pretty much heading due west, towards Nevada,” she declared before shoving the map in my direction and hitting the signal to pull back into traffic.

“Las Vegas is a really bad idea.”

“We’re not going to Las Vegas. I want to try to find somewhere sort of out of the way, since there’s a whole lot of that. But there’s a lot of boxing and mixed martial arts and stuff that happens in Vegas and Reno, right?”

“There is, yes.”

“Well, I figure all of those people need to train somewhere, and a lot of them are going to want to train where nobody but their own people are watching them. I figured there has to be, like, some gyms or things outside the cities where people can train, and maybe you can rent ring space, or a training room, or something, with some privacy.”

“We can probably find something along those lines, yes. Planning to take up boxing?”

She shook her head and grinned. “You’re going to teach me how to use a sword. Or at least more about staying out of the way of people who have swords and things that I don’t.”

“Even if I train you, fighting Demons and the Fallen will still be too dangerous.”

“Sure, and I’m still used to hiding behind you, or getting behind your wing when the real fights come. But I should be able to at least make things easier. Think about it a little bit, and if I do start unfolding Iaoel’s Grace, maybe I can do more than that. She knew how to use a sword, right?”

“Sort of. She wasn’t the greatest fighter, but she knew how to use the gifts bestowed upon her to best effect in combat.”

Adelaide thought about that for a few seconds, before following up. “How did she do that?”

I found myself reflecting on some fond memories at the question, remembering some of the fights when we were on the same side. “Not all of her visions were about the past, or possible futures. She could reign it in, look just moments ahead, where a sword would strike or a Demon would lunge, and not only avoid it, but either set up her response, or, just as often, set me up for the kill. She didn’t much like to shed blood, but somehow, she never minded my doing it. It made a lot of fights easier.”

She nodded. “Back when the Demons were attacking us, I got just a brief flash of something like that. I was just going to run back to cover, but I knew that I was okay, for just a second, and waited.”

I gave her an odd look. “You had a vision right then? Not exactly a calm moment.”

Adelaide grinned. “You wouldn’t think so, but it was actually kind of okay. I’ve seen you fight them before. I knew if I just stayed where you could guard me, I’d be okay. I just had to not fight it.” Indeed, she looked like she’d made a major realization. “That’s when I knew what I wanted to do – be useful. I don’t need to go confront my mother, I don’t need to go to law school. I need to get through this shit, right here, right now.”

“And when you’ve learned to defend yourself, what’s the next step?”

The smile remained, as she continued to study the array of small town names on the Nevada highway signs. “I don’t know yet, but that’s okay too. I don’t have a big, detailed plan, and if I did, it wouldn’t be me. When this is done, I’m going to go get a part-time job and go to community college, or maybe even a state school if I can get a scholarship or two. I don’t know what I want to do with it yet, but I know I want my freshman year of not having a clue. I want to see what’s out there, and what interests me. And if that involves the five-or-six-year plan, that’s okay. I know it doesn’t involve law school. And this is sort of the same thing.”

“This is the same thing as community college?” I asked, a bit amused.

“Yes, it’s… it’s not just
existing
. It’s not finding the job where I don’t have to really push myself. I don’t know what’s going to happen or where I’ll end up. I just know, back there in the fight, things finally felt right. It sounds weird, but you’d told me before exactly what to do. I didn’t fight it, didn’t panic. We’d gotten through it before. As soon as I did that, things just slowed down. And I want more of that. I want you to teach me how to be useful to you. I don’t want to be the helpless baggage anymore. And if that means I’m occasionally bait, or whatever is needed, then so be it. It all starts with learning how to handle myself better, though.”

It wasn’t a very detailed plan, but it was a plan, and it was Adelaide’s, which was a step in the right direction. It also wasn’t what I’d have predicted, in terms of a moment of enlightenment, so I somewhat hoped it might take others off-guard as well. “All right, then we’ll find a quiet place to stay, and start looking into a private place to train. We’ll need to find you some suitable weapons, too.”

***

Elko, Nevada turned out to have what we were looking for. While it wasn’t initially gymnasium space, we were able to find a suitable building for rent near a motel, in a town with enough gyms that we could pick up what we needed to create a sparring area with some privacy. I carved wooden practice swords for the two of us, and laid some practice mats down. We wouldn’t be able to stay forever, sooner or later, someone would track us down. But there was nothing in Elko that screamed that it would be Adelaide’s first choice in destinations, and it certainly wasn’t anywhere I’d visited before.

We didn’t waste any time. As soon as she had a weapon, space, and a night’s sleep since the attack, Adelaide was ready to begin her training, almost too eager to get started.

“Your footwork is critical. You need to keep your weight forward, on the balls of your feet.” Adelaide looked a little disappointed. Ever since she’d gotten it, any time she thought she could, she’d been swinging the practice sword around. I suspected she may have suspected more sparring, somewhat sooner.

“All right, like this?” She shifted her balance.

“Kind of, but this isn’t ballet. Just keep your weight forward, so you can shift forward, back, or to either side easily.” I demonstrated my own stance, how readily I was able to maneuver. She made a couple of attempts to copy it. I finally stepped up behind her, helping to physically guide her into the stance, lightly kicking her feet apart slightly more and nudging the backs of her knees with my own. “Bend your knees just a little, not so stiff. Everything relies on your ability to move.”

“Tab…” she started, when I’d gotten her mostly into stance. “Never mind. Okay, so, moving is key. Got it. Now what do I do with the sword?”