Black Dog (17 page)

“I appreciate what you did, more than you know. Lilith has a talent for getting under your skin and digging around until you're just a broken pile of flesh. I should have remembered that.”

“She's pretty pissed at you,” I muttered. “What'd you do, break up with her in a text?”

Leo snorted, and Clint's mouth turned down. “It's a long story. I'm sorry she threatened you, and I'm sorry she made you dream-­walk. Demons aren't as powerful here as they are in Hell and they like to piggyback on those who can more easily move across barriers and conjuring.”

“She didn't threaten me, exactly,” I said. The sensation of Lilith in my head was still there, like I had an empty spot behind my eye socket that was slowly filling up with poison, drop by drop. I didn't know if I'd be able to forget her face as she'd dug her nails into the skin of my neck. I was sporting a crop of scratches this morning like I'd tried on a tie made of barbed wire.

“She doesn't have to say much to terrify ­people,” Clint muttered. “She's got Hell's most impressive set of crazy eyes.”

“All she said was she'd worked too long to let me and Gary keep her from the spotlight,” I said. “I have a feeling she'll say more to you.”

Clint's fork dropped from his fingers and clattered against his plate before it flipped off the table onto the floor. Naomi hurried over to pick it up, and he shooed her away. “It's fine,” he said tightly. “I'm not hungry anymore.”

Leo watched Clint like he'd just jumped up on the table and started singing selections from
West Side Story.
“What is your problem, man?”

Clint ignored him and leaned across the table until he was close enough that I could see the tiny lines around the black holes of his eyes and the two days' worth of stubble sprinkling his jaw. “Tell me exactly what she said to you,” he growled. “Word for word. Don't leave anything out.”

I tried to draw back, but Clint grabbed my wrist. Leo jumped up, but I shook my head. Clint would hurt him, and I didn't want Leo to be hurt. Especially not because of me.

“She said that she had worked too long for a hellhound with delusions of grandeur to keep her out of the light,” I said quietly, trying not to squirm at the pressure of his fingers on my wrist. “And she said she'd get what she wanted from you one way or another. Then she told me my dreams were depressing her and I woke up because Leo was yelling at me.”

“I was yelling because she was screaming in agony, for the rec­ord,” Leo said. “Let go of her, Clint. Now.”

Clint released me, flopping back against his seat and shoving his hands through his hair. “That bitch,” he whispered. “That crazy, crazy bitch.”

He leaned forward again, scrubbing at the skin on his temples. I realized I was sitting tensed up, waiting for him to hit me or explode. I wouldn't put money on either. I'd said something that I didn't understand the significance of, and that usually meant Gary was about to smack me around until he was less frustrated with his own shortcomings.

I also realized, almost as an afterthought, that I wouldn't let him. Maybe it was having Leo there, maybe I just didn't care anymore. But as Clint buried his face in his hands, I curled my fists and waited for the slap. I didn't know how I'd respond, but I was done covering my head and praying for it to be over.

Clint moved his hands after a time, but he didn't reach for me. He shut his eyes and then took a deep breath. “Lilith was the first,” he said.

“The first what?” Leo asked. “What is going on here, Clarence? Why are you lying to us?”

“I'm not lying,” Clint said. “I just don't feel the need to share every little thing with a criminal I barely know.” He looked to me. “You know how I told you the Fallen were scattered to the four corners of Earth?”

I nodded. Naomi and the line cook were at the other end of the diner, chatting, and the two truckers paid up and left. We were as private as we were going to get.

“We didn't go willingly.” Clint sighed. “When we left the Kingdom, Hell was a barren place. No life, no light, nothing. It was a penal colony. There weren't many of us, not compared to the ranks who still believed.”

“If you're going to tell me that a big angry sky man with a beard threw you into jail,” Leo said, “please spare me. I don't believe and before that I was mostly raised by my very Jewish mother, so you're barking up the wrong tree.”

“The Host rule the Kingdom,” Clint said, narrowing his eyes. “Nine generals who give the orders. There's nothing higher than them, so you can relax.”

“Okay, so you and your buddies had an argument with your bosses and you quit,” Leo said. “Great. Why does this matter to Lilith?”

“Because we made them,” Clint said quietly. “All of them.”

“Demons?” I said. He nodded. He looked ashamed, like I'd just gotten him to admit Lilith was after him because he'd run her over and just kept driving.

“We needed help. Labor, companionship, a real chance at having a life, even if it wasn't the one we'd left in the Kingdom. So we each put our blood and our bone into a vessel. We mixed it with the earth of Hell and pooled our magic.”

His words faltered, and Leo offered him a fifth of vodka from inside his jacket. I was starting to think Leo's ability to procure booze was his true magical skill.

Clint took a pull, screwing the cap back on with shaking fingers. A tanker rumbled by on the road outside and he practically flew out of the booth. Whatever he was telling us had him spooked, and that got
me
spooked. Leo had probably been right—­I should have washed my hands of Clint back in Wyoming.

Too late for regrets now. I'd tried to jettison most of them when I died. If I didn't, they'd weigh me down until they crushed me.

Clint swallowed the vodka, made a face, and propped his elbow on the cracked plastic tabletop. “Lilith was the first. Then there were others. We intermarried, gave rise to hybrids, and then the demons bred with one another. Eventually . . . eventually there were hundreds of them for every one of us. There was violence . . . horrible things done to the Fallen, and to the demons as retribution. There were some Fallen who could never reconcile what we'd done to survive who believed they should be exterminated, and as for the demons . . .”

His voice was so low I could barely hear him, and his hands shook until he put them flat on the table. I waited, trying to be patient, but I felt like I'd leap out of my skin at the slightest sound. “They resented their very creation, and they attempted to crush us entirely. We Fallen found the deepest part of Hell. We decided we had to confine the demons there, for our own safety. But we'd been betrayed.”

He went silent, and I traded a look with Leo. Clint had to see how creating a slave race and then shoving them into a hole in the ground when they got troublesome wasn't going to work out in his favor. I'd thought Hellspawn were arrogant, but the Fallen had them beat by a mile.

“They came for us,” Clint said. “They tore us from our home. They created their own abominations, the reapers and the . . .” He trailed off, not looking at me.

“It's okay,” I said. “I know I'm an abomination.”

“When they took over, they used the Pit to contain the damned, the human souls the reapers collected,” Clint said. “Hellspawn can't enter, and the damned can't leave. The spokes of Hell turn on the axle of the Pit, the power the damned emanate when they cross into Hell. The only place in Hell with light.” He drew a deep breath. “The Fallen call it Tartarus.”

“All right,” Leo said, holding up his hands. “Look, story time is fun and all, but the fact that Lilith is pissed you ­people enslaved her is so far from mine or Ava's problem, it's in the next fucking state.”

“I'm not finished,” Clint growled. “Tartarus is sealed. Only a human soul can pass through the gates. If the gates ever opened, there would be chaos. And chaos is what Lilith loves more than life itself.”

I expected Leo to roll his eyes or maybe just start laughing, but he'd gone silent. I looked between them. I knew enough to keep quiet and see which way the wind was blowing.

“Long after I was run out of Dodge, I started hearing rumors about human souls being recalled. Maybe two or three in all my time here. Necromancers who somehow found a way to breach the wall of Tartarus and bring dead ­people back.”

Leo grunted. “Now I know this is bullshit. We don't bring souls back. Just bodies. A deadhead with a soul would be . . . well, it would be a real fuckin' freak, among other things.”

I flinched. He wasn't talking about me, but he might as well have been. Aside from the fact that I had a pulse and breathed oxygen, that was me. I was a dead person with a soul hanging on to my body by a few tattered threads, just enough to give me the illusion of humanity until the hound came out.

I wanted to let it out just then, claw my way across Leo's lap, and take off across the scraggly forest of cottonwoods and long grasses that backed up to the diner. With the clarity that only the very wrong and the extremely screwed possess, I saw how stupid I'd been to think we had anything. Leaving aside his thing for redheads, I'd let myself think he was on my side, that we'd gotten along as well as the profoundly damaged could ever get along with anyone.

But fact was, I didn't like ­people and they didn't like me. That had worked for me for a hundred years, and just because a guy was tall and tattooed was no reason to chuck it in the trash.

“I imagine that reaper of Lilith's was helping her breach Tartarus,” Clint said. “She always had a way of collecting the top shelf in psychopathic toadies around her.” He'd stopped shaking, and his face looked less drawn. “How she'd do it, I don't know, but she sure seems to think it's possible.”

“No wonder she came after me,” I said. Abruptly, Leo jumped up from his seat and ran out of the diner. Clint rubbed the back of his neck.

“What now?”

I followed Leo outside, trying to figure that out. He'd yanked my bag out of the cab and dumped the contents on the ground. “You okay?” I said, standing over him.

Leo held up Gary's ledger. “If your reaper really was hunting for necromancers who could bring a human soul out of Hell, then don't you think it'd be in here?”

“Why give it to me, then?” I said. Leo shrugged.

“She didn't think you were smart enough to figure it out. That's what happens when you start thinking you're too much of a badass to ever have anyone turn on you.”

I leaned on the truck next to him. The sun was up and my skin warmed up for the first time in days. “Speaking from experience?”

“Never mistreat a man who has a reciprocating saw, bleach, and access to a junkyard,” Leo said, flipping through the ledger. “All I'm saying.”

I looked over at the Lexus. It was dusty, but even with a shattered window, ten times nicer than any car I'd ever owned. Five times nicer than most of the cars I stole. I thought about my Harley, how some crackhead was probably breaking it down for parts as I stood here, and sighed.

“You could just go, you know,” Leo said. He didn't look up from the ledger. I shifted my weight so he couldn't see my face if he did.

“I get that you don't want me around, but I'm sticking with Clint. You can go. Take the car. I won't stop you.”

Leo shut the book then, folding it into his arms. “That's not what I meant.”

“Why?” I spat. “I'm just a freak with a soul stuffed inside a dead body. You think I don't know that?”

“Oh, Jesus.” Leo sighed and tossed the ledger back on the passenger seat. I looked at the toes of my boots. It was better than looking at Leo. If I actually made eye contact I was pretty sure I'd slap him. Or burst into tears. Neither would do wonders for my image as an inhuman, soulless freak badass.

Leo's hands slid over my shoulders, his fingers squeezing gently through my shirt. “Ava,” he said softly. “What happened to you wasn't your fault. You might not be human anymore, but your soul isn't tainted like what Clarence was babbling about. You're still you.”

He lifted my chin with the tips of his fingers. “You're strong.”

I bit out a laugh, but it sounded like a bark. That was fitting. My throat was tight and my skin was hot, from more now than the steadily warming sun. My heart pounded against my ribs, and I felt my pulse race against the spot where Leo touched me. “I am so far from strong, Leo,” I whispered. “You really know nothing about me.”

“I know because I know myself,” he said. “You think I don't know the signs? I grew up with a father who beat us so badly that one time I lied and told the social worker the hospital called that I got clipped by a cab playing in the street. When I was fourteen I walked in on my uncles cutting up a prostitute who'd OD'ed in their car with meat cleavers. They offered me twenty bucks to mop the blood off the floor of the cooler and I did it. My dad was only around once in a blue moon, and he used our apartment to stash suitcases full of cash in the bedroom closet. We were still constantly having our power cut off. I gave the twenty to my mom so she could buy groceries.” He straightened up, working the kinks out of his spine like he was gearing up for a boxing match.

“I went back to my uncle's restaurant the next day, and kept going back. A ­couple years later a Mexican Mafia soldier named Pablo Cruz beat one of our girls when she was out in Bushwick buying coke. Nobody wanted to deal with him, so I loaded up a syringe with my mom's insulin and followed him onto an F train around rush hour. I even made sure to jab him in one of his tattoos to hide the injection mark.”

Hearing Leo describe murdering something like he was ordering a pizza didn't bother me. I was sure Pablo Cruz, whatever his redeeming qualities, had it coming. After my time with Gary, I could say that ­people who ended up in the crosshairs of someone like Leo, or something like me, almost always had it coming.