Black Dog (19 page)

“Can you change back?” he said. “I don't think Naomi needs to see this.”

I felt stupid letting the thrill of attacking the three men subsume the human side of me, and I inhaled and opened my eyes to color and an eye line that roughly matched up with the bullet holes in the kitchen walls.

Clint knocked on the walk-­in and got Naomi out the back door. “Don't look behind you,” he said in a soothing tone. “That wouldn't be good news for anyone.”

“Look who's the white knight all of a sudden,” Leo muttered to me. Clint turned back to us.

“Just because I abhor violence doesn't mean I'm some kind of inferior species,” he said. “I've seen a lot more of it than you have, and after a while you lose your taste for it.” He reached down and gently rolled Marcus onto his back, closing his eyes. “Unless you're a psychopath, of course.”

Leo, conversely, patted down Illya for his car keys and twirled them around his finger. “We need to go. Even in Bumfuck, Nowhere, the cops will eventually show up for a shootout, explosion, and animal attack.”

Clint hesitated, and Leo snapped his fingers. “Hey. Unless you want to explain all of this from a jail cell, alone, and then sit back and wait for Lilith, get moving, Clarence.”

Clint did as he was told, and Leo followed him, but stopped by the guy with the broken arm. He looked at me and tilted his head. “Give me a hand?”

I grabbed the guy by his good arm and helped Leo haul him to his feet. Clint watched us like he thought we might just dump the Russian headfirst into the fryolator, but Leo popped the trunk and dumped him in. The guy landed on his broken arm and let out a hoarse scream.

He'd landed next to a black canvas bag and Leo rooted around in it, pulling out a roll of duct tape and a handful of zip ties. “What's your name?” he asked the guy.

Tears squeezed from the Russian's eyes, and his chest rose and fell rapidly. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. I sighed and took the tape and the ties out of Leo's hands.

“Hey,” he said. “I don't know if you've been paying attention but this is kind of my wheelhouse.”

“He's in shock,” I said. I snapped my fingers in the thug's face and he flinched. “I'm going to tie you up and tape your mouth. If you behave I'll be a good Girl Scout and make sure you live long enough to get that arm reset. It'll probably always hurt when it's cold and the steel pins will set off metal detectors, but you won't bleed out in the back of a car or go septic on your way to the ER. Sound good?”

He blinked once. His breathing was shallow, but his arm wasn't bleeding too badly. Deep punctures hurt like a bitch, but unless I'd hit a major vein he'd live. I tied his hand in front to take pressure off his arm, doubled up the ties on his feet, and pressed tape over his mouth. I turned to Leo. “See if you can find a blanket.”

He came back with a rough furniture blanket from the other SUV, and I wrapped the Russian in it. “Let's go,” Leo said. “I could do without getting arrested in the beautiful heartland of our great country.”

I let Leo drive without any arguments. My palm had a long gash in it, and thin rivulets of blood ran down my wrist and soaked the cuff of my shirt. I found some napkins in the glove compartment and pressed them into the cut. I ran my tongue over the inside of my teeth. The taste of blood starts off as metallic, almost sickeningly so, like chewing on a handful of dirty pennies, but then it starts to taste stale and a little rotten, like a bad cut of meat. I rooted in the glove box more, hoping the previous owners had stashed some mints or even a flask, but there was nothing.

“Do we need to be worried about your father?” Clint asked from the backseat. “I mean, that was not a proportionate response to us figuring out we had a tail.”

“That was just Illya being a shit stain,” Leo said. “He got pissed Ava humiliated him and he came back swinging. It won't happen again.”

We drove for another twenty miles or so in silence. Normally I was good with silence. I'd gotten used to it over the years. Silence meant nobody was paying attention to me, trying to pry into my business or my secrets.

Now, though, my hand wouldn't stop bleeding and I could feel Clint's eyes on the back of my neck. A rest stop sign flashed on the left and I tapped Leo on the arm. “Pull over.”

“I don't think . . .” Clint started, and I growled at him.

“I said pull over.”

Leo parked under a tree at the rest stop and I got out, pacing away from them to a picnic table set down a slope by a small stream almost choked off with weeds. The leaves were starting to turn, giving the barest hint of the frozen tundra that this place would be in a few months. I tossed the wad of bloody napkins into a trash can and put my elbows on my knees. It always took me a few hours to come back to myself after the hound. Last time I'd been so beat up and exhausted I'd just passed out while Leo drove us through Nevada, but I didn't have that luxury now.

Clint sat down next to me and looked at my hand, hissing between his teeth. “That needs to be stitched.”

“I'll be fine in an hour or so,” I said. “Hell builds us tough.”

Clint looked down at the river. “Sorry I can't just heal you. Laying on of hands was never my thing.”

“It's not really anyone's thing,” I said. “Collected more than a few faith healers for Gary.”

“I used to do something like what you did,” Clint murmured. “I'd track down the wicked and return them to the Kingdom.”

“So you were an angelic assassin,” I said. “Having your mojo gone must be a serious case of blue balls.”

Clint coughed, and I hoped he'd just go away, contemplate the beauty of a blade of grass or whatever it was ex-­angels did with their free time.

“It was hard to accept, yes,” he said. “I'll never age or change, but that doesn't do much good against bullets. I can't snatch them out of the air or stop time. I can't even heal myself.”

“How'd you do it?” I said. “When everything imploded and your life became a steaming pile of shit? How'd you pick up and go on?”

“I joined what I thought were worthy causes but in retrospect were just a series of pointless, bloody wars,” he said. “Then I picked out a new hiding place every twenty years or so. At first there were a lot of Hellspawn after me and the others. They wanted to do to us what we tried to do to them. Lilith is just the most tenacious.”

Leo came striding from the car, looking pissed. If I were him I'd want to be moving too, but this was it. I'd come as far as I knew how to go. Nobody was going to give me an order, send me off to my next job. I could choose any road I wanted for the first time in a century and I was so overwhelmed all I could do was sit on a splintery picnic table carved with teenage ­couples' initials and no less than six crude interpretations of somebody's penis. If there was a level ten stories below ground from pathetic, I was probably there.

“We should keep driving,” he said. “If we're moving it'll at least be harder for my father to figure out where we're going.”

“Nowhere,” Clint said. “We can keep trying to run from your father—­who, I'd point out, is a powerful and well-­connected head of a major crime outfit—­but that doesn't change the fact that Lilith is probably pointing her broomstick at me this very second.”

Leo's jaw ticked. “Fine. Sit here and wait to die if you want. I'm going.”

“Those are the choices, yes,” Clint muttered.

I stood up, walking toward the river. Up close, it was filthy, full of rusty beer cans and tattered plastic bags, the detritus of ­people who had come and then moved on in a handful of minutes. I'd have sat here on my Harley and not given the river or any of this a second thought. Just a pause, a small pinprick in the map between one collection and the next. Gary always in my ear, telling me where to go and who to kill.

Leo and Clint were still bickering. I could tell from their body language, torsos bending toward each other, Leo's arms tight while Clint was gesturing at himself, at me. I turned and walked back up the hill to them.

“Listen, you do what you like,” Leo was saying. “Stay here, set up a tent, run for your life, whatever. But I'm moving on. It's the only option.”

“It's not,” I said. My palm, covered in dried blood, itched, but the bleeding had stopped. Soon the skin would knit and it would be like it had never happened. A few days ago, I would have been happy to forget. I liked that things blurred together like ink from a cheap pen. It made it easier to forget what I'd have to do again, and again, and again, every time Gary or someone like him snapped their fingers.

“Fine,” Clint said. “We're all ears.”

I curled my fingers over my palm, hiding the blood and the healing gash. “There's something we can do besides lie down and die here, or run from Sergei's boys and die later.”

Leo raised one eyebrow. “And what's that?”

I drew in a deep breath, then let it out. I wasn't moving to the next spot down the road. This was it. There was no voice in my head except my own. I tried hard not to let that fact terrify me when I spoke.

“We can kill Lilith.”

 

CHAPTER
20

L
eo and Clint both gave me a long stare. “How do you propose we do that?” Clint said finally. “The Fallen had a hard time exterminating demons when they turned on us, and we certainly weren't powerless in Hell.”

“Gary's Scythe,” I said, mostly to Leo. He looked back at the dusty SUV.

“My father is not going to give it to you as a loaner.”

“I didn't think so,” I said. “A reaper's Scythe can kill anyone. Anything. If I get it and get close to Lilith, I'll put it right into her heart.”

“How are you going to make Sergei give it to you?” Leo said. “Neither of us are his favorite person right now.”

I hadn't really gotten that far with the idea yet. I was still back on the part where I stabbed Lilith repeatedly with the Scythe for what she'd put me through.

“Never mind my father, Lilith's not going to let you anywhere near her,” Leo said. “She's clearly not stupid.”

“Neither am I,” I said, chafing a little at his skepticism. I'd expected pushback from Clint. Leo was supposed to stick with me. “She's not stupid, but she's greedy. I'll offer myself and the Scythe up. If she thinks she can get something from me—­or even torment me—­then I have a chance.”

“Pretending for a second I don't think this is bullshit,” Leo said, “how would Lilith even go about opening Tartarus from here? I've seen enough dumb warlocks have conjuring explode in their faces to know the wall between us is unbreakable.”

Clint sighed, and I sincerely hoped he wasn't about to tell us another creepy story about demon eugenics. “When the Fallen were banished, many died in the crossing from Hell. Reapers and hellhounds and the like can cross over easily, Fallen less so. Imagine jumping from one roof to the next. If you slip and fall, you crash into the alley and snap your neck. Hellspawn have the hardest time crossing over. That's why they mostly stay down in Hell and let ­people like you do their grunt work.”

“That or they're just lazy,” I grumbled. “Gary sure didn't stir himself unless he had to.”

“There was talk when we were banished from the Kingdom of conduits between our worlds,” Clint said. “Crossroads spanning Hell, here, everywhere. But no one has been able to find them again. That's why demons needed emissaries with one foot planted here, to enable them to slip in and out of the cracks.”

“Interesting as these fantasies of yours are,” Leo interrupted, “if Lilith does somehow find a crossroads back to Tartarus and we show up for the party, it won't be with a reaper's Scythe. My father is even less warm and fuzzy than she is.”

“If you want to live beyond the next few days you need your father out of commission,” I told Leo quietly. “Otherwise you'll never stop looking over your shoulder, no matter where you go.”

“I can't just kill my father,” Leo grumbled. “Not only is he guarded better than a head of state, the other
vor
will ice me as fast as they can to swoop in on his territory. Russians clean house—­no spouses, no kids, no family who could interfere left standing.”

“I'm not talking about killing him,” I said. “That's your deal. I just want him to give back what he stole from you.”

Leo gave a bitter laugh. “Good luck with that.”

“You're a tough guy, Leo,” I said. “A scary guy. I don't get the feeling there's much on this earth that can rattle you. So why are you so afraid of your father?”

Leo pointed at me. “You want to be careful what you say right now. Just because we're road trip buddies doesn't mean you know me.”

I took him by the elbow. Touching him was risky—­he could haul off and slap me, like all the other macho gangsters I'd known, or just flatten me with a hex, like most of the alpha male warlocks I'd spent more than a few minutes with.

Leo grunted but didn't pull away. “You gave me a gift, Leo,” I said quietly. “You set me free. Let me do the same thing for you.” I tugged him back to me when he turned away. “When are you ever going to have a hellhound on your side again?”

“Sergei's survived a long time, and if you think I'm bad, he's ten times worse,” Leo said. “He taught me everything I know, Ava. Just because you turn into a big scary dog on command doesn't mean you can toe up to him.”

“Let me worry about that,” I said, and patted him on the shoulder. I walked to the SUV and opened the back, sitting next to the guy we'd grabbed. “If I take that tape off are you going to scream?”

He shook his head wearily, and I ripped it off. He yelped and then groaned, his forehead creasing. “You bitch. My arm hurts like hell.”

“What's your name?” I said. He was young, without the gun and the tape on his face. He barely even had any smile lines, and I didn't see any ink on his neck or his hands. That was good. I could work with that.

“Tom,” he said.

“Tom, really?” I leaned in. “Not Alexi or Nikolai or something?”

“If you're going to kill me I wish you'd just shut up and do it,” he muttered. I shook my head.

“I need you to call Sergei Karpov and tell him his son wants to meet.”

Tom laughed. It was more of a cough and a groan mingled together, but I took it in the spirit in which it was intended. “The only way Sergei wants his son is in a bunch of pieces in a bunch of different garbage bags, scattered randomly in landfills across the greater Reno-­Sparks area.”

“I get it,” I said. “But I want you to call anyway.”

He started to object and I reached out and flicked his wounded arm with my index finger. “Humor me, Tom. We've both had a long day.”

Tom let out a soft scream. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but he nodded at his chest. “Cell phone's in my pocket.”

I pressed the number in Tom's contacts and listened to him speak Russian for a few seconds. Leo was going to be pissed at me, but this was the only way I could think of to get Sergei out of his hidey-­hole in Vegas and to a spot where I'd actually have a chance if things went bad.

Tom listened. There was a lot of yelling coming out of the phone, and he flinched. “He wants to talk to Leonid.”

I put the phone to my ear. “Is that you, Sergei?”

“I don't know who you think you are . . .” he growled.

“I'm the girl who's saving your ass,” I said. “You want to meet with us, Sergei, trust me. Leave the hardware at home and hear what we have to say. This doesn't have to be a war for you, Sergei. Hell, you might even end up with all your fingers and toes and earlobes right where they belong.”

“I'm going to find you, dog, and I'm going to skin you,” he hissed. “You're going to be a rug in my walk-­in closet when I'm done.”

I swallowed. My throat was dry, not because I was afraid for myself but because I didn't want to fuck Leo over if Sergei didn't go for this. “Wouldn't you rather have me alive and willing to do you a favor?”

There was a long silence on the other end. “I'm listening,” he ground out at last.

“You've got other warlocks,” I said. “Other cleaners. It's a simple trade. Me for Leonid.”

Another period of quiet while the line hissed. “You fuck me, and I'll fuck you so hard your ancestors will be walking funny,” Sergei said.

Leo came up the hill, and I punched
MUTE
. “Text me a location,” I told Sergei. “A public place with a crowd. And speaking of fucking, if I walk into an ambush I'm taking every one of you vodka-­scented bastards down to Hell with me. You know I can.” Leo was almost in earshot, and I held the phone up to my mouth. “This is not a bluff. Ignore me and get fucked right in the ass.”

I pressed
END
and tossed the phone back in the SUV with Tom. Leo cocked his head.

“What was that?”

“Don't flip your shit,” I said, “but I got a meet with Sergei.”

Leo proceeded to do exactly the opposite of what I'd asked, punching the car so hard a dent blossomed. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouted. “Who asked you to do that?”

“I know it's a lot, but I'm asking you to trust me,” I said. “Just for a few more hours.” I waited. He could hit me or choke me, or decide he'd had enough and shoot me. I'd gotten all of those reactions from various humans at various times. Would I get the reasonable Leo, the one who'd carefully stitched up my arm in that horrible motel? Or would I get the Leo who'd tried to torture me into doing what he wanted, the one Sergei had worked so hard to create in his own image?

“I don't want to hear another fucking word about my father,” Leo growled finally. Minus the accent, he and Sergei sounded a lot alike. “Let's just get busy killing ourselves, because that's all this is. A fucking suicide pact with you, me, and Speedy over there.”

“You don't have to do this,” I said again. Leo sighed.

“I do. Because if I don't stick with you two, I'm just gonna be another set of spare parts in the Clark County landfill. Always kind of figured that's how I'd end up, but you went and convinced me I might be wrong, so this is your fault.”

Tom's phone buzzed with a text and I picked it up. An unlisted number said:

PROMENADE, RENO. 11 PM.

“You want to drive?” I asked Leo. He pointed at Tom.

“We should probably offload the extra bags first,” he said. Tom started whipping his head back and forth.

“Hey, I helped you! She said I'd be okay if I helped you! I know what you do, man. I don't want any part of that.”

“Then here's a tip,” Leo said, grabbing him by his jacket and yanking him out of the SUV. “Stop role-­playing that you're a tough guy and go back to your job at the Circle K. You are not cut out for a life beyond a name tag and a polo shirt.”

Leo pulled out his pocketknife and cut the zip ties on Tom's feet, then set him upright. He dialed 911 on the cell and dropped it on the pavement. “If I see you again, I'll cut your fucking eyes out,” he said, and got into the driver's seat.

I climbed in as Leo laid on the horn for Clint, and we peeled out of the rest stop, getting back on the interstate and moving into the west once again.