Black Dog (21 page)

I took another step back. “You have ten seconds to make a choice and then I'm walking.” I counted to ten while he stared at me, the skin around his nostrils going white with rage, and then I turned and started back to the corner, the marquee lighting up the night around me. I waited for a bullet in the back, but it didn't come.

“Wait,” Sergei said. He gestured back at the casino. “Let's have a drink, you and I.”

Leo would be furious I'd gone somewhere alone with Sergei, but I just nodded and followed him into the Eldorado, past the craps tables, through a plain door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
, down a flight of stairs to a drab corporate office. Sergei sat behind the desk and extracted a bottle of good whiskey from a drawer.

“Why do you not sit down?” He glared at me as he poured. “We are doing business.”

“No offense, but I don't trust you further than my hand in front of my face,” I said. Sergei grunted.

“Drink,” he said.

“Show me the Scythe,” I said. He took a flat pouch from inside his jacket and held it out. I accept it, recognizing the weight of the Scythe immediately. It prickled the skin over my whole body, the Hellspawn magic radiating like plutonium into the night air.

Sergei snatched it back, sticking it back inside his jacket. “You will do what I ask, no questions. You will come when I call, you will never tell me no. Like a good dog. Or I will put you down.”

“Fair enough,” I said. I had no intention of honoring my agreement with Sergei. I was just saying whatever I had to so he'd give me the Scythe. I thought he might suspect, but we both had too much to lose by not going along. Even the possibility of having his very own hellhound had to be getting Sergei hard. Me, I just wanted to survive, and I wasn't above lying my ass off to do it.

Sergei shoved the glass at me. “No deal unless we toast. It's the Russian way.”

Every part of me was screaming I needed this drink, and I knocked it back in one swallow. Sergei watched me, fingers resting on the rim of his own glass.

As soon as the cold fire hit my stomach I knew I'd made a mistake. It didn't taste warm and woody like it should—­it was bitter and thick, like the laudanum Jasper used to keep around for what ailed him, or when he just wanted to get good and fucked up.

Sergei stood up as I started to go down, the floor dropping out of the crappy office and spinning me sideways. “You fucker,” I tried to say, but my tongue was thick and motionless.

“Don't worry,” Sergei soothed, coming around the desk. “I will not kill you immediately. You will stand in for punishing my worthless son. After you've bled and screamed for him, perhaps you and I can renegotiate.”

He reached out to stroke my face, and I thanked my lucky stars that I fell over before he could touch me, my limbs going every which way. Before my vision narrowed to a pinpoint and the lights blinked out, I saw Sergei laugh once, humorlessly. “Stupid bitch.”

 

CHAPTER
22

I
came to on the floor, staring at the spindly legs of an iron bed. A rag rug dug into my cheek, leaving deep furrows, and I smelled tobacco and turned earth and frying bacon.

“This isn't right,” I groaned, or tried to. My mouth and throat were dry and sticky from the effects of whatever Sergei had dosed me with.

“Sure isn't,” someone drawled from over my shoulder, in a voice as crispy as the hog fat I could hear sizzling in the pan.

I sat bolt upright, a skirt from a dress I hadn't owned in over a century twisting around my legs. “Maw-­Maw?”

My grandmother hmphed, rocking in her squeaky chair as she lit a long black cigarillo. “Sure, honey. Who else would it be?”

A quick look around told me I was right; I was back in the cabin clinging to the side of the mountain above Bear Hollow. My hands were rough from pulling weeds and chopping wood, my legs were still skinny but tan instead of deathbed pale, and my hair was the long, wavy cloud it had been before I'd bobbed it to look more like a New Orleans lady and less like a hillbilly who was afraid of soap.

“You best get yourself right before Hattie or Uncle Joe sees you,” my grandmother told me. “They knew you were out all night, you'd be hauled off to some snake-­fucking preacher before you could say boo.”

I held up my hands. “Wait a minute.” This wasn't like any of my nightmares. I was myself, the Ava I'd left when I'd passed out in the casino. I was just stuck back in my old life, and apparently talking to my dead grandmother, who smirked as she looked me over.

I'd taken plenty of drugs, voluntarily or not, and some could sure make you see things, but not like this. Unless Sergei had put a heaping helping of peyote into that glass along with whatever knockout cocktail he'd used, this wasn't from the drugging.

“You got something to say to me?” my grandmother said, and something flat and black slithered across the surface of her gaze, like a pebble landing in a pond.

“Not to you,” I said, levering myself up using the rusty bed frame. There used to be a razor in the bedside drawer, left by my father, kept like a tiny grave marker by my mother after he was gone. I grabbed it, yanking the blade open and turning in the same motion, grabbing my grandmother's faded housecoat and pressing the razor against her wrinkled neck.

“Stop trying to skullfuck me,
Lilith,
” I snarled. “It didn't work out so hot for you last time.”

Whatever was using my memory of Maw-­Maw's likeness as a mask didn't flinch, didn't even blink. “You hear me?” I shouted, giving it a shake. The blade nicked the skin, and a dark trickle of blood started, filling my nostrils with the scent of dirty pennies.

“I'm not Lilith,” it said. It put its hand against my chest, almost a tender gesture, and the next thing I knew I was across the room, the razor clattering to the floorboards beside me.

“What are you?” I wheezed, my chest burning. My ribs, just recently healed from the beating I'd taken at the hands of the shifters, went tender again where I'd hit the wall.

“I want to help,” the thing said, standing and wiping at the cut on its neck with Maw-­Maw's favorite rag, the blue flowered one she kept wrapped around her silver hair or tucked in her dress pocket. “The Scythe is only part of it, Ava. You need to do what you were put in Hell to do.”

“I couldn't have less of a clue what you mean, and could not give less of a shit,” I grumbled, feeling my ribs.

“Forget about revenge,” the thing said. “Lilith has already found the crossroads. You need to find her.”

It came toward me, and I scrambled back. Its eyes were all black now, and shadows crawled across the floor and up the walls, shadows that hissed and cried and blocked out the light so all I could see were those black pits of eyes.

“You need to stop hiding, Ava. Stop denying.” It grabbed me by the chin and pulled us together, so close I could smell the sour tobacco on its breath, feel the furnace blast of it against my cheeks and chin. “And you need to wake up.”

It pressed our lips together, and the shadows sprung from its body washed over us both, drowning me in darkness black and vast as the deepest ocean.

I felt myself fly back to waking and sat up, slamming my head hard into metal. Everything was still black, but now it smelled like motor oil and burning metal, and I could taste sweet plastic-­y duct tape over my mouth.

Next to me, in the tiny confined space, another warm body rested. I felt the limits of our confinement. My hands were also taped. The space was just slightly bigger than I was. Corrugated metal walls, a rubber seal just above my head.

I prodded at the form next to me, and it groaned. First things first, I ripped the tape off my mouth and then off the body next to me. “Leo?” My voice was hoarse, like I'd been screaming. I didn't feel like I'd been tortured or beaten, but being stuffed in here certainly didn't bode well.

“You're alive,” he said, also hoarse.

“Same to you,” I said. I worked on getting my hands free, biting at the edges of the tape until it tore, leaving me covered in sticky residue.

“I thought for sure you were done,” Leo whispered. In the dark, pressed against him, I felt calmer than I had any right to, although that could have just been the drug still doing its dance on my brain.

“Me too,” I whispered. Everything was loud and close in here. I got my hands free, pressed against the lid of whatever we were entombed in—­an old chest freezer, I guessed, from the metal walls and the stale smell of freon. Nothing budged. I pressed harder, then hit.

“Forget it.” Leo groaned. “They chain it shut and take it to the crusher or the landfill. If you're not dead from what they did to you before you went in or from suffocation, you sure as hell will be after that.”

I dropped my arms. The haze was lifting from the inner landscape of my mind and my skull was throbbing. “Your father is a real asshole.”

“I've been telling you,” Leo said. “I came looking and Sergei said we could talk, that I could work off my debt. He had a cleaning job.” His breath hitched a little against my back. “He showed me you, then . . .” He sighed. “Spoiler alert: I ended up in here with you.”

“He gave me something,” I said, feeling along the rubber seal. All I got was a shredded fingernail or two. “Felt like taking a hammer to the head.”

“Etorphine,” Leo muttered. “Street name's M99. Sergei's buddies back home use it on the girls they import to keep 'em quiet in the containers. I always had a girl or two who stroked out or choked on her own vomit to get rid of when the shipments arrived.”

He must have sensed my intake of breath because he pressed his fingers into my back. “I'm not a saint, but I didn't deal with the whores. I stuck with what I was good at.”

“Stop using the past tense,” I said.

“You think I'm going back after what he did?” Leo growled. “Fuck him. He'll be lucky if I don't mount his dick on my living room wall.”

“We won't be doing anything if we don't get out of here before the air runs out,” I told him. “I'm not strong enough to bust this thing open, so if you've got an idea let's hear it.”

Leo sighed. The air was getting thin and sour—­I could feel it starting to make my head spin. If I hadn't had that dream, had never been jolted back, I'd never have come to at all.

“I could try some blood conjuring,” he said. “I used to be pretty good at getting in and out of places that were locked.”

“But you need human blood,” I said. Leo coughed.

“No, this'll work with any kind. It's just . . . I don't know how much. Or what'll happen if there's blowback. We could get pulverized.”

“That's gonna happen anyway,” I said. I found a sharp metal latch sticking out from the lid of the freezer, and dug it deep into the flesh of my arm before pulling down. The blood was hot and fast flowing, and Leo wrapped his fingers around my arm, smearing it. He began to murmur in Russian, the words running together. I'd picked up a few languages over the century—­Spanish, French, a smattering of German during the war—­but Russian just sounded like water over stones to me.

Power, though—­I could feel that, no matter what language it came in. It wrapped me up, cotton wool and thorns all across my exposed skin. Leo's whispers increased in urgency, his grip on me tightened, and stars spun in front of my eyes from the burning that engulfed me, radiating from the cut on my arm up to my skull and back down to my belly.

I cried out, and then there was a heavy, jagged clanking from outside and the lid of the cooler popped open, just an inch or two. I shoved it the rest of the way, gasping cool, recycled air flowing from a bare HVAC vent above us.

We were on the loading dock of the casino, wedged out of sight next to a Dumpster. I helped Leo saw the tape off his hands, and we both climbed out. Leo grabbed my hand. “Come on. We need to get out of here before he realizes we're gone.”

“No,” I said, pulling away from his grip and heading back toward the inside door. “I need the Scythe.”

“Ava, forget it,” Leo hissed. “We need to be out of Reno yesterday.”

I just kept walking. I remembered what that thing in my dream had said, how I needed to forget about revenge, but revenge was all I could see. I wanted to hurt Sergei, for what he'd done to me and to Leo, for Leo's whole life, for the misery he wore on his face just under that expressionless mask.

“Ava,” Leo said quietly. “If we don't go now, I'm going to die. You might survive, but my father is going to make sure I don't get another chance to screw him.”

I stopped, the loading dock spinning again under my feet. He was right. I could get my own back on Sergei or I could go. It wasn't a hard choice.

Leo's shoulders went slack when I turned around, and I could see his relief as we hopped off the dock and jogged down the alley behind the Eldorado. “Wonder if Clarence took flight or if he's still waiting,” Leo panted. He was pale, and we stopped in the shadows to get our bearings. No one behind us was yelling or shooting, and I figured Sergei must think I was good and dead. I wasn't keen to disabuse him of that notion. Clint better not have bolted on me.

The temperature was dropping rapidly in the hours before dawn, and I shivered as we hurried away from the promenade and into the wasteland of twenty-­four-­hour minimarts and faded, scuzzy motels.

I popped the door on an old Chevelle with dinged paint and Utah plates, and we drove back to Circus Circus. I felt something give a little in my chest when I saw Clint waiting, leaning against the SUV's bumper and tapping his foot. He glared when he saw us drive up.

“Grand theft auto is just a fun hobby for you two, isn't it?”

“Just get in,” I snapped. Clint got his bag and climbed into the backseat.

“Mind telling me where we're going?”

“I have no fucking idea, beyond ‘away,' ” I said. Maw-­Maw's tobacco rasp floated up in my mind again.
Lilith has found the crossroads. You need to find
her.

“Even with the Scythe, Lilith is way ahead,” I said. “She knows where the crossroads are to reach Tartarus.”

Clint gaped at me. All I could see in the rearview mirror was his teeth. “How the hell do you know this?”

“I just do, okay?” I said. I could tell from his startled glance that Leo was also wondering, but he had the sense to button his lip in front of Clint.

“How could she have found out?” I asked Clint. “If the Fallen knew the locations, it had to be one of you, right?”

“None of us would do such a thing,” Clint said, way too fast.

“Don't hand us that crap, Clarence.” Leo sighed as I merged onto the interstate. I'd never been so glad to leave a town in my dust. “Everyone has their breaking point, and everyone has their price.”

“If I
did
guess,” Clint said, “she would
not
have betrayed us. She was one of the few Fallen to speak against our treatment of the demons, in point of fact.”

“Spit it out,” I said as an interchange loomed ahead in the gray, greasy dawn. “North or south?”

“South,” Clint said after a long moment. I merged over. A trucker laid on his horn and flipped me off. I returned the gesture with my blood-­soaked hand, in no mood.

“A state and town would also be helpful,” I said. Behind us, over Reno, the same iron-­bellied clouds from Rapid City were gathering. Lilith was here, breathing down my neck. I was running out of highway.

“Bayou St. Charles,” Clint said. “Louisiana. I'll know it when we get there.”

I almost swerved into the oncoming lane. “Is that really the only place we can go?”

“If you want to speak to a Fallen who knows these things, it is,” Clint said. He examined my face in the oncoming headlights. “Problem?”

“No,” I said, speeding up as we left the city traffic behind us. “I can't think of one fucking place I'd rather be heading for than the town where I died.”