Black Dog (7 page)

 

CHAPTER
10

L
eo drove us as far as Elko, courtesy of a trucker in Henderson who left his wallet on the counter of a gas station.

Marty's car swilled gas like a wino with a gallon of Thunderbird, but nobody stopped us or even noticed, except a ­couple of guys who told Leo he had a sweet ride.

I concentrated on not passing out. I wasn't healing like I should. I didn't know if it was the cut from the Scythe or just being so beat to shit my body was giving up on me. Leo finally pulled into a motel at least ten times as crappy as the Mushroom Cloud, and turned off the car.

“You need to rest,” he said.

“No,” I said. “We should at least cross the state line.”

“There's no magical fence keeping my dad out of Idaho,” he said. “And if you crap out, then you're not going to be very useful when he does catch up to us.”

I flinched. I knew that Leo only went with me because I was good in a fight, extra protection against his father's gang of deadheads, but being reminded that I was only good for one thing didn't help me feel any better.

“Come on. At least let me take a look at that arm.” Leo's voice was a lot softer. I had the thought maybe he'd realized he'd stung me, but that was silly. Guys who didn't care about hurting your kneecaps sure as hell didn't care about hurting your feelings.

The thought of a bed was appealing, even a bed in the sort of place where the working girls didn't bother to pretend they were just taking a trip to the ice machine.

“I'm pretty sure that trucker has canceled his cards by now,” I said. “And he didn't have a whole lot of cash.”

Leo helped me out of the car and pounded on the nearest door with the butt of his gun. He grabbed the shirtless guy who answered by the neck and tossed him into the parking lot. “Out.”

“Hey!” the guy screamed. He had fewer teeth than he did prison tats, but he looked pretty pissed.

Leo pointed the gun at him while he held the door open for me. “Look at it this way—­now you don't have to leave the maid a tip.” He shut the door and put the chain on. The guy pounded for a minute, but he was gone by the time I'd cleaned up the burnt foil and glass straws on the bed and turned on the ar­thritic bathroom fan to air out the smell of crystal meth and cheap aftershave.

“Home sweet home,” I said, tossing the filthy bedspread on the ground and sitting down.

“Just like my condo on Flamingo,” Leo said. “Except this place has a painting of a sad clown to replace my flat screen.”

He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves before he grabbed the ice bucket. “Sit tight,” he said. “I'm going to grab some stuff to stitch up your cut.”

“I don't need . . .” I started, but the door had already slammed.

I looked at the ceiling stains while I waited for Leo, listened to a hooker on the second floor curse out a john in English, Spanish, and what sounded like broken Cantonese—­impressive—­and tested the TV, which got a fuzzy porn channel and a shopping network selling me cubic zirconium jewelry that even Liberace would have said was a tad flashy.

Leo would learn that he didn't need to take care of me if he stuck around, but he wasn't going to. If playing nurse took his mind off things, then I wasn't going to pee on his parade. I liked him as much as I liked any human, but he'd learn soon enough why even warlocks didn't become best buddies with Hellspawn.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and listened to the helmet-­headed bimbo on TV drone on about the brilliance index. I used to love the television—­when they first started showing up everywhere, I always found a way to catch crap like
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Lost in Space,
and
Twilight Zone.
Humans were scared of all the wrong things, I realized when I started watching TV. Nuclear war, Communists, monsters out there in the dark.

The monsters weren't out there, though. They'd already come inside, infected the world like the zombie virus in
Night of the Living Dead.
Humans with a little power would always try to peer into the darkness, and things like Gary would always be there waiting, ready to cement Hell's foothold in their world another inch or two.

Really, I had more in common with them than I'd realized before I'd started watching those shows. We were both small things in a vast forest, and we could only walk so far before something higher up the food chain snatched us in its jaws.

All at once the room was too tight and too hot, feeling exactly like the filthy little box it was. I ran into the bathroom and spun the tap, orange rust water splashing over my shirt. I ripped it off, tossing it in the tub. It stank like stale sweat anyway, and was in even worse shape than me.

I ducked my head down and splashed water on my face until all the blood and salt crust was gone, and my hairline was damp. Black strands stuck to my skin when I came up for air, but I'd staved off the panic attack.

I wasn't used to being anchorless. I'd seen a thousand motel rooms just like this one, but I'd always been going somewhere on a collection or going back to Gary. Now there was nothing except this.

Vomit took the expressway up my throat and I dove for the toilet, which was a dubious choice at best. The grime-­streaked bowl didn't help, and I retched until my abdomen cramped and my head was pounding.

“Take some deep breaths.”

I shrieked and skidded backward on the slick tile until I hit the tub, where I managed to yank the curtain rod down and start an avalanche of tiny shampoo bottles.

The demon put down the toilet lid and sat, clicking her tongue. “You must be Ava. I'm Lilith. You're not at all what I expected, based on the things Gary said.”

A weird thing happens when you see a demon in the flesh. They're like a truck bearing down on you, even if they're just sitting there. You lose all logic and sense, and your hindbrain jumps in and sets up a litany of
ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck
. Which really is a perfectly normal reaction for a bunny rabbit running smack into a hungry wolf.

I'd managed to go my whole existence as a hound without running into Gary's boss. Clearly, I'd run through my luck when Leo and I made it out of Vegas, because here she was, tapping one foot on the tile and staring at me like I was supposed to do a trick.

“Sorry to just drop in on you like this,” she said. “But I think you and I have something to discuss.”

I pushed the shower curtain off me and tried to lever myself up, managing to sit on the edge of the tub. My fingers chipped divots out of the cheap fiberglass when I gripped it to hide my shaking.

“Gary was going to kill me,” I said. I was whispering, but it still sounded unholy loud in the tiny bathroom.

“Ava, you're going to learn very quickly I don't like excuses,” Lilith said. She stood, patting her hair in the cloudy mirror that still assured the entire world she was gorgeous. She was tall too, and had a round, angelic face and an adorably upturned nose. Her hair was swept back into a smooth bun, blond and glowing like somebody had cut her out of a magazine. Too perfect to be human, though I doubted anyone besides me would pick up on that before she ripped them apart.

“Not an excuse,” I said. “If you want me to be sorry, I don't think I can do it right now.”

“I also hate apologies,” Lilith said. “They're weak. As for Gary, do you really think I'm happy that my employee let his own hellhound ventilate him?”

I stayed quiet, which made her turn back to me, white teeth bared. “Here's a hint: I'm not fucking happy.”

“Please kill me,” I blurted. “Please just do it here. Don't take me to the Pit.” I was managing not to cry as I begged, so I only hated myself a little instead of to the core.

Lilith narrowed her eyes, and then she grabbed me and lifted me up so my head cracked the tiles when it hit. “I
really
hope that you're less of a pathetic whining waste of air than you come across,” she said, “because if you don't get it together and do as I say, I
will
fuck up your day.”

“Okay,” I squeaked. I still wasn't sure why I wasn't already dead, but sometimes you just have to accept that the wolf isn't hungry and walk away.

Lilith dropped me and brushed off her skirt. She was wearing powder blue with a white blouse and pearls. Fucking pearls. I had the insane urge to laugh, but I turned it into choking instead.

“You do realize that a human warlock in possession of a Scythe is the worst thing that could possibly happen,” she said. “Just be glad it wasn't your friend out there, because I'd rip him a new asshole where his balls used to be.”

I started to talk, but she held up a finger. “I will handle Sergei Karpov. And you are going to get your ass back to work.” She tossed a leather-­bound notebook at my feet, and I realized with a start it was Gary's ledger.

“Gary's last outstanding collection is in Wyoming,” she said. “He's been tracking him since the early seventies at least. I wasn't too happy that Gary never managed to collect from the prick, but now, if you want a chance in any realm of keeping flesh on that skinny ass of yours, you'll get him, reap him, and bring him to me.”

She pointed to a name amid dozens of others. I wondered how many of those names I'd been responsible for. Gary's obsessive-­compulsive handwriting spelled out
Clint Hicks.
I risked making eye contact with Lilith, which was like staring at a well-­dressed bird of prey. “What's his deal?”

“I don't micromanage my employees,” she snapped. “I don't know why meat sacks choose to sell any more than I know why Gary decided you were worth making part of his hound pack. Which is probably a good thing, because I would have told him to let you rot.”

“I've been getting that a lot,” I muttered.

“The last hound Gary sent got sent back on a ventilator,” the demon said. “I understand this Clint Hicks surrounds himself with shifters, and when Gary came to me to track him personally, I found he had measures in place to keep Hellspawn out of the area.”

“This hound,” I said, feeling sickness that wasn't caused by Lilith grip my guts. “Was his name Wilson?”

“How the fuck do I know what his name was?” Lilith snapped. “For all I know, Gary calls you Sparky, Rover, and Spot. The countermeasures won't keep me out for long, but breaking them is more effort than I'm going to put into one damned soul who thinks he's smart, so go and fetch him.”

There was that word again.
Fetch.
But since it was coming out of the mouth of a thousand-­year-­old demon, I pretended it didn't bother me.

I just nodded. Lilith opened the bathroom door and walked out, turning back only once.

“Ava, if you screw this up, do yourself a favor and walk into traffic before I find you. Because if I do, the Pit is going to be a vacation compared to what I have planned.”

She left, and I was still curled up in the corner of the bathroom when Leo came back.

I managed to tell him the deal, in a fairly coherent manner, while he got me off the floor and carried me to the bed. I wasn't in the place to argue about that.

“Lilith?” he said as he uncapped a plastic bottle of gas station vodka and poured it over the cut on my arm. “Shit.
She's
Gary's head office?”

“Apparently,” I said. “Gary never talked about her except to threaten us with being her purse dogs if we got out of line.”

“Well, Lilith is a big fucking deal,” Leo said. He got a needle and dental floss and positioned my arm flat. “This is going to hurt.”

“What else is new?” I said.

Leo threaded the needle and started sewing, tattooed fingers moving without any hesitation. “You should probably do what she says,” he said. “I don't think we have a lot of choice.”

“The fuck is this ‘we'?” I said. “You can do whatever you want.
You
don't have a shark-­toothed bitch from Hell breathing down your neck.”

“True,” Leo said. “But one of the most powerful
vory v zakone
slash necromancers west of the Mississippi knows I'm gunning for him, so I'm thinking heading to some country that's inhospitable to both gangsters and deadheads might not be a bad idea.”

“What's the deal with you and your dad anyway?” I said, gritting my teeth. I wasn't really interested in Leo's sad life story, but it was better than sitting in silence watching a needle slice in and out of my skin.

“Warlocks are supposed to pass on their skills to their legitimate kids,” Leo said, eyes never moving from his work. “I'm not, but none of my fuckup half ­siblings got the blood. He wasn't happy about that, but he couldn't kill me, so he devoted himself to keeping me under his boot. Eventually we'll probably kill each other, but until then, I decided I was through being tied to his whipping post.”

He bit through the floss and poured more vodka over my arm. “All done.”

I examined the tight stitches. My arm already looked less like a flank steak. “You're pretty good at that.”

Leo tossed the needle and the bloody pillowcase I'd lain on into the trash. “My wife was a nurse.”

The past tense was enough to keep my mouth shut. If Leo wanted to talk about his dead wife, he'd be talking.

“In the morning we'll find a new set of wheels and go see what this Clint Hicks guy did to put a burr up Lilith's ass,” Leo said. “In the meantime, I'm starving.”

“I'll go get us some grease passing for food if I can find a shirt,” I said. Leo's lips parted in a small smile.

“Yeah, I wasn't going to say anything.” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off the black wife beater underneath, handing it to me. “Here.”

I lost a few seconds staring at his chest, at the twin stars inked on his collarbones and the death's-head that took up the space from his heart to his abdomen. The hood and the scythe were a human's fantasy of Death, from someone who didn't know what really happened when you met a reaper. Cyrillic alphabet ran up his ribs, and his biceps were covered in roses, spiderwebs, and groupings of tiny crosses and skulls.