Fallen Angels 05 - Possession (2 page)

Hell, even looking for something.

The full-on stare routine was a favor rarely returned. Most of the men, whether they were gang members, drug dealers, or partiers heading for the clubs, followed the rules, their peepers shifting away from him and staying gone.

Too bad. He liked fights.

As for the women? He didn’t pay attention to them—although that was because he didn’t want to fend off the inevitable “hey, daddys,” not because they were a threat to him.

God knew females couldn’t touch him on any level except physical, and he wasn’t interested in sex at the moment.

What he was in search of was a purple door. An ugly-ass, stupidly painted purple door with a billboard-size handprint on it. And what do you know, about fifty yards later, the entrance he was looking for presented itself on the right. As he gripped the black handle, he wanted to snap the thing off, and the red neon outline of the word
Psychic
made him curse.

On so many levels, he couldn’t believe he was coming here. Again. It just didn’t—

A sudden fluttering in his chest made him wonder if he’d gone into atrial fib from annoyance—but it was just his phone on vibrate. Taking the thing out, he recognized the number.

“You need me?” he clipped, because he hated wasting time with any kind of “Hello, how are you, hasn’t the weather been good/bad/rainy/snowy lately” shit.

Alex Hess’s voice was deep for a woman, her words as direct as a man’s. “Yeah, can you pick up an extra shift for me tonight?”

His boss was probably the only female he respected—then again, it was hard not to take seriously someone who’d snapped a grown man’s tibia in front of you: As head of security for the Iron Mask, she didn’t appreciate dealers on her turf, especially ones with short-term amnesia who she’d already warned not to sell in her club. You had one shot with Alex. After that? You were lucky if the damage was merely cosmetic and/or cast-related.

He checked his old watch. “I can be over in about forty-five, but I’ve got to be somewhere at ten tonight—that’ll only take a half hour, though.”

“Good deal, I appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Duke hung up, and faced off at the purple door again.

Compelled by a force that he had long detested and never understood, he threw the thing open, the old wood panels ricocheting off the wall. As he caught the thing in his fist on the rebound, he looked up the flight of stairs that double-backed on itself for five stories. He’d been coming here for how long?

Such bullshit.

And yet his heavy boots carried him up two steps at a time, his thigh muscles grabbing onto his leg bones, his hard hand gripping the iron railing like it was a throat, his body coiling for a fight.

When he got to the top, the sign on the door read, P
LEASE HAVE A SEAT AND WAIT TO BE GREETED
. Like it was a shrink’s office or something.

He didn’t follow the directions, but paced back and forth on the cramped landing. The two chairs available for asses were mismatched and painted in a psychedelic array of bright-and-rainbow. The air smelled of the incense that was burned inside. And under his boots, a Tibetan rug was threadbare, but not because it had been made cheaply.

He hated waiting on a good day. Despised it in this context—frankly, he didn’t know why the hell he kept coming back. It was like some unseen steel chain was linked around his chest and pulling him to this place. God knew he thought this was a waste of time, but he kept showing up—

“I’ve been waiting for you,” came a female voice on the far side of the closed door.

She always did that. The woman always knew when he’d made an appearance—and it wasn’t like she had video monitoring equipment mounted on the ceiling.

Then again, his pacing probably wasn’t silent. Not with all the muttering, at any rate.

The knob on the door was old and brass, its face polished by the countless palms that had twisted it over time. Watching it turn, a warped sense of unreality crept into his body and laid claim to his mind. As the woman in draped robing revealed herself, he was the one who looked down and avoided confrontation.

“Come in,” she said in a low voice.

Damn it, he hated this; he truly did.

As he stepped inside, a clock began to chime … eight times. In his ears, it sounded like a scream.

“You need to be cleansed. Your aura is black.”

Duke shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and flexed his shoulders. “How’s that different than normal.”

“It isn’t.”

Exactly. Shit, for all he knew, she was making things worse instead of better, cursing him instead of healing him.

“Sit, sit, sit…”

He glanced over at the round table with its central-casting crystal ball, and Tarot card deck, and white candles. Just like the heavily draped psychic herself, tapestries hung from the workspace to the floor, pooling in a swirl of every color imaginable. There were two chairs, one large enough to be considered a throne, the other more pedestrian, the sort of thing you could find at Office Depot.

He just wanted to leave.

He sat down instead.

Six … seven…

Eight.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Jim Heron waited to see if the grandfather clock on the landing had anything else to say. When all he got was an earful of silence, he took a draw on his Marlboro. He hated that goddamn timekeeper—the tone of it, the incessant gonging, and most especially the fact that from time to time, it let out a count of thirteen.

Not that he was superstitious.

Nah.

Okay, maybe just a little. Then again, events had recently shaken him out of his belief that reality was a single dimension based on what you could see, hear, and touch: Courtesy of accepting the position of savior of the friggin’ world, he’d learned that the devil in fact existed—and liked Louboutins over Blahniks, long walks on the beach, and sex doggy style. He’d also met some angels, become one himself, and been to a version of Heaven that appeared to be based on
Downton Abbey
.

So yeah, clocks that didn’t need to be wound, weren’t plugged into an outlet, and couldn’t count right? Not funny.

Taking a drag on his cigarette, he tilted his head back and blew out a steady stream. As the smoke rose, he looked around at his digs. Faded Victorian wallpaper. Ceiling with a stain in the corner. Leaded-glass windows in old sashes that were painted shut. Bed the size of a football field with a Gothic headboard that made him think of Vincent Price movies.

There were another thirty-three rooms like it.

Or was it thirty-four?

He’d been looking for inexpensive accommodations that were a little off the beaten path. He hadn’t exactly planned for a decrepit ark that had iffy running water, spotty electricals, a stove that burped gas, and drafty walls that let plenty of chilly air in.

Perfect. Right out of
House Beautiful
.

The mansion’s sole redeeming attribute, at least that he could figure, was the dour exterior: With dead vines crawling over its face and the cockeyed shutters and twelve kinds of glaring overhangs, the vibe suggested that whoever was inside might eat you alive. Plus the grounds were nothing but a couple of acres’ worth of brambles, spiky underbrush, and soon-to-be poison ivy to fight through.

Wouldn’t do a damn thing against Devina’s minions, but would defo keep the idiot teenagers away.

“Where are you …?” He stared up at the ceiling. “Come on, bitch.”

His demon opponent was not known for being patient—and he’d been waiting for a response for how long?

As he stabbed out his butt, the colorful flag across the way was a glaring reminder of how his newest tactic might have gone sour. In the game between good and evil, where he was the quarterback interacting with the seven souls on deck, and Devina, the whorish demon, and Nigel, the archangel with the stick up his ass, were “captains” of the teams, Jim was solidly ahead. Or rather, he’d put the good guys in front three to one. All it was going to take was one more victory—one more soul teased into choosing good over evil at a crossroads in his or her existence—and he had saved not just the world, but the afterlife, as well. And yeah, victory looked pretty much like you’d think it would: Not only could all the humans on the planet continue to go about their days, but the moral God-fearers who had passed Go, collected two hundred, and entered Heaven’s Manse of Souls, were safe for eternity.

Like, for example, his own mother, who’d been raped and murdered—may she rest in peace—could stay right where she was.

All things considered, he should feel pretty damned good about where he and his remaining wingman, Adrian, were.

He did not.

Fucking Devina. That demon had something he wanted, something that didn’t belong in her viscous prison of the damned. And thanks to all his military training and experience, the tactician in him had come up with a plan: Give him the innocent, and he would turn over one of his wins to the demon. Fair trade—and legal under the rules of the game. Those victory flags were his possessions—Nigel had told him that himself. And when it came to your possessions, you could do whatever you wanted with them.

Which was why eBay and frickin’ craigslist existed. Duh.

He’d expected the demon to bitch and moan about things—but he’d been so damned certain that ultimately she’d jump at the chance. Yeah, sure, according to Adrian she was nutty about her stuff, but this was the war—and if she won? She got to take over everything; Hell would literally come unto the Earth.

Instead? After he’d made his offer, she’d told him she’d think about it.

Like it was a fucking pair of shoes or something? Come on. WTF.

Getting to his feet, Jim stalked around the room, disturbing the fine layer of dust that covered the floorboards. When the inevitable creaking got on his nerves, he headed into the bathroom out in the hall.

Talk about your bed & breakfast fantasies gone bad. The rose-patterned wallpaper had faded until there was nothing but a shadow of color left—probably better that way, considering all that estrogen-drenched-decor crap made him scratch. The ornate mirror over the sink was cracked and had liver spots across its reflective face, so when you looked at yourself, you got an eyeball full of where you were headed when you hit seventy. And the floor was a forget-about-it stretch of chipped marble.

But come on, he’d showered in so much worse.

Going over to the claw-footed tub, he supposed the thing might have been romantic if, one, he’d been into that shit, which he wasn’t, and two, it hadn’t been stained yellow on the inside from mineral deposits, and green on the outside from the copper feet. And then there was the noise. As he cranked the once-gold-leafed handles on, the cold side let out a scream, like the pipes were not happy about pulling chilly stuff in from the main line in the street.

The water that came out of the corroded showerhead was more a drool than any kind of spray, but over the last two days, it had proven capable of soaping him up and rinsing him off. Dropping trou, he stepped under the cold dribble and reached for the soap.

His body wasn’t particularly bothered by the fact that there was no warmth. God knew, during his career in XOps, he’d done a hell of a lot worse to it. Sudsing himself up, he passed his palms over all kinds of scars, from old stab wounds, to bullet and shrapnel aftermath, to a couple of surgeries that had been performed in combat zones—except for that one that had been done in a bedroom in Paris.

“Where are you … Devina …” FFS, she was going to do his nut in.

Which was crazy. During his twenty-year career as a shadow assassin for the U.S. government, you’d think he’d be used to this: War had a rhythm that was counterintuitive. There were long stretches of inactivity and waiting—interspersed with great explosions of life-or-death, keep-it-tight-or-get-jacked drama.

Usually he handled the lulls better.

Not anymore, apparently.

Although, granted, the stakes were higher than anything ever wagered on his performance before. He won? Hell was nothing but a morality play that didn’t have a stage anymore.

So maybe he should have just cooled his heels for one more round, taken a fourth win, and then the innocents would have been free, and everything would have game over’d in a good way.

The trouble was, he didn’t know whether Sissy Barten would survive that. The girl was trapped down below in that wall—and if Hell was destroyed, wouldn’t she go
poof!
with it? Or did she get a pass because her soul was clean?

He didn’t know, and he couldn’t take a chance on that … so he waited for Devina’s response.

And had to wonder what the demon was cooking up—

Brilliant light exploded into the bathroom, blinding him so badly that he dropped the soap to cover his eyes with his hands.

He knew who it was—even before an aristocratic English voice cut through the anemic shower.

“Have you lost all your wits!” Nigel, the archangel, demanded.

Great. Just what he was looking for.

A confron with the boss.

Adrian’s first clue that all was not well in Casa d’Angel was the illumination that cut in around the closed door to his bedroom. Bleeding through the jambs like the detonation flash of a car bomb, it could only be explained by a visit of the archangel variety.