Grimrose Path (3 page)

Men. I hated men sometimes.

But I hated demons more. And as I ran down the sidewalk toward the grubby gym seven or eight blocks away, I got to prove it.

I kept a slow and steady pace. It was February now and still not too bad. When it came to summer, I’d drive to the gym, seven blocks or not. If you ran in the Vegas summer heat, you were either insane, suicidal, or a fire elemental out for a stroll. I ran past porn stores, liquor stores, more porn stores, a tiny car lot . . . and that’s where I stopped. I saw the blinding flash of a grin and puppy dog brown eyes, man’s best friend, as a perfectly tanned hand patted the cloth top of a black convertible as the mouth moved a mile a minute, pouring like the best caramel syrup over a pudgy tourist. A car salesman. A used-car salesman. If you’re after someone’s soul, you should be a little more imaginative with your disguises than that.

Not that this guy was after someone’s soul. I usually didn’t interfere there. That was between Heaven and Hell and that tug-of-war known as humanity that lay between them. They had some reasonable enough rules set up. First, you had to be of age—mature mentally; no trading your soul for a Tonka Toy or a pony. These days that tended to mean you were old enough to drink, vote, and die. Second, you couldn’t trade your soul for a righteous and selfless act. You couldn’t trade it to save the polar bears or stop world poverty or even save your child. Hell and demons either weren’t allowed or simply couldn’t do good, no matter how many souls they received in exchange. Which made sense—evil did not beget good. Bad luck for the polar bears.

No, Heaven and Hell could play all the games they wanted. As one puck had first said a long time ago, caveat emptor. Buyer beware. Grown-up boys and girls should know better and if they didn’t, well, Darwin had something to say about that too.

But this sleazy guy—demons and pucks both loved the used-car-salesman front—wasn’t after a soul. I could tell by the especially bright glint in his gaze. He was after some old-fashioned fun. Ripping, shredding, tearing a man to pieces and if his soul whizzed upward like a sky-rocket, I doubt the demon much cared. Maybe he wasn’t hungry. Demons ate souls. God no longer sustained them with his light and love and Lucifer was fallen himself. He couldn’t. Demons had to feed themselves and Hell was nothing but one big pantry. But demons enjoyed other things than a light snack. They had hobbies the same as anyone else. Theirs simply happened to be killing. To a one, killing was their one true passion. Trading for souls was entertaining and good nutrition, but killing someone . . .

Souls were a McDonald’s hamburger, but killing for sheer butchery alone was an all-day ride at the amusement park. This demon was going for the loop-to-loop roller coaster all the way. It was Sunday and the lot was closed, but he had lured some dumb-ass tourist lost from the main strip into the lot. The road to Hell is paved with a lot of things . . . some of them Hyundais. I sighed and hopped the rope that acted as an imaginary barrier between sidewalk and lot to follow the two men inside the tiny two-cubicle office. The shades were down. In Vegas, winter or summer, the shades were always down or that purple couch you bought six months ago would now be lavender, and a pale lavender at that.

Rather the same shade as the face of the tourist who was panicked and struggling to escape the one hand that held him by the neck. He was bent backward over a desk, his flailing arms knocking papers and salesman of the year awards onto the floor, and sometimes . . . just once in a while, you did get annoyed with the gullible. But you were more annoyed with one damn stupid demon who had set up shop literally six blocks from your territory. A human had been running this place three days ago, a potbellied pig-shaped man with a comb-over and enough nose hair to trim into bonsai trees. That alone marked him as nondemon, but he was gone now and a demon had moved into his place.

Demons were so easy to spot it wasn’t even close to a challenge. This one had shiny blond hair, soulful brown eyes, not one but two dimples, and he threw off sex appeal by the bucketfuls—plus a manly I-could-be-your-best-bro, bro. He would appeal to men, women, and little old ladies. His charisma covered the spectrum. As I had made this body, so did demons make theirs. And they always liked theirs bright and shiny as a new penny. It was bait after all, part of the lure.

“Six blocks.” I pulled my gun, a Smith & Wesson 500, from the holster in the small of my back. That’s why I kept my T-shirt loose. To cover the toys. “You set up your perch here”—I waved my other hand at the room around us—“sniffing for the innocent, the unwary, and the idiotic like this poor schmuck, and you do it six blocks from my place. My home.
My
territory.” He gaped at me. While I hadn’t bothered to find out about him before now, neither had he bothered to do the same regarding me—a little sloppy on my part, a little fatal on his. The sloppiness stopped now. I blew his head off before he had time to blink his eyes or blink back to Hell.

He shimmered for a second into a man-sized brownish-green lizard with dragon wings, dirty glass teeth, a once-narrow but now-shattered reptilian head, and oozing eye sockets. The Smith had taken care of that. I doubt his eyes had been that same soft and soulful brown anyway. Then he was a pool of black goo on the worn carpet of the office, and while I felt for the cleaning lady, I had security tapes to wipe, a tourist to toss out on the street, and a gym to get to before all the elliptical trainers were taken. The tourist rolled to the floor, gurgled, and passed out either from lack of oxygen or lack of intestinal fortitude (balls for the more succinct of us). I wasn’t disappointed. A little judgmental, but not disappointed. It would actually make things easier on me.

“Good old what’s-his-name. I’m surprised he lived to this millennium.” The voice came from behind me. A familiar one, not in a good way either. I looked over my shoulder to see Eligos—“Call-me-Eli,” he would always say with a grin that would suck the oxygen out of a room and half the brain cells out of your head. If you were human. Truly human, not just temporarily human. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t tell he was something to see all the same. Damned and damn hot, what a combo. He was also very probably the smartest demon I’d come across—what Hollywood likes to call a triple threat. Demons themselves were afraid of Hollywood, the only place where humans were more frightening than any Hell-spawn.

“You can’t even remember his name?” I kept the gun loose and easy in my grip and blew a curl that had escaped my ponytail holder out of my eyes. “Some brotherly love there.”

“Would you have me sing ‘Danny Boy’?” He was sitting on the other desk, one knee up, chin propped in his hand, his hazel eyes cheerful—if bright copper and green could be called hazel. “I have an amazing singing voice. I could’ve been Elvis. But I did eat him, so six of one, half a dozen of the other. You always have to be specific with the trades. Famous singer . . . good. Famous singer who doesn’t swell to the size of Shamu on fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches . . . better. But humans aren’t very detail oriented. Short attention span. They’re ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ Yadda yadda yadda.” He switched from leaning forward to leaning back and locked his hands across his stomach. “But all beside the point. I want to talk to you, Trixa.”

“Your attention span isn’t all that great either, Eli, or do you remember what happened to the last demon I ‘talked’ to?” I wasn’t talking about the one I’d just blown away. He’d barely been worth breaking stride for. I was talking about Solomon, my brother’s murderer.

He smiled, so flawless and white that an orthodontist would’ve fallen to the floor and genuflected before him and then no doubt offered him a blow job. Male or female, it wouldn’t matter. Humans are slaves to their hormones and no one manipulated hormones like demons. “Oh, I remember. I’ll remember that for all eternity. A: You made me piss a pair of Armani jeans that I was quite fond of. And B: You gave me the challenge that will occupy me to the end of time. Or the end of you, whichever comes first. It was worth losing the Light to you
païen
for that. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been challenged? Not since the Fall.” He shrugged and waffled a hand. “And even then, eh, we knew it was coming. Truthfully, I didn’t care if we ruled in Heaven or not. I just wanted to mix it up. Make a little trouble.” The smile was even brighter. “Because, Trixa, sweetheart, trouble is the only thing that makes existence bearable.”

I’d promised the Light, an artifact from even before
païen
time, to Eli if he verified that the demon I’d suspected killed my brother was the real deal. He delivered. I didn’t. I lied. Sue me. I’m a
trickster
. I lie, cheat, steal. . . . It all comes with the name. Although I did it typically to show a few humans the error of their wicked ways, make them a little better, and hopefully a whole lot smarter. But Eli hadn’t known that at the time. The same as everyone else, he’d thought me human. But when it all went down—the taking of the Light, an unbreakable shield that would protect
païen
from Heaven and Hell, neither of which much cared for us, and the passing of Solomon—Eli had seen little Trixa in a brand-new way. When I’d finished with Solomon, before he melted to the black of liquid sin, he’d been in so many pieces, it looked like it had been raining demon parts. I’d shape-changed my heart out on that one—not that I had a heart in regard to Kimano’s killer. But I had been something to see
and
be. Bear. Wolf. Fox. Spider. Crow. Dragon. Shark. All in one. And as I’d told Solomon then, when ranked, it went something like this: gods, then tricksters, and then a damn sight lower . . . demons. I’d told him and I’d proved it.

And Eli had been part of the audience.

As far as he knew, I was still trickster, shape-shifter, all that had made Solomon look as if he’d fallen into a wood chipper. I had my shielding against empathic and telepathic probes to keep Eli thinking I remained all that I’d been. I might be semihuman, but I’d die before I lost that last defense. I’d lost my offensive abilities for a while, but nature makes sure every creature keeps their defensive ones until there’s nothing left to defend. It was a fortunate thing too. While angels had telepathy, and a host of other annoying habits, demons had empathy. It made it so much easier to trade for a soul when you could
feel
exactly what a person desired.

I needed to keep Eli believing I was a trickster at the top of her form, because while the ranking went gods, tricksters, demons . . . humans were far enough below a high-level demon like Eli that you’d need binoculars to see them. I still had my trickster mind, but I had a vulnerable ninety-nine percent human body and that made things more difficult.

“Fine. If you want trouble”—I checked my watch—“I can spare five minutes. That should give me time to kill you, wipe the tapes, and maybe browse for a new car while I’m at it.” I smiled. I doubted I was too impressive a sight right then. I was an explosion of messy waves and curls anchored at the crown of my head with a ponytail holder. No makeup. The shirt that snarky Leo had had made for me that said SLAYER NOT LAYER on the front in the same bright red as my sweatpants, and a pair of beat-up sneakers. But Eli wasn’t seeing me now; he was seeing me
then
, and I had that going for me for a few months at least.

“Oh, I want trouble.” His eyes darkened and it wasn’t with anger. Some serial killers had horrific childhoods that had tangled sexual and homicidal urges into one black, strangling noose. Demons had only needed that one spat with Daddy to get them there. “But it’ll have to be another time. I want to talk to you about some demons.” He straightened, turning serious . . . as serious as Eli came anyway. “Dead demons. Quite a few dead demons.”

I tapped the barrel of my gun against my leg. “Really?” Now there was the best news I’d heard all day. “You want to throw a party at my place? I’ll even throw in an open bar for the occasion, because, sugar, I am
that
excited about it. How many demons are we talking about? Fifty? Because I can do a theme party. El Día de la Muerte de los Demonios. Death of Demons Day. Like Cinco de Mayo only with piñatas that have little horns and forked tails.”

“Cute. You’re so adorable when you’re tearing apart my rivals and blathering on about something to which you have no utter fucking clue.” He smiled again. This time the white teeth had turned to the mouthful of smoky quartz fangs. “But that’s fine. I’m happy to have this conversation later. Maybe I’ll go out and occupy the time by burning down a church. Barbecuing the faithful. I always enjoy that. A big side of coleslaw and I’ll be in hog you-know-where.” At the last word, he pointed a finger skyward and mock fired it.

Technically, that was Heaven’s problem, not mine, but despite the lying, cheating, and stealing part, I did have a conscience. Most tricksters did, as much as we’d deny it. That, combined with Eli not being in the mood for a little verbal sparring, was unusual enough to pique my interest.

I sat on the other desk and rested my feet on the large belly of the still-unconscious tourist. “Okay, grumpy hooves. I’ll give you those five minutes. Better yet, I’ll actually listen to you instead of killing you during them, because I’m sweet as cotton candy that way.” I checked my watch again and snapped my own fingers. “Go.”

And go he did. It wasn’t fifty demons who had died. It wasn’t even a hundred. That wouldn’t be that unusual. Demons killed
païen
for sport and tricksters killed demons because of it. All
païen
weren’t tricksters. There were vampires, wolves (werewolves to the fictionally inclined), nymphs, sprites, boggles, revenants, trolls, chubacabra, pukas, and thousands more. Some could take a demon and some couldn’t. So, if a hundred demons died in the past few years, that would be normal.

Nine hundred and fifty-six in six months was not normal.

I tapped my feet on the unconscious man’s belly and watched it ripple for a second while I processed the information. “All right. I see your point. Someone has been eating their Wheaties, taking their vitamins, and chugging a whole lot of Red Bull on top of that.” Inside I had more of a “holy shit, the sky is falling—don’t let the demon see you sweat” attitude going on. Something that could do that... “Maybe Upstairs has decided to do some old-fashioned smiting of the wicked and wanton. Let’s face it, you are both.”