The Devil You Know (15 page)

I realized the jig was up and things were about to get messy.

I’ve always wanted to write that, ever since I read my first hardboiled detective novel. Anyway, the jig
was
up, and I was left staring down two very pissed off angels who knew who and what I was. So things were indeed likely to get very messy in the next few minutes.

Let me see if I can put this in a way you’ll dig. A dictator attacks the United States of America pretty much unprovoked. The President leads a return assault on the dictator’s home soil. The two armies engage in some pretty bloody fighting that lasts years and costs millions of Americans their lives. It’s brutal and changes the landscape of America. Then one day, a couple of Navy Seals guys who’ve seen years of combat are sitting in a sleazy bar when they recognize the dictator’s son sitting at another table. I mean, this thing could only end one way.

I really couldn’t blame the angels when they charged me. But I didn’t like it when the first angel grabbed me by the throat with his big hand, cutting off my breath, and the other one started laying into me. He sucker punched me first in the ribs and then in the kidneys. Even though I knew he hadn’t driven his fist all the way through my body, it certainly felt that way. Suddenly it was impossible to breathe, I felt like I was going to throw up, and I knew I was going to pass out. Then these two chumps would drag me before the Throne at their leisure.

The first angel threw me down. That woke me up. Then the two of them started really going at me
Casino
-style. I buckled down, trying to make a smaller target of myself, but they managed to get in some really good kicks. It hurt like hell and after a minute or so I could taste blood frothing into my mouth. They were good, but I’d been beat up by punks on New York crack, and that’s like getting a smackdown by the Big Boss at the end of the video game. You wonder how you’ll ever survive it, and you wonder if you even want to. Jesus, my face looked like ground hamburger the following day after one such punk got a hold of me.

Coiling my legs, I kicked out, nailing one of the angels in the ankles.

He went down hard and I rolled over. I reached out and touched him. Immediately, all my unholy un-goodness infected his perfect, pearly white skin, and it began to burn. The angel screamed so loudly that my hearing went out for a second. That’s some powerful screaming.

I rolled to my feet, and almost right into the sword swing of the second angel. It came down hard, splitting the floor in front of me. I dodged left. He followed my motion. He swung his sword around, but it was big and awkward and slowed him down. He was close enough for me to side-kick him in the belly. I am not without kung-fu, courtesy of the New York Police Academy. I felt about a dozen hurting muscles rip and tear as I did so, but it felt so good to watch him go down like a brick wall.

His sword flew back into the table behind him, flattening it, while the patrons in their timelock continued to stare at the musician on the stage, oblivious to what was happening around them. We were all operating inside about a tenth of a microsecond, so what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

The first angel had recovered. He came up behind me and grabbed my arms, pulling me back against him, presumably so his partner could finish kicking the shit out of me. I didn’t plan to wait that long. I smashed the back of my head against his face. I’d learned that in Jackie Chan movies, by the way. It hurt but it did its job. It knocked the angel off balance, and the two of us toppled back, landing on the floor between the tables. My angel took the full impact with a cough of breath. I spun around, holding him down with my weight, and pop-punched him in the mouth before jumping up and back.

The second angel’s sword came chopping down, hacking into the table beside me, and perilously close to his partner. A couple of Budweiser glasses went crashing to the floor. If I hadn’t been moving, the blade would have found itself
inside
of me. The blade, covered in arcane symbols designed to harm the fallen, would have hurt like hell. The second angel tried to pull his sword loose, but he’d lodged it in there pretty good, sort of like Excalibur.

I shifted away from both angels in a way that I could keep them both in my line of sight. I spit blood. “Yahtzee,” I said.

The second angel turned and looked at me with his mechanical blue eyes. Pale blue blood drooled from his mouth where I’d done a good job busting up his teeth some. He licked at it. “Always with the funnies, Little Horn.”

“I’m a pretty funny guy,” I told him as I drew the Tanaka from my armpit holster. It wouldn’t hurt these guys much but it gave me a false sense of security. I even turned it sideways so I could feel more gangsta. “But you guys never notice because you’re always too busy trying to kill me.”

“If we kill the young Lucifer, the Father of Lies will have no heirs. His kingdom will fall to ruin.”

“Unless my dad goes out and dicks another girl.” The angels stopped and stared at me in a blank way, then looked at each other. Of course, I really didn’t expect creatures born with no genitalia to have their minds in the gutter like me. “Didn’t think of that, did you?”

While they were contemplating that, I considered taking a bead on their bellies. Angels, demons and daemons have two hearts, one in their chest and a second sacred heart in their bellies, put there by their Creator to give them magic. If you can destroy their second heart, you can kill the magic—and, thus, the being in question. I don’t make up the rules; I just follow them. But I figured it was pretty likely the two angels were wearing protective gear under their clothes to protect their sacred hearts. If I shot at them and it bounced off their armor, it would give them a great big bellyache, and then they’d be even angrier with me. You had to know how to pick your fights.

A sudden motion caught my attention onstage. The musician—likely Josh—was on his feet, standing with the steel guitar hanging around his middle. He had his fingers hooked in the steel mesh of the chicken wire and he was turning his head, trying to follow what was going on. I found it interesting that Josh wasn’t stuck in the timelock like the patrons of the bar. That meant the angels had planned on doing business with him. Probably very bad business. While the two angels considered their next move, I called to Josh and told him to head for the back door.

“Who are you?” he said finally. His voice was hoarse and made me want to clear my throat. He turned to follow my voice.

“Your sister sent me!” I said. “Get to the back door
now
!”

Josh was a smart man. He turned toward a door at the back of the stage.

I heard a headache-inducing roar behind me. I turned. I beheld the two angels.

They had both finally decided on their next move.

Both had torn away their human disguises completely. Both were Cherubim, I realized—not hitmen like Malach, but more like Special Ops Navy Seals. I wish I could say they were cute little winged babies, but those are putti, or cupids, and those are images found in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art. Cherubim are giant golden creatures with the bodies of lions, the faces of humans, and four wings each. For angels, they are ugly as all get-out, scary as hell, and they make you want to wash your eyeballs in vinegar. Seriously.

The two Cherubim sprang at me, roaring.

I didn’t even bother trying to aim the gun, not that it would do me any good anyway. I raised both hands in a defensive gesture and
pushed
my will out at them. As a witch, I’m unique in that I don’t need magical paraphernalia or even spells to do magic. I don’t even really need to know what I’m doing. I’m sort of the equivalent of a magical idiot savant. I just need to
want
something. I need motivation. It’s probably the same principal as when Vivian set fire to Mitchell. It’s not that she probably hated him, or that she even wanted to do it, but that she was angry. Anger is a powerful motivator, as is fear.

I knew the Cherubim pouncing at me could tear me apart. I knew they could eat my second heart. I knew they could kill me. And I did not want to die. Sue me.

My will caused a rippling distortion in the air, like heat off a deadpan desert. The Cherubim hit it and bounced, flying the whole length of the room. One crashed into the far wall, ripping down posters on the community board. The other hit the jukebox. It rattled side to side, lit up, and Alan Jackson started singing “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” before it shorted out and went dark.

That was me, by the way.

The Cherubim recovered almost at once, shaking their heads to clear them, and started creeping toward me again, snarling out of their human mouths. Considering the amount of older people here, I calculated about a third of them would have suffered a coronary embolism at the sight of the monsters were they not stuck in timelock. Lucky them.

One of the Cherubim stayed to the fore of me while the other crawled away into the dark like a giant cat. I knew that one meant to circle around. I knew they meant to box me in. They would attack me from both sides until they’d worn me down.

I have some fairly unique talents, but as a daemon I’m also limited. I couldn’t do this forever. But I knew one trick they’d love.

I watched the one in front of me prepare to pounce again. I saw the moment it coiled its back legs to spring. And I also sensed the one behind me was already in motion. I did a kind of impromptu “Johnny B Goode” sliding drop to the floor, sans guitar, and summoned a gate. The first Cherub had already cleared my head, but the second one leaped right into it, and I heard the echo of its roar as it fell through the equivalent of an earthbound wormhole.

I lowered my hands. I shut the door above me. As a general rule of thumb, it’s unwise to leave a gateway to hell open for more than a few seconds. Something might come through.

The first Cherub landed on its haunches. It whipped around to face me, its human expression savage. “What did you do?” it hissed.

“I sent your buddy away.”

“Where?”

I smiled. “To my father’s world. He’s going to have a hell of a party.”

Enraged, the remaining Cherub roared and leaped at me. I moved aside at the last second and the Cherub sailed right into the chicken wire, ripped through it like tissue paper, and kept going, crashing into all the sound equipment scattered around the back of the stage. There was a great deal of awesome electricity and fire, and plenty of smoke. But I knew I had to move fast. The Cherub might be too injured to maintain the timelock spell. Then I’d have to deal with the chaos of people running willy-nilly everywhere, screaming about fire and monsters.

I lurched up on the stage, slid out of my coat, and beat out the flames. Then I moved to the back, my gun drawn and a hand over the place where my ribs were busted up pretty good. I can heal myself, but it takes time, and I need a quiet place to work. There was so much smoke it was hard to see through it all, but I finally recognized an inert form lying beside a merrily burning amp. I kicked the burning amp away.

The Cherub had resumed his humanoid form. He lay on his back, clutching his belly where a microphone stand was protruding from it. Pale blue blood slicked his hands and was splashed across the floor. Talk about shitty luck. I went down on one knee beside the fallen angel. I kept my gun drawn but I didn’t think I would need it now. “Sorry this happened, friend. I really would have liked to have avoided this.”

The Cherub groaned and clawed at the obstruction in his heart slowly killing him.

“Who sent you?” I asked.

He shook his head from side to side. Long blond hair stuck to the blood on his face.

Angels are extremely loyal. They’d rather die than reveal their secrets. Goodie.

I reached down and grasped his bloody hand. The touch of my hand immediately infected him and he groaned, his back arching. A kind of purplish leprosy started crawling up his hand and into his sleeve. The hand suddenly felt warm and feverish, and the skin began stinking like roadkill left to cook in the July sun. Blue blood bubbled in a froth over his lips. His body jerked almost orgasmically, but I knew he wasn’t enjoying this in the least.

The pained, helpless look on the angel’s face made me grin. “I can make this last a long, long time, friend. I can make you rot from the inside.”

The angel gritted his teeth. “D-devil.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.” I tightened my hold on him and he began to scream almost piteously as his flesh began to burn away under my hand. His flesh turned hot and kind of mushy and started looking like taco filling. I held on. I leaned over him. I could smell the burning on him. “Who sent you here?”

It wasn’t until his hand had burned down to a ragged skeleton that he finally began to talk. Even angels have their pain thresholds. This guy had found his. He said it was Gabriel who had sent him. Gabriel wanted the blind musician, Joshua Summers.

“What does he want with Josh?” I asked coolly. His hand was gross, but it wasn’t hurting me in the least.

“T-to . . . kill him.”

“Gabriel means to kill Josh?”

The angel nodded urgently. Like I was going to release my hold on him. Yeah, right.

“Gabriel can’t kill Josh,” I said, hoping I was right. “Even Archangels don’t have Dominion over human beings.”

The angel began to laugh almost hysterically. “They do now, devil.”

I watched the angel’s face. He was in too much pain to lie effectively. And anyway, angels can’t lie. They could torture me, kill me, but they couldn’t lie to me. “That’s ridiculous. What does the Throne think of this turn of events?” I asked.

The angel shook his head, threshing his sweaty blond hair from side to side. “The Throne is empty,” he finally admitted. “There is no Dominion…no Grace…no rules…” He continued to laugh hysterically. He showed his big white, blue-blood-coated teeth.

I looked at him critically. “God’s stepped down?”

He didn’t answer that. With his free hand he’d begun clawing at the steel that protruded from his heart. “We can hunt the daemons with impunity. Heaven has closed its doors . . . the rest is a battleground. You won’t survive it, Little Horn . . . and neither will she . . . . ”