Burned (9 page)

“I will be fine, Mac. I can handle myself without you.” She narrowed her eyes and let go of my hand. “I’ve been around for a long time, and believe it or not, I did just fine without you.”

“That’s hardly the point,” I said, gritting my teeth to keep from yelling at her. Didn’t she understand that I needed her by my side? That every second we spent apart was like someone driving a steel spike through my chest?

“No, it’s one hundred percent the point.” She gestured at me with her free hand as the voice on the phone continued to chatter away in angry, frantic tones. “We don’t even know if anything we have is real. Sources say it probably isn’t.”

“It could be real,” I said, reaching out and touching her free hand lightly with my fingers. I just had to make her understand, make her stop hiding behind her anger for a second. If I could do that, maybe she wouldn’t leave. “Isn’t that enough?”

She let out an explosive breath and pulled the phone from her ear. She covered the mouthpiece with her palm, gripping it hard enough for the phone’s frame to bend a little. It made me wonder if Danton had insurance on the device. I hoped so because he probably wasn’t getting it back even if Ricky didn’t break it.

“Mac, you need to go find your family and let me handle my own business. I do not want you to come help me. I will be fine.” The phone started coming back up. “We can talk more about this later.” She nodded past me. “Danton will be able to find Big Sal. Hell, he probably already has. You don’t need me for this.”

“But I want you by my side,” I said before I could stop myself. “I promise, I’ll help you sort this out just as soon as my sister and her son are safe. Okay?” It must have turned a key inside her brain because her face softened a touch.

She reached out and touched my face, lightly trailing her fingers across my cheek. “Mac, I
can’t
help you right now. I cannot. I know that you want me by your side, but I can’t right now. How would you feel if I turned it the other way? What if I asked you to help me first and you agree? What if your family dies because you delayed. If anything we have is real, it won’t be after that.” Green melted through the amber of her eyes, so for a second they reminded me of a cat’s eyes. “Go. Find them. Afterward, we’ll meet up and have cheesecake. My treat.”

“I can’t,” I said, reaching up to take her hand, and as I did, she let out a sigh. “I can’t explain it, but everything inside me is screaming at me to help you. I know it’s insane, and crazy, but that’s the way it is.”

“That’s because of the imprint.” A wave of frustration, sadness, and fear came off of her. It felt so real to me, I almost couldn’t handle it.

“Let’s just talk about this for a second—” The rest of my words were interrupted by her spinning on her heel, my wrist gripped firmly in her free hand. She flung me over her hip like a rag doll, and I slammed into the pavement at her feet. Stars flashed across my vision.

“I’m done talking,” she said, the hazy, blurry form of her body walking away as I tried to catch my breath and get to my feet. I succeeded at neither. “Now is the time for you to kick some ass and chew some bubblegum.” She flung something at me, and it landed a few feet from my face. “Without me.”

I somehow made it to my hands and knees and tried to crawl after her. I’d made it only a few feet when a blue convertible pulled up beside the curb. A blond Nordic-looking guy wearing a blue muscle shirt and huge gold chains threw open the passenger door. Ricky shot me one last look before sliding inside the car and shutting the door. The screech of tires filled my ears as they took off, weaving through the traffic with supernatural ease. She was gone. Just like that.

“It’s better this way,” Danton said, kneeling down beside me and picking up the object she had thrown. “Bazooka?” He offered it to me. “I call dibs on reading the comic inside.”

“No,” I said, unable to keep the hurt and anger out of my voice.

Even though I knew she would likely be fine, the need to go after Ricky made me feel like a drug addict in desperate need of a fix. I shook off the feeling as best I could, forcing it down deep and locking away the door to that particular avenue while ignoring its implications as best as I could. Then I heaped logic on top of the locked door.

Ricky had been powerful long before I’d met her. She didn’t need me to protect her, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to protect her. No, it was more than that. I didn’t want her to be able to leave me so easily. I wouldn’t have been able to do that, so how could she?

“More of a Bubblicious guy, eh? Well, we don’t have time to get you some. We need to get a move on. I know a guy who can tell us exactly where Big Sal is and probably where we can apprehend him easiest.” Danton stood and offered me his hand. “What do you say? Want to go kill the shit out of some bad guys.”

“Yes,” I growled, taking his hand. Killing a whole bunch of people sounded like a great fucking idea.

“Good,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “Because this guy we’re going to go meet isn’t the nicest person and isn’t in the nicest part of town. One might say it’s downright seedy. You’re probably going to have to rough up some people before we get to see him. That work for you?” Danton turned and began walking toward his gold hooptie.

“It’s like you know how to say all the right things,” I said, twisting so I could stare after where the blue convertible had been. It wasn’t there of course, but as I watched the cars whizz by, I knew Ricky was right. If I went with her and wound up missing out on the chance to save my family, I wouldn’t forgive her or myself. That didn’t mean she needed to body slam me on the pavement though. My chiropractor was going to have a field day after that.

“Hey, don’t go getting all mushy on me,” Danton said, unlocking the car and getting inside. “It isn’t like you’re the hardest guy in the world to read.”

I got in the car and was surprised at the amount of trash filling the floor of the passenger side. Had it been here from before Ricky had her lunch or was this because of her meal? “How did you get your car? Wasn’t it back at the theme park?”

“Angel transport is awesome,” Danton said, flicking the bobble-head angel on the dashboard. As it moved back and forth, its gaze seemed to lock on me. I turned away from it as we started to move, but even still, I could feel it watching me, judging me. I shifted uncomfortably. Yeah, I was going to kill a whole lot of people. What of it? Stupid angel.

Chapter 14

We pulled up in front of the most normal looking house I’d ever seen. We were square in the middle of 1950’s suburbia, complete with white picket fences and tree swings. The house in front of us was no exception. It had blue walls with white trim and one of those tile roofs that became fashionable a few years ago. The grass was mostly well kept and was lined with rose bushes in full bloom. Yeah, this was a
real
bad neighborhood.

“If this is your idea of a seedy part of town,” I said, tossing a sidelong glance at Danton as he shoved the hooptie into park and unfastened his seatbelt. “I’ve got some places to show you.”

“Mate, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he replied, a smirk creasing his lips as he threw open his door and got out of the car. I tossed one look at the stupid, bobble-headed angel and sighed before following him out of the car. “Just be as polite as possible, and we may get out of this alive.”

“Whatever you say,” I said, shaking my head. Admittedly, I wanted to take the demon hunter seriously, but it really felt like he was playing a joke on me. I mean, from the look of things, the worst thing that would happen to us would be the local homeowner’s association throwing a fit about his crappy car.

Once I was out of the hooptie, I realized the house’s garage door was open, and from our spot beyond the white pickets, I could make out an old canary-yellow mustang propped up on blocks inside the garage with a pair of legs wearing oil-spattered jeans sticking out from beneath the car. The floor was painted with that gray, paint-speckled industrial sealer I sometimes saw in auto shops, and the walls were lined with every kind of tool imaginable.

Whoever this person was, they clearly had laid out the garage to facilitate the whole car restoration thing. It made me wonder what the neighbors might think about the pneumatic hammer going off at all hours of the day. Probably not much since most of them were likely working all day.

“Hey!” Danton called in a loud but not too loud voice. He grabbed the gate but didn’t bother to open it. Instead, he stopped and waited there on the threshold to the lawn. “Sorry to bother you, but if you have a moment, I’d love to chat with you.”

“The only part of that sentence you’re missing is ‘about our Lord and Savior.’ Now there’s no way they’ll come over here,” I said as I made my way beside him and tried to ignore the ominous stares of the garden gnomes situated throughout the yard. A shudder ran down my spine. I really hoped we weren’t here to see a gnome. If we were, I was probably going to freak out. I mean, I had no reason to, but the idea of being swarmed by pint-sized creatures with garden implements was just plain creepy.

“You shouldn’t talk about Him like that,” Danton said, nodding toward the sky. “Like Santa, he knows when you’ve been naughty and when you’ve been nice.”

“I’ve got a demonic arm. It’s safe to say me and Him aren’t pals,” I said, glancing at Danton. “What are we waiting for anyway?”

“To be invited in, Mac. It’s the polite thing to do.” Danton tapped the no solicitors sign while blowing a huge bubble with the gum he’d been chomping on ever since we’d started driving here. I’d been this close to taking it from him and throwing it away for the last twenty minutes, but something about taking his bubblegum felt petty, so I hadn’t done it. Still, if he kept chomping on it like a cow, well, I wasn’t making any promises.

“But we’re not selling anything,” I said, gesturing past the gate toward the door. “Shouldn’t we ring the doorbell or, you know, go up to that guy and introduce ourselves?”

“Be my guest,” Danton replied, taking a step out of the way. Way too much amusement sparkled in his eyes for it to be a good idea, especially since I had no idea what we were doing. For all I knew, ringing the doorbell would drop me into a rancor pit.

“No, I’ll pass,” I said, gritting my teeth. The person under the car hadn’t even moved, and I partially wondered if he’d even heard us. “Hello!” I called even though doing so made me feel like a thousand pairs of eyes simultaneously turned and stared at me. I shifted uncomfortably.

The legs jerked violently enough for me to think I’d scared their owner. A moment later, a woman clad in a red, grease-stained flannel rolled out from under the car and eyed us suspiciously. Her dark, curly hair was wrapped with a blue bandanna, but she finger-combed some loose strands out of her work-hardened, Rosie the Riveter face.

“Who is it?” she asked, sitting up and squinting in our direction. I wasn’t sure if she could see us or not because the sun was burning on the back of my neck. We probably looked like two ominous black shadows standing at our gate. Hopefully, she wasn’t the shoot first type. “Can’t you read the sign?”

“Hey, Emi! It’s me, Danton,” the demon hunter called back, waving one hand. “You’ll have to excuse my friend. He’s a bit slow.”

“Slow as in retarded?” Emi said, getting to her feet and walking toward us with a socket wrench gripped in one greasy hand. “Or slow as in dumb?”

“You can’t say retarded anymore. It’s not politically correct,” Danton replied with a sigh while giving me a “what are you going to do” look. “And to be honest, I’m not sure which. I don’t know him that well.”

“Dumb, usually,” I said, taking my opportunity to speak as Emi sidled up in front of the gate and eyed me with cold, flat eyes the color of old antifreeze. There was nothing even remotely friendly in them.

“Ah,” she said, looking me up and down like an alligator eyeing its lunch. In that one quick moment, she seemed to take the entirety of me in and found me wanting. It was one of the creepiest things I’d ever seen. “What do you want, Danton?”

“I’m looking for someone. A Cursed,” Danton said, taking a step back from the gate, and I got the distinct impression he was trying to create some space between him and the woman. It was a little weird, but totally understandable because she was giving me a very dangerous vibe, which was saying something because there was no way she was even five feet tall.

“You have a Cursed.” She pointed her socket wrench at me. “They make lousy pets and don’t get along. I don’t recommend keeping two in the same cage.” The way she said the words made a chill run down my spine. There hadn’t been an ounce of humor in them. No, they’d been delivered with an air of stark, undeniable advice. Did she think I was Danton’s pet? What did she think he wanted another Cursed for? To give me a friend?

“I’m looking for a different Cursed, Emi.” Danton sighed. “One named Big Sal. I’m sure you and your kin know where we might be able to pull a good old fashioned snatch and grab.”

“Yeah,” Emi said, turning away from us and beginning to make her way back toward the Mustang. Strangely, I felt a lot better the moment her back was turned. It was like standing in front of a tyrannosaurus after it’d decided not to eat you. “Go to Fifth and Chestnut. There’s a small bar there. Sal will hit it up in a few hours to make his weekly collection. He’ll have a couple goons, but nothing you two can’t handle.”

“What the fuck?” I said, turning to look at Danton as the girl crawled back under her car. “She didn’t even open the gate.”

“You better be glad she didn’t, Mac. If she had, you might not have a face.” Danton shivered visibly. “Don’t ever get on the wrong side of a gremlin. Ever. I’m not messing around.”

“That’s a gremlin?” I asked, glancing at the woman under the car. “Aren’t they fuzzy little creatures you can’t get wet or feed after midnight?”

“Mac, shut the fuck up,” Danton said, clamping one hand over my mouth almost before I’d finished saying the words. His eyes were wild with fear as he looked around like he thought we might get attacked from all angles. It was only then that I realized how absolutely silent it was in the neighborhood. It wasn’t a good silence either. No, this was the kind of silence that meant a predator was near and even the birds were keeping a low profile.