Grim Tidings (2 page)

I lifted my head, looking for any sign of civilization, but we'd been on a lonely highway and this was a lonelier spot still. I looked back at the distant slope to the road, at Leo. I was going to have to carry him. There was no other way.

The lake was surrounded by a little stand of wind-whipped trees, barren now in the onslaught of freezing wind. As I struggled to get Leo up, my feet skidding in his blood, a shadow passed between the gray skeletons of the tree trunks, popping up as suddenly as the figure in the road.

I froze, even though it was useless to try and hide. Leo and I were the only things that stood out from the landscape for miles.

The shadow moved, and behind it another appeared from the trees, and another. They didn't move in the flicker-and-fade, snapshot way of spirits or revenants, scavengers just looking for a meal. They were solid, but way too fast to be anything that had our best interest in mind. I leaned down to Leo's ear again. “If you can hear me, you need to get up,” I murmured. “We are in serious trouble.”

The three figures were nearly clear of the trees, moving in the flying-wedge shape that anyone who's ever watched a nature show about pack hunters is familiar with. The one in the lead twisted its head sideways for a second, looking back, and I followed its eye-line to see the dark shape from the road standing at the top of the slope, watching us.

I stared back at them, not because I was frozen in fear—my heart sending throbbing pulses through my bruised ribs, screaming at me to get moving—but because for just a moment, as the snow cleared and gave us a look at one another, I felt something familiar.

It wasn't a sting of recognition—more like déjà vu. I'd seen something like him before, that tall skinny black figure standing so very still, a stillness that humans just don't possess.

Then a gust of snow blinded me and when I looked the figure was gone, and the shadows with it.

I wondered what I'd done to deserve a break for a change, and then a cold hand clamped down on my wrist and Leo was staring up at me, croaking, and scrabbling at the glass shard in his neck. When I pulled it out, it made a little sucking sound, and fresh blood gushed out. I clapped my hands over it, the hot blood making my frostbitten fingers prickle.

“I wasn't sure you were getting up,” I said, hoping Leo would think the tears on my face were just melted snow.

“Me either,” he said, his voice raspy from the cut in his neck. The blood started to slow, and in no time at all—considering the slash would have killed a regular man in thirty seconds or less— stopped altogether.

I slumped against Leo, and before I thought about it, I'd wrapped my sticky, red-stained fingers around his. He pulled my hands closed, putting them inside his jacket where his skin warmed mine. “You're shaking,” he said quietly.

“I'm cold,” I muttered. Leo put his hand under my chin and lifted my head so I was looking at him.

“You stayed with me.”

“'Course,” I said, squirming that he could see just how upset I'd gotten. “Who else is going to look out for your dumb ass? You can't even drive.”

Leo pressed his mouth against mine. I tasted the sharp old-penny
tang of his blood on my tongue, and kissed him hard, warmth building between our bodies until we both fell back with a groan, our respective injuries twinged.

Leo grimaced. “Let's get back to the road and get the hell out of here.”

I helped him up, and we leaned on each other. “I'll always be here,” I told him quietly as we picked our way up the rock slope. “No matter what happens.”

Leo gave me a flash of that smile again, as we started limping down the shoulder of the interstate to the next exit.

I looked back once, but shadows and their master had gone, not even a footprint to show they'd been anything but a bad dream.

L
eo and I checked into the first crummy nonchain motel we saw off the exit—the closer to the interstate you get, the fewer questions people generally ask. The clerk barely looked away from the talk show squawking on the lobby TV when he checked us in.

Leo let out a sigh when he flopped back onto the shiny bedspread. “Home sweet home.”

I helped him take off his jacket and shoes, pulling an extra blanket over him. The first night we'd ever spent together was in a motel room just slightly worse than this. I'd just killed Gary, was masterless, alone, and had no idea what was coming next. I never expected Leo to stick around.

As I watched his chest rise and fall under the blanket, sleeping off the crash, I still didn't know what I expected. Everything had
gone so much further sideways then I could have imagined when I sank my teeth into Gary's throat.

Leo and I had this little slice of time, sure. But when we got to Minneapolis, it was all going to change. He was the top of the reaper food chain, and I was still a hellhound, just another dog in a pack of thousands.

I looked out the steamy window and saw blinking neon across the parking lot. Pulling my boots and coat back on, I slipped out into the blistering cold. Making sure the door clicked shut quietly enough that it didn't wake Leo, I stomped through the slush toward the bar. After the day I'd just had, I deserved a drink.

The bar wasn't anything special—and “nothing special” was a hilarious understatement. Dive bars are all the same. They're dark, they smell like stale beer and bleach, every surface is sticky, and there are between four and ten chronic alcoholics holding down the booths and stools.

I let the wind blow me inside and kicked the door shut. The kind of people who'd brave this weather to get drunk on cheap domestic beer wouldn't pay me any attention—I blended in with the pitted walls and buzzing beer signs to the point of invisibility.

I asked the bartender for whiskey and he gave it to me without a word, accepting my cash with a grunt. I downed it, and two more just like it, finally starting to feel warm again. Before too long I'd go back across the parking lot and crawl into bed with Leo. We'd be in Minneapolis tomorrow, and whatever happened there wasn't anything I could control. A fourth whiskey should make me stop worrying about it.

I held up my cloudy glass to the bartender, who finally deigned to lift a shaggy eyebrow. “Maybe slow down, sweetheart.”

I glared at him until he shrugged and refilled my glass. One of the drunks at the far end of the bar got up and walked crookedly over to an old jukebox against the far wall. He popped in two quarters and after a minute “That Old Black Magic” drifted from speakers that looked older than I did.

The point between my shoulder blades tightened up. I don't know much, but I did know for a fact that no jukebox in Hicktown, USA had a ready selection of Glenn Miller. Especially not
that
song.

When the drunk sat down next to me, I was ready for him. You lose a fight two ways—and not being willing to use whatever you have at hand as a weapon is one of them. I tightened my fist around the pitted tumbler of whiskey. “In three seconds you're going to be wearing glass splinters in your face, so how about you get out of mine?”

The drunk let out a low sigh that sounded like rocks dragging over bigger rocks. “You always had a way with words, Ava.”

My world tilted for a second, Glenn Miller going fuzzy. Nothing to do with the booze either, dammit. I took a second look at the scarred, bald head sunk down inside the drunk's padded jacket, the white lines where skin had been inexpertly knitted back together from eye socket to collarbone gleaming under my gaze.

“Wilson?” I said softly.

He turned to face me, the one milky eye rolling off in its own direction. To say Wilson was ugly was to say that truck stop speed made a person a little jumpy. He'd been torn apart by shifters and put back together by sheer force of being too mean to die. He used to be Gary's chauffeur, errand boy, and general punching bag, before I made Gary dead and Wilson unemployed. You'd think he'd
at least be grateful enough to leave me alone, but Wilson was a miserable bastard long before a pack of shapeshifting hillbillies rearranged his face.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“You'd know,” I told him. I didn't let go of the tumbler. I'd jam a shard of it into my own throat before I went down under Wilson's teeth and claws.

“We need to talk,” he said. I cocked my head.

“You been practicing since I cut your chain?” I said. “Last I heard you preferred grunts and hand gestures.”

Wilson's good eye fixed me. “Something has happened.”

“A lot has happened,” I snapped, slamming back the last of the whiskey. “One of those things? I don't ever have to waste another second looking at your face just because the same jackass holds our note. So have a nice life, if that's even possible for you.”

Wilson grabbed my arm and held me in my seat. I tensed, and he tightened his grip, so hard it would leave bruises. “Stop that,” he growled.

“You started, you stop it,” I said, matching his tone. “I swear if you do not let go of me they will be cleaning both of us off the walls.” The second way you lose a fight is not being willing to get your ass kicked. I never had that problem with Gary and his pack of guard dogs.

Wilson let me go, and smiled, which was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen him do. “Good,” he said, pulling himself upright and brushing off the worn-out canvas jacket he wore. “I'm glad to see you haven't lost your edge, darling.”

I backed up fast, off my stool and out of range. “You're not Wilson.”

He dipped his head in assent. “Sit down. We do need to talk and your propensity to cause a scene won't help with that.”

I sighed, shoving my face into my hands to muffle any involuntary screams. I just wanted to get drunk in peace. Was that so much to ask? “Men's room, now.”

I slammed open the door decorated with a wood cutout of a guy in a trucker hat pissing, and locked it behind me and Wilson. A dim set of bulbs flickered above us, and when my eyes adjusted Wilson's ugly mug was gone, replaced by one of the few faces I wanted to see even less.

Uriel wrinkled his nose. “It reeks like a Boston gutter the morning after St. Patrick's Day in here.”

“Welcome to the mortal realm,” I said. “It smells bad.”

“I apologize for using your friend's guise like that,” the angel said. His shiny shoes squelched on the grimy tile floor and he made a face.

“Wilson is not my friend,” I snapped. “And I don't want your apology, I want you to leave me alone.”

“We both know that's not feasible, Ava,” Uriel said. He turned and adjusted his tie in the mirror. He was wearing a pale gray suit and a white shirt, the kind of soft tones favored by CEOs, TV preachers, and the favored host of the Kingdom of Heaven.

“You
said
you'd leave me alone,” I ventured. Uriel straightened up and gave me one of his patented Ken-doll smiles, so fake it squeaked.

“I said once our business was concluded you and I could part ways. Not before.”

I sighed, slumping against the dripping sink. “I don't know if
you noticed but I've been through a lifetime's worth of shit since our little business meeting. A lot's changed.”

“Strange, I'd think you'd want to help me,” Uriel said. “After what Lilith and Gary and the Fallen have put you through. An employee of the Host is better than a slave of the Hellspawn, in my book.”

“So I'm your fucking executive assistant now?” I said. “You want me to fetch fugitive fallen angels, or just coffee? Got any typing and filing for me?”

Uriel tilted his head at me. “Ava, I'm not Gary. I'm not going to make you fetch anything.”

I spread my hands. The bathroom was tiny enough to make me feel trapped, even if I hadn't been within arm's length of an angel. “Then what? The deal was, I find the rest of the Fallen for you white-shoe assholes and in return you never, ever accost me in a men's room. Why are we even meeting? If the Fallen catch wind of this it's gonna be lights-out for me and I don't appreciate it.”

“I wouldn't be here if it wasn't an emergency,” Uriel snapped. “I am not an idiot. Something has happened, like I said, and you're the person I need looking into it.”

“Why me?” I said. “I'm sure you've got a lot of worker bees up there in the Kingdom who are more competent than I am.”

“Lots of underlings, yes,” Uriel said. “Competent, a few. But none who have your skills and contacts—and none who are the Grim Reaper's personal hound.”

I rubbed my forehead. “Please don't call him that. Not unless you want me dead of secondhand embarrassment.”

Uriel reached up and tapped the bare bulb in the ceiling fixture
until it stopped buzzing. “You've been alive a long time, as far as humans understand time.”

“Just over a hundred years,” I agreed.

“In that those years, you once encountered a serial killer called the Walking Man, yes? He worked the Midwest in the 1940s. Kansas, Nebraska . . . all those flat places where everything looks the same.”

My breathing slowed as my heart rate picked up, just another defense mechanism you pick up when you live in a world where the slightest display of fear is an invitation to be beaten, or worse. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I know all about him.”

“Well, he's back,” Uriel said, pulling open the restroom door. “And since you're one of the few people to see him and live to tell about it, I'd like you to look into it. For all our sakes.”

I lunged forward and slammed the door shut again. Uriel lifted one of his perfect eyebrows. “Problem?”

“You can't just drop that bombshell and walk away,” I said, bracing the door with my good arm.

“I don't see the problem,” Uriel said. “Please let me out. I feel like a thousand showers can't erase the miasma I've picked up in this bathroom.”

“You know damn good and well there's more to the Walking Man than a scary hitchhiker on the side of the road who likes to hack up motorists,” I said. My fast heartbeat was making my voice sound high and hysterical, and I gulped down a deep breath. “And if you know that then why the hell are you messing around with him? Leave him in Tartarus where he belongs.”

“I am 'messing with' him as you say because the Walking Man
in fact escaped from Tartarus and I'd dearly like him back.” Uriel fixed me with his clear, unreadable gaze. His eyes weren't dead, like a demon's, but they missed human by a mile. It was like staring at the surface of a pond that never moved.

“Hundreds of human souls did a runner when Lilith broke that place open. If you want me to help, be honest with me, because I figured out that the Walking Man wasn't human a long time ago.” Even saying it out loud filled me with shivers all over again, like we were standing back out in the cold.

Uriel sighed. “Lilith packed Tartarus so full of human souls partly to power the engines of Hell, and partly to obscure that which isn't . . . exactly mortal, shall we say?”

“She always liked to have eight or nine knives ready to stab you in the back,” I agreed. “So she hides the Walking Man in among the riffraff for . . . what? Her own personal amusement? If you're so worried,” I said, “you must know what he is.”

I waited, not breathing, to see if Uriel had the answer, not at all sure I wanted it.

“There are parts of Tartarus so deep that even I don't know about them,” he said. “Whatever he is, he doesn't need to be walking around here on earth.”

“For once we agree on something,” I said. Uriel cocked his head.

“May I exit now?”

I got out of his way. “Go nuts.”

Uriel stepped out, the door swinging back in my face. When I shoved it open again he was gone, like I tried to blink the exhaustion out of my eyes and when I opened them he'd vanished, like he'd never been there.

The whiskey hadn't helped with the whole wanting to sleep for
months thing, and I started for the parking lot. Even Uriel's bad news couldn't put a dent in the fatigue weighing me down.

Healing up from catastrophic injuries always took it out of me too, which is why the person waiting in the shadow of the snowbank outside was able to step behind me and slide a hand over my mouth.

I didn't scream, just opened my jaw wider and bit down, my teeth tearing through flesh and hitting bone. Blood spurted, the hot red kind that meant whatever had hold of me was something with a beating heart. Whoever it was let out a surprised grunt, but they didn't let go. We stumbled backward into the bulwark of snow, me throwing an elbow into their gut that did absolutely no good. I felt the sting of a needle in my neck, and whatever the syringe held was even colder than the air around us. Ice spread through my veins, and everything was still and cold and white, silent as freshly fallen snow.