cat to save the babe?”
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. “Forget it. You stay here. If I
don’t come back, tell God I deserve a fluffier cloud.”
“We don’t sleep on clo—”
I closed the door on his lie.
97
~ * ~
At the gate of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I passed a ten dollar bill
to a bored attendant, and in return received a map folded into a swan. It must
be loads of fun working at a garden in February.
I dissected the swan and followed the map to the Trail of Evolution. I
sniffed the air. Nothing but the rot of dirt, and dying flowers. No new baby
Jesus smell. No brimstone. I inhaled again, this time catching a whiff of
something familiar and indefinable.
Opening the door to the conservatory, I dragged Tyrfing in my wake
and wiped away a drip of sweat hanging above my lip. A couple of tourist,
wide-eyed at the sight of a deranged guy with a sword, ran out of the exhibit,
slipping in pools of condensation. I smiled, and nodded as they passed. Why
not? Tourism paid the city’s bills.
I stepped into the foliage. A rainforest of exotic hothouse plants hid
my presence. The air felt heavy and much too warm, even for a greenhouse.
Sweaty hot evil. I could almost taste it. It crept through the conservatory,
tainting everything.
A child’s laugh broke the malevolent vibe surrounding me. I smiled
at the sound. The kid. He was here. I waded my way through the fauna,
pausing every few seconds to listen. Nothing. Shit.
Stepping through a ring of trees, I found myself in the middle of a
watery oasis. Water beat against an outcropping of rocks, and a heated spray
soaked my skin.
Water. Damn, I owed Sid an apology.
I ducked behind a bush when the shout of voices ahead reached me.
Unfortunately, the bush was poison sumac. My skin instantly began to itch, a
psychosomatic reaction I’m sure, but a pain in the ass just the same.
I peeked over the bush and saw the kid, all two-feet of him dressed in
a light blue sailor suit. A tiny sailor’s cap sat atop his blond head. Those evil
bastards. What had they done to him?
Nevertheless, the kid was amusing himself by reviving an ice-age
fossil of a shellfish before smiting it, again and again. Alive. Dead. Alive.
Dead. The fish finally stopped returning from the great beyond, and the kid
started to snivel, ready to let loose a wail of biblical proportions.
Good. A scene would be the distraction I needed.
The kid’s bottom lip quivered, and my heart jumped a beat.
Showtime. But before he burst into a full-blown tempter tantrum, a feminine
arm picked him up. Straining to see the kidnapper’s face or at least her
breasts, a sick feeling pooled in my lower intestine. It couldn’t be.
“Mine,” the kid screeched, and did that kid-claw-fingered-pinchy-
thing with his hands.
Shit. He spotted me. Time to move. I jumped from the bush, my
sword poised for battle. Bring it on, I thought seconds before the aroma of
sulfur fumed around me and ten pounds of metal smashed into the back of
98
my skull.
I fell to the damp ground. My final thought: Good thing the kid had
practiced raising the dead.
99
Twenty Nine
“Jace, hold still.” Lilith’s pale face slowly came into focus. She stood
above me, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You’ll be all right. Just let Angel
do his job.”
“Y B tch,” I mouthed and kicked a leg up to strangle her.
Lilith smacked the angel. “I think you put something in wrong. He’s
trying to strangle me with his foot, and can’t say vowels. Fix him.”
“It isn’t as easy as it looks, you know.” The angel searched the
ground for more smashed gray matter. “Ah, there it is.” He pressed a piece of
my brain in place, and an electrical current shot down my spine.
I blinked a few times. “You bitch.” Whew. This time my arms
reached out to choke the life out of her.
“What is your problem?” Her fist met my jaw. “I save your life and
this is the thanks I get.”
“I actually did the life saving.” The angel glared at Lilith. “You
merely drove us here.”
She tucked her arms across her chest, and tapped her booted foot. “If
I hadn’t gone looking for him, you’d still be buying bath salts on the Home
Shopping Network. And Jace would be dead.”
“He was dead.” The angel lifted me from the ground. “And I brought
his soul back.”
“Enough.” I stumbled toward Lilith like Frankenstein’s monster.
“How’d you get away from Samuel?” Suspicion curled in my stomach. Was
it her with the kid? Had she killed me? Or had the womanly arm belonged to
another? Samuel’s current succubus?
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is, did you find
J.C.?”
“Yeah.”
“So where is he?” She gazed around the plant-filled room.
“Not here, apparently.” I took a step closer to her. “After my brains
got bashed in, I lost him.”
“Oh, okay.” She gave me a pacifying smile, all pretty white teeth.
“At least we know he’s okay.”
100
“Was okay,” I mumbled. Who knew what his kidnappers had done
after my murder. “How’d you find me?”
“I tried the GPS signal on my cell phone first, but I couldn’t pick up
the signal.” She scratched her head.
Oops. I pictured the bits of busted cell phone on Mary’s floor. Faking
a search through my jean pockets, I said, “I must’ve dropped it.”
Her head tilted, but she didn’t call me on it. “When I… got back to
my apartment, he—” she flicked a wrist at the angel, “—told me you’d found
the kid, but not where. So I started looking for you.”
“And?”
“We called God,” the angel sneered. “But Michael answered. Now
he’s going to Lord this over my head for the next eon.”
“I said I’d make it up to you.” Lilith rolled her eyes. “I don’t know
how you put up with him for the last eight months.”
The angel frowned. “And I don’t know why he needs you. A
woman’s place is in the kitchen.”
I laughed as Lilith lunged at him, but I pulled her up short before she
could do any damage. “As much as I’d love to see you kick his angelic ass,
we should go.” Something crept through me, a warning of danger, a feeling
of impeding disaster, but that might have been a result of a head full of soupy
brain.
Lilith nodded, and touched the side of my dented head. “Can you
walk?”
Even if I couldn’t there was no way in hell I’d let her carry me. “I’m
fine. Nothing more than a headache.” The size of Texas.
Lilith nodded, keeping her arm wrapped around my waist as we
followed the yellow brick road down the Evolutionary path.
Halfway down the trail, I stopped. “Where’s the sword?” Shit. I
turned around and headed back toward the watery alcove.
Lilith’s eyes flashed. “You lost Tyrfing?”
“I
didn’t lose it.”
“Well, it wasn’t by your corpse. So I’m guessing you lost it.” She
shook her head, looking disgusted.
Bitch. “Sorry for dying and all. Next time I’ll let you have the
honor.”
“Won’t happen.” She winked. “I’m much harder to kill. Hell, one
little smack in the head with a tire iron and you’re down for the count.”
“She has a point.” The angel looked up long enough from his
manicured nails to nod.
A humming echoed from the rainforest on my right. Suddenly
Tyrfing shot across the sky and embedded itself in the angel’s midsection. He
let out an annoyed squeak, and fell to the ground.
Oops.
“Damn it, can’t you control yourself? You’re like a kid with A.D.D.”
101
She kicked at the unmoving angel. “Shit, we’re going to have to carry him to
the car.”
Guilt rose inside me, but only a little bit. He was annoying, vain, and
for the most part unhelpful. Really more of a pain in the ass than anything
else.
Lilith struggled with his feet. “A little help here.”
“Why? I thought you were tough. Could do everything for yourself?”
At this point, I was just being a dick, exhaustion overriding my common
sense.
“I apologize for my earlier comment. It was uncalled for and mean. I
guess you could say—” She winked at me. “—The devil made me do it.”
I laughed, and begrudgingly wrapped my arms around the angel’s
torso. We half dragged his body along the Evolutionary Trail and to the
Gremlin’s hatchback. Intelligent design, my ass.
102
Thirty
Lilith drove slowly across the Brooklyn Bridge, careful not to draw
attention to the fact we had a kabobed angel stuffed in our hatchback.
“Will he be okay?” I glanced into the backseat, noting the angel’s
pale face and the slight blue tint around his lips.
Lilith swung into the fast lane to avoid a slow moving truck. Its
bumper sticker read: “Don’t follow me, follow Jesus!” She shook her head
and stabbed the gas pedal. “Angel will be fine. I have some bandages at
home that will fix him right up.”
“I didn’t mean to...”
“I know, but better him than me.” She shivered. “There’d be no
saving me. Remember that the next time you want my blood.”
“Stop pissing me off then.” I chuckled, feeling my tension ease. “I
bet that’s the last time the angel mouths off.”
She laughed. “Somehow I doubt it.”
And damn if she wasn’t right. An hour later, fully restored to his
angelic state, he looked down his nose at me and said, “When was the last
time you showered? You smell like the devil.”
I flexed my fingers on the hilt of the sword I’d pulled from his torso,
and weighed the cost/benefit of shoving it back in.
“Hey, Jace, I have to run to the store for cat food.” Lilith reached
inside her cookie jar, frowned at my I.O.U., but didn’t comment. “Try not to
destroy anything else,” she glanced at the picture of Alex Trebek, “while I’m
gone.”
“Cat food. Good idea. The kid will be hungry when we...” I stopped
myself when Lilith shot me a confused glare. Oh right, food for the evil cat.
“Do not let anyone in and stay out of sight. Samuel’s looking for
you,” she warned.
“I can handle him.”
“Right.” Blowing me a kiss, she left the apartment, slamming the
door in my face.
“Do you want to play Mage?” The angel tapped me on the shoulder.
He held a ten-sided dice in one hand and wore a geeky grin, which reminded
103
me of a high school kid taking his mom to prom.
“Not in this lifetime.” I stepped by him, and dropped into the soft
couch. “Go watch TV or something.”
“The mean one does not have cable,” he whispered as if it was a sin,
and I guess in his world it was.
A knock sounded at the door. The angel and I looked at each other,
and then at the door. I stood and reached for Tyrfing. The angel shuddered,
but for once kept his mouth shut. Maybe Lilith had forgotten her keys. Nope,
I remembered seeing them clutched in her hand.
“Who’s there?” the angel asked in a falsetto when another knock
rattled the wood.
“Your local Avon representative,” a harsh male voice answered.
“We’re having a sale on bath salts.”
I rolled my eyes. How stupid did you have to be—?
Fuck.
The angel pulled open the door before I could stop him. “Do you
have any lavender?” he asked. Throwing my body against the door, I tried to
slam it closed, but a meaty hand slipped through, grabbed my neck, and
tossed me across the room. I landed with a crash, smashing against Lilith’s
white painted bookcase. The Anti-Christ’s Cookbook thunked me on the
head, and Bodhi hissed at me from his perch on Lilith’s bed.
Ignoring the spoiled cat, I blinked at the hulking demon currently
giving the angel a beat down. This was not going to be fun.
I stumbled to my feet, glad to see Tyrfing still in my hand. “Hey.” I
tapped the sword against the floor. “What is it with you demons? Are you all
Braathwaate, the demon of ignorance, glanced up from choking the
angel. He looked like a demon should look; big, dumb, and ugly. Unlike
Lilith, who looked far better naked then the man/beast in front of me.
“Can’t Satan afford pants?” I dragged Tyrfing across the carpet. “I
hope to hell he gives you guys a good health plan.” I reared back, and swung
the sword at the demon’s head. Not surprising, Tyrfing struck true and the
demon’s head rolled from its body and fell to the floor. Pus seeped from the
wound, and onto the white carpet. Lilith was going to be pissed.
“Well that was easy.” I kicked at the demon’s headless body. It
toppled to the ground and shattered into three pieces. Three repulsive, fetid
pieces.
I leaned down, and helped the angel to his feet. “Next time. Don’t
open the door.” A rush of power ran through me. I’d finally defeated one of
Satan’s minions. How was that for tough? “Ummm, Nemamiah,” the angel
called.
Shit. I knew it was too good to be true. I spun around, and stood
facing four hulking, and now a bit shorter demons.
The closest demon growled before grabbing me in a chokehold. Pop.
104
Pop. Pop. My vertebrate snapped in succession. He released me, and I
dropped to the ground. Oddly, the hard floor comforted me somewhat until
the second demon stomped on my ribs like a soccer ball.
Blood shot from my mouth sprinkling Bodhi. Big red globs of snot
covered the growling cat. He jumped on my leg with his claws extended. I
kicked him off, just in time for the third demon’s assault on my vital little
jaces. My nuts headed north, and my stomach followed that direction,
spewing the lining of what used to be my esophagus.
“For God sakes, help me.” I motioned to the angel, who hovered near
the ceiling, out of reach to the dwarfed demon
s. Dwarfed demons that
roamed around the apartment, knocked over furniture, and made a big mess.
“Will you play Mage with me?” the angel asked, plucking at his
feathers.
Bastard. “Fine.”
“Fine.” He huffed back and waved his hand.
Tyrfing clattered against the floor, and flew into my hand like
something out of a sci-fi movie. The kind of movie with cheesy special
effects and a hero too blinded by the femme fatale’s beauty to realize his
danger until she sucked out his soul.
My fingers tightened on the hilt the sword, and I pulled back to
deliver a deathblow. One of the demons smiled. I shanked his naked, green
ass. Pus boiled from his wound, splattering the walls. Ummm, not good.
The demon split into two more, again shorter demons. They glanced
at one in another and laughed. I gripped Tyrfing tighter and tried again.
Thwack. Suddenly I was faced with eight midget demons.
I quickly did the math, hacking away until the room was covered in
six-centimeter sized fiends, who looked a lot like little green army men, but
shorter.
All part of my plan, I assured myself as they danced around me,
stabbing my feet with their teeny-tiny fingernails. Sharp, pokey, teeny-tiny
nails.
Bodhi jumped from the top of the refrigerator, swatting at a few of
the demons with his own sharp claws. With miniature shrieks, the demons
scattered, which only excited the hungry cat. He choked down a few of the
olive monsters.
I smiled. For once, the cat was helpful. The angel, however, refused
to come down. He floated above me, still annoyed that Avon hadn’t come
calling.
“Ow.” I kicked at a demon biting my ankle. He flipped through the
air, skidded across the floor, and smacked into the oven with a splat, a loud
smacking splat complete with emerald spray.
An invisible light bulb popped above my head. With grim delight, I
lifted my foot and squashed a handful of demons under my boot. They made
a crunching sound much like cockroaches, but then again, roaches didn’t
105
scream, or beg for mercy.
Next thing I knew, I’m dancing around Lilith’s apartment crushing
demons while singing Whistle While You Work. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. A