Black Dog (16 page)

“It was an accident,” I rasped. My throat was still destroyed from crying. I sounded like the evil old woman in every bad horror movie.

Leo didn't seem to care, he just knocked into my room and grabbed the blanket off my bed, wrapping me in it and rubbing my hands aggressively between his own palms. “Everyone on this block heard you screaming. What happened out there?”

The shaking was just getting worse. I tried to curl in on myself so I didn't strain my muscles or break a tooth like I had one night in the forties when I'd chased a warlock across a frozen pond in Indiana. The ice held his three-­hundred-­pound ass, then promptly collapsed under my four feet, sending me into the freezing, crushing black below.

I managed to turn two-­legged and pull myself out, and then I chased that fucker three more miles through the cornfields outside of Terre Haute before I finally put the bite on him.

I stumbled into a Mennonite ­couple's farmhouse and almost died, my heart not able to stand the strain of the unbearable cold and the flat-­out sprint through subzero temperatures. The ­couple was nice to me right up until my blackened skin and labored breathing started to clear up, then it went pretty much like it always did when I showed religious folks the hound—­lots of praying, yelling about Satan, and a quick getaway on my part.

“Ava!” Leo snapped his fingers in front of my face and I realized I'd drifted.

“I just had a nightmare,” I mumbled. Nothing was working right, but at least the stinging in my frostbitten fingers had stopped hurting.

Veronica poked her head in. She was wearing sweatpants and a South Dakota State hoodie, looking completely different with clothes and no makeup. “She okay?” she said cautiously. “What did she take?”

“Run a bath,” Leo said. “
Not
hot. We need to get her warmed up.”

“Leo, if she's going off the rails she cannot be here,” Veronica said. “I feel bad for her and all, but I've got my girls to think of.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Veronica. Run the goddamn bathwater and save the speeches for somebody who gives a shit,” Leo snapped.

He picked me up, still wrapped in the blanket, and carried me into the bathroom. There was barely enough room for one person, never mind three, and Veronica stepped back, watching me from the door. She didn't look worried or upset, but I knew I'd worn out my welcome with this little near-­death adventure.

Leo stripped off my T-­shirt and lowered me into the bath. “Sorry,” he said as I screamed at the touch of the water. It felt like I was boiling alive. “Trust me,” he said. “It'll stop hurting in a minute.”

The door to Clint's room banged open and he stared at Leo and me for a split second before he grabbed a towel and shoved Leo out of the way, covering me with sodden, stained terry cloth. “What do you think you're doing?” he growled at Leo, eyes narrowing.

“I'm saving her fingers and her feet from dropping off like the top of an ice-­cream cone,” Leo said. “The fuck are
you
doing? She almost dies and you're tumbling off to dreamland fifteen fucking feet away?”

“Can both of you just shut up?” I whispered. “I feel bad enough.” The screaming had destroyed my voice, but the rest of me no longer felt like I was dying. As the pain ebbed away, Clint stood.

“I'll be right outside,” he said, giving Leo a stare that Leo completely ignored, lifting one of my hands and examining the navy blue beds of my nails.

“You're doing fine,” he said. “Once you stop looking like a Smurf you can have a real bath.” He levered himself up. “I'll be back. You all right to stay by yourself?”

I nodded. Leo stepped out, then something occurred to him and he stepped back in. “
Were
you trying to kill yourself?” he asked.

“No,” I said. My life might be a pile of shit, but I'd never considered ending it myself. Mostly because I couldn't, as far as I knew, actually die from most anything that would off a human.

“Okay,” Leo said. “Good to know.”

His footsteps faded and I sank down in the murky, rust-­colored water. I could see how Leo got to “suicidal” from finding me in the snow. From the outside, I must look pathetic.

I drained the water and waited for it to run clear and steaming hot before I filled the tub again. Leo came back and stuck a handful of clothes through the door. “Veronica wanted you to have these.”

“She must really want us gone,” I whispered.

Leo shrugged. “You can't blame her. She's got her own to look after, and Clarence in there does have a bull's-­eye painted on his perfectly manscaped chest.”

He left me alone and I stayed in the tub until the water was cool again, and my skin had resumed a color that was close to normal. In the mirror, I looked merely corpselike, rather than like some kind of freakish, frozen zombie.

Veronica's sweatpants swam on me, but they were clean. I stepped out to find Leo sitting on the bed, tapping his pack of cigarettes against the bedpost in an arrhythmic clatter.

“I promise I am not going to hang myself from the closet bar,” I said. “You don't have to babysit me.”

Leo stood, perhaps sensing I intended to flop on the bed whether he got out of the way or not. “Not to be nosy, but either you're a hell of a sleepwalker or something is wrong. You were screaming. Really screaming, like you were in agony.”

I put an arm over my eyes. Even the dim bare bulb hanging from the ceiling was too much. “I've been hunting down rogue souls for a hundred years. I have some crazy nightmares.”

“I get those too,” Leo said. “I don't end up almost frozen to death in my underwear.”

His shadow moved to block the light, and when I looked up he was standing over me with his arms folded. I had the feeling this view was the last thing a fair number of Leo's enemies saw. “It was Lilith,” he said, with no question at the end.

“So what if it is?” I said. “You're not involved in this. You can just go. Or I can. You and Veronica seem to have a pretty good arrangement.”

“Look, last night was bullshit on my part,” Leo said. He sat down on the end of the bed, his weight making the mattress cave in so I rolled toward him. “Veronica is somebody I've known for a long time. I trust her, and yeah, we're friends. But I was married for most of the time I knew her, so it doesn't go beyond what you saw. I don't have feelings for her and she sure as hell doesn't feel anything for me.”

“I don't care.” I sighed. “You and she could elope tomorrow. I just don't want you to feel like you owe me something.”

“You saved my life,” Leo said. “So I do, in fact, owe you a little something.”

I could argue he'd done the same when he kept Gary off me long enough for me to tear his throat out, but I let it pass.

“It was my fault,” I said. “Lilith got inside my head and she coaxed me outside. She was trying to find out if Clint was with me. She can't see past Veronica's demon nets, but if she doesn't know he's here she will soon.”

Leo held up his hand. “Whoa, got inside your head how? Are you broadcasting right now?”

I shook my head. “Apparently any time I sleep, I'm a walking, talking video camera.” A residual shiver worked its way up and down my spine. I did my best to ignore it. “I thought I was running. In the dream.”

“Running from what?” Leo clicked his lighter, the gold lid flashing.

“Doesn't matter,” I said. “But I think we should probably not be here when I pass out again.”

“I know a ­couple guys in Denver,” Leo said. “Low level. They mostly run the fights and do some trade with the Asians to bring oxy down from Canada. They aren't connected enough to rat us out to my father.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I think we're probably safest with regular ­people for a while.”

“A human would say that,” Clint said, coming in and sitting on the room's single chair like he paid rent.

“The human didn't ask you,” Leo said. “You're not handcuffed to me, Clarence. You go right ahead and fly free.”

I rolled into a sitting position and grabbed up my clothes from the floor. “Enough,” I said. “Leo's right. You can come with us or not, but I'm not staying here waiting to get picked off by Hell's very own bitch on wheels.”

I started shoving my things into a plaid suitcase I'd found in the closet. There was a drawer full of cheap bulk-­rate toiletries in the bathroom and I swiped a handful of those too. At least I was once again the proud owner of a toothbrush.

Once we'd helped Clint push his truck out of the snowdrift kicked up by the plows and were grumbling down the road again, I turned around and rubbed the frost off the back window. I watched silently until the lights of Rapid City disappeared into the dim gray dawn, and only then did I feel safe.

 

CHAPTER
18

C
lint drove south, the snow fading away to the black and tan landscape of the Badlands. There was nobody else on the roads except for a few truckers blowing past us at eighty miles an hour.

The sun was all the way up, glinting softly off the tops of the Rockies, when Leo sat up. “Pull over at the next exit, Clarence. I need to piss.”

“I thought you were all hot to get to Denver,” Clint said.

“That's how it is?” Leo muttered, reaching for his fly. “Okay. You want your floor mats smelling like the bathrooms at Yankee Stadium, fine by me.”

“Jesus, pull over!” I shouted. I jumped out of the cab when Clint rolled to a stop by a roadside diner. My legs were cramped, and I was going to choke at least one of them if I had to be in the truck for another second.

“Hey,” Clint said, catching up with me. “What's gotten into you?”

“I swear to everything in the Pit,” I said. “If I have to be a spectator at one more event in the Dick-­Measuring Olympics, I'm going to wring both your necks.”

“I'm sorry,” Clint said. “All right? I don't want to fight either of you. We have problems other than a warlock with a tiny bladder.”

I folded my arms. I felt like somebody had hit me with a car, backed up, run over me three or four times, and then clog-­danced on my head for good measure. My head was fuzzy, my reflexes were dull, and I didn't think I could handle another visit from Lilith's brute squad just yet.

Clint moved his chin in the direction of a black Lexus that pulled up and parked at the low, red-­roofed motel across the street. “That car's been with us since Rapid City.”

“And you didn't say something?” I hissed. Clint spread his hands.

“What would you have done, exactly? Gotten out and chased it while barking?”

“Fuck you, Clarence,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Why didn't Lilith kill you?” Clint asked me. “You disobeyed her, since I'm still breathing. All she had to do was leave you outside a little longer to freeze. But she didn't.”

I kept my arms folded to avoid making a fist. Punching a Fallen angel in the neck wasn't a mistake I was going to add to my exhaustive list of poor life choices. “I don't know,” I said. “If you're dancing around something, Clint, quit with the jazz hands and just say it.”

“If you're still here, you're still useful to her,” Clint said, stepping forward so his body blocked the view of our conversation from the occupants of the Lexus. “In what way?”

“Because she thinks I'll fuck up and lead her to you,” I said quietly. “And because she has a hate-­on for you the likes of which I've never seen in a century of working for a man who held grudges as his profession.”

“That doesn't explain why we're being followed,” Clint snapped.

I turned away from him and strode across the dusty parking lot toward the car. “I'll find out.”

The motel was a little mom-­and-­pop operation, flowers in front of every room, wagon wheels lining the brick sidewalk, little gnome statues peering at you around the spokes.

I picked up the nearest one as I passed and kept walking toward the Lexus. Through the tinted windows, I saw the shadow of a driver scrambling to put the car in gear, but I got there first, hefted the gnome, and smashed it hat-­first through the glass.

“Morning.” I lowered my face to see two tattooed, pissed-­off heavies with the same taste in suits as Leo staring furiously back at me. “Mind telling me why you're following us?”

The driver yanked a gun from the shoulder holster inside his jacket. I grabbed the barrel as it swung at me and yanked with all my strength. The driver's body jerked forward, his nose smashing against the steering wheel. He slumped, and I pulled the pistol from his limp fingers, glaring at the passenger. “Let's try this again,” I said, aiming at him over the groaning driver.

“This doesn't concern you, lady,” the passenger snapped. “Just back off if you know what's good for you and let us take Karpov in.”

I reached across the driver and grabbed the guy by his shiny lapel, dragging him through the window until he landed on his ass in the dirt. “I guess I don't know what's good for me,” I said. “Possibly because I'm not a lady.”

I ejected the clip from the pistol and worked the slide to pop out the bullet in the chamber. I pulled the firing pin for good measure and tossed the gun next to the thug. “Take your buddy and get lost,” I said.

The guy squirmed through the dirt toward the gun, and I put my boot down on his hand. After the shitty morning so far, the pop of his first and second knuckle was more than a little satisfying. “I don't know if you're deaf or dumb or both, asshole.”

He mumbled out a scream and I bore down with the ball of my foot. “Pack up your pal here, go out to the interstate, and stick out your thumb.” I lifted my foot away as a show of good faith. “We clear?”

The guy jumped up and got his buddy up with his good hand. “Bitch,” he spat over his shoulder as they limped away.

I got into the Lexus and pushed the button to move the seat forward. The driver had a good six or seven inches on me.

Hurting him felt good. I usually didn't stomp all over ­humans like that unless I was working. I certainly didn't go tossing around gangsters twice my size. I could still throw out my back or rip a tendon, but I didn't care right now. I pulled into the parking lot of the diner. Gravel sprayed from under the car's wheels. The interior smelled like leather and cigarettes and musty Russian aftershave.

I decided I liked the driver's seat of one of these a lot better than the trunk.

Clint stared at me as I climbed out. “What did you do?”

“Got us a new car,” I said, shoving the keys into my pocket. “I was tired of our thighs touching. No offense.”

I climbed the creaky steps to the diner and pushed open the metal door. It was oval and coated in riveted chrome, like the hatch of a spaceship. Clint followed me, narrowly ducking the door as it swung back. I was a tiny bit disappointed it didn't smack him in the face, but maybe it was just the mood I was in.

Leo was sitting in the last booth, nursing a chipped brown mug. I slid into the booth next to him. “Your dad sent two guys to give you a ride back to his place.”

He started to jump up, but I shook my head. “I took care of it.”

“For the record, I did not ask you to do that,” Clint said, sitting down across from us. “I especially didn't ask you to commit grand theft auto.”

“Instinctively, I sensed that you wanted me to,” I said. “We have that kind of relationship.”

Leo massaged a point between his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I knew Sergei was pissed off, but I didn't think he'd send a crew.”

“Wasn't much of a crew,” Clint admitted. “They ran off pretty quick.”

“You shouldn't have,” Leo said to me. “For all you know, he might have sent a ­couple of guys to throw blood conjuring around and you'd be dead.”

I shrugged as the waitress approached with coffee. “You had blood conjuring on your side and I still kicked your ass.”

“I didn't use it on you,” Leo muttered. “And at most it was a mutual ass-­kicking.”

“You're grumpy before you've finished your coffee,” I said, smiling at him. Even though I still hurt, bone-­deep aches all through me, the mental fog of Lilith's nightmare was starting to lift. I almost felt like it wasn't a hardship just to be breathing, which was something I hadn't felt in a handful of decades.

Leo smiled back over the rim of his mug as our waitress put two more down and poured coffee. She'd washed her pink uniform so many times it was almost white, and the name tag was as chipped as the mugs on our table. It said her name was Naomi. She was young but worn-­out, just like her uniform and her off-­white corrective shoes. Her hair was bleached until the blond hit an abrupt DMZ of dishwater brown about two inches from her scalp.

She smiled, though, and it reached her eyes. “What can I get you folks?”

Leo lifted his mug. “Just a refill, hon.”

“Eggs,” Clint said. “Sunny side up, and some plain wheat toast.”

Naomi scribbled away and then turned to me. I tried to smile at her, but the adrenaline of beating on the Russians was gone, and what occurred to me was to curl up and sleep in the booth for a few hours.

“Just coffee,” I said quietly.

“Be right back with all that,” Naomi said, pouring and walking away. I sipped the coffee and winced. It wasn't so much coffee as mop water that had at one point in its storied history come in contact with coffee grounds.

I spit it back into the cup. “This is shit. Being tailed by a ­couple of stone killers is actually preferable.”

“How did those men find us?” Clint demanded of Leo. “What did they want?”

Leo shrugged. “No fuckin' clue. I'm guessing they were going to practice some light bondage on me and drive me back to Vegas to have a conversation with my father.”

“Veronica,” I said quietly. Leo shot me a sharp glare.

“She wouldn't. She and I have an understanding.”

He'd also said she had her own girls and house to protect, but I let it go. It wasn't my business. I didn't get involved with humans. Leo would see eventually there was no point in sticking with Clint and me if he wanted to keep breathing.

I hoped he'd land on his feet. I imagined he was good at disappearing, and I hoped he found a place where he could forget about how wrong things had gone for him since we'd collided in that alley behind the strip club. I always hoped that ­people like Leo got away clean, although more likely he'd end up in the foundation of a new casino on the Strip about the time Lilith was peeling me like a grape.

Naomi set down Clint's plate and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Give me a holler if you need anything else, okay?”

He gave her a radiant smile and she blushed as she walked back to the counter. Aside from a ­couple of ancient truckers as weather-­beaten as the tires on their rigs, we were the only ­people in the diner.

“So are your friends in Denver going to sell us out as well?” Clint said to Leo, shoveling eggs into his mouth.

“Veronica isn't your problem,” Leo growled. “Worry about Lilith and let me worry about my old man, all right, Clarence?”

“Speaking of that particular devil, Ava never did answer my question,” Clint said, turning to me. “Lilith spared you.”

“Lilith
tortured
her,” Leo said. “Sent her out into the snow to freeze. Let it go, for fuck's sake. She could have dimed your ass out anytime. You should be thanking her, not complaining.”

“Torture, I have no doubt. Lilith excels at extracting every last drop of misery from a person, body and soul. Yet Ava's alive,” Clint said. “So the question remains: why?”

The horrible coffee soured in my stomach. I didn't care that Clint didn't trust me—­hell, I sure wouldn't trust me if I was sitting on his side of the table—­but all I could think of was the expression on Lilith's face, the thin-­lipped determination that reminded me of the warlocks I chased. Across ice, down the polished halls of mansions, through dingy Hell's Kitchen alleys that reeked of piss and day-­old garbage. That face was always the same. They still thought they could win, and they were more than willing to go through me to cling to a few more minutes of life.

Sooner or later, they realized they couldn't cheat Death. The ones who never did were dangerous.

I slid out of the booth, boots thumping on the lumpy vinyl floor. “Excuse me,” I muttered, making a run for the bathroom.

Naomi stared at me until I slammed the door in her face. A light clicked on above me, filling the tiny space with the kind of harsh light that makes you look two steps from dead even if you're not on the wrong end of twenty-­four hours with no sleep and a demon rooting around inside your head. I sat on the lid of the toilet and pressed the heels of my hands into my burning eyes. After a minute, Leo knocked on the door. I grabbed a wad of tissue and swiped at the dampness on my face.

“Go away.”

“Come on, Ava,” he said. “He was being a jackass. Don't let it get to you.”

I reached up and flicked the lock off. Leo stepped in and shut the door behind him. There was barely room for the two of us in the tiny space, even when he leaned against the wall.

“We can't keep this up,” I said quietly. “She'll find us sooner or later.”

“I told you to just give up the parakeet out there,” Leo said. “You don't deserve this. Whatever he did, let him suffer for it. Why should we have to be involved in a slap fight between Lilith and some Fallen?”

“Because if I hand him over, Lilith will have no use for me, and she'll kill me,” I grumbled. “I don't like the guy either, but me being a line on Clint is the only assurance I have Lilith won't skin me for what I did to Gary.”

“If he was such a big loss, trust me, Lilith would have already snapped your head off like a Pez dispenser,” Leo said. “Maybe we do turn him over, and we both walk. That's what a smart deal would be for Lilith.”

“Lilith's smart,” I agreed, “but she's also clinically insane. Sticking with the angel is the right thing to do.”

Leo sighed, but then nodded. “Okay. You're the one who hangs around Hellspawn. I'll stick with you, but if he gives me one more side-­eye I'm going to stick him in the throat and watch him drown in his own blood.”

“Fair enough,” I said. I stood up and opened the door. Naomi eyed us but was smart enough to keep her opinions to herself. Clint watched me carefully as I came back and sat in the booth. “I apologize. I was out of line.”

“Yeah, you were.” I rolled the bundled napkin/silverware back and forth with my index finger. Clint looked like he wanted to say something else, then sighed.