Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (48 page)

It’s good to be the Devil
, I thought, and felt a sudden urge to giggle.

By that point I was a little more used to his practice of coming around to help me out of the car; I waited in the passenger seat until he had opened the door and extended his hand. I knew now that his touch really wouldn’t feel any different from anyone else’s, but I still experienced a little shiver as I laid my hand in his.

He followed me as I headed up the stairs, rummaging in my purse for my keys the whole time. I wasn’t too worried about making noise, since Al, my neighbor across the landing, worked graveyard for the phone company and would have already left for his shift.

I had just inserted my key in the lock when Luke said, “I would very much like to kiss you.”

Somehow I managed to reply, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

I’d been half-turned away from him to open the door, but I left the key dangling in the lock and made myself face him squarely.
Because I’m afraid I’ll like it too much
, I thought, but of course I couldn’t actually tell him that. Instead, I answered, “It’s still too soon for me.”

“Ah.” Those blue eyes scanned my face; I wasn’t sure what he saw there, but he apparently decided not to press the point. “Then I’ll just have to hope that ‘soon’ becomes ‘now’ in the near future.”

Part of me wanted him to pursue the matter. It had been a long time since I was with anyone who attracted me this much, and I wanted to know what his mouth would feel like against mine — but I was also frightened. No matter how pleasant the evening, or how many times he’d reassured me that his intentions were honorable, I couldn’t yet forget who — more to the point,
what
— he was.

“We’ll see,” I said, in a voice that sounded shaky even to myself.

Maybe that was all he needed to hear. He’d been looking rather solemn up until that moment, but a sudden glint entered his eyes. “Until next time, then.” He inclined his head slightly, then moved away from me and began to descend the steps.

I stood on the landing for a long moment and listened as his footsteps retreated across the path that cut through the lawn and connected with the sidewalk. There was a
thunk
, as of a car door closing, and then I heard the silky growl of the Jag stirring to life. Finally I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding, and with trembling fingers turned the key in the lock.

Was this how the cowering mouse felt when the circling hawk finally turned and flew away?

“
I
feel like an idiot
,” Asmodeus complained. He glared down at his ill-fitting jeans and baggy T-shirt, which advertised some long-defunct heavy metal group.

“This isn’t a beauty contest,” Beelzebub replied coolly. Possession always felt odd at first, like shoving your feet into a pair of shoes that were a size too small. But the potential benefits here far outweighed the momentary discomfort. He had taken over the body of Vincent Nguyen, since Beelzebub judged that particular young man to be the marginal leader of Danny’s housemates, while Asmodeus now inhabited the form of Zach O’Connell, a spotty individual whose limbs all seemed about half a foot too long.

They stood in the kitchen of the home the possessees shared with young Master Koslowski. As was the case with most bachelor abodes, its general cleanliness left a good deal to be desired — dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, and a pile of empty pizza boxes rested on the countertop. And was that a roach scuttling away behind the overflowing trash can in the corner?

Well, the filth could be ignored. Bad as it might be, the cluttered little house was still worlds better than Hell.

He went on, “Just play your part. The sooner our goal is accomplished, the sooner we can be out of here.”

Asmodeus made a disgusted sound. “No wonder this Zach’s only lay is his left hand.”

Of all the — Beelzebub ground his teeth and pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “Is that
all
you can think about?”

“No, but I do look forward to at least getting some action when I go slumming. That girl in Rio — ”

Asmodeus did have a decidedly skewed set of priorities, the attractions of mortal women being high among them. Beelzebub could never quite understand the fascination, since sex to him seemed the messiest of businesses, complete with some of the most ridiculous facial expressions seen in both this world and the next. Now, however, was certainly not the time to discuss such things. “What you do on your own time is your business,” he said coolly. “However, we have more important things to attend to here. Danny — ” He broke off as he heard the front door slam. In a quick undertone he added, “He’s home. Stay sharp, and follow my lead.”

Without bothering to look if Asmodeus was following, Beelzebub moved out into the cluttered living room. Game consoles and cartridges littered the ground in front of the large LED television. Danny stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed, a frown creasing his forehead.

“Something wrong?” Beelzebub asked.

Danny looked up, and his frown deepened for a second. “Well…”

“Something go wrong at work?” Beelzebub felt safe enough asking this question; even though Victor and Danny worked at the same company, they spent most of their shifts out on service calls and often didn’t see each other at the actual office for days at a time.

“No…no, work was okay.” With an impatient gesture, Danny loosened his necktie and then flung it over the arm of the couch. “It’s Christa.”

“Christa?” Beelzebub repeated, in carefully neutral tones. Mustn’t give away his eagerness to discuss that problematic girl.

Danny hesitated. Like most young men, he and his roommates didn’t spend much time discussing their personal lives — from what he could tell, Beelzebub wasn’t sure Victor and Zach even
had
personal lives — so no doubt Danny was reluctant to go into any detail.

Still, it appeared the young mortal’s desire to unburden himself outweighed his need to keep his personal life private. He gave a little hitch of his shoulders and said, “I think she’s seeing someone else.”

“Who?” Asmodeus/Zach blurted, and Beelzebub ground his teeth. Subtle.

But apparently Danny didn’t appear to notice anything odd about the question. “I don’t know,” he replied. “She won’t tell me anything.”

“That’s harsh,” Beelzebub said, in what he hoped were appropriately sympathetic tones.

“Yeah,” Danny agreed, and plopped himself down on the couch. Looking droopy as a hound dog, he picked up the remote for the television but didn’t actually turn it on. The little black device dangled from his hand as if he’d forgotten what it was for.

“Maybe we could help,” Beelzebub suggested.

Still frowning, Danny asked, “How?”

Beelzebub opened his mouth to reply, but Asmodeus forestalled him by saying, “I think we should follow him.”

Wonderful. He should have known better than to trust Asmodeus to behave himself. “Impulsive” didn’t begin to describe him. Time to do some damage control —

Too late. Danny said, “You’d do that for me?”

Asmodeus grinned. Zach did have amazing teeth, despite his overall unprepossessing appearance. “Sure. I’ve been reading up on it. Trust me — I’ll get all the info you need on this guy.”

Somehow I doubt that
, Beelzebub thought. He couldn’t really see Lucifer being too patient about a post-adolescent gamer nerd tailing him in a beat-up Chevy Nova. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of a way to dissuade Asmodeus without giving too much away in front of Danny.

Instead, he gritted his teeth, then said, “I don’t think we should rely on just one method of gathering information.”

Danny still looked as if he were impersonating a hound dog. “What else can we do?”

Mortals were so easily persuaded. “Do you think she’s emailed this guy at all?”

“Probably.” Some of the fuzzy look left the young man’s eyes. “You’re thinking of hacking her email?”

Beelzebub repressed a smile. “That would probably be the easiest thing to do.”

“Unless you can think of something else,” Asmodeus added, hitching up his oversized jeans. Somehow they managed to be both too big and too short at the same time.

“There’s her blog,” Danny said. He straightened, then set the remote down on the couch next to him. “I don’t know much about it, though – she keeps it private.”

“Not a problem,” Beelzebub replied at once. “I’ll just get her passwords.”

For a second Danny looked puzzled, and then he brightened. “Keystroke capture?”

“You got it.”

Asmodeus tried to nod sagely, although Beelzebub was fairly certain the other demon didn’t know what keystroke capture even was. Technology had never been high on his list of interests, and he’d never been as good at gleaning necessary information from the minds of his possessees as Beelzebub.

“A keystroke logger would be easiest,” he said. “Tomorrow’s their weekly staff meeting — I’ll install it then.”

Danny looked dubious. “Won’t she notice?”

“It just looks like part of the wiring. She’ll never know it’s there. Anyway,” Beelzebub continued, “I can come back to retrieve it a couple days later. You’ll just have to get her out of her office for a while so I can retrieve the device and any passwords it captures.”

“I think I can manage that,” Danny said. “I’ll take her to lunch or something. An hour should be enough, shouldn’t it?”

Beelzebub nodded. He didn’t know for sure if an hour was sufficient, but he’d make it work. An hour was better than nothing.

“Okay, I’ll call her. She should go along with the whole lunch thing — she’s always said we don’t go out enough.” For a few seconds a look of indecision hovered over Danny’s features. “But — it’s kind of underhanded, isn’t it? I mean, I know she started seeing this other guy, but we never said we couldn’t date other people, and — ”

Oh, for Lucifer’s sake — “You want her to yourself, though, don’t you?” Beelzebub broke in.

“Well, yeah — ”

“All’s fair in love and war,” Asmodeus put in expectedly.

The cliché seemed to do the trick. Danny paused, and appeared to clench his jaw. “You’re right,” he said.

Perfect. Who would have guessed that Asmodeus’ lack of intellectual depth might actually come in handy one day?

“All right,” Beelzebub said. “Just let me know the time once you’ve got it set up. Then we’ll find out some more about this mystery guy she’s seeing.” Once Danny discovered Christa’s new love interest was the Devil, Beelzebub knew the young man would do everything in his power to split up the budding romance. Danny took his religion seriously; he’d be on a mission to save not just his own relationship with Christa, but her immortal soul as well.

Faced with such a two-pronged attack, the young woman would have no choice but to waver. She hadn’t struck Beelzebub as the courageous type. He was certain her lack of backbone would be quite enough to keep Lucifer in Hell where he belonged….

T
he meteorologists had been right
; I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of rain pattering on the driveway under my bedroom window. Great — there was nothing better than a forty-mile drive in the rain, especially when people in Southern California seemed to lose whatever limited driving skills they had every time water fell from the sky.

Still, if my mother’s plans included dragging me down to Laguna Beach to whatever latest organic eatery she’d discovered, better to do it on a rainy day. At least that way the little seaside town wouldn’t be quite so overrun with tourists.

I picked up my phone and saw that it wasn’t so late that I could avoid going to the gym that morning. There was also an alert for a missed call. I hadn’t given Luke my number, but that didn’t count for much. My heart began to race as I pushed the button to call voicemail, then plummeted just as quickly when I recognized my father’s voice coming out of my cell phone’s tiny speaker.

Apparently he’d gotten back into town the day before and wanted to know if I could swing by his place after I’d seen my mom.

“I could take you to Tutto Mare for dinner,” he said. “After lunch with your mother, you’re probably going to need a decent meal. Give me a call and let me know what your plans are.” And then he hung up.

Considering the meals Luke had been buying me this week, the last thing I needed was another big dinner, but I also knew my father had a point. Anyway, I’d already planned to put in a truly grueling session at the gym to burn off whatever guilt I might have had regarding those luscious pork chops from the night before or the garlic mashed potatoes that had gone along with them.

After changing into my gym clothes and allowing myself a small container of yogurt for breakfast, I took my place on a treadmill at 24-Hour Fitness with the rest of the Saturday-morning masochists. Recalling my father’s promise of a big dinner out tonight, I grimly settled in for at least forty-five minutes of slogging. My personal best so far was an hour, but I was feeling more tired than I had any right to be, considering that I’d been in bed before midnight.

My thoughts kept pulling themselves toward Luke, even though I tried very hard to keep my mind on other things, such as alternate routes I could take if the 5 Freeway got completely bogged down, or what I could wear that would be appropriate for both whatever sprout-and-twig place my mother would take me to and Tutto Mare, which was a fairly upscale seafood restaurant located in Newport Center. Unfortunately, none of that was terribly stimulating. Instead I kept hearing the sound of Luke’s voice, seeing his face as he stood on the landing and asked whether he could kiss me.

It seemed as if the more time I spent in his company, the harder it became for me to remember he was something more than a man. Maybe that was his intention — for me to become so familiar with him that his true identity was no longer a barrier.

And then what?

Well, that was a good question. I somehow got the feeling this wasn’t just about sex...assuming he was capable. Probably; otherwise, why take on the form of a human man at all? Had he done this before? Was I just the latest in a long string of mortal conquests? Maybe he needed a lay once a century to keep on his game. I just didn’t know.

Exactly. I didn’t know anything, and although he’d let slip a few interesting tidbits, they’d all been calculated to put me at my ease, not to give me any more information about why he’d come to me, of all the women on the planet. The choice snippets he’d told me seemed, in retrospect, to have been carefully chosen to put me off the scent, to get me distracted by anything but the central question of our relationship.

If you could even call it that, considering we’d only seen each other twice. The sad thing was that even in our limited time together, Luke and I had had more meaningful conversations than I’d had in the entire six months I’d been dating Danny.

Danny, who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet. Not that that was particularly unusual, but his silence seemed almost ominous. What was he up to?

Probably nothing, as usual. Maybe he had a gaming convention or something to go to. Repressing a shudder, I recalled the time when he actually dragged me to one of those a few months ago. I’d gone along, because at the time I’d still thought we might actually work out as a couple, even though his parents acted like I was the Whore of Babylon or something because I wasn’t Catholic. They were so hardcore they’d even had portraits of the Pope hanging on the walls of their living room.

At any rate, Danny had looked like a
GQ
model compared to the collection of misfits, nerds, and downright freaks I saw at that gaming convention. It didn’t help that there weren’t many other women there, especially ones in skinny jeans and high-heeled boots; the conglomeration of geeks in attendance kept staring at me the way a starving dog would stare at a steak, and I’d finally faked a headache and made Danny take me home.

But he hadn’t mentioned any events of that sort coming up, and he usually did tell me about them, in a half-wistful, half-cajoling way: “If you’d just give it a chance, you could have a lot of fun!” Yeah, right. I’d cop to playing games on my phone while waiting at the doctor’s office or something, but I certainly didn’t devote large chunks of my life to gaming the way those guys did.

Well, Danny would just have to take care of himself, and Luke as well. Not that I had any doubt as to his capacity to keep himself occupied. God knows what the Devil did in the hours when he wasn’t wining and dining me. But maybe He didn’t, either. I still hadn’t exactly figured out that particular relationship. There hadn’t been any animosity in Luke’s voice when he spoke of God — if anything, they sounded like a manager and a subordinate who usually got along fairly well but who every once in a while had a difference of opinion.

That didn’t sound much like what I’d read about Lucifer, about the supposed war in Heaven and all that, but maybe the passage of time had mellowed things. Maybe one of these days we’d be someplace private enough that I could actually try to get straight answers to some of my questions.

Then again, that could be asking for trouble. I was beginning to wonder if I could trust myself to be alone with Luke for anything longer than five minutes.

I
t was
a good thing I’d planned alternate routes down to Orange County, because, as I’d worried, someone had decided it was a really good day to wrap his car around a light pole. I had to make a detour that took me a good bit out of the way and actually put me on a freeway that ran closer to the coast. Ironically, the change in route meant that I was going to drive right by the exit I would have taken to get to my father’s house. But of course I couldn’t go there now — I still had lunch to get through somehow.

I did use some of the time I spent sitting in traffic to finally call Nina back and try to set something up with her for a belated birthday get-together. She still sounded a little cloggy, but she protested when I said we could just postpone things until she was all the way better.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m going stir-crazy anyway. Let’s get out and do something.”

“All right,” I said. “As long as it doesn’t involve food. After this week I don’t think I want to ever eat again.”

“Another big date, huh?”

“He took me to Griffith Observatory.”

A few seconds of silence as Nina digested that statement. “Wow, that sounds really...fun.”

“It was,” I replied. “It was lovely.”

“‘Lovely’? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word to describe a date before.”

“I guess I never had a date before that deserved it.”

Nina remarked, “I’m impressed. So when do I get to meet the wonder stud?”

I winced. “Um — ”

“Yeah, I know. ‘Our relationship is in a delicate beginning stage, and I don’t think it’s time yet to introduce him to my friends.’”

Despite myself, I laughed. “Something like that.” With a grin, I added, “Tell you what — you introduce me to Gina, and I’ll introduce you to Luke.”

“That was underhanded.”

“All’s fair.” The words hadn’t left my mouth before I began to wonder,
So is this love...or war?

“Fine.” But I could tell Nina wasn’t upset with me, because I heard a little undercurrent of laughter in her voice. “Have a good day with your mom, and tell her I said hi.”

“Will do,” I replied, and then we made our good-byes. I hit the “end” button on my phone and tossed it back into my purse.

Although I’d been down to Irvine just a scant month earlier for the holidays (no “Christmas” in my mother’s house...she just refers to the winter celebration as her solstice observance), it seemed as if the place had gotten even more crowded in the intervening time. The developers appeared intent on covering every square inch of land with over-priced tract houses, and shopping centers sprang up in the sections that weren’t occupied by over-extended homeowners and renters.

Following my parents’ divorce, my mother had gotten possession of the house where I’d grown up. It was located in Woodbridge, a subdivision located pretty much in the center of the city, and the homes around it were well-maintained, many of them expanded as much as city ordinances would allow. My parents had never bothered with additions or any of that, since the place had four bedrooms to start with, but it was freshly painted a few years back and so blended in fairly well with the rest of the neighborhood. I doubted you could say the same for its interior.

True, most of the furniture had stayed the same country-ish oak that had been in place ever since I could remember. But after my father moved out, my mother began to indulge her passion for folk art and ethnic crafts until the house began to look like an overcrowded shop. No wonder my brother spent so much time roaming around the city with his friends, looking for places they could hang out on their bikes and skateboards before the Irvine P.D. caught up with them and forced them to move on to the next hangout.

I just wished my mother would wake up and realize what a slacker Jeff was turning out to be. He wasn’t a bad kid — despite spending the hours he wasn’t free-floating around town holed up in a friend’s room and smoking weed. My father had been pretty much hands-off ever since my parents split up, and my mother spent so much of her time taking classes on basket weaving or throwing pottery or whatever else had lately taken her fancy that she seemed to have no clue that her youngest child was on the fast track to nowhere. Now, I didn’t pretend to be some huge over-achiever. I certainly wasn’t my sister, with her million-plus in real estate sales and her mortgage broker husband. But even I had done the best I could to try to live life for myself, away from my parents. Jeff, from what I could tell, seemed content to spend the rest of his days living in the bedroom he’d occupied ever since he was five years old and sponging off my parents. From time to time he’d get a part-time job, but none of those seemed to last very long.

Even though I knew it was uncharitable of me, as I pulled up into the driveway I found myself hoping that he wouldn’t be home. Probably not; he tried to avoid the family togetherness thing as much as possible, and going out to lunch would have required putting on a clean shirt. Besides, he hated the whole organic/vegan thing as much as the rest of us. My mother fed him top-of-the-line holistic stuff, and then he went out with his friends and spent his pocket money on McDonald’s and Del Taco.

The rain had lightened up a bit as I headed south, but I still needed my umbrella to get from the car to the front entry relatively unscathed. I rang the doorbell and waited a few seconds until my mother answered the door.

Looking at her was always sort of strange for me. We were a lot alike — same straight dark hair and big brown eyes, same short little nose and rounded chin. For years she colored her hair to keep the gray at bay, but after the divorce she let it pretty much go, and now it had heavy silver streaks through it. She also put on weight immediately after my father took off, but once she went on her vegan diet she lost most of the extra pounds and got pretty trim. Actually, she looked damn good for someone her age, so it gave me hope that I’d be able to hold up fairly well as the years went on.

Still, coming face to face with her was always like meeting up with an older version of myself, and it could be kind of disconcerting. It didn’t help that she invariably wore jeans and flowing, boho-style tops that made her look younger than her fifty-six years, despite the gray in her hair.

She hugged me and told me I was looking wonderful — her standard greeting — and then led me back into the house, chattering away about this fabulous new place she’d found in Laguna whose chef was a huge proponent of the whole raw food movement, and how much I was going to adore it. I sighed inwardly, steeling myself for a meal composed of hummus, pine nuts, and God knows what else, and managed to smile. At least I could look forward to getting some real food in me after I met up with my father later in the afternoon.

Some vaguely Celtic new age–sounding music played softly in the background, and the house smelled of patchouli. Sometimes I really did wonder if my mother thought it was still the ’70s or something. I still couldn’t quite figure out why my parents — who met at Berkeley — had ever decided to settle in staid Irvine all those years back.

“So what’s new?” I asked, hovering in the living room as she went to retrieve her purse. “Any new projects?”

My mother worked as a freelance book designer, and she made a decent living at it. Of course, the continuing support from my father probably didn’t hurt, but she did have a steady stream of jobs coming through, mainly from small presses that couldn’t afford full-time designers.

She emerged from the kitchen, clutching an oversized faux-suede bag (no leather products for my mother) and smiling. “Oh, yes, a wonderful new book from Chanson Press about the baskets of the Chumash people. It’s very exciting.”

Well, at least she was able to combine two of her great loves. I could see two examples of her own handicraft perched on one edge of the fireplace surround. Good thing she never actually lit a fire in there — too wasteful of natural resources.