Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (66 page)

“I need to talk to you,” he said, before I could even open my mouth to demand why the hell he was loitering there.

“Now really isn’t a good time,” I replied curtly.

“Please,” he said, and there was such a look of puppy-dog pleading in his eyes that I felt forced to relent.

“All right,” I said, dragging out the words with some reluctance. “But I’m really tired, so I hope this isn’t going to take too long.”

His face sort of lit up then, and I felt like even more of a heel. If he thought that by talking to me he could change things between us, he was sorely mistaken, but maybe it would be better to let him have his say and be done with it. At least I could try to get a little closure with this relationship, since Luke’s and my split still felt like a raw, gaping wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

Trying to repress a sigh, I mounted the stairs, with Danny following close behind. After I had let us both in, I asked, since I wanted to sound halfway civil, “Do you want something to drink? I think I just have some bottled water, but there might be a beer hiding somewhere in the back of the fridge.”

“Water’s fine,” he said. Danny never had been much of a drinker.

I went into the kitchen to get the water and figured I could use some as well. The food at Crown City was good, but I was still dehydrated, even though I had waved off any and all offers of beer. Frankly, right then the idea of drinking anything alcoholic made me feel a little sick.

When I went back out to the living room I saw that Danny had sat down in the armchair. It had been his usual seat when he used to come over and we’d hang out in the living room, but it still felt strange to look at him sitting there when the last man to occupy that seat was Luke.

That thought made me want to cry. Instead, I swallowed hard and thrust one of the glasses at Danny. “Here,” I said, trying to keep any betraying huskiness out of my voice.

He shot me sort of an odd look, but accepted the glass and took a drink. I sat down on the couch and stared back at him with what I hoped was a slightly quizzical but also impatient expression.

“Look, Christa,” he began, “I know you’re still pissed off at me, but don’t you understand that I’m trying to help you? Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

A whole lot of lonely nights
, was my first thought, and again that awful ache welled up inside me. God, I wanted it to be Luke sitting here in my apartment with me, not Danny, who kept giving me that anxious schoolboy look. I had the random thought that maybe I should just tell Danny that Luke and I had broken up. Maybe then he’d finally drop the whole thing. On the other hand, he might get the wrong idea and believe I was having second thoughts about ending our relationship, and that I absolutely did not want.

“What have I gotten myself into?” I asked after a brief pause.

“You’re acting as if this only involves your social life or something, but you’re endangering your immortal soul by trafficking with this person!”

At first I wanted to burst out laughing. Then I wondered if Danny had quoted that line directly from his priest or whether he’d at least paraphrased a bit. “Don’t worry about that,” I remarked, after I felt I could keep a straight face. “Luke already told me I wasn’t going to Hell.”

“Of course he’d tell you that,” Danny retorted. “He has sort of a reputation for making things seem all great at first and then
boom!
Eternal damnation.”

“Spare me the fire and brimstone,” I said wearily. “If I even believed in any of that, I would never have taken up with Luke in the first place.”

Eyes blazing, Danny leaned forward, the water glass clenched in his right hand. He looked like one of those people who get up and testify on what my father used to derisively refer to as “Jesus shows.”

“How can you not believe it, when the existence of this person you call Luke proves that Hell is real?”

“Okay, let me rephrase that,” I replied. “Maybe Hell exists, but even Luke told me that it’s different things for different people. It’s not some one-size-fits-all torture park.”

“He told you that?” Danny asked, and the light in his eyes altered suddenly. He went from looking like someone possessed by missionary fervor to a geek who had just gotten to test-drive the latest game console. “What else?”

“Not all that much,” I said, and immediately Danny’s face fell. Maybe he’d been hoping that I’d gotten a topographical map of Hell or some other nifty artifact. “He also compared himself to a prison warden rather than the most senior inmate. Makes sense, I guess, since God doesn’t seem to have too much trouble with him running around up here and driving expensive cars.”

A scowl etched itself into Danny’s forehead. I guessed he was chewing over what I had just told him and deciding which element to attack first. Finally he said, “Well, of course he’d tell you something that would make him sound better.”

“And how does that make Luke different from any other man on the planet?” I asked nastily, then wished I hadn’t. Danny looked as if I had struck him. I couldn’t take it back, so instead I added, “All I’m saying is that he hasn’t done anything to cause me — or anyone else, as far as I know — any harm. Does that sound like the source of all evil to you?”

No harm except misjudging me so badly he thought I’d happily take a job I hadn’t earned. No harm except breaking my heart.

A little melodrama, Christa?
I thought, and gave myself the mental equivalent of a slap across the face.
One pity party per week per customer.

“No,” Danny said at last, sounding reluctant in the extreme. “But that still doesn’t mean anything. Of course he’d be on his best behavior with you.”

And he was
, I thought, remembering the sound of his laugh, the look on his face when I opened the door and he saw me in all my opera finery. And the feel of his arms around me, and the warm, spicy scent of his skin. I clenched my hands into fists and felt my nails dig into my palms. At least the immediate pain helped to drive away thoughts of Luke.

“Look, Danny,” I said, facing him squarely and praying that he’d actually listen to me for once, “you and I are never going to agree on this, so let me just tell you a couple of things so you can get them through your head once and for all. First off, Luke knows all about your amateur-hour Hardy Boys impersonations. He knows Zach was watching the house and spying on him. Luckily, Luke thought it was more amusing than anything else, so I expect Zach doesn’t have to worry about retaliation.”

I let that hang in the air for a minute. I’d purposely left off mentioning that Danny didn’t need to worry about retaliation, either.

My ploy seemed to work; Danny stared at me for a minute, obviously trying to work it out, and then he paled visibly. Good.

“Second of all,” I went on, not giving him a chance to say anything, “even if by some amazing stroke of luck you got someone with any real authority to believe that Luke is the Devil, there’s no way to prove it. None. He’s got bank accounts, a credit file, and any other sort of identification a legal adult would have in this country.”

“But he’s not even human!” Danny burst out.

“Physically, he is,” I replied. “He assured me of that. Do a blood test — you won’t find anything strange. Put him through an MRI, CAT scan, whatever — that body is as human as yours and mine.”

“Oh, really?” Danny sneered. “How would you know?”

I crossed my arms and stared back at him for a long moment. If possible, he went even paler.

“You — you didn’t,” he stammered at last.

Maybe I was being cruel. I certainly hadn’t planned to rub in the fact that Luke had made love to me and it was fabulous, but I also didn’t intend to lie, either. I could have made a crack about not being the one who had taken a vow of celibacy. I didn’t, though. I said simply, “You might not want to ask any more questions if you don’t want to hear the answers.”

Danny looked away. I could see the muscles working in his jaw and felt a sudden rush of pity for him. He wasn’t a bad guy — he just wasn’t the right guy for me. That didn’t mean I should rub his face in the fact that I’d jumped into bed with Luke less than two weeks after meeting him.

“Third,” I said, and I made my tone as gentle as I could, “we both know that it really wasn’t working out between us. We just kept limping along because we couldn’t think of anything else to do. So even if Luke and I stopped seeing each other, it wouldn’t mean that you and I had any sort of future together. Isn’t it time we stopped kidding ourselves?”

For a long moment he said nothing but just sat there, looking down at the glass of water he still held as if he’d suddenly forgotten what it was. Finally he replied, “I guess so.”

A sense of cautious relief filled me after those words. I supposed that sometimes you just had to beat people over the head with things before they finally got the point. And Danny, for all his cleverness with computers and numbers, could be remarkably obtuse when it came to human interactions.

“Besides,” I added, “my friend Micaela thinks you’re cute and wants your phone number.”

“She does?” he asked, and he lifted his gaze from the glass at last. The hopeful puppy-dog look was back. “Uh — which one is Micaela?”

“Micaela Torres? You know — she works as a P.A. at Warner Brothers.”

He obviously had to think about who she was for a minute. After all, Danny had probably only met Micaela at one or two parties during the six months he and I had been together. Her schedule was so crazy she didn’t have time for much of anything else. After a bit he said, “Oh, right. I remember her. She’s kind of hot.”

A few weeks ago, that comment would have irritated me to no end. Now I was just glad to hear it — at least he sounded as if he were ready to move on. “So I can give her your number?” I asked.

A brief hesitation. Then Danny said, “Actually, I think I’d like it better if you gave me her number.”

So the warrior picks himself up and steels himself to try again, bloodied but unbowed
, I thought, repressing the urge to grin. “All right,” I said, and he immediately pulled out his iPhone. I gave the number to him, and he entered it in his contacts, looking so adorably focused in a nerdy sort of way that I felt a stab of self-doubt. Was I really doing the right thing?

Yes
, the sane half of my brain said.
Let him go. Don’t hold on to something just because you’re afraid to be alone.

“Don’t worry about Luke and me,” I said then. “I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

Danny’s expression grew troubled again, but after a few seconds it miraculously cleared once more. It was apparent to me he’d decided he had something new and shiny to focus on. If I wanted to throw away my immortal soul, that was my business.

I got up, signaling that I thought our conversation was at an end, and he followed me to the door. We paused there for a second, both of us staring awkwardly at each other. Then he leaned down and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“If you need anything, just let me know,” he said. “I want to be friends if we can.”

“I’d like that,” I replied, feeling a little overwhelmed. Maybe I’d underestimated him. Certainly I’d never thought that Danny would be handing me the “I hope we can still be friends line” — I’d always thought that would be my job.

“Okay,” he said, then took in a breath, squaring his shoulders like a man about to head into battle. “Guess I’d better go.”

And with that he was off, his sneakers squeaking a little as he moved down the stairs. They sounded very different from the soft slap of Luke’s expensive leather-soled shoes.

I waited in the doorway for a minute. Then I shut the door, knowing that very soon I was going to have a long, drawn-out cry.

If only Danny had understood it wasn’t my immortal soul that was in danger here…just my heart.

T
he Lord of Hell reappeared
, face like a thundercloud.

Beelzebub fought to keep a grin from his lips as he thought,
I love it when a plan comes together.

That dark seed he had sown had apparently grown into a wondrous plant, choking all life from Lucifer’s nascent romance. Everyone who saw the Prince of Darkness stalking through the halls of
his
palace immediately discovered they had pressing business to attend to elsewhere.

Even Beelzebub decided to lie low, mainly because he wasn’t quite sure he could contain his glee around his master. Not that it really mattered —
he
had immediately retired to the North Tower (Hell didn’t have actual directions, but topside nomenclature could be pervasive), which was where
he
always tended to go when
he
wanted to brood.

Perfect. It seemed the little chit’s independent streak had won out. Beelzebub felt a momentary flicker of respect for her bravery, then quickly quashed it. Most likely she had confronted Lucifer because she didn’t have any real idea of what he could do to her if properly provoked. Ignorance and stupidity, while typically human, were nothing to admire. But he would acknowledge that she had played her part well. Actually, his master had done so as well. For all
his
power and intelligence, the Lord of Hell had fallen into Beelzebub’s trap as neatly as a rabbit running into a snare.

A few centuries of black moods and hermit-like behavior were a small price to pay for knowing that Lucifer was back here where
he
belonged. Sooner or later
he
would snap out of it, would realize that
his
personal freedom was far more important than some promise of a return to paradise.

Beelzebub snorted. Paradise. That was one word for the place. Endless tedium, more like it. At least down here in Hell things could get interesting from time to time. He had no desire for eternal perfection. From time to time he lamented the fact that his master seemed to do little but rest on
his
laurels and make far more trips topside than
he
had any real need to, but those little foibles could be overlooked. After all,
he
was the one who had had the plutonium
cojones
to challenge the One Upstairs — it was only right that the Kingdom of Hell should be
his
reward. Even the most dedicated ruler might begin to find the bloom off the rose after so many millennia. But now
he
had probably realized that
he
had nowhere else to go and would reconcile
himself
to
his
situation as soon as
he
realized that there were far worse things than being the Prince of Darkness.

Like being mortal, for example.

A
smodeus flicked
an imaginary piece of lint off the lapel of his new suit and cast a critical eye at the line and fall of the garments. Was the break at the hem of his trousers hitting in the right place? Or should he have the tailor let it out another quarter of an inch?

A subtle throat-clearing caught his attention, and he turned, expecting to see the familiar shape of Nanthan, a transplant from Singapore who was the only person in Los Angeles he trusted to create the custom suits taste required. Instead, an elderly man in a shabby tweed jacket beamed up at him.

That is, He looked like an elderly man. Asmodeus knew better, however.

“Sir,” he said, and stood up a little straighter. Maybe Beelzebub would have thrown a little attitude in the newcomer’s direction, but Asmodeus wasn’t brave enough for that. Or perhaps he simply had a stronger instinct for self-preservation. Still, his mind reeled. What was God doing here, in a cramped tailor’s shop on the outskirts of L.A.’s Fashion District?

God’s eyes glinted. “Allan. That is what you’ve been going by lately, is it not?”

“Well, yes. Sir.” Asmodeus couldn’t quite figure out what to do with his hands and ended up jamming them in the pockets of his pants, thus ruining the lines he had been admiring just a moment earlier. He added, “I thought ‘Asmodeus’ might be a little difficult to explain.”

“True.” God moved farther into the shop and appeared to inspect the bolts of wool stacked next to the counter. “I’ve also noticed you’ve been doing a bit of possession.”

Oh, hell. God tended to frown on such things, which was why doing it for extended periods of time was such a risk.
Get in, do your work, get out
, had always been Asmodeus’ motto. But of course Beelzebub had to push things to the limit.

“Well, sir — I, that is,
we
didn’t — ”

God waved a hand. “No point in excuses, my boy. A bit of advice — I really don’t think Beelzebub has your best interests in mind.”

Asmodeus blinked. “No, I would suppose not. He has his best interests in mind. They just happen to coincide with mine.”

“Do they?”

Frowning, Asmodeus stared down at the face of God. He wore an expression of mild curiosity and showed no other emotion. That meant absolutely nothing, of course.

“I mean to say,” God went on, “that interfering with My plans is often a recipe for disaster.”

“Disaster?” Asmodeus repeated, then attempted to swallow past the lump in his throat. This wasn’t going well at all.

“Your master and I made a deal. Said deal did not include interference from meddlesome demons. Perhaps Beelzebub should have stopped to think. Perhaps then he would have realized that our friend Lucifer is not the only one who has a stake in this thing.”

“Well, erm…I suppose you could be right — ”

“I am always right,” God replied imperturbably. “And it’s not too late to fix things, regardless of what your compatriot might think. But I need your word that there will be no further meddling.”

“You have it, sir,” Asmodeus said at once. What else could he do, after all? Defying God to His face was never a good idea.

“I thank you for your cooperation.” A twinkle entered God’s dark eyes. “Perhaps a reward for good behavior?”

Reward? That sounded promising. What Beelzebub didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. “You are too kind, sir.”

“I suppose I am.” God crossed His arms and regarded Asmodeus thoughtfully. “You do spend quite a bit of time topside, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but — ”

“No excuses necessary. Would you like to stay here?”

At first Asmodeus wasn’t quite sure he’d heard the question correctly. Surely God couldn’t be handing him the whole world on a platter. To be able to stay here, to never have to return to Hell — all in exchange for some simple cooperation?

He cleared his throat and said, “Very much so, sir.”

The twinkle returned. “I thought you might say that. I don’t believe you’re quite ready for the same deal I gave your master, but let’s see how things go. Say a trial basis of a year?”

Asmodeus wanted to inquire more as to the nature of the “deal” God had entered into with Lucifer but decided it would probably be wiser to just keep his mouth shut. A year he could handle. A year up here was a year not spent in Hell.

“Very good, sir.” His mind raced, already moving on to what he should do first. A house, probably. And a car. Or several cars. He thought of the gorgeous automobiles his master had parked in the garage of
his
mansion and felt his heart race a little. Something exotic and expensive, something to catch Nina’s attention —

“I’ll leave you to work out the details,” God said, breaking into Asmodeus’ frenzied daydreams. “Enjoy yourself, and for My sake, stay out of
his
way.”

Asmodeus nodded. Why would he want to interfere with Lucifer’s life when his own had taken such a miraculous turn for the better? He had far more interesting things to do with his time.

God smiled and was gone, leaving Asmodeus alone in the tailor shop, his mind thrumming with possibilities.