Grim Tidings (9 page)

The shotgun was louder, and the first shell spun Lady halfway around. The second dropped her like a heap of dirty laundry and she stayed perfectly still, like someone had discarded her on the floor.

Tanner ejected the spent shell, turning to me. “You want to tell me why I just shot a naked dead woman?”

I prodded my side gently and groaned. My rib was definitely broken. “You tell me. You seem like you've done this before.” The spots where the shotgun pellets had hit Lady were curling black smoke, like tiny candles, the flesh around them turning ashy and
necrotic. The smell was somewhere between burning trash and rotten meat. I couldn't resist reaching out and touching her cheek, just to make sure she was as cold and dead as she'd seemed a minute ago.

“Eight times,” Tanner said. “First time she almost got the jump on me. Margaret Taylor.” He leaned against the wall, massaging his forehead. “The Walking Man gets 'em dancing, and I put 'em down. But I don't know why, and I think you can help me out in that area.”

“Yeah, I think you're wrong there,” I said as my fingers chilled against Lady's skin. Her jaw lolled open, and one of her feet trembled and twitched. “You seem like you've got this under control.”

Tanner swallowed hard, grimacing at bile as it went back down. “I'm happy I have you fooled.”

He shut his eyes for a moment and as he did I caught sight of something small and white inside Lady's mouth, jammed so far back in it was practically down her throat. I pulled out the small piece of bloody paper and uncurled it, my hands shaking.

Fly to me, little bird.

I shoved the paper deep into my pocket, then wrapped my arms around myself, protecting my broken rib. Protecting myself from the cold. “Tanner, trust me, this isn't something you want or need to look any deeper into. This isn't about you.” The smell from Lady was overpowering, and I felt the sting of the wet, filthy snow on my skin all over again, even though we were indoors, in Kansas, miles and years removed from the camp.

“You okay?” Tanner said, then shook his head. “Dumb question. I ain't ever been okay with this and I've been doing it practically since I could walk.”

“I need air . . .” I tried to say, but the words wouldn't come. I clambered up, snatching my shoes and tugging them on as I stumbled into the hall. Lady's blood squelched between my toes.

I left Tanner then, left him and the hospital, only pausing in the door long enough to pull on my coat. I made it to the edge of the parking lot, where the hissing spotlights didn't reach. If I had just gone with my first impulse to run from this town and poor Lady, I might have gotten away.

But that was a lie, I admitted to myself, because he'd been trying ever since the war ended to get me back, and he'd finally found the right girl, raised the right amount of chaos, to make me come and see what had happened, make me show myself. To stop being Phyllis and go back to being Ava.

I had just stepped out of the light and into the night beyond when I felt somebody fall into step behind me.

“Took you long enough,” he said, those same slow words coming out like water droplets falling onto hot coals. “I'd think you'd want to see the man who gave you those scars, little bird.”

“My scars healed,” I said. “And you're not a man.”

“I've left you bread crumbs all across these plains,” he said. “I've been looking for you.”

I turned on my heel and faced him, but he stepped back into the shadows, laughing. “So what?” I said. “You wanted my attention, you got it. What do you want with me?”

“There's only one of me,” he growled. “And one of you, little bird. Together, we make a set.”

I made myself laugh. It was better than screaming. How long had he been watching me? How much did he already know? “We're nothing,” I said. “I'm nothing special.” I spread my hands.
“The filed teeth I get. I know what some of you POWs had to do to survive during the war. But those airman's boot prints you left on my friend? That mark on her neck? I'm not what you need to worry about.”

“Detective Tanner, yes,” he said, inhaling like he was smelling a nice rare steak. “Without you to show him the ropes, what's to keep me from walking in there and putting an end to him? He's a tormented man. He still has dreams about the beach. About the sound of his own skin burning. About how that sniper's bullet spun him around and left him dying in the snow.”

A pair of lamprey headlights came up out of the dark, a Greyhound bus putting on its blinker and pulling over. I took a hard step toward the man from the camp, the evil spirit who'd almost torn my head off. For the first time in a while I didn't feel like turning my back.

“You want me, fine,” I snarled. “But Tanner's just a man, and all those people were just human. You leave them out of it or you can never see me again.”

“If I have you,” he said, “I have no need to make children, little bird. At least not the sort who snarl and bite, who feed on the good men like Tanner.”

He stretched out his hand and laughed as the bus door swung open. “Don't worry, little bird. This is where you want to be. Not locked up in a flesh den. Not standing next to a man who sweats booze and fear. You are not any of your names. You are with me now.”

I looked back at the hospital. Not just Tanner, but all the people inside, would be dead in the time it took me to grasp the huge hand and feel its ragged nails scratch over my palm.

“Good,” the man said when I took his hand. “Good, little bird. This is the last choice you will ever have to make in fear.”

There was no one driving the bus, and I could see nothing outside the windows as it pulled away, the man and me sitting side by side.

“Where are we going?” I whispered.

“Where the road takes us,” the man rasped. “That is what we do. We ride.”

MINNESOTA

NOW

I tried counting every stain on the ceiling—and there were a lot in this glorified cult compound the hounds called home—but even that didn't put me back to sleep.

I hadn't thought about Don Tanner in years—decades, really. Now he wouldn't leave me alone. None of the nightmares would. There was no cure for them except to get out of bed and move, so I nudged Leo.

“No,” he grumbled, burying himself deeper under the musty blanket.

“Get up,” I whispered. He pulled a pillow over his face.

“No means no, woman.”

“We need to go back to Minneapolis,” I said. Leo yanked the pillow away and glared at me.

“Give me a break. After that welcome? Let the raver chick down there set the meet and let me sleep.”

I got up and pulled on my jeans. It was so cold even inside the house that my skin prickled all over. “Did dying make you stupid?” I said. Leo's forehead wrinkled.

“Ava, what's the problem?”

“Leo, you wouldn't let this group of misfit toys get you a cup of coffee, never mind orchestrate a meeting between you and the guy who wants to kick you out of your company parking space,” I said. “For all we know, there is no split and Owen has these clowns watching us.”

“If I'm getting stupid, you're even more paranoid than usual,” he said, sitting up. I tossed him his shirt.

“Fine. I'm paranoid. But I'm also right.” I waited, keeping one ear tuned to the sounds of the house. I wanted to be long gone by the time the guard dogs woke up.

Leo sighed, and then after a long moment he climbed out of bed and put his shirt on. I let out a tiny sigh of relief. Things were getting weird beyond the two of us—bad weird—and I didn't need Leo falling apart on top of everything else.

Downstairs, the hounds were sprawled on every horizontal surface. Viv snored softly, her Mohawk at half-mast. I opened the front door, wincing as the hinges shrieked, but nobody so much as stirred.

Uriel was right—Gary had done a damn good job making everyone
who wasn't his direct hench-thug lazy, slow, and stupid. It was a wonder anything had gotten done in the past hundred years where the reapers were concerned.

“So how angry is Thunderdome gonna be that we boosted her ride?” Leo said as I tipped the keys from Viv's sun visor and stuck them in the ignition, turning them just far enough to make the radio hiss and crackle.

“If they leave the keys it isn't stealing,” I said, putting the car in neutral and rolling down to the end of the driveway. Leo gestured at me.

“I'll drive. You look like you need a lot more beauty sleep.”

“I need you to stop saying things like that before I get out of the car and let Owen chew on your face,” I said, leaning my head back against the crusty velour seat of Viv's old-man car. My skull was throbbing.

“So what was it this time?” Leo asked, turning the engine over and putting the pedal down. We were gone in a spray of ice and gravel before I could answer.

“I mean, I've got a lot of bad dreams,” Leo continued. “But not as many as you.”

“I'm lucky like that,” I muttered. My nightmare reels, after all, weren't supposed to include my life before I died and became a hound. Amnesia was one of the standard benefits of becoming a reaper's slave. No loved ones to miss, no memories of your usually violent and premature death to obsess over.

But I got the whole package, because I was meant to pair up with the Grim Reaper. Just like red wine and steak, that was me and Leo. A former mob cleaner and a girl whose boyfriend stabbed her to death in a swamp, reborn as Monster Sonny and Cher.

I was pretty sure I'd been right to get us away from that farmhouse, but as we drove back toward Minneapolis I wasn't sure this was a good idea either. That overwhelming need to run and never stop crept over me again, until I felt pins and needles in my legs from the urge to just start sprinting.

I'd had a lot of nightmares, sure. But this particular nightmare made me feel like I wasn't really awake, even as the car groaned along the highway. I felt like I was still back there, and I shivered. I didn't ever want to go back there.

“Sweetheart, you need to relax,” Leo said as we rolled to a stop across from the squat gray building. “And I mean that in the least condescending way possible. Relax and act like nothing's bothering you when we walk in there. I don't want that son of a bitch Owen thinking he's rattled either of us.”

“Well, he hasn't,” I grumbled. “This has nothing to do with Owen and his alarming overuse of hair products.”

“I know you better than that,” Leo said. “And considering you're one of the least rattled people I've ever known, how about you tell me why you've had a thousand-yard stare since you woke me up.”

“Do you even want to be the Grim Reaper?” I demanded. I felt a little bit like I was drunk—the lack of sleep and the dream hangover making me blurt like three glasses of tequila. “I mean, what happened to the two of us just driving off and surviving any way we could? Why mix ourselves up with more assholes who are forever jockeying for a seat on the back bench in Hell? These people think they're living in
Game of Thrones.
What's next, pulling a sword out of a stone?”

“Ava.” Leo stopped just before we went through the salt-streaked glass doors of the grim municipal building that hid the reaper's
little kingdom. “These people are idiots, sure. But do you really think we'd last long out there,
surviving,
knowing what we know?” Leo put his hands on my shoulders. “Ava, we saw what Lilith was planning. We were told by a freakin'
angel
that we were meant to put things right with the reapers. To anyone who likes the status quo like our buddy Owen, there's a giant target painted on us. We don't have a choice. We have to be here.”

“This blows,” I said as he went inside, the door swinging back in my face. “Just for the record.”

Leo was halfway
across the lobby when I followed him in. The floor was scuffed with slush and boot prints, almost the same color as the nicotine-stained walls. Two elevator doors barely showed me my reflection, they were so dented and scratched. The whole place looked like a DMV from the seventies, complete with the crushing hopelessness and the surly receptionist who glared at us over a romance novel. “Yeah?”

Leo leaned down into her face. “Get Owen.”

She sighed, putting a finger in her book and looking him over. “And what is this regarding?”

“Don't be cute with me,” Leo said. “If you could actually do your job you wouldn't be riding a desk, so tell your friend with the cheap suits I'm here before I use your head to press that elevator button.”

“Tell him yourself,” she sighed, rolling her eyes and opening her book again. “He's on three.”

Leo jerked his head at me and I followed him to the elevator, even though it was pretty much the last place on earth I wanted to be.

“This is way too easy,” I murmured as the contraption groaned upward.

“It's always easy right up until it's not,” Leo said. The door rolled back, and I felt my shoulders tense.

Owen met us, flanked by three other suits—one of them was the woman in the red dress I'd seen before. I smiled a little when I saw that her eyes were still rimmed in red.

Her lip curled back from her teeth. “What the hell is
she
doing here?”

“Welcome,” Owen said to Leo. “You look well.” He stuck out his hand, to which Leo shook his head, huffing a short laugh. “Come on,” Owen persisted. “No hard feelings. We had to be sure you were made of the right stuff.” He held out his hand to me, and I looked at it, then him, and narrowed my eyes.

“Listen, if you're really supposed to be the big man around here, far be it from me to stand in your way,” Owen said. “I'm not interested in a turf war.” He straightened his tie. “Between you and me, Gary made this place hell on Earth. He convinced us you didn't exist and he wasn't shy about liquidating folks who didn't hit quotas.”

My instincts said that Owen was full of shit, but Leo cocked his head. “So, what, you wanna be friends now?”

“Far from it,” Owen said. “I want to get back to work. If we're fighting each other, we're not out collecting. I don't want to be sitting on my ass in Minnesota any more than those malcontents who no doubt have been filling your head full of crap about how I'm a bad man.” He raised his arms to encompass the low cement ceilings and the green carpet ground down under decades of shoes, the faded cubicles and the peeling paneling on the office
doors at the far end of the large room. “Let's make this work, if you are who you claim. What do you say?”

“You don't want to know what I'd like to say,” Leo said. “Where's this piece-of-crap Scythe I need to fondle?”

“Direct, aren't you?” Owen smirked. “That serve you well back at Coney Island or wherever you're from?”

“Oh, I see what you're doing.” Leo smiled broadly. “Reminding all your boys here that I used to be human, and therefore I'm not fit to shine your shoes, and you're saying it all nice-nice so I won't put your lights out.” Leo stepped closer to Owen, tapping the center of Owen's chest. “You think just because I used to have a human heart beating in here that I ain't played this game? You think a Jewish kid from Brighton Beach with a junkie mom didn't have somebody just like you trying to make him feel like shit every minute of every day?” Leo smiled, and it wasn't the genuine one he only let out around me. This was the smile everyone else saw, the hollow mask that hid his intentions. “Guys like you used to piss me off, Owen. Made me feel lower than dirt. But you know what I learned? Take away the suit and the fake watch and the hundred-dollar haircut and guys like you are all the same. Human or not, you're all weak. And you all die screaming.”

Leo stepped back, adjusting his tie. “Then it's up to guys like me to mop up your blood and dump your limbs somewhere in Red Hook. Because guys like me, we're not weak. And we don't die easy.”

Owen's mouth was white all the way around, but Leo had finally wiped that Ken Doll smile off his face. “Let's get on with this,” Owen said, his voice tight.

“Great idea,” Leo replied. “Lead the way.”

Owen unlocked one of the office doors, ushering us and his little entourage of creeps inside. He held up his hand, buffed nails under my nose close enough for me to smell the clear polish and moisturizer. It smelled manly, like sandalwood or maybe men's gym shoes. I've never been very good at that stuff. “No dogs,” Owen said, giving me another one of those fake smiles that practically dripped corn syrup. “Sorry, love. You understand.”

“Get your fingers out of my face or you wasted money on that manicure,” I said.

Owen pursed his lips. “You know, Gary would talk about you, but I never believed he'd let any of his bitches be so willful. Guess I was mistaken.”

“Excuse me,” Leo called from inside, forestalling my desire to choke Owen unconscious with his stupid pinstriped tie. “Either she comes in or I'm leaving and you can all sit around jerking each other off for all I care.”

Owen's jaw ticked, and I felt a little bit of corn syrup dripping off my own smile at that. “Move it along,” Owen grunted at me, and slammed the door, almost catching my ass in it.

He repeated the fussy unlocking procedure with a safe taller than I was, black iron bulk taking up a corner of the room. I expected the usual things people keep in safes—cash, guns, porn, big piles of paper that don't mean anything to anyone except their owners—but there was nothing inside except a black case, the kind that bad guys carry bombs around with in spy movies.

Owen removed the case and flipped the locks, looking at Leo across the dented metal desk painted that particular shade of olive
green that thankfully lived and died with disco. “This is the true Grim Reaper's Scythe,” he said. “It's unique because it's the only Scythe that doesn't change depending upon the reaper. If you're the real thing, you'll be able to hold it. If not . . .”

Leo waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah.” He reached out and flipped the case open, pulling back the piece of black velvet covering the blade inside.

I didn't really expect anything impressive, but the Scythe was even less exciting than I'd imagined—the handle was plain, short, and slightly bulbous at the end for grip. The blade itself was flat and triangular, a little shorter than my forearm. More than anything, it looked like a railroad spike gussied up with a handle.

Leo stayed expressionless as always. The man had a poker face that would make a statue weep. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered as he reached for the blade. I was the only one who heard him, and I reached out to grab his arm.

Being a hellhound doesn't really give you special senses—it more fades you out of the world than tunes you in. You disappear from normal people's radar, becoming visible only to other nightmares or the rare sensitive human. I can't sense auras, feel magic,
smell
magic, even, unless I'm the hound. If I had dog senses when I was on two legs I'd drive myself insane within a week. The world is loud, and a lot of it smells terrible.

But when Leo reached for the Scythe, I felt something shift inside me, that shot of chemicals and nausea your brain emits as an earthquake hits or a twister touches down in your trailer park.

I missed pulling Leo back by a split second. When his fingers touched the handle, he was fine, for half a breath. Then he arched backward, jittering like he'd been struck by lightning. The blade
lit up molten, and smoke started to rise from Leo's palm where he gripped it, from his feet where he stood on the carpet, from his chest where the buttons from his shirt touched his skin.