Black Dog (14 page)

Sure, it was probably just a freak storm. Still, I spun and jogged inside, locking the door behind me.

I went straight to the now-pitch-­black apartment behind the chapel, flicking on the light and shaking Clint's foot. “Wake up.” He started awake, hand reaching for his rifle before he saw it was me.

“What is it?” he said, sitting up and reaching for his boots.

“We need to go,” I said. “All of us. This place isn't a safe haven anymore.”

Clint didn't question, just grabbed his jacket and bag and rifle and followed me into the chapel. He strode right past Leo to the door, turning in irritation when I didn't follow.

“Ava. Now is not the time to be a hero.”

Leo sighed, shifting the blanket tighter around him. The temperature in the chapel had dropped at least twenty degrees in the last five minutes and I heard his teeth chatter.

“Either we take him or you can kiss my ass and any help it might provide you good-­bye,” I snapped.

Clint folded his arms. “This man is directly responsible for you being on a demon's hit list. Give me one good reason we should let him weigh us down.”

Leo levered himself up on one elbow, scrubbing his hand across his eyes. “Because I can get you to an actual safe house.”

 

CHAPTER
16

C
lint wasn't happy helping Leo out to his truck, but once we were inside, windshield wipers swiping furiously at the driving snow, he relaxed a hair.

“I'll call the police from a pay phone, tell them about Colin's body.”

“Are you high?” Leo said. His voice was gravelly from pain. “Cops nowadays have software that can trace a call in thirty seconds. Not to mention voice prints, AFIS, and traffic cameras on every lamppost even in a place like this.” He pointed at a four-­way intersection coming up in the twin cones of the truck's headlights. “Turn right up here.”

“Then what, I leave him there to rot?” Clint gripped the steering wheel hard enough that the plastic creaked.

“Yup,” Leo said. “In the twenty-­five years you've been on the mountain, the government has developed fifty new ways to spy on your every move. Sucks to be Father Colin.”

“He'll be found on Sunday at the latest,” I said, glad I was sitting between the two of them. Clint looked ready to break Leo's jaw. “Are your prints on file anywhere?”

Clint made the turn, the back wheels fishtailing on newly slick pavement. “I don't have fingerprints.”

Leo snorted. “ 'Course you don't.”

I nudged Leo. “Stop it,” I muttered. Leo glared across the cab at Clint but went quiet except to call out turns. I'd have to keep them from killing each other until I could fill Leo in on Clint's real deal.

We were practically the only car on the road, passing a few four-­wheel trucks and snowplows, but otherwise the storm had fallen over the Black Hills like someone had turned off the lights.

Clint stopped the truck across from a three-­story brick town house sandwiched next to a closed-­down movie theater and a convenience store, which was stubbornly still open, even though almost a foot of snow had drifted on the sidewalks in front.

“What is this place?” he said as we stood on the sidewalk in front, Leo leaning heavily on me.

Leo coughed, smiling even though I saw fine droplets of blood on his lips. “A whorehouse.”

Clint didn't say anything, just pointed up the steps. “Get him inside,” he told me. “I'll pull the truck into the alley so no one sees.”

I didn't think hiding one ugly pickup would do much to keep Lilith from spotting us, but I helped Leo up the icy steps and leaned on the bell. After a minute, the door opened and a sliver of face peered through. “Password?”

Leo muttered something in Russian, and the guy opened the door wider. He was old, face like a leather handbag and a luxurious silver ponytail curling over his shoulder. His jeans and work vest looked distinctly out of place in the water-­stained Victorian foyer we stepped into. A canvas camp chair sat just inside the door, next to a folding table holding a coffee cup and an overflowing ashtray. I spied a Winchester Model 30 propped in the corner, oiled to a silvery, snakeskin sheen.

“Evening, sir,” he said. “I'm afraid the lady can't come in. House rules.”

“She's my bodyguard,” Leo said. The guy looked us over, clearly reconsidering his decision to allow us over the threshold. I spent the silence considering how best to drop Leo, relieve the door guy of his shotgun, and avoid anyone getting peppered with buckshot.

“Sorry,” the door guy said again. “Maybe you should go home, pal. Sleep it off. Try again tomorrow. No use wasting your money on whiskey dick.”

“Listen, asshole,” Leo ground out. “Go find Veronica. She knows me.”

“Lots of guys sayin' they know Veronica come in here.” The door guy folded his arms across his lumpy vest. “Not a single one of 'em is telling the truth.”

“Leonid is a lot of things, but not a liar.” The silky voice drifted down the scuffed, sagging staircase, followed closely by its owner, a woman wrapped in a Chinese-­style robe, which showcased both her impressively giant hairdo and impressively giant tits.

The door guy instantly straightened up, looking like he'd just been caught smacking around Veronica's favorite puppy. “You sure about that, Miss Ronnie?”

Veronica glided up to Leo, ignoring me entirely. She was about a head taller than I was, and twice as wide at both the boobs and the ass, the kind of hourglass figure that could not only stop traffic but also cause the pavement to spontaneously combust.

“Look at you,” she said. “Blew in on a storm, as usual.” She removed Leo from my grasp, helping him up the stairs. “Let Mama get a look at you,” she crooned. The door guy and I shared an uncomfortable moment before Clint rang the bell.

“He's with us,” I said. “I apologize in advance for any self-­righ­teous­ness or strange rambling.”

The door guy snorted. “We get more of that than you might think.” He let Clint in and showed us to a set of rooms connected by a shared, cramped bathroom. The place wasn't exactly modern, but it was a hell of a lot less depressing than Father Colin's apartment. Clint showed his appreciation by glaring at the sounds of a girl's screaming orgasm coming through the wall. I didn't know if he was irritated by the sex or by her terrible acting. Maybe both.

“You need anything, I'm downstairs,” the door guy said. “Veronica would want Leonid's friends taken care of.”

“What's your name?” I said. Leo was in good hands—­he clearly knew the girls here well enough to strut like he owned the place. Hell, for all I knew, he
did
own the place.

“Wallace Bear King,” he said.

I held out my hand. “Ava.” Wallace took it and shook it gently. A lot of men did, taking my slender fingers and small palms to mean I was more delicate than most.

“No last name?”

I shook my head. “Haven't needed one lately.”

“I hear that,” Wallace said. He pulled out a drawer in the banged-­up dresser squatting in one corner of the small room and showed me a collection of odds-­and-­ends clothes any self-­respecting hobo would reject. “Take a shower and change. You look like you need it.”

The door shut, and I sat on the bed, listening to the moans, the creaking springs, and the breathing of a house full of too many ­people, every one crammed full of desperation. I tried not to worry about Leo. This was his territory, and I needed to follow his lead. Some cheap whiskey and cheap ass would probably help him a lot more in the long run than me hovering. It wasn't like
I
was going to help him in that department, even if I did wish he was the one in this depressing excuse for a bedroom with me instead of the angel. At least Leo would be more talkative.

Clint stood in the bathroom, staring at me like he was afraid to cross the threshold. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Fine.”

Clint sighed, then stepped back into his own room. “I told you not to bring him.”

“Thanks,” I said as he shut the connecting door. “That's very helpful. Your contempt has solved all my complex feelings about this situation.”

I slumped back on the bed, and when I couldn't take staring at a stain shaped like a Winnebago anymore, I changed out of my clothes into an oversize Timberwolves shirt. The blizzard had made the streetlamps come on even though it was day, bright and golden, and the flimsy, half-­shredded blind didn't do much to keep the glow of the storm out. I wandered down the narrow hall, listening to ten variations on low-­rent porno moans that seemed to be the gold standard in Veronica's place.

The door nearest the stairs opened and I jumped. Leo stepped out, a sheet wrapped around his lower half, and started when he saw me. “Ava. You need something?”

I shook my head. “Just didn't want to be cooped up.” Beyond him in the bedroom I saw Veronica rise from the mattress, her auburn hair spilling down her back in a tidal wave. There was an elaborate tattoo on her back, of a weeping saint whose tears turned into black birds that took flight across both her shoulder blades.

Leo lit one of his noxious cigarettes with a gold lighter. “I figure we'll stay here until the roads are clear, figure out a more permanent solution.”

Veronica wrapped the silk robe loosely around her and sauntered over to Leo, draping an arm over his shoulder. I looked at my feet, dirty, one bruised toenail sprouting off legs that could pass for fence posts. I felt stupid standing there, and ugly. I wasn't used to it, and it soured my stomach and made my throat clench. I wasn't used to being noticed by anyone, period, and Veronica was staring at me with what even the most confident of women would describe as a vagina-­melting glare while she ran her red nails idly over Leo's ink. I could have told her she had nothing to worry about, but I didn't like her cheap nail polish and, I decided, I didn't like her all that much.

“She's a little more heroin junkie than you usually go for, Leo. You get a fetish for Goth girls while you've been away?”

Leo's mouth turned down. “I told you that's not how it is. And just because Ava doesn't have an ass you could park a truck on is no reason to run your mouth.”

Veronica pulled away, her robe falling open to where I could see a fresh handprint in the deep valley of her waist. “All signs point to you enjoying my ass just like it is. Dickhead.” She sauntered down the hall to the bathroom and slammed the door.

I leaned against the wall, tilting my head into the rotting wallpaper and the crumbling plaster beneath it. At least I wouldn't do too much damage to my skull if I beat my brains against it.

I didn't have anything against brothels or the ­people who ran them. I'd spent plenty of time hiding in them, living in them. I tried to avoid actually working, but life didn't always work out like I wanted it to. It wasn't like I pulled down any kind of salary as a hound, unless you counted my continued existence. Being alive didn't exactly cut you checks to pay for food and clothes and a bed that wasn't also a refrigerator box.

Leo went back to the bed and lay down, stubbing out his cigarette in a saucer next to the bed. “She gets a little territorial.”

“She'd be less territorial if she pissed on you,” I said. Leo flashed me a grin.

“I'm not into that. If you wanted me in your bed, why didn't you say something downstairs?”

I sat on the edge of Veronica's mattress. Everything smelled like her, like them. Rose perfume and menthols mixed with sweat and musk. The bedstead was iron, covered in white sheets and shams. Everything in the room was white or pink or gold, satin and overstuffed. I felt like I was inside a very bright, very girlie coffin. “That is not something I need complicating my life right now.”

Leo stretched one arm behind his head, leaning back against the avalanche of pillows. “Not now. But someday. You and I are too much alike not to at least try it on.”

I dropped my gaze from his, noticing the bruises on his back and side had faded to at least five days old, and the swelling in his jaw was gone. “Veronica isn't just a friend,” Leo said. “One of her sidelines is a blood seller.”

I wrinkled my nose. “She looks pretty healthy to be laced with vamp venom.”

“She sells to ­people like me,” Leo said. He held up his free arm so I could inspect it. Woven amid the almost wall-­to-­wall tattoos was a patch of rusty dried blood from an IV needle. “All better,” he said with a slow grin. “A little conjuring put me right as rain.”

Now I knew why he was in such a good mood, and running his fingers up and down the bare, bruised skin of my thigh like he'd paid money for me and not Veronica. “Stop it,” I said, moving his hand. “You're high.” Leo shook his head.

“Just feeling right for the first time in a while. Willing human blood for healing and protection. Unwilling for black magic and cursing. The more you know.” He offered me a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, and this time I took it, dragging deep. The unfiltered Russian tobacco, undoubtedly sprayed with some hideous Soviet-­era pesticide, burned all the way down. It felt about right for the shitty day I'd had so far.

“I'm glad you're all right,” I said in a rush. Leo waved me off.

“Did the conjuring, had some vodka, fucked Veronica's brains out . . . I told you I'd survived worse.”

I stood up. “I was going to say sorry for getting your liver or spleen or whatever busted in the first place, but it looks like Veronica took care of that.”

“Hey.” Leo grabbed my wrist, tilting his head. “Are you
jealous
?”

I glared down at him. “That's rich coming from the guy who's been following me since Las Vegas for no good reason other than he might get laid. For your information, the angel in there has a better chance.” It was a shitty thing to say, but I was in a shitty mood.

Leo dropped his grip on me, his eyes going wide. “Back up. Survivor Man in there is
what
?”

“You heard me,” I said. I
was
tired now and wished I could just curl up in Veronica's mind-­destroying cupcake nightmare of a bed and pass out for a week or so. How had I gone from being the least favorite of Gary's hounds to the most wanted lapdog in all of Hell? Oh yeah, I thought, looking down at Leo. I let a human talk me into going against my fundamental nature, for him to dump me and get obliterated with his favorite whore the minute he got the chance.

“He's a Fallen angel,” I amended. “Lilith and him have some big feud that's been going on lo these thousand years, or something. To be honest, I kind of blanked out on the more biblical aspects of his history lesson.”

“Fuck, Ava.” Leo grabbed an almost empty bottle from the floor and uncapped it, pouring it into a souvenir glass painted with a picture of Mount Rushmore. He killed it in one swallow and refilled the glass in a single smooth motion. “So does Captain America in there have a flaming sword and all that crap?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged. “He just said his name was Azrael and Lilith had it in for him.”