Black Dog (8 page)

The daggers I'd glimpsed were pretty intricate and surrounded by red blood droplets, as if the ink had actually pierced him. Shirt off, I could see where he got his strength—­he was all muscle on his thin frame, the kind of body designed by genetics for inflicting damage.

Leo put his shirt back on and buttoned it, not meeting my eyes. “Are you going to ask me what they mean? Because we could be here for a while.”

“They mean the same thing as me having fangs and claws does,” I said. “ ‘Stay the fuck out of my way.' ”

Leo poured the last of the gasoline-­smelling vodka into a dirty glass and drank it. “Close enough.”

“You really don't have to stick with me,” I said. “You don't owe me anything.” Truthfully, I wanted Leo to stay more than I wanted anything, except maybe to have never met Lilith. But he wasn't going to, so why prolong things?

“I told you, it's not about owing,” Leo said. “We're mutually beneficial. You could use a hand and I could use someone who can keep a deadhead off my ass if my father catches up to us.”

I nodded. “Okay. But if you're gone when I get back with burgers, I won't hold it against you.”

Leo shook his head. “Thieves like me believe in loyalty, Ava. I get that you probably haven't had a lot of that, but I'm not going to dump you after all this.”

I backed out of the room and walked out to the county road without saying anything else. Leo was right. I'd never had somebody stick around when things weren't going their way. I'd sure as fuck never had my loyalty repaid by anything but more orders at best, and a knife in my back at worst.

I'd died because I was loyal. Loyalty was for stupid girls and brainless thugs, and I wasn't either of those things anymore.

Lilith had me by the throat, so I'd go to Wyoming. I'd do what she asked, but Gary was gone—­Lilith showing up in his place proved it for my purposes—­and as far as I was concerned my contract was void. Clint Hicks was my last roadblock, and I decided then that when I did find him, pet shifters or no, Clint Hicks was going to be one sorry son of a bitch for getting in my way.

 

CHAPTER
11

W
e crept out of the motel room predawn, before day-­shift maids started their rounds. I figured not giving a fuck was a prerequisite for employment in a place like this, but Leo insisted.

“My father has a lot of ­people willing to do a lot of things,” he said, shrugging back into his suit jacket. “Right now, his one and only priority is finding me and feeding me my own nuts. The fewer ­people see us, the better.”

“Fine.” I shrugged. My arm still twinged with every motion. I hadn't slept much, waking every few minutes whenever someone in the walkway stumbled to the ice machine or one of the happy customers in the upstairs room moaned.

Leo patted himself down for his crushed pack of Russian cigarettes and a lighter, sticking a smoke between his lips. He lit it while we surveyed the parking lot. “That one.” He pointed at an orange Sprint that was more rust than paint.

I shook my head. The Sprint had left a glossy puddle on the pavement under the transmission, sported expired tags, and probably gulped gas like an end-­stage drunk tackling a box of Franzia. “We wouldn't get fifty miles in that piece of shit,” I said. Leo exhaled a cloud of rank blue smoke in frustration.

“We need something old, without an onboard computer,” he muttered. “Don't need the electronics playing up if we tangle with more witches.”

I crossed the lot to the far corner, examining an early seventies Volvo wagon parked underneath the one scrawny pine at the edge of the pavement. The back windows were piled with cardboard boxes and stuffed suitcases, a Michigan plate riding below the fat chrome bumper and bug-­eyed headlights. It was clean, though, and had a current inspection sticker. Based on the number of stuffed animals and ultraviolent zombie video games I could see stacked in the back, I was guessing college students too poor or dumb to stay somewhere better.

I whistled at Leo, who wrinkled his nose at the sight of the car. “That thing? The Joad family will be coming back any second to claim it.”

I ignored him, popping the driver's side lock and fishing out the wires from beneath the dash. I also popped the lift gate and gestured to Leo. “Leave their crap, will you?”

He sighed, grinding out his cigarette on the fender. “You kidding me?”

“Leo, they're just kids,” I said. “We're stealing their car. We don't need their entire dorm room.”

Grumbling, he went to the back and started tossing out boxes. “You know, for somebody in your line of work, you're pretty fucking saintly.”

He slammed the back as I started the motor. It turned right over, grumbling in the snapping cold of the high desert. Leo slid into the passenger seat. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

I put the Volvo in gear and drove for a ­couple of hours until we hit a faded truck stop on I-­80, just over the Utah border near the singularly unremarkable town of Wendover. Leo had dozed off, and I nudged him awake.

“You better change your clothes,” I said. His suit was looking crusty, never mind totally out of place in the land of padded vests, trucker hats, and Mormons decked out in mom jeans. I fished through one of the two remaining overstuffed suitcases on the backseat, pulling out a too-­big peasant blouse to cover up the stitches in my arm. I found a fresh pair of jeans and socks while I was at it. The girl whose car this was had feet the size of Godzilla's, but the rest of her was close enough. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had new clothes, but all my spares were gone, along with my bike.

I checked myself out in the rearview mirror. I was a mess—­greasy, pale, undereye circles that would do a junkie proud. No help for it. I'd have to make the crackhead look work for me.

Leo wriggled free of his bloodstained suit pants and coat, and I handed him a pair of baggy, frayed jeans with blue and red paint staining the knees and a faded Psychedelic Furs shirt. His boxers were white, little red and black card suits all over them. In spite of everything that had happened, I smiled a little. Enough bad stuff happens in a short enough time and you just go numb, things glossing over. If it wasn't for the throbbing, infected gash in my arm, I'd say this day wasn't going half bad.

I wriggled down my own bloodstained, filthy jeans, shooting Leo a glare. “Do you mind?”

He shrugged, a smile tugging at his lips in turn. “So you're allowed to ogle me but not the other way around?”

“Don't get excited,” I muttered, balling up my jeans and shoving them under the seat. I yanked off the shirt Leo had lent me and thrust it back at him. “Humping you is less than the last thing on my mind right now.”

Leo raised one eyebrow as he accepted the shirt. “Good to know.” Cool morning air kissed the V of skin above my bra as he stared. I glared at him as I pulled the blouse over my head and zipped up the girl's worn-­out hippie jeans. They slid down over my hip bones, barely clinging to my ass. Thieves couldn't be choosers. Leo grinned at me.

“You look cute. Like you're headed to the Lilith Fair.”

“Fuck off,” I growled, and shoved my car door open.

Leo climbed out after me, zipping up the pot-­scented UNLV hoodie he'd found under the passenger seat, and ambled into the truck stop. Aside from the neck tattoos and the hit man stare, he could have been any other good-­looking tourist stopping for coffee and a piss on his way to somewhere more interesting.

I gathered up all the cash we had left and followed him, grabbing a fresh pair of underwear and a bra from the little shop between the bleating arcade and the fast-­food restaurant. I paid for a shower, bought some shampoo and soap from the dispenser, and stripped out of my stolen outfit. The tiles were slimy under my feet, but the shower was a strong jet, and I stood under it for a long time, letting the water droplets pound on the rooftop of my skull.

Clean for what felt like the first time in months, I felt some of the resolve to find and fuck up Clint Hicks as quickly as possible slipping away. I was only alive because Lilith thought I was useful, but once I found Hicks, then what?

Then I'd just be a stray dog, and a lot less useful.

I soaped my hair twice and let the water run clear, midnight strands sticking to my neck and shoulders like seaweed.

Who was to say I could even track down this Hicks? Gary hadn't been able to find him when he'd skipped out. Wilson had tracked him down and come back with half a face. Maybe this was just Lilith's little fuck you before she sent me to my death, an extra half twist of the knife in a wound that was already fatal.

I got out of the shower stall, standing now in a world of steam, and toweled off, putting my “new” clothes back on. Everything was baggy on me. I was on the small side to begin with and I hadn't eaten in a while. My stomach burbled in response, and I wished I hadn't spent all of our cash on being clean. Who was I trying to impress, anyway? A gangster who stashed dead bodies in fifty-­gallon drums for a living?

I found Leo sitting on the hood of the Volvo, a wrapped breakfast burrito next to him letting off steam. He was paging through Gary's ledger, one side of his lower lip sucked into his mouth, teeth whiter than bleached bone pressing into the flesh until it turned crimson with concentration.

“Thought you'd be hungry,” he greeted me, not looking up from the page.

I unwrapped the burrito and shoved it in my mouth, pointing down at the Hellspawn scrawl against the ledger's pages. “You can read that?” A piece of jalapeño tumbled down my chin and I swallowed, embarrassed. You'd think after a century I'd have learned a few social graces, even if I did spend a good portion of it running on four legs.

“Yeah,” Leo said. “It's not impossible for humans to understand Hellspawn writing. I mean, ­people spend all their free time learning Klingon, so why not this?”

I remembered a warlock in Arizona, the kind who spells
magic
with a
K,
real wannabe Ordo Templi Orientis fanboy, who came at me with some kind of replica
Star Trek
weapon when I showed up on the doorstep of his shitty condo outside Scottsdale.

Once he'd stabbed me with it in the shoulder and it had no discernible effect, the screaming started.

Leo snorted in amusement when I relayed the whole sad story, rifling the pages of the ledger. “Here it is—­Louis Turnblatt, December fourth, 1992. Payment for . . .” He raised one thin eyebrow at the page. “Sexual potency and control over the lusts of others.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Some guys will literally sell their soul for magical roofies.”

“I'm beginning to understand why your boss was so cranky,” Leo muttered. He flipped the pages. “Your name is on a lot of these.”

I crumpled the burrito wrapper in my fist, turning it into a hard little rock of paper and grease. “I was one of his best.”

Leo shut the book. “Nothing before 1920, I noticed.”

I fixed him with a stare. I needed to set some clear boundaries with this guy before he started thinking we were friends, or even friendly, and then put up an electrified fence around them. “Just because I still remember what it was like to be human doesn't mean we're doing group therapy, Leo.”

I opened the car door. “I don't care about anything before the last few days, and neither should you.”

His face drooped, and I almost felt bad for a second before I reminded myself this was a guy who'd tied me to a chair and burned me with the exact same expression on his face.

“Suit yourself,” he said, sitting beside me. “Are you at least interested in hearing what it says about Clint Hicks?”

I shrugged, pulling back onto the highway. “Other than that he has a stupid name from a cowboy movie?”

“His last address is in here,” Leo said. “Although what are the odds of him still hanging around?”

“If it's all we got,” I said. Whether he was part of a ploy to get me killed for good or not, at this very moment, Clint Hicks was the only thing keeping me alive. While most days I didn't exactly greet my continued existence with a parade, things felt different now. It was like I was unmoored, tossed from one wave to another on a stormy sea. All of Gary's tethers had been sliced, emphatically.

I should feel lucky—­I was probably the only sorry hound in existence to cheat Death twice over. But I just felt a shiver on the back of my neck, from more than the wet hair plastered there. Why me? I was barely fit for one second chance, never mind two.

Leo turned on the radio, his thin fingers with their dark ink marks spinning the dial back and forth until he tuned in something other than static. Normally I would have objected to twangy guitars and twangier singers, but I let Merle Haggard's nasally whine fill up the car, glad I didn't have to talk.

Leo sang along softly under his breath, and I thought that if the rest of the trip to Wyoming went like this, I might actually exit the car with my sanity intact.

“See if there's a map in here,” I told Leo. He'd ditched his cell phone back at the Mushroom Cloud and I had never had one in the first place. GPS wasn't in the college kids' budget, but there was a shiny new road atlas in the door compartment.

Leo read the map for a while, scribbling down turns in the margin, and I tried again to shake off that cold feeling, like Death had passed me by, but in doing so, he'd turned around and touched me on the shoulder.

“This place is a hike,” Leo said at last. “Almost in South Dakota. Maybe Clint Hicks figures he'll stay hidden in the Black Hills long enough, your boss gets bored or forgets and he'll be free.”

I snorted. The idea of Gary ever forgetting or forgiving was not one based in reality. “I don't think this Hicks is that stupid.”

Leo sighed. “Me either.” After another mile marker he put the seat back, lowering his head. “I just hope he's not too pissed off when we find him.”

I gripped the wheel. “I guess we'll find out.”