Crossed (52 page)

“You should have seen him in his prime,” she countered, her voice devilish and pleasant. “He was a marvel to behold. His phallus alone—”

“Whoa!” I blinked away the image. “TMI.”

“So
you
are Eric Courtney.” She appraised me with a long slow look.

“And you’re the daughter of Scrythax.”

“My name is Scrytha,” she corrected. “Lady Scrytha—”

“Geez,” said Greta, “somebody would have rather had a boy. Scrytha, huh? Ouch.”

Scrytha didn’t bat an eyelash, didn’t even appear to have them, now that I was looking more closely. “Also the mother of J’iliol’lth and J’hon’byg’butte,” Scrytha continued. “You may remember them?”

“I fed them both to Talbot.” There was no point in lying. “One in Void City and the other in El Segundo.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Still, I mean, no offense, but they were pretty ugly little spuds when it came down to it.”

Greta laughed and so did Marilyn. Scrytha’s expression remained icy.

“Sorry,” I said with a shrug, “I can’t help myself.”

“No.” Scrytha put a hand on Marilyn’s shoulder. “You can help yourself. You can’t help her.”

I ground my teeth together.

“Did you know he attempted to replace you,” Scrytha asked Marilyn, “with that dark-haired stripper, Tabitha? The night after, his wedding ring melted off his finger. The power of Love.” Mocking laughter rose in her throat and assaulted us.

Marilyn looked away.

“The only way they could get it to stay on his finger was to replace it with the wedding ring you bought for him.” More laughter. She was enjoying this. I reached into my pocket and closed my hand around Marilyn’s engagement ring and wedding band. I would have given anything to put the rings on Marilyn’s fingers, to travel back in time to 1965 and live it all over again. To stake vampire Roger and stay human, fuck the Courtney curse, and be a normal dysfunctional married couple. I’d have been suspicious of Marilyn because she’d cheated on me with Roger, and it would have driven a wedge between us.

We’d have gotten divorced or maybe we’d have learned to deal with it and opened a biker bar. I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted a do-over. Though I’d be in my sixties, I’d still break down the door of Greta’s foster parents’ beach house and rescue her, too, or maybe we’d even manage to adopt her early on and save her the mental trauma altogether. If I lived long enough, I’d even show up on Tabitha’s doorstep and give them an early warning about Rachel’s leukemia . . . they’d have plenty of time to do something about it. And if the world ended in El Segundo because I wasn’t there to stop it? So what, then?

“Oh, I smell wishes,” Scrytha said with gusto. “How cute. How human.”

“I’m not wishing anything.” And then I was the uber vamp, Marilyn’s rings still gripped in my massive fist. Behind me, I heard the roar of an engine and Fang careened down the red
dirt road, kicking into a slide and coming to a halt against the fence surrounding Hell. How the fuck? I would have asked Fang how he got down here, but it’s not like he could answer. My heart stopped beating, skin cooling, breath still. “You can want a thing without wishing. It’s kind of a hopeless hope.”

“Hope is abandoned here, Eric.” Scrytha leaned forward, eye to eye with me. “Haven’t you read our sign?”

She removed Marilyn’s jacket. “Would you like a demonstration?” Marilyn fought her, but human strength versus a demon’s is useless. “Shall I have her raped before your eyes?”

“Do it,” I said. “Harm her in any way and I will storm the gates of Hell. I will bring them crashing down and I will kill you. It’s a promise.” I don’t make promises, but my ire was up. “I will spend the rest of my existence destroying you and your kind. You will die by tooth, by claw, by soul sucking, by maw of Mouser, or screaming underneath my car as the flesh is ripped from whatever you have in place of bones. I’ll even break out the magic sword I have in the freezer back home and cleave you if I have to. I will not stop. Do you”—I hit the barrier—“under”—Fang’s engine revved high, wheels spinning in place—“fucking”—smoke escaped my fist as the rings seared my skin—“stand me?”

Crack.

Shards of Hell glass tumbled to the hardened lava floor where Marilyn and Scrytha stood, and my fist rested cleanly against Scrytha’s ample bosom. I hadn’t expected Scrytha to grin in response, but grin she did, and her grin, like her father’s, overstretched the natural boundaries of her face, exposing muscle, bone, and ligament.

“So that’s why he covets you,” Scrytha said gleefully, eyes sparkling. “Satan’s beard! How remarkable. I won’t harm her or allow her to be harmed. Hell is where she belongs, but perhaps being away from you, perhaps loneliness is punishment
enough. No, not quite. I wouldn’t get past Fair Standards and Equitability with that one, but perhaps . . . Yes . . . Yes, that would do it.”

“What?”

“I’ll put her in a house, a replica of the one the two of you had purchased. She will have groceries delivered to her and have to cook her own meals. She’ll have books and CDs, music, but in every room there will be a screen encompassing an entire wall upon which the volume may be turned down, but never off, and on that screen will be you, whatever or whomever you’re doing—you. It echoes more to the Machiavellian and the ironic, but I can sell it.”

“Why so helpful?” I asked, not moving. “Because I broke the glass?”

“In exchange for your promise not to enter Hell. We can war in the physical world, but you do not get to chase us here.”

“Really?”

“Oh, we would win, that is certain, but if you set foot in Hell, well . . . your heart weighed less than a feather for a reason. You’ve been rewarded. No hell may hold you or even accept you. If you came here, it would cause . . . problems. I’ll deal with the paperwork if I must, but it would be an exceedingly large amount, so I’d rather you considered my offer.”

Paperwork, huh?

“Can you put up with that?” The question was to Marilyn.

“Of course I can, but Eric—”

“Done then.” A crowd was gathering on the other side of the barrier, demons of all shapes and sizes, and the most frightening of all a human-looking demon with empty eyes and a bound journal in which he wrote with a bone quill in blood he drew by stabbing the nib into his forearm as he wrote. “And Marilyn gets to step outside and give me a hug good-bye.”

Scrytha looked at the wizened little man with his quill and
bushy eyebrows. “Does Fair Standards and Equitability find it acceptable?”

The little man nodded, bone quill scratching red lines in his notebook.

“Done.”

“Promise to adhere to the agreement,” Scrytha said.

“I promise.”

Marilyn stepped beyond the gates of Hell through an open archway in the wall as if it had always been there. I fought the urge to grab her and run away with her. It wouldn’t have worked, but not to even try . . .

I turned human as I hugged her, and it felt natural again to be in that form. She was warm and I was cold. I held her hand in mine and slipped the rings on her finger, wedding band first, then engagement ring.

“I’ll find a way to get you back,” I whispered.

“Damn it, Eric.” She wiped away a tear. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’ll find a way,” I said as she was drawn back through the archway, before I could kiss her or do anything else. “I promise.”

As I said the words, a Klaxon called, alarm bells rang, and other noises like elephants farting to death through didgeridoos, growling mice, and trampled zebra split the air.

Scrytha spat on the ground. “Bastard.”

“What’d I break?”

Greta covered her ears. “Too loud!”

“There’s a hope in Hell.” Scrytha took Marilyn by the wrist and held her hand up for inspection. “It’s none of your concern. Depart as promised.”

Greta and I climbed into Fang, and before I could ask if anyone knew how to get out of here, we pulled away. Fang knew. I tucked Percy’s glasses in the glove box and closed my eyes, in case I wasn’t supposed to look back, and held Greta’s hand to make sure she didn’t go anywhere.

“How are you going to rescue Old Mom?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I had no idea. But maybe Percy would . . . or Magbidion.

“When we get you back to your body, I want you to do me a favor. Okay?”

“Anything, Dad.”

I explained the favor and, as I suspected, Greta was happy to comply.

    52    

GRETA:

STUPID PET TRICKS

New Mom, Beatrice, and Auntie Shenanigans got home from Gay Paree the next night, but they didn’t look too happy. Dad and I met them at the airport, and Daddy left me in charge of Auntie while he, New Mom, and Beatrice went off in a taxi to screw or unpack or whatever they do when I’m not around. Auntie Rachel’s eyes had bags under them.

“Are you resisting Dad?” I asked.

“Fuck you, cunt rag,” Rachel snapped.

“Be nice,” I ordered.

“Yes.” She kicked the concrete wall of the airport parking deck. “Ma’am.”

“Aw.” I pinched her cheeks. “You don’t have to call me ma’am. Magical Pretty Lady Greta will do.”

“What?”

“Magical”—I stepped over to her in a wink of speed—“Pretty”—spread her legs into a split—“Lady”—dug my claws into her thighs and buttocks for balance and lifted her over my head, banging her head against the ceiling of the deck—“Greta”—and bit into her femoral artery. She screamed and
it surprised me when the security guard, doing his rounds, opened fire. I dropped Rachel as the shots pelted my arms and torso. I turned to face him, blood dripping from my fangs and the scent of Rachel’s private parts on my cheek.

“Holy shit,” he babbled into his walkie-talkie. “I’ve got a fucking vampire up here . . . a real one!”

“So you make me pay a fang fee,” I shouted. “You don’t get to shoot me.”

Fang clipped the guard from behind, slurped him up, and rolled back into the parking spot in which Dad had left him.

“Did you see that, Auntie Shenanigans?”

“Yes, Magical Pretty Lady Greta.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Eric said he knocked down the Highland Towers and killed Lord Phillip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The Veil of Scrythax was underneath it in a vault. My guess is, Eric broke the veil. And when he killed Lord Phillip, all the spells Phillip used to control the police and city security personnel . . . went away.”

“Cool!”

I grabbed her leg and dragged her across the deck to Fang, leaving road rash on her butt and part of her left arm. “Will you please stop?” Her eyes ran with tears. “Eric won’t let me use any magic, so you might be enjoying this, but it hurts.”

“I’m the boss, applesauce.” I broke her left tibia and fibula with a twist of the wrist and she howled in pain. Then I snapped her femur over my knee, gouging my claws into her belly button to shock her awake when she passed out.

“Daddy told me what happened to me was your fault,” I hissed at her. “He said you made a deal with Winter and then fucked over all of us.”

“Be mad at Winter then.” Rachel grabbed at her leg, trying
to do something to help the pain as the break began to heal crooked. “He—”

“Winter’s a vampire.” I pulled her femur straight, let it set a second, then did my best with the lower bones. “Vampires do that kind of thing. Besides, he sang my favorite songs to apologize. In advance. And he’s prettier than you are.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What can I do to make it better?”

I removed her piercings one by one, the quick way, and I think I know which hurt the most. Did touching her there to get at it make me a lesbian?

Nah.

She shook at my feet and another guard stepped off the elevator. “She’s hurt,” I shouted. “That other guard shot her and ran off.” His confusion lasted a few seconds, more than enough time for me to make it across the deck and tear his legs off. Blood dripped from my hands and down my chest as I walked casually back across the deck.

“Is that enough?” she asked. “Will Eric be happy now?”

“Oh.” I kissed her on the forehead, leaving security guard juice there when I pulled away. “Poor Auntie Shenanigans. Daddy didn’t say to punish you; he said to kill you. I think he was afraid you’d talk him out of it.” Her little finger came off easily at the joint and I stuck it in the side of my mouth like a cigar. “He didn’t say how fast, though.”