Crossed (53 page)

“Please, no, Greta.” Rachel tucked herself into a fetal position. “Let me go. I’ll do anything.” Her butterfly tattoo glowed and she didn’t wince as it burned her face. “I’m stronger than him. I . . . I . . .”

She had trouble talking once I started kicking her in the stomach. I guess there’s important stuff in there for humans. I heard sirens in the distance. Would Daddy mind if I killed all the police? Probably. With a deep sigh, I held Rachel up by the throat.

“Daddy gave you three options. You ’member? Option one was to go away, which you didn’t. Option two was to stay and be good, which you didn’t. And option three . . .” I turned her around to face Fang.

“Lady Scrytha,” she choked. “I accept.”

“Fang,” I ordered. “Sit.”

Fang’s rear wheels clung to the ground and while he slowly rotated them, he lifted his front end up into the air, headlights an inch from the roof.

“Good boy.” I tossed Rachel against his undercarriage and she stuck there.

“Please,” Rachel bawled. “Lady Scrytha, I accept!”

Rip. Crack. Slurp.
And her bones landed in the trunk. I have to say, her lungs weren’t nearly so pretty as Telly’s.

“Fang, down.”

His front wheels touched the ground again and I plopped into the driver’s seat. “I’m still hungry,” I said wistfully. “I wish she’d been twins.”

Fang replied with “Evil Woman” by Electric Light Orchestra.

“I suppose,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We drove past the police and I rubbed the blood into my skin, surprised at how much it would absorb. With Auntie Shenanigans taken care of, that just left Kitty. Kitty Talbot was still MIA, but I knew he’d be back. Daddy was home and Talbot wouldn’t stay away for long. I had a message for Kitty, a personal matter between me and him. Private.

I flexed my claws, frowning at the chipped nail polish. Uneven nails are trashy. Maybe I should have had Rachel do them for me before I killed her.

“Hindsight,” I murmured. “Hey, what do lungs taste like?”

Fang played “The Chicken Dance” and if my bladder still worked, I’d have peed myself laughing.

Three blocks from the Demon Heart, Talbot conveniently appeared. He opened the passenger door and stepped in while Fang was stopped at a light.

“It would have been cooler if you’d jumped into the car.” Fang rolled forward when the light turned green. “Opening the door was kinda pansy.”

“I’ll do better next time.”

“If I don’t kill you before next time, Kitty Cat.” At the thought of killing Talbot, knowledge queued up in my brain the same way it did when I was hunting Vlads. Just as the data on their kill conditions came to me on the third night of the hunt, I now knew how to kill Talbot. You had to skin him alive first. How funny!

“It takes a lot to kill a Mouser, Greta.”

“Oh, I know. First, I’d have to skin you alive, which would be cool because there’s more than one way to do that, so you wouldn’t know exactly how I was going to do it.”

Talbot froze.

“And then I’d have to tie your neck, hands, and feet with your own intestines, tear out your organs and fill your chest cavity with sand, salt, or sawdust.” We turned the corner and stopped in front of the Demon Heart. “It’s amazing how creative you can get when killing a Mouser. Nowhere near as specific as killing a Vlad.”

“Greta, who told you that?”

“I died of my own accord, walked the Paths of the Dead to the edge of Hell, and then came back again.” I tried to make my voice sound spooky and mysterious. “I know how to kill all sorts of things now. But we don’t have to worry about that, do we, Kitty Cat?”

“We don’t?”

“No, because you’re never going to leave me when I need you, not ever again, and also you’re going to say you’re sorry
and paint my claws and toenails Candy Apple Red. And you’re going to tell me all about cat sex even though Dad told you not to tell me. Aren’t you?”

“Sure, Greta.” Tension. Edge of combat tension eased out of his muscles. He’d coiled to pounce, but so had I. “I’m sorry, where’s the nail polish?”

Fang dropped open the glove box and Talbot fetched the bottle and a small round tub of nail polish remover.

“You want to do this here?” he asked. “It might mess up the upholstery.”

“Fang would just regenerate it.” I kicked off my shoes and put my foot in Talbot’s lap. “Now, tell me all about what happened while you were gone.”

    53    

ERIC:

SHAKING HANDS

Tabitha suddenly turned and slapped me, which answered my question about Rachel’s death undoing the magic memory whammy I’d had done to her.

“You had a three-way with me and my sister on our wedding night and then you had my sister erase it?” She slapped me again. “You let Magbidion show Rachel . . .
Rachel
. . . how to alter a vampire’s memory?”

“Technically, it was a four-way because of the Asian girl.”

Claws sank into my shoulder and Tabitha hurled me at the wall of my bedroom at the Pollux. I spread my arms and legs, letting my impact hit in as wide an area as possible. It hurt like a bitch, but at least I didn’t go through the wall.

“If you hadn’t had her learn—”

“I know.”

Her hands were in my hair and suddenly she was using my noggin for a battering ram.

“What happened in Paris. What happened here. It was all your fault.” Each word acted as some strange punctuation, spacing out each new meeting of my head and my bedroom wall.

“Right again,” I managed to choke out.

“Damn it!” She climbed off my back and I rolled over. She sat on the edge of the bed, crying real tears.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re sorry, you dumbass.” She wiped at her eyes, makeup smearing. “Of course you’re sorry. If you weren’t sorry, I’d know what to do. It would be the last straw, but this . . . What am I supposed to do with you apologizing? And meaning it?!”

I sighed. “Maybe this will help.” I slid to a sitting position. “I’m going after Marilyn. I saw her down there and . . . I can’t let her stay down there, even if I have to destroy her soul. I bought her some time, but it’s just another kind of torture . . . and I can’t just charge in after her—there’s that whole deal with Scrytha.”

“Well obviously.” Tabitha threw her arms up. “It’s you. The rules don’t apply to you. You just do whatever the hell you want and—”

“I’ll understand if you want a divorce,” I said softly. “I mean, I don’t know if Rachel was already controlling you or not, but if you want one, I—”

Tabitha got up, and I winced despite myself because letting your wife beat the shit out of you without taking a swing back at her is harder than you might think—even if you have it coming and know it. “You can have pretty much whatever you want, but . . .”

She put a finger to my lips.

“Wait here.” Tabitha pulled me to my feet.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to Hell in these shoes.” She kissed my cheek and turned to go.

“Like I said, I can’t go down there again, not to fight,” I said, “but it’s nice to know you’re in.” It’s official. I will never understand women. “Let me go run it by Magbidion.”

“Don’t get kidnapped,” Tabitha called after me as the door shut.

“You don’t deserve that one,” said a ghost with a familiar southern drawl. “She went to Hell and back for—”

“No.” I scanned the hallway and saw a figure by the rail at the top of the stairs. “That’s what I did for Greta.” It could have been John Paul, but his clothes were untorn, and his neck was all in one piece. Clean-shaven except for his mustache, the cowboy wore a blue button-up shirt with clean pants. Even his coat was clean and whole. The hat and cigar were the same, though.

“John Paul.” I gaped. “How the hell?”

“That’s fer me to know, son.” He smiled and took a puff off his cigar, the last puff, and this time the cigar burned down. His eyes closed as he let the smoke out through his nostrils, the vapor pooling around his body. “I ain’t one to tell tales what ain’t mine to tell. Let’s jest say you ain’t likely to be borrowin’ that gun o’ mine agin fer quite some time. She ain’t likely to do ya much good, the shape she wound up in, anyhow.”

“So you’re free?” I laughed. “That’s great!”

John Paul looked at the cigar before setting it on the rail as if he hadn’t heard me. “That was one fine cigar.”

“So—”

“Nope,” he cut me off. “That ain’t the word I want to hear. I want ta hear the one you interrupted me with a moment ago.”

“No?”

“That’s the one.” He nodded, touching his neck selfconsciously out of years of habit. “But it ain’t a question. Say it like you mean it.”

“No,” I said halfheartedly.

“Like you mean it, I said,” Courtney barked. “Like Greta is asking you if she can come along on the little vacation to the underworld that you’re plannin’.”

“No!”

“Fine.” His eyes lit from within, and the light was warm and pleasant like sunshine and fresh-cut grass. “That’s jest fine. You remember that word, them two important letters, and you jest keep sayin’ them when you talk ta the lady waitin’ for you downstairs.”

“Lady?” I looked over the rail, saw no one, and glanced back, but he was gone, leaving nothing but his still-smoldering cigar on the railing.

I smelled brimstone and started down. Faint at first, the odor grew as I neared the doors to the theater. Pushing the doors open, I saw a woman in a white dress and started toward the stage.

“Hello, Mr. Courtney.” Lady Scrytha stood center stage, lit by a single spotlight, the jewels studding her twin ram’s horns sending sparkling sprays of color out from her face. Her gown was low cut and she wore it well, like a movie star. Lauren Bacall in
To Have and Have Not
maybe . . . except when Bacall wore high heels, they weren’t cloven.

“No.”

“You can’t say no to a hello.” Her tail twitched, peeking out below the hemline of the dress. “We got off to a bad start earlier, and I’d like to make amends.”

“No.” I turned on my heel, heading up the aisle.

“You and I both know that you’ll be coming for Marilyn.”

I stopped.

“You’ll find a way, but while you’re down below, I’ll wreak havoc above, and when you come back they might all be gone.”

“You don’t want to go there.” I turned back to her, hands clenched into tight fists.

“No, I don’t,” Lady Scrytha agreed. “It’s a waste of effort on both our parts. You see, Mr. Courtney, I finally understand what my father and certain other supernatural beings see in you.”

No.
I tried to say it, but the word didn’t come. My mouth was dry, even of blood.

“Do you have any idea how many prophesies you’ve invalidated, without even meaning to, over the last few decades?”

“No.” See, there it was, I could still say it. It’s an easy word. Two letters.

N + O = NO.

Simple.

“It’s a large number.” She walked off the stage, down an unseen stairway, shocks of fire sparking from her hooves at each step. “You see, I thought you were completely unimportant, because none of the prophesies are about you. You aren’t pivotal in any great battle. You don’t lead an army of light or an army of darkness. But what you do is even more astonishing.”

“I’m good in bed,” I told her, “but I wouldn’t say it was world-altering.”

“Never underestimate the importance of those talents, Mr. Courtney, but those are far from your greatest assets.” She set foot on the aisle, and I winced, but there was no fire; my carpet was safe. “You can change the game. Bend the rules. You can affect the whole.”

“Now, there you’re wrong.” I shook my head. “I’ve never been a very good masseuse. I do okay, but—”

“Heroes are a dime a dozen, Mr. Courtney,” she said impatiently. I noticed the spotlight had continued to follow her under the mezzanine, at an impossible angle, and I searched for the source but couldn’t find it. Magic. “Villains are a penny a pound, but those who can alter the status quo on a fundamental level, redraw the board as it were. Well, those—”

“A whole quarter?”

She gave an exasperated laugh, a sharp exhalation of air. “Far more than that.”

“Well, I ain’t for sale.”

“Obviously, but perhaps.” Her voice went low and husky,
and she reminded me of Bacall all over again when she asked Bogie if he knew how to whistle. “Perhaps you are for rent?”