Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal (3 page)

And not by calling the police.

Throwing a leg over the seat, she pumped the engine, tilted the weight so she could free the kickstand … and a second later she hit the gas and roared off, screaming down the drive past the old mansion’s flank, screeching out into the street and powering off.

With no helmet on her head, the wind roared past her ears and mixed with the engine’s din. Her sweatshirt offered little buffer between her skin and the cool morning, and would offer even less protection if she wiped out and hit the pavement.

But she was already dead.

So it wasn’t like she had to worry about pneumonia or dermabrasion.

Besides, who the hell cared?

Jim Heron came awake like he was shot out of a cannon, palming his forty, jacking upright, ready to pull the trig.

No targets. Just faded flowered wallpaper, the bed he was lying in, and two piles of laundry on the floor in the corner, one clean, one dirty.

For a split second, time spaghetti’d on him, no longer a function that was linear, but a fucked-up mess where the past twisted around the present. Was he looking for a rogue operative? A soldier who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? An assassin who’d come for him?

Or was this a morning from the second chapter in his life? Where a demon’s minions were after him? Maybe Devina, herself?

Or was that bitch assuming another mask where she looked like—

The roar of a Harley engine igniting outside his window snapped his head around. Up on his feet, he went over to the window and parted the thin curtains.

Down below, Sissy Barten was on Eddie’s bike, cranking gas into the engine, making that Harley talk. With quick efficiency, she freed up the kickstand and took off, blond hair streaming behind her in the spring sunlight.

His immediate instinct was to go after her, either on one of the other Harleys or by ghosting out and traveling on the wind. And he gave in to the impulse, yanking some jeans on, dragging a Hanes T-shirt over his head. He was shoving his socked feet into his combat boots when he stopped.

And pictured his enemy.

Devina was six feet of brunette sexpot—at least when she slipcovered herself in all that appealing flesh. Underneath the lie? She was a pinup only by
Walking Dead
standards. But in either garb, she had the focus of a laser sight, the smile of a cobra, and the sexual appetite of a frat boy on Molly.

In the last round of this war, he’d spent so much time worrying about Sissy that he’d made the wrong call about which soul was on deck. And lost a crucial win as a result.

He couldn’t afford to do that again.

The Creator had set up the conflict with very clear parameters: seven souls, seven shots for Jim to influence someone at a crossroads. If the person in play picked the righteous path? Angels won. If not, score one for Devina. Winner got all the souls of the quick and dead, and dominion over Heaven and Hell. The loser was game-over’d.

Pretty clear, right? Bullshit. In reality, the war wasn’t playing out along any neat and tidy rules, and the biggest deviation that screwed him where it hurt was that Devina wasn’t supposed to be down on the field. Technically, only he was allowed to interact with the souls—but when your enemy was a liar down to her black and evil core? All bets were off. Throughout the entire game, the demon had totally refused to color within the lines—easy to do when you had no sense of morality, and “fair play” was not in your vocabulary.

Shit … Sissy.

Jim scrubbed his face, and felt like a rope being pulled in two different directions.

As a former black ops soldier for the U.S. government, he was hardly the nurturing type. And yet, from the second he’d found that girl hanging upside down in the demon’s tub, her life ended so she could function as ADT for Devina’s precious mirror? He’d been strung up on her.

The truth was, she was the reason that he was on the verge of losing this whole goddamn war. He’d traded one of his wins to the demon to get her out of Hell. And then he’d been so distracted trying to make sure Sissy didn’t lose her mind in the transition, he’d tanked the last round.

If not for Sissy Barten, he’d be up by two and on the verge of shutting things down in a good way.

Instead, all it was going to take was one more fuck-up and Devina was the HBIC—and the aftermath was going to make any concept of doomsday look like an infomercial for luxury time-shares.

He thought of his dead mother, up in the Manse of Souls, spending the eternity she deserved with the rest of the righteous. He cocked this up? Poof! Sorry, Mom, pack your bags, you’re retiring down south. Waaaaay down south.

All because I got my head scrambled by long blond hair and a pair of blue eyes.

And yet he still wanted to go after Sissy. Just to make sure …

From out of nowhere, he pictured her sitting up in his bed, nothing but a white T-shirt on, her eyes wide as she stared at him.

Her voice had been soft, but strong.
Just kiss me and I’ll go. It’s the only thing I’ll ever ask of you …

He’d fought the seduction and then lied to himself as he’d given in, his brain insisting it was only going to be a kiss when his erection had known otherwise. Clear as day, he saw himself leaning into her, her lips parting for him …

And then everything coming to a screeching halt as Sissy’s voice had said his name—from outside in the hall. Instantly, Devina had emerged from the lie he’d fallen for, the demon replacing the illusion that was in front of him, her black eyes sparkling, her smile pure evil.

The bitch had been out of there a second later:
Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.

Talk about your crossroads. He was at one now. Either he went after Sissy again … or he got with the program and did his job.

Jim finished tying up his boots and headed for the door. Indecisiveness had never been a problem with him before—any more than plastic explosives would take a moment to introspect before going off. And yet, when he walked into the kitchen and saw his remaining wingman cracking eggs over a bowl at the counter, he had no fucking clue what he was going to do.

Adrian put his palm out to cut any questioning. “No, I don’t know where she went.”

“It’s all right.”

Ad’s eyes narrowed. “Lemme guess—you’re going after her.”

Jim felt a pull toward that damn door that was nearly irresistible. The idea that Sissy was out in the world by herself, hurting and confused—it was enough to make his heart go snare drum on him.

Curling his hands into a pair of fists, he turned to the table. Went over. Sat his ass down. “We need to talk.”

Adrian looked up to the ceiling as if searching for strength. “You mind if I have breakfast first? I hate hearing bad news on an empty stomach.”

Rage was the octane in her veins as Sissy shot through the streets of suburban Caldwell, jerking the Harley into lefts and rights, blowing through stoplights and intersections, flying past a hospital, some strip malls, a school …

Nothing really registered. Not the SUV she cut off or the delivery truck she nearly crashed into. Not the pedestrians that jumped back or the stray black cat that skipped across her lane.

All she could think about were flames … the ones she had started days ago in the mansion’s parlor. Red, orange, yellow, licking out of the fireplace, fueled by the dusty sheets she had ripped off the furniture and shoved into the oven she’d created. Heat on her face, singeing her eyebrows and lashes, making her pores sting, echoes of the flickering light spotting up her vision. Hunger in her gut for more, more, more …

Jim had been the one to stop her before things had gotten completely out of control—

In the corner of her eye, a pattern registered, one that was part of the real world, not the stuff in her mind.

It was a fence. A ten-foot-high, glossy black wrought-iron fence.

Beyond which were graves.

The Pine Grove Cemetery.

How had she ended up in this part of town? Then again, if you didn’t have a destination, a tank of gas and a machine could take you somewhere. Didn’t mean you had to go inside, however.

And she really meant to continue on by the place—it just was not the way the Harley happened to go. The gates were open because it was after eight, and as she zoomed through them, her stomach went on the grind.

The landscape of blocky gray markers, and tombs that looked like banks, and white marble statues of angels and crosses made her think of that tattoo on Jim’s back, the one of the Grim Reaper.

And this, naturally, took her right back to the fingernail scratches on his chest.

She was still cursing as she rounded a fat turn, ascended a brief hill … and found herself at her own grave site. Hitting the brakes, she was surprised that she’d managed to make it to the right place. The cemetery was a maze of all-the-same and she had been here only once before.

When her remains had been sunk beneath the surface.

Funny, she’d always had a fear of being buried alive, those Edgar Allan Poe–era stories of people scratching at the insides of their coffins scaring the crap out of her. Now? Turned out that hadn’t been worth worrying about. She’d have done herself more of a favor not to have made that ice cream run to Hannaford’s.

Killing the engine, she dismounted and walked across the asphalt strip. The scratchy spring grass was a bright fresh green, and crocuses and tulips were pushing up to the sun, their pale shoots searching and finding warmth, their flowers about to come out and see the world.

She was careful not to step on them as she made her way over to the grave marker that had her name and dates on it.

The groundskeeping staff had done a pretty crappy job with the rolls of grass over all that loose dirt, the lengths a little cockeyed, one of them trimmed too short.

She pictured her funeral mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her mother crying. Her sister. Her father. She saw her artwork arranged in the narthex … and that groundskeeper who had been so kind to her … and all the people, young and old, who had come to pay their respects.

Abruptly, it was hard to breathe.

None of them deserved this destiny of hers.

And the longer she stood over her own grave, the more she became convinced that virtue was so overrated. If she hadn’t been a virgin, none of this would have happened. Instead, she’d be gearing up for finals right now and in the studio with her favorite art teacher, Ms. Douglass. She probably should have just given it up to Bobby Carne when she’d been a junior in high school. Even though he’d had octopus arms and a tongue like a dripping sponge …

From out of nowhere, another image of Jim popped up, this time from when she’d knocked on his door the morning before and he’d scrambled to open it. His hair had been a mess and he’d been half-dressed, nothing but loose sweats hanging off the curves of those pelvic bones. He’d looked at her … in a way he hadn’t before.

If she didn’t know better, she’d swear it was the way a man looked at a woman when he—

“Okay, you need to stop,” she said out loud.

God, she really couldn’t believe he had a girlfriend in the middle of all this. Or that she cared one way or the other.

What she needed to get focused on was freeing the others who were like her, those who didn’t belong down below, the poor fools who had been sacrificed and claimed because of their virtue.

On this fine spring morning, she needed to put the crazy anger aside, go back to that house, and sit down with that ancient book Adrian had given her. She had to find a way, a loophole, some wiggle room where she could right the wrong that had ruined her own life as best she could for the others like her …

It was hard to say how long she had been standing there when she realized she wasn’t alone: Just as the iron fencing had gradually gotten through to her, so too did the presence that was in the shadows under the cedar trees over on the left.

A woman. With long brunette hair and tight black clothes. And she was looking right at Sissy as if waiting to get noticed.

Talk about out of place. She was like some model at a fashion shoot, and as she started to come over, she somehow managed to walk across the grass without her stillies sinking into the earth and tripping her up. In fact, it was as if she were floating…?

Sissy’s instincts started to roar, her mind making connections and conclusions that were horrific—this was no stranger, and the female, or whatever she actually was, was definitely not out of place in a cemetery.

Run!
an inner voice screamed.
Run—get out of here now!

Except no. She wasn’t turning away; she wasn’t giving in. She was standing her ground over the symbol of why she needed to fight.

“So you know who I am,” the demon said as she got within earshot.

“You look different. But yes.”

The demon stopped on the other side of the grave marker, her black eyes glinting. “You look just the same.”

The dry tone indicated that that was not a compliment. Then again, you didn’t get to be the biggest source of evil in the world because you were a stand-up gal.