The Lost (9 page)

Scratch studied Brunk's fingernails. “We stay amused.”

“Yet you still find time to track down the Lost.”

“You're talking about Jeap Yang, yes? About five-eight. Terrible hair-stylist. In love with the vein in his left forearm?”

Grif just stared.

Flaring its eyes, Scratch stared back. “What? He was standing on the corner of life and death with his thumb sticking out. I just offered him a lift.”

“That's a crock.” Straightening, Grif shoved his hands into his pockets. “You've been targeting the Lost and confused.”

Scratch smirked. “Gonna go tell Daddy?”

“I don't understand,” Kit interrupted, shaking her head. “Why would you hurt an innocent soul? One that's not even destined for the Eternal Forest?”

“Why would I—?” Baffled, Scratch tilted its head at Grif, and pointed as if to say,
Get a load of her
. But without waiting for a response, it turned back to Kit. “Because I can. Because I like it. Because I'm
bored
with blighted souls, unfit for Paradise, and each with a narcissistic psychosis that makes them think their predilections are the most original and devious and evil.”

It rolled Brunk's eyes, first the left, then the right. “And I'm tired of torturing the terrible souls who deserve every heinous thing they have coming to them. I want something new and fresh and novel. I want those who are tottering right on the edge of moral depravity, and who will tip my way given just one little poke. I
want
the Lost. Better yet, I want something pure that I can
make
Lost.”

It stared at Grif in bald challenge, but Grif just shook his head. “Too late, Scratch. I'm a Centurion, both angelic and human. You'll never touch me.”

“Who said anything about you?” And it turned to Kit, gaze like glue, sticking where it shouldn't. “But I'd love a chance to climb inside you, Kitty-Cat.”

“Sit back, old boy,” Grif said, his voice a low growl.

At the same time, Kit whispered, “Don't call me that.”

Scratch ignored them both, leaning forward. Brunk's top lip elongated into a thin sneer. “I'll call you what I like, and I'll take what I want. You think I'm merely bound to those pitiful humans who invite chaos into their lives through addiction? Think again! I
feed,
as you put it, on the emotions that prompt those addictions. Drugs and alcohol are nice little hors d'oeuvres, but rage and envy and doubt are the entrées I savor most.
That's
when the Chosen—any of you!—are truly possessed. And that's when I'm at my fucking best.”

A whimper, near to a keen, escaped Kit's throat as she edged back again, and she looked up, waiting for Grif to contradict Scratch's words. Grif just shook his head. He knew a lot, but he didn't know this.

“The damned belong to me,” Scratch continued, seeing it had them both rattled. “That's not in question. And the Lost are just the damned-in-training, though they don't know it. But you,
Kitty-Cat
? You, with your bright soul and open heart?” Phrase and lips twisted around each other like invading roots. “You are just some choice bit of beauty that I have not yet broken.”

Grif's hands were around Brunk's neck before anyone took a breath. He squeezed, and heard branches snapping in the man's trachea.

“Uh, uh, uh,” Scratch chided, even as its eyes rolled back in Brunk's head. “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”

Growling, Grif released Brunk's throat. It was right. Hurting Brunk wouldn't let him touch the spirit inside. “You will never touch her, hear me?”

“That's right,” Scratch said, clearing its throat. “Because I don't want to touch her. I want to possess her.”

“What's going on here?” Dennis was back, but, unsurprisingly, none of them had seen him arrive.

“Ah,” Scratch said, glancing down as it pulled a pair of shades from Brunk's shirt pocket, shielding the stardust in its eyes from Dennis. It didn't want the human to interfere, but it wasn't quite done yet, either. “Finally. My drink.”

It held out Brunk's hand, but Grif snatched the shot glass up as soon as Dennis set it down. Scratch's attention immediately swerved to Grif as it lowered Brunk's chin. “Give it.”

“No.”

It tilted Brunk's head. “What? A trade?”

Grif inclined his head. “The drink for the others.”

“You mean, the Lost. Like Jeap?”

Grif nodded once. Scratch had inhabited Jeap's body, so it not only knew the boy's thoughts and feelings, it possessed his knowledge as well. That's how it'd located Brunk, who ran in the same crowd. If Scratch was hunting Lost, he'd know whom else Jeap was hanging with.

“Two more,” Scratch said, confirming his thoughts.

“What the hell is he talking about?” Dennis asked.

Scratch ignored him. “I want the drink first.”

Grif jerked his head. “I don't think you need another drink, after all.”

“Withholding a man's addictions from him isn't an effective deterrent,” it snapped, slamming palms on the table before composing Brunk's features into false stoicism. “Take it from a seasoned sinner, that's no way to give up a vice.”

“Then how?” Dennis asked, still thinking he was talking to Brunk. He missed the cold calculation in the responding smile. Grif did not.

“Well, first you have to pick a specific sin. You must commit yourself to it fully. Then”—it paused for a beat—“you gotta throw yourself into it.”

And Brunk's body was suddenly hurtling toward Kit, reaching for her shoulders. She squealed, but she'd been taken by surprise and was slow. Meanwhile, Grif, holding the drink, backed away, not wanting to spill a drop, so it was Dennis who stepped between Kit and Brunk, grabbing the man's filthy shirt and tossing him back in his seat.

Scratch let Brunk's hands drop, and gazed up at Dennis in fascination. “Oh, this is interesting.”

“What the hell is wrong with you, Brunk?” Dennis shook him so that the man's head wobbled on his body.

“Keep that thing away from me.” Kit, still standing, folded her arms protectively around her body.

Grif slammed the shot glass down in front of Scratch. “Here. Just drink it and leave.”

Dennis shifted away, shaking his head at Brunk's strange behavior. Scratch adjusted Brunk's T-shirt like it was straightening tuxedo lapels, then made a show of lifting the shot glass. It toasted Kit with the golden liquid.

“I'll leave,” Scratch said, enunciating each syllable sharply, “when I'm
damned
well ready.”

And it threw back the firewater, licked its lips . . . and began to scream.

“What the hell—” Dennis grimaced and the air around them grew cold, and Kit backed up even more, but Grif just stood there, palming the glass vial he'd been concealing, now empty of its contents.

“Good-bye, you soul-stealing bastard.” Grif's voice was so low that only another angel might hear it. Scratch howled in reply, straining against Brunk's flesh, causing the man's neck to pop—
snap, snap
—as it twisted Grif's way.

“I know you now!” Wind and leaves whipped through every syllable. “You won this round, but I won't forget! I
never
forget!”

And the fallen angel left its host body as quickly as it'd arrived. Brunk slumped forward, face slamming against the tabletop with a sick, fleshy thud.

“Jesus,” Dennis said, rubbing a hand over his face. His expression was stunned. “He looked . . .”

“Possessed,” Kit finished, swallowing hard. Grif glanced down and saw that her hands were shaking. He took one in his own and gave it a small squeeze. He'd done what he had to. Scratch wasn't going to get to Kit.

Brunk's gaze rolled back in place. The whites of his eyes were pristine, the irises dark as molten chocolate.

“Trey?” Kit asked gingerly, leaning forward.

Brunk took one good look at her face, glanced down at empty shot glass in front of him, and vomited all over the table.

Rearing back, Kit barely saved her bamboo handbag. Filth spewed from Brunk's body, noxious and acidic and seemingly endless. Only Grif knew why. The liquid he'd prepared after he'd caught Scratch trying to wrangle away Jeap's tortured soul comprised something Pure. It expelled all impurities from mortal flesh, including fallen angels . . . and the addictive matter Brunk had been poisoning his body with for years.

It took a while.

Kit was at Grif's side, giant question marks in her gaze, but he shook his head. He'd bring her up to speed later.

“Jesus, Brunk,” Dennis said, when there was a break. “What the hell are you on?”

“He's okay,” Grif muttered. “He's just . . . detoxing.”

And now that he'd had a taste of real Purity, Brunk might even be able to beat his addiction. What was unholy could never exist alongside what was Pure.

Waiting until Brunk was between spasms, Grif reached out and put a hand on the man's shoulder. Dazed, dizzy with all the fresh oxygen zinging through his every mortal cell, he took a moment to focus, but when he did, his eyes were clearer than they'd likely been in years.

“Two more tweekers, Trey,” Grif said, holding the gaze. “Just like Jeap. Where are they?”

Tears of understanding welled in Brunk's eyes. “Oh, God.”

“Where, Trey?” Grif demanded, because Scratch had the knowledge, and he'd gotten it from this man.

But Brunk was having an extremely delayed rush of survivor's guilt. Without the addiction as a barrier between him and his emotions, he was facing for the first time what drugs had done to him, and his friends. “I hid the last of my stash. I wouldn't share. They didn't have any more money, so when Jeap told them about the croc, the crocodile,” he clarified, with a shudder, “and how cheap it was, they jumped on it.”

“
Who,
Trey?”

“Tim and Jeannie.” He covered his face with his filthy hands. They were no longer roving, no longer tweeking, but they shook with guilt. “You gotta help 'em. They can't stop, just like Jeap couldn't stop. They stole his stash and left him in that flop, but they took the codeine. He'd already showed them how to make it. It's my fault. I wouldn't share.”

“No, it's their choice,” Grif said, over Brunk's blustering sobs. “But you can help them by telling us where they are.”

The distraught man lifted his head, and squinted at Grif. “They stay with Timmy's mother mostly. She kicks them out, but they know her bingo times, and they sneak back in when she's gone.”

“Where?”

“Shangri-La Apartments, in Meadows Village.”

Grif shook his head. It meant nothing to him.

But Dennis jerked his head toward the door. “Got it.”

Yet it was Kit who led the rush from the bar. And as the sounds of retching resumed behind them, Dennis and Grif had to run to keep pace. Meanwhile, the men at the bar—each attending to his own vice—never even looked up.

Chapter Eight

M
eadows Village wasn't far, yet rush hour was just beginning, and traffic was bad at every turn. Grif took the time to fill Kit in on what'd happened at the bar. Or at least what he knew of it. He'd been as surprised as she was to learn that Scratch could inhabit the living through their negative emotions as well as their addictions. He'd have to talk to Sarge about it, but it made sense in theory.

“The fraction of the Host that turned against God was one-third of all angels. That's why the fallen are called the Third. They were immediately banished from God's presence, and cast into a place it would never be felt again.”

“The Garden of Eden,” Kit said.

Grif nodded. “Now the Eternal Forest. They're reluctant inhabitants, but they're a part of it, too. Both are withered and decayed, completely lifeless.”

“Except when they possess the living.”

Except, Grif now realized, when the living somehow gave up possession of themselves.

“And so the people who die and end up in the Forest? They're the same?”

“They're the only source of energy, entertainment, and power that the Third possess.” Grif pursed his lips tight. “But don't feel too bad for them. Nothing good or pure can exist when blotted entirely from God's presence.”

He waited, but Kit remained silent as a violent shudder worked its way down her spine. Her beautiful lips were pressed tightly together, too. She was trying to keep from crying.

“It's the Forest, Kit,” Grif said softly. “Not a walk in the park. You felt how cold his breath was. Magnify it fivefold. Shelter and food? Nonexistent. Same with water, though the Third despise it anyway. Water is a symbol of life—of baptism and rebirth—and nothing that truly lives can exist in the Forest.”

“It sounds . . .” Her voice trailed off as she tried to let the Forest bloom in her own imagination. Few humans, though, had a place in their minds for this kind of madness. “Hopeless.”

“Hope is a gift from God,” Grif said softly. “The Third rose up in mutiny against God, and humans do it on a case-by-case basis. The perversion of free will, God's greatest gift, lands you there. The Forest is those perversions made manifest.”

“And what about me, Grif?” She glanced over, and there were tears in her eyes. “It said it wanted me, but I can't imagine living in a place without hope or love.”

“Of course you can't.” Grif wanted to comfort her, but there was little he could do while she was driving. “You're made of those two things, with a healthy dash of grit thrown in just to spice things up.”

She didn't look comforted. “It can touch me. It wants to possess me.”

“It . . . imprinted on you somehow.” Grif shook his head.

“Like what? Some evil baby chick?” Her nerves were getting the best of her, and she jerked the wheel. Grif reached out, and held it in place.

“You were the first person it has seen in, well, God knows how long. The first who wasn't evil or dirty or doomed. Or Lost. It said you were bright, and light—”

Kit shuddered, and Grif felt helpless. He opened his mouth, but Kit was already pushing past the moment. “How did you destroy it?”

“I don't know how to destroy an angel.” But he was damned well going to try to find out. “It's only banished.”

“So how did you banish it? What was in that bottle?”

“Love,” he finally answered. He glanced over when she only stared. “It's more toxic to them even than water. In fact, if it were to wash over Scratch like the baptism they so hate, I bet then you could destroy it.”

Kit tilted her head. “How did you bottle love?”

Grif shrugged. “After we found Scratch possessing Jeap, and I knew it was targeting the Lost, I also knew it'd be back. So I harvested some tears.”

Goggling, Kit missed the car braking in front of her, and had to come to a hard stop behind it. While they waited for a green light, she turned to him. “Because tears are made of water?”

“Because tears are made of water
filled with emotion
. Infused with heartfelt memory. Love is only between mankind and God, Kit. It's poisonous to beings that were created, not born. They've never felt it.”

“Even the Pure still in heaven?” A horn honked behind Kit, but she waited for Grif's answering nod before driving. “So the human element in the tears that banished Scratch . . .”

“And the Pure element that cured Brunk.”

Kit was silent for a long minute. “They were yours?”

Grif tried to keep his shrug nonchalant. “Where else was I going to get something so precious on such short notice?”

“But it said it knows you now, Grif.” Her tone said he'd better not try to evade.

“It's not a possession thing, okay? Not like Brunk. It only gained knowledge of the emotional memory responsible for those tears.” Grif braced himself for the inevitable, and uncomfortable, questions by looking away.
What do you love so much that it makes you cry? Or whom?

Yet they never came. Glancing back, Grif wondered why, then remembered Kit's earlier hurt.
What do you think it feels like to know the man I love spends most of his waking hours thinking of another woman?
“So that's why you let Dennis intercept when Scratch tried to reach me.” Though muted, there was still a note of accusation in her voice.

“Dennis didn't intercept,” Grif said, immediately defensive. “I let him run a pick.”

Kit blew out an annoyed breath. “You know I don't understand your stupid baseball analogies.”

Grif just shook his head. “Look,
I'm
the one who got rid of Scratch.” At least for now, he thought. “Besides, it just wanted to scare you. You're the best person I know. No way are you ever destined for the Forest.”

“Well, I'm scared, okay? It knew things about me. It called me ‘the girl who loves the truth.' ”

“One of your enemies told it,” Grif guessed. “Someone who ended up in the Forest instead of the Everlast. Someone it could torture for information once it . . . saw you.”

Because while it'd been surprised that Kit could see it the first time, it was ready for her the second. And aggressive, Grif thought, swallowing hard.

You are just some choice bit of beauty that I have not yet broken
.

Kit, busy blowing her Betty bangs from her forehead, didn't notice the shudder that rocked Grif in his seat. “I'd like to think I don't have enemies terrible enough to warrant an eternity of torture in the Forest.”

“Chambers?” Grif reminded her, causing a wince. Bringing down that local kingpin, a man who'd tried to kill them both, was the first case they'd worked together. Chambers had died terribly . . . though not as terribly as he'd lived.
That's
what landed a soul in the Eternal Forest.

“I wouldn't even wish Scratch on him,” Kit said solemnly.

Grif didn't say it as they drove on, but neither would he.

W
here the hell are we?” Grif asked, taking a deep breath. They needed to change the subject, and regroup. Someone in the valley was feeding young kids a drug that had skin falling from their bones. As a distraction from soul-stealing angels, it was a good one.

“There is no hell, remember?” Kit muttered, knowing what he was doing, but allowing it all the same. “Though if there were, you wouldn't be too far off. Meadows Village is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Vegas. It used to be the first place newcomers wanted to live, but now it's the last. It's located in Naked City.”

“Oh, sure,” Grif said, the old memory revisiting slowly. “I've been to Naked City.”

Silence filled the car. It was the briefest of pauses, but it'd been happening more and more lately. Grif would mention something he'd seen or done, because the memory was somehow closer now that he was back on the Surface. Sometimes he could even smell the old scents, as light as the pressed powder Evie used to use on her skin. Other times he could hear the East Coast accents trailing behind trouble boys walking the casino floor, even though he knew they were long gone.

And sometimes the places Grif recognized on this second go-round were less real than those dogged memories; the casinos and restaurants and mom-and-pop hash houses seemed like shells to him, more fragile somehow now that the original owners were gone. But it was the natural order of things, and tucking the past away was how the living could go on.

Thing was, despite Kit's love for all things of his era, she could never really know what came before. Maybe the silence that kept rising between them meant she was beginning to understand that. But how to keep her from worrying over it?

Have you ever dreamed about me?

“When?” she asked now, shaking him from his thoughts.

“When what?” Grif cleared his throat, his mind. “You mean when was I here? Just over fifty years ago, I guess,” he said, beginning slowly. “Evie and I had just met. I'd finished up the case that'd brought me to Vegas, and she had a girlfriend, Jane, who lived in Naked City. She worked the center bar at the Jolly Trolley.”

“Oh, I've heard of that.” Kit gave a small laugh, getting into the telling. She was a sucker for nostalgia and thinking of her city's heyday always made her dreamy. “It was supposed to have the best steak in town.”

“Dollar ninety-nine,” Grif confirmed. He and Evie had eaten there right after visiting Jane, though he didn't mention that now.

“So Jane was a showgirl?” Kit guessed, and Grif nodded, because that's how Naked City had gotten its name. The women, mostly single, lived there like a coterie of hens, due to the location's proximity to their jobs on the Strip. They also had a habit of sunbathing topless in groups on the buildings' roofs to avoid tan lines, which could cost them their jobs.

“Well, the place took a spectacular swan-dive from famous to infamous in the years since you were last there,” Kit said, and Grif was glad to hear her voice was back to normal, though her driving was still lousy. He cringed as she zigzagged between two cars and a delivery truck ambling on the two-lane road. “Those women would be sunbathing on our finest crack houses today, and Naked City now references prostitution, not chorus lines.”

Grif shook his head. “Evie would be so disappointed.”

This time the silence rose between them like a wall.

“We're here,” Kit said softly, as they turned into a lot that sagged and tilted. Grif caught her wrist as she shoved the gear into park.

“Baby—” he began.

Though her smile was more of a wince, she closed her other hand over his own. “I know.”

And she let the tension, the past—the worry over Evie and Grif's misplaced dreams—roll from her shoulders just like that. She gave his hand a squeeze, took a deep breath, then got out of the car.

A single patrol car was already parked sideways at the Shangri-La apartment complex, along with Dennis, who'd somehow managed to arrive first. Kit headed his way, but Grif held back to observe events from the Duetto's bumper. A curious crowd was already beginning to gather on the sidewalk . . . though not so curious that they wouldn't take note of a vintage convertible sports car in a neighborhood littered with vehicles that looked like tuna cans on inner tubes.

Staring down a teen already eyeing the rims, Grif leaned against the hood. Kit was right. The neighborhood couldn't have gotten any more run-down if someone dropped a bomb on it. And the Shangri-La was damned well the same complex Jane had lived in all those years ago. Its white facade had been re-stuccoed in a nauseating pastel pink, and green doors popped along the top railing like dark bruises. Fifty years ago, a tidy row of rose bushes had burst with blooms along the ground level, proudly attended by all the pretty residents. But nothing thrived here now, Grif thought, eyeing the chipped tile of the in-ground pool in the front courtyard. Algae had stained the rim to match the complex's doors.

“What they looking for this time?” A kid, small for his age, and barely into double digits, sidled up to Grif. He was dark-skinned, but not exactly African-American. He had a rat-a-tat accent, too, so likely had roots someplace south of the border. Someplace warm. But he shivered now, alert with nerves, as he waited for Grif's answer.

“Get home, kid.” Grif crossed his arms as he watched the officers begin their door-to-doors. “It's not safe around here.”

“No shit it's not safe around here,
pendejo
. It's my 'hood.”

Grif did a double-take at the kid's language, then asked, “Know it well?”

Motioning with his arms, the kid tilted his head. “Man, what'd I just say?”

Yeah, the kid was street all right, and after the day he'd had, Grif couldn't help but wonder where this soul would be in another fifty years. Not in Naked City, that was for sure. This wasn't a place that sustained life.

“What's your name?”

“
Oye,
” the boy shot back. “I'm the one asking the questions around here.”

Unblinking, Grif lifted an eyebrow.

The boy, either unused to being seen, or too used to being watched, fidgeted, jerking on his jeans. Poor kid. Didn't even have a belt to his name. “It's Luis, man. Why you wanna know?”

“We're looking for a couple of junkies, Luis. A man and a woman.”

Luis just motioned behind him, at the block of mismatched homes leaning and tilting in varying degrees of disrepair. Chain-linked fences surrounded some, while others sported crumbling front porches. Grif spotted a rusting tricycle among the weeds of a yard penning in a wide-shouldered dog, but all signs of real life, a real neighborhood, were gone.

Grif thought back to Brunk's tearful confession. “The man is named Tim. The woman's Jeannie.”

The kid tucked his hands into his baggy front pockets, echoing Grif's body language. “They like you?”