Rob Thurman - Grimrose path

"Demons are a dime a dozen and for a Titan to bother with an underling when he can take out the boss isn't going to happen. A demon took his Rose, so Cronus will wipe all demons, their home, and their king from existence. That's the Chicago way and it's the Titan way as well." I smiled. "And, with my curiosity taken care of, still not my problem. Now, if you could take the dead tourist with you when you go, I'll consider that payment enough. That and, you know, the sheer enjoyment I get from seeing how screwed you are." I crossed both feet on the spare chair and studied my new red boots with heels that could slash a throat. It was a brighter red than I normally chose, the color of a stripe in a candy cane. Red didn't always have to be the color of blood. No, not always. It could be the color of a fast car, a sexy dress… or a rose.

Eli dipped a finger into the wine and turned it to the blood I'd just been thinking of. "There's a way to stop him. There's always a way to stop anyone, a way to escape anywhere. We made it out of Disneyland, didn't we? The most boring place in eternity. The singing, the praising, the showing humans the path of love and Almighty Glory. If we could escape that, we can escape destruction at the hands of one miserable paien."

I dropped my feet back to the floor and folded my hands, resting my elbows on the table. "Here's the church." I raised my index fingers to meet. "Here's the steeple." Then I moved my thumbs apart and flipped my hands over and waved my fingers. "Open the door and see all the people. All the never-to-be-damned people because you and yours will be gone. But I do wonder where the evil souls will go then. Many won't be damned with you gone, but it doesn't necessarily take your kind to make some people step off the path of the righteous. You're good at it, but you're not absolutely crucial to the process. They can do it themselves. Maybe some paien afterworlds will snap them up. They'll be punished, if they deserve it, but at least we won't eat them. Well, most of us won't."

Eli drank the blood. I don't think he noticed he hadn't changed it back to wine, or maybe he liked the taste. Once you've eaten thousands of souls, you have to begin to wonder what the container tastes like. Demons had wondered that a long time ago. They murdered, they stole lives and souls, and occasionally they ate one or the other or both at the same time. "I'll have to ask the boss about this first, but I think I might have a way to satisfy Cronus." He drained the glass without any visible enjoyment. Giving in to a paien. For a demon, it was a big sacrifice and they didn't like to be on the wrong end of the sacrificing. "What if we were to let all the Roses go? Every single one of them. He can find his and pop her in a freshly made body of his own design. That's a gesture large enough for even a Titan to take notice, I'm confident."

"Digest your Bloody Mary and keep thinking that. This is a paien the rest of us don't begin to understand and one who, for a while, became human. A god times ten became human and did not enjoy the experience. What he might take notice of I won't guess at. But, hey, sugar, you give it your scaly best." I paused, then pointed out the potential flaw in his plan. "And you are assuming she hasn't been eaten yet."

"You have a better plan?" He scowled, his eyes going from green and copper to black and copper.

"You think I'd tell you if I did?" I waved a hand at the tourist. "Remember, take him when you go. And, as I said, now that my curiosity is satisfied, y'all don't come back, ya hear? Ever."

"If you are satisfied, then you're not curious about the right things." His eyes shifted back to human.

"It's not especially alluring when you say that with blood on your breath," I said with a stone-still calm.

"As if you've never had it on yours." The copper flecks were brighter and his words…

Hell, they were true.

But mine were always with good reason. I was justice. Eli was only Hannibal Lecter crossed with a T. rex-a sociopathic carnivore. I killed the wicked, if necessary. He would kill anyone and anything. But he was gone before I could tell him so. Not that I would've bothered and not that he would've cared. No, I wouldn't have bothered and he wouldn't have cared, but I would've cared… a little.

I shouldn't have. I did what I was meant to, born to, raised to, and I loved my work. But there was the occasional moment I wondered what it would be to be like Leo, have tricking being only my hobby. That my existence wasn't my occupation-and I could broaden my horizons. Take a vacation and let the stupid do what the stupid did. Let evil do what evil did.

But everyone had a calling, and I could no more stand by and let the ignorant and the sinister bumble about than I could wear gold lame. I dropped my head forward and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. "I save one only to lose another. That's not good math even for a two-year-old."

"It's not one for one. It's one for thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands," Leo responded quietly. "Unfortunate for him, but he didn't die for nothing. He died for a reason, died a hero, despite not knowing it."

"He died because I suck at checkers." I sighed, keeping my eyes hidden. "Eligos didn't take the body, did he? The bastard."

"No." I heard Leo give a sigh of his own. "I'll take him out to the desert tonight and bury him. I'd pick him a nice spot, but wherever he is now, he doesn't care."

It was true enough. Wherever he was now, better or worse, where his dead body was wouldn't make a difference to him. "Thanks." I straightened and rubbed my forehead. "While you do that I'll try to figure out what to do when Eligos figures out I lied to him."

"That will be more tricky than checkers," Leo warned. "And while you're at it, also try to figure out what we're going to do about what Cronus really wants."

It was hard to have a smart-ass comeback to that, because I hadn't one damn clue. And the consequences to that were exponentially worse than lying to a demon, even when that demon was Eli. Catastrophic came to mind, then went off in search of a bigger and badder word to take its place. Plain and simple…

We were fucked.

"Griffin's lost." He said it just that way-Zeke, sounding exactly the same as that last word.

Lost.

My brother, Kimano, lost everything when we were kids. Tricksters didn't hold on to things much. That wasn't us, not our lifestyle. Born to roam, and roaming was easier when you weren't dragging baggage along… of either kind, physical or mental. And that meant I should've let Kimano go when I avenged him. Unpacked him. Left him on the side of the road. At peace and firmly in the past. But I couldn't. I knew it. I didn't even try. Kimano was Kimano. Unique. I'd carry him with me forever.

But it didn't change the fact he'd lost everything and probably would've lost his brain if he'd had one to begin with. That was my mama talking, not me, but that didn't mean she was wrong. In fact, it meant she was right. Mama always was. Whether it was a shiny shell, a silver necklace, a wooden ball, a camel… How do you lose a camel?

The same way you lost your partner. You looked away for a minute or he outthought you. Kimano and Zeke weren't anything alike, but the result was the same. Kimano's attention span had been that of your average happy surfer dude and his camel had no trouble sneaking off. Zeke's attention ranged wildly from one end to the other… from the "I don't care, so it doesn't exist in my world" to the "on you like glue for as long as it takes to obliterate your ass." He wasn't Inigo Montoya. No one had killed his father. But he was prepared to die, if that's what it took to get the task at hand done. It wasn't Zeke's attention span that had him here. No, it was trust. He had trusted his partner and Griffin had done the same as that damn camel. Walked away.