Rob Thurman - Grimrose path

"Fine. Let's get the satanic shithead and ask him some questions. Only you'd better ask them." He closed his eyes and ground the heel of his hand against his forehead-still trying to find Griffin, on the inside if not out. "Because right now, I want to hurt someone. I really, really want to hurt someone. Too much."

"Trust me, Kit. I won't be walking on any eggshells around him, but I'll leave enough of him to do some talking." If he knew anything. When you've pinned your first and last hope on a satanic school bus-driving demon wannabe, you knew it was going to be a bad night.

We caught up with him at Carluccio's Tivoli Gardens. It was a restaurant next to the Liberace Museum and whether Liberace was a tricked-up demon, an angel of blinding light, or only an entertainer who thought rhinestones were the greatest invention of God and Man and wanted to outshine the sun itself, I didn't know. I was always curious, yes, but at times it was best to let some things go. Keep a little mystery alive.

Keeping Bubba alive… Well, we'd see.

His old school bus, painted black, naturally, with wispy white ghosts and staring, bloody red eyes, was idling by the Gardens, hoping to pick up some tourist action. There were reputable ghost tours in Vegas. Fun in the absent sun pointing out the gangster Bugsy Siegel's hotel, the Flamingo, the "Motel of Death" where many celebrities had died-I'd never caught exactly who those celebrities were-a haunted park with a "demon" child, and the Gardens, where Liberace's ghost occasionally had a snit fit. A phantom rhinestone wedgie was nothing to mess with, I was sure.

Bubba's tour, on the other hand, was not reputable, not licensed, not legal, and not especially hygienic-all of which kept him on the move, trying to pick up tourists on the go. The Gardens were his second fishing stop of the night and we caught him there just as he was leaving. I didn't bother to look for a parking spot, pulling up on the sidewalk and ditching the Cobra. It would either be towed or stolen. I didn't give a damn either way. If we could find Griffin, a lucky thief could keep the car.

I caught the bus door as it was closing, pushed it back open, and went up the two steps to stand just behind and right at Bubba's ear. "You weren't trying to leave without us, were you, Beelzebub?"

Zeke sat in the first seat, forming the point to our triangle. "Bastard." He had one of his guns out, a sawed-off Remington, and a white-knuckled grip on it. He wasn't worried about any threat from Beelzebub… a hundred Beelzebubs would barely get a yawn out of him. He was worried for Griffin, which might be Beelzebub's fall after all, threat or no threat.

"Go on and drive, Bubba." I leaned an elbow on his shoulder and smiled at our shared reflection in the long rearview mirror. "You don't look happy to see me. You don't look happy at all. But that's all right. I have a theory about people. Happy people aren't made; they're born… like golden retrievers-bouncy and cheerful and full of love and play. And then, sugar"-I nipped his ear hard, enough to draw a single drop of blood-"there are the rest of us. We aren't happy. We aren't bouncy. But we do like to play. Only I'm not sure that you want to play the kind of games I do." I tossed my Browning to Zeke and had a knife at Beelzebub's neck in an instant.

Bubba-I could think of him as Beelzebub with a straight face for only so long-was a thin guy. He had the requisite long hair dyed so black that it looked like the world's worst Halloween wig. He had multiple piercings, some of which I was sure were hidden and I didn't want to see, and what he thought were satanic tattoos ringing his neck, but what I was almost positive said "I suck Cthulhu's dick" in Latin. The tattoo artist had seen him coming a mile away. Bubba wasn't solely a wannabe demon. He was a wannabe anything. He was almost worth feeling sorry for if I hadn't thought he tortured animals as a kid, pulled wings off flies, killed birds with a BB gun. He had that look, that smell, that taste to the air around him. A trickster should've made him a pet project a long time ago, but like some projects, he wasn't worth it. When a chemistry project went wrong, you poured it down the lab sink and started over. Bubba had "Do over" written all over him.

"Bubba," I said softly, "some people say the fastest way to a man's heart is a hollow point. One nice explosion and then a pile of mush that no one wants on a Valentine's Day card. But I honestly don't care about the fastest way myself. I like the fun way." I moved the knife and suddenly the point sank into the flesh over his heart… not much. Only a fraction of an inch, but enough that he understood the seriousness of my play. "When a woman like me breaks a man's heart, we like to do it slowly." I smiled again at him in the mirror, wider, and showed my teeth in a flash of white. His dark brown eyes went a little more glassy. "Thoroughly. And keep it whole enough so that it looks pretty in a jar on my bedroom dresser."

"What…" He swallowed and the C in Cthulhu jumped spasmodically, but the words were somewhat braver. "I ain't telling you anything, Iktomi. You're Heaven's whore, you bitch."

"Sugar, sugar." I let my smile widen. "You know my last name. Aren't I the privileged one? Haven't I made the big time? Did you hear that while scraping and crawling on the floor for any demonic crumbs? On your knees for a bunch of the Fallen? I think that makes you the whore, not me."

"They'll see I'm loyal. They'll see I'm worthy," he insisted. "They'll take me to Hell, to the Lord Who Rules All Others, and he'll make me like them. Divine."

I hadn't seen much of the divine, Above or Below, but deprogramming a self-brainwashed cluster of idiot cells that someone's toilet had coughed up would take more time than I was willing to spend and more sympathy than I had. Griffin needed us now. This asshole… He didn't need the truth about demons; he didn't need me to hold his pathetic little hand. What he needed was to give me some useful information before Zeke decided to rip off his head bare-handed.

"And I'll be sure to throw you a going-away party when that happens." This time when I moved the knife it was to slice him across his upper thigh; although the black jeans-satanists did love their black-didn't show the blood, it was safe to say Bubba felt the cut. He gave a low-pitched scream, the steering wheel wobbled under his hands, and the bus began to climb the curb.

The dangers of interrogation in a moving vehicle. Time to adapt.

"A challenge.That's even more entertaining." I grabbed his shirt and yanked all one hundred and twenty pounds of him backward. "Zeke, take the wheel, would you? And don't run over anything." As always with Zeke, I made the directions very clear. "No people, no dogs, no cars, no motorcycles, and stop when the light is red, pretty please."

He slid into the seat and maneuvered the bus back onto the street. "Rules. How does everyone remember all these stupid rules," he muttered.

I turned back to Bubba, trusting Zeke at least until it came to the moment that we would run over something the size of a Volkswagen. I had to. I trusted him far more with driving than with chatting up Bubba. Bubbas are considerably more fragile than Volkswagens. I'd pushed him on the aisle between the left and right rows of seats. Now I rested the heel of my boot, three inches easy, on his stomach. I'd grabbed them along with my shotgun. Every weapon helps. "Now, this is the part where you pay attention to me, every bit as much as you do the demons you follow around." I leaned and the heel sank into his stomach until I almost imagined I felt his spine beneath it. "Because, Bubba, some boots are made for walking and some for impromptu colonoscopies." I leaned harder. "You can turn over anytime. I charge so much less than your average proctologist."