Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

This one was definitely bored and thought Zeke was his Mount Everest. That made him higher level, but hopefully not as high as Eli was. We were in a public place and there was only so much we could do there. But that also meant there was only so much he could do as well. Griffin and I made our way out of the wandering gamblers and walked back into the bar as we saw Zeke make his move. By the time we joined him, he was staring at the demon sitting beside him in the booth with the same expression he would’ve used for regarding dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. It didn’t bother the demon, obviously, as he continued to talk smoothly.

“Okay, I got one first,” Zeke said as I, and then Griffin, sat to one side of the demon, boxing him between us and fellow demon bait. “What do I win?”

The demon, a man with prematurely bright silver hair, ferociously intelligent eyes, a killer tan, and an absolutely amazing accent that made you think you were back on Fantasy Island, let his salesman smile flicker. He knew something was up. He was a smart one all right and that made him only more dangerous. “What is happening? I was but speaking with my new friend. Zeke, you said your name was, yes, my friend? I am Armand.”

Zeke went back to his beer bottle with his left hand.... His right was ready and waiting for a go at his gun. “We always want the ones who don’t want us. Don’t take it personally,” I told the demon, resting a faux friendly hand on his shoulder . . . holding him here. No quick trip back to Hell for him.

“Eden House,” he said flatly, the accent disappearing and the charisma going with it. The eyes went from fierce to carnivorous. He knew his potential deal had gone bad from that very moment. I was surprised that Eli let another demon almost as quick-witted as he operate in what he now considered his city. “You’re supposed to all be dead.”

“You shouldn’t listen to gossip. Look what happened to Eve,” I tsked. Eli hadn’t told the other demons about my trickster status . . . as he knew it anyway. That was pure demon and pure Eli. When it was nine hundred of his colleagues dead, he was concerned, but if I took out ten or twenty, that only cleared out the playing field for him a little—lessened the competition.

And if this particular competitor wanted to think I was Eden House, I didn’t mind being their mascot for this conversation. “But speaking of gossip, your co-worker Eligos mentioned that someone was taking you out, knoshing on you by the hundreds like marshmallow Peeps. Those are good, aren’t they?” I mused. “Pink or yellow, I’ve never had a preference,” I said with nostalgia for last year’s Easter, giving a quick thank-you to the German fertility goddess, Ēostre, and her candy-loving hares. Credit where credit is due. Then I forgot about sticky sweetness and got down to business. “So, sugar, have you heard anything about that?”

“Eligos talked to you?” he said with disbelief. “An Eden House lackey, spitting feathers with every word. I sincerely doubt that.”

“The last standing of our House and we talk to Eligos and walk away,” Griffin said coldly. In anyone’s eyes, Above or Below, that made us pretty damn tough. “We are not to be fucked with.” That too.

“Something to think about, Peep,” I said, my hand dropping to his leg and still anchoring him as I used my other hand to pull my Smith that I’d shoved down behind the leather cushion we were sitting on before we’d gone hunting. It was a good place to raise it, hidden in the shadows moving up behind his shoulder to bury its muzzle against the base of his spine. “And exactly what is he thinking, Zeke?” Demons didn’t have to talk for us to hear. We only had to get close to one and bring up the subject.

Eli might want to have a conversation that was in our mutual . . . possibly . . . best interests, but no matter how bright another demon was, it wouldn’t be Eligos. Intelligence had nothing to do with sharing information with a bitter enemy who might, in one wildly improbable circumstance, be able to help you. Intelligence could let you see that picture, but only guts or an enormous ego would let you draw it. All demons had ego, but not all of them had the spine to match. Our friend here could, but it didn’t matter if he did or not. I wasn’t relying on chance, not when I could rely on Zeke instead.

Zeke’s focus on the demon went unblinking. Armand—what a name for a demon to appropriate—didn’t care for that. He hissed and bared still-human teeth. We were in public and that mattered to him as much as it did to us. The last thing Hell wanted was for people to not only truly believe in it, but to believe that it wasn’t waiting patiently, that it was actively knocking at your door to do everything it could to drag you down. Heaven wasn’t the only one with recruiters. And if you were too pious and pure, then tearing you apart was a very viable second option. No, Hell didn’t want that getting around any more than the late Colonel Sanders wanted his recipe for extra crispy hitting the Internet.

I put more pressure on the gun, feeling it grate against the bony processes of the demon’s spine. “Keep it together, doll, and it’ll be over soon enough. Then you can get back to filling up your lunch box. But in the future I’d ignore those who ignore you. They probably have a bigger bite than you do.” I kept my gaze flickering from Armand to Zeke as I went on to say, “Getting anything, Kit?”

Zeke’s mouth twisted. “I got it. Now let me kill him. I don’t give a shit if it’s in front of the whole damn casino. He needs to die. For what he’s done . . . he has to die and it has to fucking hurt.”

It was difficult to say what would’ve happened next if Armand hadn’t made his move. Eden House had connections in every branch of the government, local and federal, but they preferred to use their power as subtly as possible. If an operative could make his way out of his own mess, that would be ideal. If not, Eden House would step in and pull some strings. But shooting a demon in front of hundreds of people and trying to pass it off as one of those magic tricks Vegas was so famous for when that perceived “victim” turned into a puddle, there wasn’t much Eden House could or would do for you. Because in this situation you weren’t ridding the world of an unholy predator, you were breaking the rules. And Eden House, much like those Upstairs, didn’t care for having their rules broken.

If they had any idea what Griffin had been and what Zeke had abandoned, they would’ve done their level best to kill them both.

That was why I was reasonably satisfied with the way things turned out. I wasn’t happy the demon escaped a no doubt well-deserved death, but to keep Zeke out of jail for whatever length of time it took to prove that no body equaled no prosecutable crime was worth it. The hissing turned to snarling and the demon slithered from between Zeke and me, went on to flip over the table in one continuous movement of sinuous speed, and was gone onto the casino floor and out into the crowd in a matter of seconds. The movement caught the bartender’s attention in midswipe at the inside of a glass. Then he shrugged. Cirque du Soleil was always in town. It was a commentary on the city that demons were so easily explained away. Or perhaps it was a commentary on the peculiarities of Cirque du Soleil performers. I wasn’t one to rush to judgment.

Flexibility though, that was something to think about. Maybe like Leo I should do some dating of my own. Catch a show and dinner. Killing demons was entertaining, but a girl had to eat.

I hid my gun out of sight, returned to its holster in the small of my back. “Kit?”

Zeke shook his head and finished his beer in several swallows before echoing the bartender’s shrug. “Same as that son of a bitch Eligos told you about. Nine hundred some of the murdering bastards dead. Like any of us are crying over that.”