Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

Because, after all, I might lie to him.

Me? Never.

Or Cronus might erase me from reality as if I’d never existed, which would make passing on that info to Eli difficult. That Eli, so thoughtful, always thinking of others. Always thinking . . . period. Mother Teresa and Machiavelli had had nothing on him. But time to get back to the matters at hand—staying alive being part of that. For that I needed to be in top form, my attention focused.

“Cronus,” I tried again. I didn’t bother to introduce myself. I had a hundred names, not quite legion but more than a few, and Cronus wouldn’t give a damn about a single one of them. “Leo . . . Loki asked to speak with you on my behalf.”

Nothing.

“It’s about the demons you’ve been killing, their wings, the map to Lucifer. I was curious . . . just a little . . . as to what’s going on in that whole area. Anything the rest of us païen should be concerned about? Lucifer going to take a peek out of Hell like a groundhog? Checking for spring or Armageddon? Should we head to the Hearth?” The Hearth was païen sanctuary. The Light of Life shielded us there, from Heaven or Hell. It was our bomb shelter should the Penthouse or the Basement decide to take us or each other out. The Hearth was, ironically, the Noah’s Ark for pagankind. We were here first and we would be here last. End of story.

My questions to Cronus were good questions, I thought, païen pertinent definitely, and Titan or not, he was one of us . . . païen . Yet it was the same. Nothing.

“Okay,” I exhaled, pushing the shower-damp curls back. I’d tried playing nice. It hadn’t worked. Instead, I’d try playing a different way—I’d try playing first. “How about this?” Red was on my side . . . I took that as a sign. My color, my signature, my move. I pushed one of the round plastic circles forward on the board.

The head tilted downward, not as much taking in my move—Cronus didn’t need his empty eyes to be aware of that—as taking in my sheer audacity to make myself known to him. To stand up on my back legs, tiny ant that I was to him, and wave the others at him. Look at me! I exist! I exist right now, right here, the same as you!

Or he simply wanted to play the game. I was sincerely hoping it was the game, because ants who get noticed almost always get squashed. By a snotty little kindergartner’s foot or by the whim of a Titan. It didn’t matter which. Squashed was squashed, to ant or trickster.

A long pale finger extended and moved a black checker diagonally right.

I’d made it one second without being stomped flat. Good for me. I made my next move silently. We know how to talk, my kind, not as much as pucks—no one alive, dead, or in between could touch a puck for talking—but we know when to stay quiet as well, which is something no puck has ever known. I knew, very clearly, that if a Titan didn’t want to talk, I couldn’t make him. I would have to wait him out or wait until Leo showed up and see if it was a Boys’ Club. Guys and guys. Titans and gods. Too good to talk to down-to-earth fun-in-the-sun Trixa. I gritted my back teeth, then smiled victoriously ten minutes into the game as I jumped him and took his checker. Such a simple kids’ game and this is what he played. “So this is what you do for entertainment?” I asked more cheerfully as another customer, a tourist this time, came in and sat at yet another table to study the plastic laminate with four wide and wonderful choices of appetizers. Fried cheese. Fried chicken wings. Fried potatoes with ranch dressing. And all three combined on one plate and fried just a little bit more. “You play this for fun?” I went on.

The unnaturally smooth lips parted. “For keeps.” In the next moment with his turn, he took one of my checkers and the tourist immediately went limp, his face colliding with the table, his eyes nothing but red, blood trickling from his nose, ears, mouth. Gone . . . just like that.

For keeps. Cronus said it: He didn’t play for fun; he played for keeps.

I decided right then I liked it much better when he wasn’t aware of me or who was in my bar. A man had died because of me . . . and what I’d wrongly thought were some stellar checker skills. He’d died because of a stupid game—me and a stupid game that I hadn’t taken seriously. I took Cronus very seriously, so seriously that I thought he was beyond something as petty and throw-away spiteful as this. Killing more than nine hundred demons, yes, that I could see. Killing one polyester-clad tourist, who I sincerely hoped was right with whichever religion, philosophy, or lack thereof he nurtured in his soul, over a move in a game five-year-olds mastered—that was no better than pulling the wings off a butterfly. Who did that?

A Titan asshole apparently.

Armand shimmered. He might work for Eli and aspire to someday get lucky enough to stab his boss in the back to take his place, but I didn’t think he liked what he was seeing. I didn’t think he knew what he was seeing. Demons thought they were killers and they were. They thought they were monsters and they were. They thought they were evil and, yes, they were. They thought they were the first evil.

They weren’t.

They thought they’d invented evil.They hadn’t.Thought they were the very epitome of evil—they were only a shadow. I wasn’t proud of it, but the first evil had been païen . Cronus wasn’t the first evil, but he wasn’t a shadow of it either. He was the genuine article and Armand was only another ant, the same as me, and running for his anthill, which was better known as Hell, as fast as he could go. It wasn’t fast enough.

Cronus was gone from his chair and holding Armand up off the ground before pinning him against the wall, a butterfly soon to lose its wings. Armand, physically bound to earth, did what he thought would be his best chance of escaping. He changed to his true form: the scales, the snapping alligator j aws, the thrashing tail, jagged talons. They didn’t help him. Cronus didn’t bother to move as claws passed through the fake flesh that instantly repaired itself behind them. The only thing that helped Armand/Amdusias escape was his wings. If he considered death an escape and if I’d been the one facing a Titan who did not care for me at all, I would’ve happily considered it so. A vacation. A party.

I didn’t think Amdusias agreed with me. He screamed as one wing was torn off in Cronus’s hand. And then he was gone, a black puddle. His wing stayed, which was apparently a Titan trick, as normally it would’ve melted along with Amdusias.

I’d gotten to my feet to run. Not to help the demon. That was way beyond my capabilities and Amdusias wasn’t my problem. Locking the door and preventing someone else from walking in on a scene of dead tourist, demonic puddle, and Titan holding a demon’s wing like a cheap Vegas souvenir, that was my immediate concern. Large black puddles were easy to explain. . . . If cleanliness was your thing, then this wasn’t the bar for you. A bizarre eyeless fake human, a red and ebony dragon wing, and an expired tourist soaked in blood, that was more difficult than what looked like a very bad bathroom leak.

I was about to lock the door when Leo walked in. He took in Cronus, the wing, the dead man, and he shook his head. “I don’t know why I ever listen to you,” he said to me. I closed the door and gave the lock an annoyed twist shut. I didn’t worry about the blinds. They were closed. This was Nevada and this was a bar; there was no reason for them to be open.

“I feel bad enough about the guy,” I said, folding my arms. Did I look defensive? Probably. I sure as hell felt that way. I hadn’t planned on any collateral damage during all this unless it was demons. “I didn’t know Titans took checkers so seriously—that anyone took checkers that seriously.”