Rob Thurman: The Grimrose Path

“Next,” Eli finished for me as he opened the door, a few blond hairs glittering in the dark brown of his hair, and looked back over his shoulder. Posed rather. Demons did like the hot rides they’d created to be admired. “I don’t need to be an angel. I don’t need telepathy to read that thought. I only have to know how smart you are. And that’s almost as smart as you think.” He grinned. “Nice T-shirt, by the way. Can’t wait to prove it wrong.”

The door closed and I slowly holstered my gun. Almost a thousand demons in six months.

Not in my best year ever. While I didn’t care about the dead demons—no crying over spilt sociopaths—I did wonder what this thing might do if demons started to bore it. I made a mental list of anything and everything I knew of throughout history, mine and the world’s, that could do something like this.

It was a very short list.

I went on to my workout. Dead demons didn’t make exercise and conditioning unnecessary. An unknown creature making those dead demons made it only more necessary. Afterward I ran home to take a shower. I’d come to find out that some humans had the capacity to tolerate more annoyance and flat-out brutal torture than I’d ever given them credit for. . . . Having to genuinely earn your muscle—that was probably one of the most annoying things that I’d come across.

Give them credit? I was one of them now as much as I dragged my feet admitting it, trying to deny it with that minuscule one percent that wasn’t human. The second I forgot that I was now exactly what I appeared to be would be the second a demon would do to me what I’d done to so many of them.

Either way, human, trickster or both, I saluted Homo sapiens , respected them more than I ever had, but the gym shower? Even I had to draw the line somewhere. I kicked ass either with claws, paws, or one helluva fashionable boot, but you couldn’t convince me that mold didn’t have its own gods and demons, its own tricksters and unspeakable monsters. I know one clump bristled at me the first and last time I’d checked out the utilities. I recognized evil when I saw it. I saw it that day on seventies-era avocado green tile and some evil you simply had to walk away from. My bathroom was minutes away. I’d wait. And I’d gotten ridiculously fond of soap that smelled of oranges and felt like silk against my skin. I’d been human so many times throughout my life, but this one . . . this one . . . It had really taken. I wasn’t scared of much, but that came close to doing it.

Four more years. Who would I be then?

Me. I’d still be me. Tricking and laughing my way through life as always. Nothing was going to change that. I’d said that the past ten years. I could keep telling myself the same thing as long as I had to.

When I made it home, the closed sign was still on the door. I grumbled as I unlocked the door. Maybe Leo in his god days could make gold coins fly out his ass, but I knew the value of a hard-earned or stolen buck. It was two in the afternoon now and he hadn’t opened the place when I’d left? What was he thinking? I was surprised we didn’t have a few of our regulars going into DTs right there on the sidewalk.

Opening the door loudly, I made sure to close it more so behind me. There’s no point in being pissed off if there’s no way to share it. But before I had the chance, besides the door slamming, someone said, “You look like you were kicked out of a wet T-shirt contest.” There was a pause. “I didn’t know you could get kicked out of those.”

Zeke. Straightforward tell-me-the-truth-and-I’ll-tell-you-no-lies Zeke. Because lying was too much of a bother for him and if you lied to him, well, he’d probably just shoot you. He was sitting at one of the tables eating a pizza. Double cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, peppers, olives, and a cardiologist on call. Eating it in front of me. And there were bags . . . bags and bags in front of the table, full of garlic bread and cheese sticks from the smell of it. The exquisite smell that put the plumeria-soaked breezes of Hawaii to shame. That was worse than the wet T-shirt remark. I narrowed my eyes at him and dripped on the floor as he chewed and swallowed a bite. “You’re . . . puddle-y.” He looked at his Eden House partner across the table from him. “Is puddle-y a word?”

Griffin quirked his lips. “I think fewer moisture-related comments and more eating might be a good idea.”

Red eyebrows pulled into a scowl. “You are not the boss of me.” Slightly lighter red hair was pulled into a short ponytail . . . dry, not cascading buckets like mine. Zeke’s shirt was a plain gray long-sleeve T-shirt and his jeans were faded. What he wore didn’t make much difference to him. As long as he had a jacket to cover his gun, he was good to go. Fashion didn’t appear on his top-ten list of priorities.

“In fact, I am the boss of you,” Griffin said, reaching for his own piece of the pie, only with more napkins. “And you’re the boss of me tomorrow. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Zeke gave a grin. He didn’t smile often, so he didn’t have much of a repertoire to choose from. Pissed and predatory. You-are-dead predatory. You-are- beyond -dead predatory. And this was the newest version that had cropped up since last November. Behind-the-bedroom-door predatory. It was also happy and since Zeke had spent most of his mortal life barely comprehending the word, I forgave the pizza. It was good to see him this way. More free and open than he’d ever been when he’d thought he was human. When he thought he and Griffin were human.

I know. Vegas, right? Is anyone human?

Griffin and Zeke had been demon-killing partners at Eden House Las Vegas. There was also an Eden House Miami, an Eden House Los Angeles, Eden House London . . . Eden Houses all over the world. They’d been around for thousands of years, a secret organization created by man to bring Eden back to Earth. The key word being man. Heaven had nothing to do with its creation, but once the angels saw a source of free labor, they took advantage now and again. And they certainly didn’t have a problem with Eden House trying to eradicate every demon it came across. It did a good job . . . on the slow, lower-level demons anyway.

The angels and the demons had both been after the Light for a long time. I’d just managed to get there first . . . by a few seconds. Having narrowed down the location, both sides had planted sleeper agents in Vegas’s Eden House. An angel, because even loyal humans couldn’t be trusted with the Light, and a demon in case Eden House got to the Light before Hell did. They’d been given the same human bodies demons and angels formed when walking on Earth, only they had been children. Eight and ten years old. For a demon, that’s a doable situation. Hang around with no memory of who you are, grow up, and then get activated by your Hell handler at the right moment. Because Eden House will recruit you as it tries to recruit all humans with empathy or telepathy. Nature was a marvelous thing. If angels had telepathy and demons had empathy, then so would the rest of what roamed the earth. Not everyone by any means, but it was out there . . . in humans and païen .

Hell had planned well. Griffin fit in fine. He was a demon. He had empathy, but more importantly he had free will. All demons did. All angels had. But after the Fall, God had taken the free will of the angels still in Heaven. Some had gotten it back. Relearned it. If they spent enough time on Earth with humans, they would slowly regain it. It was like riding a bicycle, only the lag time was usually much longer. Maybe God figured if they took it in baby steps, they’d get it right this time. No more pride goeth before the big trip down South. I wasn’t sure that was true. I’d met a few real asshole angels in my day. But that wasn’t my call.