Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

“I’ll leave it outside the door. Don’t shoot your mail-man.” I was passing through the doorway when I felt something hit the back of my head hard. A bullet fell to my feet and rolled across the floor. The hell with the gun, she’d started throwing bullets at me. I rubbed the stinging on my scalp and closed the door behind me in time to hear another one clink against the glass. With that arm she should’ve been pitching in the World Series. I put the .357 down on the concrete. She took very good care of her dogs. If I killed her, who would feed and love them?

I massaged my head again. Leo liked dogs. Tempting, tempting, but no. If being a bitch merited death, I’d be notching my gun belt every day. If I had a gun belt. Damn it, that stung. Human pain, yet another thing I could do without in the whole being-human realm. Their nervous system was far too fine-tuned, ridiculously sensitive. In other forms I’d had my limbs broken, my abdomen clawed open, and, on one memorable occasion, had a lung ripped completely out of my body and none of it equaled one menstrual period of the new and human Trixa Iktomi. That might be a small exaggeration, but it wasn’t that far from the truth.

I knocked on the window of the stolen car and the locks snicked open. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I took in the scenario. Griffin had his arm around Zeke’s neck from behind in a classic choke hold. “Did the lesson take a turn for the worse?”

Zeke was tuning the radio. “He won’t go through with it,” he said without the hoarseness or lack of consciousness the arm across his throat should’ve produced. “He couldn’t choke out a Christmas elf with this hold.”

“But I want to. I very much want to,” Griffin countered. The hard line of his arm, the clenched teeth, the face flushed with aggravation; it all said it was true, but . . .

“Ha,” his partner gloated, “now that’s a lie. I can feel it. I can see it. It’s purple. When you lie, I see purple.” Closing his eyes to concentrate on the color, he then opened them again and focused back to the radio. “Okay. You can nap now. You won’t ever be able to lie to me again, not even for my own good.” Griffin’s jaw, if anything, went tighter, but he let Zeke go, then lay back down in the seat. Being Zeke’s student would give anyone a headache, concussion or not.

In a way, it was too bad. Griffin had chosen the wrong thing to lie to Zeke about, but at the end of the day you sometimes needed someone to lie to you, because some days the truth was too unpleasant, too depressing to hear. A good example would be Eli, carrying the heat of Hell with him, materializing beside the car, tearing the door off to throw into the street, and snarling, “He needs four more wings. Four, and then playing Where’s Waldo is goddamn over. He’ll have an X marks the spot to Lucifer. Your plan, if you have one, better be in fucking motion, because the world is about to come to an end.

“All of them.”

Three months ago when I’d lost my shape-shifting ability, I knew there’d come a time, sooner or later, when I would encounter a situation where a fast gun wasn’t going to be enough. It wouldn’t be because of any low-level demon, but Eligos had taken over Vegas when I’d killed Solomon. He would’ve taken it if I hadn’t killed Solomon. Eli had said Solomon wasn’t in his league and I didn’t doubt him. He also thought I was the best toy he’d been gifted with in ages. He thought he was playing with fire when he played with me, and I had to keep him thinking that. If he knew what I was now, he would do to me what I’d done to Solomon. I had no desire to be in so many pieces that I had to be cleaned up with a sponge and buried in a bucket.

That was why I’d asked Zeke and Griffin to do something no telepath or empath, no angel or demon, had done before. Instead of using their powers to pull in thoughts and emotions, I’d asked them to try pushing out those things instead. I knew Zeke couldn’t make someone see something that wasn’t real. He couldn’t make Eli see me change into a giant bear with the mouth of a shark and the tail of a dragon. But if he tried, worked hard at it, after months of practice, he might be able to blur my edges—to make it seem as if my outline was wavering. Shifting. Not a giant bear, but the beginnings of a change, my edges running like a rainbow of oil sliding over water. And if Zeke could do that, then it was possible that Griffin could send out the emotion of fear. Not a powerful thrust, but only a sliver—it could be enough. If Eli saw me shimmer, felt a spike of fear, he’d see a fully functional shape-shifter, not a hobbled one. If he saw it and felt it, it was doubtful he would take time to examine where those things were coming from—he or someone else. It had no precedent to make him suspicious of it and if you had a fully functional shape-shifting trickster in front of you, all your thinking was going to be concentrated on keeping yourself alive.

The guys had given it their best shot, practiced daily, and considering how lazy Zeke was, that was pure devotion. After two months of self-devised training, they’d tried it on Leo, who’d let his shield relax for the attempt. It had worked—more or less. Leo wasn’t a demon, however, and although it had worked on him, I couldn’t be sure it would on Eli. Still, I’d bet my life on many things along the way. Why should I start changing now?

“Well, Trixa? Is your plan going to save us?” Eli put his hands under the car and flipped us over onto our side. I hadn’t put on my seat belt yet. I didn’t slam into Zeke as I’d grabbed the steering wheel, but I didn’t land on him with the grace and airy lightness of a ballerina either. I heard the muffled grunt as air left his lungs, but that didn’t stop him from already having his shotgun in hand. The same went for Griffin in the back. But Eli was enraged and he was faster and stronger than all of us. Normally, I would’ve tried to talk my way out of this . . . but this time I didn’t believe Eli would be listening. He was asking questions, but he was too furious to listen to any answers—too furious to do anything but kill us.

It was time to see if the boys could do to him what they’d done to Leo. I only hoped they’d been keeping in practice. I gave them a fleeting hand signal. They agreed on a “We are screwed” sign; then I used the steering wheel to pull myself upright, standing on Zeke’s rib cage and rising up into Eli’s view with the happiest, hungriest smile I had in my repertoire. “Plan, sugar? Who needs a plan when I have lunch in my face bitching up a storm?”

Eli stared at me, his face not even a foot from mine. “What’s your pleasure,?” I drawled. “What part of you would you like pulled off first? Your handsome head? Rip your legs apart like a wishbone? It’s all tasty. It’s all good, Eligos. All good to me. Let’s see how good it is for you.” I took the risk and reached for him. I thought I’d guessed wrong, that the training and the work had been for nothing. I thought we were dead when my fingertips were almost brushing the front of his shirt.

Until he took one step back.

Another moment of trickster triumph. If my legs weren’t al dente and in danger of buckling under me, I would’ve been one happy-go-lucky mass of conceit and smugness. I didn’t like being vulnerable. I didn’t like it at all. I’d been positive that I could get through four or so years without my shape-shifting ability. Pie, cake, cougar soccer moms—all things that are easy. It was feeling less and less that way all the time. I’d tumbled far down the food chain and I didn’t like strapping on a fake fin to blend in with the other sharks. I wasn’t afraid to die. Tricksters can’t be . . . not if they want to do what they do best. But I didn’t want to die without pulling off the trick first. I’d done the Roses. I could do Cronus too. If death came as I took him down, I wouldn’t mind. I didn’t fear losing my life to save this world and all worlds while punishing Cronus . . . obliterating a Titan. It was my purpose. I wasn’t afraid.