J. Ward: Possession

There were another thirty-three rooms like it.

Or was it thirty-four?

He’d been looking for inexpensive accommodations that were a little off the beaten path. He hadn’t exactly planned for a decrepit ark that had iffy running water, spotty electricals, a stove that burped gas, and drafty walls that let plenty of chilly air in.

Perfect. Right out of House Beautiful .

The mansion’s sole redeeming attribute, at least that he could figure, was the dour exterior: With dead vines crawling over its face and the cockeyed shutters and twelve kinds of glaring overhangs, the vibe suggested that whoever was inside might eat you alive. Plus the grounds were nothing but a couple of acres’ worth of brambles, spiky underbrush, and soon-to-be poison ivy to fight through.

Wouldn’t do a damn thing against Devina’s minions, but would defo keep the idiot teenagers away.

“Where are you …?” He stared up at the ceiling. “Come on, bitch.”

His demon opponent was not known for being patient—and he’d been waiting for a response for how long?

As he stabbed out his butt, the colorful flag across the way was a glaring reminder of how his newest tactic might have gone sour. In the game between good and evil, where he was the quarterback interacting with the seven souls on deck, and Devina, the whorish demon, and Nigel, the archangel with the stick up his ass, were “captains” of the teams, Jim was solidly ahead. Or rather, he’d put the good guys in front three to one. All it was going to take was one more victory—one more soul teased into choosing good over evil at a crossroads in his or her existence—and he had saved not just the world, but the afterlife, as well. And yeah, victory looked pretty much like you’d think it would: Not only could all the humans on the planet continue to go about their days, but the moral God-fearers who had passed Go, collected two hundred, and entered Heaven’s Manse of Souls, were safe for eternity.

Like, for example, his own mother, who’d been raped and murdered—may she rest in peace—could stay right where she was.

All things considered, he should feel pretty damned good about where he and his remaining wingman, Adrian, were.

He did not.

Fucking Devina. That demon had something he wanted, something that didn’t belong in her viscous prison of the damned. And thanks to all his military training and experience, the tactician in him had come up with a plan: Give him the innocent, and he would turn over one of his wins to the demon. Fair trade—and legal under the rules of the game. Those victory flags were his possessions—Nigel had told him that himself. And when it came to your possessions, you could do whatever you wanted with them.

Which was why eBay and frickin’ craigslist existed. Duh.

He’d expected the demon to bitch and moan about things—but he’d been so damned certain that ultimately she’d jump at the chance. Yeah, sure, according to Adrian she was nutty about her stuff, but this was the war—and if she won? She got to take over everything; Hell would literally come unto the Earth.

Instead? After he’d made his offer, she’d told him she’d think about it.

Like it was a fucking pair of shoes or something? Come on. WTF.

Getting to his feet, Jim stalked around the room, disturbing the fine layer of dust that covered the floorboards. When the inevitable creaking got on his nerves, he headed into the bathroom out in the hall.

Talk about your bed & breakfast fantasies gone bad. The rose-patterned wallpaper had faded until there was nothing but a shadow of color left—probably better that way, considering all that estrogen-drenched-decor crap made him scratch. The ornate mirror over the sink was cracked and had liver spots across its reflective face, so when you looked at yourself, you got an eyeball full of where you were headed when you hit seventy. And the floor was a forget-about-it stretch of chipped marble.

But come on, he’d showered in so much worse.

Going over to the claw-footed tub, he supposed the thing might have been romantic if, one, he’d been into that shit, which he wasn’t, and two, it hadn’t been stained yellow on the inside from mineral deposits, and green on the outside from the copper feet. And then there was the noise. As he cranked the once-gold-leafed handles on, the cold side let out a scream, like the pipes were not happy about pulling chilly stuff in from the main line in the street.

The water that came out of the corroded showerhead was more a drool than any kind of spray, but over the last two days, it had proven capable of soaping him up and rinsing him off. Dropping trou, he stepped under the cold dribble and reached for the soap.

His body wasn’t particularly bothered by the fact that there was no warmth. God knew, during his career in XOps, he’d done a hell of a lot worse to it. Sudsing himself up, he passed his palms over all kinds of scars, from old stab wounds, to bullet and shrapnel aftermath, to a couple of surgeries that had been performed in combat zones—except for that one that had been done in a bedroom in Paris.

“Where are you … Devina …” FFS, she was going to do his nut in.

Which was crazy. During his twenty-year career as a shadow assassin for the U.S. government, you’d think he’d be used to this: War had a rhythm that was counterintuitive. There were long stretches of inactivity and waiting—interspersed with great explosions of life-or-death, keep-it-tight-or-get-jacked drama.

Usually he handled the lulls better.

Not anymore, apparently.

Although, granted, the stakes were higher than anything ever wagered on his performance before. He won? Hell was nothing but a morality play that didn’t have a stage anymore.

So maybe he should have just cooled his heels for one more round, taken a fourth win, and then the innocents would have been free, and everything would have game over’d in a good way.

The trouble was, he didn’t know whether Sissy Barten would survive that. The girl was trapped down below in that wall—and if Hell was destroyed, wouldn’t she go poof! with it? Or did she get a pass because her soul was clean?

He didn’t know, and he couldn’t take a chance on that … so he waited for Devina’s response.

And had to wonder what the demon was cooking up—

Brilliant light exploded into the bathroom, blinding him so badly that he dropped the soap to cover his eyes with his hands.

He knew who it was—even before an aristocratic English voice cut through the anemic shower.

“Have you lost all your wits!” Nigel, the archangel, demanded.

Great. Just what he was looking for.

A confron with the boss.

Adrian’s first clue that all was not well in Casa d’Angel was the illumination that cut in around the closed door to his bedroom. Bleeding through the jambs like the detonation flash of a car bomb, it could only be explained by a visit of the archangel variety.

Either that or that crap-ass stove downstairs in the kitchen had spontaneously combusted.

Getting off the bed, he limped to the door naked and opened things up so he could get a gander at the drama.

“… not interested—so fucking not interested…”

As Jim marched out of the loo with a towel around his hips and water dripping off his hair, his voice was deep and low, like a rattlesnake giving a warning.

Nigel wasn’t impressed. The boss man from Up Above was tight on the other angel’s balls, the English-accented dandy looking like he was on his way to the symphony: White tie seemed a little formal for the ass kicking that was rolling out. Although it was after dark.

La-di-frickin’-daaaaa.