“What a relief.”
“But you know, reanimation is possible.”
“Not tonight it isn’t. And certainly not in this place.”
“Man, you could suck the fun out of a strip club.”
“Pass.”
Ghosting into the large, clinical room, it was damn obvious why horror movies used morgues for settings. Between the green security lighting, the rolling gurneys, and the drains in the floor, the place was the perfect backdrop for a case of the heebs.
Even though he’d died and gone to heaven and all that crap, his adrenal glands still waved its flag well enough. Then again, the twitches were probably less about the other dead guys and more about the fact that he was going to look his own corpse in the face.
As he headed for the massive refrigerator unit, with its rows of cold flats, he knew exactly what he was doing. When he didn’t kill Isaac on schedule, two things were going to happen: Someone else would and somebody would be sent out looking for Jim.
And that was the reason they were here. His old boss was going to want to make sure Jim had bought the farm, so to speak: Matthias didn’t believe in death certificates, autopsy reports, or photographs because he knew all too well how easy it was to fake that kind of documentation. He also didn’t trust funerals, burial sites, or weeping widows and mothers, because he’d substituted too many bodies one for another over the years. Face-to-face verification was the only way to be sure in his book.
Usually Matthias sent his second in command to do the double-check, but Jim was going to make certain the big man himself was the one to do it in this case. The bastard was hard to flush out of hiding, and Jim needed his own face time with the guy.
The only way to make that happen was to use his own frozen ass as a lure.
And a little of Eddie’s magic.
Checking the nameplates set into the holders on the front of the doors, he found himself between D’Arterio, Agnes, and Rutherford, James.
Flipping the latch, he opened the three-foot-by-two-foot door . . . and pulled his dead body out of the refrigerator. There was a sheet covering him from head to foot, and his arms had been neatly tucked in by his sides. The air that wafted out of his hole was cold and dry and smelled like antifreeze.
Man, as many stiffs as he’d seen over his violent and bloody life, this skeeved him out.
“Give me my marching orders,” he said to Eddie grimly.
“Do you have the summoning object?” the angel asked, coming to stand on the other side.
Jim reached into his pocket and took out a small piece of wood that had been carved many, many years before in the tropics on the far side of the planet. He and Matthias had not always been at odds and Matthias hadn’t always been the boss.
And back when they’d both been grunts on the floor level of XOps, Jim had taught the guy how to whittle.
The miniature horse was done with surprising competence, considering it had been the first and only thing Matthias had carved. If memory served, it had taken about two hours—which was why it was being used: Apparently, inanimate objects did more than just collect dust. They were sponges for the essence of whoever owned or made or used them, and what lingered in the space between the molecules was very useful if you knew what to do with it.
Jim held the horse up. “Now what.”
Eddie whipped the sheet off Jim’s gray, mottled face. For a moment, it was hard to concentrate on anything but what he looked like forty-eight hours dead. Holy hell, the Grim Reaper was no makeup artist; that was for sure. Even Goths had better complexions.
“Hey, don’t be harshing on my peeps,” Adrian cut in. “I’d do one of us way before some SoCal bimbo with plastic melons and a spray tan.”
“Stop reading my mind, motherfucker. And you’d do the bimbo anyway.”
Adrian grinned and flexed his heavy arms. “Yeah. I would. And her sister.”
Yup, that angel appeared to be over whatever the demon Devina had done to him the night of Jim’s official “death.” Either that or all the self-medicating with living, breathing Barbies had exhausted any introspection right out of him.
Eddie took a metal file from his pocket and presented it handle first. “Grate some of that carving onto the body. Anywhere is fine.”
Jim chose the flat pads of his chest, and the scraping sounds were soft in the tiled cavern of the cold room.
Eddie took the tool back. “Where’s your knife?”
Jim took out the hunting blade that had been given to him way back when he’d first joined the armed services. Matthias had gotten an identical weapon at the same time—had used it to carve the horse, matter of fact.
“Slice your palm and hold the object hard. As you do, picture the person you want to come here clearly in your mind. Remember the sound of his voice. See him in memories that are specific. Watch how he moves, the gestures he makes, the clothes he wears, the smell of his cologne if he uses it.”
Forcing his head to focus, Jim tried to call up something, anything, about Matthias the Fucker. . . .
The image that dove into his frontal lobe was stunningly clear: He was back in the desert on that night, with the chemical stink of the explosive in his nose and the ringing sound of time-to-get-a-move-on banging in his ears. Matthias had no lower leg, his left eye was nearly gone from the socket, and his digital fatigues were covered with pale dirt and bright red blood.
“. . . Dan . . . ny . . . boy . . . my Danny boy . . .” he was saying.
Jim put the blade to the center of his palm and dragged it through his skin, letting out a hiss as the steel bit deep and clean.
Eddie’s voice cut through the memory and the icy pain. “Now take your palm and rub it on the wood shavings. Then get out your lighter and fire it up. Lifting your hand, blow across it into the flame and onto the body, keeping that picture in your mind.”
Jim did as he was told . . . and was amazed to see a blue glow coalesce on the far side of his Bic, like the thing had magically turned into a blowtorch. And the hey-check-its didn’t end there. The flare settled around the body, blanketing it in a shimmer.
“You’re done,” Eddie said.
Jim flicked his Bic off and just stared down at himself, wondering what Matthias was going to think.
There had been a time, long ago, when he and the guy had been tight. But as the years had passed, the bastard had gone one way, Jim another. And that was before the whole being-dead, fallen-angel thing.
But this wasn’t about him and Matthias.
Jim pulled the sheet back into place, covering his own face and wondering how long it was going to take for the spell to call Matthias here and for Jim to see the guy again.
He slid the table into the refrigerator and shut the door, cutting that phosphorescent blue glow off. “Let’s blow this joint.”
He was quiet on the way out, lost to the bad memories of what he’d done and who he’d killed while in XOps. And what do you know. In addition to his adrenal glands, it seemed like his personal demons had also survived his death. In fact, he had a feeling his regrets were eternal luggage: The not-so-hot part about being immortal was that there was no endgame to be had, no prospect for getting off the ride that you could hold on to when things got rough and overwhelming . . . and you despised yourself.
As he and his comrades reemerged onto the funeral home’s side lawn, it was back to the hunt for Isaac Rothe.
“I’ve got to find that man,” he said grimly. Although it wasn’t likely they’d forgotten what they were doing.
Closing his eyes, he summoned that which would carry him over the miles between Caldwell and where Isaac had been seen last. . . .
Jim’s massive wings unfurled on his back, the span of iridescent feathers stretching out and flexing like limbs that had been cramped. When his lids lifted, Eddie and Adrian were sporting theirs as well, the two fallen angels magnificent and otherworldly in the light of the streetlamps.
As a car drove by on the street, it didn’t screech to a halt or get derailed from its lane. The wings, like him and Eddie and Adrian, were neither there nor not there, real nor unreal, tangible nor intangible.