“All?” Eli straightened, dropping his hand from tracing patterns on my cheek and leaning back slightly as if it gave him room to think. “You asked him what he wanted and the only thing he said was ‘All’? Well? What does that mean? All. He’s ripped off the wings of nearly a thousand demons, only one wing per demon if you were wondering, that’s what it takes, and the most conversation the son of a bitch can muster up about his wholesale slaughter of my kind is ‘all.’ It’s meaningless.”
I gave him a look every teacher slips up at one time or another to bestow on her slowest student. “Eli, you can’t mean that. You don’t get it? You? I’m disappointed.” I leaned toward him as he had leaned away. “Don’t be Eli, wearing your fancy human suit. Be who you are. Be Eligos. You know of Cronus. He’s a Titan. He gave birth to gods, but no one gave birth to him. He birthed himself out of the universe . . . out of the sky and the earth. They were said to be his father and mother; that’s a myth. He created himself—the ultimate ‘I think, therefore I am.’ He was once locked in Tartarus, a païen hell, and he took it over. Then he took over the Elysian Fields, a païen heaven. And it wasn’t enough. One hell and one heaven weren’t enough to occupy him and he deserted them. He was bored. What do you think it would take to satisfy him? What could possibly do it?”
His jaw tightened. “All.”
“Exactly.” When I was sure that one hand would support me, I ran a hand through the mess of my hair to shake at least a pound of dust free. “Your Hell, your Heaven, every païen hell and heaven and all the thousands of ethereal worlds in between. And, last but not least, this world. The one we live in now. There will be nowhere to go to escape him. If he consumes Lucifer and Hell, one in the same that they are, and adds that energy to his, he’ll have more power than anyone could possibly conceive. He will rule every place that there is a place. If you think your boss is tough now,” I said, my voice hardening, “you wait until you see your new one in action. Lucifer might be fallen, you might be fallen, but you’re sane. You do enormous evil, but you do it with logic and reason. You enjoy it. You need souls and you like to kill in your off-hours. It’s disgusting, but there is a twisted motivation behind it. Cronus is nothing like you. Cronus is outside your frame of reference. He could move past you and nothing would happen, and then a second later he could look at you and drive you and everyone in the hemisphere instantly insane. Worse,” I said with a sigh, “he very likely wouldn’t know he’d done it. He’s a giant and you’re a ‘tiny slow-moving caterpillar on the sidewalk’ demon. Fuzzy and cute, but powerless. There’s nothing you can do.”
“What about that artifact you stole?” he said abruptly. “The one that made your sanctuary for païen against God and Lucifer?”
“Heaven and Hell it can stop. Cronus would crumple our shield like tissue paper and toss it over his shoulder. Do you think we’d all still be hanging around if that weren’t the case?” I snorted. “We’d leave you all a nice sympathy card and be running for the hills.”
“Then why free the Roses at all? If they’re going to end up in places worse than Hell, places ruled by Cronus,” he demanded, “what’s the point?”
“In case I can stop him.” I lay back down and covered a yawn with the back of my hand. Long nights, crashing through ceilings; it was taking its toll. And the pain. Humans were the most gossamer of snowflakes. Touch one and you damaged it without the slightest intent at all. “I said you couldn’t do anything, gecko. I didn’t say I couldn’t.” I being Leo and me and any others who might come up with an idea, but I didn’t need to share glory when there was no glory to be had at the moment... and no glory sparkling anywhere in the distance. “It’s time for a nap now. Explaining it all to your tediously slow iguana brain exhausts a girl. I’ll bill you for the floor and ceiling. Oh, and the bedspread. That was my favorite.”
I closed my eyes and hoped for the best and readied myself to go for my gun if the worst came instead. His weight shifted on me as he said, “You are such an utter bitch.” Each word was a shadow given teeth and appetite.
“Say it with love, sugar. I’m your last hope after all.” I gave another yawn, but kept one hand free to go for my gun or the knife in my boot.
“Actually, for me, sweetheart, that was as close as it comes.” He laughed, almost startling me. “I do have to give it to you. I am going to kill you, sooner or later, and I don’t like being a mark. You can take that to the Vegas bank and break it, but the Roses? You led me right down that primrose path there, and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never live it down either, but you know I’m a demon of my word when I say”—he placed his lips at my ear—“neither will you.”
Then I was alone. His weight disappeared. The tingle of him in the air fizzled out, a lightbulb dying after one last spark and sputter. He had probably gone back to Hell to report or to find a few humans to eat to fortify him before giving that report. Me? What did I do? Exactly what I’d said.
I took a nap.
Chapter 11
I was surrounded by pissed-off people.
It was a feeling I was used to, and I didn’t take it personally, although one-third of it was very personal. “Leo,” I said for what I thought was the third time, but I could’ve been wrong, because he’d yet to take any of it to heart, “if you’re going to kill me, kill me. If it’s too much work for you, wait, and Eli will do it for you. Now stop glaring at me before you get eyestrain and the vein in your forehead explodes.”
Leo had found me when he’d driven back from dropping off Ishiah at the airport. It was a toss-up which was more terrifying—finding holes blown through the floor and ceiling of the bar or getting through the drop-off lane at the airport without having a power-inflamed, overgrown crossing guard scream at you for idling your car one second too long. Soon enough you wouldn’t be able to do more than pause as you booted your passenger face-first onto the curb and squealed off, damn the horses and to hell with the luggage.
He’d discovered me on the floor, covered in plaster dust and unmoving . . . an effigy at repose on an ancient British tomb. He shook me violently, lifted me up, and then wrapped his arms around me so tightly that I might have spit up a little down his back like a surprised, dyspeptic baby. Only might have—I didn’t look because I didn’t want to know for sure.
“I thought you were dead. Odin, hang me—I thought you were dead,” he’d said fiercely. It was warm . . . warm and comforting to be held that close, to be that cherished, to know you would’ve been that missed, all while I was still on the edge of sleep. It was I think the most reassuring, safe, and yet anything but safe feeling all wrapped into one. Cradled on the edge of a precipice, knowing you couldn’t fall alone, but you could fall together . . . a feeling that anyone would’ve sold their soul for.
Naturally Leo had gone on to promptly ruin the moment.
“I thought you were dead,” he’d repeated or, more accurately, accused, pushing me back away far enough to get a good look at me.
“I was napping.” I’d tried to make it sound perfectly normal, which, considering the situation, it had been. I’d been too tired and in too much pain to drag myself up to the bed.
“What the fuck are you doing lying on the floor taking a goddamn nap and making me think you’re dead? Are you that idiotic? Are you? I am mostly human now. You could’ve stopped my heart in my chest, but I’m guessing you didn’t once think of that.”
You’d have thought that if there were a diva in the room it would be me. Wrong. Hair had come loose from his ponytail and it fell in my face as he was yelling at me. I’d batted it aside, took a breath that hurt every rib I had, and had replied with what I thought was a valid argument. “You were a killer. You are a killer.” Not that I was saying the killing wasn’t for the side of all that was right and just. It was. “I’d think you’d know dead when you saw it.”