“Without casualties would be nice, unless it’s someone mugging an old lady. Then you’re a free agent. Do what you have to do.” I braced my hands on the dashboard. “We should’ve switched. I love driving fast.”
“Right. Then the only casualties would be us.” Leo drove the car between two rows of pumps at a gas station. I leaned out the window to flip off the cops. I had no problem with them personally, but I didn’t mind giving Leo more of a challenge. “Oh yes, that’s helpful,” he said. “Maybe you could moon them too. That’s a thought. That might actually scare them off.”
“Ass.” I punched him hard enough in his ribs to have him grunting as the car left the station, bounced over the curb, and hit yet another cross street. This part of LA was full of them. It made car chases more interesting. But despite that and despite riding the sidewalk and nearly taking out a gas pump, Leo’s version of a shortcut, the cops stuck stubbornly to us.
“That’s what I said. If you show them your ass . . .” I punched him again, turning the words into a pained hiss.
I pushed at his shoulder and put a hand on the wheel. “That’s it. You had your chance. Switch places with me.”
“My chance consisted of forty-five seconds? Hell, no.” This time he drove over the concrete curb in front of a liquor store and we were on yet another street, this time going the wrong way.
“I find it disturbing that if we die in a fiery collision, Cronus will still make us his bitches,” Griffin said, ducking as Leo dodged oncoming headlights.
“When Cronus does Armageddon, he likes to get it right.” I took my hand off the wheel, trying not to be greedy as Leo continued to weave the car around two more approaching ones. “Damning absolutely everyone, living or dead. Good or bad. Human or païen, and that means Thor the Indestructible too. If he’s ever sober enough to realize it.” That last thought gave me an idea, and moments later Griffin and Zeke had tossed a deadweight Thor out of the car. He tumbled across the street behind us and was wedged under the front of the cruiser as it hit him dead on. That stopped them. Thor was a big guy. A truck or SUV might have made it over him, but not a low-slung cop car. Right before both the car, lights flashing and siren screaming, and Thor disappeared in the distance behind us, I saw the beer can that remained clutched in his hand. He had one true love, but he was wholly devoted to it. You had to admire the dedication.
“It’s nice to know he’s good for something besides stalking a women’s volleyball team and single-handedly supporting the Internet porn industry,” Leo said, seemingly without remorse for letting us turn his foster brother into a speed bump. It did solve two problems at once. It stopped the cop car, and we managed to get rid of Thor. If he were sober, he would choose self-destruction over helping Leo, and if he was passed out or drunk, he wouldn’t be any use. We’d been beyond blessed he’d been helpful at the museum. It had been a long shot, but with the limited time we had left, our only shot. As Leo had once said, Fortune rarely favors the fucked, but there were exceptions.
“You’re sure he’s not dead?” Griffin asked. “I think one of the tires went over his head.”
“Unfortunately I’m sure. That won’t give him a headache, much less kill him.” Leo had us on the I-10 in twenty minutes and heading home. Only then would he pull over and switch places with me. He had hogged the car chase, short though it was, but I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have given one of those up either. As I took over the driving, Leo took a much-deserved nap. Zeke was only minutes behind him. He had been Tasered, which was a good excuse, but he didn’t require one. Zeke was a napping fool, one after my own heart.
“He didn’t need me to tell him what to do.”
It was an hour later when Griffin spoke those words. It didn’t surprise me he was the only one other than I who was awake. When you’d been in a coma, that was nap enough for a while. “With the museum guards?” I said as I lowered the radio volume. “No, he didn’t. Zeke’s come a long way in the past few months, if you don’t count blowing up houses.”
“He has. He knows why he is the way he is. Before he never knew whom to blame except himself. Now he knows better. Finding out what he was helps him deal with who he is.” Griffin exhaled. “I find out what I was and I can’t deal at all.”
“If it had been the other way around, would you have held that against Zeke?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, of course not, so I shouldn’t hold it against myself. But it isn’t that easy, is it?” He was slumped in the corner of the seat Thor had occupied before being unceremoniously rolled out. I couldn’t see much of him in the rearview mirror. Shadows within shadows. At that moment, it would’ve been the same in broad daylight.
“Nothing worthwhile is easy, but remember, angels have only ever fallen. You’re the single one who has ever risen up. That makes you damn special whether you want to see it or not. For one moment you had all the memories of who you once were and you still turned your back on Hell. You chose who you are now, a life that might be shorter, a life without all the power, a life of doing good instead of destroying it. I keep saying you aren’t that demon and you’re not, but I have to give him credit. That demon made that choice with you. To stay you and to never be what he was again. In a way, he gave his life to let you live. Maybe we both shouldn’t think of ex-demon as an insult. Maybe we should see that only makes what he did that much more extraordinary.”
The shadows moved and the tone lightened. “You think I’m extraordinary?”
“Sugar, ordinary you are not. If you were, do you think I’d have spent so many years babying you?”
“Is that what that was? I thought you were whipping me into shape Spartan style. . . . Shit! Watch out!”
I jerked my attention from the mirror to what was in front of me, easily visible in the car’s headlights—too easily. It was the Apocalypse, wearing that same inside-out T-shirt, same new jeans, and with the same eyes that were abandoned wells littered with bones of the doomed and the damned. He was standing on the road fifty feet ahead of me. I had less than half a second to decide which would be worse: to swerve off the road and most likely flip the car or to hit him head-on. I chose head-on. That was the unknown. I might do some damage; I might not, but rolling the car was guaranteed injuries. This was an old car with no airbags and the seat belts were questionable at best. I had to make a choice, and I did.
I chose wrong.
Hitting Cronus was like hitting a brick wall. He didn’t move, bend, or break, but we did. I heard the shattering of the windshield and the scream of metal as the front of the car folded in like an accordion—felt the rear of the car come up off the ground. We weren’t going to roll over, but we were going to tip and land upside down. With the speed I was going and the lack of give when we hit, we were going to fall hard. I didn’t think the roof would hold, and I didn’t think any of us were going to end up as anything other than dead with crushed skulls and broken necks. I thought all of that in less time than it took to take a breath. The mind moves quickly when it sees an ugly death racing its way. If there was anything I was sure of in that one frozen moment, it was that our lives were over.
Then the car stopped up in the air at almost a ninety-degree angle before slamming back down on all four wheels, which all immediately blew. I could see Cronus, blurry now as warm liquid dripped into my eyes. He had one hand resting on the mangled remains of the hood, the glass of the windshield diamond pebbles across the metal. He had stopped us and I didn’t think it was out of the kindness and goodness of the black hole that was a Titan heart. “I smell the demons on you. Bring me one more demon out of Hell. One more or I don’t start with worlds. I start with you,” he said before switching to a subject with such abrupt illogic I nearly couldn’t understand the words. “You should go home.” He swiveled his head in the direction of our home, then completely around to face us again, the neck a twisted piece of inhuman taffy. “But you can’t.” The smile was as creepy and soul sucking as it had been before. “You can’t go home when there is no home. Bring me a demon.” He lifted his hand from the car and turned the world inside out. Gods moved themselves through the world. Cronus decided to move the world around him. It was indescribable, the feeling—worse than the free fall of an airplane falling from the sky. A thousand times worse.