Well, for one, he was dead.
Not demon dead, but when you’re dead, you’re dead, and do the particulars really matter?
I sighed and pulled a ponytail holder out of my jeans pocket and bundled my curls on top of my head, clearing the way for a better look. He was tied to an old kitchen chair with wire that ate into his flesh, once raw and bloody—now dry and stiff. Whoever had done the fancy stuff had used a knife. Knife wounds are quite different from damage made by demon claws. Those are serrated, and while some combat knives are, they’re not quite so finely serrated. Jeb had been tortured pretty thoroughly. The Light might have been worthless to a jeweler, but it had meant something to him—touched him somehow, and he wasn’t about to give it up. And even with two fingers and an ear missing and a savagely slit throat, I don’t think he had. Someone had gone away mad. What a shame.
I searched his house, no bigger or better a shack than Wilder ’s, and found nothing. I didn’t expect to. If anything had been here, the person with a knife would’ve found it—the same one I would bet was with Eden House.
I’d have said they were ruthless before, without qualms about doing what had to be done. Eden itself had been of the Old Testament, and Eden House didn’t much differ. They weren’t much into forgiving and Suffer unto the little children, but torture? Would they go that far? Would Above allow it? And if it was Eden House, why hadn’t they brought a telepath?
Too many questions. It didn’t matter who had done it. My link to the Light was gone.
Needless to say my mood was not good when I finally made it home, walking into my bar just in time to see Zeke plant a bullet point-blank in a robber ’s forehead.
“Wait!” Griffin grabbed Zeke’s wrist a split second too late—the “think” cue not quite making it over the finish line.
“What?” Zeke looked confused and a little annoyed. “Wrong?”
“Give me a second,” Griffin muttered. “I’m thinking.”
“Not too wrong, then,” Zeke said with satisfaction.
“Son of a bitch!”
Zeke and Griffin looked up from the crumpled body to me and each sidled a step back. They didn’t often see me well and truly angry. I was cheerful, I was easygoing, I was . . . I was so pissed, I couldn’t see straight. “He was armed,” Griffin said immediately in defense of his partner. “He was robbing the place and he had a gun. He could’ve killed somebody. That guy in the corner. The ones at the pool table. Leo.” He jerked his blond head in the direction of my bartender, who stood behind the bar with arms folded. “Your Leo.” Leo gave me an “Eh, it could’ve gone either way” shrug.
“And you like Leo,” Zeke pointed out, trying to slide his gun back under his jacket without being seen. “Everyone likes Leo. I like Leo. He gives me free beer.”
Leo instantly disappeared into the back kitchen, no doubt to call 911. Yeah, right. “I run a business here,” I shouted after him. “This isn’t a soup kitchen or a damn beer kitchen either.”
“He would’ve killed someone,” Zeke said as I approached him—and he said it honestly, because truthfully I wasn’t sure Zeke had figured out how to lie yet. Either that or he simply didn’t have the motivation to be bothered. “I felt it. It was right there, like acid sizzling in his brain.”
I ignored the excuse. True or not, it was still an excuse. Zeke could’ve taken him out without killing him. He . . . I gave an internal sigh and let the ire drain away. No. He couldn’t have. He was Zeke, it had happened too fast for him to think it through, and Griffin had been just a moment too late this time. It was a done deal. Now we just had to deal with it.
“You.” I shoved Zeke into the nearest chair, but without any real force. “You have a conceal and carry, right?” I was almost positive he did. Eden House liked to avoid trouble as much as possible, and on occasion there was some collateral damage while demon hunting. Shouldn’t be, but there was. Eden House or not, the demon chasers were human. They made mistakes or accidents happened. Either way, they could plant guns, knives—hell, samurai swords—on the innocent in seconds to get their own off, if that’s what it took.
I didn’t wait for his reply. I started to reach for Griffin to give him a shove toward Zeke, but he was already there. “Coach him on what to say,” I said, “and how to say it, quick, before the cops get here.” The how to say it was just as important as the what.
“The rest of you.” I took in the room of my regulars with a swing of a pointed finger, short nail frosted red. “You are literally on your hands and knees in relief. This man saved your life. That psycho son of a bitch was going to kill every last one of you for the pennies in your pockets. And he may have mentioned doing things to your dead bodies. Bad things. Really, really bad. You’re too scared to remember.” Eyes blinked, a mouth or two gaped, and I repeated it a little more loudly, “Literally on your knees.”
Chairs tipped over. Pool cues dropped to the floor and my grand total of seven clients went down with them.
By the time the cops got there, Zeke had his Glock on a table and his head in his hands. “He made me,” he said with a fair imitation of shock. “The bastard wouldn’t back down. He was going to kill everyone. Swear to God. Everyone.”
It went on an hour or so there as someone came to drag off the carcass in a nice black plastic bag. The cupful of brains they left on the floor. Oh, they took a small sample, but the rest . . . oatmeal gone bad and it was seeping into my ancient wood floor. I had Leo out with a mop and some bleach, but the floors were old and cracked. We’d be spraying that spot with a good shot of potpourri deodorizer every morning for a while.
They took Zeke to the police station for the paperwork. Griffin went with him as his “lawyer friend.” No, Griffin wasn’t a lawyer. I wasn’t quite sure what they were taught when Eden House took them in and trained them, but they were as educated as any college grad. Better yet, they had enough fake ID to walk into the White House, get a Twinkie from the vending machine in the basement, then high-five the Secret Service on their way out. If Griffin told a cop he was a lawyer, I knew he’d backed it up with something.
Zeke had still been doing a good job as he left. You would’ve thought he actually gave a shit about blowing that guy’s head off. The guy was a killer; the guy had a gun; the guy went down. It was Zeke’s philosophy about this entire situation, but let a cop see that and, justified or not, he would look at Zeke a little more closely . . . maybe for a long time.
But Griffin had run over it with him a few times before the sirens approached. “You’re upset. Yes, he was going to kill you, but you’ve never killed anyone before. You’re shaken up. And throw in a ‘Shit, why’d we have to pick this bar? Why didn’t we go down the street?’ ”
Zeke repeated it faithfully under his breath, and damn if he didn’t actually look almost distressed when the first cop arrived. Ten years ago, he would’ve killed the guy, stepped over his body to the bar, ordered a beer, and been unable to fake a twinge. Of course, ten years ago he was fifteen and wouldn’t have been served, but the point was the same. And inside he was still the same as he’d been ten years ago; he’d just learned to fake it.
Like I said, I thought he knew right from wrong. No, that wasn’t true. I knew he knew right from wrong, but he knew it in such a black and white manner—the results often ended up the same as if he didn’t. Lack of the gray areas . . . it made for Old Testament justice.
“Hey, whatcha doing? Milking your goat on the Sabbath? Really. Now, where’s that nice round rock I’m going to stone you with?” Five minutes later, “By the way, you won’t be needing that goat anymore, will you?”
Too bad I didn’t need a goat.
Exaggerated, all right, a little. Even with his issues, Zeke wasn’t that black and white. Although I was amazed with his problems that Zeke had been able to attach to Leo and me. As for Griffin—it was just a given, as I’d thought before . . . the Universe. They were two halves of a deadly whole. Zeke needed Griffin and Griffin needed Zeke. Griffin needed to take care of someone. He was a fixer. Wanted to fix, had to. Was it the way he grew up in foster care, surrounded by the weaker kids? A common-sense answer, but was it the right one?