Leo interrupted, disgruntled—no more a fan of demons than the rest of us—and jerked a thumb toward the back exit. “There’s another one in the alley trying to eat a homeless guy. This is one bitch of a night.”
Zeke grinned, and when Zeke grinned that was never a good thing, at least for the person or nonper son that grin was meant for. It was the grin of a hungry wolf in midleap on something tasty and slow—damn happy and utterly without remorse. He headed immediately for the back door. Griffin looked at me. “Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “I’ll get the shotgun out of your car. Go.” Right now Zeke had his objective in sight: Kill the demon. The homeless guy—let’s hope he was out of the way when Zeke went into action. That was why Griffin was going with him and I was going after the shotgun. Zeke was white, the demon was black, and the homeless guy was that shade of gray Zeke had so much difficulty seeing.
Being saved from a demon didn’t do you much good if you were accidentally between the shotgun and your attacker when rescue came.
God had supposedly given man free will—so it was debated anyway—but without a good deal of practice or an inborn instruction manual, free will . . . well, it could be more a nightmare than a blessing. We all saw it and we all knew it, but Griffin knew it most of all. Their current employers had apparently tried psychotherapy and every medication known to the field, but nothing had improved Zeke’s condition; nothing had worked. Only Griffin worked . . . to a certain degree. “How many damn drugs did his bitch of a mother take while she was pregnant to make him this way?” he’d asked once over a drink after a particular mission had gone sideways because of Zeke and his inability to stop, once in motion, to exercise that will. “How could someone do that? To their own baby?”
How indeed?
But that had been last year that Griffin had spilled his frustration over whiskey—last year, and this was now. And now required a shotgun, so let’s concentrate on that. I had it out of the car and in the alley in seconds. A dirty, disheveled man went tearing past me, so it was safe to say Zeke hadn’t trampled over the top of him to get to the demon—or shot through him. Either that or it was one tough homeless guy, and he was gone so fast, I didn’t have a chance to look for footprints on his back or a hole in the middle of him.
Zeke was still grinning in the gloom of the ill-lit alley. He was never happier than when he had a job to do, a task to perform, a demon to kill. A strand of hair had fallen free from his short braid as he wrestled the demon to keep him on the ground. He had one arm and Griffin had the other, and both had buried knives in the man’s chest.
The man’s chest because the demon looked like a man now. Actually, he looked like Elvis . . . the very best Elvis impersonator in the city, thanks to a demon’s chameleon abilities. If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought the King himself was spitting foul curses at us. Zeke did know better because, like several other local demon chasers, he was telepathic. He could sense a demon’s surface thoughts if he was close enough. I once asked if he’d ever rummaged around in my thoughts. He’d said no and with Zeke-honesty, admitting that it was only because he hadn’t thought of it. “Good,” I’d said, pointing the knife I was using to cut lemons at the bar. “If you do, I’ll rummage around inside you with this.” Zeke definitely comprehended that consequence. Whether he could only sense surface thoughts or not, my thoughts, no matter how shallow or deep, were my own. I made sure of that.
Griffin, because he was an empath, knew the man was a demon, and this was why Eden House had recruited Zeke and Griffin both. They had the abilities Eden House prized above all, a mirror of the Above and Below.
Angels had telepathy, which was useful for impressing long-ago shepherds by pushing God’s word directly into their minds, and demons had empathy—very good for feeling out what a human would trade for his soul. A human empath could feel a demon’s emotions, which were similar to a human’s emotions—if he was one helluva bad human—only multiplied ten times over. And a telepath could hear a demon’s recruitment plan forming in its head or its murdering intent—unless you were a high-level angel or demon, in which case it all went out the window. No one could tell what you were up to. It was a peculiar balance the Universe had come up with—if the angels and demons had those powers, then so did the humans.
It gave Eden House and its demon hunters an extra edge. To destroy demons and bring Eden back to Earth . . . as if demons were the only thing keeping that from happening. But men were men. Try telling them anything, especially as the occasional angel reinforced the belief by showing up and giving an order or two. Free labor—not even angels would turn that down.
Now, when it came to me, how did I know a demon in human form? Griffin and Zeke had asked me that when they became aware that what they’d found out regarding the world around them when they were recruited by Eden House wasn’t precisely news to me. Demons were real. They were here. For once, movies and TV hadn’t lied.
I told them the truth. My family had been gypsies and travelers since—since before anyone could remember. We’d seen a lot in our travels and we passed on our stories to relatives when the reunions came around. And then I told them a lie, but a small one. I also told them that my family, my ancestors, had been pagans before a druid had ever danced naked under the moon. I said we’d worshipped the gods of nature when they were the only gods known to man. Honestly, I wasn’t into worship myself. Respect and reverence, yes, but not worship.
But regardless, hear about and see enough demons over the years and you knew one when you saw it. You didn’t need any fancy, psychic empath abilities. You just knew. The blinding good looks, the waves of unnatural charm they put off, the sly glint in their eyes . . . the scales and tail tended to tip you off as well, when they were caught.
Like now.
Suddenly the human form under their hands flickered. It was trying to go back to Hell, but it couldn’t. When a demon was physically anchored to this world, it was stuck and it couldn’t take you to Hell with it unless you’d consented, sold your soul. At least Heaven had given humans that one advantage when it had tossed the rebels to the pit. That and an age limit on selling what God gave you. More of a maturity level really. One didn’t want little Billy selling his soul to go to Disney World.
When escaping didn’t work, the demon shifted to its true form. Serpentine with thrashing wings and tail, it was patterned like a rattlesnake, but in swamp green and dull black. It opened its mouth and hissed, showing jagged teeth of dirty glass, but nowhere as brittle. “Pathetic, motherfucking humans,” it snarled. “Death is what—”
I stuck the single-barreled shotgun, a Remington and a beauty, under its pointed jaw and pulled the trigger. The slug changed a snake skull into something a little more avant-garde. Black blood flew, splattering Zeke and Griffin on their faces, necks, and chests. “Trixa.” Griffin groaned. I had ruined his gray-blue silk shirt and fawn-colored ostrich skin jacket. When Eden House had hired him away from sweeping my floors, there’d been a definite increase in salary. And it showed. The man liked his clothes.
“Sorry,” I said with utter insincerity as I pumped another slug into place. You never knew. Demons were tough, but they could be killed in their physical form, human or demon, if you used the proper tools and aimed at the vulnerable area, the head—or the brain or whatever passed for it in a demon. You could rip the rest of them to pieces, but they’d keep coming. “But that’s my mama he was talking about. And that I will not put up with.” Not that my mother wouldn’t laugh at the thought of me protecting her “good” name. “And you know Elvis wouldn’t talk about his mama that way either,” I finished.
“That was too quick. Let’s go find another,” Zeke said as the body by his knees melted away to the next best thing to an oil slick. It spread across the cracked gray asphalt, staining it a permanent black.