“Those two,” Leo grunted as he refilled the pretzel bowl with a rustle of a bag a few weeks past expiration.
“They have a long way to go,” I admitted as I watched them pass the window to turn the corner that led to the alley where Griffin parked his car—the same alley where we’d destroyed the demon last night, “but I think they just might get there. As long as they learn Eden House isn’t the be-all and end-all of existence.”
“So it’s not the shit?” he said solemnly, and shoved the pretzels my way—already knowing the answer.
“No, not nearly the shit it thinks it is,” I said absently as I crunched some stale bread and salt, but he already knew that. “Has Robin called back yet?” He’d called last night when I was out. He said he’d call back today. Robin Goodfellow was one of the many contacts I’d made throughout my life. If I didn’t know something, which was rare, he was likely to.
“No, but he’s not exactly punctual. The orgies tend to slow him down,” Leo said dryly. True. Robin did like his extracurricular activities. I finished up with the ice, ran a cold, tousling hand through my unruly mass of hair, and had just started working on the glasses when the phone call came. Robin’s impatient, snarky voice was on the other end. It was his usual smooth tone, a tone that always seemed to carry the message Let me fly down to Vegas and show you, or you and Leo, or you, Leo, and anyone else you might have in mind, a good time. “The Light of Life, that’s what you said you were interested in, right?” he asked. “Instead of my naked and amazingly sculpted body? Your loss. Your horrifically catastrophic loss.”
I ignored the usual bragging . . . truthfully, it wasn’t all bragging . . . and focused on the Light. I was “interested” in it and had been for years. I’d spent the past few of them waiting for news of it to surface, a whisper of a dying demon two months ago to finally echo the rumors, and then set to tracking Robin down via the network of people like me. People in the business of knowing things.
The demon hadn’t known the location of the Light and very probably didn’t genuinely know anything at all—demons like the little sin of gossip as much as humans do, but Robin . . . Robin definitely knew his shit, which made finding him worth my while. He didn’t stick in one place too often, but if there was anything worth knowing that I didn’t, then he would.
“Yes, the Light of Life. I’m looking for it just like I said the last time I called and the time before that and the time before that. Have you found anything?” I demanded. I’d noticed Eden House had been looking for it as well and looking hard. Whether they’d known about it as long as I had was a different story. Griffin and Zeke couldn’t tell me. They weren’t high enough to be in the real loop. They were strictly demon chasers, nowhere near management level. They didn’t know what their bosses did. And in some cases, such as this one, they didn’t know what I did either.
“I’ve heard something, but I’m in New York and I’m in no position to leave. I have friends in trouble. I’m in trouble. It’s like the bad old days when we chased the demons and Eden House out of the city all in one night. I never was able to get the scales and feathers out of my best cashmere coat. I billed the Vatican and the Church of Satan, but did I get my money? No, not a damn penny. Of course, the party afterward almost made up for it. You’ve never seen so many drunk vampires and werewolves in your life. Even Wahan ket showed up, and you know what it takes to pry his dusty, mummified ass out of the museum basement. I remember . . .”
It was honestly awe-inspiring, who and what you could see if you traveled every corner of the world and kept your eyes open. What you could hear as well, but I didn’t have time for Robin’s trip down memory lane, as entertaining as it usually was. I cut him off impatiently, only verbally, although if he’d been talking to me in person . . . It’s so difficult to be good sometimes. “Robin, I thought you were in a hurry. I know I am.”
“Fine. Fine. Deny me a little stress relief. The best I can do is give you a name.” He did sound a little stressed under his customary tale spinning and Robin never sounded stressed. He’d fallen in with a bad crowd apparently. That made him more like me. Good for him. I didn’t want to be the only one. Although vampires and werewolves, tsk, were nothing but fanged and furry trash. I’d stick to demons.
“Who, then? What’s the name?”
“Wilder Hun.”
“You’re kidding,” I said incredulously.
“That’s what he calls himself. Born Eugene Gleck, so who can blame him.” He rattled off an address. “He’s also a molester of sorts, out of jail a year now.” He would’ve told me to watch myself, but he knew better.
“A woman.” I rapped a fisted hand against the bar. Of sorts? What did he mean by of sorts?
“No.”
“A man?” Less usual, but it happened. More and more, it happened.
“No. Think alcohol, a great deal of it, and a redneck’s most faithful companion.”
Ah, it was simply Robin being Robin. I didn’t roll my eyes—that would be juvenile—but it took effort. “All right. Your random pervert. So no one can say if it might have been consensual?”
“I don’t think they had the Pickup Truck Whisperer around to ask, but it wasn’t his and I hear the muffler was never quite the same.” I heard noises behind his voice. “I’ve got to go. Wire the money to my account.” In the background I heard him say, “I said, get away from her. Salome doesn’t like you. You do not want to end up down the incinerator like that Great Dane.”
He hung up before I could get the news on Salome and what she had against Great Danes; so sue me—I was curious. Born curious and lived every day the same way. Ah well, maybe the next time I talked to Robin I’d get the story on the cranky Salome. I had Wilder Hun, the moronic-named truck molester,. to deal with now.
Wilder lived an hour or so from Vegas in Moapa. That’s the thing about Vegas that’s so different from other cities. There’s no main drag, then suburbs, more suburbs, scattered houses, rural area stretching on and on . . . no. There’s Vegas and then there’s nothing. Nothing but dirt, sand, tumbleweeds, and the occasional mass of horny tarantulas swarming across the road during mating season. You really have to settle in and drive to find the next signs of life. It ain’t cheaper outside town, baby, because there is no outside town. You have to haul ass to the next town and watch the gorgeous, brown, flat, dead scenery in between.
When I finally arrived at the Hun Mansion, a shack with a distinct lean, I checked my Smith & Wesson 500 and slid it into the back waistband of my jeans and covered it with my shirt, a Chinese silk and brocade top in reds, golds, and peacock blue. It’d warmed up too much for the sweater. That was Nevada winter weather for you. The shotgun I left covered with a blanket in the backseat of the car. A round or two from my Smith wouldn’t do much but annoy a demon, but Hun was most likely no demon, just your run-of-the-mill pervert. And I trusted my judgment enough to play it that way. I also trusted myself to take down any pervert, run-of-the-mill or otherwise.
They say the gun is the great equalizer. Not so. A gun blowing off a guy’s balls, that’s the great equalizer.
I sat on the hood of my car, the metal hot but bearable, and called out to the guy with a hammer banging on the side of his “house.” “Hun. I’m looking for a Wilder Hun. Is that you?”
There is ugly, then there’s ugly, and then there’s your mama hooked up with King Kong. He was tall, six foot seven at best guess, hairy . . . long, scraggly brown hair and beard, tufts of hair sticking out of the collar of his T-shirt. His arms were like prehistoric caterpillars, bristling with spiny fur, even his ankles from under his jeans . . . never mind. Big Foot in a torn T-shirt and dirty jeans, and with eyes the color of algae on pond water.