Devil's Business (13 page)

“No, I think I like it here,” Jack said. Don shook his head.

“I don’t want to gut your lady friend out there from crotch to collar, but that doesn’t mean I won’t,” he said.

“You seem to know so much about me,” Jack said. “Then you know that threatening Pete is a royally bad fucking idea.”

“But effective,” Don said. “You don’t have soft spots, Jack, except for her. She’s going to get you killed one of these days.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh wait, she already has. How was your little vacation in the Pit, Jack? Did the dry air do wonders for you?”

“If you’re going to try and kill me, do it,” Jack said. “Otherwise, shut the fuck up and let me go about my business.”

“We’re not done,” Don said. He opened the office door, but instead of leading Jack back down the hallway, he went to the auto bay. The door was up and a sleek black car rumbled, headlights cutting cones of yellow on the dingy walls of Sal’s garage.

“Take a ride with me,” Don said. “I promise after it’s over, you’ll see things my way.”

Jack pointed to the back door. “Let me just tell Pete I’m going.”

“No,” Don said. “Now, or you can clean her insides off your outsides.” The door of the Lincoln swung open, and Don gestured Jack into the back seat. The car was old, upholstered in slick hide that shifted like oil in the low light. “She’s a big girl,” Don said. “I’m sure she can find something to occupy her time until we’re finished.”

Jack tightened his jaw, but he got into the car. Don needed him alive for something, at least for now. If he really wanted Belial off his scent, he could’ve just sliced Jack, or let Sal shoot him. And Pete would be well and truly pissed off that he’d left, but she’d get over it. Or she wouldn’t, which would probably make his life easier in the long run. Pete hating him was probably how it should go.

“Good move,” Don said when Jack settled back against the seat.

“Fuck off,” Jack told him.

The Lincoln didn’t have a driver, but it backed out of Sal’s garage and purred smoothly to the freeway. Don opened the center console between the seats and drew out a thin black cigar. “Care for?” he said to Jack.

“No, thanks,” Jack said. “I try to restrict my vices to things that’ll kill me slow.”

“You’re funny,” Don said. A cherry sprang to life on the end of his smoke. “Didn’t expect that.”

“What exactly did you expect?” Jack asked.

“I know a lot about you,” Don said. “Been keeping tabs on you, just like Belial. Enemy of my enemy and all that shit. Knew when my spell went dead that you’d head back to poor Sally back there and threaten to beat the piss out of him. Fortunately, Sal knows what side is the right side. He’s a good boy.”

“Belial is going to find you one way or the other,” Jack said. “Whether I’m helping him or not. He’s a vicious cunt, that one.”

“Belial is more concerned with keeping his little hardscrabble patch of Hell in his control than he is with me,” Don said. “I was away for a long time before he ever cared. Nergal made him look bad, is all. I’m older than him, and I’m meaner, but if he wants a stand-up fight, he’ll get one. And his little masters the Princes aren’t going to like the upset in Hell one bit when I give it.”

Don rolled down the window and let the smoke drift out, trailing behind them. The highways were empty, something Jack knew should never happen at this time of day, and the Lincoln traveled so fast he could feel the vibration of the road. “I’ve walked around the block, Jack. I know when to sit back and let the dogs and the rats fight it out. Whoever’s left, that’s who I’ll deal with.”

“So, what, you kidnapped me because you’re lonely and wanted to have a chat?” Jack asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Don said. “You don’t have the whole story, Jack. When you do, you’ll be on the right side.”

“And by right side, you mean your side,” Jack muttered. Don grinned at him.

“Of course.”

Jack stayed quiet at that. Don certainly wasn’t what he’d expected, in terms of a boogeyman who’d frighten a demon enough to go through the trouble of compelling Jack to hunt said boogeyman down. He wasn’t sure of Don’s nature just yet, but he didn’t ping his senses like a ghost or a demon, and he’d never stopped smiling since Jack had gotten in the car. That, more than Don’s purported reputation, worried him. You couldn’t trust somebody who was always cheerful. There was usually something wrong with them.

The Lincoln left the freeway and started to climb into the hills. The barren scrub blurred by so fast it was only a welter of green and brown, and the flashes of Los Angeles in the gaps came and went so quickly they could be a single frame of film.

“Let me guess: You’re going to tell it to me?” Jack said. That was the thing with demons and their ilk—they always wanted to blather at you, to make you understand how right they were, even as they burned and flayed and ate humans alive. Don wasn’t human, was certainly who Belial was searching for, but Jack couldn’t read much beyond that. He was a blank spot in the Black, something either so old or so strong that magic flowed around him like a stone in a river, leaving a void that shrieked against Jack’s sight.

“Going to try,” Don said, as the Lincoln cornered, spraying gravel behind it. “It’s not a happy story, but I have high hopes for the ending. I’m not one for a downer, just a slow fadeout before the credits roll. I like a twist. You?”

“I like knowing that my day won’t consist of listening to smarmy demons talk about themselves,” Jack muttered. “But so far it hasn’t worked out for me.”

Don lunged forward, leaving no space between Jack, himself, and the seat behind. Jack could feel springs pressing into his spine and his bones creaking from the pressure.

“I’m not a demon,” Don purred. “I don’t like being called what I’m not, Jack. It’s narrative falseness. It’s not fair to the audience.”

“Fine,” Jack said. He hated that his heart beat faster, that he could hear blood roaring in his ears almost to the exclusion of Don’s soft voice. He shouldn’t be afraid of flash gits like this any longer. Not after Hell. Not after everything that had come before it.

Don sat back and grinned. “Good. We’re here.”

Jack looked through the tinted glass. They were at the crest of a hill, a long gravel road in front of him that swooped down into a canyon. Nestled at the foot of the sunset-colored rock, a few gray buildings and a farmhouse with a distinct tilt to it baked in the California sun.

“I’ll bite,” Jack said. “Where’s here?”

Don snapped his fingers and the Lincoln’s doors sprang open, mental raven wings poised for flight. “Home sweet home.”

CHAPTER 16

Don’s boots crunched on the gravel. The heels and toes were silver and flashed in the sun, the stippled snakeskin in between crackling as he walked. “Close enough to the city that no white-knight types poke around,” he said. “Far enough to enjoy the beauty of nature.” He flicked the end of his cigar away. “Paradise on earth. Gotta hoof it from here. We take a few precautions, being Belial’s most wanted and all.”

Jack followed Don, the ripples in the Black growing stronger the closer he got to the farmstead.

“You like that?” Don said. “Farmer killed his wife and his daughter back in forty-eight or so. Killed two sheriff’s deputies when they came to see what happened. Found out later he had eight whores buried under the floor of his barn. Guess the wife put her nose where it didn’t belong. Sad when that happens.”

“Sad, yeah,” Jack said. “They charge you extra for the story?”

“Something like.” Don smiled. “Real estate around here isn’t what it used to be. Used to be, you couldn’t spit in Los Angeles without coming across a crime scene or a poor sad little murder-victim ghost.”

Jack watched a crow alight on the ridgepole of the barn, cawing once before it took flight again. Don curled his lip. “One of yours? Or your bitch hag checking up on you?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Jack said. Under his shirt, the markings of the Morrigan crawled over his skin, as if the wind had ruffled his feathers.

“Aw,” Don purred. “You and Mommy have a fight?”

“Would it make you feel better about your goatee looking like a stripper’s pubic hair if I said yes?” Jack snapped.

Don wagged his finger. “You’re not much fun to have at the party, Jack, and if you don’t cheer up, I might have to throw your ass out.”

A sagging porch wrapped the farmhouse, weighted down with mattress springs and a rusty icebox. The crow on the barn took flight, screeching. In the bowl of the earth, the heat pressed down against Jack’s skin, radiated from the dirt and from the near-white sky above. The Black here was seared and screaming, hot as an iron and dry as graveyard dust. There were other places that felt the same, but they were concentration camps and mass graves, the sites of enough pain and terror to leave an indelible echo through the layers of life, death, and magic. Jack had never seen so small a patch of earth so infected.

In the bare dirt yard between the barn and house, a small girl sat crosslegged, pushing two dolls together at the apex of their legs. The dolls’ faces were blackened and melted, and their hair had fused into thin spikes. She looked up at Jack with pure black eyes that were lidless and did not blink.

“She’s our little one,” Don said. “Not used to people yet. Still got the marks on her from where I cut her free.”

Jack stared back at the girl until she stuck her tongue out at him. “I see you,” she whispered. “You want this body? You want me to suck your cock? I see it. Don’t lie.”

Jack lifted his eyebrows at Don. “Got a mouth on her, doesn’t she?”

Don cradled the girl’s head against his thigh. “Is that any way to talk to our friend Jack, darlin’?”

“I saw it,” she pouted.

“Sure you did. You stay out here and play,” Don said. “Jack and I are going to have a little chat indoors.”

The girl stared at Jack for another moment with her insect eyes, then went back to smashing her melted dolls together. Human flesh could contain a lot of things, but he still didn’t have a sense of what Don and his creepy little bug child really were, under the skin. He could be patient and see what he could see. Don was playing a long game, trying to make him comfortable, and Jack was content to let him think he was as dumb as the rest of the human race and had nothing to fear from this place. The Black writhed inside his mind like a snake, hard to grasp and cold to the touch. He’d be hard-pressed to call up witchfire, never mind sling a hex if he had to. Effectively, he was stuck here for as long as it amused Don to keep him, but he didn’t have to let on that he knew.

Don mounted the steps of the farmhouse, rotted boards cracking under his boots. “Come on in,” he told Jack. “Meet the rest of the family.”

CHAPTER 17

Inside the farmhouse, all was darkness. Light leached from above, through broken spots in the roof, and hit a floor littered with trash and the skeletons of small animals. The stench was even heavier than the darkness, shoving fingers into Jack’s nostrils and down his throat. The house stank of rot, old food and older sweat, decades of filth baking in the heat. Even the offal tanks of the Pit hadn’t stunk this badly.

Jack pulled his shirt over his nose. At least his own sweat was familiar.

Don jabbed a push-button switch, and a single bulb flickered overhead, casting bird-wing shadows into all the corners. Stairs with most of the treads missing led up, and a hallway stretched ahead, so stacked with ancient newspapers and fruit crates that Jack could barely maneuver it sideways.

“Levi!” Don shouted. “You in here?”

“Back room,” a voice croaked, and Don jerked his head at Jack.

“Levi’s my brother. You’ll like him.”

“Will I?” Jack said. “He as convivial as you?”

“He’s a laugh riot.” Don slithered down the hall passage with the acumen of a snake. Jack dislodged a stack of ancient, moldy
National Geographics
. A rat hissed and scurried deeper into the holes its compatriots had chewed in the stacks of paper.

“For such a flash chap, you sure do love filth,” he told Don.

Don shrugged. “Humans notice dirt. For me, your whole world is dirt.”

“Suppose it is,” Jack muttered. The back room had been a kitchen, at some point, and pipes jutted from the wall where a stove and icebox had once stood. A deep sink crouched in one corner, with some thick, black, viscous substance dripping down the stained porcelain flanks and puddling on the floor.

A mechanized wheelchair, the kind old ladies drove around shopping centers, sat in front of a TV fizzing with static and occasionally showing flashes of a saggy and low-budget porn film. In the chair sat the largest man Jack had ever seen—he overflowed the bonds of the chair, and white stretch marks cut jagged canyons on the back of his shaved head. He breathed with a deep, wet wheeze, something rotten deep in his chest rattling with every puff of air.

“That him?” Levi gave a wet sniff. “He doesn’t smell so sweet.”

Jack decided that pointing out that the waves of stench rolling off Levi could fell a werewolf wasn’t his most prudent course of action. “Your reception is shit,” he said, pointing to the telly. Levi grunted, jabbing at a remote with fingers strained with bloat.

“Everything here is shit. Your world is a crapper waiting for somebody to flush the floating turds.”

“Come on, now,” Don said. “Can you really say that after where you were when I found you?”

Levi coughed, and the floor shook under his weight. He didn’t have a shirt on—Jack doubted any shirt in existence would actually keep the rolling hills of his stomach under wraps—and the hair on his chest was sparse and black, matted with sweat. Blemishes dotted his shoulders like a range of volcanoes. “You bring me what I want?” he croaked at Don.

Don fished a grease-spotted paper bag from his jacket and passed it into Levi’s waiting hands. The giant ripped it open and tore the wrapper from an In-N-Out Burger with his teeth. Two gulps, and it disappeared down his gullet. He unrolled the magazine also in the sack with greasy fingers, leaving thumbprints on the expanses of naked women in the glossy pages. What Pete called sad porn—junkie girls with empty eyes, tied and splayed, cut and displayed in ways that Jack supposed a bloke like Levi would find right up his alley.