Straight to Heaven (17 page)

“Of course, okay,” I said. I reached around and tried to pat her head. “Any time you want to come back, though, you let me know. I’ll be there in a second. I promise.”

She pressed her face into my back and nodded. “I know.”

It took me quite a while, but about a block from Tanya’s apartment building, I finally found what I was looking for: a wrinkle in the air that let me know I was facing a portal into Heaven.

My demon screeched in outrage, but I ignored her and passed through. Immediately, I was back among the looming trees and the murky, underwater light of Heaven’s pathways. The place was completely empty. The little bird that had been singing last time had fallen silent.

Ari’s guardian angel was hiding there somewhere; I just knew it. But since my demon’s navigation was no use in this strange place, I didn’t dare wander too far for fear of getting lost. Instead, I entered the first doorway I saw. Only, it wasn’t a doorway like the ones in Hell. This thing was more of a natural arch formed by two angled trees. As I passed through it, I left the forest and entered a pleasant, rustic living room with an enormous rag rug spread out in front of a large stone fireplace. A blue plaid couch faced the roaring fire. Sitting on a coffee table were several leather-bound books sandwiched between a pair of gaudy, gem-studded bookends. With the exception of the hideous bookends, the whole setup looked like a spread in an L.L. Bean catalog.

Several angels in ski sweaters sat on the floor drinking hot cocoa, and when I entered, they stared up at me in amazement. I recognized one of them. He wasn’t a kid or even a teenager any more, but a grown man. Still, I knew he was the one supposedly guarding my niece.

I pointed at him. “You! While you were here having fun, my niece almost broke her neck.”

There was a collective gasp of horror. “What’s
that thing
doing here,” asked one of the women. “They aren’t allowed in here!”

“Harmony was right about that demon,” said another female angel who had scooted to a far corner of the room. Her eyes were wide, and her lower lip trembled. “She can enter our kingdom at will!”

Ari’s guardian and another angel, an older man with a ponytail and a pair of round, John Lennon-style glasses, were on their feet in an instant. Ari’s angel glared at me. “I have no idea how you can breach Heaven, but this is
not
your domain. Go back to Hell where you belong!”

“Easy, Jed,” said the older one. His eyes blinked owlishly behind his round glasses. “Maybe she’s decided to cross over.” He offered me a wavering smile. “Are you here to stay, my dear? You’re welcome to join us if you want.”

As if. I glared at Jed, furious. “I’m here because you weren’t doing your job. Ari fell off a chair and nearly broke her neck!” I was so angry that I was going more deeply into demon mode than I ever had before. My skull itched as it sprouted horns, and my toes molded together as my feet turned into hooves. Several angels shrieked in alarm.

“Stay calm! Hell has no power here!” the man in the round glasses shouted.

Ariel’s angel waved his arms at me. “Get out of here! You are not to enter this place again!”

“Or what?”

We locked eyes. He was every bit as angry as I was. “You don’t scare me,” I said. I took a step forward, making him back up one. “I want you guarding my niece.”

Despite my outward change, my succubus was not doing well. She scrabbled in alarm, begging me to leave Heaven before she collapsed. Ignoring her, I said, “If anything bad happens to Ariel I
will
be back.” I growled at the angels, who shrieked once more. Then, to make my point perfectly clear, I grabbed Jed by the front of his sweater.

“She’s violating our territory,” one of the angels shrieked. “There can be no bloodshed in Heaven! Get out, vermin!”

All at once, my strength gave out, and I nearly dropped Jed. My succubus was in worse shape than I’d realized. Her struggles were growing weaker. If I didn’t get her out of Heaven’s rarefied atmosphere, she’d die, and I’d be stranded there forever. I let go of the angel and fled from the room.

I returned to the forest. To my relief, the portal to Earth wavered nearby. As I strode towards it, I passed several more wanted posters that had been tacked to the trees. Among them were pictures of William, me, and the strange pair in the trench coats and fedoras.

My temper blazed. Those angels had called me a
vermin
who had
violated
their space. Like I was a roach! Or a rat! Furious, I made a blind swipe at the nearest poster, ripping it from the tree it was tacked to. As I passed from Heaven to Earth, and then from Earth back into the familiar hallways of Hell, I balled the poster up in my hands, compressing it tighter and tighter. When I walked into my kitchen, I threw it in the trash.

Violated! I’ll show them violated, I thought. Then I pushed my hands through my hair, suddenly worried that my horns would still be showing when I went to the range with J.T.

Two hours later, my horns had shrunk, and I was ready to meet up with J.T. I didn’t care what Mr. Clerk’s note said. I still considered myself on the job. Until Miss Spry told me in person that she’d canceled my assignment with Craig, I refused to give up. Come hell or high water, I
was
going finish this job and reclaim my sterling record for temptations. Not to mention free my daughter from her fate.

I found J.T. inside the Dirty Duck, drinking a bottle of Rolling Rock, eating peanuts, and jawing with the bartender. His face lit up when he saw me. “Lilith! Right on time. Care for a beer?”

I hesitantly took the seat next to his. “Maybe drinking before we go to the gun range isn’t a great idea.”

He shrugged and finished his beer. “I just got off of work, and I’m parched.” He held up his hand for another.

“What is this? Deer hunting season?” the bartender joked as he opened the bottle. “You keep this up, your date will think you’re a drunk.”

Too late. His date already did.

Wondering if Craig had discovered the painful lump Miss Spry was sending his way, I asked J.T. how his friend was doing. “Sounds like he’s been having some bad luck. What with his girlfriend and his job and all.”

“He’s not too happy about that, no,” J.T. said, “but Sam Butcher’s been cheering him up.”

Sam Butcher. The man that J.T. had met at the barbeque. I envisioned a wild-eyed prophet with a long, gray beard and a camouflage vest. Someone full of 9/11 conspiracy theories and a grudge against the U.S. government. Just his name was enough to raise gooseflesh along my arms. I wondered how a man like that could possibly cheer someone up.

J.T. leaned back on his stool. “Craig is my best friend, but he can be a cement head sometimes. Good thing Sam’s been talking sense to him.”

“Such as?”

“Such as we’re on the verge of a global meltdown, and that little basement bunker of his isn’t enough to help him survive. He needs to think bigger. He’s got property further up north, and that’s where he should be planning to build his fortress. Doomsday is around the corner, you know.”

Fortress?
Just how paranoid were these guys? I glanced at the bartender who rolled his eyes and moved farther down the bar. I wished I could follow him.

J.T. finished his beer and stood up. “Ready to go?”

Watching an angry drunk handle a loaded weapon wasn’t how I wanted to spend the evening. “What if we stay here instead?”

“What gives?” That edge of suspicion was back in J.T.’s voice. “I thought we’d planned to go to the range.”

I suddenly wished I’d listened to Mr. Clerk and stayed home. “To be honest, I’m a little nervous about going to the range. See, I’ve never actually fired a gun before.” I laughed uneasily. “When we met the other night, I wanted to impress you so you’d be interested in me. See, I haven’t been on a date since I divorced my cheating ex-husband.”

J.T.’s jaw clenched. “You don’t have to tell me about bad ex-spouses. My ex is insane. She lives down in Florida with my two kids, but she won’t ever let me see them. She’s got some judge convinced that since I have a record, I’m a no-good father.”

“A record? You mean a
police
record?”

He shrugged and looked away. “I did some time for possession of illegal firearms.” He winked. “Good thing they don’t know about the gun safe in my basement. My ex would have a cow if she knew about that.”

I blinked in astonished horror. A gun safe? Illegal fire
arms
? Dear sinners! Next to J.T., Leo the golfer was a well-balanced, rational human being.

I needed to get out of there before I got in over my head. I excused myself to use the ladies’ room and headed straight for the otherworld doorway I’d used the night before. Being in J.T.’s company made even Hell seem like a refuge. I’d go back to bugging Mr. Clerk, but I was ending this nonsense with J.T.

That’s when Craig walked into the bar. He was deep in conversation with a slightly taller man with a large mustache and a head of frizzy, light brown hair that had been pulled into a ponytail. The stranger with the ponytail was talking earnestly while Craig nodded in sober agreement.

As they approached J.T., I realized that the stranger had an otherworldly shine about him. Not only that, despite the frizzy hair and mustache, he looked familiar. The moment I recognized him, my succubus let out a shriek of alarm, confirming my suspicions.

William
!

What in the hell was William doing with
my
client?! I chewed my lip, thinking. Had Miss Spry finally gotten impatient with my countless failed attempts and turned to my counterpart to finish the job?

I left the doorway and marched back over to where Craig and William had joined J.T. at the bar, determined to dig up the truth.

J.T., another beer in hand, grinned like an idiot. “Lilith! Come meet Sam Butcher.”

My jaw dropped. So
William
was the mysterious Sam Butcher, prophet of the apocalypse. Which meant that he’d been following Craig since the barbeque – the same day I’d been at the golf course with Leo. Although, it didn’t make sense since, at that time, I’d still been assigned to tempt Craig. Unless William was trying to seduce my client before I could!

William offered me a crooked smile as he extended his hand. “Lilith. Nice to meet you.”

There was only one reason William would want to steal my client: he wanted to prove that he was the superior tempter. Damn him!
Double
damn him!! My cheeks blazed. Well, he might know a thing or two about temptation, but I knew a thing or two about exposing liars. Just ask my lying, cheating ex-husband.

Ignoring his hand, I glared at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

William feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know
exactly
what I mean.” I turned up my demon’s shine to maximum. “This man isn’t a sympathizer. He’s an undercover police officer.”

William’s eyes popped wide.

“He’s been trying to infiltrate the Great Lakes Militia for months. He has a tip that you’re trafficking illegal firearms into Canada.”

Craig set down his bottle of beer. “Come again?”

“She’s crazy. I never…” William sputtered, but Craig threw up his hand cutting him off.

“You better know what you’re talking about,” Craig told me in a low voice. He was dangerously still, like a snake that was tensed to strike. J.T., too, was giving me the evil eye.

I smirked at William. “If you know so much about the Great Lakes Militia, then tell me. What’s so important about April 23, 1968?” Asking this was risky because if William had done his research, he’d know the answer. Then I, not he, would look like the imposter.

“That’s the day the Militia was founded?” Even a human could have read the question mark behind his answer. I had him!

“No,” I said with a smirk. “It’s Timothy McVeigh’s birthday.”

J.T. set down his beer as well, both he and Craig crowding in closer to William. William’s eyes darted right and left, and he offered a big shit-eating grin that wasn’t charming any of us. “Whoa, let’s just back up here a minute, okay?”

I was about to say something that would put an end to ‘Sam Butcher’ once and for all when, all of a sudden, two pissed-off angels walked into the bar.

It sounds like a set up for a joke, doesn’t it? Two guardian angels walk into a bar. One says, “You take the incubus. I’ll get the girl.”

But it was no joke.

One was Harmony, the angel from the post office and the bowling alley. The other was Jed, Ariel’s guardian. Like William and me, they were in disguise. They wore bikers’ leathers and red bandanas, and had added about a hundred pounds of solid muscle. Each. Jed had grown a set of bushy mutton-chop sideburns and added several large rings on his thick fingers. Harmony was smaller but looked just as fierce. Her jet-black hair had been shaved on the sides, and her bare arms showed tattoos from wrists to elbows.

The pair of them shoved their way between the crowded tables. They dumped over beers and knocked people off their chairs as they went, leaving a wake of outraged customers. Despite the shouts of indignation, however, the angels kept their brilliant blue eyes focused on William and me. Jed cracked his knuckles.

Before either of them could land a punch, I pointed to William. “I’ve been taken off this assignment. He’s the one you want.”

Both angels focused on William.

I smiled sweetly. “Go ahead, William. Knock yourself out and seduce them. Show me how it’s done.”

Jed’s face tightened. “Is this who I think it is?”

Harmony nodded. “I believe it is.”

By now, the entire bar was in chaos. People up close to the action were trying to back away while those farther away were attempting to squeeze in for a better look. Several people had taken out their phones to make calls while others were using them to shoot videos. Everyone, however, looked eager to see a fight.

As much as I would have loved to stay and witness the carnage, I wanted to get to Miss Spry and find out what the hell was going on.

J.T.’s eyes were glued to the fight. “Who are those bikers?”

“Sam Butcher has made his share of enemies,” I said. Jed grabbed William by the back of the neck, thumping his head against the bar so hard that I flinched.