The Devil You Know (22 page)

“Englebrecht,” she said sweetly. “Angel-breaker.”

She bit into my wounded left arm and I screamed. And screamed.

The pain was well-nigh orgasmic, and not in a good way. Each bite of Billie’s teeth seemed to drag the pain up from my very spine. I screamed as Billie went about the process of eating me alive. She stopped only long enough to say, silkily, in my ear, “Such power, Dark Prince. And in forty years you have not so much as scratched the surface of it. You have squandered your father’s gift to you.” Her voice was husky and stilted, like she was on the edge of coming right then and there.

I arched my back and gagged as she resumed biting into my forearm, right into my wound to get at my ragged, raw flesh and blood. Her gnawing teeth made me writhe like I was conducting an electric current. I kicked at the ground with my heels but I couldn’t escape the pain. “Fuck you, bitch.” My right hand flailed, coming down hard on something familiar lying in the weeds beside me.

“Shhh,” she said, stroking my hair. “Be still, daemon, and serve.” Her hand moved to my chest, then further down, and she started pawing at my cock through my jeans. I stayed soft. That part of me had decided it was going to have no part of this insanity, thank you very much. Billie leaned close, her bloodied lips inches from my ear. “You shouldn’t have disturbed my garden. Now you’ll have to replace it. I need your power. With you, Little Horn, I can Ascend.” She bent down and kissed me on the lips. Her cold, sugary-sweet tongue curled inside my mouth.

That’s when my hand closed around the grip of the gun lying on the ground. I brought it up and around, hard, connecting with the side of Billie’s head. Billie grunted and rolled off of me.

I’m left-handed, though you’ve probably guessed that already. Still, I can shoot with my right in a pinch. My instructor in the Academy taught us to shoot with both hands. I’m not a crack-shot, but at close range, that hardly matters. My left arm was numb and virtually useless. I rolled over and brought my right arm around, shooting blind in the direction where Billie had fallen. I saw a flicker of glowing whiteness. I tried to track it. I heard the rapport of the shot echo through the trees, saw the muzzle flash, heard sleeping birds and small animals screech awake, but otherwise it brought no response.

“Hell,” I breathed hoarsely as I struggled to my feet and stumbled around like a drunkard, bleeding all over the ground from my seeping bite wound. It hurt, but now I was mad as hell. Mad is good. It motivated me. I had a madwoman on the loose imbued with the power of the Devil who wanted to be God. Fuck. Could my night get any worse?

Apparently so. Before me, a door shushed up. I saw shifting darkness and colors that just don’t exist on planet earth. Oh fun. Company from the other side. Problem was, I didn’t know
which
side. The doors looked all the same to me, at least until I saw the denizens.

I’d just managed to get my equilibrium and was weaving dangerously when a massive pair of patent-leather-gloved hands caught me by the shoulders and steadied me. A hand grasped the athame in my shoulder and jerked it loose without warning. That made me scream like a little schoolgirl as blood and something black and rotten poured out of my wound.

First I felt pain . . . then gratitude that a big biker-type dude from the other side had materialized out of nowhere to help me stand up and get that cursed, angel-eating athame out of my flesh. I was about to say “Hey, thanks,” when I realized who that big biker-type dude was.

A booming, unnatural basso said, “Nicky . . . ” with a giant smile in his voice.

“Malach. Nice seeing you here,” I croaked. “You’re just in time. How are you?”

Malach punched me in the face.

Attack by supernatural forces . . . check.

Assault and battery by a magical artifact . . . check.

Complete and utter loss of all dignity . . . check.

I figured I was batting zero tonight. I sat shirtless against a tree, smoking the last of my dad’s fancy cigarettes, and working on binding the giant bite wound in my left arm with strips of my shirt. The pain made me nauseous and I kept clutching the wound with my right hand, but my healing mojo was working slow as hell tonight. It was like the athame had sucked the magic right out of my body.

“Why are you taking so long?” Malach asked, pacing back and forth in front of me. He held the giant gold angel gun in both hands as he walked a few paces, stopped to eye the woods, then started walking again in the opposite direction. I had the feeling the gun was the equivalent of his security blanket.

“I’m sorry I’m holding you up, friend,” I said, my voice coming muffled and acidic out of my swollen mouth. I tasted blood and at least four of my teeth felt dangerously loose when I probed them with my tongue. Malach had a hell of a right swing, and I don’t even think he was putting all he could behind it. “I do just happen to be half human, you know.”

“Hurry up.”

“Or what? You’re going to hit me again? Drag me through the woods?”

He turned and eyed me with his cold blue mechanical eyes. “There’s a thought.”

I met his gaze unflinchingly. You can call me brave or stupid, I don’t care. After all the shit I’d been through tonight, I was
not
going to cower under Malach’s tough guy persona. “Why don’t you just shoot me already? That’s what you’re here for, aren’t you?” I indicated the woods. “We’re not on holy ground now.”

“I’m not here to shoot you, Nick. I’m here for the Arcana.”

That surprised me. “I thought you were hunting daemons?”

“The Arcana takes precedent over daemons. They are far more dangerous.”

“Sure, and that’s why you’ve been following Vivian around for the past three days?”

“I was not hunting your Whore of Babylon because she is a daemon, Nick. I was hunting her because she knew Billie Berger. I thought she might be part of the Arcana.”

Well, that surprised me. I thought about busting Malach up for the Whore of Babylon comment, but he’d probably just punch me in the mouth again. “She’s not,” I said defensively. “Whatever else Vivian is, she is
not
part of them.”

“Yes, Nick,” he answered. “I know.”

I don’t know why, but it made me want to cry with insane joy that Malach called me
Nick
. Malach
always
called me Nick. No stupid names or nicknames, no vainglorious epithets. To Malach I was just
Nick
. It was so goddamn . . .
normal
.

“Can you get up?” he asked.

“Why? You’ll just hit me again.”

Malach rolled his eyes. “I am not here to hit you, Nick. I told you. I am here to hunt the Arcana.” He paused and seemed to consider that. “And I need your help.” He sounded embarrassed by his admission.

I shook my head. “I thought you were here to drag me before the Throne.”

“There is no one on the Throne to drag you to,” he said. He sounded sad about that. He played with his big gun. He liked his big gun. I’m sure there was something very Freudian about that.

On a hunch I said, “You’re one of the angels who’s undecided, aren’t you?”

He shrugged one shoulder, the way some guys do, creaking a lot in his dusty black leather. “I do not like the new management.”

“I thought you took your orders directly from Gabe?”

His eyes flared. It wasn’t something you ever wanted to see directed at you, believe me. “I take my orders from my Lord.”

“So why hunt the Arcana?”

“I do not want a human being to Ascend to the Throne. Especially
them
.”

The pain in my arm was finally lessening, though I wished I had some ibuprofen or something. I really needed to carry that around with me along with my candy fetish. Mental note on that. Especially considering the amount of people who wanted to knock the shit out of me of lately.

The wrist of my left hand was burning. I looked at it and was surprised by how irritated the witch marks looked. There was no doubt in my mind that Vivian had marked me in return, and the sight of the shallow scratches gave me an idea. We had learned that Vivian could heal through sex. I wondered if I had a permanent conduit to that power . . . that power that existed outside of me but inside
her
. I pressed the marks to my wounded shoulder and felt warmth infuse the wound. The pain began to drain away.

I decided to give standing a try. I was halfway up the tree when the whole forest started to sway. I leaned back against the trunk and closed my eyes. I was sweating and still feeling sick to my stomach.

“What is wrong with you?”

“I think that athame poisoned me.” I clutched my fist closed until the force of it made my wrist marks bleed. Spitting away the cigarette, I brought the blood to my lips, trying to force Vivian’s healing power into my body. Malach watched me with interest. “Don’t let that bitch put one of those knives in you,” I told him after a few moments of licking up my own blood like a second-rate vampire. “If it hurts this much and I’m only half angel, it’ll tear the shit out of you.”

“Thank you. I will remember that.”

The sky was lightening and I could see Malach better. He looked big and badass as usual, like a bounty hunter misplaced from somewhere in the south-west, the deserts of Arizona, maybe. But he also looked a little lost. A little . . . not Malach. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Doing what?”

“Being nice to me. Not shooting me.”

“I told you. I need your help with the Arcana.” He smiled then, a little. “Maybe I’ll shoot you later.”

“You sound like the Terminator with those lines, you know?
Come with me if you want to live.
”

Malach stared blankly at me. Mostly, he did not get my jokes.

My shoulder was feeling better, not mended, but better. Manageable. I slipped the jacket over my bare shoulders, grimacing a little, then pushed myself off from the tree. The woods, already filling with moody grey morning light, still swayed a little like I was standing on a giant cosmic pendulum, but I decided I could deal.

When you have a whole world to save from a nearly omnipotent bad guy, you can’t let a little angel magic get you down. I checked the Tanaka, noting I had plenty of munitions left. “Rock and roll,” I said to Malach. “Let’s go.”

We started hiking toward the Berger house together. Along the way I said, “You know, I make a better ally than an enemy.”

“You are the son of the Lord of the Pit.”

“Come on. I’m not
that
bad.”

He glared at me.

“Just because I smoke and like sex does
not
make me a bad person. Some would even call me normal.”

He glared at me.

I reached into my pocket and found a half-full bag of Skittles. My day was looking up. “You want one?” I asked, offering him the bag.

Malach ignored me. His loss.

“So why’d you punch me if you were here to get my help?” I asked through a mouthful of candies. They tasted funny in my swollen, metallic mouth.

Malach shrugged. “I just always wanted to punch you.”