The Taken (5 page)

Glaring through blurred static, and a picture that rolled every few seconds, Sarge crossed his great arms and gave Grif a cold stare. His wings, as black as the rest of him, took up the whole of the screen, though Grif could still see the tips, currently gold-tipped with fury. Hard lines drew his mouth down like a thin hook, and his jaw clenched reflexively. He hadn’t seen Sarge this mad since Harvey brought home the wrong soul.

Frank leaned back, and the celestial camera—or whatever was allowing Grif to view him in the Everlast—pulled wide to reveal a desk that was as broad and imposing as the Pure behind it. “Childers?” Frank repeated, pointing to some papers on his desk.

Grif glanced outside to make sure the cashier wasn’t looking before he answered. “What is that? My folder?”

Sarge just stared. Like Anas, he had no pupils, though instead of her hot open flame, the rounds of his eyes held mist swirling over black marble. “And you told Simon Abernathy he wouldn’t have gotten dusted if he’d stuck to shilling fish and chips on his side of the pond?”

“He was an illegal.”

“Shaw.” Sarge threw down his pen. “You are a Centurion! You are greeting people in the most vulnerable moments of their afterlife. Don’t you remember what that was like?”

“Sure I do,” Grif said, tapping out one of his smokes. He lit it behind a cupped palm, and exhaled before meeting Frank’s restlessly churning eyes. “Though the part right before that gets a little fuzzy.”

Frank narrowed his gaze. “We’re not having this conversation again.”

“Good.” Because Grif had been murdered. No amount of yapping would convince him to forgive it. And, for some reason, he couldn’t forget. “Then maybe we can talk about what the hell I’m doing on this mudflat. In
flesh.
”

“You have sensitivity issues, Shaw.”

Despite those, or maybe because of them, Grif just blew out a stream of smoke. “Maybe I could put on a dress. Sing a little show tune?”

Frank just stared back at him from the video screen. With his angelic nature hidden behind this familiar guise, it was easy to forget he was created in and of Paradise. Yet, unlike some of the other Pures, Frank didn’t seem to resent the Centurions. Sure, they were celestial misfits; no longer mortal, not truly angelic. But Centurions had still been created in God’s image, they remained His beloved children, and Frank said it was his job to see those souls at peace.

Admittedly, Grif didn’t always make it easy.

“That it?” he asked, when Frank just kept eyeballing him. “You knocked me back to the mud just to talk about my bedside manner?”

“No, smartass.” Frank’s curse was cause enough to raise a brow. “You barred yourself from the Everlast when you did this.”

And Nicole Rockwell’s corpse replaced Frank on the screen. Grif shot a nervous glance out the window, but the cashier was still staring across the street, giving a play-by-play to whomever he was talking to on his cell.

“Come on,” Grif protested. “I was nice to the working girl.”

Sarge’s words were just a voice-over. “She wasn’t a hooker, Grif.”

Grif sighed. “Yeah. That’s what she said.”

“It’s not what she said, Shaw. It’s what she
did
.”

And the image fluttered, shifted, and then there was Grif, entering the motel room just as Nicole Rockwell spotted her dead body and began screaming.

“Damn,” Grif whispered under his breath.

It looked more incriminating, more premeditated, from a distance. There was no sound, but he couldn’t fault the picture. Especially after he’d resuscitated Nicole’s body, and she made him turn away so she could dress.

“The girl wanted some privacy,” Grif objected, having seen enough.

“No . . . she wanted this.”

And Grif watched, slack-jawed, as Rockwell scribbled something on the Moleskine he’d seen lying on the dresser. When his image finally turned away from the window and back to her, she made sure her head was on straight, literally, and that her body was blocking the notebook.

Grif cursed again. “She tricked me.”

“You let her trick you.” Frank’s wide face reappeared on the screen.

“I wasn’t thinking straight!” Grif protested, then finally got the nerve to say what was really bothering him. “You sent me to Vegas.
Vegas!
”

Frank’s face remained impassive. “It was mandatory. Doing Surface time in the city where you died—”

“Was murdered,” Grif corrected.

“Is part of your rehabilitation and healing process.”

“I’m fine,” Grif muttered.

“Then what are you still doing here?” Frank asked, gesturing at his office in the Everlast.

“You mean
here
?” Grif motioned around the gas station on the Surface.

The swirling eyes narrowed. “You want to see the rest?”

The rest? Grif frowned. What was left?

But Sarge was shaking his head, and Grif suddenly found he couldn’t hold the stare. He might be slow on the uptake, but he was catching up fast now. His actions had changed something on the Surface. They’d altered fate somehow, and whatever his interference had allowed—whatever Nicole Rockwell had written in that notebook—was big enough to gain a Pure’s attention. No, he didn’t want to see.

But Sarge showed him anyway. The static blurred with a wave of his hand, and there was the same dingy hotel room but a new scene. Another woman and her john entering, freezing when they spotted Nicole’s corpse on the bed. Grif was already gone, of course, and the woman fled screaming, but the man looked around . . . then pocketed the notebook.

“Who is that?” Grif asked, leaning forward, studying the blond hair, stocky build . . .

“None of your damned business, that’s who!” Sarge reappeared, and looked like he was going to come at Grif right through the screen. “You are not a P.I. anymore. You’re not even human! Yet you took anchor in a body still pulsing with life, and so that must mean you want the human experience again. Fine. You’re demoted,
angel
.”

Every instinct told Grif to remain quiet. “What’re you gonna do?” he said instead. “Confiscate my halo?”

Frank’s gaze narrowed. “Go back to the man outside.”

Grif looked at the cashier. He waved when he caught the man looking back.

“The other one,” Sarge snapped. “And take the map. You’re gonna need it.” And the security screen returned to normal.

Muttering to himself, Grif pocketed the Luckies and folded the map, and was halfway to the door before remembering the coffee. When he finally exited, the cashier looked over, scoffing when he saw the steaming cups, one in each hand.

“You’re really not from here.”

But he didn’t follow as Grif headed back around the side of the building, and Jimmy was right where he left him, seemingly passed out, though his head lifted when Grif stopped in front of him. “Here.”

But it was Sarge’s misty, marbled gaze staring out at him from the mortal flesh. Grif jolted, scalding his flesh with the coffee. “What are you doing? Is he . . . possessed?”

“It’s easy to control those who have no possession over themselves,” Sarge said. “Now look in his left coat pocket.”

Grif set down the cups. “Why?”

“I’m giving you a case.”

“Another Take?” Grif asked, withdrawing a file folder.

Jimmy’s expression altered, both hard and sympathetic all at once. “Not a Take. A
case.
You think you can do my job, Shaw? Make the decisions and sacrifices required of a Pure?”

What the hell had the Pure ever sacrificed? Grif thought, but Frank didn’t give him the chance to ask. “Open it. Find out more of exactly what it is we do.”

A black-and-white glossy stared up at him, a rap sheet stapled across from that, but he ignored the vital stats and studied the face. He recognized her immediately, of course. The pretty woman he’d seen from the motel window, though pretty wasn’t a word he’d use to describe her up close. Siren would work, and her baby blues were lit up as if she knew it, and it amused her.

Cherry-cream lips and sable-hued bangs stood out against pale skin, stark, even in black-and-white. A rose, blood-orange, he imagined, was tucked behind one ear. He glanced over at the name—Katherine Craig—then back at the photo.

“I don’t get it.”

Jimmy’s mouth moved. “What’s your job as a Centurion?”

Grif cleared his throat. “Secure the Take. Clean ’em up. Bring ’em home.”

Do it
respectfully,
he added silently. Okay, so he’d learned his lesson.

But Sarge wasn’t through yet. “And when do you meet your Takes, Shaw?”

“When they are most traumatized. Immediately after corporeal death.”

Every Centurion knew that, because that’s why they existed. They were the losers. The few murdered souls that incubation couldn’t cure. Still tethered to the Surface by memory and regret, they were pressed into assisting others to cross into the Everlast. The idea was that helping others would relieve their mental anguish. Then they, too, would be able to enter Paradise proper.

The bum gave him a tight smile. Grif blinked. For a moment he thought he saw fangs. “Not this one.”

“Sarge?”

Frank’s roiling liquid gaze suddenly looked shuttered. “You gotta watch this one, Griffin. See, you might be back on the Surface, back in flesh, but you’re not human. Take away a Centurion’s wings, and all they’re left with is an intimate acquaintance with death.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can still see death coming. It also means you’re gonna watch that woman die, and you’re going to feel the death as if it were your own.”

Grif froze. That’s what he was doing here?

“No.”

He began to shake his head. He might be a misfit in the celestial realm, but everyone knew the only thing keeping him sane was the protective layer of Everlast that lay between Paradise and the Surface. It was a balm, a numbing cream rubbed atop his sore soul. Flesh would scrub off that balm and expose him. Without it he’d wither.

But Sarge knew this better than anyone, so all Grif asked was, “Why?”

“Because you caused it, Shaw.” Now Frank didn’t look angry, vengeful, or cold. He just looked sad. “Katherine Craig is fated to die because of you.”

Grif’s newfound breath deserted him, but his mind fired fast.

My best friend is waiting outside . . .

The siren in the car. The way she’d looked up at him in a way no woman had in over fifty years: as if really seeing him. And the blond man who’d pocketed the Moleskine.

Whatever Nicole Rockwell had written in it was going to lead the man directly to Katherine Craig
.

Grif tossed the folder to the ground. “I won’t do it.”

Jimmy’s expression, and Frank’s darker one beneath it, didn’t alter. “You’re going to bring that poor girl’s soul home, Shaw. You’re going to see that she gets safely to incubation where she can heal from her death, and the grief over a life and family she’ll never have.”

“No.”

“You will do this so that she damned well doesn’t end up like you. And, Grif? You’re going to do it
nicely.
” The bum’s nostrils flared, his stare tumultuous and bright. “Keep the map until you get your bearings. You’ve been navigating by the constellations for so long now that the streets mean nothing. Now, go.”

Grif closed his eyes, and the same loneliness that’d run him under when he sank through Nicole’s body wracked him again. Lowering his head, he shook it side to side. “I still remember things I shouldn’t. And the memories will be stronger if I stay on the Surface. Humanity . . . hurts.”

Silence reigned for so long Grif could almost believe Frank was reconsidering. But when he looked up, the bum’s gaze was bleary, confused, and pinned on the coffee cup next to him. “What the hell is this? Where’s the sauce, man?”

Grif bent, pocketed the folder, and turned to leave. But, just in case, he paused to mutter, “You forgot my damned hat.”

“You forgot my damned beer!” Jimmy replied, but Grif was already walking. He was just out of the drunk’s view when he spotted it coming fast, like a soundless comet or a falling black star. It dropped directly to his side, sending a small puff of dust into the air, causing Grif to cough.

Yeah, yeah, Grif thought, bending down. It’s all dust. We’re all dust. I get it.

But he didn’t give Sarge the satisfaction of looking back or up, and he didn’t give thanks. Instead he dusted off his fedora, settled it atop his head, and kept walking.

Somewhere out there was a woman with powerful blue eyes, a secretive smile, and curves that made him want to cry. A woman he was going to have to face in both this world and the next. A woman fated to die because of him.

Again.

K
it shouldn’t have been surprised at the sun’s ascendance in the sky, or by downtown’s early-morning bustle. Yet she stood at the bottom of the concrete stairway outside the station, shoulders slumped and limbs heavy, as astonished by the urban landscape as she’d be in a foreign country. It was startling that these people had dressed this morning—or not, in the case of the vagrant sprawled to her left—and bewildering that they could now think of coffee, or gambling, or work.