The Grimrose Path (Trickster, #2)(25)
Apparently not. “You’re afraid of this guy?” Zeke asked skeptically. “You?”
“Hell, yes,” I admitted freely. Damn, there went another joint. My once-conditioned body seemed to be falling to pieces fast. The maintenance on a human body was unbelievable. If you slept wrong, you were crippled for the day. How could a species manage to sleep wrong? How had they survived to swarm the earth? A bad mattress to them was like an asteroid to the dinosaurs.
Them.
Me.
Damn it.
“He can hop from dimensional realm to realm,” I went on, “from place to place in this one, can kill nine hundred demons. . . . I hate to keep repeating myself, but, guys, seriously . . . nine hundred demons. Finds ruling a heaven and a hell not challenge enough, and when Leo almost destroyed the world, Cronus thought it was cute . . . like a puppy mauling your slipper. Or a kitten pouncing on a ball of yarn. You remember the Ark of the Covenant? Melting people’s faces? Disintegrating their bones? He probably uses that as a retro lava lamp. He’ll kill you and the worst thing is, he probably won’t even notice that he did.” I stopped stretching and checked that my T-shirt covered my gun. “And that’s it. If that doesn’t convince you, I give up.”
“If he’s so indestructible, how are you going to stop him?” Griffin asked.
“Stop him? How can we join up?” Zeke countered.
“We can’t stop him, and you’ll stay away from him or I’ll paddle your behind, if he doesn’t rip a cheek off like he did that demon’s wing. So just go home, watch TV, get naughty, whatever, and be safe,” I ordered.
Zeke looked disgruntled, but then again, he looked disgruntled ninety-nine percent of the time. If the demon-killing business ever lightened up, he could be a postal worker, no aptitude testing needed. Griffin, on the other hand, was the same sensible Griffin I’d always known him to be. He wore a more disappointed expression than I expected. . . . Griffin was a demon killer, but he didn’t go into withdrawal like Zeke did. It wasn’t the be-all and end-all of his existence. That was why I chalked up his glum look to there being less action lately, Eli having apparently warned his demons to steer clear of the four of us if they could.
I should’ve chalked it up to my stupidity instead. I might’ve been smarter than Eli, and might even be half as smart as I thought I was, but it wasn’t smart enough to see what was coming. And I hated that. Screw my ego. I hated that one of my boys was in trouble, and I didn’t see it. I let him down.
But that came later. For now, oblivious, I decided I’d rather run someplace more picturesque than the several blocks to the gym and drove to Sunset Park. Back to nature—at least as close as you could come in the midst of Vegas. There were ducks and geese and a pond. Unless you wanted your ankles pecked, you didn’t run there. I had the respect . . . more accurately, the suspicious wariness . . . of a good deal of the pa?en world. On top of that, at times in my life I’d been worshipped, respected, and feared by humans. And then there were demons . . . ppfff. Let’s just say that was the second bumper sticker on my car. SLAYER NOT LAYER and I DON’T BRAKE FOR DEMONS. Next to Cronus, I might be a gnat, but compared to everything else, I was content with my place in the world.
Except for geese. Geese feared and respected no one. No ankle, human or otherwise, was safe. It could be even Titans like Cronus bowed to their pure, feathered evil. It was worth thinking about. And I did as I thought about other equally ridiculous things. I liked ridiculous things. I avoided the pond and jogged to the mesquite flats for a real run. Once there had been homeless people there, but the police had run them off some time ago and I often found the flats empty except for jackrabbits and ground squirrels. It was quiet company, although at least once during every run a chipmunk tried to commit suicide by diving under my feet. They weren’t bright, but they were pretty to look at . . . much like Leo’s dates, which made me curse the rodents a bit more as I avoided squashing their little furry heads as I ran. It was big of me to admit that to myself, about Leo’s women, and as a reward I decided to cut fifteen minutes off the run.
There were also other animals on the flats, ones that didn’t throw themselves under me—cottontail, quail, trails of ants, a hunkered-down spider here and there, and tiny lizards darting along the cracked ground.
There were also the big lizards.
They appeared in a circle around me. I stopped in midstride, kicking up a spray of dirt. There were eight of them—demons in human form. Normally it would’ve been like a convention of lawyers, the ambulance-chasing kind. The ones with bright teeth and an even brighter magnetism . . . an irresistible appeal that can convince you to sue your own ninety-eight-year-old grandma when you trip on a crack in her sidewalk. But all that potential charisma, it was still a holstered weapon behind flat eyes. They stood motionless, arms at their sides. Every one of them a prince made of pure poison. Flawless but empty of anything except hunger and hate.
And then there was Prince Charming himself—Eligos. With a brown leather jacket, dark bronze finely woven shirt and slacks, he forced me to say, “I’m way underdressed for this party.” I turned my head to take the entire nine of them in. “All this for me, Eli? You do know how to flatter a girl.”
“I remember our last party. I wanted this one to end differently.” He smiled, but his nonexistent heart wasn’t in it. There was none of its usual carnivorously merry gloating. “Think of my colleagues as doormen. They’re to keep you around while I make my Tupperware pitch. I don’t want to end up like Solomon before you’ve heard me out.”