Lover Arisen, page 7
“No, I told you, he’s on another plane. The Creator has many of them. The ‘reality’ we all are in at the moment is merely one.”
“Can the Omega get back here?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
A sense that time was of the essence made V not ask for even the Cliffs Notes on all that. “The demon isn’t gone then, as the result of that house fire. She’s still with us, true?”
“Flames aren’t going to do anything but inconvenience her. The Book’s the same. That’s all I can say, though.” Lassiter lifted his finger. “No, there’s something else.”
V leaned forward. “What. Tell me.”
The angel glanced around the milky white that surrounded them, and it struck V that this landscape—wherever it was—was made of the same components as the sky over the Other Side. Then he forgot about all that. The angel’s face was drawn in such tense lines that for a second, V did not envy the guy—and not just because Lassiter was an idiot a lot of the time—
“Betty White.”
V popped his eyebrows and closed his lids at the same time. “I’m sorry?”
“I had a crush on Betty White, not Bea Arthur. It’s a world of difference.”
Shaking his head, V couldn’t believe in the middle of everything, this was the point Lassiter had to elaborate on. “Listen, my guy, once you’re in Geritol territory, I’m not sure there are many degrees of separation.”
“And before you go, one other thing.”
“Rue McClanahan I can kind of see—”
“Do not open it.”
“ ’Scuse me.”
“The Book. It’s a portal. When the spells on its pages are used, they open up cracks in the separation between planes. Some of what’s in it is nothing more than party tricks, but other incantations can change the course of destiny. In either case, every time it’s used, the boundary that protects our reality is weakened. You think the Omega is bad? Wait’ll you see what it’s like when you have to deal with the toxic waste of an entire other world on top of what’s on your plate now.”
Great. Christmas in April.
As V stroked his goatee and did some real Armageddon math, he was aware the angel had just confirmed that the Book was still kicking around, too. Nice.
“I’ll tell everybody to leave it closed.”
“Especially you.” As V’s brows arched, Lassiter demonstrated opening and closing with his palms. “The Book interacts with whoever is handling it. We do not want your power amplifying its own. You’re liable to blow a hole in the space/time continuum. Stay the fuck away from that thing, Vishous. I’m telling you. We do not want those kinds of consequences.”
V rubbed his hair. “Okay. Important tip.”
“You better believe it. Now, you and I? We didn’t have this conversation.”
There was a tremendous whoosh, and then the private quarters rematerialized.
As V’s body weaved from reorientation, he felt tired to the point of death. “No offense,” he muttered, “I’ve wanted to forget most of our little chats. So yeah, keeping quiet on this one won’t be a problem.”
Walking away to the double doors, which had opened again, he stopped in the jambs and stared across the white marble courtyard at the fountain.
“Thanks, angel,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome, vampire.”
CHAPTER SIX
As it turned out, Balz didn’t make it down to the bridges where the friendly neighborhood drug dealers were. He’d planned to go do a deal for some powdered energy to keep himself awake, but a sidetrack happened—and no matter how much he’d tried to get to goal, he couldn’t seem to reroute.
Which, given that his measure of bright-idea was securing a controlled substance, really said something about where he was and what he was doing.
On the where-he-was front, he was sitting on the roof of the security kiosk in the Caldwell Police Department’s mostly empty administration parking lot. And as for what he was doing?
He was being pathetic. That’s what he was doing.
Stretching his lower body out of its cross-legged position, the metal roof under his ass had no give in it at all and he grunted as his weight transferred from cheek to cheek. The good news was that there was a chill in the April air so shit back there was numb as a box of rocks. Provided he didn’t move it.
After settling into a halfway comfortable lean-back, his eyes drifted up the flank of the building once again. The structure was low and long, and as adorned as a pizza box, the rows upon rows of windows inset into the brick without any kind of flourish. Ah, yes, municipal architecture from the sixties, when four corners and a roof that didn’t cave in were considered a stylistic trend.
Then again, that decade had coughed up macramé, bell bottoms, and lava lamps. So it could be worse.
There had to be a good seventy-five to eighty offices in the sizable expanse and almost all of them were dark. Not every one, though. On the second floor, over on the left, there was an entire bank of glowing glass rectangles.
And that was why he was here. He’d checked in on a lark… and found what he shouldn’t have been looking for.
The detective he should not be getting anywhere near—in person or mentally—was sitting at her desk and staring at her computer screen like it held the answers to every question she had ever had—or at the very least this month’s Powerball numbers. God, he would have given his eyeteeth to know what was holding her attention like that. Given her job, he had a feeling it was nothing good.
Saunders was her last name, Erika, her first. He’d learned both when he’d had to scrub her memories.
He’d learned a few other things about her, not that he’d been prying. She was unmated, or unmarried, as her people called it, and she lived alone. She also had no family, and he knew the terrible reason why, the horror… the tragedy.
God, he didn’t want her involved in all his shit with that demon.
“How can I protect you,” he said into the wind, “when you can’t even know me.”
As if she could hear him, Erika sat back in her chair and let her head fall free on her neck. With his keen eyesight, he could tell she was murmuring something to herself. Then she re-leveled things… and reached forward to her computer monitor. Brushing the screen, her fingertips lingered on whatever was on there.
Even though he could only see her profile, the yearning on her face was clear. Then she jerked as if she were snapping out of a trance.
Fuck, she had a lover.
Although Balz had never considered himself a ladies’ male, he’d been with enough females and women over the centuries to recognize that particular kind of distraction.
Well, he was just going to have to kill the guy. It was really that simple—
“You are not going to murder anybody,” he snapped. Except then he had to do some editing. “You’re not going to murder her man.”
Fine. Just a little castration. Snip, snip, over the shoulder—
“You’re not doing that either, idiot.”
With a wince, he realized that he was arguing with himself. Thank God no one was around to—
“Here, I made these for you.”
Balz shifted so quick, he nearly fell off the side of the kiosk—and talk about a hi-how’re-ya. Standing over him, tall as a tree, broad as a mountain, dressed in black leather, was the only male on the planet he had any interest in seeing.
Vishous.
“Thank fuck,” Balz muttered as he kept himself from broken-egging his butt chips on the pavement below. “Even though you snuck up on me like a ghost.”
“You want me to announce myself with a bullhorn while you’re camping out in front of the police?” The Brother lowered himself onto his haunches and extended his palm. “I heard you need more of these. And you mind telling me what you aren’t doing? I’m not going to comment on the idiot part.”
The orderly little stack of hand-rolleds being offered was exactly what he needed.
“You’re going for sainthood, you know that?” Balz said as he took the largesse.
“Not hardly. You still have that lighter I gave you?”
By way of answer, Balz outed the Bic that the Brother had lent him and flicked his thumb at the same time he put one of the cigs between his lips. Then he offered the Brother his own creations.
“And you’re a gentlemale,” V murmured as he accepted it.
Balz lit his own. Lit the Brother’s. Put what remained of the stash away inside his leather jacket.
“So I’m guessing you ran into my cousin.”
V nodded. “We crossed paths.”
When the Brother didn’t move on to another subject, Balz felt his exhaustion get heavier by about seven hundred thousand tons.
Shaking his head, he said, “No, I’m not going back—”
“Good. I’m glad that’s what you’re not doing.”
Balz blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t want you at the mansion, not right now. And I know where you’ve been staying during the day. I’ve asked Fritz to kit your flop out a little more properly so when you’re there, you’re more comfortable.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need anything.”
“I didn’t ask whether you did. Besides, you want to tell Fritz he can’t make up a bed?”
Balz conceded that one. Then he frowned. “How did you know where to find me—”
V waved his Samsung cell phone. “Like you have to ask, true?”
“Oh. Right.” Balz took another drag and looked over his shoulder casually, making it like he wasn’t checking on the human woman in that window. “I’m not too bright right now.”
“You’re smarter than you think. And you’re doing the right thing.”
“I’m curious, why do you believe me?” He picked a loose flake of tobacco off his lower lip. “No one else does.”
“A hunch—that happens to have a pair of wings and a sun fetish. Also really bad taste in pretty much everything. But you don’t know anything about that. I just want you to have confidence that it’s all going to be handled.”
How, he wondered.
“Will the others believe you?”
“I’ll make sure of it.”
Balz stared down at the hand-rolled in between his fore- and middle fingers. “Thanks.”
“So why are you sitting here?” V indicated the lot with his gloved hand. “You think that demon doesn’t want to get arrested or some shit? Important tip, human police don’t mean anything to her.”
“Oh, yeah, no. I mean, no particular reason.”
He was very careful to lock eyes with the tip of the cigarette. And ignore the soft chuckle that came back at him, said sound suggesting that the Brother had taken one look at the woman spotlit in that row of windows and guessed precisely why no-particular-reason meant this very specific kiosk.
“I’m not talking about it,” Balz muttered.
“You’re right to stay away from her, too.”
Fuck you, Vishous. Even though the guy was spot-on and then some.
The Brother rotated his right shoulder like it was stiff, his black leather jacket creaking. “I want you to call me if you need anything, ’kay? In the meantime, I’m going to find out what we can do for you. The Scribe Virgin’s library on the Other Side has all kinds of information in it, and there’s no way that demon doesn’t have a weakness. We’re going to find it, and exploit it without using the Book—”
“Vishous.”
The Brother frowned and tilted his head, the tattoos at his temple highlighted by illumination from the security lights. “Funny tone in your voice there, Bastard.”
Balz stood up and stared at his detective—not that she was his. When he finally spoke, his words were slow and steady. “If we can’t get the demon out, I want you to take care of the problem.” He glanced over at V. “And don’t pretend you’re missing my drift. If something… needs to be done, I want you to put a bullet in my head. Don’t let my cousins or Xcor be the one. I don’t want them having to live with that kind of thing on their conscience for the rest of their lives. For you, there’s enough distance so it’ll just be another shit job you got stuck with, instead of something that eats you alive.”
“Don’t have much faith, do you.”
“Life has trained me to be realistic. So promise me, here and now. You’ll do what has to be done. You’re the only one who’ll walk away clean. And if I do it, no Fade, right?”
“Not to throw a wrench in your grave, but your death might not be your salvation. It might keep you with that demon forever, a little commitment ceremony that has no divorce court, feel me?”
Balz closed his eyes. “Fuck.”
“Give me some time.” There was a pause. “And yeah, if there’s no other way… I’ll take care of you.”
The Brother extended his dagger hand, and as they shook, Balz nearly cursed in relief. A moment later, V dematerialized into thin air, nothing remaining of him but the exhale of smoke that left his lips and drifted off.
Left to his own devices again, Balz smoked his cigarette down to his fingertips and enjoyed the view of the human woman, soaking in the planes and angles of her profile and the way her hair was so sensibly pulled back and her frown of concentration as she checked her phone as if she were expecting a text or a call.
There were probably no more than fifty yards between them, as the crow flew. And considering he could dematerialize through glass, even if it was perma-thamed—
Thermopaned, he corrected.
“What am I doing here,” he muttered. Other than increasing the likelihood of Devina finding the woman.
In which case, the Brotherhood wasn’t going to have to worry about what to do with that demon. Balz was going to drag her to Dhunhd his damned self.
Dropping the stub of the hand-rolled on the tin roof, he crushed the last little bit of the Turkish tobacco with the treads of his shitkicker. Then he stared at the woman in the window for a moment longer.
He could be by her side in the blink of an eye. He could calm her down by controlling her fight-or-flight response. He could insert into her brain things that were true about him: He wasn’t going to hurt her. He didn’t want to scare her. He only wanted to protect her.
“Yeah, and then what. You going to take her out to dinner?”
Well, there was that 24-hour diner that had the good pie…
Balz stayed a little longer, playing out a fantasy that involved the kind of insanity that he was embarrassed to admit to himself. He was no prince, and paying for some woman’s dinner and holding some doors open for her was not going to turn this thief into anything charming. Besides, he came with one hell of a caboose, at least until V figured out how to file eviction papers with the Department of Goodbye Demons.
But God, he hated to leave the woman. He really did. And it wasn’t all about the protection thing.
He just liked looking at her. She calmed him down, focused him, made him stop chasing the inanimate objects of other people.
Closing his eyes, he took a couple of deep breaths and willed himself to dematerialize to the closest bridge. When nothing happened, he tried again. And a third time.
Great. All this shit was turning him into a pedestrian.
With a mutter, he jump-of-shame’d it off the kiosk’s roof and landed on the pavement with a clap of his boots. After a jack-up of his leathers, he got to hoofing it—and chilled his bad mood by pointing out that at least she didn’t have to know he was skulking off like his Kia Soul had run out of gas.
Not that there was anything wrong with a Soul.
As he went along, passing by dark office buildings, restaurants that were closing up, and ghost town surface lots and parking garages, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked anywhere, except for when he was on rotation and patrolling the field.
On that note, he wasn’t sure when he was going to be back at work.
His real life seemed a thousand miles away. Maybe that was why the fifty yards between him and that woman had struck him as a painfully close divide he desperately wanted to cross.
After a number of blocks, he caught sight of the first of the bridges, the span lit up with multicolored lights, the four lanes lightly traveled on account of the late hour. As he closed in, he made quick work of the sidewalk, pulling a Saturday Night Fever without the platform shoes. Or John Travolta’s dance moves.
Also no Bee Gees soundtrack, although, yes, he would like to stay alive, thank you very much.
When he arrived at the bridge, he went around the base of an on-ramp and entered an underworld that had its own rules. The stink of the place instantly registered, the combination of river mud, burning trash, and human waste burrowing into his sinuses. He was too tired to sneeze as he checked out the shadowed, littered landscape for things that went bump in the night.
No threats anywhere, but that didn’t mean there was nobody around. A couple dozen humans in ragged clothes were shuffling between tents and cardboard pallets, and little groups of like individuals circled around trash can fires. Lit joints, cigarettes, and liquor bottles were out in the open; the meth and crack pipes were generally kept hidden.
Putting his hands in his pockets, he strode forward with a lowered head and eyes that tracked everything. The man he’d come to see was nearly a quarter mile away, stationed all the way across at the brick wall boundary created by the start of the warehouse district. On the approach, the dealer didn’t look Balz’s way, but his hand ducked inside his bomber jacket. With his hoodie up and the darkness surrounding him, he was a sentient shadow in gray clothes.
Or he better be. Drug dealers didn’t last long in Caldwell if they weren’t halfway decent in the noggin department.
“I want something,” Balz said by way of introduction.
“I don’t know you.”
“I’m looking for a bump.”
The dealer glanced left. Glanced right. What little of his hair showed was dark, clean, and gelled, and his beard was trimmed tight. That bomber jacket of his was battered, but in a store-bought way, not from the authentic wear-and-tear that came from being homeless. He even had fresh kicks on, those sneakers the only thing on him that was white.
