The Grimrose Path

  Maybe we were lucky Griffin was on the other side of the street. He considered their personal life to be just that and not shouted down the street over people’s heads. I choked back a laugh, because Zeke was trying to be good since this was my show. Most times he wouldn’t mention the little annoyances of life and take care of them himself, which was rarely a pretty picture. “Did you tell him to stop?” I asked.

  “Twice. Which are two more warnings than I normally give,” came the exasperated reply.

  I shrugged to myself. Sometimes the Zeke way was the right way—once again, not pretty, but still occasionally right. “Sounds like someone needs a lesson. You can be a trickster intern for the night.”

  After that I heard a grunt, a loud one to make it as far down as I was sitting. I didn’t hear a silencer’s muffled cough though, which was good, but better safe than sorry. . . . “You didn’t shoot him, did you?”

  “No, I hit it with the butt of my gun.” Considering the size Zeke’s guns tended toward, that was one unfortunate flasher. “He’s curled up and I can’t see his dick anymore, but I heard a crunch. A nice, loud crunch. Is that enough of a lesson or should I go ahead and shoot him?”

  He didn’t know, truly didn’t, and I could see why Griffin still tutored him in walking the line between the stark black and white of decision making. Who knew how long it would be before Zeke could actually see the gray instead of only guessing at it?

  “What do you think?” I called back.

  “That I should shoot him,” he said promptly.

  “No,” I said with a loud sigh, and he heard it.

  “Just a little?” he wheedled.

  “No . . . unless the crunch wasn’t sufficient and he tries it again. Then maybe. Now quiet down, Kit. You’re making people a little nervous.”

  Sarge looked at me, squinting his eyes as some of the homeless began to move their scant belongings and themselves farther up or down the sidewalk away from Zeke. “You think, girly? That boy’s not quite right in the head, now is he?”

  “He’s right in every way there is to be right,” I said firmly. “And he’s lived through battles and a war you couldn’t imagine. You know the good men who do nothing and let evil thrive? He’s a good man who does something and, trust me, evil will never thrive if he’s in the area. He’s better than I am and better than you. Understand?”

  The man held up his hands. “Hold your horses. You sure don’t look like brother and sister. He looking all Irish with that red hair and you looking, well, all kinds there is. Ain’t meaning to step on any toes regarding family.”

  He was right. Zeke was my family, my brother, just as Griffin was. I’d lost my real brother, Kimano, years ago, and vengeance, while satisfying, couldn’t bring him back. But life had given me two more. Not my guys, not my boys, but my brothers. For a loner trickster who usually led the most wandering of lives, who made the most temporary passing through or ending of your life, I was picking up strays like crazy. They were anchors to my kind, Mama would be the first to say. I looked down the street to see Zeke swiveling his red head back and forth with a “Hey, what?” puzzled expression as people moved away from him.

  No, not anchors, Mama. They were wings. They had wings when they cared to show them and they were my wings. I’d thought I’d been blessed to have one brother. Now I was blessed to have two.

  “If you’re going to leave, then take the pervert with you,” I heard Zeke demand. “His dick touched my gun. Now I’ll have to take it to the free clinic to be tested. Do you know how hard that is to explain?”

  Blessed was a strong word. Fortunate. I was fortunate to have two more.

  “Especially when it’s the third time?”

  All right, family. It was everyone’s burden to bear. And bear it I would . . . with the same grace and style with which I bore everything else.

  “Does anyone have any goddamn hand sanitizer?”

  My cell rang at just the moment I was considering taking the bat back from “Sarge” and using it on Zeke. Very good timing. Griffin was excellent at that. “What is Zeke doing?” he asked before I could say hello. “You’re zapping me with waves of irritation like a leaky microwave. Zeke feels the same as always—his usual nice Zen level of vexation with the world in general, and since I normally can only read what you want me to, I have to guess he’s also having a little fun with you.” He didn’t sound especially sympathetic. Amused was more like it. He dealt with Zeke’s quirks every day and he did it with the grace and style I was beginning to shed like a winter coat.

  “Zeke is being Zeke,” I groaned. Since I was assuming his taking his gun to the free clinic was a joke, I added, “The more he develops a sense of humor, the more worried I get. It scares even my kind.”

  I heard the grin in Griffin’s voice. “I wake up to it every morning. I’d think a big, bad trickster such as you could suck it up a little. Ouch. Fine. You want me to come over to that side and make Zeke play nice?” The “ouch” would be from my escalating annoyance.

  The picture of Zeke playing nice made all the irritation instantly disappear. It was too ludicrous to imagine. Zeke being a good boy—I would’ve laughed, but in that moment I saw them . . . two men meandering down the sidewalk from Zeke’s end. They wore baseball hats and knee-length jackets bulky enough to hide a baseball bat. “Have to go, Griffin. I have two over here. Look for one on your side. It’s time to get off the bench and play for real.” I hoped that Zeke remembered we were here to help, but vengeance wasn’t ours this time. And it wasn’t Heaven’s. It belonged to these people.

  I made a quick call, then put the cell phone away and waited. They kept coming, not trying to look inconspicuous by hunching their shoulders or keeping their heads down. They swaggered, predators on the prowl and proud as punch. Except they were more like poodles on the prowl, teacup ones, strolling into the open mouth of a lion. Pulling the hood of my raincoat over my hair, I did some hunching of my own. Hopeless, helpless, lost . . . victim. Put out what you want others to see and they’ll see it. Whether you’re a pretender to the throne or to the gutter, the ignorant rarely see the chameleon. And if the chameleon is actually less a tiny lizard and more of Godzilla waiting to swallow you whole . . . that truly was your bad luck. You should’ve looked closer. You should’ve paid attention.

  They passed Zeke, still sitting with his gun now out of sight. They hesitated, but kept moving. Zeke would never a chameleon make. We all have different talents. Looking harmless wasn’t one of Zeke’s.

  They might have swung a wide berth around Zeke, but the two of them came on, through shifting people, focusing . . . focusing. There . . . Look at that. There was a woman, hiding under her hood, so withdrawn from the world, so afraid, she’d balled herself up, hoping to disappear completely. Bullies loved fear. In seconds they stood in front of me, baseball bats now out and hanging by their legs, harsh grins showing as they gobbled up a fear that wasn’t there and saw a woman who didn’t exist.

  “Hey, bitch.” A foot nudged my leg hard. “Look at me. I wanna see if you’re worth messing up or if you’re ugly as shit already.”

  Ask and you shall receive.

  I tilted my head back, hood falling, and gave them a flash of teeth far more predatory than anything Animal Planet had on it. “Boys, boys, boys. You wouldn’t know a ‘messing up’ . . . well . . . until I showed you one.” I put a bullet in the right kneecap of one of them. The other one I left to Zeke. Fair was fair. He put a round in the back of the second one’s thigh, throwing him face forward onto the concrete. They were both down, screaming in pain, and the cars on the street—they just kept moving. Just as they kept moving as I heard a muffled pop from across the street. Barely audible over the sound of the cars, but I’d been listening for it. Griffin had gotten the third. I didn’t expect that any mistaken Good Samaritan would stop driving and get out to investigate when justice stood up, and they did stand up, all around me—worn men and women with baseball bats and a chance to take back a bit of the
peace that had been stolen from them.

  “See you later, Sarge.” I squeezed his shoulder as he got to his feet with the help of a crutch on one side and a bat on the other. “Hit one out of the park for me.”

  “I will, little missy. Damn straight I will,” he said grimly. “Thanks for this. It ain’t no honeysuckle nights, but it’s real damn close.”

  By the time the bats were raised for a second time, Griffin, Zeke, and I were halfway to gone. Ghosts and shadows. In the distance I could hear the approaching sirens. By the time the cops arrived—thanks to my call to 911—justice would’ve already been served. Those men wouldn’t be dead, although they more than deserved it, but I doubt they’d see the outside of the hospital for a year—then straight to a cell for the murder of Jimmy Whitmore. Hopefully they’d get the death penalty, but even if they didn’t . . . no one lives forever, especially crippled murdering scum in a prison surrounded by predators who’d see in them what they had seen in the homeless. Then Hell could do the cleaning up. The demons had to get their groceries from somewhere. As God didn’t feed them his love and spirit anymore and Lucifer didn’t have it to give—at least not to hundreds of thousands of demons—they ate souls. Every soul in Hell was consumed sooner or later. For these bastards I hoped it was later. Let the demons play with their food first, as they usually did, only for much longer this time. It was the one time I did regret souls don’t have that eternity to suffer.

  That checked off the first lesson of the night. It was time to see how the second was going.

  Leo, as it turned out, accomplished his trickery as quickly as we had and didn’t need our help. It was too bad. I’d been looking forward to seeing that one in action. Some evolving serial killer or just plain psychopathic ass had been killing pets in a certain gated neighborhood that encompassed several streets. He would kill them, in horrible ways that were no pleasure to think about again, so I didn’t, and then would hang them in trees or, if no desert-loving tree was available, on mailboxes, the antennae of cars, whatever he could find. The majority of his victims were cats. Dogs tended to bark when approached in the middle of the night, but cats were quiet.

  So was he. No one had caught so much as a glimpse of who’d killed their pets, their companions, sometimes, to the very lonely, their only friends.

  Tonight though . . . Tonight the timing was right. I’d felt it for this psycho the same as I’d felt it for the ones Griffin, Zeke, and I had been waiting for. Tonight what was good for the goose was good for the gander. Or, better, what was good for the kitty killer was what was good for the kitty.

  Leo had rented a U-Haul trailer and headed out of town on U.S. 95 to the Sheep Range that sits outside of Vegas. It makes up the eastern boundary of the Nellis Bombing Range adjacent to the Nevada Test Site with a wildlife preserve at the base of the mountains. Do you know a common fact about mountains and sheep? They attract those who like to live in the mountains and eat the sheep. Like a mountain lion or a cougar, whichever name you preferred.

  One big pussycat was good enough for me.

  Even though we were in our human bodies and had lost our trickster powers, animals still knew us by the lingering telepathic-empathic defense. They knew what people, and sometimes gods, didn’t know. To a wolf, a trickster would be an alpha. To a lone ranging mountain lion, we’d be its mommy, no matter how old it was. They knew us, and they obeyed us . . . most of the time. This time had turned out to be one of those times. Leo found a full-grown cougar who would’ve nursed on Leo’s leg if Leo had let it. But it was happy to ride in the well-ventilated U-Haul too, and then wait in the lovingly watered large silver-green sage bush of one house while Leo turned into Lenny, who could croak one very convincing imitation of a pet cat’s meow. And as the meows became more smug—because no one did smug as convincingly as Leo, someone decided to put another notch on the handle of his bloodstained knife.

  Here’s another common fact—cats? The thing I love most about them . . . next to their curiosity? There is no such thing as a tame cat. You see the survival-challenged tourists in Africa at the rehabilitation preserves where young abandoned lions are being educated to be reintroduced into the wild. You see them sitting next to that “tame” lion to have their picture taken, all smiles, and the next thing they know they’re wondering how their neck managed to get in that good-natured lion’s mouth. How had that five-dollar souvenir photo gone so wrong?

  As any granny knows, five-pound Marshmallow with the poofy white fur, the slightly crossed eyes, the adorable purr, and who loves you dearly would eat you within ten minutes if he suddenly grew to the size of a Great Dane. It doesn’t mean Marshmallow doesn’t wuv you; it just means Marshmallow loves eating creatures smaller than he is more than he wuvs you. That’s what being a cat is all about.

  When our pet killer crept through the yard, softly calling, “Kitty kitty,” until he came to a particularly large bush that a raven perched atop, he probably thought he wasn’t tame either, but a carnivore out to kill, torture, and maim, if not devour. That’s when a brown and tan head with happy-to-see-you, come-in-for-dinner anticipation in its yellow eyes came out of that greenery and proved him wrong.

  It’s amazing how fast you can go from “I taut I taw a puddy tat” to choking on your own blood.

  One more lesson learned.

  Our friend the cougar ended up back in the mountains with a full belly and some leftovers courtesy of another ride in the U-Haul, and Leo had called to give me the story on his way back. That left time for Griffin, Zeke, and me to catch a very late dinner. I was sorry I had missed the fun, but there was always more to be had.

  As I went to bed that night, I did some wondering of my own. What did someone . . . something like Cronus, who’d thought it hilarious to eat his own children, according to legend and truth—what did he do for fun?

  Chapter 6

  Checkers.

  It was true and I never would’ve guessed, but the world is strange like that. Cronus liked checkers.

  He was waiting for me when I came downstairs that morning. Actually, not really. I gifted myself with an ocean full of flattery there. He was waiting for Leo. Leo had reached out and touched someone, as the commercials used to say, and that someone had in turn touched someone who in turn . . . Bottom line, Cronus was waiting for Leo to show up at work. Because this is where Leo had probably called from and to beings like Cronus, occupation versus a personal life . . . work versus your home, it was all anthills to them. And as powerful as Cronus was, in a way, that was a weakness too. An anthill was an anthill and so much trouble to tell the difference between them.

  Waiting here would do.

  I knew it was Cronus the moment I opened the door to the stairs and saw him. I had one hand still rubbing lotion on one arm when I froze—froze except for continuing to automatically rub in the lotion. When I’d figured out I was going to have to work to keep my weight at demon-kicking prime, I’d then discovered living in the desert when you can’t shape-shift for a while is unbelievably hard on the skin. At the rate I was going, I would need an entire staff of cosmetic, nutrition, and health professionals to keep me from disintegrating in the next brisk wind.

  But I was here now and still relatively moist and mobile . . . when I wasn’t facing a Titan. Not that Cronus looked like a Titan. I had no idea what a Titan did look like and I was happy to keep it that way. I was a trickster. I bowed to no one, not ever, but I knew that seeing a Titan . . . That couldn’t be a good thing. They had given birth to gods, were a level above gods, and Leo, a god himself, was hard to look at in his natural form. Not because he was hideous—he wasn’t. He was glorious and terrifying, an infinite darkness and a blinding light, good and evil, the earth and the sky, exuberant life and the unending stillness of death—all in one. He was inconceivable and when you looked at him, even a trickster like me knew . . . his existence defied the universe itself. And that was a god. What would seeing a Titan be like?

  Most likely similar to seeing a nuclear exp
losion at ground zero. Oh, hey, there were some lights and it was really hot and then I was less than ashes—all in a microsecond of a microsecond. And best avoided if at all possible.

  Today, Cronus looked like a nineteen-year-old kid. He sat at one of the tables, hands folded on the wood with a checkerboard in front of them. He wore a simple short-sleeved black T-shirt, inside out and backward with the tag showing. It was nice and flat, not curled as tags tended to be after a few washings. He also had on jeans, but this time right side out and with the zipper in the correct place.

  “Cronus?” I asked, letting the door close and taking several cautious—any more cautious and they would’ve been going backward—steps toward him.

  He didn’t look at me or act as if he’d heard me at all—only stared ahead, over the checkerboard and at the wall. His hair was brown and not dark brown or light brown or any human color of brown at all. There was no depth to the color, no shadings, no bounce of light. Every single hair was the same precise shade of brown, from the root to the end, and the same as the one next to it. Mud. It was the color of mud, not the kind you’d want to play in as a mud pie-loving kid either. It was the color of toxic mud found around chemical waste plants . . . where frogs are born with six legs, the fish with two heads, and nothing else is ever born at all. As I moved closer, I could see his skin was poreless. If it had been shiny, it could’ve passed for plastic and he could’ve passed for a giant doll. But it wasn’t—it sucked in the light the same as the hair and when I set across from him and saw his eyes . . .

  I was wrong. He was a doll, the most cheaply made imitation of a human being you could find on a thrift store shelf after some little girl’s brother had popped the toy’s eyes out to see if they would roll like marbles. Cronus had only oval-shaped holes that revealed the shadows inside his skull. Shadows of men strangling their wives over the grocery bill, the drift of darkness that was SIDS claiming an infant’s life between one breath and no next, the midnight cloud of poisonous gas mixed with volcanic ash that buried cities and killed every living thing for miles and miles and miles.