The Grimrose Path

  We took a corner at a speed that had Leo chuckling under his breath. I don’t think he’d had this much fun in years. A bit of Loki wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for Leo. After yet another corner, squeal of brakes, and blare of horn, Zeke was able to move his lips. He sounded as if he were shot up with novocaine, but he was understandable. “Being . . . good . . . sucks.”

  “No argument with you there.” I squeezed his hand and then let it rest on the seat beside him before patting his cheek. “But other than getting Tasered, it wasn’t bad. You helped rob a museum. Now how many people can say that? You’re practically a professional jewel thief.”

  “I don’t . . . wear jewelry.” He moved slowly and sat up straighter. If they didn’t kill you, Tasers were great for recovery time. “And fragging demons is better.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with killing demons, true,” I admitted, “but you have to widen your horizons. There’s more to life than demons.”

  “Things like this?” he asked dubiously, trying for a look behind us as the wail of a siren erupted. The police car had turned left off a cross street and slid right onto our bumper. The cops had either gotten notice of the museum incident over their radio and tracked us down in a matter of minutes—lucky but unlikely—or they had been waiting on that street with a looming ticket quota and had spotted Leo’s creative driving. It was certainly creative enough to be instantly noticed by anyone with a single law enforcement gene.

  “Things exactly like this.” I faced forward again and buckled up. I bounced slightly in the seat in anticipation as well. I had no choice. It was a car chase. There had been decades of American cinema devoted to the genre, and here was an opportunity to experience it. You had to live every moment as if death rode your bumper instead of the police. It made every moment irreplaceable—every one a perfect, brilliant jewel strung along the glittering gold chain of your life. “You can outrun them, can’t you, Leo? You being so much more technically adept than me.”

  “That’s a given. The question is, do you want the escape casualty free as that may take a few minutes more.” Leo jerked the steering wheel and we took another corner. This time he didn’t stick to the street. He took out a newspaper box, clipping it with the front bumper.

  “Without casualties would be nice, unless it’s someone mugging an old lady. Then you’re a free agent. Do what you have to do.” I braced my hands on the dashboard. “We should’ve switched. I love driving fast.”

  “Right. Then the only casualties would be us.” Leo drove the car between two rows of pumps at a gas station. I leaned out the window to flip off the cops. I had no problem with them personally, but I didn’t mind giving Leo more of a challenge. “Oh yes, that’s helpful,” he said. “Maybe you could moon them too. That’s a thought. That might actually scare them off.”

  “Ass.” I punched him hard enough in his ribs to have him grunting as the car left the station, bounced over the curb, and hit yet another cross street. This part of LA was full of them. It made car chases more interesting. But despite that and despite riding the sidewalk and nearly taking out a gas pump, Leo’s version of a shortcut, the cops stuck stubbornly to us.

  “That’s what I said. If you show them your ass . . .” I punched him again, turning the words into a pained hiss.

  I pushed at his shoulder and put a hand on the wheel. “That’s it. You had your chance. Switch places with me.”

  “My chance consisted of forty-five seconds? Hell, no.” This time he drove over the concrete curb in front of a liquor store and we were on yet another street, this time going the wrong way.

  “I find it disturbing that if we die in a fiery collision, Cronus will still make us his bitches,” Griffin said, ducking as Leo dodged oncoming headlights.

  “When Cronus does Armageddon, he likes to get it right.” I took my hand off the wheel, trying not to be greedy as Leo continued to weave the car around two more approaching ones. “Damning absolutely everyone, living or dead. Good or bad. Human or païen, and that means Thor the Indestructible too. If he’s ever sober enough to realize it.” That last thought gave me an idea, and moments later Griffin and Zeke had tossed a deadweight Thor out of the car. He tumbled across the street behind us and was wedged under the front of the cruiser as it hit him dead on. That stopped them. Thor was a big guy. A truck or SUV might have made it over him, but not a low-slung cop car. Right before both the car, lights flashing and siren screaming, and Thor disappeared in the distance behind us, I saw the beer can that remained clutched in his hand. He had one true love, but he was wholly devoted to it. You had to admire the dedication.

  “It’s nice to know he’s good for something besides stalking a women’s volleyball team and single-handedly supporting the Internet porn industry,” Leo said, seemingly without remorse for letting us turn his foster brother into a speed bump. It did solve two problems at once. It stopped the cop car, and we managed to get rid of Thor. If he were sober, he would choose self-destruction over helping Leo, and if he was passed out or drunk, he wouldn’t be any use. We’d been beyond blessed he’d been helpful at the museum. It had been a long shot, but with the limited time we had left, our only shot. As Leo had once said, Fortune rarely favors the fucked, but there were exceptions.

  “You’re sure he’s not dead?” Griffin asked. “I think one of the tires went over his head.”

  “Unfortunately I’m sure. That won’t give him a headache, much less kill him.” Leo had us on the I-10 in twenty minutes and heading home. Only then would he pull over and switch places with me. He had hogged the car chase, short though it was, but I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have given one of those up either. As I took over the driving, Leo took a much-deserved nap. Zeke was only minutes behind him. He had been Tasered, which was a good excuse, but he didn’t require one. Zeke was a napping fool, one after my own heart.

  “He didn’t need me to tell him what to do.”

  It was an hour later when Griffin spoke those words. It didn’t surprise me he was the only one other than I who was awake. When you’d been in a coma, that was nap enough for a while. “With the museum guards?” I said as I lowered the radio volume. “No, he didn’t. Zeke’s come a long way in the past few months, if you don’t count blowing up houses.”

  “He has. He knows why he is the way he is. Before he never knew whom to blame except himself. Now he knows better. Finding out what he was helps him deal with who he is.” Griffin exhaled. “I find out what I was and I can’t deal at all.”

  “If it had been the other way around, would you have held that against Zeke?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No, of course not, so I shouldn’t hold it against myself. But it isn’t that easy, is it?” He was slumped in the corner of the seat Thor had occupied before being unceremoniously rolled out. I couldn’t see much of him in the rearview mirror. Shadows within shadows. At that moment, it would’ve been the same in broad daylight.

  “Nothing worthwhile is easy, but remember, angels have only ever fallen. You’re the single one who has ever risen up. That makes you damn special whether you want to see it or not. For one moment you had all the memories of who you once were and you still turned your back on Hell. You chose who you are now, a life that might be shorter, a life without all the power, a life of doing good instead of destroying it. I keep saying you aren’t that demon and you’re not, but I have to give him credit. That demon made that choice with you. To stay you and to never be what he was again. In a way, he gave his life to let you live. Maybe we both shouldn’t think of ex-demon as an insult. Maybe we should see that only makes what he did that much more extraordinary.”

  The shadows moved and the tone lightened. “You think I’m extraordinary?”

  “Sugar, ordinary you are not. If you were, do you think I’d have spent so many years babying you?”

  “Is that what that was? I thought you were whipping me into shape Spartan style. . . . Shit! Watch out!”

  I jerked my attention from the mi
rror to what was in front of me, easily visible in the car’s headlights—too easily. It was the Apocalypse, wearing that same inside-out T-shirt, same new jeans, and with the same eyes that were abandoned wells littered with bones of the doomed and the damned. He was standing on the road fifty feet ahead of me. I had less than half a second to decide which would be worse: to swerve off the road and most likely flip the car or to hit him head-on. I chose head-on. That was the unknown. I might do some damage; I might not, but rolling the car was guaranteed injuries. This was an old car with no airbags and the seat belts were questionable at best. I had to make a choice, and I did.

  I chose wrong.

  Hitting Cronus was like hitting a brick wall. He didn’t move, bend, or break, but we did. I heard the shattering of the windshield and the scream of metal as the front of the car folded in like an accordion—felt the rear of the car come up off the ground. We weren’t going to roll over, but we were going to tip and land upside down. With the speed I was going and the lack of give when we hit, we were going to fall hard. I didn’t think the roof would hold, and I didn’t think any of us were going to end up as anything other than dead with crushed skulls and broken necks. I thought all of that in less time than it took to take a breath. The mind moves quickly when it sees an ugly death racing its way. If there was anything I was sure of in that one frozen moment, it was that our lives were over.

  Then the car stopped up in the air at almost a ninety-degree angle before slamming back down on all four wheels, which all immediately blew. I could see Cronus, blurry now as warm liquid dripped into my eyes. He had one hand resting on the mangled remains of the hood, the glass of the windshield diamond pebbles across the metal. He had stopped us and I didn’t think it was out of the kindness and goodness of the black hole that was a Titan heart. “I smell the demons on you. Bring me one more demon out of Hell. One more or I don’t start with worlds. I start with you,” he said before switching to a subject with such abrupt illogic I nearly couldn’t understand the words. “You should go home.” He swiveled his head in the direction of our home, then completely around to face us again, the neck a twisted piece of inhuman taffy. “But you can’t.” The smile was as creepy and soul sucking as it had been before. “You can’t go home when there is no home. Bring me a demon.” He lifted his hand from the car and turned the world inside out. Gods moved themselves through the world. Cronus decided to move the world around him. It was indescribable, the feeling—worse than the free fall of an airplane falling from the sky. A thousand times worse.

  I sucked in a breath and held it. I didn’t vomit. I wouldn’t. I refused. Zeke and Griffin weren’t so fortunate. What Cronus had done to reality was horrifying to me, unnatural, but not unknowable. I was païen. I’d seen similar things, not as perverse in its magnitude, but similar. But to Zeke and Griffin, what had been done was beyond obscene and so alien to their minds and bodies that it couldn’t be tolerated. I heard them push the doors open, crawl out onto the asphalt, and retch. If they could move and throw up, then chances were they weren’t dying, which was good. The Titan hadn’t detected Griffin’s wings either and taken him, even better. The fact that he needed only one more demon now fell into a classification of which good and better weren’t a part.

  Prying both hands off the steering wheel, I wiped at the blood running into my eyes. I’d either been cut from flying glass or smacked my head on the steering wheel. “You can’t go home when there is no home,” Leo said beside me. He undid his seat belt before pulling off his shirt, folding it, and handing it to me. The tribal raven tattoo on his chest showed in flashes from the one working headlight and the lights of cars moving up behind us. This interstate was never empty, no matter what time of day.

  “Thanks, Matthew McConaughey. I’ve gotten to see your bare chest twice this week. You’re a shirtless wonder. I’m swamped with happy horny hormones.” Despite the wit or dark attempt at it, I leaned against his shoulder as I held the cloth to my forehead.

  “You can’t go home when there is no home.” He wasn’t giving up until I admitted it, was prepared for it. “You know what that means.”

  I did. I knew. I shouldn’t have cared. It shouldn’t have mattered, not to me—not to who and what I was. But it did, and it hurt. It hurt so damn much. “I know,” I said, closing my eyes and letting him take more of my weight. “I do.”

  And it broke my heart.

  Trixsta was gone.

  My home, the first I’d ever had, was gone. A pile of rubble was in its place. The only picture I had of my brother and me, the piece of amber my mama had given me, the whimsically painted headboard of my bed, its carved leopards and birds that greeted me every morning, the claw-foot tub I’d taken far too many bubble baths in, Zeke’s first headshot from the target range stuck to the refrigerator—an accumulation of ten years of Trixa Iktomi’s life, and it was all gone. Cronus had brought it down like the Tower of Babel.

  We’d stolen another car—carjacked it from a less-than-Good Samaritan who’d tried to drive around our wreck and keep tooling it toward Vegas and the nickel slots. He’d made it to Vegas, but riding in the trunk of his own car. We’d dropped him off at Buffalo Bill’s Casino on the California-Nevada border. Nickel slots to his heart’s desire. We’d also torched our “borrowed” car before we left—couldn’t have the VIN number tracing it back to the neighbors, and it made a good distraction for the police and emergency response teams.

  But that was a thought that came and went, because my home was gone and now I knew. Me and mine weren’t wanderers thanks to it being written in our genetic code. There was another reason we were nomads by nature. Some long-past ancestor had discovered that if you didn’t love something, you couldn’t lose it. If you didn’t take in strays, like I had Griffin and Zeke, you wouldn’t have to watch them die. If you refused to see that someone was more like you in the good ways and not the bad, you wouldn’t have to watch them leave someday. If you never had a home . . . but I had. I’d lost it and my confidence that I didn’t need it, all in one. I felt the loss of both like an ache straight through to my bones. Who I was and where I’d chosen to be that person had vanished in the remains of a squat and unique building. Unique being another way of saying ugly, but ugly with character and meaning. You didn’t have to be beautiful to have those things. Trixsta had had them in abundance.

  I missed it. That son of a bitch Cronus might get by with tearing down Lucifer and Hell along with him, but he wasn’t getting away with what he’d done to my home.

  “I have a copy of the picture of you, me, and Kimano,” Leo said quietly beside me.

  My mama would say it was foolishness. That a picture of Kimano and me was a picture of empty Halloween costumes, because you couldn’t see who we truly were anywhere in the shapes we chose. They were temporary and forgotten as easily as an old shirt or pair of shoes you hadn’t worn in years. She was wrong. No matter what we looked like, I could always see my brother and he had always seen me. Leo always saw me, and he always knew me. He knew how much that old black-and-white photo meant. Memories faded, the most precious ones as well. Time washed everything out on the tide, every year taking it farther and farther from sight. I wanted that one memory sharp and bright. I needed it. I nodded, but said nothing as I felt the warmth of his hand wrap around mine.

  Boulder Highway was blocked off as fire trucks and an investigative crew looked over the wreckage. It was four a.m., but Vegas never sleeps and the traffic pileup was enormous, which is where we sat—one in a long line of cars. But I could still see. The buildings on either side were completely undamaged. It was as if a minute yet hugely violent earthquake had hit Trixsta and only Trixsta . A natural disaster, that was Cronus . . . one massive natural disaster, without mercy or remorse.

  Zeke and Griffin were both asleep this time in the back. Considering they were bruised and battered from the wreck, I didn’t wake them up to see the bones of Trixsta laid bare. It would be painful for them too. It had been their home for several year
s, more than Eden House had ever been. They would mourn, the same as I did, but they didn’t need to do it now. They’d been through enough this week, and with Griffin having the only thing close to demon wings on Earth at the moment, they had other things to worry about.

  We spent what was left of the night at Leo’s condo, two hours later, after finally passing through the backed-up traffic. His place was in Green Valley, older but neat and well kept up. This was actually the first time I’d been inside. He tended to bring his bimbo du jour here these days instead of the bar as I’d produced a doctor’s note that I was horrifically allergic to silicone. The fact that I’d filled the car of one of the overly enhanced actress/ singer wannabes with tarantulas during their mating season also might’ve had something to do with it as well. I say, if you’re not an animal lover, you can’t be trusted anyway . . . and horny spiders are fuzzy and cute. I was merely pointing out her character flaws to Leo as an act of charity on my part. He, unreasonable bastard that he was, didn’t see it that way.

  We roused the guys and headed them for the stairs. “What happened to Trixsta?” Zeke asked, yawning, then wincing as his bruised jaw cracked loudly.

  “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” I replied lightly.